Gender roles in the Bible

 

Some of the challenging issues in the bible revolve around gender roles, slavery, and also about the issue of wealth and its distribution. To understand those points, we need to have a common understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ and his ways. Though I think I do understand lord on those issues, I am not lord, however, to claim infallibility. As I stand on the shoulders of giants who came before, the idea is to be the next brick that can move the next generation further so they can reach much higher until they can see the image of the lord printed on their life full in full. As we learn from the past, while correcting the errors that we think we have discovered, we have to know the next generation will do better to know Jesus better and to follow his commandments better.

Going to the main point, let us start with the easy one, wealth and its distribution. Lord finds a rich man who impresses him because he claims to be blameless by the law. Then lord asked him to give all his wealth to the poor and to follow him. The rich man was worshiping his wealth as far as to accept eternal hell for it. The lord, therefore, said that it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for the rich to make it to heaven. His disciples then after asked him who could be saved, therefore. He responded that what is impossible to man is possible to God. By law it is impossible for man, let alone for a wealthy man who enjoys a luxurious life while the poor Lazarus suffers in poverty, to be entitled to heaven; but by grace, through faith of obedience every sinner, which includes both rich and poor people, can make it to heaven. Of course, for that, the almighty God has to be crucified for our sins to pay for all our sins. This is foolishness to the foolish world but this is the wisdom of heaven for the salvation of all.  

 

God did not stop by dying for us. He also declared us holy by his blood to be his temple, where the Holy Spirit resides inside us to transform us into his image. This implies that, by the grace of God, the rich man can keep his wealth without losing his citizenship to the kingdom of heaven. Yet this is not the end of the story because helping the poor is holiness and children of God have to be holy not only in name but also in essence. Wisdom of God, however, says that before the rich can help the poor, the rich need to have a change of heart, mind, spirit, and way of thinking. Law says obey or die, the wisdom of God says change of heart comes before obedience to the truth of God that helping the poor is holy. Many rich people will die for their wealth, but many rich people do give their wealth up for the common good when they have the right heart. Wisdom of God says let us not scare the wealthy by demanding the surrender of his wealth, but first let’s allow him to have it without losing holiness. Then after, God by being inside of his heart will train him to look down on wealth as far as to give it up for the kingdom of heaven all in all.

 

Many wealthy people did give up their wealth to be poor disciples of the lord after they had the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Act of the Disciples. Yet that cookie was undercooked and at the wrong time. They were building the end of our faith before they started it. It is because they were building their heaven on earth when the lord wanted them to disperse until the end of the world to preach his gospel. The end of life on the new earth, to the chosen one of the lord, is where scarcity is a fairy tale, not by human technology and achievement but by the grace of God, who can feed 5000+ people from thin air, and economics is beneath people as they are enlightened enough to work without carrot and stick. That is not because violent revolution turns people holy at last, as the foolish Marx claims it to be, but because the Holy Spirit will transform them into angelic beings.

 

The rise of such civilization of heaven did not end by making all authority absolute and building anarchy of the devil. No, it will end with a strict military-like hierarchy where some are more equal than others. Yet in heaven, those who are more equal are not pigs of the animal farm but servants of the lord. Those who are highest in qualification and rank will not get better treatment from society, in the contrary better service is expected from them. It is like family, where the parents are more equal than the children, but when love is real parents are servants of children. The more capable and more equal parents will sacrifice their joy, happiness, sleep, and rest time to serve the needs of the immature beings that are less equal than them. God does not turn to Angel Michael to tell him to die for people’s sins, and Angel Michael does not turn to lower-ranking officials to give similar orders until it is the turn of Charles Chaplin to die for people. No, God himself dies because he is the highest-ranking being in heaven. God does not say die for me and my kingdom, God says I die for you. In this system of heavenly wisdom, God does not force people to give up their wealth but trains them to look down on wealth and to look up in admiration to the kingdom of heaven and the love of their fellow faithful. God changes hearts, so the poor can love hard work and the rich can love people more than wealth before he can change society.

 

Now imagine you are a slave owner, living in a slave-owning society. If you cannot give up material wealth and you are willing to go to hell for that, what would you do if somebody told you that you have to give up your human slaves for God? It means you have to do your house chores, your farm, and everything you give to the lower class. You may claim the market is possible, yet the market is another form of slavery, and the market itself needs development. You can raise revolution and war by organizing the lower class and kind nobles against the evil slave owners, the way Islam did it in some locations. Or you can change the heart first so you can change social structure then after, the way heaven did it. God is wise, and his ways are not always bloody revolutions. Jesus is not Lenin with Red Army, Jesus is not Abraham Lincoln with Northern Army, Jesus is not the nutcases of the French Revolution, and Jesus is not, his shadow, Moses with his Jewish people. Jesus is the wisdom of God from the host of Armies in heaven. His way is perfection not trial and error.   

 

As God allows the rich to hold their wealth for a while until he can make them look down on it, by spiritual growth process, God allows slave owners to own their slaves and even demands slaves to be good slaves for a while. Since slave owners take slavery as natural, God allows them to have good slaves. Then God will build perfect love between slave and slave owners because the slaves are becoming obedient, hardworking, loyal, honest, and simply perfect not only in the eye of the slave owner but eye of the lord. Once love and friendship are built what is impossible by force is possible by love. By changing hearts, God plans that he will free the slaves from bondage. After all, it is written that if you can, never be a slave of anyone because the lord died for your freedom. God was not affirming slavery, but God was being practical taking the heart of the people into account. This is not easy to prove in real life, as people use this law to affirm slavery rather than as a tool against slavery.  

 

Now let us think about gender roles. We have to remember that God has to work in social, cultural, and historical settings where women are treated as inferior class. This is not a coincidence, it is the result of a curse because Eve was first to be deceived by the devil. In this setting not only men are not ready for the proper role of women, but even women are not fit for their proper roles. In heaven with the guidance of God, Adam and Eve did have the right mindset with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Initially, they were created united as one body, not as equal but as one body. They were not negotiating, fighting, sharing, and boxing, as the hand does not fight leg. As the hand cares about the leg as much as it cares about itself, because they are one body, the man used to care as himself for his woman, and the woman used to care about her husband as herself. They were operating as one body that was united by the spirit of the lord.

 

The ideal association in heaven is when “I” is replaced by “we.” Once Eve listens to the philosophy of the devil that built skepticism on her faith and her relationship with the lord, and she shares it with her husband, their eye is opened to questions that they cannot easily learn in Eden’s happiness. Now the debate is between faith in God and the philosophy of the devil, and that cannot be settled in the happiness of Eden. Ideal minds have the luxury of contemplating endless garbage, and this is easy to do in Eden. Yet people who have to live practical lives cannot be too idealistic and hypothetical in their approach but would be very practical. Since easy communication becomes impossible because they learn to question things that they cannot learn in infancy, God has to kick them from Eden. After all, the ideal mind is the devil’s workshop. This is needed so they can be practical in life and they can refine their mind from the poison of the devil. This is like Moa sending his opponents to a hard labor camp because they are baseless idealists revolving around the devil's skepticism. Yet our Moa is an infallible God being forced to be a God of baseless fools who question his words and hide from him for that.

 

In this new life of hard labor, the much stronger man will have more power over the women. This is also more true as the earth will grow them thorns, as “we” is replaced by “I”. In thorns of condemned life, without the Holy Spirit that unit us, people develop the thorn of selfishness and all evils that are associated with it. People of this system are not right, because it is the wrong system. Before you can change the system, therefore, you have to change the people first. The men and women of faith are the result of this system. Not only that men are not rightly built to work on the “we” role rather than “I”, but also the women themselves are not ready for the “we” role rather than “I”. In heaven and the kingdom of heaven, the goal is not equality but unity. The goal is not to empower one so it can have equal rights concerning others. God builds people who are united enough to think as one unit for the commonwealth of their body of Christ.   

 

The problem is not only that man is not accustomed to living in unity, not equality at all, but that the woman doesn’t also know what it means to be united. The desire of God is for what is high to be low, and what is low to be high. Yet the low does not know where is high, though they know the Revolution of the French to end with the devil as their emperor, and they don’t know how to be high, which is how to attain unity of spirit and body with husband. Those who are high are not accustomed to being less than what they are, and they don’t know how unity of spirit and body works. Now what comes first: change of heart and mind, or revolution? I know what the school girls love, but the Lord Jesus can't be as clueless as plastic girls of our age. Jesus is God, he cannot be such stupid.      

 

The world has theories about how to empower women for negotiation, at best, and for family warfare, at worst. Yet, what we need is how to build a family without the oppression of anyone. The interest of heaven is not in negotiation and power struggle within the family but in the unity of the family where the dignity and honor of everyone are respected. We have no theory of how to achieve this. As dominance can be built, unity can be built. The devil and his culturally illiterate soldiers are for power struggle and conflict, heaven is for unity and dignity for all. Faith, therefore, is not about power struggle, as our spiritual father is not named Marx, it is about unity for the dignity of all, as our spiritual father is the heavenly father. For God not only men and women, but family is important. God is not only angry about why females suffer, but also why the next generation has to grow up without proper guidance and proper family. Now the problem of God is how to improve the life of women without destroying family. This is not the way of the French, it is a way of heaven.  

 

In this cultural setting, where women and men live as unequal, men are superior and women are inferior in power and relationship. So God started by respecting this not to create conflict and an endless cycle of the French Revolution. The law says that a woman has to be obedient to her man, as the church is below Jesus. How powerful is the lord on the church? A husband has that level of power over his wife. Why? It is for the same reason that God demanded slaves to be fully obedient. God is taking conflict out and is building unity of superior and inferior beings first. This is because what is impossible by war and law is possible by love.  

 

Then God demanded that the husband love his wife as Jesus loves the church. Jesus is working 24/7 to perfect the church, so the husband with the help of his wife has to work to perfect their unity in the eye of God. Even though man has the last say, he is expected to work for common will in the eye of all-knowing God. This means as a man cannot feed his hand by destroying his leg, the husband cannot serve himself by suppressing his wife. Otherwise, God will judge him as such. The law of God says if man oppresses his women, God will not listen to his prayer, and who knows what comes next? For those who know the Holy Spirit is real and for those who live under his guidance, this is not easy judgment to know that God hates you as much as you mistreat your women. Yet first the women have to be obedient so the conflict can be minimized and the growth of unity under perfect love can be possible.  

 

In heaven, the superior serves and the inferior is served. If the man claims to be superior, in the long run, he is expected to serve more. Those who want to rise above everyone have to be slaves of all, as it is written. But that will demand time and spiritual growth to be materialized. For the spiritual growth process to happen, where the suppression of women is minimized and unity is built, both husband and wife must be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and be at a comparable level of spiritual development. After all, if husband and wife are faithful, which is extremely advisable, the lord himself is leading the character and manner of wife and husband toward unity through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In this setting, it is easier for a wife by the lead of the Holy Spirit to obey God, than for a man to accept the unity of women let alone equality. That is why the lord demanded first obedience from women and love from men, first. This is the law, but we have to remember love is more important than any law of God in heaven. The final say is not by the law that we can state for our sin, but by love that we must produce. The end of all law is love; that is why the outcome of love is more powerful than the law that anybody can state in the eye of God. This law therefore is for love and love is not oppressive.   

 

God is not working to preserve slavery of women, but to build unity of man and women in wisdom. How? When the woman is a good and obedient wife, then God can make him think good about his wife which leads him to give better respect, better honor, and better power to his wife. Then God will come through the wife's heart making her think that her husband is angelic and will obey him more. Then her husband will be more willing to be obedient by love and the wife will be more obedient by love. Slowly God will be building a unity of two persons’, who are united in spirit and body.

 

Now wife and husband will not be fighting about who has the right to this or that. No! As they are not made by the French Revolution, but by Jesus, they will be fighting to express their love to each other. The man says you need to buy the new clothes first, beautiful, and the wife says no you buy first, dear. People do that when they are deeply in love for the first time due to a chemical reaction. God makes it last through his work in the spirit. The purpose of the law is not to suppress women, actually, if the man oppresses his women, God will not listen to his prayer, and who knows what follows. Yet it is a practical necessity of spiritual development if our interest is on a happy family with a happy wife and happy husband rather than on the French Revolution within the family. In the French Revolution of our age, the winner is neither the unhappy wife nor the unhappy children but the devil and his soldiers who want to destabilize families and leave children without proper guidance from mother and father.

 

The purpose of God is to create unity of spirit as they have unity of body for the fulfillment of all good-loving people inside and outside the family. Yet the world is interested in empowerment, the way the British empowered suppressed communities in their colonies. The British of our families, who are dividing to rule us, are the devil and those culturally illiterate soldiers of the devil. The way of the world is for everlasting war between husband and wife. The devil empowers the wife, and families are destroyed generation after generation in confrontation, conflict, and family desolation. The alternative is to build unity by slowly addressing old problems in the spiritual growth process.

 

This process is possible if both husband and wife are born again and have a comparable spiritual growth process. Otherwise, conflict is not only engineered by flesh and cultural problems of man and women but also by the devil who will test your obedience to the will of God against endless disobedience that the devil will engineer in your life. If you must pick a marriage partner, pick born again faithful, assuming that option is possible for you. Then look for one who has a comparable spiritual growth process at best and one who is led by the Holy Spirit at minimum. Otherwise, the devil, flesh, social influence, and cultural influence will continually test your unity of marriage with your partner.