Pastoral Marriage Killers 3

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: (Deuteronomy 13: 6 – 8)

I want to close this topic by asking some questions.

Why is a wife included in this passage that talks about enticement to idolatry?

Could she have been included if she was treated the way the Eurocentric church that we inherited treat their wives?

Does it mean that Israeli wives were more wicked than women from other nations?

On the same vein, who misled the wisest man on earth?

Women are women, wherever they come from.

A European woman is no more different than an Arab woman than an educated woman is to an illiterate one.

They were all made of the same material and so possess the same basic inclinations.

Upbringing and culture will predispose one to more vice than another. One will predispose one to submission even as another will lead towards feminism.

It is on that basis that the Bible is universal because it comes from the One who created all things.

Trashing things by branding them Old Testament therefore makes us prone to error and intense disappointment. Because nothing in nature veers so off the beaten path.

Let us go to the New Testament to ask a few other questions.

Peter had a wife before Jesus called him.

What was her name?

What was her ministry?

Where do we see her in his ministry?

Except for Paul, and probably Barnabas, all the other apostles had wives.

Where do we see them in the book of Acts?

Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? (1Corinthians 9:5)

If as we read, they were leading their wives, could they have been leading them as we do if none of them is visible in the scriptures?

Could those wives whose names we do not know have had as much influence and visibility as we have allowed the modern wife to have? Could they have been validating the calls of their husbands?

That is what I want to leave you meditating on.