Renew Your Mind

I have read Driscoll's chapter ' How Sharp the Edge? Christ, Controversy, and Cutting Words' in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God , and was very disturbed. Driscoll talks about the need for church leaders and preachers to speak 'tough and tender words', and goes on to give examples of what he considers those tough words should be. Unfortunately, he devotes an inordinate amount of time to examining Old Testament passages which criticize women. Here's an example- Virtually the entire book of Amos is a rebuke to swine. The painfully devastating satire is pointed at rich women who are fat cows and get drunk at concerts and act like Paris Hilton's BFF. (p. 85) And here's another- Proverbs is littered with similar rebukes to swine. Scattered throughout the book are repeated rebukes of loud women, whoring women, foolish women, nagging women, and contentious women. Some of the best rebukes are reserved for women who are impossible to live with. (p....

When you meet someone new, how do you identify yourself? Maybe it's nationality, or places you've lived, or job, or relationships..... If you are an expat, the question of identity becomes particularly important. In every new place, you have to start again, build an identity, struggle for significance in a new situation. So it really struck me, reading how Peter begins his first letter, that he chose to name his hearers as 'exiles'. That was their reality- they were expats, forced to flee their homeland by religious persecution, and now scattered all over the Mediterranean. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia... 1 Peter 1: 1 The whole way through his letter, Peter is aware of the way these people are seen by the world they live in...and maybe also how they feel about themselves. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles..... 1 Peter 2:11 It's tempting to "spiritualize" theses ...