Читать книгу Blessing the Curse? - Ksenija Magda - Страница 1
Оглавление
One of the most attractive aspects of this outstanding book is how Ksenija Magda very thoroughly examines Scripture and lays out the foundations carefully. From these foundations she challenges our views on male-female relationships throughout history and up to today. She convincingly points out how these views have had severe defects and have hindered the spread of the kingdom of God through his church. She goes on to explain how in fact the church is responsible for many of the negative effects and reactions in society.
I appreciate how she shines light on hierarchy and how this affects all areas of life and society including male-female relationships. I wish this book would have been published forty years ago. It certainly would have helped to straighten out my warped understanding of the role of women. It would have sped up what I have had to learn through much pain.
This book deserves wide distribution.
Thomas Bucher
General Secretary, European Evangelical Alliance
Blessing the Curse? is a fascinating journey through a deep and wise theology of God’s perfect will in our contemporary scene. Redemption and restoration are its goals. In fact, recovering the original purpose for both women and men is the main purpose of the book and to read it is to enjoy an amazing journey. I am thankful to the Lord for the day he let Ksenija Magda come up with this wonderful literary work – the timing is perfect! Please open your spiritual eyes and listen to the sweet voice of God who says, “I will bless you . . . and you will be a blessing.”
Liliana Fernández
Psychologist and Writer
President, UFBAL (Union of Baptist Women in Latin America)
Dr. Ksenija Magda has decades of academic insight and personal experience about the roles and gifting of men and women in the church. Her underlying point – that the church has accepted and even fostered inequality, rather than the partnership seen in Genesis 1 and 2 – is a really helpful way to understand the whole Bible narrative of men and women. It is dangerously easy to take individual verses about women out of context and Dr. Magda’s explanations of those passages (with much academic firepower) reminds readers that God’s design is for women and men to be a blessing to each other and to our needy world.
Amanda Jackson
Executive Director,
Women’s Commission, World Evangelical Alliance
This book is based on sound biblical scholarship, wide-ranging experience and deep spiritual reflection. Ksenija Magda engages with the issue of male-female relationships at a profound level, exposing the damaging “hierarchies of sin” that destroy life-giving human relationships, churches, society and the environment. Those who promote these “hierarchies of sin” deny God, seek to make themselves “gods,” are materialistic and use power in an abusive way. This is a thought-provoking book that can change the way women and men think and live. The application of its prophetic insights can infuse the everyday realities of our lives with God’s life-giving salvation and bring hope to our troubled world. I consider this book to be well worth reading – and living.
Louise Kretzschmar
Professor of Theological Ethics,
University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
This wonderful book speaks to the little girl I once was, who desperately wanted to love Jesus with my whole heart, yet couldn’t quell my urge to rebel against the church’s constraints on me as a female. I wanted to speak, preach and lead, but instead I was encouraged to clean, cook and care for children. This same girl grew to a woman who desired to honour God in her marriage but was repelled by teachings on submission; at worst I feared abuse, at best I feared my liberty would be limited. I have spent years trying to make peace with this tension without losing my freedom in Christ. Dr. Magda’s intelligent and thoughtful book is a godly and gracious guide through this ongoing process. She has demonstrated that challenging the church notions of hierarchy is integral to this process. By reading this insightful text, I have undergone a paradigm shift regarding assumptive power structures within church. I have been challenged to question these structures and to analyze if they reflect the curse or the cross. For if they reflect the curse, women will remain in bondage to inequality and vulnerable to abuse; if however they reflect the restorative power of the cross, as Dr. Magda suggests, gender inequality and indeed perhaps other forms of injustice will be dismantled.
Elissa Macpherson
President,
Baptist Women of the Pacific, Baptist World Alliance
We have good reasons to believe that as the 1900s have been the century of ecclesiology, the current period may well be the century of anthropology. And probably no other area of this theological discipline needs more prophetic renewal than that of gender relations. Ksenija Magda’s daring book tackles head on the responsibility of the church, in all its traditions, for supporting and promoting the oppressive hierarchical patriarchy that still dominates our world, hurting not just people, but everything else. She calls this ecclesial blindness “blessing the curse,” the foolish attempt to redress the consequences of the fall into expressions of normality, even presenting it as “God’s eternal plan,” and thus, literally ignoring the work of the cross in this area of the plan of salvation. The harm that this has done to the world and to the gospel of Christ was enormous. Yet, even if this may have been, as Fiorenza suggested, a coping mechanism that the church has adopted in order to survive in a misogynistic world, Magda believes there is a better way. Nevertheless, in order to find it, we all, men and women alike, need to willingly take our crosses and follow Christ on it.
Danut Manastireanu
Director of Faith and Development,
Eastern Europe and Middle East Region, World Vision International
PhD Coordinator,
International Baptist Theological Seminary Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In an ever-winding narrative of Scripture and cultural application, Ksenija Magda expounds the challenge of gender equity with robust frankness. In pages punctuated with personal stories and anecdotes from years of visiting other nations, Magda unpacks Scripture in a way that dignifies both men and women, but not without warnings. She has something powerful to say to both genders and it needs hearing. This book is not for the faint-hearted and needs to be embarked upon with openness of mind and humility of spirit.
Acknowledging the many obstacles ahead, the leadership path for women may still be one of suffering, Magda points out, but hopefully there is a better future: a future where we are willing to learn from one another; a future where men and women flourish together; and a future where we step into mutual strength and celebration of one another.
Karen Wilson
Chairperson and CEO, Global Leadership Network Australia
Director, Strategic Relations, Transform Aid International
President Elect, Baptist World Alliance Women
Blessing the Curse?
A Biblical Approach for Restoring Relationships in the Church
Ksenija Magda
© 2020 Ksenija Magda
Published 2020 by Langham Global Library
An imprint of Langham Publishing
Langham Publishing and its imprints are a ministry of Langham Partnership
Langham Partnership
PO Box 296, Carlisle, Cumbria, CA3 9WZ, UK
www.langham.org
ISBNs:
978-1-78368-792-3 Print
978-1-83973-080-1 ePub
978-1-83973-081-8 Mobi
978-1-83973-082-5 PDF
Ksenija Magda has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.
Requests to reuse content from Langham Publishing are processed through PLSclear. Please visit www.plsclear.com to complete your request.
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-78368-792-3
Cover & Book Design: projectluz.com
Langham Partnership actively supports theological dialogue and an author’s right to publish but does not necessarily endorse the views and opinions set forth here or in works referenced within this publication, nor can we guarantee technical and grammatical correctness. Langham Partnership does not accept any responsibility or liability to persons or property as a consequence of the reading, use or interpretation of its published content.
Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB
To Baptist women of the world:
May they always find a church that will accept and nurture them.
