Did all go smoothly then, for your Thanksgiving? As to another topic, I was wondering if there was something personal you wanted to share about your personal struggles with life and faith?
I was also wondering how you felt about women as pastors? For? Against? Ambivalent? The church in which I grew up did not allow women to serve as pastors, taking this from 1 Corinthians 14:
34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
I have mentioned before that the Mennonite practise of faith is not one set practise, and that within the Mennonite Gemeinshaft (fellowship), there are many variations in interpretation and practise. Of course at the time I grew up in the church, it was unheard of in any church, in any denomination to have women as pastors. This would have been back in the day when we all walked to school five miles, barefoot, through blizzards, uphill both ways.....
But as far as I know, my particular church that I grew up in still will not allow women to serve as pastors. That is not true of all Mennonite churches.
I have to confess that I am somewhat ambivalent about whether this is theologically necessary or not. I am not sure that Paul meant for our time what he might have meant for his time. There may also have been particular problems within the Corinthian church that he wanted to stop.
Paul also sets standards for men to serve as pastors:
1 Timothy 3:2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3 Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)
and in Titus: ...For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee:
6 If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly.
7 For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre;
8 But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate;
That also negates a lot of men currently pastoring churches, including the prosperity type churches, given to filthy lucre.
The Mennonite church also interpreted the 'husband of one wife' thing to exclude as potential pastors men who had been divorced or who had been intimate with women other than their wives.
It seems to me that Paul is clearly saying that the leader ought to be above reproach in all ways, much like a presidential candidate should have no skeletons in the closet for the opposite side to use against him. In this case, Christ is more important than a presidential candidate, and Paul, as I read it, was saying that a potential pastor's life, ought to have been the kind of life that has always been measured, so that the enemy (Satan) can use nothing he has done to undermine the gospel that he preaches.
That also leaves out the Jimmy Swaggerts and Jim Bakkers. I don't intend to harp on them - it is only that they are well-known names associated with well-known sins and I give them for an example.
There are many pastors like that among us lesser known people, who are men, who are serving as pastors. I do not say that they necessarily continue to live in sin, only that they have had intimate relations with persons other than their spouse, their children are not well-behaved, they are not particularly hospitable unless there is a chance for money for the church, and not particularly temperate judging from their waistlines.
Is it better to have a man - any man, even a man who violates the above qualifications that Paul lays out for positions in the church - to a woman who holds all the qualities that Paul values in men, but happens to be a woman? If so, why?
Another thing I think about is that there have been times in Christian history when there were no men left to teach - due to war, imprisonment and similar things - and women then unofficially preached the gospel to those who were left.
They did not call it preaching but preaching it was and how can it have been better not to preach at all, not to speak of God, than to speak and preach of him?
It's always struck me as strange, how Christians pick and choose what is a major sin and what isn't. Like ferinstance, homosexuality is a major sin but drunkenness isn't. Although we are told that such people will not inherit the Kingdom of God, we nonetheless excuse drunkenness along with other sins, like gluttony, but make homosexuality a bigger sin than any of the rest of the sins. Even though there is no such distinction made in the Bible.
So what are your thoughts?
Layla
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Head coverings
"Caligirl" - for a second my eyes deceived me and it looked perilously close to "callgirl."
You brought up a number of interesting subjects. I think I will tackle the head covering thing first. I don't quite see the point in what Dr. McGee has to say about the Nazirites in relation to men having short hair and women having long hair. I think the whole point was to be different - visibly different, to go outside the norm, so that in a sense, everyone knew you had made a vow to God. But if that was the meaning of it, to purposefully humiliate yourself for God, why is Paul against it?
It isn't any different from what the Hutterites and Amish practise in terms of dress. They also dress in a way that makes them visibly different as an expression of their faith. Are you saying that because the idea of shorn hair on a woman was tied to prostitution what Paul has to say about it isn't valid for today's Christians?
I haven't been to church for many years and I don't really feel any sort of calling to return. I have never been baptised and the head covering that was common among women in my denomination of the Mennonite church forty and more years ago was exclusively for baptised women.
But even then, aside from the very (to my childish eyes) ancient crones occupying the first two or three rows at the front of the church, who always, as I remember it, wore black shawls over their hair, not unlike that of Muslim women, the younger women, the ones who were not widows, seemed to prefer fashionable hats that would not have been out of place on any non-Mennonite woman at that time. Hats were in fashion back then and not something that only Mennonite women wore in church.
I think that one has to understand the original religious reasons for head covering in order to understand what Paul meant exactly. Orthodox Jewish women also cover their heads - and in some cases of the ultra Orthodox, some also shave their heads, then cover themselves with a wig. If Jewish women were covering their heads or shaving their heads before they came into contact with Greek culture, the association between Greek temple prostitutes and shorn hair that Dr. McGee makes would be too recent to account for it.
Head covering among Jews, as with other cultures of the time, predate the Greek empire. I am not sure however, whether shaven heads among Jewish women predates Greek culture. Although I think it is odd that if the Jews associated a shaved head on a woman with pagan temple prostitution, that shaven heads, albeit covered with wigs, would ever have become part of orthodox Judaism. So I think that either Dr. McGee is wrong in his explanation, or Paul, being a Hellenized Jew, was part of a Jewish culture that associated shaved heads on women with temple prostitutes. In which case, Paul's ideas about that would have been cultural/regional rather than religious.
As far as kneeling to pray in church, I have no idea if it is still done this way, but when I was a girl in church, at least two prayers that were part of the service were done with the whole congregation kneeling. I can certainly see the purpose of it, in that it seems or feels to me that one is consciously humbling one's self before God. I am not usually a kneeler though, mostly because there is always someone around. But I do kneel sometimes, when I want to earnestly connect with God, and I have a moment of privacy. And when I do, I do feel that I am very deliberately humbling myself before Him and kneeling is the physical manifestation of it.
There are so many more thoughts to address, that I will have to give it some more thought before I respond to the rest of them.
Layla
You brought up a number of interesting subjects. I think I will tackle the head covering thing first. I don't quite see the point in what Dr. McGee has to say about the Nazirites in relation to men having short hair and women having long hair. I think the whole point was to be different - visibly different, to go outside the norm, so that in a sense, everyone knew you had made a vow to God. But if that was the meaning of it, to purposefully humiliate yourself for God, why is Paul against it?
It isn't any different from what the Hutterites and Amish practise in terms of dress. They also dress in a way that makes them visibly different as an expression of their faith. Are you saying that because the idea of shorn hair on a woman was tied to prostitution what Paul has to say about it isn't valid for today's Christians?
I haven't been to church for many years and I don't really feel any sort of calling to return. I have never been baptised and the head covering that was common among women in my denomination of the Mennonite church forty and more years ago was exclusively for baptised women.
But even then, aside from the very (to my childish eyes) ancient crones occupying the first two or three rows at the front of the church, who always, as I remember it, wore black shawls over their hair, not unlike that of Muslim women, the younger women, the ones who were not widows, seemed to prefer fashionable hats that would not have been out of place on any non-Mennonite woman at that time. Hats were in fashion back then and not something that only Mennonite women wore in church.
I think that one has to understand the original religious reasons for head covering in order to understand what Paul meant exactly. Orthodox Jewish women also cover their heads - and in some cases of the ultra Orthodox, some also shave their heads, then cover themselves with a wig. If Jewish women were covering their heads or shaving their heads before they came into contact with Greek culture, the association between Greek temple prostitutes and shorn hair that Dr. McGee makes would be too recent to account for it.
Head covering among Jews, as with other cultures of the time, predate the Greek empire. I am not sure however, whether shaven heads among Jewish women predates Greek culture. Although I think it is odd that if the Jews associated a shaved head on a woman with pagan temple prostitution, that shaven heads, albeit covered with wigs, would ever have become part of orthodox Judaism. So I think that either Dr. McGee is wrong in his explanation, or Paul, being a Hellenized Jew, was part of a Jewish culture that associated shaved heads on women with temple prostitutes. In which case, Paul's ideas about that would have been cultural/regional rather than religious.
As far as kneeling to pray in church, I have no idea if it is still done this way, but when I was a girl in church, at least two prayers that were part of the service were done with the whole congregation kneeling. I can certainly see the purpose of it, in that it seems or feels to me that one is consciously humbling one's self before God. I am not usually a kneeler though, mostly because there is always someone around. But I do kneel sometimes, when I want to earnestly connect with God, and I have a moment of privacy. And when I do, I do feel that I am very deliberately humbling myself before Him and kneeling is the physical manifestation of it.
There are so many more thoughts to address, that I will have to give it some more thought before I respond to the rest of them.
Layla
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