"I contend that if we lose the battle over the gender debate, we lose the proper interpretation of God's Word, we lose inerrancy, we lose the authority of the Bible itself, and that is detrimental to the Gospel."
Dr. Thomas White
Did you read the following announcement over at the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) website back in July?
"Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary will host a one-day conference on biblical manhood early this fall. The conference will be held on Sept. 13 at the Riley Center on Southwestern's campus in Fort Worth, Texas. Featured speakers will include Russell D. Moore, Paige Patterson and Randy Stinson." (link)
I check out the CBMW site from time to time and remember reading this announcement when it was first posted. Isn't it telling that this one-day event was billed as a "conference on biblical manhood"? Equal in essence, huh?
Dr. Thomas White was one of the presenters at this conference, and he addressed the topic The Biblical Foundation for Gender Roles. (link)
Bob Allen (Associated Baptist Press) provided a brief summary of White's discussion regarding Adam's sin. Allen explains:
"A Southern Baptist seminary professor said at a recent conference that Adam’s sin was in listening to his wife.
Thomas White, vice president for student services and associate professor of systematic theology at the seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, said Adam “abandoned his leadership responsibilities and directly disobeyed God" by accepting forbidden fruit offered by Eve in Genesis.
“The beginning of God’s curse on Adam indicated that he fell because he heeded the voice of his wife, which contradicted God’s established order and represented the first biblical example of abandonment of male leadership responsibility,” White said during a Biblical Manhood & Womanhood Conference Sept. 13 on the campus in Fort Worth, Texas.
Defending a theology called complementarianism, which holds that men and women are both created in God’s image but assigned different roles, White rejected the “egalitarian” argument that the subjugation of women came as a result of the Fall and is something that Christ came to redeem.
'Eve was cursed on her God-given role before the fall,' White said. 'She is cursed on her role as a mother and as a helper. She will have pain in childbirth, and her desire will be for her husband.'
White said he doesn’t believe 'there can be a more important debate' than the conference topic.
'I contend that if we lose the battle over the gender debate, we lose a proper interpretation of God’s word,' he said. 'We lose inerrancy. We lose the authority of the Bible, and that is detrimental to the gospel.' "
If Thomas White's name sounds familiar, perhaps you will remember reading about him in the secular press. Here is the Dallas Morning News headline calling attention to his chapel message three years ago: Baptist teacher from Southwestern calls birth control pills 'murder' (link)
We covered this development not long after we began blogging, and you can read our post entitled Selling the Quiverfull Approach to Family Planning here. This post contains quite a bit of information on what White said in chapel along with the adverse reaction from pastors and the press. We encourage you to check it out to understand what is really going on at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Now let's get back to gender roles, as discussed by Dr. Thomas White. He explains that complementarians believe that because God created Adam first (Genesis 2:7), he has headship over Eve. White believes the created order is the foundation for headship.
Then White quotes Adam's first words when he initially saw Eve (Genesis 2:23 NKJV):
And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”
White believes the last part of this verse "because she was taken out of Man" supports his position of headship.
Have you ever noticed that the name Eve is not referenced in Genesis 2:23? It is only AFTER the fall that Adam gives his wife the name "Eve". We believe this is significant.
With regard to the fall, have you ever thought of it in this way?
The woman was deceived by a supernatural being named Satan.
The man was deceived by his wife.
We hope you will give that some serious thought.
We disagree with White's contention that Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden was a failure to lead because he listened to his wife. We believe the fall occurred because man and woman chose to disobey. (10/14 correction). When Adam heeded the voice of his wife, he was ignoring the influence of God in his life. That, we contend, was Adam's failure.
We would love for our readers to chime in on this important matter. Was Adam's sin a failure to lead his wife?
Lydia's Corner: 2 Chronicles 1:1-3:17 Romans 6:1-23 Psalm 16:1-11 Proverbs 19:20-21
My husband came home from a mens’ conference at church several years ago and announced that Adam’s problem was that he listened to Eve – and therefore he didn’t have to listen to me. Not that he already did and he still doesn’t. 🙁 I can tell you this mindset is a recipe for a very strained marriage.
I guess that whole sentence with “The woman you gave me…” isn’t in this guy’s copy of Genesis.
i.e., his “pass the buck” statement.It reminds me of arguing kids who say things like “but Mom said…”
God making humanity with a sin nature might need some clarification. As Bonhoeffer put it in Creation & Fall, stating that the serpent is Satan merely pushes back the question of how and why creations disobedient or opposed to God’s will existed. Augustine went so far as to suggest in City of God that there is no natural efficient cause that explains the origin of the evil will. It wasn’t possible for either Bonhoeffer or Augustine to concede the point that God made humanity with a sin nature but, as Bonhoeffer put it, “If we knew the reason why humanity chose to sin we would not live in a fallen world”, as best I can paraphrase him.
Listen Up,
What you have shared is exactly what I fear about the complementarian position. Most women are very perceptive. If a husband ignores his wife’s input, there will be problems for sure. I am so sorry to hear that this is the attitude of some Christian husbands.
Wenatchee,
I’m giving your comment some thought. Thanks for your insights!
Re. pre-Fall, I have always understood that as God having created us with the capacity to choose… not with “a sinful nature.”
Isn’t it the choice (right or wrong) that made the difference?
(fwiw, the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches do NOT teach that humans have inherited Adam and Eve’s sin. Their understanding is closer to “ancestral sin” than the Western idea of “Original Sin.” I have to say that the Orthodox sound more on the mark to me than a lot of Western divines.)
You know, I always thought it was Adam’s fault because the New Testament puts the blame on him and because the consequences of eating the fruit didn’t become apparent until after Adam ate (Eve didn’t realize that she was naked before she gave the fruit to Adam). Eve was deceived, but Adam knew what he was doing.
I have heard this theology before, and I loathe it!!
Adam’s problem was that he listened to Eve repeating the serpent’s words, instead of holding fast to the word God had already spoken. it had nothing to do with gender. We also need to remember that the text clearly states that Adam was right there when Eve and the serpent had their little dialogue — and he said nothing. That is not a failure of headship, but a failure of human responsibility — thinking about it I would even call it a failure of friendship, since there are times when we all have a responsibility to remind one another of God’s truth.
If it were wrong for a man to listen to a woman, how come God told Abraham to listen to his wife (Genesis 21:12), and why did Jesus send Mary Magdalene to tell His (male) disciples He was risen from the dead? And (just one more question)why do these guys hate women so much?
As to the nature of the curses, it wasn’t about some reinforcing of an authority relationship that was already there, but (and I read this only a while ago and a lightbulb went on) a turning back of the original creation process. Think about it. Adam came from the dust of the earth, and now he must be engaged in a struggle with it, it no longer yields it’s bounty to him without pain and effort. Woman came from man, now she must struggle with the thorns and thistles that have sprung up in his heart towards her. The parallels are so clear that you can’t claim Adam was always in authority over Eve unless you claim the nonsense that the ground was always in authority over Adam
Dee
Sorry folks
We made a minor typo which then changed the whole intent of the closing paragraph. It is now corrected. We believe that the sin nature occurred after the Fall. Man was created with the ability to choose to between right and wrong. That is the problem with late postings-things blur.
Listen Up
Your poignant comment is a testimony to the damage that is being done by this nonsense. One thing that these “patriarchal leaders” refuse to admit is that men are just as sinful as women. And that sin causes men to do some very bad things to their spouses.
Some men take the opportunity afforded them by such pronouncements and cause significant damage. And then these “patriarchs” refuse to admit the damage, encouraging women to stay in abusive situations.
This is not the Gospel nor is it Biblical in spite of their pronouncements. They are just plain wrong and Satan has used it to cause untold pain for women.
If we can be of assistance to you, please let us know via our email or phone which is found under our contact situation. We adhere to strict anonymity. Just know this,, you are not alone and we are praying for you.
W.the Hatchet
Thank you for your excellent comment.
Sorry about that.It has been corrected.Choice=>Fall=>Sin nature.
Lynne Tait
Well said.The men who lean towards patriarchy must force their preconceptions on the text in order to come out with “proof” for their cause which is to transform the view of women in today’s church.
They tells us that the Bible says women are deceived. Then, they stop at that point. They then use another reason for why Adam did what his wife asked. They claim it was “lack of leadership.” It is patently obvious that Adam was as deceived as his wife. he was standing their when she took the fruit from the tree. The Scripture does not tell us that he jumped around screaming “no.” He didn’t even ask a question like Aare you sure?”Eve did have a short dialogue prior to doing the deed.
Instead, he did as was suggested. To imply he wasn’t deceived is a pile of malarkey.He was as deceived as Eve. In fact, Eve was deceived by the Master of Lies-Satan. Adam was deceived by a mere human. Who was stupider? In other words, plenty of blame of being deceived to go around.
Anna
In my opinion, I believe there is a subtle change in theology happening here. The patriarch movement must have some fodder. They have dreamed up the Eternal Subordination of the Son in order to justify submission of women into eternity. Now, they focus on Eve as the deceived one and Adam as the guy who was not deceived but was sitting around naming animals when he should have been telling Eve what to do. Talk about Revisionism.
Numo
Thank for catching our little blooper.Also thanks for the lesson on Russian Orthodox thinking. Did you know that a fair number of evangelicals have converted to orthodoxy, including Franky Schaeffer Jr.? I have thought I might like to write about this trend since my dad was Russian Orthodox.
Re: Eternal Subordination of the Son
Someone in a prior blog gave this reference, for anyone wanting some “chewy” writing on that subject.
http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/36-1/trinitarian-agency-and-the-eternal-subordination-of-the-son
They actually call it Eternal Functional Subordination there, and it appears Augustine (frequently admired and quoted by CBMW folks) wouldn’t entirely agree with Dr’s Grudem and Ware. Anyone have any writings from them from BEFORE they developed their doctrine which would support our theory that they dreamt up ESS to support a pre-existing Eternal Subordination of Women doctrine?
http://razilazenje.blogspot.com/2006/12/ancestral-vs-original-sin-false.html
Since I’ve been friends with a fellow ex-MH who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy he’s told me that a lot of Western converts go through a cage phase Orthodoxy and reject doctrines as “Western” that are not really Western. For instance, penal substitutionary atonement IS present in Eastern Orthodox thought but is not made the make-or-break understanding of the atonement that it is among conservative Protestants.
Further, as hamartiology goes “ancestral sin” is not as different as “original sin” as some people bill it as because the result is that unbaptised babies are considered to have a default mode of being estranged from Christ. Pelagius’ dust-up was in part a consequence of arguing that if no one is born with a sin nature no infant baptism is needed. Advocates of what is called federal headship have argued that natural headship (i.e. “ancestral sin” is the means through which Adam’s decision as the first human and father of humanity mediates and imputes sin throughout generations). It’s not that differences don’t exist between Western Christians and the Orthodox, it’s that I’ve been learning from some of my friends who are Orthodox converts that both sides can play up the differences for the sake of polemic. A number of Orthodox fathers in the 20th century have been working to point out that there’s a kind of pseudo-Orthodoxy in Western converts seeking to repudiate Augustine rather than accept that Augustine is, not uncritically, accepted as a legitimate Father in the patristic tradition of both East and West.
Plus I’ve met a few Orthodox who say Franky Schaeffer Jr. is a really bad representation of Orthodoxy. He’s apparently an embarrassment to the Orthodox the way he’s an embarrassment to what Michael Spenser used to call the “truly Reformed”.Schaeffer rambling about how, after Breivik killed people, that he’d been predicting right wing Christian terrorism for years, has been shown to be mercenary and daft as Breivik was not quite the kind of Christian Schaeffer would have needed to really be “right”. On the other hand, some conservatives (among Christians) in NOrth America are so busy with “no true Scotsman” they can’t concede that Schaeffer can still have a potentially valid point.
Apalled, I spotted that link several months ago and thought it was a useful corrective within the movement that will probably, nonetheless, not have much effect.
One of the differences between the “new” and “old” Calvinists in North America is, as I’ve been studying this subject, that the old Calvinists think the new Calvinists are willing to do too much to modify core doctrines such as the Trinity in a pragmatic attempt to implement things such as “worldview” apologetics and to arrive at certain ecclesiological conclusions (no women pastors) that have, historically, been arrived at on other grounds.
I submit that Keith Johnson’s article constitutes evidence that this is how and why eternal functional subordination has become popular even though historically it is a teaching that is rejected by Christians. It seems to me (even as someone with a Reformed set of convictions and a complementarian) that most American conservatives are resorting to reverse engineering a new theology of the Trinity because they want to avoid installing women as pastors (or even as deacons) because they want to claim they have biblical authority rather than doing what the Orthodox and Catholics do, which is to simply appeal to apostolic tradition and history as the basis for not installing women elders. American conservative Christians are so steeped in a Protestantism which rejects appeals to tradition as papist they can’t afford (they seem to think and feel) to simply make an appeal to tradition because the Bible is supposed to be the ultimate authority. So the scriptures have to be held to be even more comprehensive on all matters of 21st century subjects than they are–that’s my take on the subjects at hand so far, for what that may be worth.
“It is patently obvious that Adam was as deceived as his wife.” – Dee
“For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” – The Apostle Paul
What do you think Paul meant? That is not a sarcastic question. I am curious.
These patriarchal folks are unbelievable. Here is a quote recently shared by an SBC leader/patriarch I personally know: “Many men have blamed Eve for ushering sin into the world. However, it was Adam’s lack of protection and provision that brought sin into the world. Consistent with puritan Henry Smith, ‘When Adam was away, Eve was made a prey.'”
In my opinion, I feel the quote removes Adam’s responsibility and reeks of spiritual arrogance of the patriarchal brand. It implies that, if Adam had been standing there listening to the conversation between Eve and Satan, HE wouldn’t have fallen prey to the deception. It implies that Adam’s only responsibility was that he allowed Eve to be alone. If he’d been there to tell her what to do, she wouldn’t have ushered sin into the world. He would have protected Eve from her vulnerability, instructed her to not eat of the tree, and we would all still be living in a perfect world.
We don’t know where Adam was for sure. Most translations say he was “with her”. He was with her in the garden, but was he standing right beside her? Don’t know, but I don’t think it’s extremely relevant.
The point is that Eve was deceived by the serpent, then she deceived and persuaded Adam. Eve was certainly no more gullible and vulnerable than Adam. Adam made a choice to do what God had clearly instructed him not to do. God confronted Adam first, and he covered up his sin. I don’t believe Adam’s sin was a failure to lead. I believe his sin was choosing to do something he knew was wrong and then covering it up.
rabbinic commentaries may be relevant on this topic. Some of the rabbis held that Eve’s mistake, even prior to being conned by the serpent, was adding to the instructions of the Lord. God did not say the tree and its fruit could not be touched. So when some theologians say Adam failed to teach they may be referring, in some cases, to the discrepancy between what God told Adam and what Eve says. We don’t know why this discrepancy exists because of the threadbare narrative. We don’t know that Eve wasn’t simply repeating an overstated hedging instruction from Adam to not even touch the tree that he decided at some point for himself. In many cases the narrative of Genesis is a bit too skeletal for people to hang this or that observation and systematic theological premise on.
One of the things that happens in reading texts is that we can unconsciously bring ourselves to a reading. I remember a fellow who insisted that Moses resisted God’s call to go to Pharoah due to false humility. I never deteced false humility in Moses, he just said straight up after all his bargaining failed that he just didn’t want to go do it and wanted someone else to do things instead. Theere are absences in the biblical narrative about motive that may be there because authors left those out and because, as even some secular authors have noted, the biblical narrative invites us to find ourselves in it. The sticky wicket is just how much ourselves some of us find in it. 🙂
Joey,
I’ll take a quick stab at the question of what Paul meant, by the closest parallels I can think of. Adam was formed first: I Cor 11:8-12. The woman was deceived: II Cor 11:3 And became a transgressor: Rom 5:12-18 esp.14. Haven’t studied this, but Paul sees Adam’s transgression to be unlike the sinning of those who followed.. Related to his being a type of Christ. No mention of Eve in that passage, just the repeated “one man” compared with the “one who was to come”.
Hey All,
I’m back from France. Jumping back into life. Loving the comments. Although I have none becuase I am so frickin’ sick of CBMW and their poison. My comment: I hope they all disappear.
Seriously.
Back to your regular programming.
Joey
Here is what I mean. Eve was deceived by the serpent. Adam was not deceived by the serpent. He willingly transgressed what he knew to be wrong. However, think about it. If Adam truly believed that he would die, that pain and suffering would come into the world because of his actions, that the entire race of man would be cursed because of his action, do you think that he might have hesitated a bit?
He was with Eve. Watched her grab the fruit. Perhaps he deceived himself into thinking that, if he did such a thing, it wouldn’t be too bad. In other words, was he guilty of self deception? Self deception is at the heart of many sins.
Wendy, Elastigirl, numo
Winsome is the one of the buzzwords. I know winsome people. Patterson’s comments were not winsome. Winsome people do not brag about midnight buffets with dubious individuals.CJ Mahaney is not winsome. Robert Jeffress is not winsome. These folks remind me of clanging gongs. Mother Theresa was winsome. I will never forget her comments on abortion before the Congress which caused the Clintons to stand and applaud her statements even though they disagreed with her. Corrie Ten Boom was winsome. Richard Wurmbrand was winsome.
Also, winsome is used by certain authority to figures as an excuse not to listen to someone who is making a strong point. “Naughty, naughty, you should be winsome. Since you’re not, I won’t listen to you.”
Elder NLR
I prayed for your and your trip a couple of nights ago. Was it wonderful? Welcome back to your TWW home.
I am looking forward to reading your post when you get around to it. No pressure. I just think you have a lot to say.
Dee,
Regarding Adam..that makes sense to me.
Regarding winsome…if you have to communicate at the level of Mother Teresa or Corrie Ten Boom to be winsome then we are all in trouble. Obviously there are a lot of ways to use a word…but just because YOU don’t find Mahaney or Dorothy Patterson winsome doesn’t mean they aren’t (How was that for a sweet triple negative?) Plenty of people apparently find them charming, winning etc. I guess the question would be if winsomeness is simply in the eye of the beholder?
“I contend that if we lose the battle over the gender debate, we lose a proper interpretation of God’s word,’ he said. ‘We lose inerrancy. We lose the authority of the Bible, and that is detrimental to the gospel.”
The anti-Abolitionists said pretty much the same thing about what would happen if they lost the debate over the Bible’s support of slavery and the subjegation of the African races.
Dee–
Awww! THat is SO sweet! Thank you for praying. I had a wonderful, WONDERFUL time! I am still stuck in France, my heart, that is. Ha! Yes, I am slowly working on my post.
I made 4 new friends who live in the area on my trip. We are all going out to dinner tonight, BTW. And guess what! THey are NORMAL! Yes, normal. Who would have ever thought normal would ever mean so much.
Joey
People rise to the level of Corrie Ten Boom because they are truly winsome, not pretenders.
Kirsten
i just heard about an interesting book called Slavery, Women and Homosexuality which is a scholarly work that shows how the issues of slavery and women differ from the issue of homosexuality. It shows why the arguments from slavery can be applied to women but not to homosexuality.
Wendy
Why did he even think he could cover up his transgression? He supposedly knew the character of God. Once again, self delusion rears it head.
One last comment on the “man was not deceived” topic, since I didn’t find any specific references to that elsewhere in Paul’s writings. In another letter he did say that at least 2 men (himself and Titus, and no doubt all other believers) had once been deceived, amongst other things. Titus 3:3
Again in Rev12, we see that the ancient serpent deceives the whole world (male, female, Jew, Greek, great, small, IMO) except those who conquer him through Christ. Those “brothers”, he accuses, and wars against
I forgot also, Paul said SIN, through the commandment, had deceived and killed him in Rom 7:11.
A quick attempt to challenge the definition and define the situation in answer to the question “Adam’s sin– a failure to lead?”
One definition of Adam, “Male and female He created them, and blessed them, and named them Adam when they were created.” Gen 5:2
One part of that blessing? “Have dominion”… Likely includes some leadership and authority.
Over whom? Fish, birds, every other living thing, livestock, all the earth, every creeping thing that creeps… Likely includes the serpent.
So “a failure to lead”? Yes– IF we define things aright.
The Good News?
“And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church.” Eph 1:22
Lynne Tait’s great descriptions of “failure of human responsibility” and “failure of friendship” remind me of an insightful article, which could I suppose be subtitled “and failure of brotherhood”.
http://awildernessvoice.com/brotherhood.html
Dee, Appalled, Joey,
I hadn’t thought about Dee’s point that Adam deceived himself. Excellent observation.
I’ve always believed Adam was with Eve when she ate the fruit, since most translations say Adam was “with her”. Obviously, that is/has become a subject of debate. I can see how the CBMW crowd would take the position that Adam had left Eve alone, and thus believe this left her vulnerable and gullible to deception by the serpent. After all, they don’t want Adam to have any real responsiblity (or not much). They won’t say that directly. They’ll just play semantics games to convince folks that, since Adam was a man and the head, his only problem was not protecting and leading.
In my opinion, I don’t think it matters. If he was there and watched her eat the fruit, he was certainly complicit. He could have deceived himself into believing what she was doing was fine, since there were no immediate consequences. If he was somewhere else in the garden, and Eve went to him and deceived him, Adam’s sin and the result was essentially the same. I believe the text can be interpreted that Adam wasn’t deceived by Satan – Eve was – and then Adam was deceived and persuaded to eat the fruit by Eve (and deceived himself, as Dee pointed out).
I agree that Adam would have to be deluding himself, in order to believe that he could successfully hide from God and cover up his sin.
I think it is very easy to take this particular passage and add our own thinking into it, to make it say what it does not. Many pastors do exactly the same thing, and often come to a conclusion directly opposite to what the passage says. (I have certainly listened to many of these.) So I think when the passage specifically says that Adam was not deceived, we need to be very careful when we conclude that Adam was deceived.
I think Dee has now clarified that Adam was not deceived BY SATAN (change made at request of commenter) , and concludes from common sense that he self deceived. However Adam had some information that Eve did not: He didn’t see her drop down and die.
(I will note that it is interesting that Adam and Eve both had the word “die” and knew what it meant.)
It is also I think important to know how this very short passage is used by Paul, and not try to apply it beyond that application, because it is both short and (I think) pretty hard to understand the reasoning.
A parallel passage: II Cor 11:3 is perhaps enlightening, because it also has to do with leading the church away from the gospel.
The clear conclusion Paul comes to is hard to understand in light of other passages in the New Testament:
“I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet”
However one can ask about the word “I” used here – instead of “The Lord does not allow” we have “I do not allow”. Perhaps this is from Paul’s abundance of caution rather than a command from the Lord?
I don’t pretend to have an answer here. I believe it important to regard the Bible with authority, but I also believe (as in the passage in II Cor 11:3) that we shouldn’t be adding rules to the simplicity of the Gospel.
We live in a time where I think the opposite problem is occurring. *sigh*
Interesting. I wrote “Dee has concluded that Adam was not deceived BY SATAN” and emphasized BY SATAN by putting it between brackets. And the stuff between the brackets was omitted in the post.
How sad to make my post read exactly the opposite than what it read when I wrote it.
me
Do you want me to edit the original comment?
As somebody noted on another blog, this spin cycle is getting out of control, we need to call in the Maytag rapariman!
Did I catch the original quote? Did one of these BM people actually say, straight up cut and paste “The beginning of God’s curse on Adam indicated that he fell because he heeded the voice of his wife, which contradicted God’s established order and represented the first biblical example of abandonment of male leadership responsibility,” White said during a Biblical Manhood & Womanhood Conference Sept. 13 on the campus in Fort Worth, Texas.
Defending a theology called complementarianism, which holds that men and women are both created in God’s image but assigned different roles, White rejected the “egalitarian” argument that the subjugation of women came as a result of the Fall and is something that Christ came to redeem.
‘Eve was cursed on her God-given role before the fall,’ White said. ‘She is cursed on her role as a mother and as a helper. She will have pain in childbirth, and her desire will be for her husband.’
Is he really saying she was cursed by the role God had given her mother, helper, child-bearer?
What a tool.
DB
here is the issue in a nutshell in this writer’s opinion. These guys adhere to a basic belief that men are in authority” and go so far to say that they are patriarchs.Everything is interpreted in this light. It is like Ken Ham, who no matter what he is reading, find support that the earth is 6000years old. It is a lens through which they read. BTW, i used to say I believed these gender things but deep inside I had questions and felt uncomfortable. A wonderful pastor, Pete Briscoe, challenged my assumptions and I decided to get my questions answered.
Make no mistake. There is a gender war going on. I guess they like this one a whole bunch more than trying to figure out why kids are bolting from the faith. My prediction is that in a followup study within a decade, the gender issue will be raised by the kids as well.
Well, Dee, think about it, why would a young female want to remain in the faith if the faith includes being led around like a heifer with a ring through it’s nose and domesticated and used for your biological processes and then having those things, the only things that system values being called curses.
There is nothing to attract a woman with an IQ above room temperature to such a faith.
Then who will these men lead? Oh, yes, once in my old SGM church, many years ago, one of these patriarchists said, “Get a dog.”
Thank God this isn’t actually God’s will. Thank God He didn’t create half the people in His image only to disapprove of them walking in their giftings.