Biblically Sanctioned Oppression Not God's Will

Former president Jimmy Carter and other world leaders issued this statement: "The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable." What's your reaction to these statements? Are 'male interpretations of religious texts' to blame for the 'deprivation of women's equal rights?'

Hooray for former President Jimmy Carter, who left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 because of its vote to continue to subjugate and denigrate women based on faulty and self-serving interpretations of a couple of verses in the Bible.

So often I have felt, or perhaps known, that too many people only read the verses of the Bible that support their beliefs or desires. The sections, huge sections, I might add, that advise and admonish those who would be believers to take care of one another, to love one another and to respect one another, are sections that people choose not to read -- and far too many preachers choose not to preach.

So, when a verse that says, "Wives, obey your husbands" is read, men rejoice, not knowing that Paul was advising women to follow the social order of the day, because he believed one had to obey the laws of earth in order to be received by Jesus, who was soon coming back.

They apparently don't know, those who lift these verses, that women were advised to be quiet because, after Jesus came and went, women were allowed in the Temple for the first time, and, not knowing Temple protocol, would blurt out questions when there was something said they did not understand.

Nobody was supposed to do that. Men knew it; women didn't, and so Paul, wanting there to be order, told the women to be quiet. They were to wait until they got home to ask their husbands what things meant.

I have often thought, as men have railed against women preaching or being pastors, that they missed that part of the Gospel which clearly has Mary Magdalene giving the first sermon on the resurrection. She preached to the men.

They miss the verse in the Book of Romans where even Paul says that God "has does not show favoritism," and they obviously miss or choose to ignore the verse that former President Carter lifted up that says that in Christ, there "is neither Jew nor Greek, ..bond nor free,...male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

The misguided and self-serving theology of men has caused women to suffer immensely as they have on the one hand wanted to do the "will of God," which was really the will of men, and on the other hand wanted to do the "will of God," which was calling them to use their gifts for the building of the Kingdom of God.

It is absolutely presumptuous and arrogant to think that God would put men in charge of everything. God did not intend for anyone to suffer, or to lead a life of suffering, at the hands of men who spouted off theology while they practiced demagoguery.

Had God intended for women to be sexual objects, I think he would have given us women the mind to be so, and contrarily not be so infuriated that men think us incapable of doing anything other than to satisfy their physical needs.

Truth, crushed to the ground, will always rise. It might take a minute, but truth cannot be held underground forever. Langston Hughes said, "What happens to a dream deferred?" It gets more and more filled with the passion of the dream until it can no longer be contained, and then it bursts wide open.

Men, in this country and around the world, cannot keep women oppressed forever. Who is it but the women in Iran who are leading the protest against that country's most recent election? And in this country, in spite of men using God as suspenders to hold up their britches, women have pushed forward, up and out, breaking the suspenders if need be.

God gave us dreams, too. God gave us dreams, brains, and a spirit that will not stay crushed forever.

Because the oppression of women has been so soundly set by the church, the effects of that oppression will be hard to break. Some women will continue to be content to be oppressed, thinking it's God's will. They will rail against women who step into the dreams and talents that God has given them, treating them as outcasts.

But hooray for the brave men who see the light, and who hear God's displeasure - the same displeasure God said himself and whose voice was echoed by his son Jesus about the way people oppress others, and who make a stand and brace themselves for the consequences.

I hope more men will step forward and lend their voices to the need for this church-sanctioned oppression to end. And I hope that more and more women will accept the freedom that God offered us a long time ago, and, as the apostle said, "be not entangled again with the yoke of slavery."

If we are going to church and feel trapped, then that church is not understanding the Gospel. It was for freedom that the Christ died. That's what the Bible says. Any religion which makes anyone feel trapped and not free ...is a religion not worth its salt and not in compliance with the Bible it says it loves and follows.

By Susan K. Smith  |  July 21, 2009; 2:38 PM ET
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