Tag Archives: Women

Commentary

C. Michael Patton explains why women cannot teach in the church

23 Comments

He explains why he thinks that the Bible teaches that women cannot teach in the church.

His point:

Now, let me give my short and sweet answer as to why Paul did not allow women to teach:

Paul did not let women teach due to the often aggressive and combative nature that teaching must entail concerning the confrontation of false doctrine. Men must be the teachers when combating false teaching. However, because the role of a teacher in the church is so often to combat false doctrine, and because false doctrine is always a problem, generally speaking, the principles are always applicable. The “exercising of authority” is inherently tied to teaching and its necessary condemnation of false doctrine.

The combative nature of teaching is particularly relevant to a broader understanding of the characteristics of men and women.

I agree with Patton on this one. I think in practice most women are more interested in relationships and community than they are in truth and polemics. Christianity is a propositional faith, though. It’s not meant to be a set of arbitrary preferences that give our lives hope and meaning without any evidential foundation. And it needs to be defended using rational arguments and evidence against lies.

I would make an exception for women who want to teach on an area of knowledge not related to the Bible but related to apologetics or Christian living, like astrophysics, economics, ancient history, bio-ethics, etc. In that case I would allow a woman to teach. I would also be willing to make exceptions for women who are truth-focused and who do not mind making exclusive claims if it makes them unpopular, e.g. – Jennifer Roback Morse.

Apologetics advocacy

Related posts

 

Humor

In which I blame the coffee manufacturer for making bad coffee

11 Comments

This morning, I was contemplating whether to go downstairs and buy a cup of coffee for $1.25 from the coffee shop on the first floor, or whether to take a cup of free coffee from the kitchen on the 4th floor where I work. I like to have things that are free because then I do not have to work for them. Besides, I can spend more time watching TV if I don’t work as hard to buy the pay-coffee.

I was pretty sure that coffee that is sold by the small business on the first floor for profit would taste the same as coffee that is based on a community of coffee drinkers on our floor who just contribute whatever they want to out of the goodness of their hearts. To tell you the truth, it’s not something I really want to put that much thought into, I just expected that the world would conform to my intuitions and emotions.

So I snuck into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of the free coffee and snuck out again. I skulked back to my desk and sat down to drink the free coffee.

Imagine my horror at finding out that free coffee tastes like raw sewage!

Imagine! Free coffee doesn’t taste as good as coffee you have to pay for! How unfair! I hate this coffee! It’s weak! It’s cowardly! It’s lazy! It isn’t meeting my needs and expectations! It isn’t making me happy! It’s to blame for all of my problems! I want to sue this coffee manufacturer in court! I want everyone to condemn them! I demand justice! This coffee is to blame for my tires being underinflated! This coffee is to blame for me not going to the gym! Why is this coffee judging me? Why am I being marginalized and excluded?

Why, oh, why did God make coffee that is so bad? How could a loving God allow me to suffer from this bad coffee that I freely chose instead of pay-coffee? Shouldn’t God give me free coffee that doesn’t taste like sewage? Oh, woe is me! Why doesn’t anyone care about my needs? Why do other rich people have coffee that tastes good, and not me? Why are all my friends drinking good coffee, while I am forced by evil corporations to settle for sewage coffee? We should have a government-run social program to provide me with good coffee for free!

Do you know what I should do? I’ll tell you. I should take control of this coffee corporation. I should force them to give me free coffee for the rest of my life! After all, they are to blame for making the bad coffee. I shouldn’t have to pay for coffee! It’s my right! I have a right to the same coffee as people who go further away and who work hard and who pay for their coffee! I’m being discriminated against! There is no way that I should have to be. There is nothing that I should have to do. I should just get all the goodies in life and never have to give anything back to anyone, if I don’t feel like it.

Do you know what would be really good? A faucet that poured hot coffee with Splenda and cream. I think i’ll go see if we have that in the kitchen. I know we have water, so how hard can it be to get hot coffee with cream and Splenda, too?

Hey, I wonder if I could also get free back rubs? And free candy? I like candy! So I should get candy, too, right?

Commentary

Sex-selection abortions and defending the unborn

2 Comments

An article from the National Post.

Excerpt:

Plenty of studies show that many parents will choose abortion to avoid having a baby of the “wrong” sex. Most often, they preferentially abort girls, especially within cultures in which men are seen as more valuable.

[…]In order to support “a woman’s right to choose,” you have to believe that a fetus is not human in the moral sense. This judgment — or lack thereof — is encoded in Canadian law, which permits abortion for any reason, or no reason at all.

If you believe a fetus is not a human life, the fetus becomes no different from any other unwanted appendage on a woman’s body. There is no moral difference to removing it than there is to removing an unwanted mole, or an unsightly wart. It’s just a bunch of flesh, with no human soul or spirit to it, so what’s the difference?

Why, then, would abortion proponents object to women having abortions because they don’t like the sex of the fetus? If a fetus is not human, a woman has the right to abort it for whatever reason she chooses: because she doesn’t feel like going through the process; because it might interfere with her career plans; because she doesn’t like children in general; or because she loves Starbucks and someone told her she’d have to give up caffeine during the pregnancy. What, no latte?

Read the whole thing. When it comes to debating abortion, it never hurts to take your opponent off of their moral pedestal. They think that pro-lifers are anti-woman. It’s your job to show them how abortion hurts women the most. Bringing up the psychological effects of abortion on women doesn’t hurt either.