ROLES

(letter)      

You asked if I’d write down my thoughts.  Much has taken my time but now I will outline my understanding of the recent issue.  ( I awoke at  2:30am with this on my mind so will take this time to write. )

I believe we both recognize that God loves His wayward children, of which I am a prime example.  Yet when trustingly obedient we bring greater happiness into both sides of the relationship.  It is from this foundation that I approach this request. 

Because the written word of God is His attempt to communicate to humans through humans— their languages, thoughts, idioms and forms, it becomes exposed to many interpretations – ie.  worship days – the first, the seventh, or any will do; soul vs. conditional immortality; second chance, third, or multiple chances; punishing or punishment; fire that destroys or destroying fire; improving apostolic succession or deteriorating Christianity; eat what God created to be eaten Genesis 1:29, or anything will do Gen. 9:3, or eat clean meats Lev. 11, or foods created to be eaten 1 Tim. 4:3; or your body is a throw-away vs. the temple of the Holy Spirit; alcohol use or abstinence; “go to Bethel and sin, go to Gilgal and sin yet more” Amos 4:4 vs. Christ’s instruction to  “sin no more”;  assemble yourselves together Heb. 10:25 or “I can not stand your assemblies” Amos 5:21;  salvation by works, by grace, or faith; is prophecy about His history or or more about humans story and future.  When one overlooks God’s foundational love/freedom in our milieu of reality, texts can easily be put together to “prove” a capricious, angry, violent OT or NT God; or when one ignores the foundational perpetuity of God’s beneficial laws  (instructions revealed in the OT and NT — Romans 2, James 2 along with Christ’s teachings), texts from Paul  (like Romans chaps. 1, 3) can be misused to promote antinomianism — the government of the man of lawlessness.    The list goes on…

Then we create what we term “moral” concepts, concepts not found in the scriptures such as tolerance vs. true Biblical other-centered love;  “egalitarianism”— when paired with human desire and logic paves the way for the anatomic, metabolic role lie of unisex and loss of shame;  self-esteem — when we should see self truly, despise, die to self and humbly accept God’s valuation which is infinitely bigger than the pitiful prop of self-esteem for the poor man of self; and twisting love from other-centered to self-centered.      

As  a scientist I look at the spread of data on a subject, then draw a line that best fits, realizing data variation may originate from many sources, so the outliers are not what you draw conclusions from.  That line might be a straight line, a bell curve or others but rarely a tightly packed point or line. From that line, that vantage point, you may look at and attempt to interpret the outliers.  The same applies to scriptures.  Read widely, obtain the main point, then from that vantage point interpret the real or supposed variations.  In Luke 10: 26 Christ asked “What is written – How do you read it?”  The Bible is to be understood as coming from one source, consistent throughout (2 Tim. 3:16, 2Pe 1:21).  Look for the obvious, the main point, the plain, the repetitive teaching on a subject. Problems arise in interpretation primarily when an obvious teaching is wanted to be changed by humans so new teachings are made from outliers or by taking a little here and a little there and we fall back.…  Isa. 28:13.  Thus the 5 to 39 thousand different Christian denominations depending on how you cut the cheese.

Concerning the topic at hand of women in spiritual headship, to focus on the action of “ordination”—  the laying on of hands  — confuses, since it was used for different religious purposes, blessings and ministries (of which there are many) or even political offices, so a second question should arise as to/for what purpose?  Reasonably persuasive as well as strange downstream arguments from outliers abound on either side of the question but let us look for the main point—the “foundation… which was laid” (1 Cor. 3:11) for this question.               

Twelve foundational points first to consider:

One: The Hebrew word ( “adam” ) used commonly in Genesis chapters 1-9 can mean generic mankind or gender man so meaning is determined by the context of each specific use.

Genesis 1:26 means ( generic ) mankind – affirmed in vs. 27 as male and female.

Then in the expanded version of mankind’s creation of chap 2 we find:

vs. 5 God recorded, “ there was no ( gender ) man to work the ground”( woman not yet created).

vs.7 God formed ( gender ) man from the ground (woman not yet created).

vs.15 God put ( gender ) man into the garden to work it (woman not yet created).

vs.16,17 God commanded ( gender ) man (no woman yet created) not to eat of the tree… with the obvious expected responsibility to pass it on, which by implication was.  That necessitating submissive trust in the hearer.  

vs. 18 God said, “it is not good for ( gender ) man to be alone, I will make a helper”  A helper implies a leader ( see Strong’s or Webster )— the beginning of the concept of servant leader (Lk 22:26).

vs. 19 God brought the animals to ( gender ) man to name.  A head names (woman not yet created).

vs. 20 ( gender ) man named the animals.

vs 20 not found a helper for ( gender ) man.

vs. 21-23 Woman was made from ( gender ) man. Contexually Genesis 2:1-23 is all gender man since it was prior to woman’s creation.

vs.23 &3:20 ( gender ) man in his headship role named “woman” without prompting.— An address of deep respect, pointing back to creation, given by the second ( gender) Adam to His mother in John 19:26.

vs. 25 ( gender )  man and his wife, in that order. 

Chapter 3 —post fall. vs 8 ( gender ) man and his wife, in that order.

vs 9 God called to ( gender ) man to answer for the absence of the couple.

vs. 10 ( gender ) man answered.

vs. 22,23 God said ( gender ) man has become one like us…so God banished ( gender ) man from the garden to work the ground from which he ( gender man ) was taken (woman was not given the task to work the garden nor was taken from the ground).  Implied here is that woman followed.

These 16 acts of God and descriptions before and immediately after the fall, and before all culture, strongly imply, if not establish, a God given headship role of ( gender ) man as a servant leader ( Mark 10:42-44 ).

To look at these verses a different way we see in Genesis chapter one God is mentioned 4 times in the record of each of the first five creation days. Then 16 (4×4) times on the sixth day in which he created man and woman. In chapter two (prefall) we find God spoke of/about/to gender man 24 times and woman six times (4:1). Or if we look at pre-fall communication pathways God spoke to gender man four times and to gender woman none (4:0). Then post-fall in chapter three, God communicated with gender man four verses and gender woman one (4:1). Then God placed hard but beneficial curses on gender woman one verse/one curse and to gender man four verses/four curses (4:1). What we have, whether we modernly like it or not is an obvious, God designated preferable headship role/responsibility in the spiritual and family realms. But remember God did not and does not always have the privilege of willing/capable subjects for His work, yet needed outliers do not make the preferred, nor does the preferred negate a needed outlier.

Two:

Then God (not culture) began delineating the first approximately 1656 years of earth’s history by (gender) man’s family and spiritual headship role. Each name revealing an orderly step in the plan of salvation Genesis 5.   A leadership/headship plan where all were to be treated  justly with one law (Gen. 18:19; 26:5) and with compassion.  Gender man in general botched that opportunity both spiritually and relationally so God pushed a reset/reboot button with a world-wide flood. Then Abraham followed that wise arrangement that God himself had made, while God through him was beginning to set up a new arrangement.  That of a nation (Hebrew race, Jewish nationality, ideally to be Israelites -spiritual victors/over-comers Genesis 32:28) to represent Him, His love to the world. 

Three:

In Numbers 11:16,24 the Lord designated spiritual headship in the new order to seventy (gender) male elders.

Four:

The God appointed the (gender) male spiritual headship of the Aaronic priesthood. Ex. 28

Five:

God first desired first born gender males to be priests but after the Israelite worship failure at the foot of Mount Sinai God appointed (gender) male spiritual headship from the Levite tribe Num. 3:5-39. There were no female priestess in the Hebrew culture. Women were treated with great respect but had different/special roles in family and religion.  

Six:

While elevating and honoring woman, the gender male role of Christ’s appointed spiritual headship permeates the New Testament as Apostles Luke 6:13, Titus 1:6. While women were treated with great respect and served in other ministries . 

Seven:

The New Testament servant-headship  (LK. 22:26) of the gender male in the family – “as Christ is the head of the church”  repeated twice   Eph. 5:23 and 1 Cor. 11:3.

Eight:

When I began the practice of medicine I was the only one in a medical community of thirty plus physicians who would see patients coming from the state university’s teaching hospital with their external anatomic gender changed via surgery.  I became friends with them — external anatomical transgenders.  (In reality there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of unseen anatomical and biochemical gender differences especially in the brain).  I also had a number of patients of the lesbian/gay persuasion, one partner commonly taking on the opposite gender role of the pair —functional transgenders.   God indicates that New Testament church’s spiritual headship should be a “(gender) man of one woman” in 1 Timothy 3:2 then emphasizing it by repeating the male gender 10 times in the first 7 verses. Then again giving it full double emphasis by repeating it all in Titus 1:16. 

To ignore this in the family or the church is to practice at least functional transgenderism. 

Nine:

Some have said God had ok’ed a king though it was not His first choice.  Thus making it “ok” to add women to a spiritual/family male assigned leading function.  They ignore that the same God told Samual ‘the church’ people were “rejecting me (God) from being king over them”  twice, 1 Sam. 8:7, 10:19,  and that “I (God) gave you a king in my anger” Hosea 13:11 and in Isa 1:26a gives His continuing desire as , “I (the Lord) will restore your judges as in days of old”. The fact that Jesus became the son of (king) David (Mt 1:1; 22:45; Rev 22:16) speaks to the exceeding graciousness of God, not to His approbation of the human action.

Ten:

Some have used Gal.3:28 for egalitarianism, ignoring that there continues in subsequent Biblical writing  Jews, Greeks and nations clear into the last chapters of Revelation, as well as recognizing in Philemon a Christian response to ongoing secular slavery Philemon 15,16.   Biblical equality is in value, not form or function, status or role. 

Commenting on a totally different subject, Elijah Mvundura noted well in the magazine Liberty July/August 2018 that:  “winning the cultural wars is not enough – humanity itself must be deconstructed.  Biological markers of gender must be obliterated and identities defused into Dionysian formlessness.” That’s the culture we are in!

Eleven:

The Bible does not negate women in ministry especially under ministry’s definition “to give aid or service”. As one spiritual writer noted, in some areas of ministry women are better than men.  Their ministry speciality is in her understanding, to be in the homes with wives, mothers and children.  This still does not negate outliers or special cases in other fields of ministry – but outliers never become the desired norm. 

Twelve:

A “helper” in Gen. 2:18 implies a leader plus one of value, and valued function, but varied function from headship. 

Conclusion:

The wisdom of having a known leader (not a competitive position) is understood by all secular nations, businesses, sports teams, musical groups and mammals.  And there’s exceptional rest in each when there is a known servant leader – which can be in most role spheres. Each of which involves both following and leading – and a good leader is always a good follower – even an older child leads the younger and follows another older.   

Numbers 35:30 &  2 Cor. 13:1 share the principle that a concept must be established by two or three witnesses (actually repeated 7 times in scriptures).  The Bible is not silent on this subject of roles as some purport, but shares at least twelve powerful internal & external repetitive illustrative witnesses.    

The servant-headship-helper-submission concept for family and spiritual, is Biblically used in five other non-gender major relationship illustrations ( God – each one,  God – angels,  Christ – church,  each other – to each other,   mankind – animals )  thus leading to a further understanding of this current paradigm shift of our culture in which we are considering imbibing.  With God designed, following and servant-headship there is the freedom for, freedom of, and freedom in submission ( trust-trustworthiness ).  

As in an orchestra, true individual expression, joy and music comes when a piccolo does not try to be or play the part of a bassoon, all the while realizing the composer and the conductor cherishes them both equally, yet each rejoices in their well done unique roles. In our body, 20 out of 92 naturally occurring elements exist in millions of known organic molecule forms. Some function as substrates, hormones or catalysts such as enzymes, small in quantity but invaluable by causing a reaction to speed up, maybe up to 1000 times. Each chemical form in the human cell playing widely different but pivotal roles in the final outcome of life. Life that runs on the average of 37 billion billion purposeful chemical reactions inside an active human cell each second! Are you willing, satisfied and excited to play the role, and the role on time, you, like they, have been created for?  

Equality is in value – value in God’s sight and in our’s – not in anatomy, function or role —each of the three independently determined, designed and blessed by God.  And when we gladly function when and as designed, there arises beautiful harmony.

Always be assured you stand on a foundation already divinely laid and revealed while interpreting other texts.  Nor that you reject or run away from foundational truths because they and others were or are woefully, twistedly used/abused or looked down upon by your culture- but restore them to their intended beneficial beauty. 

Do we, will we, believe and trust the obvious divine instructions or do we, will we, like Balaam or King Saul keep looking for other options?