Deborah Harrell wrote:
What IS it with various religious factions and their profound fear of women? Sheesh, even among the baboons at least females determine ranking in the society...
Haven't we spent a fair amount of our energy over the past couple of hundred thousand years separating ourselves from the so-called lower primates? So maybe it's the fear of becoming baboons?
Maybe it's the fact that women are magic (Really. Other *people* come out of them!), and most religions are afraid of magic.
Really, though, I think it has to do with controlling reproduction. Until *very* recently, there was no way for a man to know whether the person who came out of his wife was his or not. Fear and the biological imperative added up to some pretty brutal habits that die hard.
Breaking up families, not allowing dissenters to see their family members, no access to outside influences - how loving, how Christ-like...
Yeah, but that Jesus is full of surprises:
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters -- yes, even his own life -- he cannot be my disciple." -- Luke 14:26
It's sayings of Jesus like this that give me pause when anyone -- myself included -- claims to know what Jesus would say or do.
And yes, I know that the word "hate" as Jesus uses it here probably means about 100 things that we don't normally think it means, and yes, I know I'm taking one verse out of context.
Dave
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