MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS, ATHEISTS UNDER ONE ROOF

BAHAI – In a first of its kind, Christians, the Baha’is, Muslims and atheists have agreed on one issue; women are not inferior to men.
This was during a women’s devotional meeting which was held at Baha’i Primary School Hall on Saturday.

The event was hosted by the Baha’i Faith and was aimed at engaging various religions to speak on issues that centred on women. Present were representatives from the Islam, Christian, Baha’i and atheism faiths. 
“Women do not necessarily have to submit to their husbands but they too shall submit to their wives,” according to Reverend Jabulani Thwala of the Alliance Church.

Submission

Thwala spoke on the issue of submission and headship in the Christian religion. He expressed that according to Christianity, women were taken as minors and as people who had to be subject only to their husbands.
He said this did not mean that women had to submit to every other men, but only to their husbands.

He quoted the scriptures from Ephesians 5 verse 21, where Paul gave an instruction to believers in Ephesus to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. The reverend went on to read verse 22 where the scripture states that wives should submit to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband was the head of the wife as Christ was the head in the church.

Likewise, Thwala reiterated that the Bible issued a directive that husbands should love their wives just like Christ loved the church. He pointed out that there was a challenge in that this scripture was not well understood by Christians and, as a result, this led to conflicts among husbands and wives.
The reverend highlighted that the submission part tended to be directed towards women yet it had to be done equally among husband and wife. He explained that the meaning of submission, according to the Greek Language, meant decision sharing.

“If we submit to one another, it comes with an issue of sharing, mostly in decision-making. Mostly, as men, we find our word being final but this submission means we have to discuss issues with our wives,” he said.

He pointed out that sometimes wives’ words must be final. Thwala also said submission also meant obedience, however, not that which was blind such that women obeyed to everything their husbands ordered them to do.

He also stated that when the Bible said men were the heads, it meant they represented life. He likened this to a situation where the head was removed from the body and said life stopped. However, Thwala mentioned that the same head could not function if there was no body and women were the bodies.

He advised against Christians using the Bible for their personal gain by abusing the fairer sex. Instead, he said the holy scriptures were to benefit those to whom they were talking to. 

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