Today we had our Annual General Meeting and one of the main things we had to do was ratify our new constitution. I expected this to be somewhat interesting (in a confrontational way) however, what I was not expecting was for someone to bring up the issue of women in Church leadership positions, so I was surprised when just this issue arose. It was taken care of in a healthy manner and addressed well but I realized two things from the incident. First off, I realized how important understanding the whole theology of the Bible is. If the person who had made the comment was able to look at the whole of scripture with all its examples of female leaders and talk of equality I don't think that he would have had any choice but to recognize that the verses he was referring to, applied to a specific cultural context and were not immediately applicable to our own. This has led me to again think on how important it is for me as a youth pastor to make sure I instil this understanding within my students.
My second realization was that I am completely and utterly postmodern. To be honest my problem with this situation isn't the fact that this man has that opinion. I know this to be true because a few years ago a friend of mine was part of an interview for a female Biblical Studies professor and he ended off by saying that he thought she would be a good hire for the school but his convictions would not allow him to take her classes (because he too misinterpreted New Testament passages). However when he was being criticized I actually spent time defending him and saying that we needed to be sensitive to the fact that his convictions were real.
No the issue is not the opinion it is that someone's wrongful opinion was being forced upon the rest of us. Very interesting to note my own postmodern worldview that makes me comfortable with tensions as long as they don't interfere with my life.
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