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LONG HAIR AND SUBMISSION #2
SEEN BUT NOT HEARD
Picture with me a church with a very interesting tradition.
Only the MEN ever say anything. Oh, there are plenty of women THERE, but
during the Sunday School discussion, a man teaches the class, and anytime
he throws out a question, ANOTHER man raises his hand and suggests an
answer. Sometimes during the give-and-take you might see a wife quietly
whisper something in her husband's ear, or perhaps jot down a word or
two on her church bulletin, but out in the open, it's a male-only 45 minutes.
During the eleven o'clock hour, same thing. The sermon is by a man, of
course. Everyone on the platform is wearing a suit, not a dress. Once
in a while — not often — someone of the female persuasion WILL offer a
prayer during church . . . but only if she's wearing a shawl over her
head. And that's pretty much it! Except for that, the gag order is pretty
much ON all the time.
What would you say about a church operating in that fashion in May of
1999? In one sense, you'd have to say that this is a church trying to
operate by what the BIBLE clearly teaches.
Before you get distressed by that suggestion, let's go directly to some
Bible verses that are on this topic. Yesterday we scrambled some eggs
by reading from First Corinthians 11:3, which has this to say:
"Now I want you to realize," Paul writes, "that the head
of every man is Christ, and the head of the WOMAN is MAN, and the head
of Christ is God."
That's difficult enough, but over a few pages in chapter
14, the Apostle Paul adds some fuel to the feminist fires when he writes
down this command:
"As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain SILENT
in the churches. They are NOT ALLOWED TO SPEAK, but must be in submission,
as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should
ask their own husbands AT HOME; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak
in the church."
In case we think maybe the e-mail message just got
garbled as it went over the Internet to the hackers in Corinth, we find
Paul pretty much saying the same thing again in his first letter to Timothy.
This is chapter 2, verses 11 and 12:
"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not
permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."
He then goes on to say why . . . because Adam was created
before Eve, and because Eve was the one deceived in the Garden of Eden.
Etc.
But friend, we're faced with a very clear dilemma. Here are Scriptural
teachings that we simply ARE NOT following. In the vast majority of Christian
churches, including my own, these verses absolutely ARE NOT adhered to
anymore. Four days from now, in Seventh-day Adventist churches all across
North America, women will teach Sabbath School classes; they'll have leadership
positions on the platform; a number of them will even preach a good sermon.
Thousands of them will offer public prayers from the rostrum, and I doubt
that a single one of them will have a tallith or four-cornered shawl over
their head. Some will chair church board gatherings or business meetings,
which puts them in a position of authority. And about a hundred miles
down the freeway from where I'm sitting at this very moment, a female
named Dr. Lyn Behrens serves as the PRESIDENT of Loma Linda University,
a Seventh-day Adventist institution, one of the more prestigious church-operated
medical teaching campuses anywhere. This woman wields effective authority
over top medical professors in a number of specialty schools, and teaches
all around the world.
We began to explore yesterday the biblical principle that often a Bible
student has to consider the CULTURE in which a biblical passage was written.
What were the sociological conditions in Corinth when Paul wrote to these
people? Did factors existing THEN die out in later generations, so that
here in 1999 we can put some teachings on the shelf? And if we now allow
women to pray and teach and preach in church, is it also an obsolete concept
that man is the head of woman? Is that one gone too?
There's a temptation that all of us, whatever our religious profession,
need to avoid. And that's to allow INSTINCT or our human makeup to determine
where Scripture might apply and where it doesn't. King Saul did that,
you remember, and just obeyed God when he felt like it. Now, the verse
we have displayed at center court today — "The head of the woman
is man" — might suit YOU just fine. Because of how you were raised,
or because of your nature — male OR female — or your denominational education,
that rings true in your heart. So of course, you want to say: "Yes!
That's Bible truth! I accept it and so should everyone else. Keep THAT
one." Someone else who lives in a home where, because of people's
temperaments and gifts, MOM seemed to always direct the flow of traffic,
might say instead, "Wait a minute. It was never that way in OUR home
— and things worked fine." Or, "We have a female pastor, and
attendance has never been better." Or, (**BRITISH ACCENT**) "Maggie
Thatcher was our prime minister for eleven-and-a-half years and did a
jolly good job of it, really."
Let me say again, OUR instincts about a verse, which are colored by so
many human variables, aren't the basis for determining Christian obedience
here in the year 1999; that's for sure.
As we explore THIS particular issue — the role of women, and the relationship
between the sexes — what cultural factors AND broad principles DO we find
in all of Scripture? The outstanding Nelson Bible Dictionary takes readers
through the whole Bible, pointing out that God created male and female,
BOTH in His image, and that Eve was to be Adam's companion and helper,
described in terms that specifically connoted EQUALITY between them. Women
were sometimes leaders in Israel; we think of Deborah, a judge, and Queen
Esther. However, this same theological dictionary does go on to explain
that:
"The culture that developed around the Israelites
in ancient times did not always have this perspective of women. Certain
Old Testament passages tend to reflect an attitude that woman was little
more than a THING and that a woman should be entirely subordinate to man.
This tendency became pronounced before the coming of Christ. One of the
Jewish prayers that dated from that era declared, ‘I thank Thee that I
am NOT a woman.'"
By the time of the New Testament era, much of this
still continued. Jews segregated the women in both the Temple and the
local synagogue; in fact, they didn't even COUNT women when trying to
come up to the minimum number of ten to HAVE a synagogue. Respectable
women in the Greek culture of Corinth ALWAYS wore a head covering in public.
And it was the custom in both Jewish and Greek public functions for women
to be kept in the background.
And friend, it was into this mindset that a man named Paul was endeavoring
to serve. These were the views; these were the customs . . . and believe
me, they were PREVAILING customs. So more than 1900 years later, we have
to read what he wrote, and then take it from there.
What, then, are the teachings of this man — we firmly believe he was an
INSPIRED Bible writer — who sent these two letters to Corinth? ON THE
ONE HAND, Paul believed and taught EQUALITY. We find in Galatians 3:28
a ringing statement about heaven's view toward humans in light of the
cross of Calvary. Here it is:
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor
free, MALE NOR FEMALE, for you are all ONE in Christ Jesus."
Notice that in the same sentence, Paul really tells
us that a slave and his master are equal at the foot of the cross; they
have the exact same standing before heaven. And yet, nowhere in his writings
here in something like 55 A.D. did Paul teach that slaves had to be set
free, even by Christian masters. Slavery was part of the culture, and
Paul spoke TO that culture.
And so it's suggested that in a world where female submission was the
entrenched custom in society, the brand new Christian Church was to be
sensitive to those conditions. In chapter 14 of this same letter to the
Corinthians, Paul writes this:
"Everything should be done in a fitting
and orderly way."
In this time and place, outspokenness by a woman, or
a leadership role by a woman, simply WOULD NOT have been seen as an orderly
thing. It would have been a disruption; it would have appeared militant
and headstrong. I'm sure you've had the experience of going into a church
where things just seemed unfamiliar, even uncontrolled. And you were turned
off by it. Well, it was the same back then. And so, in order to preserve
order within the church, suggests one commentary, AND to be a witness
to outsiders, the same Paul who said, "There's no male or female
in God's eyes" also gave the new church these very hard instructions.
That still leaves us with hard questions, though, doesn't it? And frankly,
we're not going to try to answer every question — because we don't have
answers to some things. But again we ask: how do we decide which verses
SURVIVE intact down here in 1999? I read through a few verses in First
Timothy chapter two, for instance. Verse eight says that men should pray
with their hands raised in the air. Verse nine teaches modesty for women
and talks about not wearing gold or pearls. Verse 11 says they should
learn in quietness and full submission. And verse 12 says they shouldn't
teach or have authority over men, but remain silent.
Speaking very frankly, in my own Adventist heritage, which is decidedly
NON-charismatic, verse eight — about praying with raised-up hands — is
NOT practiced. It's not really a right-or-wrong thing; it just doesn't
happen. On the other hand, verse nine, especially the jewelry part, is
quite carefully followed. Then again, verses 11 and 12, speaking about
women being silent in church, etc., is relegated to a bygone era. So in
my own experience, we have a no, then a YES, and then two more no's. It's
a challenging thing to be a Christian here in these 1990s.
Tomorrow we'll ask: what is God's IDEAL vision for His church?
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