How do feminists deal with Scriptures that go against the movement?

[Gardening_Mommy]

Yeah, the joke in our house goes something like this:

DH: You couldn’t be meek and submissive if you tried!

Me: Yeah, well, you aren’t dead yet, so you must not be trying hard enough!



Seriously, though, I think women got the better half of that deal, especially since the norm at that time (and in a lot of the world now) is that the wife becomes the man’s property and/or loses her family to join his. St. Paul also instructs all Christians to submit to one another out of love for Christ, so the idea of humble consideration of others isn’t just for women.

It’s hard, though, to trust in love. Look at Eve; she grasped after something she already had (“to be like God”), sucked in by the fear that maybe God wasn’t REALLY out for her best interests and was holding something back.

 

[Image_of_God]

Thank you everybody. I have learned a great deal just by reading. I guess I should read the Bible in context.

 

[Klydewannab]

I asked the same question several years back. At the time I was listening to a lot of Protestant talk radio, where the women really believed in being submissive. While their views were interesting and helpful, they did not completely satisfy me. I did come to believe that the man should be the spiritual head of the household. Some studies have supported this, showing that there is a strong correlation between children remaining in their faith if the father attends church and/or teaches their faith to their children. This correlation is irregardless of weather the mother does or does not do the same.

Still, I kept searching. Now that I am investing more time in Catholic catechesis and apologetics, I’ve found answers that are more substantial, liberating, reasoned, respectful to women and men, and biblical. I found these answers in Christopher West’s CD’s titled “The Genius of Women” which was an aid to understanding Blessed John Paul’s Theology of the Body.

Then I heard Fr. Corapi explaining that the word “submission” might be better translated “in relation to”. So that the passage about wives submitting to their husbands might be better understood as both husbands and wives needing to relate to Christ; the wife relates to her husband as Christ relates to his bride the Church, and the husband willingly sacrifices his life as Christ did for his bride the Church.

Sacrificing one’s life does not mean just jumping in front of a car to save someone, it also means the little sacrifices each day. As the CC puts it, dying to oneself to rise in Christ. There is a Catholic artist (can’t remember her name) who did a song about her husband’s everyday sacrifices, like getting up before her to make coffee and bringing it to her in bed, or one time having to say no to golfing with the buddies because one of the kids needs him at home.

These little sacrifices, or as St. Therese said, the Little Way, should really be practiced by all of us, men and women, a little more, including myself.

I digress though. My main point was follow Jesus’ advice–ask, seek, knock. You have asked. You are seeking. Continue to search for the answers in faith, to search for the truth, and allow the Holy Spirit to lead you to other avenues, besides this forum, that might help you understand any passages from the Bible that confuse, confound, bewilder, make you feel ooky, or seem just plain weird.

As to how feminist deal with these passages…sometimes they take them out of context, sometimes they shun them, sometimes they ignore them, sometimes they misunderstand them (like using the modern definition of what submission means in today’s society without understanding what it might have meant two thousand years ago to a Roman Jew or Greek gentile, or early Christian), sometimes they twist them to mean something else, sometimes they use them as a reason to turn away from God or to turn others away from God, and sometimes they use them to better understand God and to understand, as your screen name says, how they are made in the Image of God and made uniquely woman as well.

God bless