This problem as stated has an undercurrent of sisters feeling subservient to men and/or head knowledge. Learning the truth is not head knowledge. People often acquaint it with such. It’s not the case. Everything that we require to love Jehovah - intrinsically, is already written in our hearts. It is perhaps more accurate to note that the spirit of the creator is within our “life”, the object that Jehovah “breathed into his (Adam’s ) nostrils and he became a living thing”. The command is to “love Jehovah with all your heart and mind, your soul,” This is not head knowledge. Head knowledge is understanding prophesy and that has to be given to one. It is not acquired through learning, but from insight, inspiration from Jehovah if we are to believe our own rhetoric. It gives us the power of discernment over the common philosophical reasoning of man, and makes us think “Yes - this is true.” Thus we can “disregard” the speaker (man) (but disregard the appointment of the speaker at your own peril for they are one and the same), and make that truth our own. But how do we make truth our own, unless we feel it from within and “recognise my (Christ’s) voice?”. It is because we are aware of our spirituality and it awakens to our reasoning. Many, too many, suppress their absorption of the spirit by valuing head knowledge above the sensual realisation of what “truth” actually is. Truth must be imbibed into the soul.
There are two outstanding examples of this in scripture. One is the conversion of Paul. When we read of his conscience about how he, with his head knowledge of Judaism as preached, participated in the slaughter of Christian’s whom were following the example of Christ. We see how years later, his understanding of the attributes of Jehovah had altered his course in life. It is a fine illustration of how the heart informs the head (knowledge). The second example is of Christ’s reply to Pilate when he asked “What is truth?” That is something that can only come from within:- how can any explanation be understood and with meaning, unless one is first aware of its existence?
This is the primary common-denominator of all of us here. Did Jehovah on bringing Adam to life, give him an instruction manual to learn how he was to feel, how to express his thankfulness on coming to awareness, how to maintain his perfection, how he was to respond to these sensations? Recent conversations here on site suggest that the first response of Adam on seeing Eve for the first time was of a sexual partner. But was it? Our first experience in youth of our fellow beings is one of friendship and encounter. Love grows through appreciation of all the faculties of the Spirit, only one aspect of which is head knowledge. There was no need for explanation that we find in the bible, so it stands to reason, that there was no need of Adam to have a ‘bible’ then to teach us how to love one another and our God Jehovah.
So why should sisters remain quiet or be “less than” in terms of contribution? I have learnt far more from sisters here than I have ever learnt elsewhere about the truth., Susan, Edith, Melinda and all the others and from long ago, Raven, who was too aware of the hammering sisters get and never divulged her gender. What she did not know about the bible was scant indeed. Essentially then, the bible instructs us on what is important to our salvation and warns us to be ready. It does not tell us how to love, but that we should. The same with respect for each other, our values toward each other. Submission, in context, is not to be interpreted as “less than”, but within the context that Jehovah meant it to be for the sake of His view of order and completion. There is no subservience in that, only the required respect for Jehovah’s order of things, and which are perfect. One only has to look to watchtower for an example of how misunderstanding, shallowness of application and appalling waste of contributions in balance of thinking from the sisterhood, lies untapped and rejected in the progression of truth amongst those seeking Jehovah.
From a psychological point of view, it is wisdom personified to view the unification of the mindset of women and men as one being - the completeness of the human psyche. It may not be far from the truth to understand that the success of marriage, and the reason for its success in the way of Jehovah, is the fact that when united in mind, man and woman form a completeness of the intended human nature. Thus, far from being “less than” a man, as viewed by watchtower and other religions, and men in general it has to be said, they are the completion of man, the completion of the whole psyche. Far from being at the “intermediate stage of learning” Phyllis, you and all other women who use their intuition from the heart, are at the apex of understanding, far more likely than any man. Intellectual learning is of no value, unless it is warmed and embellished and put into motion and action by love (of the meaning of the attributes of Jehovah) - and women understand that far more wholesomely than man. Show me a watchtower man that has insight into the application of mercy, justice and understanding and who can bleed for such in the case of widows and children. Something else is required and it’s tempered and exposed by love born of understanding the attributes of Jehovah. Thus listening and sharing together as one is the essential factor. Obeying the order of things that springs from it, as does its reasoning upon it correctly, only contributes to that. No one is “less than” the other.
