Wives submit to their husbands...

[Gillian76]

Have just heard this reading at church and been a rguing with DH. How can I be part of an organisation that teaches:

"SECOND READING Ephesians 5:21-32

Give way to one another in obedience to Christ. Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the Church submits~ to Christ, so should wives to their husbands, in everything."?

And this is what it said to the husbands...

"Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. He made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless. In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats the Church, because it is his body - and we are its living parts. For this reason, a man must leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one body"

Don't feel like I needed to be cleaned before he took me to himself...

And what's more, the priest totally avoided the issue, choosing instead to preach on the other readings.

I have a HUGE problem with this and being part of an organisation that thinks we are not equal to men. What's more I cannot bring my daughters up to believe this.

DH however is staunch Catholic and wants ut to go together.

How can we find some common ground on this?

In contect, yes I understand your comment. I was objecting to the bald statement which did not mention Christianity. I know this thread was specifically started over a bible quote, but nevertheless you have to keep in mind that you don't have to be a Christian to read it

As for holding a faith without believing in every word of the associated spiritual text - why do you need a text? Any text will have been written and therefore interpreted by man. Man is fallible regardless of if 'his' god is speaking directly to him, hence the text can be fallible too.

FWIW my own faith has no text to follow, it does not mean I have no faith/religion.

• context

ok - haven't read the whole thread but biblegateway.com gives different translations of it - very interesting reading.

I particularly like this one

"22A wife should put her husband first, as she does the Lord. 23A husband is the head of his wife, as Christ is the head and the Savior of the church, which is his own body. 24Wives should always put their husbands first, as the church puts Christ first.

25A husband should love his wife as much as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. 26He made the church holy by the power of his word, and he made it pure by washing it with water. 27Christ did this, so that he would have a glorious and holy church, without faults or spots or wrinkles or any other flaws.

28In the same way, a husband should love his wife as much as he loves himself. A husband who loves his wife shows that he loves himself. 29None of us hate our own bodies. We provide for them and take good care of them, just as Christ does for the church, 30because we are each part of his body. 31As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother to get married, and he becomes like one person with his wife."

(Contemporary English Version).

The basic gist is - all you have to do as a woman is respect your husband, put his needs first etc etc. The man on other hand is expected to love his wife as much as God loves the church! A pretty big job!

I can also highly recommend the Selwyn Hughes books.

Indeed the Bible does not say the world is 6K years old. But "fundamentalism" is believing the literal truth of the Bible, so it may be rubbish, but is not at odds with Christianity.
The Bible is pretty explicit that humans were there at the start, which is at extreme variance with the evidence, or what we know about biology for that matter.
It is tricky to say "this bit of the bible is true, this bit is superstition". How do you know for a fact ?
If it can't get right how many people guarded the tomb of Jesus, or explain the gaps in his life, how much can you trust the fine issues of doctrine ?
You are being picky about which bits you believe.
I have no problem with that, and if I was religious I might do the same thing. I've never been called an intellectual, but as it happens I have read most of it. But part of the reason for giving up was the growing realisation that it was largely made up.
I was in error when I compared the bible to Superman TV series. It's far more like Batman.
The Dark Knight has had far more re-workings, by serious authors trying to get to the "real" legend.
For instance in one series the Joker points out that Batman is a middle aged bloke with a succession of small boys as "helpers", who wears leather, and tight clothes, and likes hurting people. These were suppressed on the orders of the people making the Batman films who wanted "family" entertainment (ie scarring of women, violence, but no sex)
The King James bible is the same thing.
It is the defining work of the English language, beautifully written, certainly better than most Batman stories.
Sadly, this was done at the price of accurate translation. The "original" texts are the sort of thing you'd expect from primitive tribes, both dull and incoherent. Also a big editing job had to be done working out which bits of which books to retain. This was not achieved through faith, but the infighting amongst the scholars.
Doesn't mean they were wrong of course, but every time you make stuff up or "improve" text, you add noise. Also it is tragically hard to adjust for cultural references. There is a debate for instance on the bit about a rich man going through the eye of a needle. Some scholars think this refers to a very narrow gate in Jerusalem, and is thus not pure metaphor.
In another direction, it's clear that the ancient Greeks simply did not use our pattern of colours (the wine dark sea), and you can't directly translate them into any modern language.

If Jesus lived, this was at a time where the cultural refrences were easier than the primitive tribes wandering in the desert, but we can't even get that right.

I was not stating that an event could not have ocurred unless it was recorded. I was replying to the silly assertion that the Bible was backed up with facts. It ain't. You have to have faith to believe in the Bible because such a large & of it is either unsupported by other records or archeology or geology; or cannot be made consistent with itself.
As for Jesus not being very significant to the Romans, that's not true at all, if he had existed.
Palestine was an area of considerable interest to Rome, and the New Testament is very clear that the Roman governor was in fear of riots caused by his enemies.

As for John and the colonnades I never stated that every single statement of the Bible was false, merely that it dropped below the factual standard of second order reworkings of 1940s childrens comics.
As it happens they had problems making them consistent with reality even then. How can you have Nazis and Superman in the same world ?

In the recent Thunderbirds film, T1 and T2 are shown flying around the London Eye and Tower Bridge. Both are the sort of buildings that
a few thousand years from now will seem quite improbable. Why would anyone build a bridge to look like a castle ? Why would it open ?
Silly idea.
Why would British Airways have a giant wheel ?
Even more improbable.

Tower Bridge is unlike any structure in Britain.
On the other hand colonnades and pools were very common architecture in Roman times. In particular owning a fish pool was an affectation of rich people.

I accept the argument about eyewitnesses not seeing the same thing, but in the absence of their original statements we don't don't know what if anything the disciples saw.

Message withdrawn

If I could interrupt all of you who have chosen this thread to argue at length about each other's understanding of the bible...

DH is away on his own this morning

He is not asking me to submit to him and we didn't have the "obey" bit to worry about.

I do have a big problem with the equality of women in the church as a whole. Women priests (the lack of) being another big problem for me.

I don't want this to be a divisive issue for us but he would absolutely no way consider going to another church.

Message withdrawn

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Sorry, Gillian, I can see that we have got off topic slightly.

I was an Anglican and have left the church precisely for the reason you describe i.e. it isn't a place I want to raise my family. We have women priests, but are still arguing over women bishops, treat gay people like dirt and are obsessed with heirarchy and buildings and 'tradition'. In short, the church is unjust. I don't have the problem of dh as he's a floating voter when it comes to religion anyway.

Where does your dh stand on issues like women priests? If he is in favour then as a family you can negate any negative comments at home. You can explain to your dds that as a family you go to church but don't believe everything the churuch teaches, and hope that the presence of people like yourselves will bring about change. I am sure there must be organisations within the RC to bring about change, just as there are in the CofE, that you can join. And do buy that book by Lavinia Byrne I mentioned (if you haven't read it already) and get dh to read it, it will help him to understand where you are coming from.

But I do agree with Bloss that it sounds like you are deciding exactly where you stand on wider issues than just a Bible text. And IME you can't just analyse one Bible text without looking at what you believe about the reliability of the Bible as a whole, which is why I think the conversation ended up where it did.

HTH

DC, with all respect...

I have never met anyone who rejected Christianity on the grounds that as a document (or collection of documents) the Bible is historically unsound or untrustworthy, if they have taken the time to read and study both the Bible itself and other documents of similar periods of time.

I have met many people who have rejected Christianity because its claims are huge and, to many, offensive (e.g. God as a baby, human need of salvation) and implications life-changing ('if I really believe this, it is going to demand a response').

Just be honest with yourself - is it really an intellectual problem you have with Christianity or a moral / emotional one? In my experience the intellectual objections to christianity are by far the easiest ones to deal with. I'm absolutely not saying that we shouldn't think and respond intellectually to these issues; what I'm saying is that if we do what people like bloss have done and study all the documentary evidence available, it becomes obvoius how trustworthy the Bible is. People who dismiss the trustworthiness of the Bible tend not to have read much about its historical context.

One of my favourite christian speakers says "the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart" - it's our hardness of heart and unwillingness to accept what is right there in front of us that stops us responding to Christ, not our superior brain-power.

Don't mean to offend you or anyone else but I believe wholeheartedly in having integrity and utter honesty when we examine our reasons for what we do (or don't) believe.

There's a brilliant episode of the westwing when Toby is questioning his faith (jewish) and quoting the old 'eye for an eye' thing.

The Rabbi points out (and I can't remember his phrasing so this may sound a bit odd) that

"religous texts were written as a mixture of metaphor and actual instructions. however they were also written to be representative of the times, they weren't written by GOD but by his messengers and priests, who COULD NOT avoid writing from their own societal perspective.

It would be wrong to follow the teachings of the bible (or similar) without questioning them, we no longer stone women taken in adultery nor do we say that all waste pits (ie shit trenches) must be a certian distance outside the city walls."

So on those grounds - talk to your husband and your priest, you don't nesecarily have an issue with your faith, you have an issue with a specific set of words and instructions written a very long time ago.

I'd say the biggest problem is likely to be the attitudes of any church/priest who CHOOSES to use this reading.

Find a more women friendly church.

There's a brilliant episode of the westwing when Toby is questioning his faith (jewish) and quoting the old 'eye for an eye' thing.

The Rabbi points out (and I can't remember his phrasing so this may sound a bit odd) that

"religous texts were written as a mixture of metaphor and actual instructions. however they were also written to be representative of the times, they weren't written by GOD but by his messengers and priests, who COULD NOT avoid writing from their own societal perspective.

It would be wrong to follow the teachings of the bible (or similar) without questioning them, we no longer stone women taken in adultery nor do we say that all waste pits (ie shit trenches) must be a certian distance outside the city walls."

So on those grounds - talk to your husband and your priest, you don't nesecarily have an issue with your faith, you have an issue with a specific set of words and instructions written a very long time ago.

I'd say the biggest problem is likely to be the attitudes of any church/priest who CHOOSES to use this reading.

Find a more women friendly church.

well said texasrose

I would love to find a more women friendly church as you say.

DH is definite on wanting to stay in the Catholic church however. I worry about what that would say to the children.

I am wondering about whether the Alpha course would help me?

Anyone done it?

I haven't, but know people who've found it useful. What have you got to lose?

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Gillian. I can sympathise with you, regarding your DH not wanting to go to anything other than a Catholic church. Is he a 'cradle Catholic'? I was brought up a Catholic and found it really hard to find another church, due to how/what I was taught when I was little. Although the Catholic church doesn't allow women priests, it does allow them to become Eucharistic ministers, and it IS possible, priest willing, to lead Eucharistic services and take an active part in the mass. Unfortunately for you, if you start going to a different church from your husband/children, it is likely to raise problems. I have a friend with the same dilemma - she chooses not to go to church rather than upset her husband/son by going elsewhere (the son is more likely to want to go with his mother, but its one of the few chances he gets to bond with his father). She refuses to go to the church where the priest referred to their marriage as a 'misfortune' because she was C of E.

HIya,
Just a quick one to say yes I did an alpha course and I got so much out of it. There's absolutely no pressure to conform or agree - in fact the most interesting evenings were when everyone was arguing (in a friendly way, of course!)
I'd defo recommend it. It's run in very similar ways across all churches (sorry bad grammar but you know....)
Off to work now - bye!

Gillian, I'm not sure there is such a thing a 'woman friendly church', not within mainstream Christianity anyway. It's just the degree to which women are second-class that varies.

Message withdrawn

I go to church and I just love it there. I feel at home and valued, and i don't consider the Vicar or the church culture to be at all sexist. Thats not to say I never disagree with anything that is said, but its a good place that welcomes healthy discussion. Gillian, I hope you can find yourself in the same position some day.

Maybe experience has made me cynical. But if anyone can show me the church that acknowledges God as Mother, has facilities for children of all ages so their mothers can join them or join the worship as they please rather than have to sit outside in the 'creche' or be parted from their kids, and that has an equal number of men and women cleaning, making tea and arranging flowers and I might just join!

join mine nearlythree