Just asking (32): Is it really still so stiff?
Are we, in 21st century, still so hung up over the issue of woman vs man?
Decades ago we had Mrs Thatcher whom President Reagan respected.
And of course Mrs Aquino of Philippine.
Recently, we’ve seen Italy’s Prime Minister and the latest is Japan’s, over centuries of tradition.
One would have thought that in this day and age, people wouldn’t be so stiff to get hung up on this woman in authority thing.
I was so wrong!
Various, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Last week, I bumped into a YouTube presentation, likely AI generated, on the “decline” of an American mega church Saddleback, allegedly precisely ever since that church started having woman pastor!
Don’t know Saddleback church?
Google the book Purpose Driven Life and read all about the church’s founding pastor.
Anyway, the YouTube tape presented it as if it were a heretic break from the historic church, in that case clearly pointing to the Southern Baptist Convention being the historic church.
This is not to debate the validity of the accusation, nor the characterisation.
This is just asking a simple question: does it still have to be so stiff?
Years ago I was in an academic institution where nearly half of the faculty left because of their view on woman being pastors.
Decades passed.
The issue doesn’t seem to have gone away.
Though the world moved on.
Still so rigid.
It’s not the place to relitigate the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12.
The argument involving the weight of eternal Biblical truth vs cultural adaptation is too much for me to bear at my age now.
So let’s challenge something more fundamental.
Does Bible, or to be precise, man’s interpretation of what’s written in the Bible, have an overriding or more rigid authority over the Holy Spirit?
For isn’t the Holy Spirit “is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have”? (1 Cor 12:11, New Living Translation)
And, isn’t it the case that “the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”? (2 Cor 3:17, New Living Translation)
Don’t you find that overwhelmingly those who worship in Pentecostal tradition are warmer, happier, kinder and less judgmental than those who worship in Bible-adhering Baptist or Evangelical Free traditions?
Just asking.