A place to talk about Paul
Mar. 27th, 2009 08:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zeborah(To avoid derailment in racism_101, but of course anyone else is welcome to join in.)
Paul has taken a bad rap. And I have a nagging resentment against the anti-Paulites - not those who dislike him due to his bad rap, but those who have twisted what he said.
When I was in Korea I flatted for almost two years with a wonderful sweet woman who had grown up in a church that said "Wives, submit to your husbands" - and stopped there, without going on to the next verses that says that "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her". And remember that Christ didn't just die for the church; he submitted to it: he washed the feet of his disciples.
Paul was writing in a time when saying "Wives and husbands, respect each other and submit to each other" would likely have been met with blank stares if not calls for a straitjacket. I'm not saying he deliberately muted his teaching because of that, but that, like us, he was a product of his own time. For his time, what he said was pretty radical. And I'm confident that if he lived today, he would be one of the most radical in promoting justice for women.
Paul has taken a bad rap. And I have a nagging resentment against the anti-Paulites - not those who dislike him due to his bad rap, but those who have twisted what he said.
When I was in Korea I flatted for almost two years with a wonderful sweet woman who had grown up in a church that said "Wives, submit to your husbands" - and stopped there, without going on to the next verses that says that "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her". And remember that Christ didn't just die for the church; he submitted to it: he washed the feet of his disciples.
Paul was writing in a time when saying "Wives and husbands, respect each other and submit to each other" would likely have been met with blank stares if not calls for a straitjacket. I'm not saying he deliberately muted his teaching because of that, but that, like us, he was a product of his own time. For his time, what he said was pretty radical. And I'm confident that if he lived today, he would be one of the most radical in promoting justice for women.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-26 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-27 01:24 am (UTC)Mary Anne in Kentucky