Many long-time readers of this blog know I love John Shore. I even have a link to his blog, for Pete Sake! And now that I am a FAN of his on Facebook, it’s that much easier to get the latest and greatest posts the man writes.
So, I’d LOVE for you to read it here, and let me know your thoughts regarding the issues he raises. Many of the questions he poses are the same ones I’ve asked recently – so your heartfelt responses are appreciated! And hey, you might as well answer him, too!
Just Rambling 
Thank you for pointing out someone who understands what a true Christians should be and bring out some very valid points up. And your never lame, quite the opposite!
Man, John has almost 100 comments over there, so I think I’ll just stay here, if that’s OK. 🙂
He’s right, that chapter is not about worship, or at least not about worship only or corporate worship only.
But I’d argue it’s not about everything everywhere either. In 1 Tim. 3:15 Paul tells Timothy he’s writing the letter so that Christians know how to conduct themselves in the “household of God,” which I think means both in the narrow sense of corporate Sunday worship and in the broader sense of the whole Christian community of the Church.
The key is that this has to do with the Christian community. Jesus, Paul and Peter make a distinction between the Church (as a community) and the world. Jesus said to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Paul writes at length about submission to worldly authorities in Romans 14. Peter tells us that we are aliens and strangers in this world. We are citizens of a better country.
But, for now, we are also citizens in this world. As the old saying goes, in the world but not of it.
So Paul’s instruction in 1 Tim. 2 in that passage is about conduct of women in the Christian community. In the secular, non-Church, arena, can a woman have authority over a man? Sure, why not? So Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton running for president is certainly acceptable. A man working for a woman is certainly acceptable.
But what about the expensive clothes thing? Personally, in regard to Sarah Palin, from everything I’ve read about that whole situation it says more about the Republican Party than it does about her. Not to get too far astray, they’re the idiots who bought her the clothes and then fumbled up how it was handled in the press. Is she blameless? No, but far less to blame than the party, it seems to me.
But still, there is something to the observation or complaint. Can a Christian woman be in compliance with 1 Tim. 2 by dressing modestly when in the Church community and wearing what she wants when outside of it? No, I don’t think so. Part of our being aliens and strangers is that the world ultimately recognizes us as such. At some level we shouldn’t look like the world, act like the world, think like the world, talk like the world, etc. Somehow they should see something about us that’s different: alien, strange. Imagine how alien and strange it would have looked if Sarah Palin had turned down the fancy clothes and wore what she normally wears. Now that would communicate something!
There’s a guy who writes about this sort of thing that is much smarter about it than I am, at deregnisduobus.blogspot.com. He’s a very cool guy. A couple of his recent posts on this have been pretty good. He even recently wrote a book about it, that I’d like to get and read.
Part of the problem that John Shore senses is due to too much of the Evangelical church getting too much in bed with the Republican Party. We are not the world. We are not the Republican Party. Or the Democratic Party. Or the Libertarian Party. Or the Green Party. Etc. We are Christians. We are the Church. If we have any brains and open up our eyes, we can see plenty to criticize in both of the major political parties, both promote all sorts of things that are inconsistent at the least and contradict, at worst, biblical teaching. A pox on all their houses, says I.
It’s hard enough to understand what the Bible teaches us, learn it, and apply it in our lives, and then try to explain it faithfully and winsomely to others. Defend the Democrats or Republicans because of Christians on one side or the other who uncritically support them? Uhhh………..no thanks.
Peace, out.
Not to belabor the issue, but it occurred to me that in regard to Sarah Palin, her Christian faith, and her recent foray into a national election, there are a couple things she deserves credit for, to be fair.
The clothes thing could have / should have been handled better. But I think a big reason for why she was so well loved by so many Evangelicals is for her reaction to two personal events: 1) knowing she was carrying a Down syndrome child, she and her husband decided not to abort but to go through with the birth; 2) she didn’t castigate her pregnant daughter.
The former is one of those things where Christians can take a stand for life, and she did so. The latter is one where the stereotype of Evangelicals is that we’re all full of hate and are judgmental about unwed mothers. Again, they did not resort to abortion, did not shun their daughter or shut her up in a closet, but affirmed her while also choosing life, and in this case there seemed to be a legitimate reason for their daughter to marry the father (as opposed to a spiteful “shotgun” type wedding). I think they would have been just as well admired if the decision had been to carry the child to term and give him or her up for adoption.
I think for most Evangelicals, those two personal decisions far outweighed the controversy over her clothes.
It’s easy to criticize, especially when we see incongruities like with the 1 Timothy 2 passage. It’s right and fair (“meet and right so to do”) to affirm good decisions, too.
(Hope your shoulder recovers quickly!)