Upon Further Review

April 28, 2024

I appreciate those who have started to read some of my essays. Now I believe it is necessary for them and for others who might stumble across them to hear what I have written about, regarding certain misunderstandings that have wormed their way into Christian doctrine and teachings,

Listening to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians this morning, my memories were awakened by those certain concepts.

First, is the concept of “sin.” Sin is often simply portrayed as doing something naughty. What it is and why God is reported to hate it is because sin is doing harm to ourselves and to others — the opposite results of what God, as a father, wants for us. So, when we simply may hurt someone’s feelings or actually cause physical injury to them, that is sin.

God has a better plan for Humanity.

Second, the story of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace concisely records their original sin as disobedience. True enough, but I have realized that there is more to it. Looking at the entire episode we can discover more sinful behaviors. They both initiated what I have called the Blame Game. (It is a very popular pastime, existing through all the ages, and is still popular and widely, almost universally, practiced today.)

It is not constructive criticism. It is destructive — whether with people or with God.

My list of “Original Sin” grew into “Original Sins” when I reviewed all of Genesis chapter 3 :

• willful disobedience
• pleading ignorance
• attempting a coverup
• making excuses
• claiming helplessness
• blaming one another
• blaming God

Well, believe it or not, all this relates to my deepening understanding of what Paul wrote in Ephesians about husbands and wives…

“Wives submit yourself to your husbands,” has been taken out of context, isolated, and adopted by male chauvinists who like the domination aspect applied in all sorts of many different ways. All the while many women have responded, likewise converting it, forming it into a massive bludgeon, clubbing to death everyone who doesn’t quite see it their way.

What a mess!

What is omitted from this Bible teaching makes the situation onerously burdensome, unjust, oppressive, and unfair to God, Jesus, and the Bible. It certainly does not represent the love between Husband and Wife that Paul promoted in Ephesians 5.

You should read the whole chapter, but in the meantime, I am going to chop it up into smaller, chewable, and digestible excerpts in regard to my topic.

1. submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
2. wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord… in everything.
3. husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her
4. husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies.
5. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.
6. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”

Paul concludes in verse 39, “So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

Somewhere along the long, long history of Mankind men forgot that at the Creation of the heavens and the Earth and all living things, we were given dominion over everything God had made, but we modified our mission to mean we were meant to dominate everything and everyone — except ourselves…

I don’t intend to exclude women from their changing definitions, either… well perhaps not definitions but their roles. Women have forgotten how handicapped men became after the Fall. God told Adam, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken…” Then, many women seem to have gone AWOL on their mission to help the men.

Two things Adam did that made God, let’s say, “unhappy.”

• He didn’t take good enough care of Eve in a watchful sense.
• He not only blamed Eve for his own disobedience, but he had the audacity to blame God for giving her to work the Garden with him in the first place. (“”…the woman you gave me… Adam said.)

When Paul said women are to respect their husbands, I think, aside from cultural views, was like saying recognize what men are up against and that they are pretty frustrated with the difficulties, having the burden of planning, providing, protecting, preparing etc. etc. and often don’t know which way to turn.

It don’t come easy. Women, as equal, intelligent partners really need to step in and help.

What I’m trying to get across with this opinion I can only convey with a scene from the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” :

“Ah, the man is the head of the house!” Maria Portokalos said. “Let me tell you something, Toula, “ she continued, “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.” — https://www.imdb.com

I realize now, as Patty just informed me, you see, turning my head in the right direction, that this quote is a bit manipulative. Nevertheless, its undercurrent shows that men need women’s understanding and support to make the right decisions for both themselves and their families… like people do in a Mutual Aid Association.

(“Mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members to overcome social, economic, and political barriers to meeting common needs.” — Wikipedia.com).

The community here is basically, of course, an association of two.

Anyways, Paul’s views of marriage, while bound as they may be by cultural traditions, is all about self-sacrificing love, and respect, and partnership — no matter what people are claiming these days or how people are behaving in today’s world.

It isn’t constructed to be a prison. It is a structure where a man and a woman can flourish.

Marriage is as old and as changeless as Creation itself — even though the situation surrounding us is no longer Paradise — even so, we can still work it out… if we choose to…

Maranatha! Lord, please save us from ourselves!