Protestants love to tear apart Catholic traditions and teachings, but have several blind spots of their own.
Take food, for example.
Let's face it.
The church has entered the restaurant business.
Warnings of Paul about not being able to concentrate on the Lord's supper because of the suppers of man are totally ignored today, explained away as a cultural "extra".
Worse than that.
Men and women delivered from drugs and drink are being encouraged by their peers and even elders, to be captured by other destroyers, such as excessive sugar and salt.
Gluttony is silently approved as persons with obvious eating problems hear not a word from the pulpit about self control in this area.
Then, "after church" they see otherwise godly men caving in to fleshly appetites, in the name of "fellowship.
" The kitchen opens at Sunday School, then Junior Church, then the aforementioned "fellowships", plus an endless array of breakfasts, luncheons, and suppers.
Persons who try to exercise self control in this area are often pointed out by guilt ridden eaters who feel uncomfortable around such restraint.
Jokes are exchanged about how the diet will begin tomorrow, how fat is beautiful, and so on.
Those who have a problem with overeating, especially with junk food, either give in, to be sociable of course, or finally stay at home and have private devotions in place of the public feast.
These things ought not to be! Let's agree with God's apostle who reminded the people of his day to eat at home! Courageous leaders in our day will simply say, "The kitchen is closed!" and turn that room into a prayer area.
Then turn that time into feeding on the Word and prayer,if the people will come to such things.
It is especially distressing to see the effect of this open refrigerator policy on the children.
There is, perhaps, a need for a small(nutritional!) snack during a 9EUR'12 time period or more on Sunday morning.
Some children are not being fed properly at home.
But here, in the church's opportunity to speak to the world about how Christians care for the body God gave them, the church fills those children's faces with chocolates, soft drinks, pretzels, potato chips, cakes, candies, gum...
Those who live by the "candy draws kids" philosophy seem to be unaware of the fact that God has made some very good and tasty foods all by Himself, without the help of human processing.
I know for a fact that good food, lovingly prepared, will be enjoyed by children.
Parents tend to appreciate churches that care enough to take proper care of their children.
But we were speaking of adult "children", who need to keep the food at home, and come together to feed on Christ! What about women in God's Church? Let's imagine.
Paul the apostle, happily with Jesus these past 1900 + years, has not seen (we will say) the building of the church he helped Jesus begin in the first century.
And, in the 1990's,our own day, let us suppose the Lord says to Paul,"Put on your old body, return to earth, just for a few weeks.
Don't identify yourself.
See if you feel what I feel about what's going on in My church, as you visit the congregations I show you.
" Not without some pain of memory, Paul obeys.
There are many scenes we could paint as we imagine the confrontation of first and twentieth century saints.
I offer this one.
Paul, walking through the downtown area of a major city, is led to a church with a female pastor.
As he walks in, he is greeted by friendly ushers who show him to a seat.
A nice touch, Paul muses, "but hardly necessary.
" There is placed in his hand a program that tells him how the Spirit of God is going to move today.
(We will assume here that Paul is being given the gift of English, as the church I describe is so very American.
) As he looks it over he wonders how they already know that the Spirit is going to have a particular teaching, and what will be the content of the praises.
He begins to feel he is in one of the theaters he has passed on the way here, where signs and programs clearly spell out what will happen.
If the Spirit has already moved, what is the point of the meeting? No time to think of that,for someone has climbed up on a platform that divides a certain group of people from the other group, seated in chairs facing the platform.
(But why do I want to watch them? Paul asks himself.
) Somehow he sits through the announcements, the "preliminaries," the strange sounding music, the half hearted worship.
The one leading the meeting thus far interjects a joke to help "warm" the audience, but the humor of it is lost on Paul, who begins deeply to grieve at the flippant ways of these people calling themselves followers of his Jesus.
Something very familiar begins to rise within Paul, and he hopes he will be able to control an almost certain outburst.
Then she stands, opens the pages of a Bible, and begins to teach the men and women assembled some of Paul's own words to the Corinthian church, about love.
Since she has been introduced as the pastor, Paul knows that she has violated his specific apostolic teaching about allowing women to teach, and take authority over, men.
His standing and speaking is something he did as a matter of course in old Jewish synagogues.
Here it seems out of place, but he reminds himself that it is this "church" that is doing the interrupting, for they have interrupted the plan of God for local assemblies.
Boldly he rises to his feet.
"Men and brothers!" Oh no.
The same sexist phrase recorded in Scripture.
Definitely won't please this crowd.
"Don't you recall the warnings given you about women teaching men in the public assembly?" The sleepy congregation is suddenly quickened.
Of course, the first impulse after awakening is to throw out the one who has intruded upon your sleep.
But the learned pastor decides to use this interruption as a teaching event.
She has had to study this issue intently, since so many men have come against her through the years.
She is prepared.
"And sir, don't you recall that 2000 years have passed since then? Don't you know that the one who spoke those words was culturally biased, and probably hated women himself?" Paul confesses that he didn't know that, and questions "pastor" as to why she would use the words of a woman hater to preach love to her congregation this morning.
After all, he points out, the teaching concerning love and the teaching concerning women are only inches apart in his letter.
He counters her argument by pointing out that "culture" or even a man's personality does not change the Word of the living God, which had been given to Paul.
"When God speaks, He means what He says, " Paul concludes.
Sensing trouble, at this point she terminates the discussion and asks Paul to leave.
I will veil the rest of the proceedings.
But if Paul is still Paul, a riot probably follows...
Denomination after denomination and congregation after congregation is succumbing to the pressure of the day to exalt females to leadership.
Now if indeed God has called a woman to pastor, I will step aside, and say with Paul, "Nevertheless Christ is preached.
" But God would have to give me a vision greater than He gave Peter to shake me loose from the clearly written words of the apostle, and attend such a church! I've read the pro female leadership literature, and found it to be nothing more than "explaining away" the Scriptures.
I've read similar works explaining away the first chapters of Genesis, the book of Jonah, the resurrection.
It's the old, "Did God really say that?" echo of Satan in the Garden.
And, as I say, short of that vision, I'm not buying.
For when we add to or take from the Scriptures, we enter Satan's ground, the ground known as Babylon the Great.
Jesus is Lord of the harvest and can use anyone He wills.
When the officer stands at the street corner by the stop sign and waves me through the intersection, I will not defiantly obey the stop sign.
But no officer, no go.
To shame proud, lazy, or fearful men, God may raise up women.
Some notable examples come to mind.
But none of this changes what God said by the Spirit in the first century.