Nice Idea Paul - We just don't want to do it...

Isaiah 54:1-57:14
Ephesians 6:1-24
Psalm 70:1-5
Proverbs 24:8

The One Year Bible is normally great at splitting bits of the Bible up into meaningful chunks so that each day you get a bit of the Old Testament, New Testament and Psalms and Proverbs that makes sense and (unless it's a big long Old Testament story or series of prophecies) it rarely divides passages that are meant to be read in the one go.

With today's Ephesians reading however it splits what appears to be a kind of teaching poem of Paul's in two. I call it a "kind of teaching poem" because it is a mixture of sentences about different "opposites" in society and how they should behave towards one another arranged in parallel lines. A bit like Hebrew poetry but in Greek :)

That the One Year Bible splits this very obvious unit up might seem odd at first but this section is probably one of the most edited, censored and spoken against sections in the Bible short of the Sermon on the Mount. All of this editing, censoring and speaking against is not being done by opponents of Christianity, by and large it is being done by Christians.

So why do we edit this passage so much? Is it that it sounds too much like a 1960's hippy speech ranted from the stage of Woodstock after too much cannabis? "Like, man, love your woman. Like, woman, love your man. Bosses, like, look after your workers. Workers, don't diss the boss-man." and so on and so forth. Or do we fear that if we take this seriously and put it into action that our whole world might get turned upside down?

The first bit of editing that takes place is that the overall header of the piece tends to get cut out by those "useful" little headings that Bible translators put in to divide up passages. Verse 21 "Submit to one another out of reverence for the Lord." is divided off in the NIV and other translations (although thankfully not by the NLT) so that the next line, "Wives submit to your husbands" is taken out of this context of love and mutual submission and made to sound like a chauvinist rallying call. Next even the NLT (New Living translation) goes through splitting sections up so that they look like they are all different little commands given by Paul rather than a joined up recipe for how a Christian society might function.

Finally when it comes to preaching on this passage in the Bible Christians of most flags and flavours seem to side with the powerful side of each of Paul's equations and balances and ignore or minimise for the most part the needs of the weaker half. Almost any time I have heard this part of chapters five and six preached on the preacher has focused upon the duties of the wife to submit, the child to obey and the slave to serve. It has been a very rare Sunday when I have heard a call to husbands to enter into a spirit of mutual submission, parents to not provoke their children and bosses to remember that God sees all men as equal before him.

Why is it then that when we hear someone talk about gender issues there is always someone "sound" from the church to label them as undermining God's plan for marriage? Why is it when someone speaks up for the voice of youth that they all too frequently get shouted down in the church for not respecting their elders? Why is it that when someone starts to talk about workers rights in a Christian context that they get labeled a communist? Paul is being radically egalitarian here. He is calling for a massive amount of mutual respect for people of all genders, age groups and social positions. We hear him, we know that he is speaking the word of God but whether out of insecurity or out of prejudice, out of lust for power or fear of using it, we tell him in nice theological sounding words, "Nice idea Paul but we just don't want to do it..."