Truthseeker

Michael, thanks, and your points are good, also!  Somehow, one’s eyes have to be open.  Lin, you are right, and I actually do have Cheryl’s dvd series and have watched it, and this comp began to watch (saw about an hour of it) and felt there were a number of errors in just that much of it.  I realized then that I am dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enlighten the truth to this person and I have to trust the same Holy Spirit to guide my efforts and words.  I wish it could have all been answered-in the comp’s eyes-via Cheryl’s dvd series.  She has covered it so well and that would save me a lot of time!  Somehow, I think this whole issue, to some people, is kind of like that ink drawing of a face where you either see an old woman or a young woman depending on how you ‘see’ it.  I think or wonder if there is not some threshold point, with the concept of biblical equality, where a person finally ‘sees’ it.  How was it for  some of you that were comps and are not now?  Was there finally an ‘aha’ moment after which it just all made sense or were you persuaded gradually, bit by bit?  Did it happen quickly or over a long span of time>
     The difficult thing here is that this comp is my husband.  He is a very mild or non-existant comp in practice in our marriage, but officially is a comp, nonetheless.  When I go to his church, I sometimes have to really fight tears because I grieve so at the oppression that is taught in the name of Jesus.  In my mind’s eye, as I think of the verse that says ‘how beautiful on the mountain are the feet of them that bring good news’ I see this church (and ones like it) taking the men in, and setting them out on the wide open terrain and giving them rugged shoes and saying to them, ‘go freely, you can go anywhere’, and taking the women, and herding them into a corral and binding their feet and saying to them, ‘here, you can hobble around here and teach the other hobbled ones and the young children.’  This past Sunday I finally visited another church, a Salvation Army church of all things, that is egal., and it was a very freeing feeling to be back in the midst of egal. belief and practice, yet very sad to know that across town, in another place, sat my husband in his church, as we each sought to have like-minded fellowship.
     I was raised egalitarian, and even had a great grandma who was a minister, but I was never able to articulate well or defend the egal position (never had to because I was surrounded by egals),  yet was attending a Calvary Chapel when I met my husband (there were no egal churches in that area that weren’t very liberal per homosexuality, also, so I went to the Calvary Chapel; my husband lived hundreds of miles away so that wasn’t where I met him), so I was in a weakened position in my own mind, regarding this issue.  Now I am not, and am finding myself needing/wanting to defend my view.  I can only think that one of God’s purposes in all this is to make me well able to give a reason for this aspect of my Christian belief since I was not able to do so before, and perhaps He will have me use my honed belief time and again with others for His kingdom’s sake.  What a hard, painful journey, though!