The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn...

If you’ve been following me on Facebook (and if you haven’t, the truth remains the same), I’ve had what is to me a major life event in the past week. For the first time in my life, I am in a Relationship with a capital R. I am someone’s boyfriend, and I have a girlfriend.

Questions abound, I’m sure. To start, her name is Amy. We met online. Occasionally, it seems, online dating does pan out. In my case, it panned out very well. Amy is a very attractive young woman, very pretty with gorgeous long hair and dazzling eyes. She’s a nerd, and a writer with a snarky sense of humor. She’s also a sophomore at a Christian college, studying English and Theater, and while she goes to school out of state, her hometown is in Colorado. But this only scratches the surface of who Amy is.

Amy is, in my honest opinion, a very amazing person. She is brave, able to face her fears and take risks for what she wants, even to initiate with a guy—which is not terribly common to find in a girl, even online. She is also passionate, caring deeply about the people she’s with and capable of feeling very deeply, as she has with crushes in her past. She is loyal and committed. As a friend she stuck by and supported even those who were actively and knowingly wounding her, and when faced with insurmountable difficulties at a job which—at times—was probably not even treating her legally as an employee, she still felt immense guilt and quit only reluctantly. She is not the sort of person who gives up or gives in easily. I am persuaded that she has in her that sort of heroic kindness that would give you the shirt off her back and think it no big deal, certainly nothing worth mentioning. She is amazing, and more amazing still, she really, seriously likes me.

Even before we were boyfriend and girlfriend (which we haven’t been for long), that part was taking some getting used to. It’s not that I’ve never had anyone like me before. There were a couple girls in high school, one who was, awkwardly enough, my then-crush’s sister, and another who came off as being clingy toward everyone in my family. So while I have had the experience of being liked, it was brief, shallow, awkward, and certainly not from anyone I felt anything like what I feel for Amy. Our relationship began as a mutual crush, and that in itself was strange to me. I’m no stranger to crushes, my earliest dates back to grade school! But I’ve never had anyone I like like me back. I’m so used to being the only one in a friendship who has these feelings, so used to having to suppress them and respect the other person’s cooler, platonic affections. It is still something I’m getting used to, to realize that when I really miss hearing her voice, she really misses hearing mine. That as magical as the act of holding her hand is to me, it gives her butterflies as well. It’s a strange idea to get used to, that someone feels that strongly for me, especially someone as awesome as Amy.

But it puts me in mind of stranger, greater things. As amazing as Amy is (and she is), there is One who is far more excellent than words, whose monikers include “the King of Kings” and “the Everlasting God.” While Amy has without complaint made sacrifices for disloyal friends, He silently endured a sham trial, public mocking, mutilating beating, and literally excruciating death for His enemies. Where Amy is creative, He created the world, the heavens, and everything therein, including Amy. While she is loyal, He has such faithfulness that it is quite thoroughly impossible that He should ever break His word or fail in performing it. Where Amy’s beauty dazzles, His has (on the record) struck men dumb and sent them to their knees gibbering their unworthiness to behold Him in his glory. Most amazing of all, everything Amy and I feel for each other—everything we do for each other, now and even if our relationship should be able to progress to the uttermost extent of human romance—is at best a pale shadow of the unfathomably deep love He has for us.

I am no stranger any longer to the idea that God loves me. It took some getting used to. Still, it is certainly not a truth to be taken for granted. It should change everything. I should live my life in awe of this one truth. Knowing, being liked by, and becoming the boyfriend of Amy has helped me remember this wonder, and has made me consider that the line from the old song may indeed be right: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return.”

Comparable to the Bible: Dualism

I'm taking a break from the Egalitarian series (even though it's not yet finished) and coming back to my series on The Book of Mormon.  It's been a while since I wrote about it, but since last writing I've run into a sort of Mormon seeker coming to my church and he asked to study The Book of Mormon with me, hoping to get back into the swing of evangelizing and sharing the good news of Mormonism.

He's had some rather eye-opening surprises.

Meanwhile, reading with him has put me well into the "book" of 2 Nephi and given me lots to write about.  The book opens where 1 Nephi left off.  For those of you who've slept since my last post (I know I have), the story so far is that Lehi, a Jew living in Jerusalem around 600 BC, is told by God to pack up his family and get out before the city is destroyed (by the Babylonians, though I don't think they're ever really mentioned).  Lehi has a number of sons, three of which are important to the plot.  Leman and Lemuel are the eldest sons who are constantly doubting God, antagonizing their brother, and falling into egregious sins, such as rudeness.  Nephi, the younger son, is faithful.  He is also the first-person narrator who wrote these books.  He will let you know that he is Nephi, the author!  He will say it again, and again (one of the most common phrases in the book is I, Nephi, just in case we might have forgotten who he was in between sentences).  He will waste whole chapters telling you that he wrote these books, named them after himself, and wrote them in the language of his own Jewish subgroup (reformed Egyptian, naturally)...and then he will complain about how much he has to leave out because of all the space he wasted telling you the above (not to mention how much space he wastes telling you he's having to leave stuff out...or all the other unnecessary stuff he does).  He goes on to have many adventures with many teachable moments, such as how to murder someone in cold blood when the spirit of god commands you to in a highly uncharacteristic manner, nearly starve your entire family to death because you broke your (historically impossible) steel bow and everyone else's bows "lost their springs" (exact quote, I kid you not), and be given divine instructions on how to build a very special ship to cross the ocean to the Americas and somehow forget to write them down.  And to be honest, that's just the highlights reel.  I could go on all day.  But anyway, after faithfully following god's directions via a magical compass powered by one's own belief (because one of the major lessons of this book is that all truth comes from direct revelation of God and that it's completely dependent on us believing the truth as hard as we can before we get any proof) to the Promised Land (by which we mean America...somewhere), Nephi, his brothers, and his aged parents (who were left ambiguously hanging on the edge of death when the narrator forgot about them in chapter 18) finally arrive at book two.

Here, having just completed an important journey by God's grace and power alone, anyone familiar with the Old Testament Jews and their habits might expect Nephi and his family to offer a sacrifice in thanks or build an altar of some sort as a memorial (as did Noah in Genesis 8:20 and Joshua in Joshua 4:5-9), but despite professing multiple times to be a faithful follower of the Law of Moses (which is full of sacrifice requirements), Nephi has yet to mention offering a sacrifice of his own even once.  Apparently, he's just that kind of Jew.

But I don't want to get too bogged down here in the many, many details I could nit-pick—like how The Book of Mormon is consistent with saying that everyone in Jerusalem was killed and the city was completely destroyed, whereas history and the book of Jeremiah in the Bible tell us that there were a significant number of survivors still living in Jerusalem at the time (including Jeremiah himself), or how it explicitly claims that God hid the Americas from every other nation except Nephi and company because otherwise it'd be overrun with other peoples, even though history and even The Book of Mormon itself tell us there were other people in the Americas long before the children of Lehi.  Yeah, I could go on for a while, but I want to get to the titular issue for this post: Dualism.

Dualism, strictly speaking is a theology wherein both an evil and a good deity exist, equal in power.  Almost always, these two have each been around as long as the other and will always be around because neither can conquer the other.  In fact, in some way, they need each other.  It's this last part of Duelism that's most popular today, and that finds its way into the most places.  It's a popular idea that good and evil coexist in some way, even with their obvious conflicts, and that one really can't exist without the other.  It's a sort of justification for evil in all of its forms, an answer to the Problem of Evil.  Why are there bad things in the world?  Well, because without them, we wouldn't have good things either!  So the story goes, anyway.

In 2 Nephi, Lehi opens the book by going into a multi-chapter sermon, in which he's supposedly blessing his sons on his deathbed, but gets very distracted along the way.  One of the points he winds up talking about is definitely an endorsement of Dualism.  "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things," he says in 2 Nephi 2:11.  Right there, you have the definition of Dualism embraced in a nutshell.  But just in case you missed it, Lehi will reiterate it and spell it out several times in the rest of the verse, and the verses that follow (even Mormons call this the Gospel of Repetition).  Specifically he claims that the following cannot occur outside of opposition "[neither] righteousness...[nor] wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad."  This need for "opposition" (that is, Dualism) is expounded upon until it becomes clear that it encompasses all of existence, and even the existence of God, for "if these things are not there is no God," as 2 Nephi 2:13 asserts.  Even life cannot exist without death, sense without insensibility, purity without corruption (2 Nephi 2:11).  Though it is not stated outright that there is a second Dualistic god out there, it's an almost inescapable conclusion from the text.  If God is good, if God is love, if God is life, and wisdom, purity, joy, and peace, and if none of these can exist outside of opposition (and even god is not immune to this principle, as per 2 Nephi 2:13), then surely there must exist a deity who has been around as long as god and who is his opposite in every way: evil and hateful, a god of death, folly, corruption, misery, and war.  Some outside The Book of Mormon have proposed Satan to be that very god, an eternal, undefeatable, and necessary opposite to the God of the Bible.

However, when we examine the Bible, we find that the Dualistic good-god is, in fact, not the God of the Bible.  First and most obviously, the God of the Bible stands alone.  He does not even know of any other gods that do or ever have (or ever will) exist (Isaiah 44:8).  Satan, certainly, is not a Dualistic equal and opposite god to our God.  Satan cannot even inflict the most basic of miseries without God's express permission (Job 1:8-12), and He is a created being who has not always existed, nor will he always be free to cause trouble.  That alone should make it clear that the Bible does not share Lehi's Dualism.  But for further proof, we need look no further than the creation account in Genesis.  At the end of chapter 1, God declares His creation finished and "very good."  He has made a wonderful paradise full of life, love, purity, joy, and peace...and there is not a trace of evil, hate, folly, misery, war, or death anywhere in creation.  Clearly all things do not have to exist in opposition.

In fact, claiming the need for Dualistic opposition leads to some very strange interpretations on the creation story, particularly the Fall.  Lehi spells it out for us.  Was man made to serve and glorify God (as per Isaiah 43:7, and numerous other Bible passages)?  Not at all!  According to 2 Nephi 2:16, man was created to "act for himself."  Here, the Humanistic all-importance of man's agency in Mormonism appears (it's so pervasive that they explicitly teach that Satan's evil plan is essentially just predestination—and must be rejected because it takes away our agency!).  Humankind needed to have a choice to do good or evil from the beginning.  Going further, Lehi claims that they needed to do evil, in order to balance out all of that good and secure their own existence in the cosmic Dualism.  "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy," says 2 Nephi 2:25.

That verse might be a little surprising to anyone familiar with the Bible.  In fact, it should be.  That's because there is no passage anywhere in the Bible giving a positive spin to the Fall.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Adam's Fall was necessary.  Nowhere does it say that it was ultimately a good thing.  In fact, in Genesis 3, God pronounces a terrible curse on all of Creation because of Adam's Fall.  Paul in Romans goes on to elaborate that it was this one act of Adam that brought sin and death down upon all mankind, and that Christ came as a type of second Adam specifically to free us from these.  In the Bible, the Fall was such a terrible thing that it wrecked all of creation and fundamentally broke all of Adam's descendants in such a way that, in order to make healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness possible the very Divine Son of God had to suffer and die on a cross thousands of years later.  That's what the Bible says the Fall was like. It's not exactly the portrait of a positive and liberating necessary event.

Nor should it be.  There's a very simple reason why the fundamentally Dualistic theology and philosophy of The Book of Mormon clashes so badly with the Bible: Dualism isn't a Biblical idea, nor does it come from any culture that existed in Lehi's time.  It comes from the ancient Greek philosophers.  From them, the idea passed on to us and has gained a certain credence, despite its logical problems (like how it would, logically, require that logical principles such as squares not being able to be triangles could only exist in opposition with some nonsense place where squares could be triangles if they wanted to be).  It became popular with humanism, which saw it as a way to excuse our flaws and turn a blind eye to the evils of the world.  After all, there's no use sweating over your own shortcoming when you believe that, without them, you couldn't be great!  Evidently Smith found this train of thought appealing.  He certainly would have been exposed to it, the Burned-Over District where he came from being a melting pot of Christian-like philosophies.  This of course, explains exactly how Dualism found its way into The Book of Mormon and exactly why it doesn't agree with the Bible...because Smith was it's human, uninspired author.

Why Obama isn't the Antichrist

I'm not the greatest fan of our president, but lately someone showed up on a Christian forum where I'm an admin purporting to be a prophet, revealing with absolute certainty that Obama was the very Antichrist prophesied to come in the end times.

His name has been removed, as has is post and account, but let his argument live on as a shining example of how not to study prophesy in the Bible.

Original Post:

100% PROOF THAT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS THE ANTICHRIST AND THAT WE ARE ALREADY IN THE GREAT 7-YEAR TRIBULATION!!!

Why would Jesus pray this if it was God's will that we be raptured out instead of going through the tribulation? If it wasn't God's will that we remain on this earth, then it would mean that this prayer that Jesus prayed to the Father was a sin, and we all know that Jesus was sinless. Like I said, the tribulation already began a few years ago, and it won't be long before Jesus arrives on His white horse with ten thousands of His saints (See Jude 1:14-15).

The Tribulation Will Soon Be Over and Obama Revealed as the Antichrist!

By Prophet/Evangelist [name redacted]

Matthew 24:27-31 "For as the lightning (HEBREW WORD FOR LIGHTNING IS "BARAQ") cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west (HE WAS BORN IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THEN CAME TO BE PRESIDENT OF AMERICA IN THE WEST); so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together (WHERE THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD IS, THE ELECT, THE ONES WHO ARE WAITING ON THE LORD, WILL MOUNT UP WITH WINGS AS EAGLES). Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

In fact, Jesus even gives the antichrist's full name in Luke 10:18 "And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Remember what I said about the Hebrew word for "lightning" being "baraq"? Well, the Hebrew word for "fall from" is a simple "o" and the Hebrew word for "heaven" is "bamaw." So, put them all together and the actual pronunciation that Jesus said in Luke 10:18 was "I beheld Satan as baraq o bamaw."

Isaiah 24:22-23 "And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously."

Hebrews 11:32a "And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae;...."

Hebrews 11:35b-40 "......and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect."

Revelation 6:15 "And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;"

1 Samuel 13:6 "When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, (for the people were distressed,) then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits."

Obama has secret underground bunkers all throughout the United States which house the 30,000 top-secret guillotines along with the millions of plastic caskets that he has purchased. This is where the missing people of the United States are beheaded including children so that Obama can harvest their organs for money. He is pure evil! These next verses tie into Hebrews 11:32 up above:

Daniel 7:3-4 "And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it."

Daniel 7:8 "I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things."

Yeah, there's a lot of great things that come out of Obama's mouth, but they're all lies!

Daniel 7:17-21 "These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever. Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet; And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom."

Daniel 7:25 "And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."

Yeah, Obama has nothing good at all to say about Christians, and he's worn out a lot of saints because of it. He's attempted to rewrite the constitution since he was elected. "a time and times and the dividing of time" = 3 and a half years.

Revelation 13:5-7 "And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations."

Obama's most famous blasphemous statement is "The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet Muhammed."

Revelation 13:15-18 "And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

Yeah, Christians who won't worship the "image" of the beast which is the fake god "Allah" are being beheaded! Also, Obama has a mandate for all humans to be implanted with a microchip in their right hand or forehead by the year 2017 or else they won't be able to buy or sell. This chip will contain GPS and he will be able to hear anything the people say. The ones who are Christians, he will have them tracked down and beheaded. His plan is to collapse the U.S. economy before the next election so that martial law will be declared, allowing him to remain in office indefinitely!
Obama calls same-sex marriages and abortions good, and those who condemn them he calls evil. Here is a verse about him:

Isaiah 5:20 "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

Matthew 24:15 "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)"

Mark 13:14 "But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:"

(WHEN YOU SHALL SEE THE "OBAMA NATION OF DESOLATION")

2 Thessalonians 2:8-12 "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

Yeah, let those who read this understand.........Hold on till the end of the tribulation, saints!

Daniel 12:10 "Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand."

For those Christians who are mourning the death of loved ones whose heads have been cut off by the evil Muslims, here is what Jesus said:

Matthew 5:4-5 "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."

Psalm 37:9-15 "For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming. The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation. Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken."

Matthew 24:13 "But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved."

Revelation 20:4 "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

Revelation 2:26-28 "And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

Revelation 6:9-11 "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."

Hold on saints! It won't be much longer! Wait on the Lord! He will be worth the wait, and then everything will be worth it!

Isaiah 40:31 "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."

Jesus in John 16:33 "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

Not satisfied with plopping this boisterous tome on the forum by itself, the self-proclaimed prophet then added the following instructions for forum members:

Please, no comments without first reading the entire message. Everyone who reads it ends up having their jaw dropping wide open, their eyes getting really big, and saying something like "Wow! I see what you mean now!"

Normally I'd ignore drivel like this, but this time I wrote up a response.  While the reply never made it to him, as he was banned by another admin too quickly (and yet not quickly enough!), it too will live on here, for the sake of anyone who might actually get drawn in by the words of such a charlatan.

Okay, well, consider my jaw dropped for all the wrong reasons.

 First off, the use of Matthew 24:27-31 is an excellent example of how not to use scripture, ignoring context. By context I mean that little verse that comes just AFTER the end of the quoted section, Matthew 24:36, wherein Jesus says, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." In a parallel passage, Jesus says that even the SON does not know when the end times will take place. By putting forth this essay, the writer has implicitly made the claim to know more about prophesy and the end times than the Son of God.

The writer has then helpfully dismantled his own claim by making a number of major mistakes that render his entire argument absurd.

First, at the very start, the writer attacks the “pre-trib” view of the end times by referencing (but not citing) John 17:15, which reads “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”  The writer takes this to be emphatic proof that Jesus was not in favor of a pre-tribulation rapture for believers.  Unfortunately the writer forgot to check his context on this one, because the section of the prayer where Jesus prays for believers today (John 17:20: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;”) doesn’t start until 5 verses later and this section is devoted to the 12 disciples who were alive and following Jesus at that time (hence the reference to the loss of Judas in John 17:12: “none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled”—same “they” as in verse 15).  While the writer’s argument is at least a decent attempt, it is far from being as watertight as he’d like to believe it to be.

 But I digress.  Getting back to Matthew 24, the writer not only ignores the very critical verse 36 by determining to know what no one but the Father knows, but also butchers the meaning of his chosen passage beyond recognition in order to set up his wordplay.  While in the original context the all-important “lightning” refers to the suddenness and undeniable nature of Jesus’ Second Coming, he makes it refer to the Antichrist…which strikes me as not only unjustified by the context but also borderline blasphemous.  But it’s all okay, right, because the wordplay between “lightning” and “Baraq” (is that even pronounced the same as Barack Obama’s name?) provides “100% proof” that our current president is the Antichrist, right?

Well, no, actually.  You see, underlying the wordplay is an assumption that either the New Testament passage in question was originally written in Hebrew or Jesus originally said it in Hebrew.  Unfortunately, he is wrong on both counts.  The New Testament was written in Greek.  The Greek word for “lightning” in this verse is “astrape.”  “Astrape” does not bear even a passing resemblance to Obama’s first name.  Furthermore, it is certain that Jesus did not speak those words in Hebrew either.  The ancient Hebrew language was, in that period, on its way out and very rarely used in Jewish culture (analogous to the way Latin clung on for centuries among certain Catholics: they had sacred texts and services in it, but nothing else).  Greek was the world language of the time, and the locals spoke Aramaic.  We can know that Greek and Aramaic were Jesus’ preferred languages by looking at the other things He said.  When He quoted from the Old Testament, you can tell from the differences between His wording and our modern Old Testament’s wording that He was quoting from the Septuagint, the Greek version of the scriptures.  Furthermore, when He hung on the cross His cry of “Eli Eli lama sabachthani” is Aramaic, not Hebrew.  In Aramaic the word for “lightning” is “barqoa” or “barqao” (depending on pronunciation), which is, again, nowhere near “Barack.”  Bottom line, the writer, in his excitement and ignorance, is not only butchering Jesus’ meaning with this passage but also quite literally putting words into our Lord’s mouth.

These same inconvenient facts plague the writer’s analysis of Luke 10:18, where he attempts to seal the deal by proving beyond doubt that Jesus is actually talking about (and name-drops) Barack Obama.  Unfortunately he proves nothing of the kind.  The context of the verse is not only ignored, it’s completely trampled on.  It doesn’t even make sense for Jesus to mention the name of the Antichrist in this passage, but the torturous way the writer tries to make Him do so anyway is so obviously forced that it destroys the basic grammar of the sentence.  In his version, instead of saying, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,” He says, “I beheld Satan as Barack Obama.”  What is that even supposed to mean?  Is he saying Satan is like Barack Obama (and if so, in what way?  In his actions?  In his authority?)  Is He instead trying to say that He, Jesus, saw Satan just like Barack Obama saw Satan?  Throw in the fact that (again) Jesus was speaking either Greek or Aramaic and the whole attempt becomes just sad.  Rather than saying something that can even remotely be taken as “baraq o bamaw” Jesus said either “astrape pipto ek ouranos” or “barqoa danpal men shmayoa.”  Did you get “Barack Obama” out of any of that?  Yeah, neither did I.

 Next comes a rather interesting one which can only generously be called a bit of a stretch.  Less generously, it’s a lesson on how not to read the Bible.  This lesson comes in three steps.  First, grab five totally unrelated verses from opposite ends of Scripture (in this case Isaiah 24:22-23 [talking about the final fate of the wicked kings of the earth], Hebrews 11:32 [referencing great men of faith in the Old Testament who were left out of the “Hall of Faith” chapter due to time and space constraints], Hebrews 11:35-40 [explicitly talking about martyrs who died BEFORE the time of Christ, see Hebrews 11:39-40], Revelation 6:15 [talking about the suicidal reaction of the wicked in the face of God’s judgments during the end times], and 1 Samuel 3:16 [talking about how the Israelites reacted to a Philistine invasion during Saul’s reign]).  Second pretend all these verses are somehow secretly talking about the same thing.  Then grab an unsubstantiated conspiracy-theorist-fringe rumor from the internet (notably without fact-checking it) and try to present it and the above verses in such a way that they vaguely seem to be talking about the same thing.  Need I say more?

Oh, but I must, for the writer continues pounding on poor Hebrews 11:32, completely distorting its real meaning.  The writer is very pleased to have found a verse that, honest to goodness, actually contains the name “Barak.”  He wants to make it a reference to Barack Obama, who is, of course, the Antichrist.  Unfortunately, in the actual verse, it’s a reference to the Old Testament’s man of faith and military leader, Barak, son of Abinoam (better known as the male half of the “Deborah and Barak” team).  Trying to make it about our president instead doesn’t even remotely make sense.  Trying to make it about the Antichrist (here being praised for his faith?!?) is absolutely ludicrous.

But the writer’s not done, unfortunately.  He continues with a reference to Daniel 7:3-4 and 8 that can only be called weak.  Sure, the “little horn” said great things and was lying, and I’m sure Obama has said great things and been lying.  However, here’s a news flash: lots and lots and lots of leaders throughout history and in our present day have lied about great things.  Hitler lied like a rug all the way to and through World War 2.  Evil he was, Antichrist he was not.

In similar vein, the writer alleges that Barack Obama’s slight (in the big picture of what other world leaders say about Christians, VERY slight) verbal harassment of Christians is actually the “little horn’s” prophesied physical harassment and wholesale slaughter of Christians.  In an attempt to bolster this argument, the writer throws in a reference to Daniel 12:7’s “a time, times, and half a time” interpreting this as the prophetic 3-and-a-half year presidential term of Obama.  This reference embarrassingly dates the original writing.  The writer should really update the math on that one, because Obama’s been in office now for just over six years, a figure with precisely zero prophetic significance.  This is why re-reading and editing your own work is always a good idea as a writer.

The stretched prophetic allusions are growing tired by this point, but the writer tries one more, alleging that the great blasphemies of the world-leader (not powerful-nation-leader, as Obama) are actually Obama’s remarks that the future should not belong to those who “slander the Prophet Mohammed.”  First off, did Obama even say that?  Even if he did, how is that blasphemy?  How is that a great blasphemy foretold in prophesy?  I think I’M guilty of uttering greater blasphemies whenever I slip up and swear.  Nobody prophesied about that.

Well, after that, the writer decides to revisit one of his previous tactics and try to match Bible prophesy with internet conspiracy theories, pulling up absolute nonsense about Obama’s supposed plans, which cannot be backed by any facts because they are simply not real.  People have been spouting the same nonsense allegations about every leader or political figure they dislike since the invention of the microchip decades ago.  It still hasn’t come true, and it isn’t going to this time either.  Let’s be realistic: Obama had to fight tooth and nail for four + years to get through a healthcare reform bill which, while objectionable in many parts, was universally acknowledge as needed (or at least we can all agree that some kind of healthcare reform was necessary), and that with the full support of an overwhelmingly Democrat Congress.  Now Congress is overwhelmingly Republican.  The president won’t be able to get out of the bed in the morning without them objecting that he’s not doing it right and trying to hamstring him in some way.  The odds of him passing any major legislation in the next two years are very slim.  The odds of him passing some sweeping and EXTREMELY objectionable (as in no one, not even Democrats, would support him) piece of legislation mandating the tagging of and committing genocide against American Christians (many of which are part of the current Congressional majority—and minority: yes, there are Christian Democrats, it’s a thing) are so tiny as to make the entire idea comically absurd.

 Finally, mercifully, the writer makes his last argument, using Matthew 24:15 and 13:14.  This is the part where my jaw dropped.  I had to re-read the section because I could not believe that the writer was seriously trying to use an English PUN as a legitimate argument.  Both passages mention the “abomination of desolation.”  Rather than trying to interpret and understand that, the writer distorts it into a pun: the “OBAMA NATION OF DESOLATION”.  I wish I was making that part up, but no, that is really the level to which the writer stoops in his flat-out desperation to make his case.  First off, even in English you can tell the difference in pronunciation between “abomination” and “Obama-nation.”  Even if you couldn't, a pun does not an argument make.  Second, when we look at Matthew 24 and Matthew 13, we are looking at TRANSLATED texts, as in, the original words Jesus spoke were NOT English.  The terrible pun that this argument stands on works ONLY in English (and that only if we define the phrase “the argument works” loosely).  I’m shocked, completely blown away, that the writer would make this kind of an obvious error when fully the first third of his argument was spent trying to derive secret meanings from the (supposedly) original Hebrew.  So at the beginning of the article, the real meaning of Matthew 24 can only be decoded in Hebrew, and at the end only in English?  Is the writer deliberately trying to deceive us, or is he just dense?  In case it does need to be said at this point, no, Jesus never said, “Obama-nation” anything because He spoke Aramaic or Greek.  He said either “bdelygma” [Greek] or “msaybuotoa” [Aramaic].  Either of those look like “Obama”-anything to you?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Lest anyone should think this too difficult or think too much of me, all of the information I used can be found in 10-15 minutes on Google, counting time needed to scroll to specific references.  It's disgustingly easy to debunk stuff like this, and it makes me sick to think that false prophets actually deceive and rob people blind with this level of garbage. 

Reasons to be an Egalitarian: Going Back to Genesis (honestly)

As I said in my introductory post, any Complimentarian argument, sustained long enough, eventually goes back to the Creation and Fall accounts in Genesis 1-3.  It is here, according to Complimentarians, that God established the hierarchy of roles between the genders.  This is why it's such a critical topic: in Complimentarianism male leadership isn't just a social construct—it's a part of the created order originally made by God.  In this view, leadership is an essential part of masculinity: literally what men were created to be.  Likewise with submission for women.  Its easy to see how this view could easily spill over into a view of complete inequality, wherein women are created as inferior humans who need to "learn their place"—which is sadly something women still have to put up with hearing from time to time in supposedly Christian society.

But where is this essential part of the Creation story?  Where does Genesis say that women were created to follow and men to lead?  Well, no where so clearly as Genesis 3:16:

To the woman he said, "...Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

Well, that's it folks!  God has officially instituted the patriarchy as His divine will for all women everywhere!  Show's over!...at least until we read the rest of the verse:

To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children.  Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

That complicates things.  You see, in context God's declaration of the patriarchy isn't part of His establishing the ideal way things are meant to be.  It's part of the Curse, part of a passage where He goes about systematically breaking His perfect world so that Adam, Eve, and the Serpent will be forcibly confronted with the depth of their sin.  For the man, the curse was hard labor, thorns and thistles, death, and eventual decay.  For the woman, the curse was extreme pain in childbirth and domination by men.  None of these things are the way the world was supposed to be.  All of them represent a twisting of the created order by the sin that we, as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, brought into God's perfect world.

An Egalitarian can read the passage that way, can see the domineering and abusive patriarchy that we observe throughout so much of history as a curse brought on as a consequence of sin.  But the Complimentarian reading, again, must approach the passage inconsistently.  Sure, thorns and thistles, death, decay, and extreme pain in childbirth are not the way things are meant to be.  All these things, the Complimentarian acknowledges, are a part of the Curse and are distortions of God's perfect created order.  But  the domineering patriarchy from the very same verses?  Somehow, that must be exactly the way God intended things!

When we have to be inconsistent like this and change the meaning from Curse to Created Order in the middle of a verse, it's a good hint that we're not reading the passage honestly.  We're bringing in some outside idea and trying to mold the Bible to support our own views.  An honest reading sees that "he shall rule over you" is a curse, a statement of how the world will be broken as a result of sin, just as much as the statement "you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

But this is only the most obvious place where Complimentarians see a subtext in Genesis supporting their position.  Really, Complimentarians see and claim it everywhere, but most prominently in the following places:


1. Woman was Created for Man
In Genesis 2:18-25, the story of Eve's creation takes the form of a search by God for a "help-meet" for Adam (or, as other translations have it, a "helper fit for [or suitable for] him").  Woman, therefore was created to be man's helper.  How exactly you want to take that varies.  Some interpret it as meaning that woman is an accessory to man: unnecessary, and fit only to be a man's slave.  That's an extreme view, and one attested no where else in scripture.  More moderate interpretations have woman as an essential part of humankind, but one suited and created for supporting roles, rather than leadership.  After all, you can't be a "helper" and still be a leader, right?

Well, perhaps not so much.  See, the word translated "help-meet" is the Hebrew 'ezer.  Anyone who's a fan of old hymns might recognize it.  The old classic "Come Thou Fount" features the word in the form of a name:

"Here I raise my Ebenezer: hither by Thy help I'm come!"

 Ebenezer, far from being simply a Charles Dickens character, is a Hebrew name from the Bible (1 Samuel 7:12, actually) that means "Stone of Help."  An Ebenezer was a stone set up to mark a place where God had helped someone...that is, in the name Ebenezer, the 'ezer (or helper) is none other than God Himself.

In fact, in every occurrence of the word 'ezer in the Old Testament, except for two, the word is referring to God and His divine action of rescuing, delivering, sustaining, directing, and saving.  The two other occurrences are in Genesis 2 and refer to womankind collectively in Eve.  That is a radical perspective shift when it comes to thinking about woman being made for man!

If woman is an 'ezer—a term elsewhere only used to describe the miraculous intervention of God—then she is surely not an unnecessary accessory to man.  She is certainly not his inferior.  It is unthinkable to say she is his slave (is God Almighty our slave?!).  Can we even say that she's a supporting actress, unfit to lead?  Not honestly.  God is certainly not limited to helping us in non-directive ways.  In fact, we are very, very much in need of God's leadership and direction.  Very frequently His role as our 'ezer takes the form of Him giving us divine leadership and direction through life's challenges.  Why should we expect things to be different with woman, created to be an 'ezer to man herself?  She may not always lead, especially after the Curse put domineering male authority as an obstacle in her life as surely as thistles were an obstacle to man, but leadership certainly is not beyond her created capabilities, purpose, or role as an 'ezer.

2. Man was Created First

Similar to the first argument, but weaker, this argument says that, since Adam was created first, it's implied that he, as the forerunner of the human race, had a divine implied imperative to lead which was passed on to all of his sons.  Order of creation implies order of hierarchy.  Specifically, because God delivered His command against eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam before Eve was created, Adam must have been intended as the spiritual leader of the pair, since he would have to teach this command to Eve himself.

However, the basic argument of the order of creation translating into an order of hierarchy falls apart when the creation order from Genesis 1 is examined.  In this order, the first creatures God put on the Earth are fish and birds, and by this logic they would have an implicit divine mandate to rule over all of us (well, maybe they do).  But this isn't so in the Bible.  Rather, the mandate to rule is given to humankind, the very last species to be created by God.  If it is order that makes hierarchy, then this would actually put women as the rightful leaders of the species rather than men.

The argument for spiritual leadership doesn't fare much better.  All we really know for sure is that God told Adam not to eat of the fruit and that somehow, by chapter 3, Eve knew as well.  Did Adam tell her?  This would seem logical, but there are other possibilities.  God may have told her before He brought Eve to Adam.  She may have simply been created with this knowledge, the way she was evidently created with the knowledge of how to walk and talk.  We simply don't know, and that gap in the text renders the argument for spiritual headship from Genesis to an argument from silence, which is inherently weaker than any passages blatantly stating that women and men are equals in spiritual matters before God.

3. The Fall was really a Failure of Male Leadership

This argument is really a complete reinterpretation of the story of the Fall in Genesis 3.  In this interpretation, Eve started out under Adam's spiritual leadership.  Under him, she learned the command God had given them.  Enter the snake.  Satan deceives Eve and gets her to doubt God's leadership, and, implicitly, Adam's.  The real sin here is that Eve casts off Adam's spiritual guidance and takes initiative for herself.  She takes the fruit, eats it, and—even worse—acts as a spiritual leader herself by giving it to Adam.  Thus the real moral failure of the Fall was not a human disobedience to God (though that certainly was there) but a female rebellion and reversal of the God-ordained male hierarchy!  Thankfully, God restores the right and good order of the patriarchy later during the Curse.

The problem with this interpretation is that it isn't based on what Genesis 3 actually says at all.  It's an interpretation entirely imported from our own views.  There's no mention of Eve usurping spiritual leadership from Adam, or even of him having a spiritual leadership role for her to usurp.  When God deals out justice for the Fall, He does not mention Eve usurping authority or Adam failing to exercise it.  His focus is on disobedience, on each of the newly created humans listening to someone else other than God (Eve, in the case of Adam, and the serpent in the case of Eve).  Furthermore, as discussed earlier, the "establishment of the patriarchy" is a part of the Curse—which is perhaps the most compelling argument for believing that it is not a part of the created order and is, in fact, something Christians may rightly struggle against.  Weeds aren't a part of the naturally created order, and we certainly strive against them!

At this point, someone may object that these interpretations of Genesis are Biblical because Paul subscribed to them, based on readings of 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 or 1 Timothy 2:11-15, but such readings ignore the larger context of what Paul was talking about and why he referenced Genesis in the first place.  For example, in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 Paul brought up the facts in Genesis that Adam was created before Eve and that Eve was the first deceived in Genesis because he was combating early Gnostic heresy, which asserted that Eve was created first and that she was a demi-goddess, a wellspring of divine wisdom and enlightenment: contrary to what scripture actually said about her.  He wasn't trying to justify male spiritual dominance, but trying to combat the opposite teaching.  However, to be fair, these complex passages really deserve their own posts, to explain how I understand them now as an Egalitarian.  For now, suffice it to say that, in their context, they don't support a complete reinterpretation of the Genesis creation narrative.

The account, as it stands, is one of equality.  Both male and female are created together in chapter one, both in the image of God, and both together given dominance over all other life on Earth.  In Genesis 2, looking at the particulars we see the woman created for the man as an 'ezer, an amazing companion whose role as help does not at all imply inferiority or an inability to lead (since it is directly related to the way God Himself helps us and acts as our 'ezer).  Finally, in the Fall we see both male and female fall when they place someone else before God and disobey Him, and as a result both are cursed by God with a broken creation to strive against.  For women, a part of this fallen world is a domineering male society—something they must strive against even as farmers have, throughout recorded time, striven against weeds.

Reasons to be an Egalitarian: Reading About Submission of Wives in Context

Okay, so I'm going to go back a few posts and revisit three passages I touched on earlier, when I was discussing how the Egalitarian position can help a man be a more Biblical husband than the Complimentarian position.  When discussing that, I deliberately left out any discussion of the following verses:

"Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."

—Colossians  3:18, ESV

"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.  Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.  For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.  And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening."

—1 Peter 3:1-6, ESV

"Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands."

—Ephesians 5:22-24, ESV

Just looking at these verses, it would seem that they spell doom for the Egalitarian position.  Here, plain as day, the Bible is telling wives they need to obey their husbands.  1 Peter 3:6 even says wives should be calling their husband "lord!"  At this point, the Complimentarians declare victory, insist on "love, cherish, and obey" as the bride's wedding vow, and prepare to walk off the scene.  After all, demonstrating that wives must be totally submissive toward their husbands is only one step away from showing that women cannot have authority over any men at all, period.

But all is not as it seems from a simple first reading, and these verses do not exist in isolation.  In understanding the Bible, context is critical.  So what's the context of these three passages?  Well, their immediate context is a set of commands to husbands and wives...and as we saw in a previous post, Complimentarianism isn't too good at taking the verses aimed at husbands seriously.  In fact, they're mostly ignored in favor of telling men to be dominant leaders (from nowhere in the Bible) and citing these verses out of context to tell women to obey.

But the larger context of these verses is even more enlightening.  These verses belong to three parallel passages in the Bible: Colossians 3:1-4:6, 1 Peter 2:11-3:8, and Ephesians 5:1-6:20.  Each passage details how Christians are supposed to live in certain situations.  The Colossians and Ephesians passages are nearly identical, speaking of, in order: general commandments, mutual submission among believers, wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, masters, and the importance of prayer.  In fact, the Ephesians-passage could be called simply a fleshed-out version of the Colossians-passage outline.  The passage in 1 Peter is a little different, coming from a different Biblical author, but still covers the same general topics: general commandments for all believers, commands for citizens obeying the government, commands for slaves, commands for wives, husbands, and ending with a call for overall unity.  The main difference is that verses directed toward masters, fathers, and children are left out while verses about submission to government are included.

What does this mean for us?  Well, it means that in their original context, the verses about wives being obedient to their husbands are part of a set of verses directed to Christians in various walks of life telling them how they should live in the roles within which they find themselves.  Citizens should obey their governments, slaves should obey their masters, masters should treat slaves fairly, wives should obey their husbands, husbands should love their wives, children should obey their parents, fathers should treat their children well, etc.  All three passages are also framed by general commandments to all Christians for how they should live their daily lives in all circumstances, and calls for mutual submission and unity.  In other words, the passages are sets of instructions for how Christians living very different lives are to live out the unity, mutual submission, and love that they have in Christ.

This is an important point.  Its easy to see these passages as endorsing these societal roles, but in fact the Bible does no such thing.  All three passages advise slaves on how to live within their roles as Christian slaves without necessarily saying that slavery is good or right.  In fact, in insisting that masters remember that their slaves are equals, these passages subtly lay the groundwork for future Biblical abolitionist movements, which see that these roles, while they can be lived in as a Christian, are fundamentally un-Christian in nature.

The problem for Complimentarians is, again, that their reading of the passages must switch partway through.  The verses that talk about the absolute submission of wives to their husbands are held to be universal divine edicts, expressing the pure will of God for all Christians throughout all time, and most definitely endorsing a patriarchy at home.  However, when, in the same context, the Bible talks about the absolute submission of slaves to their masters...somehow this is a not-so-eternal truth.  It's more of a command to Christians finding themselves in a certain cultural and social construct (slavery) which the Bible, rather than endorsing, simply tells them how to endure in their role as Christians.  The same goes for the verses commanding absolute and unquestioning obedience to an imperial government in 1 Peter.  Just because the Bible says, "Honor the Emperor" or "Honor the king" (in some translations), does not mean that the Bible is establishing an imperial monarchy as the only Biblical and Christian form of government.  So just because the Bible has commands for Christians under autocratic governments and slavery does not mean the Bible endorses these institutions...but somehow just a few verses later passages about how Christians are to behave in a patriarchal marriage absolutely is an endorsement of this institution.

This is a contradictory reading!  We can't have it both ways!  Either the Bible's commands to slaves, citizens, and wives are circumstancial and cultural, telling Christians how to live under certain institutions without endorsing the institutions themselves, or else all Christians everywhere are under a divine command to fight for a society marked by slavery, autocracy, and patriarchy.  Again, as in the previous post, the Complimentarian position forces us to ignore context and treat the items of a list as having totally different meanings, and this is inconsistent.  To me, it means that the Complimentarian reading is, in some way, deeply flawed, forced to distort the passage and take it out of context in order to maintain its own views imported from the outside.

Egalitarianism carries no such burden to the passage.  It sees all three passages as commands given to Christians who find themselves in social and cultural roles which the Bible does not necessarily endorse.  Rather than laying out what these roles should be, these passages simply tell Christians how to live out lives pleasing to Christ within the cultural and social roles in which they find themselves.  Citizens are to obey and honor the autocracy under which they find themselves, even though it may not be the ideal form of government for Christian principles.  Likewise slaves are to obey their masters even though under Christ both are equals.  So also wives, finding themselves in patriarchal marriages where they were literally dependent on their husbands for everything, were to obey him, even though in Christ gender doesn't matter.

What does this mean for us today?  Two things, really.  First, it means that patriarchal marriages as described in these passages are not God's gold standard of relationships.  They are not even, necessarily, something consistent with the rest of Christianity.  Like slavery and autocracy, they are social and cultural roles, and, like slavery and autocracy, we have the freedom in Christ to seek a more perfect and more Christian union.  Second, it means that the roles we take in marriage (whether submissive, dominant, or sharing), like the roles we take in government and economic life, are not nearly as important as how we live those roles, as Christians.  If we, as Christians, find ourselves in a culture of egalitarian marriages which emphasize mutual decisions over male leadership, we do not have a divine mandate to revive the patriarchy.  Nor do we, if we live under a patriarchy, necessarily need to abolish it.  Whether we show the love of Christ and His new life in us in our roles within our culture and marriage (whatever those roles may be) is far more important to God.

Reasons to be an Egalitarian: Taking Galatians 3:28 Seriously

I apologize for the lapse in posting.  I was hoping this would be a quick series of blog posts, but it's hard to make a series quick if you stop partway through!  So, let's try to wrap this up!

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

—Galatians 3:28 KJV

 Galatians 3:28 is without a doubt the best verse for arguing equality in the Bible.  It says that in Christ, we are all equal.  Race doesn't matter (neither Jew nor Greek), economic and social status doesn't matter (neither bond nor free), and sex doesn't matter (neither male nor female), we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Despite some preconceived notions some might have, this isn't a point that's actually at variance between the Egalitarian and Complimentarian camps when it comes to gender.  Both sides of the debate insist and believe that men and women are equal before God.  The difference is that the Complimentarian position insists that, while they are equals before God, women and men are designed to function in different roles in the church and the home as part of a divinely ordained hierarchy.  Egalitarians insist that gender is not something that determines roles in the church, but that God can gift anyone, regardless of gender, to be a leader.

Let's take a look at these differences as they contrast with the verse above.  In the verse above, all three categories are declared to be equal before God.  But to what extent are they equal?  Are there certain things in the church which, by divine command, can only be done by people of a certain race?  Can only Jews be leaders in the church, while Greeks must remain followers?  Certainly not!  What about the distinctions between economic and social status?  Should the poor and slaves be forced to remain in separate church roles, while the upper levels of church hierarchy are reserved for the wealthy?  While historically it may have worked out this way more often than not, I think we can all agree that this is merely our human prejudice stepping in rather than a divinely ordained division of roles.  In fact, the Bible flatly condemns such prejudice in James 2:2-7 (and that just in a simple thing like seating arrangements!).  It is clearly not established by God.

This is where the problem comes in to the Complimentarian reading of Galatians 3:28.  In the first two cases, we can agree that the equality the verse speaks of is a total equality that encompasses all church life, that there is no God-ordained division between races or classes to restrict their roles in the church.  When the verse says they are equal, it means they are completely equal and can fulfill any role in the church to which God may call them.

But when it comes to the third pair of the verse, the Complimentarian reading has to make a radical shift.  Men and women, in Complimentarianism, can't be equal in the same way as race and class are in the church, because while race and class cannot be used in the name of God to restrict roles within the church, gender must be.  While the verse clearly says that all three sets of distinctions are done away with in Christ, and all three are equal in the same way in Christ, the Complimentarian can only take the verse seriously on the first two.  When it comes to the third, the Complimentarian must suddenly restrict the kind of equality meant by the verse to an equality of salvation (men and women are both saved in the same way) or worth (men and women are both equally loved by God).  An equality of roles (which exists in the previous two sets of distinctions) cannot exist between men and women because the Complimentarian view holds that men are divinely appointed leaders at home and in church and women can never rightly hold a leadership role over men—that is, male vs female is still a very important distinction and division within the church to God, in a way that Jew vs Greek and slave vs free isn't.

This bothered me for years, and was one of the reasons I eventually became an Egalitarian.  It's textually inconsistent to switch meanings in the middle of a sentence.  It's especially inconsistent to switch meanings in the middle of a list.  If I say, "I love pizza, meatloaf, and spaghetti" it would be a strange interpretation indeed if one were to understand me as saying that pizza and meatloaf were my favorite foods but that I only liked spaghetti occasionally.  Yet that is exactly what I was forced to do when I read Galatians 3:28 as a Complimentarian.  Neither Jew nor Greek meant just that: race doesn't matter to God, and doesn't determine standing or role within the church.  Neither bond nor free meant just that: economic and social status doesn't matter to God, and doesn't determine standing or role within the church.  But neither male nor female?  That I had to switch up and understand in a completely different way, because that one obviously still mattered to God and determined standing and role within the church, despite what this verse was saying to me.  I knew that, because of this forced shift of meaning, my understanding of the passage was fundamentally unsound.  That bothered me, and it was only as I began to see the way other passages I struggled with fit together neatly in Egalitarianism that I was able to let go of this weak and warped interpretation of the passage and take Galatians 3:28 seriously.  Neither race, nor social or economic status, nor gender matter before God—and none of them can determine or limit our roles in our service to Him!

Reasons to be an Egalitarian: Better (& more Biblical) Sex

This post is not explicit, but due to it's topic of married sexuality and the Bible, it is probably not for younger folks.  If you are not of age to talk about sex in a mature way, this post is not for you.  Please move on.

Reasons to be an Egalitarian: You can be a better, more Biblical husband

Yesterday I posted about how I came to change my views on gender and leadership, from believing the complimentarian position that only men can lead, to holding the egalitarian position that leadership is not one of the things men and women differ on.  While I alluded to the reasons why I changed my mind, I didn't actually mention any of them.  I thought I'd start now and revive my dusty old blogging habits by making a series of posts on why I consider the egalitarian position the best in the light of scripture.  There are lots of better minds that have written on this subject, so I thought I'd start with a topic that doesn't get much attention: the idea that being an egalitarian can help you be a better man, and more specifically, a better husband.

Consider the following verses aimed at husbands in the Bible.

"Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them."

—Colossians  3:19

"Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered."

—1 Peter 3:7

"Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.  In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.  'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.'  This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.  However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

—Ephesians 5:25-33

Looking at these passages, one thing is conspicuous by its absence: none of these passages contain commands for a man to exercise authority and leadership over his wife.

Now, one can argue that the exercise of authority is implied by the proceeding verses about wives submitting themselves to their husbands.  That argument could be further backed that the passages instructing parents on how to treat their children don't mention exercising authority over them either, even though it's clearly assumed that they will.  But where this analogy breaks down is when we admit that women are not children.  There is a difference between a man's wife and his daughter.  A child, still growing up, needs instruction and guidance from their parents and there are many, many verses in the Bible attesting to that and admonishing parents to raise their children well, especially in Proverbs.  Women, on the other hand, are adults who no longer require parenting, especially not from their husbands.  There are no verses anywhere in the Bible instructing husbands to exercise authority and give guidance to the lives of their wives.  From the complimentarian position, we have to simply assume it's implied by the verses about wives submitting to their husbands.  We have no other scriptural proof that it is so.

But, from such a dearth of proof comes a wealth of "Biblical" advice and commands from Christian sources.  I sat in on a number of gender talks when I was at Summitview.  The importance of leading one's wife and family was a topic that never failed to come up.  In one particularly memorable session, the entire talk was devoted to leadership by provision, and how critically important it was that we as men find profitable jobs and pursue marketable degrees so that we would be able to financially support our family in the white-picket-fence American dream (anyone with aspirations of a less lucrative career was told point-blank to abandon their dreams for money; there was even a list showing which careers were most profitable and thus which occupations were acceptable for a leading, Biblical man and which weren't).  The topic of male leadership is proclaimed everywhere in complimentarian Christianity.  If someone is decrying the loss of masculinity in the church today or the record numbers of men who are up and leaving their families, odds are the solution they'll propose is that men become better leaders and exercise more authority.  According to the complimentarian view, the essential thing for making a good, godly husband and a good, godly man is nothing more or less than the exercise of authority and leadership.

The problem with this is that our proscription for godly men is not at all the same as the Bible's.  Ask the Bible what advice husbands need to hear, and it isn't "lead your wives and provide for them," but "love your wives and understand them."  We may brush this aside as a non-issue, perhaps a mere cultural difference (like early church men somehow already knowing how to lead whereas ours do not), but the truth is that this is more than a simple disconnect.  There's actually an inherent contradiction that arises when we put the emphasis for husbands on leading rather than loving in their marriage.

Take, for example, this scene that played out at my register yesterday.  A young couple was in line buying a variety of groceries and obviously enjoying themselves.  When it came time to pay, however, a disagreement arose.  She wanted to split the transaction.  He wanted to pay all of it.  Very likely the pair shared finances to some degree, so it probably made little difference whose account it came out of.  However, the man felt his prerogative to provide and lead was being threatened.  He insisted.  Things became physical.  He shoved her forcefully away from the checkout stand, told her harshly not to get in his way, and swiped his card, insisting I allow him to pay the entire bill.  Now, some questions.  Was the man leading?  Well, certainly.  He fulfilled the prerogative to provide by paying, and he exercised authority by making sure he got his way.  Was the man loving?  I would say just as certainly no.  And now, for the real question: was he Biblical?  If we go by what the complimentarian position defines as Biblical for men, then yes, or nearly yes, because to that position the most essential part of manhood and being a husband is to exercise authority and provide leadership, which he did (albeit not in a very gentle way).  However, if we go by just what the Bible actually says, we'd have to say certainly not.  He was harsh with her, not gentle or loving.  He did not try to understand her at all or honor her.  He certainly did not show the same kind of self-sacrificial love to her that Christ shows to the church.  He dominated her.  This is the disconnect: in the Bible, his behavior was unambiguously wrong, but in complimentarian morality he was right or at least on the right track.

When our views lead us to different moral conclusions than the Bible, I think it's high time we reexamined our views!

But the disconnect goes deeper.  A few years ago I had the privilege to acquire the book For Men Only by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn.  I recommend it and its companion For Women Only for anyone who wants to understand gender differences and the opposite sex better (which, Biblically, should be a goal for all husbands, citing 1 Peter 3:7).  Each chapter is dedicated to one of the most commonly reported (by women) misunderstandings between them and their spouse.  One chapter is titled, "Your Real Job is Closer to Home."  The thrust of the chapter is how many husbands believe that their financial provision is their best or a major way of expressing love for their spouse.  They put in long hours at the office, they work hard for the promotion they don't really want, they work nights and weekends to get that extra paycheck...and then come home to a wife and family that feels positively abandoned by them.  Why?  Because when it comes to the type of love wives and families need from their men, the love that provides monetary things is way, way down on the list.  Most of the women surveyed by the Feldhahns (who based all of their writing on comprehensive surveys of actual couples, etc) would much rather be married to a poor but affectionate man rather than a hard-working provider who was never there when they needed him.  Another chapter of the book, if I recall correctly, was dedicated to addressing the misconception in men that women talk about feelings because they want them fixed by the man rather than simply understood.  The problem for the complimentarian husband is that his ideology predisposes him to make both mistakes.  Complimentarian ideology says that leading, fixing, and providing are all essential not only to the role of a husband but also to a man's very masculinity.  Certainly it holds these things as more essential for husbands to practice than love, emotional connection, and understanding.  The problem is that wives find the opposite is true and the Bible agrees with them!  To be good, Biblical husbands, men must agree with these priorities as well.

This doesn't fly in complimentarian theology.  In fact in the Bible's emphasis on husbands loving and understanding their wives we probably see the stage set Biblically for the end of the patriarchal system, much as the Bible's insistence that masters treat their slaves as brothers in Christ spelled the eventual emergence of Biblical abolitionist movements.  If we insist on complimentarianism, we're forced to hold a believe that contradicts scripture when it comes to where our priorities should be as men and husbands, and one which, at the very least, predisposes us to be bad husbands and very possibly unbiblical ones.  If we instead discard the belief that leadership and provision are divinely ordained roles every husband must fulfill, we are much more free to obey the Bible's commands to husbands and to better love our wives.

A Journey to an Egalitarian Complimentarity

Men and women are different in many ways.  This is a pretty well established and accepted fact.  There are some obvious sex differences, and then some less-obvious physiological and psychological differences.  Among these fall the reality that men tend to have greater upper body strength and the saying that "men are like waffles, and women are like spaghetti"—referring to one gender's tendency to compartmentalize topics vs the other's tendency to run them together in a complex flow of ideas.  These latter apply only generally, though, as there are some men who've learned to string together topics like spaghetti and some women who think in highly organized boxes—and also some women with incredible physical strength.  In general, all of these differences (where they exist) compliment each other.  The complimentary virtues of sexual differences are obvious, but psychological differences are also generally complimentary as well with the unique approach of each gender bringing something different to the table (sometimes it's more advantageous to think and speak in topicly-focused waffle squares, sometimes it's better to be able to explore the connections between disparate topics with the flow of spaghetti).  But in Christian circles there is another difference that is often talked about, one that is often the actual topic implied whenever the idea of male and female complimentary differences is raised: leadership vs service.  In this complimentarian view, men are seen as naturally, universally, and divinely suited for leadership whereas women are given the role of serving and helping under that leadership.  Since leaders need followers and followers leaders the relationship is complimentary.  Since Christianity further holds that leaders are not above their flocks in terms of value (at least on paper), it's also a view of equality.  It is, above all, something that the Bible clearly teaches.  This is what I was raised to believe, and this is what pretty much every church I've ever been in has taught.

But that is precisely what I've come to question of late.  To be honest, the idea of a gender heirarchy was never something that set well with me.  It started with the fact that the passages used to support the idea of a male heirarchy are...problematic at best.  Take the prototypical proof-text for the complimentarian position: 1 Timothy 2:12.  While the complimentarian position takes as plain-gospel-truth-seriousness only the part about women being forbidden to exercise authority or hold teaching positions over men, the rest of the passage is something that obviously requires a more in-depth approach.

"Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control."

—1 Timothy 2:11-15

The whole thing about women keeping silence in churches is not something we practice these days, and in fact, it seems barbaric.  As for that last part, the whole idea that a woman will be saved through childbearing seems like proposing some alternate gospel that applies only to women (salvation by grace through faith for men, but through childbearing and good works for women?).  But looking at the passage beyond the level of using it as a proof text was something that was never really done in any church I attended, same for a lot of the other problematic gender passages (such as 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, or 1 Corinthians 11:3-16).  I confess that I never really knew what to do with these passages, so I did my best to ignore them.  This was where the disquiet started, because I knew that ignoring a difficult passage so scripture wasn't really any way to understand the Bible.

The next blow came, honestly, at Summitview, the church I attended during my college years.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the church took the traditional complimentarian view and defended it well from the Bible (though still without really sorting out any of the complexities surrounding the proof texts).  While I would view their public position as one that is very Biblically supportable, private practice was another matter.  In practice, all women were encouraged to marry, have children, and take support roles in the institutional church, while all men were encouraged to marry, be the dominant authority at home, and enter ministry in some sort of leadership role.  Obviously not everyone could do that, but the popular perception was that those who could and did were better off and more faithful to God than those who did not.  This, however, was but the tip of the iceberg.  The rest of it I glimpsed passing shadow-like beneath the surface of the public facades church couples maintained.  I witnessed a small group leader publicly rebuke his wife for being tired and distracted during his lesson (with no honor, love, service, or understanding for her at all—in contrast to verses which tell husbands they must treat their wives with all of these things: 1 Peter 3:7 and Ephesians 5:25-33).  I heard about men who tyrannized women in private, to the point where one wife had to ask her husband's permission before meeting with her friends.  While I recognized that this abuse was yet another example of the church warping a good public teaching and warping it in to a bad private practice, it had the same effect on me as their warping of emotional purity principles: the abuse of the principle set the stage for me to question the assumed legitimacy of the principle itself.

Still, I did not question the principle immediately.  After all, how else was I to understand these verses?  What other legitimate interpretation of them could there be?  I did not know any, so I simply continued to ignore and avoid the question wherever possible.  However, all that began to change.  The first hint came from online dating, of all places.  There I met a Christian young woman who impressed me by presenting a more egalitarian interpretation of Ephesians 5:22-33 (pointing out that the whole passage begins with a command for all Christians to submit to each other, not just wives to husbands) which impressed me.  While nothing came of that relationship, the stage was still set for taking a more serious look at the topic of gender hierarchy and the problematic passages that seemed to support it.

The opportunity to do so came when I found and bought the book Discovering Biblical Equality: Complimentarity Without Hierarchy.  For the first time, I found a book that wasn't afraid to delve into those problem verses, and one that made an honest effort to set them in context and understand what they meant.  I found their explanations made sense, and were surprisingly insightful.  For instance, with 1 Timothy 2:12, the book reminds readers that the verse is set in the context of a church that was obviously having troubles with false teachers, possibly with early Gnosticism, and reminds readers that this was the site of the huge riots where people were chanting in the street for hours "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" (Acts 19:23-41).  It even goes into a little history on who the Ephesian Artemis was and how she differed from the traditional Greek Artemis, then ties these together by showing how the 1 Timothy 2:11-15 passage is specifically tailored as a rebuttal of a particular woman attempting to bring cult of Artemis and Gnostic teachings into the church by dominating men and teaching the primacy of Eve instead of learning her new faith and insisting on singleness and abstinence from childbearing in order for salvation.  A similar exploration of the passage can be found here.  All in all, I was impressed by the egalitarian position, which asserts that—while men and women differ and are complimentary in many ways, gendered hierarchy is not one of them.  I was forced to admit that even if I did not agree with the egalitarians in the end, I at least had to consider their position defensible, much like my view of Armenianism in the free-will vs predestination debate (I would consider myself a Calvinist, but I concede that the Armenian interpretation is a valid alternative).

But reading this and then getting involved in a feminist debate on Facebook caused me to reflect on my own complimentarian position.  I was forced to look critically at the interpretations of these passages that supported male-only leadership, to reflect on the arguments used to support gender roles from the Bible.  In the end, I found them wanting.  Any argument, sustained long enough, goes back to Genesis and claims of a Biblical male-female hierarchy there, but in an honest reading of the text it simply isn't to be seen.  Men and women are both together given authority over the animals (note the plural in Genesis 1:28).  Adam's sin isn't a failure to properly dominate his wife but rather his decision to listen to her over God (Genesis 3:17), and Eve's isn't breaking out of gender roles (which are established as part of the curse, butted right up against extreme pain in childbirth in Genesis 3:16).  Furthermore Paul's references to this section to justify the complimentarian interpretation are taken out of context in ways that reduce them to nonsense (in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, he was addressing Gnostic and cult of Artemis teachings about Eve as the preeminent being, the embodiment of knowledge, the precursor to Adam, etc—and ignoring these facts make hash of attempts to understand the last verse of the passage, which is why most complimentarian commentators simply ignore it).  In the end I found that I could no longer take the complimentarian position seriously anymore.  While I admit that there's some decent rhetoric out there to support it, I can no longer see that rhetoric holding up to and making good sense of scripture.  When I realized this, I realized that I would need to change my views to reflect what I believed the Bible was actually trying to get across: the idea that women and men are equal, though different, and may be equally fit for leadership roles.

I recognize that this is a minority position, and one maligned as un-Biblical by the majority of Evangelicals, who believe it's a position based solely on pandering to the culture and ignoring scripture.  Such accusations do not change the truth however, and I cannot take them or anyone who makes them seriously.  Such people very often put pandering to their own patriarchal subculture ahead of understanding the Bible, using the latter merely as a collection of convenient proof-texts seeded into difficult passages they ignore.  As for me, my journey was not one of learning to ignore the Bible and pander to culture, but of learning that my (Evangelical, complimentarian) culture did not fit my Bible and choosing a better understanding and alignment with the latter over the former, and I have seen the same is true for the majority of egalitarians Christians.