judybarrettblog

Okay, I am not for adultery, even on an emotional level, but some of us in the church have gotten a bit nuts over the male/female issue. I’ll admit, if the sight of a woman, any woman, causes you to ‘lust in your heart’ then you need to do something about it. But that something does not involve placing rules on all of the people around you just because you are still thinking like a 13-year-old boy. It means you need to grow up!
My husband is an ER doctor. If he followed all of the ‘rules’ we are now seeing for Christian men he would be out of a job. (We do enjoy laughing about it with our other ‘health-care’ friends as we sit in the pew listening to all of this ‘good advice’ though. Comedy in the church is rare so these ‘talks’ are not completely useless…)
The problem is that many of the ‘rules’ assume that men have not grown up, and will never grow up. Bull! I have seen men go out of their way to love and protect women rather than take advantage of them even though the opportunity was there. (Non-Christian, tough guys, not committed to purity, but with an ounce of decency in their make-up.) These are the ‘real’ men. Truthfully, if I actually felt that my pastor needed ‘rules’ to keep him away from women I would not think him mature enough to be a pastor. Sure he can fail. But for the most part he should be mature enough to overcome his raging hormones, at least for an hour, so that he can talk to a matronly mother of seven without wanting to jump on her! (I am tired of having to bring my husband, keep the door open, or not go to the restaurant where the guys go to talk for fear of impropriety. I was once a physical therapist, trusted to treat partially naked men when they had a groin pull, or worse I was an 18 year old personal care aide who gave sponge baths to men who were confined to their homes. This is just pathetic.)
If these ‘rules’ were applied to the Bible, Paul, a single guy, would have lost half of his work force. None of the prophets would have been allowed to stay alone in a widow’s home. John would not have the affectionate (friend) relationship that he obviously shared with the woman in 2 John. Deborah (a married woman) would have never been allowed to sign a duet with Barak (not her husband). Rebekah, Rachel and Zipporah (unmarried women) should not have been talking to strange men at wells. You see where I am going with this. If we are going to be brothers, and sisters in Christ (like they were in the Bible) then we are going to have to grow up!
Someone once said, ‘If she is not your wife, then she is your sister in Christ. Treat her that way.’ This doesn’t mean avoiding her and acting like she has the plague. This means you love her, care for her and look out for her best interests. What if men actually did this? Got to know the women in the church. Could they stop a naïve girl from falling for some young schmuck before he got her pregnant? Could they figure out that maybe this wife was being abused and beat the crap out of (I mean, nicely talk to) her husband and cause it to stop? Is it really better for everyone that we keep the sexes at arm’s length, or are their benefits to actually acting like one body in the church?