Heating Pad Blues

This living statue phenomenon has spread all around the country as an easy way to raise money in tourist zones. Take a picture and please drop in a buck?

This will not become a "complaining about my health" blog. I promise. I bought our first heating pad in our marriage to help my sore back muscles heal and had to leave work because of the soreness. Much improved today.

I am studying this week a bit about the Apostle Paul and his statements about women. I Timothy has the most strident passage that links Eve as a more guilty conspirator in the fall. Its a passage that has always made me feel uncomfortable, as if I am hearing the echos of Saul the Rabbi, "Thank God you did not make me a woman".

It seems as if women are to carry this guilt all their lives in silence in the church and be second class citizens in their freedom in Christ.

Bible believing Christians have pretty much ended up in two camps, currently called,
Complementarian, and Egalitarian. With the passing of time and the maturing of feminism in our generation the role of women has certainly changed in politics and education and in business with many successful CEOs, teachers and public servants.

In my former denomination it was always touchy when the wife of a missionary was asked to speak at our assembly, or some famous wife of a leader who had become an author like Catherine Marshall, or Edith Scheaffer , or even Joni Erickson. We would always have some young zealot publically marching out of the room to show their support for Paul's command that women should be silent and not teach men.

Turns out it was not really a command, and the word for silence is quietness, used earlier by Paul in his prayer for a quiet and peaceful life, which obviously is not a life of not speaking but a life of serenity and peace. Most probably Paul had some issues of loud women supporting the theological insurrection that was taking place in Ephesus and about which Paul was mentoring Timothy to "man up" in dealing with.

Anyhow, I am slowly reexamining the issues and moving a bit more toward Egalitarianism, and please manly men who never help around the house....don't hate me for it.