The kid looked up, exasperated. "Do I look like I have been playing?"

Consider the bum rap my good friend the Apostle Paul gets on the subject of women.

True, Paul invited some of the confusion. He did tell the women in Corinth to be quieter in church. We don't know what that was all about.

If the women were the ones making a disturbance, they needed to be told to put a lid on it. Paul was always putting pressure on his churches to keep order and not scare off the converts.

But Paul did not tell women to be subservient to men in marriage - or in anything else. The great passage which seems to cause such confusion (Ephesians 5:21-33), is actually very clear. To make sure he is not misunderstood, Paul begins with the words, "Be subject to each other, out of reverence for Christ." Then, for the next eleven verses he talks about the "mystery" which binds two people, who have become "one flesh," in service to each other.

At no point in this scripture does Paul suggest that the wife should defer intellectually to her husband.

The Gospel truth is that we all live in direct relationship to God - and all of our decisions are to be made on the basis of that relationship. To intrude the husband between a wife and God in forming her judgments is a terrible and frightening denial of her position in Christ before God.

This would be a serious offense to the Gospel - as serious as the effort by some in the early church to intrude circumcision between a person and God in the work of salvation.

Nothing and no one must stand between us and God in making life's decisions. In marriage, a man and woman must, in equal submission before God and to each other, seek God's will in their lives.

To say that the wife gets God's answers secondarily through her husband is a denial of the "oneness" of marriage, and a dangerous denial of basic Gospel truth.

For Paul's final word on the subject, read Galatians 3:28. With God, the categories "male" and "female" do not even count.

Be in church this Sunday.