Blessing the Curse? A Biblical Approach for Restoring Relationships in the Church
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
The message of the kingdom of God, as brought to us by Christ, is a message that overturns hierarchies, sets free the enslaved, and breaks the power of the curse upon humanity. Yet when it comes to women, the church has chosen all too often to live according to the structures of sin and death, offering them not the good news of Christ, but the curse of Genesis, as their inheritance.
In this powerful and challenging text, Ksenija Magda traces the impact of the curse – and the ever-present temptation to choose the world and its power over the servant-hearted humility of Christ – on our families, our church structures, our nations, and ultimately, our gospel witness. The question of how we view, treat, oppress or empower women is not, Magda reminds us, peripheral to the gospel but foundational. She warns that if men and women will not partner together in building the kingdom of God, they will find themselves partners in the work of upholding the world’s structures of power and oppression.
Will we choose to bless the curse or to redeem it? To live in the death that our foreparents chose in the garden, or accept the life and freedom held out to us by Christ? This is a question upon which human history and the hope of our restoration hangs.
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- Examines the relationship of men and women in ministry
- Traces the impact of the curse on our families, our church structures, our nations, and ultimately, our gospel witness
- Introduction: How the Church Makes the Gospel Bad News for the World
- Blessing the Curse
- Church Structures as Structures of Sin
- The Solution to the Problem of Sin
- The Church as New Creation
- Epilogue: Next Steps
In an ever-winding narrative of Scripture and cultural application, Ksenija Magda expounds the challenge of gender equity with robust frankness. 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.
—Karen Wilson
It is dangerously easy to take individual verses about women out of context and Dr. Magda’s explanations (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