Some of the most gruesome events of the Iraq war involved the beheading of enemies by terrorist cells. Yet long ago, David did it to the Philistine giant, Goliath (1Samuel 17). The Philistines later beheaded King Saul and hung his headless body on the city wall of Beth Shan (1Sam 31:9). John the Baptist suffered […]
One of our goals at RBC (the publishers of Our Daily Bread) is to attach authority to no more or no less than the necessary implications of the Bible. I don’t find that easy to do. Seems so hard to avoid reading more into the Bible than out of it (by treating possible implications as […]
I’m convinced that there are few callings more honorable or difficult than that of a pastor-shepherd. If we think the relationship between husband and wife is problematic, imagine the complexity involved in the relationship between church congregations and their spiritual leaders. Interestingly, the New Testament likens both church and marriage to a body and discusses at […]
The lengthy discussion that followed my weekend post on “The Bible and Marital Submission” shows what a difficult problem this is for those of us who share a deep and conservative commitment to the Bible as the Word of God. I posted on the subject again because I’ve seen how often churchmen claim and misuse […]
Have been working with our team to revisit a booklet answering the question, “What Does God Expect of Men and Women?” Together we want to be faithful to the intent and wisdom of Scriptures while applying its timeless principles to the changing circumstances of our lives. One of the things some of us have noticed […]
Over the years I’ve concluded that seeing “headship” in marriage as a basis for the authority of a husband to tell his wife what to do says more about the customs of fallen culture than it does about what the God of the Bible wants for us. My last post is an attempt to explain […]
In first century Greek, Roman, and Jewish society, a man was the master of his house. Wives lived under the rule of their husbands and were expected to submit to them. So when the Apostle Paul, in his New Testament letters, encouraged wives to submit to their husbands, those words would not have been unusual. […]
In 2004 an article in USA Today raised a question about whether modern polygamy law exposes our hypocrisy. In that article Jonathan Turley writes, “For polygamists, it is simply a matter of unequal treatment under the law. Individuals have a recognized constitutional right to engage in any form of consensual sexual relationship with any number […]
When does the absence of submission double its meaning? I learned something this week that has carried with me into the weekend. Let me see if I can put in words a thought that I find compelling. In the ongoing debate about the role of husbands and wives, we’ve probably all heard both sides of […]
Do we have a high enough view of marriage to respond adequately to marital abuse? Before answering, let’s consider one woman who represents many. To personalize her, let’s imagine her as our daughter or friend. She doesn’t know where to turn and blames herself for ending up in a bad marriage. We know she isn’t […]
