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Side By Side, Step By Step PDF Print E-mail
Heather Payne

'We've been blessed with a baby girl.' This happy welcome of a girl is a real mark of Christian distinctiveness which must gladden the heart of God. Paul said uncompromisingly in Gal 3:28, Faith in Christ is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman. So if you belong to Christ….you will be given what God has promised. [Contemporary English Version CEV]

The Human Development Index 2005 of the United Nations Development Programme showed India at 128th place out of 177 countries, an extremely low rating. The reason? A similar Gender Development Index showed that the grim level of gender injustice in the country was responsible. Has much changed in gender parity  n the last 5 years?  What kind of change do we want to see that will benefit human development in India and the Christian community?

A girl wrote a letter to the Hindu newspaper recently, "I refer to the discussion on gender issues in the Open Page of August 29. Gender differences, supposedly, do not matter much for the younger generation. Movies and television serials show girls and boys learning and working together in harmony. But life on a college campus is a far cry from this. Boys do not like girls assuming leadership. Of course, they include girls in team work. But when a girl shows some promise, comments and jeers follow. Some boys consider it their fundamental right to pass comments on girls. If a girl reacts she is told, "They are guys na …".

Side by side, what a fitting term this is for good gender relations, especially in Christian circles. Eve was made out of a rib from Adam’s side, ribs that  are the protector of the heart. She was not made from Adam’s shin bone to be walked over or a bone in his hand to do all the dirty work. She was a helper suitable for him; a helper like God is our helper. The same Hebrew word is used of Eve as for God, ezer; a capable, powerful asset available for invaluable support. The same sense is in the word parakletos in New Testament Greek, referring to the Holy Spirit, it means one who comes alongside. So, Eve was not a subservient helper. However, part of the penalty God handed to Eve and all women soon after creation was male domination, ‘Your desire will be to your husband and he will rule over you’ [Gen 3:16].

There is good news, though: the gospel and the resurrection life of the new covenant is a righting of this imbalance: our redeemed life brings reversal and restored relationships as Paul described to the Galatians.  It brings reclaimed beauty to our character, our minds and to the whole of creation which eventually will be set free from this present decay. [Rom 8:20-22]. Wives are to submit to husbands, says Eph 5:22-25 who love them, not dominate them.  In the verse immediately before, Eph 5:21, all Christians are instructed to submit to one another.  Mutuality within marriage is also wonderfully clear in 1 Cor 7:4. Husband and wife have authority over each other and should exercise mutual consent.

What are our attitudes as church leaders and members? Can we lead this change towards mutuality in the church and in society at large where we are salt and light? Is there a place in the church where it can benefit more from the gifts and commitment of half their members, women?

In the CNI in Orissa there are a handful of ordained women; they have struggled for recognition by both Bishops and church members. Rev Latika Sagar now leads an urban church successfully with support from her husband, Bilhan, who heads up his own development organisation. In the latest election a year ago for a new bishop, however, there was no discussion about having a woman candidate, although Latika was on the voting panel.  In Scotland recently, the Anglican woman candidate for Bishop lost out to the male candidate because she had less relevant experience.  But experience is harder to come by for women, even now, because completely equal opportunities are not yet a reality in Europe either. 

Step by step change is coming. The decision-makers in the Church of England have just voted in favour of appointing women Bishops. A small step for man but a giant leap for womankind?

In a retreat in rural Orissa for CNI pastors and wives, groups of men and women were separately asked to consider their roles in two areas: home and family; and church ministry and evangelism. A brief reminder was given first of the lives of Priscilla and Aquila in Acts [18:1-3, 18-21, 24-26]; they are always mentioned together, side by side, as tent-making colleagues of Paul’s in Corinth and then as ministers in Ephesus, leading the church, teaching Apolos. After much heated debate, two points came up; it was agreed that more women should preach and men should cook and wash clothes more. Two little steps, it seems to me, towards restored equitable relationships.

God has promised gifts in 1 Cor 12:28, Eph 4:11: that is, gifts and responsibilities. So some members will excel in some areas more than others, with no mention of male or female. Translators translate through their cultural perspective and language and now some modern translators of the Bible can see that the original words for church leaders in1 Tim 3:2-10 and Titus 1:6-8 are neither masculine nor feminine. The translators of the CEV in 1991-97 use church officials for overseers and deacons, elders, bishops. So it reads, ‘church officials must … be faithful in marriage.  They [not ‘he’] must be self-controlled, sensible, well-behaved, friendly to strangers, able to teach.’ The translators of Today’s New International Version in 2001 & 2005, however, did keep the masculine for ‘overseers’. So we are in transition in our translations and don’t yet have the last word.

Paul as a writer also wrote in his own culture and was running the race and had not yet attained the full knowledge of God. It is very strange that in 1 Tim 2:12 he says ‘Women… should learn by being quiet… and not allowed to teach or tell men what to do.’  But, he later says, church officials of both sexes are expected to be able to teach. Now we know that women in Paul’s day didn’t have the education of men, but that doesn’t mean they were less intelligent or wise or gifted by God. We saw in Acts 18:26 that Priscilla did, in fact, teach Apollos alongside her husband, Aquila. Certainly, in our church we expect Sunday School teachers to be women. How about more men teaching alongside the women? How about, on the far horizon, women serving the communion alongside the men? Or even pastoring and nurturing the flock like they do so well at home and in other churches?

And what about Paul’s view of who was chief of the 2 idiots in the Garden?  If we count the snake, that’s 3! I think Paul was wearing his first century patriarchal spectacles. Adam was made first, then Eve, he reminds us [1 Tim 2:13]. Of course, we remember this was because he needed a helper to till the earth, he couldn’t manage on his own.  He didn’t get a farm labourer to boss about, remember? He got an all-rounder, an encourager to strengthen him, someone from his ribs to come alongside him. But Paul’s logic is spoiled in 1 Cor 11:12, after the controversial passage about the authority of men over women and head covering, when he says ‘For as woman came from man, man is born of woman.’  Who comes first the chicken or the egg? An irrelevant argument.

Then, does Paul imply that Adam was not weak and foolish, only Eve?  Who did God first instruct not to eat the fruit in Gen 2:15? Adam, and then he did his part and passed the word on to his wife; she tells the Serpent the instruction correctly.  But then what does Adam do when the Serpent spoke to Eve and she ate the fruit? In Gen 3:6 we read Eve gave some fruit to him, ‘who was with her’. Adam looked on, he was also ‘deceived’ and he did nothing except take a bite himself. They were side by side in their folly and sin. It’s tempting to argue but Paul was only a man of his patriarchal, male dominated age, that’s all. A man seeking God’s wisdom and his regenerated path of life, like we are.

Argue or run on together? No, we will not argue, only seek to understand, together, step by step. We will run the race side by side, learn and teach, seek and use our gifts, lead and follow side by side, praise God and please Him in holiness, change the world and be changed, and love each other as Jesus loved us side by side. And all with the great hope that when he comes again we will know full joy and justice in our restored relationships and the reclaimed beauty of his image, both male and female.


Let the Spirit change your thinking and make you into a new person.
You were created to be like God, and so 
you must please him and be truly holy.  Eph 4:23