Women's Day!

Binhi sang Pagtuo

March 8, 2010

Dear Centralians and Friends,

Greetings from the campus!

Today is International Women’s Day. In commemoration of this event, let me share a portion of my lecture on the Role of Pastors in Overcoming Violence against Women that was delivered last Saturday at the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches headquarters.

Hans Küng wrote that religion can provide “A change in the inner orientation, the whole mentality, the ‘hearts’ of people, and a conversion from a false path to a new orientation for life.” This means that the church has a big role in the formation of theology and practice of the people.

Re-reading of the Bible is very important. Oftentimes, we read the Bible with close minds. This means that we already have an interpretation before we actually read it. Re-reading can change our perspective.

The issue of violence against women is related to the issue of dominance. And one of the scripture texts used to reinforce dominance of men on women is Ephesians 5:21ff “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

If we re-read the words of Paul in the original Greek, we can see that our usual interpretation of the meaning of head and submission is far from the intention of Paul.

There are two different words that mean head in Greek. First, arche which means “beginning, chief, boss, ruler of a group.” But Paul did not write that the “husband is the arche of the wife, instead, he used another Greek word with another meaning. Paul used kephale. Kephale is translated also as head but the meaning of this Greek word is a leader that is a servant of all, willing to give up life itself for the body. Verse 23 says, “as Christ is the head (kephale not arche) of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.”

Be subject to – “wives should be subject to their husbands in everything.” Paul did not use hupakouo which means the obedience of a slave to a master, nor did Paul use peitharcheo which means obedience to someone who is in authority, nor did he use hupotasso which means to subordinate someone such as the plight of the conquered.

Instead, Paul used hupotassomai. The essential meaning of this word is “be responsive to the needs of” or in modern translation, “be supportive of.” It is almost identical to the meaning of agape which is which means “giving up of one’s self-interest to serve and care for another.”

With this re-reading of Paul’s words, we can see the original meaning and hopefully change our theological framework, then our way of life especially on how we view and behave towards women.

May God bless us all!

Sincerely,

Pastor Francis Neil G. Jalando-on

Assistant Chaplain