Cheryl Schatz

Lin,

I do not want to be contentious and I hope you know I am just trying to make a point. The above does not describe me at all and I am a woman.

Yes, I am glad that you brought this up. It certainly does not apply to everyone just like Peter’s words do not apply to every woman. Peter said that the woman is the “weaker vessel” literally the “powerless container”, it doesn’t mean that every woman is physically weaker than every man. Some woman are bigger and have bigger muscles than some men, but generally speaking women are physically weaker. My words were of a general nature.

I do know about exceptions. I am one of those exceptions. When I first started studying how to witness to the cults and I was able to do the work of witnessing and explain the scriptures so that others could also understand, I was seen as an oddity. I was even told that some men were afraid of me. I guess they were not open enough to understand that the gifts are gender-neutral and that no one should be afraid of one of God’s gifts.

I get very nervous when we take scripture that has been translated by men and put genders in these categories of what they should ‘feel’.

I hope that I haven’t done that. I haven’t meant to. I was expressing my understanding and my experience in general terms not meant to put someone in a box nor to assign certain feelings to one gender or another. My own husband is one of those men who is very in touch with his emotions. Some are very taken aback by the emotions that he shows on his face. But I like him like the way he is. His emotions do not scare me and I would much rather have a man that is extra emotional (he is more so than I am) than a man who has little to no emotions and who is unable to emotionally bond.

I would prefer respect over understanding. Just as I would prefer cleaning the toilet over flowers.

I am about even-even. And I prefer flowers over toilets but I also prefer a deep-level theological discussion over a discussion about flowers any day. I never go to the doctor or dentist without a theological book in hand because I bore easily just reading women’s magazines.

The comps tried to tell me for years I was in rebellion because I did not fit those categories. There was always something wrong with me.

Well, they are just plain wrong. There is no one-shoe-fits-all category. You and I and Paula and a few others are in a category that doesn’t have a whole lot of women in it, but we are real women nevertheless.

I think culture plays a big part in understanding this passage. These are women who had NO respect at all from men and would need understanding.

I agree that these women had no respect in that culture. But I don’t think this is the kind of understanding that Peter is getting at. The terms that Peter uses is to “live together with” the wife “with perception, comprehension”

In the Theological dictionary of the New Testament this word for “understanding” denotes in ordinary Greek the intelligent comprehension of an object or matter, whether this comes for the first time, or comes afresh, into the consideration of the one who grasps it (“to come to know,” “to experience,” “to perceive [again]”)

I take this to mean that the man is to live intimately with his wife in such a way that he comes to experience who she is as a person and he is to consider that she is weaker physically so that he doesn’t put on her an expectation that is beyond her physically. In some countries the man supervises while his wife plows the field. I don’t think this would be considered a respectful thing by Peter.

It is very good to express these kinds of thoughts so that we can hash out our differences and perhaps come to a better understanding of what the scriptures are saying and how we can apply them in our day and with women who do not fit the general mold.