How God Sees Women Quotes

“That’s why, to understand God’s word, we need to put aside the sensibilities and assumptions of our culture, and do our best to enter into the framework of theirs.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Here’s a woman who, for close on two decades, has attended this faith community, disfigured and buckled over in pain. The spiritual leader, whose job is to see people in their community as God sees them, does not seem bothered by her dismal condition. It’s only when she stands upright that he takes offence. Jesus then sends further shockwaves through the gathering as he bestows on this woman a title that has never been given before: “[T]his woman [is] a daughter of Abraham.” Sarah Bessey comments on this moment: “People had only ever heard of ‘sons of Abraham’—never daughters. But at the sound of Jesus’ words ‘daughter of Abraham,’ he gave her a place to stand alongside the sons, especially the ones snarling with their sense of ownership and exclusivity over it all.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“After all, the biblically defined goal of life is not to become more masculine or more feminine, but to become more like Jesus, who is both Lion and Lamb.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“This is why Paul writes, “When I became a man, I put away childish things,” and not, “I put away feminine things.” Instead of contrasting womanhood with, as we often do, manhood, perhaps we’re meant to contrast both with childhood. Children tend to await instruction, to be self-centered, fearful and extremely dependent on others. In contrast, we know we have matured in womanhood and manhood when we have learnt to serve others, be interdependent, and take more initiative and responsibility.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“To be clear, the Bible never commands us to strive for greater levels of masculinity or femininity. Instead, we’re called to greater levels of Christlikeness. We don’t ask, “Am I fulfilling my mandate to become a ‘biblical’ woman or man?” Rather, “Am I imitating Christ?”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“The real sign of God’s work in both men and women is that they both pursue Christlikeness. It’s no secret what Jesus is like. Perhaps Revelation 5 best sums up the stereotype-defying nature of Jesus. In it, John is told to look at “the Lion of Judah” who has triumphed, but when he lifts his head to see him, he is surprised to see “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.” Jesus is both the undaunted lion, and the slain lamb. He carries a scepter of authority, but he also carries the scars from being nailed to a cross. He is both majestic and meek. He is both king and servant. He stands tall, exalted to the heavens, but also kneels down to scoop us to his chest. He is powerful, yet vulnerable; authoritative, yet approachable; assertive, yet acquiescent; roaring, yet weeping; unbreakable, yet broken.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Eve, the first to disobey, may have failed in the garden of the first creation when she carried Satan’s enslaving message to Adam. But Eve’s daughter in the garden of the empty tomb and new creation is the first to obey as she carries God’s emancipating message to the sons of Adam. And just like that, Eden’s curse reverses.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“That Jesus later rubs their noses in their failure to listen to their sisters,[494] makes undoubtable the lesson he is trying to teach us men, right at the launch of the church in the world: learn to accept God’s word in the mouths of your sisters. That Jesus stitches this crucial insight into history’s most important day, and that the writers of the Gospels record it, means that it is a priority lesson we subsequent communities of Christ-followers must never forget.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Paul helped the early church to attract the powerless in droves. The pagan critic Celsus mocked the church in the second century, saying that “Christianity is a religion for women, children, and slaves.”[372]”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“he tells him to now lay down his life for his wife, to not exasperate his children, and to not threaten his slaves. This would have been an absolutely groundbreaking challenge in its day. In a culture that gave husbands the power of life and death over their wives, Paul tells husbands to lay down their power, even to die if need be, so their wives can flourish.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Every second word it seems is “Christ” or “Lord.” Paul is artfully attempting to help everyone—wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters—to see their way of relating to the other as an outworking of their relationship with Christ.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“We imagine that the married couples present in the Ephesian church were more or less like modern ones. We imagine that Paul “sees” us, our contemporary marriages, and therefore writes this letter to us. But no, the marriages he addresses are those in the first century Greco-Roman world, so different from our own.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“The Christian today is separated from the biblical audience by a “river” of differences (e.g., language, culture, circumstances). This river hinders us from moving straight from meaning in their context to meaning in ours. We are certainly part of the same great story, but our place in the story is often different from that of our spiritual ancestors. Sometimes the river is wide, requiring a long bridge for crossing. At other times, it is a narrow creek, which we can cross easily. We need to know just how wide the river is before we start trying to construct a principalising bridge across it.[367]”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Paul’s point is that if God in creation has given Eve and her daughters some kind of authority, it is not for any men (nor biblical translators) to take it from her.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Cynthia Westfall documents the fact that in the Greco-Roman world, female slaves and prostitutes were forbidden from veiling.[180] Married women covered their heads as a symbol of their respectable married status, modesty, and chastity. Their head covering spoke of their honoured status.[181] In Paul’s mind then, when all women covered their heads in a church gathering, it beautifully communicated that all women—whether single or married, slave or free—were honoured in Christ and in church, even those who did not receive honour outside of the church.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Yet in Paul’s mind, our status before God will shape our concrete relationships and the form the church takes. The gospel of Christ opens up not only a new way of relating to God but also to one another.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“In all Paul’s letters he is especially concerned with the difference the gospel actually makes to the practical life of the community. The church is not meant to merely believe the gospel. The church exists to work out in and through its community, the best way for people to relate to and function alongside each other. It is the one place in the world where all are meant to participate on an equal footing.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Holding Galatians and Philemon side by side, we notice that Paul deals with Jew–Gentile and free–slave tensions in the same way: without denying the social differences, he seeks to dissolve the hierarchy as far as possible, by applying the uniting and equalising power of the gospel.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“The gift of the Spirit is given not only as an aspect of one’s full salvation and inclusion in God’s people, but also on behalf of one’s full participation in the mission of God.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Jose ben Johanan of Jerusalem had taught, “He who talks much with a woman brings evil upon himself and will at last inherit Hell.”[154] But Jesus shocks his followers by allowing Mary to “sit at his feet,” a technical term for being someone’s disciple.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“In contrast with the rabbis, who avoided even mentioning women, Jesus populates his sermons with female characters. Scandalously, he likens God’s joy at our salvation to that of a widow who finds her lost coin.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Compare Jesus’ treatment of women with the first century rabbi Eliezer, who warned, “The words of the Torah should rather be burned than entrusted to a woman. Whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who teaches her lasciviousness.”[142] As moderns, we might think Jesus was merely kind to women, but he was far more than that—he was revolutionary.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“in Genesis 2, in which the foremost meaning is given: “It is not good for man to be alone, I will make a suitable helper for him.” She helps him by rescuing him from his aloneness. She is his companion.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“To ezer someone, then, is to make up what is lacking in them by offering one’s strength or intervention.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“In 18 of the 19 instances, the one being helped is not the leader of the helper.[112] Eight of these uses the “helper” is a “saviour,” “protector,” or “rescuer.” In the remaining occurrences, the nature of the help is an offering of strength, often of a military nature.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“What is particularly fascinating, however, is that the word never denotes subordination in the Old Testament. In fact, the word translated “helper” (Hebrew: ezer) is used predominantly in the Bible for God helping his people.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“To credit the man as her authority because she was made from some of his body would mean that Adam would need to call the soil his master, for he was made of dust.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“God could have created the two sexes simultaneously, but he did not. Why? One answer leads: Adam is formed first and then Eve, because God wants to demonstrate to Adam (and his sons) how desperately alone, incomplete and inadequate he is without Eve (and her daughters)—God’s final creation.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“It takes both men and women together to reflect the full image of God. This is the blessing of an alliance.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy

“Notice especially that, although males and females may look different and one is capable of birthing and breastfeeding babies and the other is not, this passage does not create two different sets of instructions for men and women. Not just men, but women too, are given authority as God’s vice-regents, which is an aspect of our full humanity.”
― Terran Williams, How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy