1 Cor. 7:8-9; “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

Matthew 19:11-12; “But Jesus said, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Some, from birth seemingly, never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked—or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you’re capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.””

Why would God create a pattern and then create people that do not fit that pattern but to show that every rule has it’s exceptions? What is the gender role of a single individual whom God does not call to married life?

I don’t see how that can work. The gender role for women is basically to submit to the gender role for men, which is to exert authority. You’re telling me that even single men get to be in authority (over whom?) and single women get to submit (to whom?). I’m told that single women submit to their father – that assumption is flawed as fathers do not live forever and most generally do not live as long as their daughters do. In which case they are left without a ‘head’. As for the men, having them be in authority over others seems as if you’re implying that all men get to have authority over all women, in which case all women must submit to all men. What about Christian daughters of unbelieving fathers? It seems that it just doesn’t work in that scenario either.

That’s the oddest thing. In this pattern, every male spiritual leader in the home has a female counterpart that they work together with to manage their family. But in the church, there are no female counterparts for the male spiritual leaders to help manage God’s family? That’s not a pattern, but two isolated teachings with a similar premise based on male spiritual leadership. For it to be a pattern it has to be consistent and repeat itself. The only agenda I see here is one that side-lines all women as spectators who get to cheer on the men who are the ones that are allowed to play the game.

The Proverbs 31 woman as well as Lydia seemed to do a lot of things that modern Christians would say is the ‘man’s role’ – they conducted business, they owned property, and they even had people working for them. The problem is that I don’t see this ever in any church I’ve gone to. None of the women in those churches hold down jobs, conduct business, buy fields, or anything like that. In my high school youth group, every single meeting one girl would volunteer to pray and she’d be told that she can’t because the boys have to lead prayer. I see different ‘roles’ but I don’t see any equality.

So I take it you believe that by being male, a person’s spiritual authority is automatically superior to that of a female? It doesn’t matter in the least that the girl who volunteered knows the Bible the best out of all of them? That the boy that knows the Bible the least out of them is the one called upon to lead prayer? Let’s save Christianity some trouble and just forbid all women from praying at all then.

I’ll read it – but you’ll have to explain to me which Bible verse says that single women cannot lead a prayer while single men are in the room because it violates male spiritual leadership.

I just finished reading it – and I noticed a few suppositions that aren’t supported by some of the things that I’ve read. Junia, for example, is a woman’s name and she served in a leadership capacity with the apostles. Crysostom even wrote of her: “To be an apostle is something great. But to be outstanding among the
apostles – just think what a wonderful song of praise that is! They were
outstanding on the basis of their works and virtuous actions. Indeed,
how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was even
deemed worthy of the title of apostle.””
Another thing is that basing it on Adam and Eve doesn’t really support their case. Eve was deceived, but Adam was not and yet he disobeyed the one commandment from God – isn’t that usually referred to as rebellion? Eve was no rebel. Which of these two things are worse – being tricked to break a rule or not being tricked and breaking the rule?
How then, do you get around what 1 Corinthians 11 says about women and prayer? Do you only let women pray who wear a head covering? For the vast majority of the church head coverings – and the symbol thereof, are a thing of the past. It doesn’t make any sense to ‘enforce’ part but not all of it.

The woman mentioned something about not touching the fruit – did God tell the man that? No, he did not. This leaves two possibilities – either the man told her that God told him not to touch it or she came up with the idea that God had said not to touch it. I wonder which is the case.

God spent a lot of time talking about the animal sacrifice system, who, what, why, when, where, how – he didn’t miss a detail. It must have been very important. The Bible doesn’t have a similar passage explaining male spiritual leadership. God didn’t sit the man down and explain to him in the Garden of Eden that he was supposed to be the leader, how he was supposed to lead, when he was supposed to not lead, why he was supposed to lead, or anything like that. I guess it must not have been that important.

My church never explained dispensations – so I have no idea what they are or how they are relevant. The thing is, we’re a hatless society for the most part. Women don’t wear pillbox hats and men don’t wear fedoras everywhere they go. So it’s kind of hard to say ‘men don’t balk at taking off their hats’ – most men don’t wear hats to balk at taking them off in the first place. Women don’t wear hats either, so it’s easy to see why they balk at being told they have to wear something.

Being treated differently is a big thing in our society. It wasn’t that long ago when ‘Separate but equal’ was the law of the land in terms of racial segregation. We learned then: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of
“separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal.” Complementarianism says “Equal but different” the problem is that it is carried out in an inherently unequal way. Because you’re in the midst of that, you might not see it. Look with the eyes of an outsider who is often excluded and you’ll see it differently. You might not draw this parallel, but there are many who do.

And may you be blessed as well.

The Message – which is a paraphrase, not a direct translation. Most of the time it’s all too easy to see the word ‘eunuch’ and think – well that’s cultural and there’s no trans-cultural meaning to it. This paraphrase captures the meaning behind Jesus words – that marriage is a gift that isn’t for everyone.

Singleness is a gift for some, and marriage is a gift for others – let’s not go around opening each others’ gifts.

In the ancient Greek, the word for ‘man’ was the same word for ‘husband’ and the word for ‘woman’ was the same word for ‘wife’. When 1 Cor. 11 refers to the man and the woman, it’s referring to Adam and Eve – who are husband and wife. They could not have conceived of a time when people would put off marriage or not get married altogether. Statistically, single individuals outnumber all of the couples in the world (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/us/26marry.html?_r=0). I think Jesus’ words were proved true that not everyone was going to get married now more than ever. The problem is that the ‘gender roles’ teaching are also ‘married role’ teaching because the words are interchangeable, but when people are not married then they cannot fulfill gender roles. Or would you have no difference between the way that married and unmarried Christians are to live? How are single men to lovingly servant-lead the wife they do not have? No one has explained to me how all males are supposed to exercise authority over all females in a way that is consistent in all stages of life, single and married. How are single women to submit to the authority of the husband they do not have? Likewise, no one has explained how all females are supposed to all males in a way that is consistent in all stages of life, single and married. One thing I read suggested that single women were not supposed to submit to single men, but ought to defer to them in mixed gender group settings. The problem is that the definition of the word defer includes the word ‘submit’. I see that a lot in complementarian materials. The lack of consistency isn’t just in what you bellieve women must wear, but pretty much everywhere else.

There is a saying that you can’t win them all, but I’d like to think that I provide a balance. In the movie World War Z, it was explained how Israel saw the zombie plague coming and was able to stand against them – when nine men agree on something – it is the duty of tenth man to investigate the matter and to operate on the assumption that the nine men are wrong. The Roman Catholic church had a position called a Devil’s Advocate for a similar purpose. Sure, it’s fantastic for everybody to agree – but where does that get you? It creates a blind spot where people tend to ignore weaknesses in their translation and get lazy in how they frame their arguments because they all agree that they’re right. I’d rather disagree even if it makes your side stronger and you personally better at answering questions. I’m just like my grandfather that way. I did put ‘devil’s advocate’ on my user profile from day one – so if anybody clicked around to find it, they would have been warned that I cannot be convinced. But for the sake of argument, would you have done half the research you have to answer me in all this time had I agreed with you in everything?

Just this week, John Piper wrote an article that says: “To the degree that a woman’s influence over a man, guidance of a man, leadership of a man, is personal and a directive, it will generally offend a man’s good, God-given sense of responsibility and leadership, and thus controvert God’s created order.” He was referring to life in general and answering why he believes that a complementarian woman should not pursue a career as as a police officer. Even other complementarians are pointing out the flaws in his logic. When he and other complementarians resort to double-speak and fail to speak clearly to these issues, they lose the respect of outsiders and all of their related teachings such as on head coverings are seen as less worthy of serious consideration. That’s what worries about this whole thing. Relying on this guy’s teachings could very well do your side more harm than good.

In terms of this website, few disagree. I know I’m not the only one, but many times I’ve seen answers posted without a balancing viewpoint. To me, it feels like everyone here is pro-Republican using pro-Republican materials to recruit more Republicans. So they ignore any valid criticism of the Democrats. So many here are pro-Headcovering using pro-Complementarian teachings to make more pro-Headovering Complementarians. In the process any valid criticism of the Complementarian teachings from the Egalitarian point of view is usually outright ignored. An unbalanced Christianity is a dangerous Christianity. I see it when God’s daughters are denied the use of their gifts and when God’s sons are pushed into areas that God hadn’t meant them to be in because it ‘fits’ Complementarianism but ‘fails’ what God’s principles were and are.

And Christ will always be just as much God as the Father and the Holy Spirit are – our God isn’t three – but one. He is in submission unto himself and in authority unto himself in a way that doesn’t work for humans.

Centuries of humanity tried gender roles, biblical manhood and womanhood, and even head covering. What was the results? Patriarchy – no vote for women, no rights for women, no education for women (for they were all manly things). This was while Christianity was the dominant religion that basically controlled the superpowers of world back in their day (well, Europe and America).

And now that the world is moving toward equality, Christians suddenly realized that they’re supposed to be counter-cultural and they push for those things even more so. I think the world is calling us out on our behavior showing us the inconsistency of the teachings and the fruit that it resulted in.

So we couldn’t be counter-cultural when Patriarchy was the norm, but now that egalitarianism is the norm, then complementarianism is the ideal.