In her Today Show interview, she stated, "Diversity is being invited to the party, but it includes being
This made me think of the situation at ABWE where, after Donn Ketcham got away with decades of abusing women and girls on the mission field in Bangladesh, ABWE finally put women on their board of directors.....3 women.....and 16 men remained. To this day, ABWE has not done enough to rectify their culture of abuse. It remains.
How is it that a worldly man like Mark Cuban can "get it" about abuse and power and churches don't? One could argue that church leadership is not about "power" but I see nothing but power, and the abuse of power, within today's church leadership.
A recent adult "Bible" study played this out. It was a group of married adults and they were studying a Sunday School quarterly. This particular lesson covered a few of the 10 Commandments, including "You shall not commit adultery." The teacher took the class to Matthew 5:27 & 28, where Jesus says, ".....if a man looks at a woman to lust after her, he has committed adultery with her already in his heart." Ok, so far, so good, but I was shocked at what happened next.
In the class, the people started a discussion about this verse and one woman said, "Well, girls have to be modest." They followed this statement up with extreme examples of women and girls not being modest in church. In looking around the church, I found no one dressed immodestly.
This turned the discussion to women and the "part" we women play in "causing" men to sin and commit adultery in their hearts. I was appalled. This discussion went on for about 10 minutes, and even though a couple of us presented the Truth, that this verse said nothing about women having a "part" in a man's sin, the people stuck to their thinking that men would sin less if women were more modest. Women have NO part in any man's sin.
So, the culture of abuse remains. Women are continuing to be blamed for the sins of men in the church. While I agree women ought to be modest, I contend that the Bible is not talking about modesty in the same way we do today. When Paul taught instructed women to dress in modest apparel, he was talking to wealthy Ephesian women who were flaunting their wealth in church and he wanted them to tone that down since it's not good to flaunt wealth in church. Read more in I Timothy 2:9-10. Paul clarifies that women are to "dress modestly, not with elaborate hair styles, gold, pearls of expensive clothing, but with good deeds..." These verses say nothing about dressing modestly to help men avoid sinning.
What struck me about the discussion in the class is how quickly they spun the Truth of the verses they were studying. Even the teacher of the class did not refute their opinions, but reaffirmed what they were thinking. They are wrong. Spinning Scripture at any time is wrong and it's wrong to take what Jesus said and spin it like they did.
The natural leap of patriarchy is to blame women for men's sins at every turn. If a man sins with a woman, the church talks about what she was wearing or what she did to entice him. But Scripture does not teach this. Scripture teaches that when a man sins, he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). It does not say women need to modify their behavior in any way to help men avoid sin.
To jump from a verse about adultery where Jesus addresses men specifically, to the subject of girls needing to be modest is a huge and unjustified jump. This jump is very natural for patriarchy, however, and many church folk would argue with me, some vehemently; but they are out of line.
It's not safe or wise to filter the Bible through any lens, even the lens of patriarchy.
Do I think women and men should dress modestly? Of course. I simply stand against the idea that this is taught in Matthew 5:27&28.
~Tricia
