Lin

Kim, I have no problem with your differences. What I have a problem with is assigning them to men and women as gender stereotypes given by God specifically to each gender that are not biological. I know some very touchy feely emotional men as we all do. They are made fun of ,yet, Jesus wept. And not for Lazarus. He knew He was going to raise him. He wept at the sight of his friends grief. Jael drove a spike in a guy’s head, for crying out loud. Now, there is a women who demands respect. :o)

My point about the fall is that there is nothing before the fall to denote these non biological difference such as emotion, feelings and intellect. You cannot read it into Ezer because God is also an Ezer. What else do we have to go on before the fall? We are made in God’s image. To say that these are differences to celebrate and assign to genders as a result of the fall is dangerous ground.

We all need love. We are ALL to love one another. We tend to idolize these differences and focus on them because of all the teaching, conferences, books, etc. when we should be seeking the Kingdom…because ‘all these things will be given to us’. We seek to be Christlike, none of this matters. And Christ was a male!

BTW: Paula wrote a post about phobeos in this passage. Boy do we have it wrong! I went and checked an interlinear and Peter is not talking to women at all about ‘respect’ in this passage. He is actually talking to men about fearing God.

http://www.fether.net/2009/06/25/grammar-and-context-a-study-in-1-peter/comment-page-1/#comment-1155

BTW: Phobeos is used in Eph 5:23, too, in the passive. It can also mean fear or even reverence. Eggerich’s conference would not sound so good as Love and Fear or Love and Reverence. :o)