This may not be a debate, but first time poster here and I'm curious on your thoughts. Please feel free to move if need be.
Struggling a lot in my marriage, was getting pastoral counseling through our church. I've always been a Christian, but not much of a Bible reader. Recently I've rectified that. I was honestly shocked at how women were treated in the Bible. And how they are commanded to behave.
I won't get into details except to say during our counseling sessions, I have repeatedly been told to submit, Ephesians 5, yada yada. I have done that. My husband was told to work on some things and he didn't. I showed frustration in a session and was told, "You should be grateful your husband is coming home every night. That he's not with other women."
I spent 2 days after hearing this pouring over every time women were mentioned in the Bible. My takeaway is a complete challenge to my faith. I do not see love for women in the Bible. I see women offered up to be raped, women held as "less than", and told to submit at all times, even when husbands are cruel or unfair. It appears to me that a suffering woman is pleasing to God. So that is my debate question: Is a suffering woman pleasing to God? Is that His desire?
Long ago culture was far worse.
Slavery was universal around the world. The poor were often left to beg and starve to death.
Women could be treated like chattel, and children also.
But this has changed. Why has more and more of humanity, far more than 2,000 years ago, began to do this --
"So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you"
Why do many people now do this ideal?
Christ changed the world.
While Paul wrote in his epistles for even slaves to just remain slaves,
for women to remain in traditional roles at that time, and other things we now have moved past, what was Paul's goal at that time?
Paul wanted the slaves, the oppressed, women too, to show Christ to their owners, and convert them, and thus change the world one person at a time.
But, later, once the slave owner was converted, then, finally, a new relationship would arise, as shown in the very short, 1 page epistle Philemon.
So it is also with the changed situation in churches. Once the liberation of women would overwhelm the weak and uncertain faith of newly converted Jewish men 2,000 years ago. So, therefore, women were to remain in their traditional roles, for that time.
Now....it's different. Now the only kinds of things 99% of Christian women might need to consider is merely to not dress in too seductive a manner, for example. Just modesty, for both genders, that virtue. They don't have to be silent now to help prejudiced men of weak faith. Not anymore. None of us should be argumentative, but
a woman can now lead a service without destroying the faith of any men, because now we no longer have slaves as the norm, nor oppression of women as the norm.
Change from within, over time. Through Christ.
That's how we got here. That's how our culture is so improved over 2,000 years ago.
