Believe it or not, things go on in the church that I'm just not so sure about. To hear some tell it in their skewed judgmental way, I have tossed doctrine to the wind. So, I write to say some things go on that I have to go back to the Word to see what I think I should think.
At ZOE a woman stood before the group of us and spoke. That makes me uncomfortable. What makes me most uncomfortable is I can't put a scripture to its wrongness. Women are to be silent. Yes, I know but what do I do with the women who are singing? What do I do with the women who are complaining? Just where does that silent zone begin and where does it end? If it ends not in the Word but where we begin to fidget, we are most silly in our convictions.
And then Sunday morning at Woodmont, wouldn't you know it, two women served communion along with six men. I was hearing from a liberal preacher in 1975 that it was all right for women to pass communion trays, but I couldn't buy it. Yesterday I saw it and I want to say, Hey don't you know you can't being doing that? Don't you know it is profane.....to see a woman....pass a tray....standing up? Don't you know it's scriptural for a woman to pass the tray from side to side sitting down, but she can't do it walking around. It's just not.....you know.....
I surely don't mean to mock either of these experiences. But I wish to convey I hit points I'd rather not have to think about because I can't come up with sufficient reasons why I want my reasons to stand. In the meantime, the world is rushing past us to the bars and the casinos looking for someplace to belong; to be accepted.
It must be one of our goals to discard any barriers between us; certainly those God did not erect. It would seem right that we speak where the Bible speaks and not add to the Word to fit our expectations.
Uncomfortable? Yes. But I want to grow more uncomfortable with the unknown millions going to hell without a Savior than I want to pacify my dis-ease of needing to feel good about church when I'm there....and I think it would be a good bench-mark for you.
5 comments:
I'm probably going to be sorry that I am responding, but I'm uncomfortable about some things in the church, too. I am uncomfortable with preachers who deny the omniscience of God (saying that God does not know the future), preachers who deny the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and preachers who don't believe faith in Christ is needed in order to be saved. Before I started reading blogs, I didn't have much concern about those things. (I'm not accusing you of teaching any of those things.) I'm disturbed because each of those teachings undermines faith in Christ.
My wife and I were just talking about this very subject. Our home Bible study/discussion group is going through The Truth Project DVDs from Focus on the Family (recommended highly), focusing on the REAL truth of God that is all around us (such as the fact that God really is sovereign and works in everything), versus the lies that we have all bought into in our culture. As she is the only one to see them before, one of the women in the group leads the discussion afterward. A little uncomfortable at times? Yes. But, what's different than another woman who speaks up during the discussion and makes some other point? None.
And, yet, while I'm certain of my desire to break down barriers that we men have put up where they weren't mean to be, I read Terry's comment about God's omniscience, and I struggle with whether or not we're concerned enough with the right thing? I've had the opportunity to hear one of the men that Mr. Rush listed in his post quite a bit over the last several years and there was a lot of emphasis on us changing our thinking on some issues (which is important, no doubt), yet very little about how great our God is and his True nature. I feel pulled in different directions very often!
Jay
Sometimes we have to ask ourselves what is right about it. There you will find the difficulty in mustering the answers. Yet, Satan loves to sneak and to twist and sometimes ask what is wrong with it. Then it is easier to muster up all the things we can find wrong with it. Sometimes the misuse of scripture.
What do I find right about be uncomfortable? Knowing God is working on my heart and changing my views towards the old thoughts which may have hampered the cause of Christ in the past.
Try it sometime in writing out your thoughts of what may be right about it. You would be amazed at what God can do when we think on the positiveness.
I don't feel uncomfortable about those things (women passing communion or leading a discussion or prayer) any more because of what I read in the Bible! One excellent study of these issues is Linda Belleville's "Women Leaders and the Church." Based on some of that material and others, I put together a 13 week study of the issues and taught it in my church. Some were very uncomfortable at first, but when you start with Genesis and look at the big picture, it all fits and makes sense. We discovered that we all knew those individual verses in 1 Cor 14 and 1 Tim 2, but none of us knew the context of the verses! Study the context closely and they say something very different than what we have been told they say!
I always come back to the Bible and God's words that everyone is equal in his eyes. If this is the case (and we must believe it is), why would he want any one particular group to feel 'less' equipped to serve God based on her gender? Gender nor race nor any other way in which we are inherently born affects our ability to worship or praise God and since God created us, we're just the way he wants us to be!
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