I have a way of just skimming through titles of articles when reading the news or looking through social media. I am sure you do too as the overload of information available to us is impossible to thoroughly explore, and who would want to read it all anyway? Yet the other day the title of an article in the BBC caught my eye. The title was ‘If we can’t speak, why live?’ – BBC meets women after new Taliban law", so I stopped and read. What I discovered was that the Taliban in Afghanistan has passed a law, about 100 pages worth, that gives the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry wide ranging powers to enforce a very strict code of conduct for Afghan citizens. Apparently, some of those rules for women include, in addition to the complete covering of bodies and half of their faces, they now can’t speak, sing, recite poetry or even laugh outside their homes. They cannot even laugh in public!
Reading this article and other information as I researched this topic, I felt so sad, and my thoughts went to how some women are diminished even in the world at large, and then my thoughts went to the church regarding this same subject, and then my musing settled on a desire to research what God may have intended when He created woman. First, He made Adam, and then not finding a suitable helper for him, He took something away from man and made woman, Eve.
We find the account of creation in Genesis 1:26-31. In verse 26: “Then God said, “let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Verse 27 – “So God created man in his own image, and in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Did you know that the distinction between the account of creation written in Genesis as compared to the stories of gods creating humans in the accounts from Mesopotamia in the Near East? It is that the account in Genesis is of man being created to rule over the earth in communion with God in contrast to humans being made to bid the commands of the gods. Our God created us to rule with Him in the garden and He made no hierarchy between man and woman when He did so.
We all know the story of the fall, how the serpent deceived Eve and Adam went along with it, Genesis 3:1-13. And we know the results of that disobedience, Genesis 3:14-24. This is a large, complex subject but my considerations of these passages of scripture are motivated by the pursuit of what God means, starting in Genesis, for His daughters.
In the curse, God curses the ground that the man will work and He adds sweat and pain in that process. For the woman God tells her He will increase the pain of childbearing and her desire would be to her husband and her husband would rule over her. But remember that both Adam and Eve in their pre-fallen state were already working the ground and were caring for animals. And they were meant to be fruitful and multiply so childbearing was already an established function in the garden, but the Fall and the curse it brought added pain to what was already a reality. The reality imposed by the fall was not the original intention of God.
Regarding the Taliban, who are they? They are a hardline Islamic group, “Students” in the Pashto language. They emerged in northern Afghanistan following the Russian army’s withdrawal from that country in the 1989. The Taliban promised to restore peace and security to the country as well as to implement their version of Sharia, or Islamic law, their religious beliefs, once in power. I am sure that it sounded great to a country coming out of an invasion by a foreign country. Yet time has proven that the harshness of their attempt to implement their religious mindset has come down to what they have now, cruelty and repression.
Ok – so we know this about the Taliban. What does that have to do with Christians and what the great I AM meant for the relationship between a man and a woman and what “rules” women should follow? But you know it’s not even that I am trying to write about, although that question is important, but I think I want to focus more particularly on what originally caught my eye, silencing women. Religious men silencing women. Why? What do they hope to gain while imposing a loss to women?
I can see people getting ready to protest the above paragraph with ‘Christian men are not the Taliban’ and ‘Haven’t you read about how women are to be silent in the church?’ ‘What about Sarah calling Abraham Lord?’ I get that this subject is also complex but there is an evil in the harsh treatment of women and I wonder what the force behind that is, and why. We know as Christians that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. Additionally, for me at least, I try to follow an unction that prompts me to write on a subject, which in this case is the silencing of women.
When I contemplate the dynamic of men harshly ruling over women, I can’t ignore that we can utilize research and most likely get on a rabbit trail of past civilizations that either elevated or reduced woman in their societies all around the world. I get that. Could possibly find that there are cultures that had the reverse, women dominating men. So I will continue with the perspective in writing this from, as I wrote earlier, religious men silencing women. Why?
In the Garden of Eden, God began the creation of man’s helper – “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall became one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Genesis 2:21-25
What did God take away from Adam when He made Eve? God took tesla (Hebrew) from Adam and covered up that place with flesh. With this tesla God created woman. Then Adam himself declares that Eve at last she is bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.
What is tesla? It is more than a rib, it is a side. The same word tesla is used in Exodus 26:26 when speaking of the construction of one SIDE of the tabernacle. In this understanding we see that God took much more than a rib but took one side of Adam and then with it made Eve. Since Eve stands at the side of Adam, she is his equal and his compliment.
I believe my more religious readers at this point would have their guard up as to what will come next in this text regarding how this understanding of two complimentary halves works out in present culture(s). And I am not even going to go there because the issue of silencing women is a greater issue than how, in cultures around the world, men and women interact with each other.
I believe that the silencing and domination over women, in whatever circumstance and arena, is an attempt to create a reality that is in the mind of the enforcer and not a reality as God had intended. That is a hugely complex issue when applied to innumerable contexts and I could not begin to cover them all so I will rest in my musing of this subject on the interaction between man and women in the Christian marriage environment specifically in regards to the woman’s right to speak within it.
In 1 Timothy 3:16 we find that all scripture is breathed out by God and it is profitable for teaching reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness. Reading in Genesis 2:18 we find that God made a HELPER for Adam. In English we find that the description of helper is simple. It is “a person who helps someone else”. Yet in the original Hebrew the word used there is ‘ezer - “one who supplies strength in the area that is lacking”. So a woman supplies what is lacking from the man in a Christian marriage. Reading in Proverbs 31:26 we find among the descriptions of an “excellent wife” a woman who OPENS HER MOUTH with wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
This is not a silent woman.
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