To Gabriella, who is in the Majority

A word on reading this: The links are important, and give much context. Most of the truly important parts I have included as hover-text so you don’t have to actually open the page, but it is a more excellent way if you do. These things take time; which I encourage you to take as testament to my sincerity.

Hosea 10

¹³ You have plowed iniquity;
you have reaped injustice;
you have eaten the fruit of lies.
Because you have trusted in your own way
and in the multitude of your warriors,

This is a learning opportunity. If not: you can still be of service to other as a signpost.

Gabriella, over many comments on my post Advocates Under Authority, has made many comments about why she ought to be exempt from obeying God’s revelation of the natural order of men and women; especially concerning husbands and wives.

In her latest several iterations of “I just don’t feel like submitting to my husband” she said:

Egalitarianism is trickier. Perhaps not to [Dalrock], but I have a hard time not seeing a rejection of egalitarianism as a cop-out. Its like, even if you make a good argument that women are not equal to men, there is still the nagging sense that they SHOULD be and perhaps with the right training they could be.

Where oh where could that nagging sense have come from? No person should trust the judgment of a one with a perpetual nagging sense that what they want is therefore probably good, because they judge the goodness of things by an unnamed and indefinite feelings of want. You have read that that rebellion leads to sin and death, yet you reject it for nebulous “nagging senses”. Instead, you ought to recognize such sensations for the call of temptation that it is, demolish the argument, and make it captive to Christ.

There are a few things I’ve made up my mind about and one of those is the permanence of marriage. Another is that BC is evil, and it only took me 8 years to come to that conclusion.

No family has eight years to spend for a wife (or a husband for that matter) to suss out every moral quandary. You’ve accomplished two. At this rate, when you decide to agree with 6,000 years of scriptural REVELATION, you and your descendants to the tenth generation will be dead. Does this seem profitable to you?

I suspect you chose to tackle the birth control issue before marital submission precisely BECAUSE it is not explicit in scripture. Isn’t it not only possible but foretold to you that the “nagging sense” you have is a refusal to submit to clear revelation from the Lord? Birth control is, you know, “important” like abortion and homosexuality*, as the crumbling American churches keep telling us. But in today’s society you can look around and know most American Roman Catholics don’t really care two whits about them. Their negligence means it’s really up to Gabby; not the church, because the RCC only barely pretends to care about it, and they mostly as a rallying point. This de facto vacuum of authority leaves Gabriella the power to choose, and that satisfies you. It satisfies you so much that you sucked that lollipop of personal empowerment on whether to choose birth control for EIGHT YEARS; on what is long-settled Catholic teaching. If my assumption of this is wrong, that can be easily proved by whether or not you used birth control during those eight years, or obeyed (took, as a man takes a woman) their authority by faith until you had sorted it out.

When my post on authority and the ensuing argument was fresh, I struggled with whether or not to say what I am about to say. Back then I decided against it. Upon further consideration, and having re-read the post and all the comments all over again I have changed my mind. It is more important to me now that other men understand the dangers of being unenthusiastic and foolish about their wives than it is to protect other’s feelings, extend the benefit of the doubt, or avoid possible harm to other’s relationships. Unlike Zippy, at a certain point I believe I can make statements about the psychology of people based on their comments. Words are a REVELATION–an uncovering–of a person, and “What comes out of the mouth of a (wo)man defiles him (her).

²⁸ “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, into the hands of those from whom you turned in disgust, ²⁹ and they shall deal with you in hatred and take away all the fruit of your labor and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered. Your lewdness and your whoring ³⁰ have brought this upon you, because you played the whore with the [world] and defiled yourself with their idols.

Those idols are self-esteem, self-empowerment, your own understanding, and all seemingly various fruits which actually have one tree.

Based on what you have said about your husband, a big part of the problem is that your husband is (or was) physically and spiritually lame. There is probably very little to nothing he can do about being handicapped. For whatever portion–if any–of your subversion of him is due to his physical incapacities: double shame should be heaped on you. If that actually plays no part, then good on you. I cannot and will not comment further on that, as you haven’t spoken on it much, and what you have is often of still being physically attracted and available to him. This is good.

However; I think his spiritual lameness is much more crippling to him and you. You are drifting about like a ship without a rudder, even in the relatively calm waters of this blog. There are no woman-haters here. There are many women here. There are no non-Christians here. Your comments are carefully read. Even when you are rebuked it done so thoughtfully, and at significant length and time. This is because we give a damn. We give a damn because we believe–buried under (and in spite of!) all the bullshit you churn out–you want to give a damn, too. I believe you are starving to be in submission. That’s why you come to my blog. Here, you get the best of both worlds: You don’t have to obey me, but I provide a relativley unbendable spiritual rod of correction that you crave. It’s just like American Roman Catholic church. I do not speak of rods with prurience, but I am talking of things that are sexually entwined because the Lord made it so.

You are a practicing Catholic, yet your husband is not even of the same faith. You spend hours (years you said!) reading about what others think (submitting yourself to them) about various issues, and somewhere in the background of your life your husband HAS an opinion on these things; an opinion you should be seeking as fervently as you have my blog.

And he allows it.

You are not one flesh, as you have been called. You are not the body, and he is not the head. Christ said “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” In the sublime way God chooses to make truths echo and transcend: Your husband is the vine of your marriage. You, branch, must submit to this temporary church of the family that you have joined with him, or die.

You are still “so blind”, and you have been warned that you will be uprooted.

Instead, you spiritually break yourself off, and call it holy because you attend a Catholic church, agreed with them on birth control, resigned yourself to marriage, and read a lot of theology. To you it must seem cheap to compare the riches of busy blogs and Augustine’s writings and papal encyclicals to the two coppers worth of seeking and obeying your husband’s will. But from what I have read I feel secure in saying that your soul is poor and pitiful indeed. In truth giving up that mite of service would be the world to you and Christ. Instead you walk away sorrowful because all you care about is being wealthy by your own measure, instead of that of your Father in heaven, and your husband. You did not even have the wisdom to honor the worldly standards of wealth of your earthly father.

Do you see a pattern here, Gabriella? Men: do you see a pattern here? Consider how important are your relationships to your daughters. Consider the patterns you set for them in the way you allow your wives to behave. There is much more at stake than we can know.

As it stands: You’re a moneychanger; exchanging cheap offerings of experience as sacrifices in your own temple when YOU COULD WIN YOUR HUSBAND’S SOUL WITHOUT A WORD by submitting to him and calling him lord, as your spiritual forebear did. By this you would be a branch of Sarah, too–more honorable than anything this world offers. YOU could be the man of your husband’s heart; grooming it with long-suffering, and penetrating it with supplication; to bring forth the fruits of headship, honor, and love. These you could feast on, instead of scrabbling for others’ spiritual scraps.

Men: This is surely your wife’s fate if you do not take being an obedient follower of Christ and an understanding husband (wise to their weakness and innocent of injury) seriously. If there was ever an age where men could be merely a material provider and get fidelity: this is not that age. You are surrounded by evil wolves; male and female. To be a husband is to be watchful and involved and work to make a thing grow; pruning her vices and staking her virtues. It is leading her to pastures of faith, mucking the stalls of your house from the filth of the world, and washing her with the clean water of the Word. You are called grooms for a reason.

A final word: There is no guarantee. Gomer lacked for nothing in Hosea’s house.

“Plead with your mother, plead—
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away her whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;

“…from between her breasts”; where her heart is. Gomer, like many, chose to be a whore for the personal pleasure of it.

“I have found this conversation edifying because I learned that I am not a traditionalists in the strictest sense of the word, and based on the conversations this has spawned in our household my husband isn’t a traditionalist either.”

So do many Christian wives and husbands. Do not be among them.

I wonder if Ezra is still around. She had a lot of good comments.

 

*I do think birth control, abortion, and homosexuality are evils. Now get back on topic.