“Women should be silent during the church meetings. It is not proper for them to speak. They should be submissive, just as the law says.” (1 Cor. 14:34)
Now I don't know anyone who really likes this verse. We tolerate it. We joke about it. Some people may feel strongly about it but I can't remember ever meeting anyone who actually liked this verse. We are rather embarrassed by it in our 21st Century post modern world. Women be silent in church?! Preach that on a Sunday morning! Better yet preach that message on Mothers Day. Hey ladies, shut up. It's not “proper” for you to be talking here today. Hush. And of course we've all heard the sermons justifying the “real” meaning behind what Paul said. He didn't really mean that women were never allowed to speak in church, no, he... uhm he meant that they... uhm, shouldn't teach, yeah that's it, they shouldn't teach men. But it's ok of they have a word of prophecy or something like that because that's different. And certainly they can pray, and sing on the worship team or “share” something. But silence? No that's not what he meant.
I'm not doubting that there may be some validity to these lines of reasoning. Perhaps taking the whole counsel of scripture into account we could find that women did have a more equal share in public ministry and maybe that verse is in reference to teaching men. But something about what that man prayed and what we seem to see a lot of – women, women, women, praying, praying, praying, struck me. His prayer was to ask for forgiveness as a man (and for men in general) for causing women to sin by filling in the men's places. Do we do that? Do we stand in the way of our men leading? What would happen if the women all decided to be quite in church meetings. We refused to pray or prophecy or share or even to sing. The women were silent. Well, we'll never know because that would indeed be a major move of God to get women to be silent in church meetings. I'd love to find out. I'd love to see week after week the silence from the sopranos. Singing from our seats but not leading. Praying from our seats but not leading. Hearing the Lord and recording his message to take to our “husbands” later but not leading. I wonder if we women do sin by filling in this gap so to speak. Not allowing the men to come forward because we have monopolized the God arena. It's a very interesting thought to me. One I can only pray about and blog about. And perhaps if women were to take the lead we could start by leading in listening and allowing our men to come forth more boldly.
