Women Teaching

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Colossians 3:14 ESV

When I first brought up the topic of women teaching a few years back I didn’t realise it was going to be so controversial. Where I came from my viewpoint was mainstream and so I was a bit taken aback at the response and surprised by how delicate a subject it was to be. I have, since then spent a good deal of time listening and reading to different material on the subject, but I do still land at the same position, which is a strong preference for men in the pulpit. I thought I would share why here. It seemed like a good idea to start with the Colossians verse above, just to remind ourselves to put on love which will help bring harmony even in delicate territory.

The bible is God inspired

If we believe this then it follows that every word of it means something and is useful for us. To say something is cultural and irrelevant is to say that new versions of the Bible could just delete that part and it would have no effect. Most of us would not think it was OK to delete any parts of the text and yet I have often heard that this particular verse is cultural and no longer applies, we can basically just ignore it. This leaves me with the unanswerable question then of why is it in the Bible?

Understanding the culture is important to fully understand the text

I agree that knowledge of the culture is useful, but that knowledge should enhance and enrich our understanding of scripture. It should not override it.

In the case of this verse I have often heard culture overriding the biblical text.

Compare the following two sentences.

1. I do not permit women to teach or be in authority over men because they tend to be uneducated and some worship the goddess Diana.

2. I do not permit women to teach or be in authority over men because God created Adam and then he created Eve.

When the case for women teaching is being put forward I have often heard sentence 1, but we don’t actually need to work out the cultural context around this verse because Paul himself tells us why he is giving that instruction. It’s a clear override of biblical text dismissing the reason Paul actually gives in favour of our own reason. It may well be true that women at the time and place of Paul’s letter were uneducated and worshipped false idols but this is not the reason given for the instruction. Notably the reason given, the order of creation, never changes and is as relevant today as it was in the days Paul wrote the letter.

Consistency

This instruction, though hard to swallow for many, is consistent with other passages that show God placed men in headship and women in a submissive role in both the home and the church (See 1 Corinth 11 and 14).

Consistency is also important in our approach to the passage as a whole. Most people agree wholeheartedly about men lifting holy hands in prayer and women dressing modestly, it is only for this last part of this passage that there is a sudden interest in the cultural context and things are dismissed as no longer relevant.

It seems inconsistent to me that there are some parts of scripture that I’m told to take at face value (like eagerly desiring spiritual gifts), but other parts (the bits we don’t like as much) I have to consider cultural context.

Women have value

Of course they do, but standing in the pulpit doesn’t prove it. This is not about equality , it’s about order. Many men also do not preach, are they of less value than the ones that do? Our God is a god of order and not of chaos. Our true value is realised when we do and be what God has designed and ordered for us at home and in church. We need to study scripture to find that order, detach our sense of value from any instructions given in relation to it, embrace them, prayerfully consider them, and obey them.

Give women a voice

I don’t believe it’s women’s voice that needs to be heard, it is God’s voice. If a man desires to be in the pulpit so his voice can be heard then I don’t believe he should be there either. It is a tremendous responsibility and should be approached with a corresponding amount of humility. I often wonder if we lived in a culture where teachers and leaders were heavily persecuted would we be so keen to be heard? If our voice ringing out biblical truths resulted in jail, torture or death would we campaign so hard for our right to do so?

From an eternal perspective are you keen to be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1) or held to account for many souls. (Hebrews 13:17)

In the words of my husband “This is spiritual warfare and church leadership (including teaching) is the front lines.

A chance to use our skills and talents

There are plenty opportunities to use our skills and talents outside the pulpit. I once read somewhere that 75% of the worlds population are women and children. That seems entirely possible and provides plenty opportunities for influence outside teaching in an official capacity in the church gathering.

Aside from that, I heard this statement in an Exodus sermon last year. “Nobodies are the kind of raw material God likes to work with”. Moses was in a prime position in the palace. He was well placed politically and had plenty resources around him, he could probably speak Egyptian. God could have used those things to end the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt. He didn’t. He took Moses out to the desert for 40 years until he was a nothing, nobody. He had no skills that were of use in the desert, no important contacts or resources. Only then did God use Moses to lead the Israelites. God desires an obedient heart, not our skills and talents. Infact, his power is made perfect in our weakness (2nd Corinth 12:9).

It kind of makes me wonder why we don’t look at our “nobodies” more expectantly.

Bible doesn’t actually say what it says

I’ve heard it said, more than once, that the sentence should say “teach with authority” and not “teach or be in authority”. My thoughts on this are firstly that the pulpit is a position of authority. Even without a title, your very presence in the pulpit gives you a degree of authority. Secondly, if you think this to be true you’d be disagreeing with all the major Bible translators. I couldn’t find a translation that didn’t say “or”. I even looked up the Greek using Strongs and it said quite plainly that the word there means neither, nor, not even.

Non-sensical obedience

In Luke 5 Jesus tells the fishermen to put down their nets. The experienced fisherman had already been fishing all night and had no success. It did not make any sense at all to let down their nets. Peter said ‘Master, because you say so, I will” and that is when the miracle happened.

In our generation where women are very well educated, where technology has made us less dependent on muscle and where we are at least just as capable as men are at most things and often even better, it does not seem to make sense often to hold onto these biblical roles. There is going to be a time where a woman seems on the face of it to be more qualified than her male counterpart for these roles. There is going to be a time that it does not make any human sense at all to step back and allow him to step up. That is the time for nonsensical obedience. That is the time that as a woman you need to say “Master, because you say so, I will”

and that is when a miracle will happen.