I hate being mad, so it's a good thing that I don't have a short fuse and don't get my feelings hurt easily. In general, I'm more laid-back than high-strung, so while I'm in touch with angry feelings when they arise, I don't dwell on them -- usually.
Yesterday, however, two things really got into my craw.
The first was a credit card bill. We've been doing lots of home maintenance lately, and the cost added up to several thousand dollars. I could have taken money from savings to pay for it, but when a "0% interest" offer arrived from an Amazon.com credit card I never use, I decided to take advantage of it for six months of no interest payments.
I'm usually pretty savvy about such things and rarely get burned, though I know the credit card companies use such teaser rates because they know most people won't pay the balance before the typically exorbitant interest rate kicks in. I make notes and generally avoid that.
When my first bill arrived, however, I discovered that Chase Bank, which operates under the guise of Amazon.com and many other branded credit cards, had added a full $285 in "transaction fees" to my balance -- effectively charging a high rate of interest in advance and making the "0%" claim an absolute sham, nothing more than a big honking lie in bold print.
After scouring the original offer, I eventually found information about the transaction fee. As you might guess, it was printed in such a tiny font that it was barely readable.
That made me mad. I called, complained, and asked for the deceptive fees to be removed, but got no satisfaction, other than that letting the company know they would get no more business from me -- and knowing I could warn any readers to beware deceptive claims.
While I can afford to pay the ridiculous fee and clear the account before the six months is up, I know that is precisely how credit card companies entice many other people into taking out loans they cannot afford to pay, contributing to mountains of debt that can become overwhelming. That makes me mad.
The second thing that got my goat was not a financial issue, but a theological-social-cultural one: I learned that a professor from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, while preaching in a Texas church, said wife-abuse sometimes results from a woman's unwillingness to submit to her husband's "God-given authority" over her. You can read about it here in Bob Allen's report at EthicsDaily.com ... I won't go into the stomach-turning details.
The professor's pompous position is really nothing new, as it builds on the SBC's "Baptist Faith and Message" statement that was amended in 1998 to assert that wives should be submissive to their husbands, claiming divine sanction for such a practice.
Fundamentalists moan that Christians have fallen prey to cultural shifts that have promoted women's rights and allowed women to think they might be qualified to stand on an equal footing in their marriages, their workplace, or even the pulpit.
They do so, however, on the basis of biblical texts that are clearly products of their own culture. The same biblical texts that talk about submissive women also speak often of human slavery but offer no words of condemnation. For modern interpreters to claim that slavery was a cultural anomaly but male domination is an eternal principle is nothing more than bad hermeneutics fueled by men who like being in charge and fear losing their power.
The professor did not put all the blame on non-submissive women for abuse they might receive -- he admitted that men are sinners, too -- but promoting a theology that tells men they should expect their wives to be submissive is just priming the pump for domestic violence.
And that makes me mad.
I suspect I'm not the only one.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
A lot of men are not completely uncomfortable with the concept of gender equality.
What scares many of them (us?) spitless is the possibility that women are not merely equal, but superior!
Brother Deaux
i have an amazon/chase credit card, and i received an email that told me i was eligible for a 0% APR special. thanks to you, i will pay it no mind.
also, i have heard about how some conservative circles like to find out if the pastor is satisfying his wife or not, because if she says no, that conversely means that "she isn't satisfying him," and thus this justifies a pastor's irresponsible behavior. i would assume that abuse falls under that umbrella.
You are right - you are not the only one "mad" about both the unjust lending (no)laws of this land, and the unjust treatment of females by fundamenatlists!
I would assume Christians would want no part of treating women in such a way as to be compared to the way Islam treats them. That's the most abuse I've ever learned about.
We can't stick our heads in the sand and just hope it goes away. The Torah (I've read the verses) commands them to kill infidels, and that's anyone that's not them.
star
Tony,
You said,
"They do so, however, on the basis of biblical texts that are clearly products of their own culture."
Ah, the old liberal slippery slope! And what other Scripture texts might we decide reflect, not the mind of God, but ancient middle eastern culture? The ones about children obeying their parents? The ones about sodomy? The ones about the virgin birth? The ones about the deity of Jesus Christ?
I am glad you keep making such statements, because they prove what many of us have known all along, that, after all the dust has settled, you so called "moderates" really don't believe in the authority of the Scripture at all. You said,
"The same biblical texts that talk about submissive women also speak often of human slavery but offer no words of condemnation. For modern interpreters to claim that slavery was a cultural anomaly but male domination is an eternal principle is nothing more than bad hermeneutics fueled by men who like being in charge and fear losing their power."
Yes, bad hermeneutics indeed. But the badness of it is not in believing the texts about women submitting to their husband, but in swallowing the modern rejection of God's commandment to slaves.
You have hit on something very profound here - namely, that the roots of the modernistic rejection of the authority of the Scriptures go right back to the social movements of the early 1800s, including slavery and the so called "temperance" movement. And the only way for Baptists ever to find their way back under God's authority is to reject modernism in its totality.
Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas
On the scale of righteous indignation, the treatment of women ranks higher for me for one simple reason...
In every case of spousal abuse (and misogyny, for that matter) women had no choice in what gender they were born. They were abused because of something over which the had no control.
On the other hand, for better or worse, every person caught up in credit card problems had a choice that they exercised to accept the debt (myself included...in spite of the money difficulties I encounter). I'm mad at lenders who are vague and create problems for unsuspecting customers, but I'm also mad at the fiscal indiscretion and rampant consumerism (demand) that has brought about the "need" for such credit offers (supply).
So I guess I have three things in my craw now thanks to this blog. :-D
Hi Toni,
It makes me mad too. Both the tricky loans and forced subordination of women.
I'm a woman and a wife. I do believe that God wants wives to submit to their husbands, but in turn, husbands are to love their wives sacrificially. Nowhere in the Bible does God justify a man's getting his own way and using his wife in the process. Nowhere does he tell men to get their way.
Dr. Ware CAN preach on the topic as he did, but he MUST begin by stating that a man trying to get his way is sin, which will cause a woman to claim her rights, and can cause a man to get mad or despondent. Both of these reactions are not the wife's fault, and he was the one sinning against her in the first place.
He forgets that women also have two reactions to male domination: we lift our heads in "rebellion" or we simply give in, becoming doormats.
A teacher like Ware would do much better actually reading what the Bible has to say to both spouses and discussing what that means, instead of trying to push an agenda of male domination.
Thanks for making people aware and actually think about what's being taught out there.
God bless.
I was mad all day Friday after reading the Ethics Daily article. I have the uncomfortable feeling that some women will lose their lives because of it.
That article had me burning up too! It is sad that the Bible has for some time, and will continue to be the excuse for such intolerable acts. I dont care how you interpret the Bible, anyone that uses it as a good reason to beat up on their wife is cruel.
Several years ago, I was at the copy machine in our office copying a lengthy document. To pass the time while I waited, I decided to tidy up a bit around the copier. I put the paper clips in their proper place, restacked the extra paper, sorted some colored paper back into the proper stacks, and even moved the staplers closer to the copy machine. By the time my document had printed, I had the entire copy area looking pretty darn spiffy.
Joyce, one of the administrative assistants, walked out of her office about the time I was finished and asked, “What are you doing?” I of course was very pleased with myself and said, “Oh, it’s no big deal, I was just cleaning up a bit while I was waiting for my copy.” Joyce’s response was far from offering thanks. In fact, she put me in my place rather quickly. She asked me if this was my designated work area. I timidly responded, no. Joyce then asked me, “If this isn’t your work space, why are you rearranging everything?” No response on my part. Joyce concluded with, “This area is arranged for specific work functions so please don’t make changes based upon what you think it might or might not need.”
I later apologized and thanked Joyce for helping me realize that I don’t know a lot of things that I claim to know.
The comments concerning wife-abuse by the professor from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary add jet fuel to the fire for the women who try to justify to themselves and others that the treatment they are receiving is deserved and therefore must be accepted.
If these types of “copy areas” continue to be rearranged by people that don’t know any better, we will continue to live in a pretty darn spiffy world that is dysfunctional to those that need us most.
In response to Ashley (and others who expressed similar sentiments): Amen!
Anyone who practices exploitation and domination didn't get it from Jesus!
Brother Deaux
I think that a deep theological problem (one of a few) that has not been discussed is that Dr. Ware's theology of a submissive trinity yields, for him, a model in complementarian gender roles.
Isn't the idea that members of the trintiy are unequal, "there is authority (in the trinity), and the Son eterally sumits to the will of the Father" an unorthodox one?
It seems to me that a trinitarian theology in which all members are not equal is a suspect "theology," perhaps a modern one which defies historic church teaching.
Drew, I'm surprised a professor of theology would make that statement, too. There's a lot of unpacking to do when you talk about the Trinity...imminent v. economic, for example. In other words, the way the persons of the Trinity related to each other in salvation history is not necessarily a mirror image of how the persons of the Trinity relate in eternity.
While I don't think the position mentioned in the article is necessarily unorthodox, I think is quite simplistic and certainly not what I would expect from a professor of theology at a major seminary.
Fundamentalists--whether Baptist, Anglican, or Moslem--are all the same. They, and no one else, holds the truth.
The SBC is a bankrupt denomination. Please, just let them go and ignore them. Reasoning with them is like teaching a pig to sing--it doesn't work, and it only aggravates the pig.
Purging oneself of an SBC past and never darkening the door of churches that give to it, allows me to sleep so much more peacefully at night.....
Dr. Cartledge,
According to the article at Ethics Daily, it seems Allen has mis-stated what Dr. Ware was saying. Dr. Ware never gave one statement about it being ok for husbands to abuse their non-submissive wives. He even stated that we all know the horrors of that and the ugliness of that. The very quote that Allen mined to strengthened his thesis does not strengthen it. If one will read the article without the preconceived notion of Allen's first statement one will see Dr. Ware's quotes in the article speak against Allen's thesis.
I too am mad over the atrocities of abused women. However, you and Allen seem to be advocating that abuse of women is not because of the sin nature in males.
Blessings,
Tim
It's amazing to see how many blogs are commenting about this. I also think it's essential.
If you read most blog postings about Dr. Ware's statements, you will see that Christians tend to be very critical of Dr. Ware and do not espouse this kind of teaching.
I agree, the last thing an abused woman needs to hear is that she is responsible for her husband's abuse. The Christian community should rescue these women, not condemn them even further. And I believe the MAJORITY of the Christian community would starkly disagree with what Ware says.
Being submissive does not mean being stepped all over. The Bible does not teach us as women to be doormats. In reading the Bible you see strong examples of women, not weak ones. These women loved their husbands and held them in high regard, but they were not silent all the time and they were not weaklings. Just think of the prophetess Deborah.
Post a Comment