A Belgian minister has called for Christian television to be banned after a Songs of Praise-style program gave an on-screen Bible reading calling for women to be submissive to their husbands.
Sven Gatz, the minister for media in Flanders, told the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad that he would make a renewed push for the abolition of religious services on public funded channels.
“Of course I am not behind these kinds of statements,” he said. “The fact that they come from an old book is not an argument for letting them go on our people. This is not of this time, and that it is broadcast on the VRT for the whole of Flanders is already completely crazy.”
The Dutch Bible Society has rightly responded to Gatz saying the excerpt, from Ephesians 5:22-33, should not be “ripped out of its context.”
R.C. Sproul once said, “Isn’t it amazing that almost everyone has an opinion to offer about the Bible, and yet so few have studied it?”
Imagine being so ignorant that you take offense to the Christian teaching that men ought to love their wives with a sacrificial-type love, while women ought to submit to their husbands with respect.
Then again, we never hear the same people complaining that this very passage commands men to live sacrificially for women… Funny that.
And what’s the alternative, anyways? Live a self-serving, self-gratifying, self-seeking existence with the person you’ve married? Is there any wonder our divorce rates are so high?
