A look at women ordination and roles in the church: Part I

So my place of fellowship is having a Bible study on women ordination. So far, I have been listening to the debates, especially to hear the point of view that promotes women ordination as pastoral leaders. I want to hear Biblical arguments and not just feminist arguments that have originated out of secular cultural movements. Hopefully, I will get those soon, yet within the mean time, I want to share my own understanding so far, based on past revelation.

I must begin that by being a father of all girls, I have become more interested in justice issues for females. Especially considering that as a father I cannot protect my girls from engaging with the wider society and perhaps encountering the gross acts that men take to satisfy their sexual lusts and cravings. Right now, my girls are all young and do not leave the house unaccompanied. However, in the future, I can't guarantee that I can lock them up forever and only let them exit with parental accompaniment. As such, I want to see laws put in place to protect them from abuse (especially perpetrated by males).

At the same time, my spiritual views do not see the need for the feminist movement within Christianity to go beyond articulating the personhood of females and the prevention of women abuse. I hold traditional views on patriarchal hierarchy because the Holy Scriptures endorse hierarchy, rather than sees it as an evil to be presently eliminated. The New Testament reveals this the most in the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, which could be liken to man and woman in the church. (Ephesians 5: 21-33).

Philippians 2:6 states that Jesus in his nature, being God: "did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage" (NIV). Rather, despite their equality, Jesus ,  "gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being... [or appearing] in human form," (Philippians 2:7; New Living Translation).  From this perspective, Jesus, despite having equal rights and privileges as God the Father, chose to deny himself those rights and privileges, in order to work with God the Father and accomplish the larger picture and plan for humanity, which required great humiliation.

It is the same Christian duty that Jesus requires of us. Women though being equal to men, are asked to endure or even put up with men's often impoverished and poor leadership (especially wives), in order to please God. Let me just raise some of the scriptures that illustrate this point:

But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3; New International Version, 2011) )

Also women be they subject to their husbands; that if any man believe not to the word, by the conversation of women they be won without word. (1 Peter 3:1; Wycliffe Bible)

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:22; New International Version, 2011)

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. (Colossians 3:18 ; New International Version, 2011)

I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. (1 Timothy 2:12; New International Version, 2011)

Based on the above Bible verses, it seems as if women are asked by Christ to walk with him in humility and take a place less than they deserve in order to fulfil God's purpose and design for them and for the larger humanity. Again, I must emphasize that male-dominated leadership in a sinful world has often been abused and that women suffer dreadfully under such abuse as victims, as mothers of victims and even the disappointed mothers of the perpetrators of abuse. Christ in his treatment of women in the New Testament demonstrates a break with men's abuse of power:

• he teaches that men must look at women with dignity and not with an imagination desirous of fulfilling sexual cravings (Matthew 5:28); 
• he shows that we must not view a woman's one time sin of adultery as being greater than any other sin (John 8:1-11; New International Version)
• males must treat even prostitutes with dignity
• males must not criticise women's efforts to show and express their appreciation to God in worship in ways different from us (Matthew 26:7-13)

There are countless other teachings that I can't go into detail now, but look out for part 2 of my post on this subject. (I've typed it already; just to tidy it up and publish it).

The institutionalisation and corruption of Protestant Christianity

This week, I read Tooley's (2013) article putting in perspective the end of mainline Protestant churches, as the National Council of Churches abandons New York City for a shelter in D.C. Tooley's (2013) article basically raised the issue of the decline of Protestant churches politically as force to be reckoned with in American politics. In this post, I want to particularly explore some issues related to his article, especially as it relates to the corruption of Christianity by the powerful and liberal elite.

First, I must say that I learned from Tooley that the Rockefeller family and other New York elites were sponsors of the National Council of Churches. This is not a good sign, considering the rumour that the Rockefelllers are Illuminati members (Dice, 2009) and partners of  the infamous Bilderberg group (Lendman, 2009). Yet, conspiracies and rumours aside, consider this quotation from Tooley:

His father having recently died, John D. Rockefeller III was present at the dedication to honor the Interchurch Center as the fulfillment of his father’s dream of a new Christianity without denominational distinctions. Although he didn’t then specify it, the Rockefellers also dreamed of a uniformly liberal Protestantism devoted to good works instead of doctrine. The elder Rockefeller donated the land for the Interchurch Center plus over $2.6 million for costs.

Ironically, nearly all the Mainline denominations housed there would begin their nearly 50-year membership decline just a few years later. A sanitized Protestantism without doctrine or distinctions simply became too boring to sustain. In the early 1960s, about one of every six Americans belonged to the seven largest Mainline denominations. Today, it’s one out of every 15.

 Explicitly stated here is the revelation that the Rockerfeller family had a vision to purge Protestant denominations of "doctrine" and create a "new Christianity". In addition, Protestant institutions that got involved with Rockerfeller's vision, suffered a decline in their numbers. Further, another quote from Tooley shows that being aligned to elite and powerful men was the priority of Protestant churches in the 1960s, with an ecumenical aim.

Likely unable to conceive of such a dramatic spiral, the NCC’s chief pronounced at the Interfaith Center’s 1960 dedication: “It is the prayer of all who worked toward its creation that this will become more than a symbol of the growing spiritual unity of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Churches in America.” Those days were heady times for the Mainline denominations, who were flush with members, money and influence. Church offices in the God Box then claimed to represent 40 million church members.

In fact, Tooley also mentions a German Lutheran bishop warning at the Interchurch Center’s 1960 dedication, against the “institutionalization” of churches, noting that a beautiful building and organization were of “no avail without true faith.” As the Apostle Paul would say: with our institutionalized churches, we have a institutionalised a form of godliness, but deny the power that makes us godly (2 Timothy 3:5). Which brings me to my personal point.


I have benefitted from institutional and bureaucratic church socially, economically, emotionally, spiritually and even psychologically. However, the more I study the Bible, experience life and the contradictions between how church and church people operate and how the Bible actually records early church life and even Jewish culture at the time of Jesus, the more I realise something is wrong. As beneficial as institutional and bureaucratic church is, and as enriching as it is to me and my family, institutional and bureaucratic church can no longer imprint in me the image or character that I see in Jesus Christ.


Church as practiced today simplifies Christian living to:

• church attendance, 
• giving tithes and offerings to church charities, 
• participating in church activities and services,
• doing good deeds for church members and 
• spending time trying to increase the membership of the church organisation (including doing good deeds for outsiders with the goal of winning them over to the church).  

Nothing is inherently wrong with any of these activities. However, when I exam Jesus and even the apostles, the way that they practice "church" was more subversive to the cultural, social and economic order. First of all, I do not see Jesus or even the church in Acts as owning property or buildings. They shared what they own and helped others. In this regard, they were socialist or almost communist. Today, Christianity is highly linked to democratic capitalism and many denominations own many properties. At the same time, the budgets of churches are focused on trivial budgetary items such as property maintenance or acquisition. Each time I hear churches talking about setting aside money to redo the tiles or carpets of the floor of the church building, or the interior or even get gowns and musical instruments to improve their 'worship service', my spirit is disturbed. And to think that there are people who are in poverty who need help getting an education and subsequently a job to sustain their own life. To make matters worse, there are even members of the same church, that while they are giving their tithes and offerings to help renovate the church building interior, they themselves are living in rent house. Compare this with the church in the book of Acts, where people met in each other's houses and other spaces and public places in order to fellowship and worship. Isn't something wrong with the picture?

Reference:

Dice, M. (2009). The Illuminati: Facts & fiction. The Resistance: San Diego, CA.


Lendman, S. (2009, June 1). The true story of the Bilderberg group and what they may be planning now: A review of Daniel Estulin's book. Global Research, Retrieved from: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-true-story-of-the-bilderberg-group-and-what-they-may-be-planning-now/13808


Tooley, M. (2013, March 1). End of the mainline: The declining National Council of Churches abandons New York City for shelter in D.C. The American Spectator. Retrieved from http://spectator.org/archives/2013/03/01/end-of-the-mainline

Return of the Neanderthals

So I have been absent from my spiritual blog for some time due to the fact that I was preparing for my comprehensive examination as well as contemplating the future of this blog in a world that is becoming increasingly intolerant of criticism. In fact, I have plans to at the start of the Passover season around the end of March to take a forty day break from social media (namely Facebook, Twitter and Blogger) in order to deepen and enrich my spiritual life as well as learn how to cope without social media. After all, one day, such freedom can be taken away from me. Nevertheless, for this post in particular, I want to discuss and comment on the National Geographic feature on the Return of the Neanderthals (Hughes, 2013) and possibly other extinct beings, putting it in a Judeo-Christian perspective.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130306-neanderthal-genome-extinction-cloning-hominid-science/

Return of the Neanderthals

news.nationalgeographic.com

Scientists could someday resurrect Neanderthals—or at least their cells—to help modern humans. Would it be ethical?

The very sound of the title: "Return of the Neanderthals", seems like a title that would make a nice Hollywood story: like a modern retake on "Frankenstein" and/or even "The Planet of Apes". I find that we have this theme running in science fictions where human beings create an artificial being that is much stronger than themself who ends up tormenting humanity and becoming an oppressor, with the human creator (or creators) losing control over such beings. This idea is also expressed in Jewish mythology through the idea of the Golem, which in my opinion shows that all our (scientific) thoughts and developments are driven to some extent by our mythologies (more to come on this later).

Of course, the seriousness of the matter is overlooked. Our [mad] scientists who actually try to summon these extinct beings from the dead through cloning, need to be guided by our science fictions that warn us that one day we will create something that will almost devastate us. As they say, the road to hell is paved by good intentions. Hence it is much frightening when we consider the science fiction scenario of how we as human beings create or summon beings into our dimension that will totally devastate, oppress us and lead us to our ruin. Yet, in reality, this is actually being done and has been done in the past. Our pagan religions have sought to communicate to and establish connections with other beings not of our world that have lead to demonic possession and domination by fallen angels. But even if you do not believe in fallen angels and demons, if you just consider our science fictions and what they tell about the dangers of our inventions, it does point out that if man's destiny is in his own hand, then what a frightful and fearful future is on the horizon for us as humanity.


Essentially, human nature cannot be trusted. I have no trust in human nature. Men conspire, scheme, institute tyranny and oppress others. Such nature has not yet changed. And as long as human beings are the same as they were for millenia, then someone will use science and technology for evil. Already, we see that the US military is contemplating creating (Weinberger, 2013) and attempted to create (Heussner, 2009)  supersoldiers. However, even if humans do not intend to use their inventions for evil, as our science fiction themes point out, there can be unintended consequences of even creating artificial beings, especially humanoids.

But, since I subscribe to Judeo-Christian eschatology, I know that the future is not as scary as how science fiction predicts that it will be, at least not for everyone. The Bible already tells us how the world will end, thereby telling us that our fate is not in our own hands. However, this latest development could in fact create what we call the return of the Nephilim from Genesis 6:4. This is already an idea that is explored in Harding (2010), who suggests that what the ancients called the Nephilim may actually be the Neanderthals so-called by today's scientists. In addition, Jesus himself did say that the end of the world will be like the time of Noah (Matthew 24:37; Luke 17:26), lending credence to the fact that the Nephilim could actually return. Hence, it is very possible that our scientists in an attempt to bring extinct humanoids back to life, may create and resurrect the Nephilim of the 21st century.

Currently, we have demons, which according to some scholars are the disembodied souls of the Nephilim that continue to roam the earth and look for human bodies to possess and inhabit (Klein & Spears, 2005).  As such, I do not see it as farfetched that human scientists are creating the conditions for the return of these demonic entities in physical form that will permit them to regain physical bodies to oppress us as they once did before the flood. In fact, the imagery in the book of Revelations does show one such possibility. In one chapter of Revelations, the Bible speaks of an image being created, who will kill all that do not worship it (Revelation 13:15). When we consider that there is to be a seed of the serpent (Genesis 3:15), it is clear that Satanic forces are driving our science to create a body in which Satan can find an incarnation, just like how Jesus was an incarnation of God (an idea I know that many currently do not accept). Biblically, it makes sense.


References:

Harding, Fred. (2010, March). Nephilim skeletons found. ISEE Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.teklinepublishing.co.uk/art-nephilim.htm

Heussner, K. M. (2009, November 9). Psychic spies: Any truth in 'Men who stare at goats?' ABC News Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/psychic-spies-truth-men-stare-goats/story?id=9032019


Hughes, V. (2013, March 6). Return of the Neanderthals: Should scientists seek to clone our ancient hominid cousins? National Geographic News Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130306-neanderthal-genome-extinction-cloning-hominid-science/


Klein, J, & Spears, A. (2005). Devils and demons and the return of the Nephilim. [S.l.] : Xulon Press, c2005.



Weinberger, S. (2013, January 21). Iron Man to Batman: The future of soldier suits. BBC Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130121-batman-meets-iron-man-in-combat/1