I confess, I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to most teaching on women in the text. My husband pointed at it just this Sunday. A random rabbit trail by the teacher on Genesis 3, and my leg started twitching and my smile froze in that Nancy-Pelosi-way I have to hide disagreement for sake of unity. Stephen placed his calm hand on my knee. The chip didn’t get knocked off, but I was distracted through the class thinking about why I’m so touchy on the topic of women?
After much typing and deleting, I can not come up with a succinct reason. I just am. Thank you God for a husband who fights to keep me balanced.
P.S.
I can’t resist. WHY do teachers focus on Eve’s curse never mentioning Adam’s? You would think Eve herself WAS Adam’s curse the way its expounded upon! More on that later.
Kay Bonikowsky 
Jamie, you are right that men have been screwing it up badly for too long.
Kbonikowsky, you might be riled because you sense in your spirit that the gospel of freedom does not teach what they do, that their one-sided teaching does not love others as they love themselves. Many texts in the Bible plainly say the opposite of what they think. For example, it is no praise to Adam when in 1 Timothy it say that Eve was misled and Adam was not. For in the previous chapter, Paul say God had mercy on him because he was under a wrong impression when sinning (1 Tim 1:13), and he speaks of sinners who sinned knowingly and was given over to Satan.(1 Tim 1:19). John is right about Eve’s “curse”, go read the words in Genesis 3 and you will see the sepent is told “because you did this, you are cursed.” The man is told “because you did this, the earth is cursed.” The words to Eve have no “because you did this”, nor a “X is cursed.”
Perhaps this could teach you something: http://christianrethinker.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/the-plain-meaning-of-the-text/
Yes, it’s self-promotion to link to my blog, but if Bible teaching on women riles you, egalitarian teaching may be what you need.
LikeLike
That’s been a frustration of mine for years, and the way the church has botched the issue so badly is the main reason my mom hates organized religion so much. It’s too bad that a lot of the church’s structure and theology came out of the early Middle Ages when Biblical scholarship was so horrible. Even Seed, which has pretty good theology, has a blindspot at times when it comes to gender issues.
I’ve got a commentary on Genesis you should read. The ironic thing with the curses is that we misread/translate them even today. Eve’s ‘curse’ was really just describing the natural consequences, like “your hand got burned because you touched the hot stove”. Adam’s curse was an actual punishment for his failure which implies greater culpability.
LikeLike
This makes sense.
LikeLike
Hahaha! We could blame it on Mom [sorry, Mom]!
LikeLike
I guess we could do a bible search on passages that refer to Eve’s transgression and compare it with those covering Adam’s?
LikeLike
So am I! More and more so recently, and I can’t quite pin down why it is increasing for me. Anyway . . . I would love to see a post on when we should and should not hide disagreement for the sake of unity.
LikeLike
You’re touchy on it because men have been screwing it up for hundreds of years. And most women just go along with it.
LikeLike