Over on my Facebook profile, a huge debate has been happening over the past 3 days! More than 250 comments were left, as the dialogue bounced back and forth between people of differing opinions.

The problem was only 5k of you are my Facebook friends, and as my profile has reached it maximum number of friend requests, many of you who WANTED to join in the discussions couldn’t, as you couldn’t access my Facebook profile. Sorry!

Hence, why I’m blogging about it…so we can carry on the conversation here.

One thing that stood out in the Facebook discussions, was that people often make statements like “I just take the Bible at face value” or “I just believe what is clearly stated in Scripture”.

These arguments are pretty weak, as if there really was one, clear, obvious reading of Scripture, then people wouldn’t be debating these issues in the first place (unless people deliberately were trying not to see what’s clearly there, which I don’t believe is true for many of us).

So what I’m wanting here is BIBLICALLY BACKED UP, theologically well explained comments! :)

Not just blind adherence to something somebody else told you was true. Let’s show our ability to engage with the Bible for ourselves and back up our views. This is a really important part of following Jesus – knowing truth by exploring the actual texts and original languages – for yourself!

Otherwise we will just be robots, parrotting off what we heard from the last Christian author or speaker. Let’s be like the Berean followers of Jesus, in Acts:

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” – Acts 17:11

So…..here goes!

Some key texts we need to grapple with are:

Colossians 3,  Ephesians 5,  Genesis 1, 2 and 3,  Proverbs 31,  Revelation 1:6,  1 Corinthians 14,  1 Timothy 2,  Galatians 3:28 and any others you want to bring to the table.

Over to you!

- Do you believe women should be able to preach in Church?

- Should women be able to be the senior leader of a Church? An Elder? A Bishop?

- Are men and women equal and ‘the same’ before God, in their role, because of the resurrection? Or is there a difference in role that is God intended?

- Is a man the ‘head’ of his wife? Should the husband get the final say in a marital issue?

- Is Complimentarianism (the belief that men and women have different roles; e.g. women can’t teach men) right?

- Is Egalitarianism (the belief that because of Christ’s work, men and women are equal in role and not bound by any gender dictated restrictions) right?

- How do we interpret the key Scriptures about these things?

Really looking forward to your thoughts on this!

Vicky

Related posts:

1. “Go West Young…. Woman!”