The Law of God Verses The Culture of Man

By Tim Webb

One of the first things that I did after God called me to embrace the Bible in 2014 was I began studying discipleship with a seasoned and venerable Christian man named Fred Brammell, who went to my church. Fred hung his hat on the biblical tutoring of men who were young in their faith. We met every Tuesday morning at Cracker Barrel and sat at a table nestled in the back corner, close to the fire place. I had been studying with Fred for several months, when one morning a new waitress was serving us and noticed that we had our Bibles out on the table. She said, “Do you mind if I ask a question,” and Fred said, “Of course not.” What happened next was so unassuming, but it turned out to be a driving force that would ultimately shape my faith journey. Although her question was simple and innocent enough, it set me on a new course and literally changed my life forever. She said, “I’ve always heard that the Bible says that women shouldn’t speak in church. Is that true?” Ole Fred knew exactly what he was doing as he leaned back in his chair and pointed his hand at me. Feeling the pressure of a baseball pitcher who was suddenly thrown into the game in the seventh inning, I paused and thought about her question and then gave her the best answer that I could think of. It went something like this. “Uh. Well. You see. The Apostle Paul said. Uh. Um. Now, I personally don’t think that Paul was a misogynist. But uh. Yes. He did say that. Well. Uh. So, you see...” Thankfully, after Fred let me squirm for a few minutes, doing my best to give an ill-prepared answer to this young lady, he came to my rescue and said, “It was Paul’s rule, not God’s rule. Paul said, ‘I do not allow women to have authority over men. The Bible doesn’t say that God feels the same way.’” As I left Cracker Barrel that morning, I felt humiliated. It wasn’t anything that Fed had done. Quite the opposite. He did me a big favor by putting me on the spot like that. He gave me the opportunity that I had been wanting, and that was to be like him and disciple other people. But it showed me that I wasn’t quite ready. It turned out to be a watershed moment in my faith journey because I vowed to never let that happen again. I didn’t ever want to be caught off guard again without an answer to a biblical question. The Cracker Barrel waitress has now become a metaphor in my life for being prepared and being driven to know the Bible. I went home and began making my own personal concordance filled with scripture to help me answer any controversial question that someone could ask about the Bible. I didn’t have to have all of the answers, but I at least wanted to be in the ballpark with an answer. My new mantra became that of First Peter 3:15, which reads, Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Her question on gender roles in church is as relevant now as it was then, as churches still grapple with it, and large denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention continue to splinter apart because of it. To give this controversial topic it’s due process, you have to view it from the perspective of the entire Bible, not just First Corinthians 14:34-35 or First Timothy 2:11-15, which are the two main scripture references from the Apostle Paul that churches use to argue that women should not be pastors and not hold any role that puts them in authority over men. First Corinthians 14:34-35 reads, Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. And First Timothy 2:11-15 states, A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. When you look at the Bible as a whole, you will see that God built women up and empowered them, but it was the human male, over time, who disempowered them by reducing their basic civil rights and taking multiple wives during Biblical times. That was man’s doing not the action of God. Genesis Chapter 4 tells us about a man named Lamech. It was Lamech and his pride who first turned women into property by having multiple wives. God never told man to treat women as property. Genesis 4:19, 23 reads, Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. Lamech was a man embroiled with immense pride and arrogance. He created a culture of how society treated women, and it has cascaded down through time and still affects our culture today. The culture that Lamech created established the mentality that women have two jobs in this world…and one of them is to cook. This culture and mentality was never what God intended for women. God gave Adam one wife and one wife only. Two became one. Adam said to Eve, You are bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh! God said that a man leaves his mother and father and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one. God created Adam and Eve…not Adam and Eve and Barbara. We see several examples in the Bible where God-fearing men like Jacob, David, and Solomon, took multiple wives and it became part of the culture to do so. The Bible tells us that Solomon was the wisest man to ever live, past, present, or future. But yet, he had 700 wives and 300 concubine’s. Near the end of his life, Solomon wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes where he concluded that everything on earth, including having sex with a thousand different women, is meaningless outside of God. Having multiple wives was man’s invention, not God’s. This serves as a reminder to never confuse the sovereign and perfect will of God with the broken will of man. Too often, we see mankind’s brokenness in the pages of the Bible and mistake the futility of man by justifying it as the will of God. Unfortunately, this has been the case for centuries with gender roles and women’s equality in church. It has created a culture that was counter to God’s will and eventually lead to the silencing of women in church. Proof in Scripture Let’s look at a few examples of how God empowered women in the Bible, and this study covers the entire Bible, not just the epistles of Paul. The story of the prophet Deborah in the Book of Judges establishes God’s will for women. If this were a court of law, the story of Deborah would set the precedent for future case laws. The people who served as judges after the Israelites entered into the Promised Land were not chosen by the people, rather, they were appointed by God. With Deborah, God raised up a woman to be a leader to his chosen people. God chose Deborah to lead the nation of Israel, not only in their daily affairs as a judge, which was the closest thing they had as a king or queen, but he also raised her up to lead 10,000 men into battle. Deborah’s appointment as prophet and judge was directly from God. If God had a problem with women having authority over men, we wouldn’t have the God-inspired story of Deborah. Judges 4:4-9 reads, Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided. She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount Tabor. I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’” Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” “Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman. Next, let’s look at the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. If God trusted Mary enough to carry the Word in her womb, then surely he trusted her enough to stand up and speak the Word in church! Her fiancé was Joseph, and he played an important role in raising Jesus. He swallowed his pride and took Jesus in as his adopted son, but only after God sent an angel to talk him off of the ledge. If left to his own devices and his own understanding and decision making, in modern terms, Joseph would’ve quietly slipped out one night to go get a gallon of milk at the 7 Eleven and he would’ve never come back. But God had different plans and Joseph stayed. But it was Mary whom God chose to bring his chosen one, the messiah, into the world. We don’t hear anything else about Joseph after Jesus was the age of twelve, but his mother Mary was there until the very end. She had to endure the worst nightmare that any mother could ever experience. It was Mary, not Jospeh, who watched her son be beaten and flogged before his accusers. She then stood at the foot of the cross and watched as her son, the most innocent man in the history, died a very cruel and brutal death, as he sacrificed himself for the sins of humanity. Next, let’s look at a person whom I consider to be the world’s greatest eye witness, Mary Magdalene. When our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rose from the grave on that Sunday morning it was Mary Magdalene whom God chose to announce to the world that he had brought his son back from the dead. John recorded this historic annunciation in chapter 20 of his Gospel. "Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, 'Woman, why are you crying?' 'They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.' At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, 'Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?' Thinking he was the gardener, she said, 'Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.' Jesus said to her, 'Mary.' She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, 'Rabboni!' (which means 'Teacher'). Jesus said, 'Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: 'I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her,'" (John 20:11-18) Peter and John were right there on her heels, but God didn’t choose the two male apostles. Instead, he chose a woman in an era of time and in a male-dominated culture in which a Jewish woman’s testimony wouldn’t even hold up in a court law. And yet, he entrusted a woman to announce the one thing that separates Christianity from all other religions. God trusted Mary Magdalene to announce the one thing that allowed Jesus to proclaim, I Am the way. I Am the truth. And I Am life. Without the resurrection, Jesus was just one of thousands who claimed to be the messiah. One of thousands to be crucified on a cross. But the resurrection changed the world forever. Since that first Easter morning, there have been many preachers, many authors, many podcasters, many missionaries, many followers, and many disciples, to proclaim that Jesus is Lord! But a woman named Mary from the little town of Magdala…she was the first! The Book of Romans is arguably the most important book in the Bible. If you took an exacto knife and cut Romans out of your Bible and then stapled it back together, you would still be holding in your hands one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time. While the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tell us about the life and good news of Jesus Christ, it’s Paul’s letter to the church in Rome that dissects the gospel and puts it on display for the world to see. The entire doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is introduced to us and explained to us in the Book of Romans. Paul knew the significance of what he had written. He knew that he was ramming the gospel of Jesus Christ down the very throat of Caesar by sending it into heart of the Roman Government. Here’s the kicker, he didn’t entrust its delivery to a man. He didn’t give it to Luke. He didn’t give it Timothy. And he didn’t give it to Silas. No, he gave it to a deacon of the church named Phoebe, to not only deliver it but to read it. Because it was customary that when someone delivered an important message, they were the ones who read it to the audience who received it. Law Verses Culture When you read First Corinthians 14:34-35, the passage says that women should be quiet in church according to the law. Which law was Paul talking about? Was it a Roman law or Jewish law of the time? It wasn’t God’s law. The Jews had 613 laws that were mostly man-made, which is why Jesus so brilliantly said in Matthew 15:8, You please me with your lips but your hearts are far from me. There is no law from God in the Old Testament that says women can’t speak or have authority over men. If there were such a commandment, Deborah would have never been a prophet and a judge, and certainly would have never been allowed to lead an army of 10,000 Hebrew men. The key word when examining the First Timothy 2:12-15 passage is the word “I.” Paul says, “I do not let women teach men or have authority over them.” He then makes a distinction between Adam and Eve, saying that Eve was the one who was deceived by Satan and sin was the result. My argument against this verse is that it appears to be a commandment from Paul and not a commandment of God. God said men and women were joined as one, but yet Paul separates their actions. And the next age-old-question becomes, what kind of husband was Adam to stand back and let Satan tempt Eve the way that he did. Adam was just as complicit to the temptation and the sin as Eve was. That’s why we call it the “Original Sin of Adam” to this day. It may be easy to throw Eve under the bus on this one, but Adam was a big boy who made his own decision to sin, and they were together in their sin against God. It’s not fair and it’s certainly not just to single out Eve on this matter. We see a systematic precedent throughout the Bible that was created when Lamech set the standard on how to treat women, and many of the men of the Bible flowed suit. Not everything that is historically accurate is morally prescriptive. The Bible is not a written record of perfect people. It’s quite the opposite. The broken stories that dominate most of the Bible do not paint a picture of perfection. But they do point to a God who is faithful even when his people were not. Men like Abraham, Jacob, Samson, and even the apple of God’s eye David, serve as great examples of why we need a savior and why we need God’s grace. I may not be a scholar, but I like to think that I do have a reasonable amount of common sense. And my common sense tells me that when you look at the entire Bible, all 66 books, and all 1,189 chapters, and weigh out God’s decisions verses the decisions of man, I feel that the evidence is overwhelming. Paul made a directive on women serving in church that was based on the culture of the time, a culture that was rooted in Lamech, not rooted in the word of God. You can ask the question of how can I question the actions of Paul when I believe wholeheartedly that the Bible is infallible and inspired by the creator. I am not questioning Paul or the Bible, but I am giving interpretation to the circumstances under which Paul wrote First Corinthians 14:34-35 and First Timothy 2:12-15. Paul was God’s chosen instrument to deliver the gospel to the Gentile world, which was a monumental undertaking. He was a master at understanding and reaching his audience. He became all things to all people to save as many as possible. The church in Corinth was decadent and had a lot of problems that Paul had to address, but Paul never lost sight of the bigger prize, which was preaching the gospel and saving souls. Paul never changed the message of the gospel, but he was constantly adapting his methods of how he communicated the gospel based on who his audience was. For example, when he was in Corinth he dumbed his message down and told them in First Corinthians 3:1-4, Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? When Paul left Corinth and moved on to the city of Ephesus. Ephesus was a very urbane, metropolitan city, with one of the world’s largest libraries and theaters. Paul approached the people of Ephesus differently than those in Corinth, and wrote the Book of Ephesians with a more sophisticated writing style. The point is this, Paul was smart enough to constantly make adjustments to his methods of delivering the gospel, without changing the message, as he traveled between different cultures. Paul was operating within the male dominated culture of the time. Here’s the brilliance of Paul. Paul didn’t try to change the culture, instead he tried to change the people living in that culture by building churches. He fought an uphill battle everywhere he went in preaching the gospel to a pagan culture. Christianity was the biggest upstart in the history of the world, and it was in its infancy as Paul was on his missionary journeys. Paul was smart enough to choose his battles wisely. Introducing a new religion while allowing women to speak in church, all at the same time, would’ve been too much for that culture to deal with. I think Paul gave up the cultural battle to win the spiritual battle. Personally, I love Paul! I love to study Paul and the intricacies of his of ministry. I don’t think Paul was a misogynist because during his 34-year ministry, he empowered so many women like Phoebe, Lydia, and Pricilla, along with countless other women in the early church movement. I think Paul did what he had to do in the culture he was operating within. I think First Corinthians 14:34-35 and First Timothy 2:11-15 have been taken out of context for centuries by a male dominated church and society. For centuries Christians have been using the broken culture of man that was recorded in the Bible, such as gender inequity and slavery, to justify their actions. It’s time to distinguish the law of God from the culture of man, follow what’s truly Biblical, and free women from this unfair oppression. I hope someday, God will reintroduce me to the Cracker Barrel waitress who unknowingly changed my life. I would like to tell her how I failed her that morning with my answers of, “Well. Uhm. Uh, and you see.” I would love to have the opportunity to give her a very simple answer now that I have had several years to study this topic, from Genesis to Revelation. My answer would simply be, “Well, you see…Adam looked at Eve and said, ‘You are bone from bone and flesh from my flesh. And together we are one.’” Because there really is no other answer.