three things converged on a recent sunday morning. one (which had been simmering for a couple of weeks , months and years) was recent event that the woman pastor of our methodist church led the other church leaders in expelling an older man -i think for his sexually harassing behavior toward females at the church.
though i have been a methodist for all these years, i don't line up with the denominational tenet that women can be church leaders. as much a i admire and respect these women and believe that they have received a calling from the Lord, as they profess, and as i believe, i just cannot ignore the Bible passages that limit the leadership pastoral roll to men.
i have mulled over some of the passages many times and over the years have synthesized ideas about God's reasoning of what seems to be God's limit of men only in leadership. my ideas are : tho' God sees each one of us a a beautiful individual with equal worth as all others (this is approximate) and although we Christians strive to interact with one another in the most godly way, we sometimes or often relate or think of one another in less-than-godly ways. our humanness often interferes. so one part of this limitation is God's addressing the men's resistance to obeying a female authority over them. men, and women too, have a hard enough time obeying and respecting authority. perhaps God chose to not add the additional burden of asking men to respect women in authority. my analytic mind (if you disagree that i have a particularly analytic mind in this, well too bad.) my thinking goes: men are not perfect, even christian men so this bias against women in authority is going to rise from time to time no matter how enlightened and egalitarian the man/ men purports to be. plus, even tho' the most godly men might be wiling to bow to a women, their so bowing would make them less effective leaders/models for less godly, less egalitarian men that they are supposed to reach for the Lord. plus, if you believe Genesis, part of the original fall was that adam did not lead eve in that original event with satan.
still on #1- (who is going to read this? i am even getting tired of this.) my other thinking about not women in charge is God's desiring us all and maybe women first to keep on the road of relying on Him for all things. it is so easy to try to take action and "do" in a human way instead of praying to God and trusting him and keeping to His ways in order to win the race.
so this difficulty with this friend of mine (the older man accused of sexual harassment) causes me to articulate some of these beliefs to others, including the woman preacher. i have not done this yet.
the second thing that happened that morning was that i was reading ACTS where Peter preaches and refers to AMOS' prophecy that "your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions . . ." i had always noted and been disconcerted by the fact that my demographic- older women- were totally not mentioned in that passage. but on this particular morning i realized that all women are daughters and all women are called on to cultivate an attitude of being a servant (which were both mentioned)
so my thinking on this became that morning that women's attitude in trying to express a truth or right a wrong could remain in the area of a daughter or maidservant; not boss.
when i talked to my husband about that thought, he was surprisingly receptive, because he had just read a commentary by ____ parker in the houston chronicle where ms. parker noted that the woman boss of a bigtime new york publication had been fired by the board of directors because she was too bossy; and hillary clinton's viability in future polictics was questioned because she had had either a head injury or a stroke. this seemed to columnist parker sexist in an institutional kind of way. my husband and i agreed with parker wholeheartedly.
the third thing was that my daughter told me about a friend of hers who was a bigger than average young woman in their high school years who finally reallized that as a young woman she censored herself from answering questions in school, etc. cuz' she didn't want to be recipient of the attitude that she was a bossy know-it-all and that she had denied the world her perspective on things and that maybe it was time to get over that fear that others might ridicule instead of listen and learn or at least give some value to a thought.
i wanted to give that friend of my daughter's my perspective on this area with that new insight from the books of ACTS and Amos.
so that is one, two, three.
