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Post by setfree on Mar 28, 2010 23:24:58 GMT -5
Journey, your posts have been speaking to me very strongly. I also hope you'll write a book.
These 'marriage' books instruct women to do idolatry and dysfunctional co-dependency.
Are we meant to glorify God or glorify our husbands??? To say one is the other is such manipulative blurring. One is in the Bible (glorify God) the other is extra-biblical (glorify husband). It *sounds* religious - but IT IS NOT biblical. Subtle distortion, subtle deception.
Just like *obey* your husband. Obey your parents IS in the Bible. Obey your husband is NOT.
Kephale of the wife IS in the Bible. Head of the house is NOT.
All believers and kings, priest and co-heirs IS in the Bible. The husband is the priest of the home is NOT.
What twisting of scripture, to infer that submitting to your husband is part of being filled with the Spirit and walking with God!
How can they just *ignore* Ephesians 5:21? Being gentle and submissive towards ONE ANOTHER is the outworking of being filled with Spirit and imitators of God, being kind and compassionate and forgiving towards one another. Wives submitting to husbands (and husbands doing likewise as they lay down their lives for wives and see to it that they are lifted up to a position of equality as equal partners) is AN example of 5:21, in the context of the whole chapter and previous chapter!
How can it be twisted to force women to commit idolatry and become co-dependent???
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Post by kisekileia on Apr 4, 2010 18:35:21 GMT -5
Just a little quibble: The Bible instructs CHILDREN to obey their parents. The command directed to all ages is "honor your parents". There's a large difference between those two things.
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Post by setfree on Apr 4, 2010 20:53:21 GMT -5
True. But my point was, the Bible does not tell wives to obey their husbands.
These hideous books (like Helen Andelin's "Me? Obey him??" do.
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Post by Sierra on Apr 5, 2010 4:08:55 GMT -5
True. But my point was, the Bible does not tell wives to obey their husbands. These hideous books (like Helen Andelin's "Me? Obey him??" do. Aren't they basing it on Titus 2:4-5, where older women are supposed to teach younger women to do the following? That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.It's not a direct command, but the crap is actually in there.
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Post by setfree on Apr 5, 2010 6:41:58 GMT -5
That is really interesting. I have held the belief that nowhere in the Bible does it say for wives to "obey" their husbands. I didn't realise some translations actually do use the word 'obedient'. My Bible (NIV) says, "... to be subject to their husbands" and later in Titus 2:9, "Teach slaves to be subject to their masters ..."
The New American Standard version says "be subject to" also.
There is a clear difference in the Greek between "obey" and "submit" or 'be subject to", so i would be interested to know whether Titus 2:5 uses the Greek word that is used in Eph 6:1, or the Greek word used in Eph 5:21.
if it's actually the same word, then a translation that is interpreting it "obey"/"be obedient to" rather than "be subject to" is kinda stretching things a little, in favour of male entitlement.
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Post by Sierra on Apr 5, 2010 7:13:56 GMT -5
That is really interesting. I have held the belief that nowhere in the Bible does it say for wives to "obey" their husbands. I didn't realise some translations actually do use the word 'obedient'. My Bible (NIV) says, "... to be subject to their husbands" and later in Titus 2:9, "Teach slaves to be subject to their masters ..." The New American Standard version says "be subject to" also. There is a clear difference in the Greek between "obey" and "submit" or 'be subject to", so i would be interested to know whether Titus 2:5 uses the Greek word that is used in Eph 6:1, or the Greek word used in Eph 5:21. if it's actually the same word, then a translation that is interpreting it "obey"/"be obedient to" rather than "be subject to" is kinda stretching things a little, in favour of male entitlement. I wondered if this might not be a translation issue. My church was of the KJV-only bent, and this might be one of the reasons! They held that God inspired the early modern translation and thus all others were tampering with the Word. (Funny that God is apparently not capable of inspiring modern translators, huh?) Two thoughts on the KJV-only folks: 1. Generally they aren't terribly educated and don't actually know how early modern English worked, and misinterpret phrases they don't understand: My main pet peeve is 'helpmeet.' Meet meant suitable or appropriate in early modern English, so the passage in Genesis actually refers to a 'helper suitable for Adam,' which I personally think emphasises Eve's equality with him - she was suitable because she had brains! But modern Christians who don't know what to do with 'meet' have jammed the two words together to make a 'helpmeet,' which has no definition other than what they give it. They seem to think it involves 'meet'ing all of Adam's needs in a subservient fashion - because that's what they want to hear. Caveat: I don't know Hebrew or Greek myself, so I can't say whether the KJV got that passage right even before the fundies got to it. But you can't take a relatively recent text (compared to the original Hebrew) and interpret it at face value in modern English and get a legitimate result, any more than you can look at Hebrew characters you can't understand and decide that 'the squiggles point downwards, so Eve must be subject to Adam.' Srsly. It's not that hard to learn older conventions of a language you already know - one would think the fact that sacred scriptures are written in it would be impetus to try to understand. But oh, that would be 'reasoning with the word' and 'leaning on your own understanding' to many fundamentalists. 2. I wonder what the KJV-only crowd makes of translations into languages other than English? In my church, when people spoke in tongues or prophesied, the translations were always in approximated KJV-speak. While at the time I was usually melting into the floor in a puddle of terror at yet another direct warning from God that the end was near, now I think it's pretty funny. KJV was to England under King James what NIV is to us: up-to-date everyday language.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 5, 2010 14:14:55 GMT -5
Yes, this is a translation issue; I looked that passage up not long ago, and the word in Titus 2 is not the word translated "obey" in more modern versions, but is in fact the same word usually translated "submit" or "be submissive to" or "be subject to."
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Post by usotsuki on Apr 5, 2010 22:06:24 GMT -5
Ugh, Ruckmanism/Riplingerism >_<
When I translated Titus, I rendered 2.5 as "that they may be sober, pure, keepers of the house, kind, subject to their husbands, that no bad word of God be heard" (it is, admittedly, a rough translation).
I'm not a fan of Paul to begin with as it is too easy to take his writings and interpret them in a highly misogynist way.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 6, 2010 12:02:32 GMT -5
True enough, Usotsuki, and I agree that "subject to" is a good translation of the word there; but it is my understanding that it still has a different connotation than the word "obey." The thing that people tend to miss is that next phrase: "so that no bad word of God be heard," which is usually translated something along the lines of "that the word of God not be maligned." Variations on that idea occur repeatedly throughout the letter to Titus-- people are told to be subject to the governing authorities, slaves are told to try to please their masters-- all so that "no one will have anything bad to say about us." I think that many people miss the fact that one of the main themes of the letter to Titus is protecting a young religious movement from needlessly creating enemies. Husbands in that culture were in authority over their wives; Paul says, in effect, that women should avoid creating conflict in this area, so that the real message of the movement would not be hindered.
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Post by usotsuki on Apr 6, 2010 12:30:33 GMT -5
I guess it's more like "don't rock the boat", then, as opposed to "your husband is your god" as many *men* (*grunts disgustedly*) seem to understand it.
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Post by xara on Apr 6, 2010 13:13:23 GMT -5
Yeah, but sometimes the boat NEEDS to be rocked. And sometimes you need to find a different boat.
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Post by usotsuki on Apr 6, 2010 13:39:00 GMT -5
True. Even I get creeped out by men because of my own past experience, I can only imagine it's worse having gone through that cranked up to 11, or worse.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 6, 2010 14:06:27 GMT -5
So true-- which is why I object to the view of the Bible that says that Paul's letters are meant to be new law for Christians. I don't think Paul had any intention of writing new law or of saying, "These are new commands to be obeyed. No exceptions!" He spent a lot of time in his letters crusading against living under law, saying it was a form of bondage. I think his words are meant to be practical advice and general principles, not hard-and-fast rules.
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