A question for the men

[miss-a]

Are you out there? Are there Christian men who question the belief that men are to be the head of the women?

 

[Ken Behrens]

Are you out there? Are there Christian men who question the belief that men are to be the head of the women?

Hello.

 

[WolfGate]

I do not question the truth of the scriptures at all.

I do question how many have interpreted and implemented them.

 

[JackRT]

Are you out there?

Here I be ,big as life.

Are there Christian men who question the belief that men are to be the head of the women?

Yes, I am one. With the exception of average physical size and strength, women are in all other ways the spiritual and intellectual equals of men. Whether it be in marriage, in business, in government, in the military, in society, women should be considered on their merits and not on their gender alone.

 

[Ken Behrens]

Yes, I am one. With the exception of average physical size and strength, women are in all other ways the spiritual and intellectual equals of men. Whether it be in marriage, in business, in government, in the military, in society, women should be considered on their merits and not on their gender alone.

The use of the word "average" is important here. In almost every case we know of, many people in any group are above or below the average on various measures as well. In a given marriage, it is quite possible that the woman will be superior to the man in various traits, and/or he superior to her in others. A wife might even be physically stronger than her husband. It is just stupid to deny the maximum expression of all the gifts of God, because a couple insists that the man must always lead. The best success potential is to let both partners use their gifts to the maximum.

 

[All4Christ]

If this is true, majority of field workers in construction projects must be women.

No one said that the majority of women are stronger than men. However, it is very true that some men are not as strong as some women, and some women are not as strong as some men. Similarly, some women are better leaders than men, and some men are better leaders than women. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, which are not necessarily defined by gender.

 

[JackRT]

WRT physical strength, there are some women who are stronger than some men but on average most men are stronger than most women. When it came to tossing hay bales around my aunt Rita could work her husband and brothers in law into the ground. She lifted the front end of a truck off her husbands body so her sister could drag him out.

 

[dayhiker]

Since I was like 10 yrs old and read the Bible I've thought where the Bible says (Male pronoun) it should also read to include female pronouns.

 

[Paidiske]

Just a gentle reminder, folks... this is the Egalitarian forum. I realise it's new, and some of you may not even have realised that this thread is in it, but please do check the SOP.

 

[WolfGate]

The use of the word "average" is important here. In almost every case we know of, many people in any group are above or below the average on various measures as well. In a given marriage, it is quite possible that the woman will be superior to the man in various traits, and/or he superior to her in others. A wife might even be physically stronger than her husband. It is just stupid to deny the maximum expression of all the gifts of God, because a couple insists that the man must always lead. The best success potential is to let both partners use their gifts to the maximum.

An anecdotal story, but one that came to mind reading this post.

My children go to a high school with a very strong men's soccer program. They are regularly ranked in the Top 25 nationally among all high schools in USA Today's national rankings. In the past 3 years they have been as high as #1 and finished #3 in one of those seasons. As part of their fitness testing they do a max pull-ups test and post the results on one of the coaches' classroom walls.

My daughter is a senior at this same school, and a swimmer. She also serves as an assistant to the coach who posts the boys' pull-up results. One day after bantering a bit with the coach, she grabbed the pull-up bar and did more pull-ups than all but one of the soccer players - 19 of them to be exact were weaker than her. Yeah, that was a result of the different training regimens that soccer players and swimmers undergo. But regardless, in this case a female was stronger than most of the males.

Now, reproduce that test with her and her male swimming teammates, and the result would be much more typical of what you'd normally expect.

 

[hedrick]

The OP asks a question that is more complicated than it looks, because it’s citing 1 Cor 11:3. So it seems to be asking whether there are men who think Paul was wrong. If it had asked whether the same roles should be available to men and women, I would have no problem answering yes. I’m even going to answer yes to the question as posed, but I think it’s worth looking at the implications.

In 1 Cor 11, Paul is speaking of women who pray and prophecy in worship. Note that he has no problem with that, as he has no problem acknowledging female leaders. But he maintains that they should cover their hair as a sign of their authority.

This is a complex passage, because it’s not entirely clear what he means. “Head” in that context doesn’t have the modern English connotation of boss. He connects it to the creation story, where woman is made from man. He then goes on to point out that nevertheless in the Lord men and women are dependent upon each other.

So what does he mean by head? The meaning has to be metaphorical, since there’s no literal sense in which man is the head of woman. Commentators have somewhat different explanations of the metaphor, but clearly it is connected to the creation account, and sees man as source or representative of woman. However (and the word implies “in contrast”) Paul goes on to say that in Christ they are mutually dependent. Hence she has authority (vs 10), but needs to wear a sign of it.

Note by the way that this can’t be a sign of man’s authority over her, since the term translated “authority” is used to refer to authorization to do something. So I think it’s clear that Paul envisioned head covering as a sign of woman’s authorization to pray and prophecy.

So with head covering we are dealing with a symbolic acceptance of a difference in the realm of nature, while exercising authority in the Church that comes from the fact that we are all one in Christ.

However, I have to go further than this. The concept of man as head of the woman comes from Gen 2. And there’s no way that this story can be in any historical sense true. Nor in the realm of nature as I understand it is there any reason to think of man as the source or representative of woman. However Paul's culture, including current Jewish understanding, did have this view, so perhaps in that situation he was right that some symbol of the woman's authority was needed. But I don't think in most contexts today that's true.

 

[ValleyGal]

Hedrick, that is an interesting take. It reminds me of the headship relationship of Christ and the church...that he has given us the authority to act in his stead, which is why we pray in his name....it is praying in his stead, and if we pray in his stead, we MUST be careful to pray according to what Jesus would be praying if it were really he praying. Iow, the church needs to know him so well that we will not pray anything Jesus himself would not be praying.

I think in terms of historical marriage, maybe the "sign" that women have the authority is the changing of names to take her husband's last name, and therefore acts in her husband's stead. Since Jesus gives the church his authority, the husband also gives his wife authority. Iow, he YIELDS his authority to her just as she knows him well enough to act in his stead, YIELDING to her husband. Mutual authority. Mutual submission.

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

My wife made it pretty clear that she was the boss from the start. So I ceded to her authority and all the responsibility that comes with it.

 

[rturner76]

Men are the head women are the heart.
A little proverb:


“Eve was not taken out of Adam's head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.”

Matthew Henry

 

[Paidiske]

The problem I have with the "men are the head, women are the heart" type line, is that it plays into the stereotype of men as rational and women as emotional; denigrating women's intelligence and capacity to reason.

 

[Paidiske]

On what basis do you claim that women feel more than men do? I don't believe that to be true, at all.

I also don't believe in God-assigned gender roles, especially if we're talking about God assigning rationality to one gender and emotional intelligence to another.

 

[Paidiske]

Please note that you are in the egalitarian forum. If you don't share egalitarian beliefs, this is not the place to debate them.

(And it's not miss, it's Reverend, actually).

But as to the idea that men can't talk about their feelings, I think that's much more to do with how they're socialised than whether or not they have those feelings. They're not emotionally numb, nor do they lack emotional intelligence, they're just not rewarded for showing it.

 

[Paul Yohannan]

Whereas I support the views of my church concerning requirements for ordination into specific offices due to their antiquity, I am opposed to discrimination against women.

I do not believe that Scripture indicates any sense of women being less competent, less viable as humans or inherently weaker than men.

 

[Paul Yohannan]

By the way, Orthodoxy designates several female saints as "Equal to the apostles." Unless one wishes to resort to an Orwellian redefinition of the word "equality" after the manner of Animal Farm, I would say this establishes eglitarian as Orthodox doctrine.

There is a book which does not have doctrinal status, which some people still like, but which I regard as hopelessly obsolete and odious, the Dromostroi, a book on household management for Russian boyars (16th century nobility) which appears to condone wife-beating.

 

[hedrick]

On the basis of...life??? I cannot in any wise talk to other dudes about how I'm feeling, they just tell me to "suck it up and man up!" But when I talk to women they have an insight that I, as a male, do not have. And if you don't believe in gender roles, then quite frankly, you haven't been reading your Bible, miss. Plain and simple.

I doubt that men are inherently less competent emotionally than women. But there are certainly traditional subcultures where they're not supposed to show it. It's like "women can't do math." They most certainly can, but if girls grow up being told they can't, they often believe it.

Here's an article that used a standard test for "emotional intelligence." http://jornadasaludemociongenero.uji.es/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Fernandez-Berrocal.pdf. They noted that most investigators have found that women score higher than men. Indeed they also found a difference that is statistically significant, but in my view it's small enough not to matter. I.e. 99 vs 101 average scores.

Other investigators have shown somewhat larger differences. But these are averages. The differences are small enough that they're only tendencies. There may be highly competent men and highly incompetent women. (It's also worth noting that emotional intelligence tends to be associated with higher job performance, so you're actually arguing for female leadership.)

Furthermore, there can be more than one way to be a successful leader. One person may be really strong in getting a team to work together. Another may be really strong in inspiring people with a vision. In certain situations one aspect may be more important than the other.

Having worked with both men and women in both churches and the secular world, I see no evidence that either gender should be banned from leadership. (There are plenty of individuals that I'd like to ban, but my highest priorities for removal from leadership are men.)