Well... if you're going to quote things jesus didn't actually say...
I say, If a woman is to hold the bible as the word of god, and strive to follow god, then she should never attempt to tell me anything. I've got other arguments for men. However this one is just so damned good for attacking uppity Christian women
Shai Gar, I suggest you go and read through a thread posted by Satya in the Humanities section entitled “God is a sexist, homophobic, proslavery, sadistic murderer”. Wherein, he and Kwistalline have a conversation about certain things in the scriptures, and Kwistalline does an excellent job of putting these verses and others in their proper context. This brings me to my point. If you are going to quote scriptures from the Bible to make an argument for or against something, you had better do so from a basis of actual knowledge of the context for those verses. I thought I cautioned you about taking things out of context before. But I will go ahead and explain what these verses actually mean and how they, as well as the rest of the Bible, will not help you in your argument against “uppity Christian women”.
First of all, you have to understand that the text of the Bible was written within the context of a culture and time period that dealt with the various complexities of social structure, interrelation between male and female, etc. in very different way than our cultures do. Obviously, in your culture and my culture, we don’t have as solid a dividing line between the statuses of males and females. But they did. I could try to explain the history of why that came to be but that is for another thread. Now, the author of those verses, which is the apostle Paul, is also writing these instructions within the context of the rest of scripture (All the way from Genesis up until his time). He understands that when Adam and Eve sinned against God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God put a different curse on each of them, one for the male and one for the female. It is the understanding of the nature of this curse and how it affected Eve and her progeny that is the key to understanding why Paul believed it was necessary to write these things. I know you may not believe any of this actually happened but, like I said, if you are going to use text from something, you need to know what it is talking about. Just so you know I am not making this up, read Genesis ch. 3 and you will see this curse I am talking about. Ok, here it goes (takes a deep breath). So God creates male and female in His image (ch. 1 verses 26-27). This means that Adam and Eve bore the image of God, each by themselves but more extensively in how they related to each other. Once again, you may not believe any of this, but this is how all of the pieces fit. If you consider the idea of God creating the heavens and the earth, then this God must be very interested in beautiful things and almost limitless variety. Hence, such a diverse and beautiful world in its features, its shape, and its inhabitants. I am going somewhere with this. So God’s final act in creation is to create Eve, as if she is somewhat of the pinnacle of it all. This is important because it demonstrates the fact that she is created to ultimately display certain aspects of God’s character, namely His beauty and how He wants to relate to us. Males of course also bare His image, but in a different way which I can explain later if you want. Think about it. The lives of women are centered around relationship. They can’t stop talking about it. It is simultaneously their source of greatest strength and the source of their greatest sorrow, depending on how it turns out. And it is precisely this area that God curses Eve in. Why? I sincerely want to ask Him when I see Him, that is if I don’t find out before hand. I speculate it is because, through her sin, she demonstrated that she didn’t trust God, that He was somehow holding out on her. She simply wasn’t satisfied with that image she bore and wanted to trust the lie more than it. Because she bought into the lie, God knew he could not trust her with that image. So God had to curse her in this area of relationship to her husband because in her present fallen state, she could not bare the image properly and thus could not relate to Adam as she was created. To say that God cursed Adam and Eve is not really bringing anything new apart from the natural consequences of their disobedience. He is simply making them “official”.
Now that the background is set, here we are with Paul. He recognizes that all of this happened and is showing the early Christians how they can be restored to the original image rather than continue to suffer the affects of the curse. He recognizes that through Eve’s sin, all women after her will not trust God in the area of relationships and will seek to have authority over men. They just will not accept the fact that men will rule over them. For this reason, the hardest thing for a woman to do now is trust a man. And with good reason too. Man is pretty screwed up from the curse as well and often takes the whole “headship” thing way too far. Man and woman were meant to live in harmony together, in a mutually submissive state (of course you left out verse 19 from your Colossians 3 quote, though it goes hand in hand with verse 18). But since the fall, there has always been enmity between them. God, through Paul is trying to reconcile them back together in the same way that He is trying to reconcile us back to Him.
Finally, if you are going to quote any more commandments from the Bible, whether by God, Jesus, apostles, Moses, etc, you have to understand the true relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. First off, the latter does not simply supersede or nullify the former. Everything in the Old Testament is a shadow, or a lesser representation of what is written in the New Testament. Everything in the Old Testament pointed to Christ and what He ultimately will accomplish (you can read Colossians 2:17, Hebrews 8:5, and Hebrews 10:1 to see what I am saying). My point is, the law (being the ten commandments, the civil law and moral law) given to Moses in the Old Testament was never meant to restore God’s people back to Him. It was only a shadow of the new covenant He made in the New Testament. This is why Jesus said, “You have heard that it is WRITTEN, do not murder. But I say to you, if you have hatred in your heart towards your brother, then you have already committed murder in your heart.” There is “written law” given in the old testament, but there is the intent that was behind it. This is what Jesus is drawing attention to. Likewise, when Paul wrote those words you quoted, the spirit in which they were written was to help the women of his culture combat the affects of the curse. Now, though we live in a completely different culture and time frame, the spirit and intent behind these instructions still apply, even though the means may be different. The objective is still to help the women in our cultures combat the affects of the curse and regain the image of God they once bore without taint.
[FONT="] Now, as far as those “uppity Christian women” you speak of, unless you are married to one, I see no reason why said female should not instruct, warn, correct, rebuke, or even chastise you up one end and down the other, that is if she has superior knowledge and experience over you in a particular area of life or study. I for one, welcome the instruction of a woman in some matters, even ones that I am particularly prideful in; as they usually see the things that I do not. I hope that helped. [/FONT]
