Sexism in disguise? – Ephesians 5-6 (NTiR)

By | August 19, 2010

Bible and magnifying glassI don’t have much to say here. Ephesians is mostly ignorable, except for the big batch of sexism coming up. Otherwise? Nothing to see here, folks…

Chapter 5
The meat of this chapter starts about 20 verses in. The sexist in Paul comes to the forefront again, as he once again states that women are not equals to their husbands. Paul commands that women must submit themselves to their husbands, just as they would to the lord. He repeats again that a man is the head of the wife, and the woman should be submissive to their husband in everything.

Paul apologists try to the next verse as proof that Paul isn’t actually sexist, as he commands that husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies, and nourish them thusly. The chapter ends up, however, with the indicative line, “wives should respect their husbands.”

At least Paul is consistent.

Chapter 6
Paul touches on slavery, saying that slaves should do as their masters say, and that masters should treat their slaves justly. Interestingly enough, Paul doesn’t say “the lord will not tolerate slavery. Which you’d think would be pretty clear from Jesus’s life, but hey, I’m not the man writing these letters.

Paul’s last bit of advice for the Ephesians: gear up with God’s armor (+5 DEF), the belt of truth (+2 CHR) and the breastplate of righteousness (+3 ATT). Add it all up, and the church should be able to fight off “rulers.. authorities.. cosmic powers in the darkness…evil spiritual forces from heaven.” Sounds like it’d be one pretty awesome campaign, perhaps it’ll make it into the next release of World of Warcraft.

Anyway, Paul finishes up, and we can walk away from another dull, boring book.

Up next: Can’t get worse than this…

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Monday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

One thought on “Sexism in disguise? – Ephesians 5-6 (NTiR)

  1. Pingback: Ephesians, the bible’s cure for insomnia – Ephesians 1-4 (NTiR) - Biffster's World

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