Do Women in the Church Really Know God?
Women are not inferior to men by Gods design. We have been made to have the knowledge and personal relationship with our God. As women, we need to get away from thinking we need women only books and Bible studies. Instead, lets realize that we are Gods children just as men as and should spend our time in theological study.
I grew up in the church attending every Sunday service, Sunday school, vacation Bible school and confirmation classes. I loved God and thought I knew all there was to know about him, but I was wrong. Throughout my life, I have learned that I don’t know enough about God and I never will. Each stage of my life has taught me that there is so much more for me to learn. There were times when I was doing the bare minimum in my Christen life and thought I was fine. But looking back, I realized I did not prioritize God our Father and I was not growing in Christ. Over time, I have come to realize the importance of knowing God. The importance of spending time with Him, and the peace that comes from a personal dependence in God.
Growing up, I thought that Biblical study was for the men, the leaders in the church. I never thought there was a need for me to know more about God. I never felt a need to strive to grow closer to him. But boy was I wrong. Women should be taught about God. Not just the basics, but deep theology just like men. But what exactly is theology and why is it important for women to know? Theology is simply the study of God.
Why the Study of Theology is Necessary
The study of theology for all members of the household including men, women and children, is not just a side issue of the Christian faith but is a central necessity. Theology is the building block of our faith. How can we follow a God that we do not take the time to know? Our God has given us His infallible Word to study to learn more about him. Much like children need to be taught the alphabet and phonics before they can read on their own, we need to be taught theology. Once we have the basics of theology we can dive deeper into God’s word. God has called us to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior. Our primary way to grow in our knowledge if we spend time studying him through the reading of his word, prayer and serving him.
You Might also like
-
What the Holy Spirit Does for Us
Knowing that the Spirit prays, we can sit with God in prayer when we don’t have words. It is good to keep coming to him in our confusion and suffering—we don’t need any fancy language or feeling of holiness. We can trust that the Spirit will intercede for us (just as Jesus also does, see Romans 8:34) “according to the will of God.”
For many Christians, the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives is unclear. We have heard many stories of excess, of churches either ignoring the Spirit or focusing almost exclusively on him and his gifts. If we affirm the Trinity and want to understand and celebrate the work of the third Person, how should we proceed?
Romans 8 is not a bad place to start! It is full of references to the Holy Spirit.
But, because the chapter is so full of these references, we need an entry point. As we look closer, two of the references to the Holy Spirit stand out.
Twice in Romans 8 we are told that “the Spirit himself” does or accomplishes something. This phrase is emphatic, designed to make us look up from our coffee and take notice. The Spirit does not contract these jobs out to others, he does them himself, intimately involved in this work for us.
The Spirit Bears Witness
This phrase first occurs in verse 16.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:15–17, emphasis mine)
When the Spirit “bears witness” with our spirits, he is reminding us—testifying to us—that we are children of God. Why would we need such reminding? Too often we default to a “spirit of slavery” which leads us to fear (Romans 8:15).
To know when we are sliding back into a spirit of slavery and away from the Spirit of adoption, we only need to consider the difference between slaves and children.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Progressivism’s Dark Frontier
Written by Terry L. Johnson |
Friday, August 12, 2022
So it is with our sexual nature. God made us for heterosexual, monogamous marriage. That is the physiological and biological reality. That alone is the context in which sexual expression may safely take place. The lifelong union of one man to one woman alone is suited to our design. The sexual act is a procreative act. It has other dimensions, but that is its fundamental meaning, its basic biological meaning. When we make other meanings primary, or when we move sexual expression outside of marriage, we pervert it. When we “exchange the natural for the unnatural,” to use the Apostle Paul’s language, we do harm to ourselves, as when we pretend to have gills or wings (Rom 1:26,27).How can a secular society make moral distinctions? How can it separate right from wrong? This is more of a problem than most people realize, especially in the realm of sexual ethics. A generation of “everything is normal” sex education, mixed with “everything is desirable” Hollywood sit-com and cinema seductions has morally disarmed our civilization. Politicians frame the issue as, “the freedom to love whom you choose,” which it is not. Of course we can love whomever we choose. We may love our parents, our children, and our neighbor’s children. However, we may not have erotic relations with them. The language of freedom and equality, as in “marriage equality” has added to the confusion. Can we say that any form of sexual expression, any form at all is wrong? Or must we say, as it seems we must, that various lifestyle choices are merely a matter of personal preference lying outside the categories of moral judgment? After all, who can be against freedom and equality?
Human nature
The traditional Christian view is that humanity has a God-given nature. There are those things that are consistent with human nature (e.g. breathing air with lungs; walking with feet) and others that are inconsistent (e.g. breathing underwater; winged flight). Humanity has a given design, purpose, and nature. We ignore that nature at our peril, as when we try to breathe under water or flap our arms as we leap from tall buildings.
So it is with our sexual nature. God made us for heterosexual, monogamous marriage. That is the physiological and biological reality. That alone is the context in which sexual expression may safely take place. The lifelong union of one man to one woman alone is suited to our design. The sexual act is a procreative act. It has other dimensions, but that is its fundamental meaning, its basic biological meaning. When we make other meanings primary, or when we move sexual expression outside of marriage, we pervert it. When we “exchange the natural for the unnatural,” to use the Apostle Paul’s language, we do harm to ourselves, as when we pretend to have gills or wings (Rom 1:26,27).
Christian-influenced civilizations understood this for over a millennia. The west was never in doubt – until recent times. “Everything is normal” sex education, has given us “anything goes” sexual ethics, with dire results.
Are homosexual acts natural or normal? Of course not. They are physiologically unnatural. They are “contrary to nature” (Rom 1:26). As such, they are “shameless acts” driven by “dishonorable passions,” and a “debased mind” (Rom 1:28). Again, western civilization understood this for the better part of 1500 years, and its legal systems were designed to discourage this form of human degradation.
The campaign to normalize homosexuality has been successful. With the acceptance of the “gay” way, a wall came crashing down that may never again be rebuilt. What wall? The wall separating the moral from the immoral. We warned years ago that if and when homosexuality was normalized our ability to make sexual moral distinctions would vanish. Many scoffed at the suggestion.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The Comfort of Conforming to Christ
Why is it comforting that we have a new identity in Jesus Christ? The phrasing of the question shows that Gordon is making an appeal against the expressive individuals that we all are. We almost impulsively reject the notion that anything outside of ourselves could define our identity and that we would find that comforting. Yet the new identity that Jesus Christ imparted upon all whom He has redeemed is still the only true and lasting comfort, both in this life and even in death. The answer contains four sentences. Because the first sentence must be understood in light of the second, it may be more helpful if the answer read: “Because God has redeemed my life with the precious blood of his Son and has also delivered me from the lie of Satan in the Garden, I am being remade into the image of Christ, to have a true identity–in body and soul, throughout the whole course of my life, to enjoy God and glorify him forever.”
In the preface, Gordon says that he based this catechism upon the Heidelberg Catechism, which was approved in its final version in 1563 and was written by Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus (who were both in their twenties when they first wrote). While the Westminster Shorter Catechism is unrivaled for instructing in sound doctrine, the Heidelberg remains in use nearly five hundred years later largely because of its devotional warmth. We see this distinction in the opening questions of both catechisms. The Westminster begins with establishing the end or purpose (telos) for all of mankind. In other words, it begins with what we were created to do. The Heidelberg, however, begins with the only source of real and lasting comfort that can be found in this broken and sin-stained world. As we will see, Gordon’s use of the Heidelberg is most evident in these first two questions.
Question 1
Whenever I first read the questions to my wife, I don’t think I even finished reading the answer to this first question before she asked me: “Why does a catechism on sexuality begin with identity?”
And that is a great and necessary question to answer right from the start. I answered Tiff that she likely thinks of identity in the much the same way that anyone would have throughout most of human history. My identity is who I am, and that is likely to be expressed through many external factors. I am the son or daughter of X and Y. I am the husband or wife of Z. I am the father or mother of my children. I am a citizen of… And the list goes on.
For the ancients, understanding one’s identity was crucial for being able to live out the virtue of piety, which meant doing one’s duty to whomever that duty was owed. For the Romans, Aeneas was the standard of such piety. Throughout the Aeneid, he repeatedly sets aside his own interests and happiness in order to do his duty to the gods, his country, and his family. The most famous example comes in book 2, where Aeneas escapes the burning of Troy while leading his son by the hand and carrying his elderly father on his back. That was an act of masculine piety, guiding the next generation while also shouldering the weight of the previous generation. Indeed, the Roman government saw the catechizing potential of that image, so they imprinted it upon their coins. Again, to live piously required understanding one’s identity or place within society so that you could properly fulfill your duty.
Yet you may have noticed that that notion is rather foreign to us today. Samuel James writes:
Over the past several years, Christian theologians and others have described the emerging generation of Western adults as belonging to the spirit of “expressive individualism.” The scholar Robert Bellah defines expressive individualism this way: “Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed in individuality is to be realized.” In other words, what most people in the modern, secular world believe is that the key to their happiness, fulfillment, and quest for meaning in life is to arrange things so that their inner desires and ambitions can be totally achieved. If these desires and ambitions align with those of the community or the religion, great! But if not, then it’s the community or the religion that must be changed or done away with. Life’s center of gravity, according to expressive individualism, is the self.
pp. 5-6
For our discussion, this means that most Americans today do not approach identity as a statement (this is who I am) but as a question: Who am I? This is crucial to understand because as Carl Trueman notes:
at the heart of the issues we face today is the phenomenon of expressive individualism. This is the modern creed whose mantras and liturgies set the terms for how we think about ourselves and our world today. It is the notion that every person is constituted by a set of inward feelings, desires, and emotions. The real “me” is that person who dwells inside my body, and thus I am most truly myself when I am able to act outwardly in accordance with those inner feelings. In an extreme form we see this in the transgender phenomenon, where physical, biological sex and psychological gender identity can stand in opposition to each other. I can therefore really be a woman if I think I am one, even if my body is that of a male. But expressive individualism is not restricted to questions of gender. When people identify themselves by their desires–sexual or otherwise–they are expressive individuals. And to some extent that implicates us all. The modern self is the expressive individual self.
That is no exaggeration on Trueman’s end. We are all, in some sense, expressive individualists. James opens up his book with David Foster Wallace’s fable about the fish. An older fish swims past two young fish and asks them how’s the water. As the older fish swims away, the young fish look at each other and ask, “What’s water?” The point of the fable is that it is incredibly difficult to notice what is all around us. Expressive individualism is the water that the modern West swims in, and failing to notice it does nothing to change the fact that we are still swimming in it. Even simple notions like being a cat or dog person or a morning or evening person give away that we are all expressive individualists to some degree, since the very notion that I can be defined by what I like or dislike is fundamentally modern.
Practically, this means we and virtually any person that we know has an ingrained propensity to look within ourselves for happiness, fulfillment, and meaning. And it makes sense right? Shouldn’t we know best how to best satisfy and comfort ourselves? Despite the reality that we live in most comfortable, wealthiest, and safest time in human history, the pandemic levels of anxiety and depression screams that something isn’t quite right. Indeed, for the first time in human history young people are more likely to kill themselves than be killed by almost anything else. The world has never been better, but in some ways, we have never been more broken.
The Heidelberg began by speaking comfort into a world filled with pain and death that were ever-present and inescapable, asking:
What is your only comfort in life and death?
Read More
Related Posts: