Lin

– “Our culture has such a strong concept of leadership attached to certain words that I suspect it might even be hard to separate ‘boss’ from ‘team captain.’ ”

Boy can I relate to this. As a corporate trainer we ran into this all the time in team building. Folks cannot get away from hierarchy. There has to be a ‘coach’ or a ‘team captain’. If one is not appointed, the team decides. They cannot conceive of working together without being led.

Christ wants us working together being led only by Him.

As to ‘helper’. The word is Ezer and is used of God throughout the OT. It is the same word used to describe Eve as ezer. In many passages it has a ‘war’ connotation as in warrior. If it means subordinate, then that means God is subordinate to us when He helps us. Actually, Grudem teaches this very thing in his book to prop up earthly hierarchy. Sad, huh? And his book is used on many seminary campi as a text book.