truthseeker

Lin and Gengwall, thanks for your comments. You are both blessings in a ‘dark land’. The place where compism seems to especially reveal its shortcomings is in the practical application. The simple fact that so many churches ‘do’ compism differently is the first indicator. One church may allow women to lead singing and help with adult classes, another may allow the lead singing but not the adult teaching, etc. Defining the ‘job description’ or ‘roles’ is tough for them, I believe, because the bible gives no clear-cut description because it doesn’t prescribe such roles. One would think that something as important as ‘headship’, as comps mean it, would come with a very clear job description. After all, in the O.T., God was very clear, down to minute details of dress, even, about what the priests could and could not do, and what the people could and could not do. So why would He have not done the same in the NT regarding so-called headship roles if He did indeed establish them?

It is so true that women have to become manipulators or puppeteers within comp theology. I think that is demeaning of men. As I have said elsewhere, one comp pastor’s wife was heard to say about this matter, “Well, come on, you know it is the neck that turns the head anyway.” To me, that makes the man out to be a dummy, which he is not-any more than is the woman. It seems highly disrespectful to manipulate a man-every bit as disrespectful as it is to diminish women’s capacities.

Gengwall, your observation that we are really opposing powers of darkness rather than people is true, and very helpful. It can feel like ‘us’ against ‘them’ which is easily divisive, rather than, “Father, help them and forgive them, for they know not what they do.”