Corrie

This will be my last post for a while. I don’t want to hog your blog!

“But the point is that whenever someone “helps” someone else, whether in the Hebrew Old Testament or in our modern use of the word help, in the specific task in view the person who is helping is occupying a subordinate or inferior position with regard to the person being helped. (Page 461-462, Systematic Theology, ch. 22: Man as Male and Female).”

Every time I read this, I have the same reaction. My jaw hits the floor. I am stunned. I am flabbergasted. This is in his systematic theology book? Yikes! It is just so nonsensical on so many levels.

I guess I can now better see why he would tell a woman who is giving directions to a man over the backyard fence to make sure she recognizes his manhood and remains submissive to him in the way she gives him directions. When a woman helps a man, she cannot do it from a position of strength and knowledge. It must be done from a position of weakness, subservience, subjugation and inferiority. So, that means, we better understand the 1950’s handbooks on women when they tell women to pretend they are not as smart as the men around them. Men must not know that they need help because they are in need of help. I know that some teach that “help” means in the way of providing sexual intercourse, birthing babies, cleaning homes, cooking meals and doing the laundry. That hurts less than believing that they are truly needy and not just for sex and a housekeeper. 🙂

I was looking up the word “help” in my English dictionaries since Grudem asserts that anytime a person gives help that means they are in a subordinate position. Not only is this nonsensical but it is dangerous. Do I want to help someone at the grocery store or when they run out of gas because that would make me their subordinate. When a police officer helps people in distress, he is their subordinate? When a man helps his wife, he is her subordinate. When a woman helps her children, they are her master?

Look at the following English definitions for the word “help”. Certainly does NOT imply subordination or inferiority. It does imply strength. It does imply having the strong resources in order to help someone who is LACKING or IN NEED. And that is much more in line with what God does as an ezer for man. God helps us with His strength to supply what we are lacking and when we are in need.

“When I look in my English dictionary help simply means this:

to make it easier for someone to do something by offering your services or financial or material aid; improve a situation or problem (be a benefit to); to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist: He planned to help me with my work. Let me help you with those packages. to save; rescue; succor: Help me, I’m falling! to make easier or less difficult; contribute to; facilitate:

Antonym of help: hinder or impede

The word help doesn’t seem to say what Wayne Grudem would have us believe it means.