Frank

Cheryl,
I have been busy with job hunting and taking MS Office 2007 courses since my last posted comment, so I just saw your comments (#17) today. And I guess I have to agree with your assessment. The only thing I think I would add is that regardess of what my opponents might do, I must always put on the armour of God, as Paul directs in Eph. 6:10-18, and then clamly and patiently teach the truth without compromise, as Paul also directs in 2 Tim. 2:24-26.

Another thing that is keeping me busy is that I’m doing research for an essay I hope to write soon and make available to CBE as a resource, “Jesus the Messiah: Redeemer, Reconciler and Royal Liberator.” And in my research, I came across the following passage that points out a truth about God and his plan of redemption, reconciliation and liberation that hierarchical complementarian, for all their professed devotion to Scripture and its teaching, cannot or will not see:

“All too often in church history God has been misrepresented as suppressing rather than promoting freedom. He has been the heavenly despot who is the model and sanction for oppressive regimes on earth: divine right monarchies in the state, clerical rule in the church, patriarchal domination in the family. It is clear that this is not the biblical God. His lordship liberates from all human lordship. His slaves may not be slaves of any human master (Lev. 25:42). Those who call God their Father and Christ their Master may call no man either (Matt. 23:9-10). This is because the divine Master himself fulfills his lordship not in domination but in the service of a slave (Phil. 2:6-11). But what kind of freedom is it that the biblical God promotes? According to liberal individualism, highly influential in Western democracies, ‘the only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to attain it’ (John Stuart Mill). Perhaps a definition of the biblical understanding of freedom might be formulated in parallel to Mill’s definition: The only freedom that deserves the name is that of freely pursuing the good of others, not by depriving them of liberty, but by promoting their liberty” (Richard Bauckham, “Freedom in the Bible: Exodus and Service,” GOD AND THE CRISIS OF FREEDOM, p. 20).