Friendly Atheist - Another Reason for Women to Leave Christianity

[FutureAndAHope]

As a Christian I have no problem with women having authority over me, my pastor is actually a woman, and she is a very spirit filled person. My trust in her comes not as a result of gender but her relationship with God. In our church people only ever get put into positions of authority when she is confident they are spiritually mature. I know of other very famous women pastors like Joyce Myer and there is no way I would ever get up and say "Hey I am a man I am taking over your pulpit". It is true in the bible one of the apostles would not let women speak in church. But else where in the bible it says "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus ... There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" - Gal 3:26. So from that vesre we see God does not make a distinction between genders. In fact there are other places where in the New Testiment women did speak in services, as an example "Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied". Act 21:8-9 So these women prophecied or "spoke on God's behalf". Many people say in order to form a doctrine it needs to be in both the Old and New Testiment. Well in the Old Testiment we also find woman prophets, some to whom all the people both men and women came for spiritual advice. The following is a quote from a website that describes one such OT womans life

Deborah-- prophetess, judge and military leader-- is the most celebrated woman prophet of the Old Testament because she brought liberty to Israel through her faith, courage and boldness. Judges 4:4 is generally translated as "Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lapidoth. . ." but the Hebrew word here translated "wife" usually means "woman," and Lapidoth is not attested elsewhere as a man's name. Rather, it is the ordinary feminine plural for the word "fire." As her career demonstrates, Deborah was a fiery woman! The Hebrew is emphatic that SHE judged Israel at that time. Respecting her as a wise woman who heard from God and knew His Law, the people of Israel came to her for judgment. When the word of the Lord came to Deborah, she summoned Barak from Naphtali and directed him to obey God by mustering troops against the oppressor Sisera. When Barak agreed to do so only if Deborah accompanied him, she did not hesitate to go and rally the troops.

Also we find women were encouraged to be business people in the bible as is shown in the end of the book of proverbs: "She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard". - Pro 31:16

God is not in the business of oppressing any one man, woman, slave, free.