Two for One AGAIN!

Warning: The first link below contains a link that leads to a rather hilarious blog. I spent probably a couple hours reading it and laughing. So if you don't have time or if you are bound to take things seriously, don't bother.

We're skipping this one!
We're not skipping this one!

Note: I can't go over everything that Lalaith brings up otherwise this will take forever. So I'm going to hit a few, and you can either send an email and ask about something specific or just research it yourself. :)

Patriarchy. It's an annoying word if nothing else - there is no smooth way of saying it as far as I'm concerned. We're going to take a moment and look at the way that God made things (Creation) and then the way things went in the OT, and then some of the points Christ made in the NT. Hopefully, you'll see that the Bible does not teach or excuse a lot of what Lalaith is talking about.

Creation: God made Adam. Adam came first; Adam was the representative of the people - not Eve. Eve was created FOR Adam - not as a toy or a thing of pleasure - as a companion, as a friend, as a helper, as a coworker, as his wife (Genesis 2:18).

After the Fall, when God is pronouncing judgment, there is an interesting and debated phrase that is used in verse 16 of chapter 3. There seem to be two basic ideas of what the phrase "thy desire shall be to thy husband" means. One is that God is saying that women will no longer be satisfied with their role as helper and they will want to rule over men. The other is that women will basically worship men. They will so strongly desire to please their guy that everything else is secondary.

Personally, I see no reason to think that God couldn't have meant both. Because I look around and I see both. They are both extremes; they are both wrong; they both make sense (at least to me) with the wording. I see women who HATE the idea of a man being in any way above them. And I see other women who can't imagine disagreeing with their husbands. And it seems to me, with my limited experience, that EVERY woman struggles with one of those two things - which would go along with it being a universal curse upon the female gender, rather than it affecting some and not others.

Either way you look at it, this - sin - is the beginning of the entire problem. Because whether women WANT to rule men or whether women WANT to worship men, the end result is that MAN rules over them. And being in his sinful state, that means that man is not going to rule well. So either you end up with huge conflicts - the war of the sexes - or you end up with women being utterly trampled. Being smaller and weaker physically, it's rather easy in less civilized cultures for the women to be trampled no matter which tendency they have.

The OT: From Able to Joseph (which, by the way, is quite a long time), there's not a whole lot said about women or their role. So we'll get into the big stuff of the Law. Like women not inheriting. How horrible. Or, you know, it's just the order of things. What was it that they inherited? Mostly, it was the land. If you had both sons and daughters inheriting land, then the tribes would get all mixed up - which they weren't supposed to. God gave specific land to specific tribes and specific families. It wasn't gypping the women; in marriage they "inherited" their husband's land. And if there was no son, the daughters DID get the land (Numbers 27:1-7). Why? So that the land would remain with the tribe that it was given to.

Giving and receiving women as property: Every time you read in the Bible that a girl was given to be a wife, remember that the Bible is very practical. Since the sons inherited the land, you TOOK a wife for your son - because she was going to be around - and you GAVE your daughter to that guy because she was probably leaving to live somewhere else. At the very least, she wasn't going to be in your house anymore.

Also, seriously, the "Giving of the Bride" in wedding ceremonies? My dad "gave" me, not 'cause he owned me, because it was a sign of his blessing. Rebecca is a GREAT example of this. Rebecca was ASKED if she would go with the servant; she wasn't told or sold. She agreed and they GAVE her away because Isaac lived somewhere else.

Now, I don't mean to say that the property thing didn't/doesn't happen. It did; it does. My point is just that you have to be careful how you take things, especially when dealing with stuff that's quite old and uses words very differently than we do now. Reading into stuff RARELY gives you the truth.

Breeding massive families - there's quite a large family that's the basis of Israel and you know whose idea it was? Not Jacob's. Leah and Rachel were having child-wars. They actually HIRED Jacob to have with sex with them (Genesis 30:16). Doesn't sound terribly oppressed. Breeding for massive families really doesn't seem to appear in the Bible. Yes, there were massive families, but that's not usually because that was the purpose of the women - it's because people like Solomon couldn't stick with one lady. It wasn't to have tons of kids - it was to have tons of sex.

Does the breeding thing happen today though? Yes. Check out Mormonism for a great example of the way women SHOULDN'T be treated. Oh and a note on that, Mormons don't claim to be Christian, so they shouldn't really be placed under the umbrella of "Abrahamic faith." Abuse of the poor and the weak is not bound by any type of anything. It's just plain, old, universal to humanity, Sin.

Moving on 'cause this is already getting REALLY long, the NT: Something to take note of in the NT is the specific people that Jesus made a point of talking to and how PROMINENT a role He gave to the cast-outs of society in general and to women in specific. First off, there's the woman at the well. The woman who went into the city and told them all about Jesus. He picked HER for that. Not just a woman, but a woman married five times and currently living in adultery.

He raised a little girl from the dead. He healed the woman who was sick for 12 years, He healed the daughter of the Canaanite woman and gave the mother the honor of telling her that her faith was great. As opposed to those 12 guys of "little faith." There were the women who were a normal part of His following - the ones who were there at the cross with His mother, the ones who went to the tomb, the ones to whom He entrusted the message of His resurrection. The Bible is FULL of stories of godly women in both the OT and NT.

The fact that God included books like Ruth and Esther, the fact that God recorded the story of the Shunamite woman and her dealings with Elisha, the examples of Abigail, of Deborah, of Samson's mother who never gets named, but who trusted the angel of the LORD before her husband did, of Lydia, of Lois and Eunice, of Pheobe - these are not things that a god who dislikes women or who doesn't use women, or who thinks women are worth less than men would talk about. And that's why God, the Lord Jesus Who, while He was hanging on the cross, made sure that His mother would be cared for, can be shown beyond doubt to love men and women the same amount.

God does not view women as worth less than men. And you cannot find anywhere in the Bible to HINT at that. God's order and God's desire is not about the worth of someone. When a soldier follows orders, it doesn't make him worth less as a person than his captain. It makes him a good soldier. Jesus OBEYED the Father's will. He SUBMITTED to death on the cross (Phil. 2:8). Why? Because He was less God? Because Jesus is not worth as much as the Father? Absolutely not! Because there is an order. Because submission is godly. Because meekness is beautiful. Because obedience is good.

If you make the argument that submission makes you less of a person, you are inevitably making the argument than Jesus is less than %100 God. Women are worth just as much as men. Christ did not pay a greater price for a man than for a woman. We simply were not created to fill the same capacity.

Men were made to fill the capacity of leading the home and the church. Women were created to fill the capacity of helpers. Those are the roles that the Bible has made clear. And that is not a demeaning thing or a sad thing. It's not sad when Autumn follows Summer. It's just the order of it. It would be rather bad if all our soldiers overseas decided that being obedient meant that they were not worth as much, and therefore, they weren't going to follow the orders anymore. I would not feel very confident in our military if that happened.

Why Love and Hate Must Coexist

Skipping the political post, that brings us to this one - about love and hate.

First, let me be clear that I don't really care if you do or don't like using the phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner." I don't mean that in a jerk-ish way; I just mean that it really doesn't make much impact on things if you use the phrase or don't use the phrase. The phrase is not the important thing here; what's important is what it means. What's important is one's attitude toward sin and one's attitude toward people.

Now on to the post itself. First, there is a problem when people start deciding what is and isn't okay based on how they feel about it. Jeremiah 17:9 makes that REALLY clear. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. They shouldn't be listened to. There's also your conscience, which can be tricked into thinking backwards about things as we see in I Corinthians 8. Like I said back Here, the only source worthy of our trust is the Bible because that comes from God Himself.

Therefore, the premise of the entire post is unacceptable. It doesn't hold weight. What matters is what the Bible says. Here are a few verses that describe how God feels about sin.

Proverbs 6:16-19
Psalm 45:7 - Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness...
Hebrews 1:9 - Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity...

Righteousness is the opposite of sin and God loves righteousness and hates sin. Again and again, God is described as holy (Revelation 4:8), righteous (Psalm 11:7), and pure (I John 3:3) - all things that relate to Him being separated from sin, completely and utterly free of it. God doesn't hate sin just because; God hates sin because sin is the opposite of WHO He Is. And since He is everything that is to be admired, sin must be everything that is to be deplored.

God is holy; God's holiness requires that He hate sin. We are called to be holy as God is holy - I Peter 1:15-16. Therefore, the Hating of sin is not negotiable for a Christian. If we are becoming like Christ, we will be hating sin more and more. Now, just as we aren't perfect and just as we don't love God as wholly as we ought, we also don't hate sin as much as we ought. But the fact remains that we are to be striving to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, etc. And in doing so, we will automatically be HATING sin. (Romans 8 says we're to be "mortifying" or "killing" it. Pretty strong terms.)

By virtue of loving God, we hate sin. You cannot have one without the other. That's why John can state so adamantly in I John 3:6 that if we are abiding in Christ, we AREN'T abiding in sin. This is actually a GREAT tell-tale sign of whether or not you're saved. If you don't hate sin, you don't love God.

How does this work with people? Well, as love for God is what produces hate of sin in us, so love of God is what produces love for people in us. I had a friend when I was working at McDonald's who was a habitual liar. If I hated HER instead of her sin, then I wouldn't have hung out with her; I would have deplored HER and not been able to stand being around her. But that's just silly. If I were to hate HER, I would have to break the second greatest commandment to love my neighbor as myself. I would never witness to her. I wouldn't want her to get saved; I wouldn't want anything good to happen to her ever. If I hated her, it would be the same as killing her.

You know who is a good example of hating the sinner? Jonah. Jonah HATED the people of Nineveh. He disobeyed God because he didn't want the people of Nineveh to receive God's mercy; he didn't want them to repent; he didn't want them to be saved. He wanted them to BURN. He cared more about the plant that gave him some shade then he did about all the people in that city.

We are called to do the most loving thing for people that we can. God did the most loving thing that He could for us in sending Christ to die for us. The most loving thing that we can do is take that message to the world.

In closing, the phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner" is Biblical. Although, personally I prefer to reverse it to change the emphasis. "Love the sinner; hate the sin." Said that way, I think it makes more sense. Rather than perhaps seeming contradictory to itself, hating the sin can be seen as the natural outcome of loving the sinner whose life is in havoc because of sin. Just a thought.

Skip and a Hop

It's a poem - you should know how I feel about those. On the one hand, yes, faith is something that everyone has in common. On the other hand, I don't think I could claim that it is our strongest link. It certainly is not our most unifying, since there's a lot of faith that is misplaced. No, I think our strongest link is the fact that we are all created in the image of God; we have souls. That's just my opinion.

And now we hop over to Bubbles. (I like bubbles, by the way; they're fun, if sticky. But that's a different kind of bubble.) This isn't so much a religious post, so I'm just going to give my two cents on it.

Once and again, I read Lalaith's posts and I just get. . . irked. Not at her. And at the same time, I feel sad. I grew up under some similar teachings, things like rock music being evil. It irks me because Christians ought to know better. They OUGHT to be able to see beyond what they grew up hearing; they OUGHT to be able to say, "This isn't in the Bible; it doesn't matter how many pastors have said it; it doesn't matter if my parents believe it; I'm going to believe what's in the BIBLE." We claim to live by that one Book - God's Word - and then we go and add stuff to it that is nowhere to be found in it. It's sad and irksome. We all know that we're supposed to be like the Berean Christians - the ones who took what they heard and compared it with Scripture. But we've gotten lazy. And if a few people say it and it sounds good, if it sounds pious, well then it MUST be in there, right? No.

In order to know what you believe, you have to be able to hold it up to other things. Which means you have to know about other things. I don't think all bubbles are bad. I think small children should be in bubbles that limit the swearing that they hear. But you can't keep that bubble forever. If you do, they'll never hold a normal job. They wouldn't be able to live in the apartment complex that I currently life in. Bubbles are useful, but they have to be grown out of. Lalaith is perfectly right that you cannot live indefinitely in bubble without growing ill. You also don't take the newborn calf and hitch it to the plow. You stick it in a field with its mother until it grows.

Bubbles have uses; they're not meant to last indefinitely.

Just a Short One

I don't feel like doing two at once tonight, so I won't have much to say. I miss my husband. That has nothing to do with the blog.

It's a link to a post with two links!

I agree with pretty much everything that Lalaith said, expect the very last bit and that's only a kinda/sorta disagreement. The root problem of war is not that people allow their disagreements to spiral out of control; the root of the problem is sin. Just like there would be no war if people didn't let it get that far, people would never let it get that far if they weren't sinners.

And that is that. Happy blog-hunting. :)

Arrogance and Selfishness

Something to keep in mind while reading: Since Threnody's post is her opinion of Christians, based on her experience with them, the Bible has very little to say on the subject. Thus my post will contain very few Bible verses (if any) and take a different route in our defense.

Today's post is about arrogance and it takes an interesting view of the word. I say interesting because arrogance is generally about being SELF-centered, while everything that Threnody states as being a problem is not necessarily centered on God or others or self.

Arrogance is defined this way:

offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride

The adjective form of the word is defined as follows:
having or showing an exaggerated opinion of one's own importance, merit, ability, etc; conceited; overbearingly proud

Both of these definitions make it quite clear that there are two very important factors to go into arrogance. One, it must be about yourself. And two, it cannot be deserved. It MUST be an exaggeration. Not just pride, OVERBEARING pride.

Obviously, Threnody is of the opinion that Christians are wrong and that the Bible is not true. Therefore, her opinion about them being arrogant is logical. But if she is wrong and Christians DO possess the truth, it is NOT arrogant to say such. This puts her position at odds with itself. In deploring Christians for such "arrogance" in assuming that they are right, she is displaying the same kind of "arrogance" in assuming that they cannot be right.

Now, to be fair, as if Christians possessed the truth and did not share it, it would be selfish, so if Threnody is right and says nothing, that too would not be kind. It would be the witness in a murder case not saying that he knew who the murderer was because he feared or disliked the consequences. To keep silence when you cannot be assured of anyone else ever speaking up is not a kindness.

Moving along, I don't know ANY Christians who say that THEY know what is best for everyone on the planet. They say the BIBLE has the answers. Do we know some things? Yes, but only because it's in the Bible. Normally, our statements begin with a "God says" or "The Bible says." I've yet to meet a Christian who claims something is true because THEY said it. Therefore, a Christian's authority is not connected with his good opinion of himself, but rather on his good opinion of the Bible and God.

I also don't know a Christian who says that they cannot be wrong. I've been wrong many times, and will be wrong many more times. What isn't wrong is the Bible. When the Bible says something is evil, it's evil. And like a child who says to their sibling, "Dad told us not to do that" the authority does not come from the child. And it doesn't require arrogance for the child to say, "Don't do that; Dad said not to." Even if the child is WRONG about what they thought dad said; it STILL doesn't necessitate arrogance.


Now the opposite side of things. Are Christians arrogant? Sadly yes, many of us are. Usually, it has nothing to do with WHAT we are doing/saying, but rather HOW we are doing/saying it. Should Christians be arrogant? Superior? Elitist? Absolutely not. There is no justification of it whatsoever. We are called to be humble, meek, gentle, kind, loving, etc. Those are not words that coincide with arrogance. We are not Christians because we were elite or special. We are special because we are Christians. The difference there is that one is ME and one is GIVEN to me. I am not loved because of who I am; I am loved IN SPITE of who I am.

So all Christians would do well to remember that they were on the same path, in the same boat, and it was of none of their own doing that they are not anymore. An old friend of mine just got shipped over to, I think, Afghanistan. He hadn't been there long, a few days at most. He got out of one of the military vehicles, which a very short time later, exploded, killing some soldiers.

That was the state of every single Christian. We were going along, thinking that we weren't in a bad place, trusting in our training and our abilities. We never saw it coming, but if God hadn't pulled us out, we'd be dead. There is very little so humbling as knowing that you were just saved from certain doom, a doom that you were entirely unaware of or too stubborn to acknowledge.

Arrogance is best counter-acted by remembering what we are, and realizing that we could not change it then and cannot be rid of it now on our own. When we see that, rather than feeling superior to everyone else, we ought to feel an overwhelming sense of sympathy and love for everyone, like an orphan who has been adopted and given the best home imaginable and then goes back to visit all the other orphans. It isn't arrogance to be aware of what you have; it's arrogance to believe that you deserved it and it's selfishness to not want to share it.

Up and Running

Okay, that's enough of a break. I didn't even get any of my random thought stuff down. Oh, well. Found out today we're having a baby girl - you can't get close to my cloud. Hehe.

So here's the post for the day - a poem.

I don't know what led that author to believe that the voice inside them was God. It certainly wasn't the Bible. Does the Holy Spirit indwell Christians? Absolutely. But God speaks through His Word, not through that little voice in your head. That voice is 1) heavily influenced by society and experience and 2) subject to the sinful nature that infected us all through the Fall. So, yeah. That little voice? Not to be trusted on it's own.

That's not to say that God can't use that voice, that conscience, your logical thought process, or the sometimes intact innate feeling that a thing is wrong. But God is not your conscience and your conscience is not God. This is clearly seen in I Corinthians 8. The truth is that eating the meat isn't wrong, but he FEELS like it is. So if he eats it, thinking that what he's doing is wrong, he's sinning because he's choosing to go against what he believes God desires. Conscience is NOT a substitute for the Bible. Conscience is why so many people - Christians are sometimes the worst it seems - have such sharp disagreements over what is "right and wrong." Conscience varies from person to person; the Bible does not. If it's not of faith - don't do it! In other words, if you can't do it assured that it's right, Don't! (This does not mean that everything you're sure is right, actually is.)

This is something that I think needs to be brought out more from the pulpits. Because I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "Be careful of your conscience! It can trick you into causing problems in the church, and into teaching as God's Word the commandments of men!" I've heard warnings against legalism - lots of those - but never anything that says, "And just because you FEEL that something is wrong, doesn't make it wrong." They'll tell you that your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, but most people don't bring up, "And your conscience will tell you that things are wrong that really aren't and cause trouble that way."

That was a large issue when I was dating my husband. I grew up in churches where things were "wrong" that weren't really wrong. It's because someone FELT like it was wrong and used the Bible to try to prove it. And I grew up wondering why I heard that it was wrong, but never heard HOW or WHY it was wrong. I didn't really question what made it wrong though, because I also felt like it was wrong. My conscience was heavily influenced by environment and superstitious, nebulous feeling, rather than what the Bible actually said.

Bottom line of the whole thing - if it comes from inside you, don't trust it. Not if it's what you feel, what you think, what you've heard, or what you've experienced. Compare EVERYTHING to Scripture before you call it good or evil.

Half a Hiatus

So I was feeling bad last night that I hadn't written anything here this week, and I had resolved to write a new blog today when I had a conversation with Lalaith. She was kind enough to tell me that Untwisting will be (as far as I'm aware) temporarily private due to some personal happenings. Therefore, Freedom will be taking a sort-of hiatus.

I hope to continue posting regularly on various topics, but until Untwisting reappears, I highly doubt I'll be getting anywhere close to three per week. I have some ideas for the next few, so hopefully tomorrow, you'll get something more substantial.

Thanks for your patience.