My friend: “Good post overall. Two questions though. What about the man who abuses or cheats on his wife? And in regards to women leaders, Deborah led the Israelites so there is biblical precident. Your thoughts?”

Me: “Thanks, Mark! I knew I’d get questions on exactly those two issues, so I’m glad you asked. Those are VERY good questions.

Because adultery was punished by death, his death acts as a divorce. In the case of abuse, the Bible never supports a man beating his wife, and we are allowed to make other laws for that. A man who beats his wife belongs in jail, not in his home; and in my opinion, although a Christian/Jewish woman may not be permitted to have another marriage after her first one (unless divorced or widowed in the very specific circumstances mentioned in Deuteronomy, or the husband was an unbeliever who left her as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7), there’s nothing that says she’s prohibited from living apart from him. I don’t have a lot of tolerance for physical abuse from either side, so–in the case of the church–I think the men of the church should straighten a guy like that out by sending him to jail regardless of what she says. No tolerance for the abuse of our sisters!

Deborah is a pretty rare case in Israel, and I think she’s a rare exception to the rule. I’ve never seen anyone called to be a prophet, so I can’t tell you too much about the issue, but I do know that Christ selected men to be His apostles and the overwhelming majority of the prophets, and the apostles made very clear statements about the roles women and men should fill, and made very specific prohibitions regarding women being in church leadership over men. When you’re dealing with Apostolic authority, you take it at face value. … See More

Here’s a pretty good link on the issue for ya:

http://www.gotquestions.org/women-pastors.html

Once again, EXCELLENT questions. I was wondering how much of this I should have included in the article, because they were just begging to be asked. It was so darn long, though!”