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Dear GWfan:

I have lived in many cultures (India, Pakistan, Iraq and many others) where women immediately said "Never" when I told them that "God loves women". To them it absolute heresy. There are millions of women who are not Americans and who are different from you. Unfortunately, many Christians are caught up in America-first or America-only mentality and I don't think that is obedience to God's word. His kingdom is neither Arab nor Jew, male nor female, American or Afganistan.

Yes, I have always known that God loves me. I still do not understand how saying "Peace to all people" is different from "Peace to all men". Please explain the difference. Did God mean peace to all people Or did he mean it just to men? Help me out.

Kay, there is no problem saying that 'God loves all people'. It is the BIG message of the entire Bible. However, when we go in and change selective texts to reflect the cultural attitude of the day, we open the door to change all scripture to mean something it does not.

Take for example, 2 Timothy 3. It describes the qualifications a man must have to be a church leader. If we change the Bible to a gender friendly version, this would blur a very clear message that God intended church leaders to be men. Men were always to be the spiritual leaders. Men were to be the spiritual head of the house. This does not exclude women from serving God, it merely defines what is God pleasing behavior. Many already ignore what Paul says in Timothy. Many ignore what most of the Bible says. This new version just helps eliminate the stuff they don't want to read or understand.

Kay - I am not sure that you are reading all that is available to you concerning this subject.

If all they were doing was changing the usage of Men and Man in context to "people" when referring to all peoples, I doubt many would object. The issue is that these translations change very important word, form and context of the Bible. Please go back and get all the information before you accept this translation.

Honestly though, John 3:16 (For God so loved the World....) and the entire message of Salvation is WORLD based and cannot be confused to pertain to Men only. It is our JOB to inform them of the TRUTH.

I lived in Oman, and the Canadian wife of one of my colleagues got a job at the University there as a research assistant. She was the curious type and asked a lot of questions about Islam.

One was about why women were not allowed inside the mosque during the time of the month they were considered unclean. Her male faculty boss told her that Allah didn't want to hear her prayers during that time? Why she asked? Because he doesn't.

Eventually she was "laid off". We were convinced that it was because she asked too many questions for which there were no logical answers.