Cheryl Schatz

Hi Tiffany,
Thanks for adding your comments to this discussion.

I understand that you are looking for charitable discussion and so am I. May I respectfully say that you may have misunderstood me and thus see my comments as inflammatory when they are never meant to be that way?

You introduce NN’s argument in the most inflammatory way possible. Yes, in his post he points out that all of the relationships that are listed in Eph 5 and that Paul (not NN, but paul) uses the same word for all of them. That is far different than saying that the marriage relationship is like that of master-slave.

Actually that is not what I said. I didn’t say that NN said the marriage relationship is said to be the same as master/slave. I said that he said the submission is said to be the same. NN draws a hierarchal ordering in marriage submission and a hierarchal ordering in the slave/master submission. Yet he doesn’t see a hierarchical ordering in “normal” Christian interaction when we submit to one another. But in addition to the “normal”

But apparently he doesn’t see an equal submission for the husband and the master in these “parallel” sets so that only the slave submits and the master does not and only the wife submits and the husband does not.

It is not inflammatory to repeat back what the person has said (i.e. that two kinds of submission are related) but it would certainly be inflammatory if I had stated that NN was saying that the wife was to grovel at her husband’s feet waiting for his next command. Do you see the difference? Questioning one’s position and repeating back the statements that have been made are good communication skills. They promote communication.

I sense that you are very sensitive to this kind of discussion. Perhaps an egalitarian has been rude to you in the past and caused you to have pain. If that is the case, I am very sorry if you have been hurt by anyone calling themselves an egalitarian who is insensitive and/or condescending. But I assure you that this is not how I feel nor do I wish to express my passion in a way that would misrepresent another. This is one of the reasons that I welcome those who have opposing views to dialog here. I believe that talking through these issues is a very helpful thing so that even in the end if we were to agree to disagree, we would have a better view of what each of us believes and why we believe it. It allows us to give the other space on the non-essentials while we can have love and respect for each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Is it possible to give me the benefit of the doubt and ask me what I mean rather than assume that I am being inflammatory? If by your questions I can see that I have stated things in a wrong manner, it gives me the ability to correct my misstatement and apologize for inadvertently hurting someone’s feelings. It is not my intention to see my complementarian brothers and sisters in Christ as the enemy. They are to be loved and respected even if I disagree with their views.

I hope this helps. 🙂