Women need to be quiet in church. And that statement is total and utter male macho BS.

 It was when it was written by Paul, and it still is today. And I’m going to prove that to you.

In honor of women in history month, I’m going to talk about some women in the Bible.

But let’s start with what Paul said. There are two very specific passages that I’ve heard people talk about before in the Bible that Paul, talks about women needing to be quiet. One of them is in Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 14:34. the woman should keep silent in the churches for they’re not permitted to speak but should be in submission, as the law also says.

What law is that? It’s not in the Old Testament, therefore it’s not an Old Testament law. What Paul is talking about here is either Roman law or the Talmud. The Talmud was a list of laws that the Jews decided upon, they had their own laws outside of what God told them to do.

So there’s no law in the Old Testament where women can’t speak. So he’s not talking about anything that God said.

God created men and women as equals.

And anyone who says, “Well, Eve got Adam’s rib, and she was second.”

Again, total male macho BS.

There is nothing in the Bible that talks about that.

And Paul actually contradicts himself anyway, I’m going to go over that in just a little bit.

But let’s go back to 1 Corinthians 14:34 and let’s look at the time of the Corinthians when Paul wrote that letter.

There were women in that church that were gossiping, disrupting the church services, and were basically making it difficult for other people to get into their time with God.

So Paul was basically telling the people of that church to keep those particular women silent, and he was telling those women that they need to be silent. They need to stop gossiping and stop disrupting other people’s time with God.

That reminds me of a time that I was in church, and I it was when they were worship through singing, it was the beginning of the service. Two guys were talking behind me, and the funny thing is that both of those guys were members of the church and they were volunteers.

And they were, to me, strong Christians.

And yet they were talking the whole time the band was singing.

I couldn’t get into the right mood, so I finally turned around and said, “Hey, guys, listen, why don’t you go out to the hallway to talk? You’re kind of disturbing the people who are trying to do concentrate on God.”

And, of course, they were very apologetic. They simply didn’t realize that they were interrupting other people’s time with God.

My hope with these women is that they were doing the same thing; that they weren’t purposely trying to go against other people trying to get closer to God. But it was happening enough, obviously, if Paul had to actually write a letter to the church in Corinth saying, “hey, these women need to be quiet and be submissive.”

But what he’s talking about the law has nothing to do with the Bible. So therefore, to me, has nothing to do with God. The second passage where Paul talks about women in being quiet is

1 Timothy 2:11-13. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.  For Adam was formed first, then Eve.

I’m going to be push against that again. I already talked about that a little bit. Adam may have been formed first, but that doesn’t mean that Eve is any less than he is, not in God’s eyes.

We are all of us nothing but shadow and dust to God. And I don’t think that he puts men above women at all. If he did, there would never have been women mentioned in the Bible, we would never have heard about Ruth and what she did.

We would never hear about Esther and how she’s saved the entire Jewish nation. We wouldn’t hear those things that wouldn’t have been women that did those things.

But let’s look at another part where Paul talks about this.

Romans 16:1. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant[a] of the church at Cenchreae.

 He very specifically says, I commend our sister Phoebe, a church Deacon. Deacon. So this is a woman who’s not learning quietly, who is teaching in the church and exercising authority over men. It is a complete contradiction of 1 Timothy 2:11. So how does this happen? How do we get these so direct contradictions in the Bible?

Well, it’s very simple. Paul is talking to very specific audiences. So we look at the New Testament of the Bible, and we say, Okay, this is the inspired Word of God, this is what God wants us to learn.

But I guarantee you, yes, it is the inspired Word of God. But when Paul was writing these letters, nowhere in his mind was a single thought that, oh, 2000 years later, people are going to read this and say, women have to be quiet in church.

I guarantee you that was never a thought on his mind. I guarantee you that he never consciously thought that this would be the New Testament, what he was writing would be considered with the New Testament, and a Bible that’s being read by billions and billions of people 1000s of years later.

It is the inspired Word of God, but it’s not the perfect word of God; the Bible was written by men

 and there are many, many places where men fail, and they write their own personal things in the Bible. Whenever I look at anything that’s going on, even things in the Bible, I’ll look at 1 Timothy 2:11, where it says for women to learn quietly with all submissiveness, don’t permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, she’s to remain quiet.

Whenever I hear anything, my first question is, is it Biblically accurate? And even if it’s Biblically accurate, my next question is, what did Jesus do? And for those of you that have been listening for a while, yes, I just stole that from Pastor Angie Hall, and I love it.

What did Jesus do?

Not what would he do? What did he do? And let’s look at what Jesus did do.

What he did was, he allowed the very first person to see him alive to be a woman, Nurses and people that helped deliver babies were always women back then; always, never men. So the first person that saw him alive was a woman.

The first person that saw him do a miracle was a woman.

The last people that saw him alive were women.

He allowed women to speak, women supported his ministry, women followed him.

Now we don’t hear about it because, again, there was that whole male macho thing in that society where women were second class citizens back then and didn’t have a say in things.

But if they would have actually talked about it, we would have learned a lot more about the women that helped Jesus the entire time he was around.

But again, women were the last people to see him alive on the cross.

A woman was the first person to see his grave, empty. Why would Jesus have a woman be the first person to see his grave empty?

Jesus went out of his way, many, many times, to show the importance of women. To me personally, this is simply because Jesus wanted to teach us, us men, and I’m a man, that he wanted to teach us men that women are just as important to him, just as important to God as men are.

In fact, I can’t find a place in the Bible where Jesus or God says that women are any less than men. Women do have different qualities. There are different things that men are better at. We’re generally physically stronger than women. To me, women are generally mentally stronger than men.

Definitely emotionally stronger. Most men have the emotional capacity of a teaspoon, right? We like something or we hate it. We hate it, we don’t do it. If we like it, we do it.

With women, there’s 85 different shades in between there on how much they may or may not like something.

Women have their place; they do. And so do men; we have our place. And our place is right there with women.

The last place in the Bibl where I hear people talk about women is Ephesians five, and that’s one that’s one that I love to talk about. Because Ephesians 5:22, very specifically states Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. And then Ephesians 5:33 says, wife see that you respect your husband.

But what most men don’t say is in between verses 22 and 33 are 10 verses about how men are supposed to treat women.

 Again, Paul does say the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church. But remember, being the head of a family means that we’re a leader. Leaders lead by setting the example, not by being the authoritarian over them but by setting the example, by showing the people that they’re leading, how to do things and why to do things.

Managers push, leaders pull. That’s the difference. And as being the head of a household men, our job is to show a godly lifestyle. And again, what did Jesus do? Jesus became a servant. That’s a big part of the reason why he was on the earth, was to show people that if we are to be great than we must serve our fellow men, and that includes our wives. Men, that includes our daughters and other women. We need to respect them greatly because that’s exactly what God wanted.

And that’s exactly what Jesus showed us. He showed us in his birth, in his life, and in his death, how important women are to everything. In the United States, there’s never been a woman president. I believe that that has happened simply because again, the whole male macho thing.

One day, there will be a woman president, and that will be awesome. That will be a great thing, because I think a woman can bring things to politics that a man can’t, of course, great doesn’t mean it’s good. It can be greatly bad, it could be greatly good, who knows, but it will be different.

So it will be interesting to find out what happens. And of course, I believe that that will happen before the end times. And no men, that will not herald the End Times either. There’s nothing in Revelation that says a woman being president in America is going to herald the End Times, so don’t go there.

Again, in honor of women in history, I very gladly tell you about people like Phoebe, the Deaconess. Ruth, who followed God’s will. Esther, who did so at the risk of her very life. And there are just a couple of examples.

There are many women in history that have given their lives for Jesus for God, and for Christianity. And they did so no less than any men, so men out there.

Remember, women should have just as much power, authority, leadership and everything else as men do. Women should never get paid any less than a man if they’re doing the same job and are doing just as well. Of course, if they’re doing better, they should get paid more.

To me, it’s actually kind of sad that we have a women in history month because we should recognize women in history all the time, just like we recognize men in history.

Full equality for all people is something that I believe that Jesus wanted his what he worked towards. God never said anything about any human being be any being any less than any other human being. He did say that his real was it were his special people. But if you want to know my kind of opinion on that, listen to my episode on the real reason for the flood, because I talk about another possibility a why Israel worth his special people. Bay. Thank you for listening to this episode of Simple Christians. I’ll talk to you next time.