Ten Reasons: My Conclusion

The author spent reason ten elaborating on his belief that headship; authority and submission; are what makes God a trinity – three in one. He says that headship has always existed, that the father has always had authority and that the son has always been obedient. He says that God based all relationships on authority and submission, starting with Adam and Eve before the fall. Adam has headship (authority) over Eve before the fall because: the man was created first, the man represents mankind in the NT, the man named the woman ‘Woman’, the name of the human race is Man, God spoke to Adam first after the fall, the woman’s purpose was to help the man, the curse distorted the previous roles of headship, Jesus restored the roles when he reversed the curses, marriage is picture of Christ and the Church in the same way that Adam and Eve represented the first marriage, the parallel within the trinity, the differences within the trinity, the unity within the trinity, and that woman was created out of or from man. You’ll notice that he has to come up with ‘reasons’ but unlike other Christian beliefs, there’s not a direct statement that says as much clearly. Communion, for example, originates at the last supper – Jesus breaks the bread and hands out the wine. It’s a tradition that gets established in the New Testament church as seen in the epistles. Baptism was already a wide-spread symbol of belief one that the New Testament church also accepted. In the Old Testament, the tabernacle and then the temple were described in detail, who was allowed to do what, how it was to be done, what the laws were and how they were to be carried out. You can find explanations or instructions for all of these things.

To arrive at headship, you have to borrow parts (not all of) Genesis 1-5, Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, 1 Peter 3:1-7, 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, and a few others taking them out of context, mixing up the metaphors and that’s how you end up with male headship; which just leaves female submission as it’s compliment. There’s not a lot of verses from the gospels, no words spoken from Jesus on this matter. You won’t find verses that say: “This is the Word of the Lord, because the name of the human race, meaning all humanity, is ‘Man’ then only men have authority over not-men, that is, women.” or “I want you to understand this, before the fall, God gave authority over the woman to the man, holding him more accountable. The fall distorted these roles making men harsh rulers and women disobedient; but I have reversed the curse, restoring the roles so that men are kind rulers and women are submissive and obedient. This is the teaching that Jesus gave his disciples before he ascended.” Hence the need for the reasons as opposed to verses. And the use of only the verses that can be construed to support those reasons, not a through examination of all possible verses even if they speak against the reasons the author gives. Especially not those verses.

This is, of course, the way things have always been done. When Christians needed reasons to prove why slavery was not morally objectionable, but indeed ‘right’ and ‘good’; they used the Bible for that. When Christians needed reasons to go to war for Jerusalem and fight in the Crusades; they used the Bible for that. So it’s no surprise that the author would work so very hard to use the Bible to prove that sexism is not morally objectionable, but indeed ‘right’ and ‘good’ to prove that men have authority and leadership and women have no authority and no leadership for all time.

Sometimes I think the teaching is so mixed up that the ‘like Christ’ aspect is gone entirely. It’s a middle ground where men have to be less manly in the ways that Jesus wasn’t manly and where women have to be less womanly in the ways that Jesus was manly – Christ-likeness is something for both genders to attain by denying fundamental elements of what culture tells them is womanly or manly. Which is why they don’t teach it. It asks people to give up their own authority and that’s something that goes against the foundation of headship.

Or the Holy Spirit, for that matter. You can’t say that two people is a parallel of three people – the math just doesn’t add up, so the Holy Spirit has to be ignored and the trinity has to be broken. If God/the Father is the parallel of man/husband, and Christ/the Son is the parallel of woman/wife, then the Holy Spirit has to be the parallel of something, someone, because if he’s the parallel of nothing, what does that say about the Holy Spirit in relation to God and Christ? It sure seems that ‘nothing’ is exactly what is taught about the Holy Spirit in this context.

As for me, I’ve gotten a rather disturbing glance as to how the author thinks; any reason is a good reason to promote men as leaders and limit women to being followers. To hire only men to be teachers and to forbid women from teaching. To let men speak their minds and to tell women to be silent. Things that the Bible doesn’t say has to be read into it – verses have to be taken out of context and removed from its cultural and historical time-frame in order to twist and warp the Bible to get it to say what the author needs it to. He’s taken words that mean one thing and reinterpreted to mean it’s opposite – and if he can do that, there’s no limit to what anyone with a mind to can do to oppress people with that skill.

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