Ephesians 5; Something Rotten
I wanted to post at length on Ephesians 5:21-33 (which, in Rilina-land, is known as "The passage of scripture that will not be read at my wedding, if I should ever get married"), but the entire passage has given me enough of a headache that you're getting the short version.

Briefly: My pastor has been doing a series on Ephesians, including six weeks on the infamous passage noted above which talks about such pleasant things as male headship and female submission in marriage.

For five weeks, I listened with an open heart. Many of the things that he said about marriage seemed very wise. But the whole time he was avoiding the gender issues, and in week 6, he finally tackled 'em. That's where he lost me. Because my pastor decided to argue that each gender has "particular gifts" - the stereotypical ones. You know, men as leaders, and women as helpers and relationship-builders. Blah blah blah.

Anyway, I ended up sending him a long email with my reaction to his sermon. I asked him if he was suggesting that gender is our destiny. That all women must be one way and all men must be another way? Because while I'd agree that what he said is true as a general tendency (especially in a patriarchal culture that encourages men and women to act in those ways from birth!), it isn't true about all men and all women. So why should all marriages be held to one rubric--men leading, women submitting--when plenty of women have gifts of leadership and plenty of men have gifts of helping? It's like sticking square pegs into round holes, and that doesn't seem characteristic of a God who embraces outsiders and outcasts--and what else will men-helpers and women-leaders become in the world my pastor describes where women have to be womanly women and men have to be manly men?

Full disclosure: It doesn't help that this whole "particular gifts" malarkey is not a particularly happy theology of gender for someone like yours truly, who is quite conspicuously lacking in what my pastor would consider traditional female gifts

In his defense, my pastor did say some good things about redeeming the idea of "submitting" and "helping"--on how Christ submitted himself, not thinking of his own rights, to the will of the Father and the power of being a helper or assistant in God's work. And he did take some care to emphasize women's equality with men before God. But that all rang false when he went on to essentially belittle women's concerns about being oppressed in his next sentence. Typical male.

(On a side note, Camassia wrote astutely a while back on the subject of how imitating Christ's humility should not prevent women from asserting their equality.)

(Yes, this really was the short version. You should have seen the email.)

* * *

I finished reading Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten (2004) last night. As expected, it was good for lots of laughs. I was particularly amused by Friday's speaking of Loren Ipsum. And I was tickled to discover that Fforde shares my opinion of the merits (or lack thereof) of The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.

You know, I do believe that I'm becoming a more careful reader than I have been in the past. I've often enjoyed novels because I can be willfully dense while reading, which allows me to be surprised at the Big Twists. (This is especially useful when reading mysteries.) But these days, I find that I've become much better at predicting twists a few chapters off. That was the case at the climax of Something Rotten, though there was (in Fforde's defense) another shocker that left me, um, properly shocked. Of course, the groundwork for that twist was laid in previous novels, which I read very quickly in some Barnes and Noble in the greater Boston area.

The ending of this novel would have marked a good end to the series, but it seems like there's (at least) one more Thursday Next novel due.