This post was a comment on Society of Phineas, (and reposted at Dalrock, in the thread that spawned SoP’s post.) but I wanted to repost here for posterity; that anyone can find. I have edited it a good deal, to become a more complete post.
In no way do I absolve the women of the reality and guilt of abusing men; particularly husbands. To wit: If she cheats, or is a slut, that is her fault. Nevertheless, as I won’t be married to a cheater, and God allows it to happen, then I must accept that it is God’s will that I not be married–provided He does not change my heart.
A woman does NOT have the same moral culpability that a man does. That is not to say they have none at all. Scripture is clear that women as a sex were given a mediator because of this weakness; first the father and then the husband. Numbers 30.
3 “If a woman vows a vow to the Lord and binds herself by a pledge, while within her father’s house in her youth, 4 and her father hears of her vow and of her pledge by which she has bound herself and says nothing to her, then all her vows shall stand, and every pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. 5 But if her father opposes her on the day that he hears of it, no vow of hers, no pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. And the Lord will forgive her, because her father opposed her.
6 “If she marries a husband, while under her vows or any thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she has bound herself, 7 and her husband hears of it and says nothing to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand, and her pledges by which she has bound herself shall stand. 8 But if, on the day that her husband comes to hear of it, he opposes her, then he makes void her vow that was on her, and the thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she bound herself. And the Lord will forgive her. 9 (But any vow of a widow or of a divorced woman, anything by which she has bound herself, shall stand against her.) 10 And if she vowed in her husband’s house or bound herself by a pledge with an oath, 11 and her husband heard of it and said nothing to her and did not oppose her, then all her vows shall stand, and every pledge by which she bound herself shall stand. 12 But if her husband makes them null and void on the day that he hears them, then whatever proceeds out of her lips concerning her vows or concerning her pledge of herself shall not stand. Her husband has made them void, and the Lord will forgive her. 13 Any vow and any binding oath to afflict herself, her husband may establish,or her husband may make void. 14 But if her husband says nothing to her from day to day, then he establishes all her vows or all her pledges that are upon her. He has established them, because he said nothing to her on the day that he heard of them. 15 But if he makes them null and void after he has heard of them, then he shall bear her iniquity.”
Should a woman reject her prescribed mediator, she is on her own. She has this ability; which nearly all modern women practice.
Scripture is also clear that women as a race–mankind–need a Mediator because of mankind’s moral depravity. Christ does not go His own way, in regards to us women (men and women) that repent. Having heard of our sins, He pleads our moral vacuity (we know not what we do) before the Father, and so absolves us of them. We become blameless not because we do not sin, but by recognizing we are guilty and weak, and so subject ourselves to His blameless rule. He pleads our case of: not guilty by reason of insanity…lack of reason; lack of Logos. We cast our sins upon the Sinless, at His offering. This is remarkably unfair to the Man–which only makes since in an inherently unfair world. It is not justice to the law, which is made for the world and condemns, but mercy–we are justified to His love.
Compounding the problem, in their cowardice, earthly fathers have created a moral hazard for wives and daughters by not informing them of their true choices: submit to their fathers until they marry and then to their husbands, or submit to themselves and prepare to suffer their own consequences.
So who is more to blame here? It is men. By our sin of abdication is the ground cursed, because we would not stand up against sin, for the sake of our women, and before the Lord. No change will come until fathers begin to incline their hearts to their women in true love and understanding of their nature.
We do not need a men’s rights movement (does the Bible ever speak of rights?); we need a true men’s responsibility movement;
32 As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem at any time the houses in the cities they possess. 33 And if one of the Levites exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in a city they possess shall be released in the jubilee. For the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel.
one that informs women of their options, and also casts out those that choose to go their own way, to be disciplined by Satan. This is the error of:
Christian husbands and fathers of the world (best demonstrated by Feminist Christian leadership, to sell our wives and daughters as equal sisters rather than subordinates, that we might prosper.)
the MRA movement (best demonstrated by their desire to change caesar’s laws and science to accomplish God’s order, instead of rendering what has the face of God back to Him),
and Players (best demonstrated by their eagerness to suffer, and cause suffering, not for the sake of love, but for the sake of pleasure, revenge and destruction).
It is sacrificial and fearful to be the man, but if we will assume our authority, and intervene in love, our helpmeets can begin healing immediately; without one law of man being being changed. Though, the time of reclamation will have to wait for the jubilee.
I will repeat what I said before: celibacy is a righteous option. However; insofar as anyone rejects that women’s independence, harlotry, and idolatry (in a word: Feminism) is a problem to first be sorted out by fathers and husbands–by explaining and maintaining the scriptural order–they are in error because we are men under authority.
5 When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him,6 “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” 7 And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” 8 But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12 while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”13 And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.
Finally, I want to add that I do not say these things because I have tried them, and they’ve worked so well for me, but because I believe they are true even though my trying of them is very shabby. This blog is as much a working-through for myself as it is a proclamation to the world. The Jubilee is coming.
I also want to remind my readers that I write with an eye towards the Christian man who desires marriage; with a special emphasis on not letting the wisdom of the world crowd out the wisdom of God–most especially as it pertains to finding a wife, the role of the husband, and sexual sin.
Things that We have Heard and Known 
That is a very serious claim and I’d like to know what makes you so sure of your interpretation. If you are wrong you are very wrong and you may be preventing your daughters from fulfilling a call from God that does not involve living under a mans direct authority.
Well, there’s one thing you’ll definitely need to clarify: “if we will assume our authority, and intervene in love, our helpmeets will be healed immediately; without one law of man being being changed.” I don’t think you meant it so, but it’s certainly possible to read that as a sort of name-it-and-claim-it teaching.
@hauteclere
We should be careful about this, but there’s not much I can do to stop the health-n-wealth folks. They’ve been abusing “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” for centuries, and that was said by a much better man than I.
Packaged up in assuming authority is the idea of assuming it legitimately; God’s way, in God’s time, and with God’s blessing. The will of the Father and presence of the Holy Spirit are what make miracles happen, but He has promised miracles.
@Gabby
If I am wrong–and let’s get out of the way right now that in some way I must be, at least in the sense that I do not have the mind of God, and cannot know fully of what I speak–then I shall, like a good wife or soldier, count on my superior to take responsibility for me; because I am insane. I expect (welcome? At my rare best…) to get correction from from Him, through the Holy Spirit working in other Christian’s lives. Though I can be a stumbling block, I cannot prevent God’s will, as He raises up those who fall when they ask for it.
The question is: In what spirit did you make that comment, Gabby? For my edification, or are you trying to judge me?
I think this is one of those protestant/catholic divides. I am fairly certain some single women are called to do things that their fathers don’t approve of.
@Gabby
You didn’t answer my question.
Why are you implying that God answers the prayers of Catholic fathers, but not Protestant?
Why am I, if I bring my daughters before God in prayer, not granted peace about a thing if it is God’s will?
Can you give me some examples of these callings that single women get, of which you think I wouldn’t approve or recognize?
I do want you to answer these questions.
Now I certainly don’t know everything about God’s character, nor am I a professional bible scholar, but if God is a God of order, and not chaos, WHY on earth would he “give a calling” to a young woman under her father’s authority, and subsequently fail to release peace in the father’s heart which would lead him by the Spirit to release his daughter in full blessing to her “calling?”
A Christian woman is always “covered” by some man’s authority; be it her spiritual “father” at her church, or her natural father, or her husband. A wise female missionary isn’t going to run off and just decide she is “called” to serve as a missionary in Africa without first obtaining the blessing and prayer of her home church, especially if they are supporting her. A Chrisitan daughter (hopefully) isn’t just oging to run off to some liberal college somewhere, to pursue a degree in what-so-ever, because she got a “call” to be a what-so-ever, without her father’s full blessing. In a perfect world I suppose a Christian daughter isn’t going to marry Mr. What’s His Face without her father’s full blessing, either.
I suppose it depends upon what you are referring to as a “calling”. Further, I suppose it depends upon whether or not you believe that God’s complementarian gender outline was meant to exist in society at large as it does in the family. It is my understanding that even Deborah the judge in the bible was only a judge at the time because her children were grown, and the social climate was one of absolute rebellion towards God’s order.
Many of the Catholic Saints and women I respect and emulate had a father who wasn’t Catholic at all, or wanted them to make choices that were more culture-approved.
And then when I consider my own father..a devout Baptist…he would have had me make very different choices. Go to college..become a lawyer.. marry a rich man.. have 1.3 children.. etc etc. Very “All American”..and very against my own conscience. He does not approve at all of marrying young, having 6 children, avoiding college, etc, and is ashamed that I don’t have the wealth that he has.
No, I don’t think that you would necessarily have peace about a situation even if it was God’s will. I think you would be prone to acting as all parents have done through all generations- make choices for their children based on fear and cultural expectations.
Then when you consider all the fathers who are not consistently present or not Christian it becomes impossible to think of a woman staying under her fathers authority til one of them dies. I think of my friend Lacey who converted to Christianity without her fathers approval (he was hindu). I wonder if you would have told her not to disobey and stay Hindu?
Thanks for answering the last question, Gabby. What you’re supposing is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a man living the revelation of scripture, and applying it to his family; not just thinking scripture is good in some abstract way. For example it means that women can be saved through child-bearing; as dealing with our children to learn both how valuable they are–worth any sacrifice–and how utterly depraved they are. They respect no one, demand everything, have no concept of time or space, and sometimes smear feces on the wall.
My response, is those fathers should read the Bible, and expect Him to be faithful to what He has revealed; whether he is Baptist, Hindu, or atheist. A father cannot follow an essentially God-less formula for “success”, and expect his daughters to become Godly.
That is what it sounds like your father did; it seems like he psychologizes scripture; “Well, she just needs to have a good attitude about God, but she still needs advanced schooling, and wealth to be worth anything.”
C.S. Lewis talks about this in Screwtape Letters. Instead of talking about living in a true, physically expressed submission, he’s talking about prayer that is not physically expressed; psychologizing prayer.
To return the child-rearing scenario: It is the work of raising children that leads to salvation; not merely pushing children out through their vaginas–though that is the beginning of understanding supreme joy and violent pain. (I can only imagine such blessings.) So, we can’t expect that a woman taking off six-to-twelve weeks maternity leave before returning to work, and dropping her kid off at daycare and then school is going to show musch success in inclining her heart to understand the truth and beauty about Christ’s love for us even in our state of disrespect, ignorance, and filth.
In summary, for their benefit and for the benefit of those around them, women should live in submission to their fathers or husbands. This isn’t even that out-dated of a concept. Less than a century ago it was downright common. The automobile and the Internet haven’t changed us.
I am hearing Gabby talking about “religious” fathers in authority over their daughters (no offense to your father, Gabby), vs. fathers following The Way (Jesus via a Spirit-led life) in authority over their daughters. I get some of this flavor confirmed in The Screwtape Letter reference as well. I like that term; psychologizing prayer.
Years ago, I had a dream which was very involved, but the very last mental picture in the dream was an image of a beautiful cage full of freshly-hatched butterflies, unfurling their wings in complete safety. As they began to stretch their wings, an enormous parrot appeared suddenly and devoured them. This is religion.
As far as girls living in submission to their fathers, one cannot even watch a seemingly “cute and entertaining” Disney film for girls without being slapped in the face with the fact that almost ALL of these Disney princess heroines are in utter rebellion to one or both of their parents, but usually their father. I think many people today, including the Disney princess viewers and society at large (yes, including the “religious, church-going folk”, think being a “stay-at-home-daughter” (such as on a reality show like The Duggars, or The Bates new reality show) is flat-out cultish and bizarre at best, and abusive at worst. It’s amazing to me that it has been a relatively short period of time since this practice was the only practice.
My husband and I have two daughters, very young. We have talked at length about this issue and particularly the issue of “you’re eighteen now, so you have to get out of our house”, which seems to be the prevailing societal view of young women in their parent’s homes. We will not be raising our girls with this philosophy. My husband has a grown daughter, from a marriage he had before he became a believer – the wife never wanted to be married and went her own way. Although my husband never had the chance to “cover” his oldest daughter in prayer and authority, the offer is open for her to come and live with us, provided she is in submission to her father. As of yet, she lives in total rebellion toward God and her father.
I love how you expounded upon being saved in childbirth.
WHY on earth would he “give a calling” to a young woman under her father’s authority, and subsequently fail to release peace in the father’s heart which would lead him by the Spirit to release his daughter in full blessing to her “calling?”
Well this is exactly what happened in my case. I had “a calling” to be Christian but this did not release peace into my father’s heart.
My conversion while living under my father’s home was considered a huge sign of rebellion, and I was once told by another person who shared my ethnicity that I should submit and do what my parents said. In other words, forget about going to church, forget about reading the Bible, believing in Christ, etc. If I had decided to take that route, I would have needed to accept that my parents would eventually choose my spouse for me (a Hindu, most likely) and I wouldn’t have been able to practice my faith. My family is of the belief where a woman isn’t allowed to change her faith unless her husband gives her permission to do so, but that wouldn’t have happened in my case. In my cultural background, only a husband is allowed to change his faith and then his family follows; it doesn’t work the other way around.
Clearly, we have been talking about Christian fathers in Christian homes with Christian daughters, all believing in the Bible as absolute truth.
Obviously, it is not “rebellion” to choose Christ over a false god, even if the false god is one that has been traditionally worshipped by your father. This is spelled out very clearly in the bible as NOT being rebellion against God, no matter what is perceived as rebellion from a female in the cultural/traditional religion of the family.
With all respect to you, this must be very difficult. You are brave to follow Christ.
However, Cane Caldo will have to correct me if I am wrong, but this is not the context of “calling” that he is referring to in his conversation with Gabby. If I am tracking him correctly in context, he is referring to the daughter “hearing” some “calling from God” that he has no witness from the Holy Spirit whatsoever (we are talking again about a father who is truly following The Way – Jesus Christ). For instance, many women “hear” that they are being “called” into some kind of careerism which is not at all a calling, but rather a selfish pursuit which may not be God’s best for them, and may turn out to be nothing more than idolatry. .
Maybe that’s a poor example, but it is what comes to mind. I would hope our daughters would have the protection of their father’s authority if they came home after church one day and told us they were “called” to be something that will a) put them in too much competition with men, b) most likely take a job which would be better filled by a family MAN, c) would place her in a part of society where she could easily be morally swayed, etc.
I think my husband would not have peace about certain things young women may believe they are “called” to do.
@Lacey
That person who shared your ethnicity gave you bad advice; insofar as they advised that you should abandon God, Christ, and scripture.
It doesn’t pertain to my post for one second. I write of how I believe God wants fathers to behave, and that starts with being scripturally saturated, God-fearing men. By definition Hindus do not fear God. I neither write to them, nor for them. Lacey, you have fallen for a trap Gabby has set to snare women.
Now, what Hindus and other pagans have done through the millennia is to recognize that God (though they do not know Him) made men and women in certain discrete ways, and at least have the wisdom to harness the animal halves of our spirits for the good of society, men, women, and children. Their eyes are open enough to see what it going on in front of them. They understand the nature of mankind better than most modern Christians; such as a father who urges his daughter to become a lawyer and marry for wealth. That is a decidedly Western Civilizational sin.
This is why C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton (and others) repeatedly point out that converting from paganism to Christianity is relatively easy, when compared to converting from modernist and post-modernist thought. The psychology is entrapping, as Gabby is entrapping women now.
@Gabby
Answer the questions.
@Ezra
You’re tracking me right. I’m waiting to hear what these callings to Godly daughters of Godly fathers, are, of which a father would deny the will of God, or that the Holy Spirit would not witness to the father. By the way: that was excellently said.
Are we talking of entering the convent, or witnessing on a pole at Starlight Ladies?
I really dislike that I am being accused of “entrapping” women. I am not speaking as any kind of authority. I am not standing at a pulpit telling people how to be or what to do. I am just a woman asking questions on a blog for the sake of clarity for myself and any readers who may be entertaining similar questions.
Perhaps just for the purpose of respectful discourse we can not assume any ulterior motives on my end. Normally when I have ulterior motives I actually admit to it within the conversation (as I recently did when I got Deti all riled up on another thread and I have done at Dalrocks a few times) but on this thread I am being sincere. I just want to better understand your stance, and then I will decide if it is inline with the Teachings of Holy Mother Church..who is the ultimate authority by which I obey and filter my discernment’s through.
The reason I did not in the beginning say anything other than “this must be a Protestant/Catholic divide” is precisely because I did not want to be accused of creating an elaborate strawman for the sake of creating a “gotchya” moment. That is NOT my intention, and I only elaborated my thoughts because you asked me to.
This isn’t the kind of debate I feel like I can win…if it is even a debate. I just know that when someone says “Grown Single Women Should Obey Their Fathers” I quickly think of the many scenarios where that would have turned out badly. And so I then question..do you mean this as a general tendency, or as an absolute rule? If you mean it as a general tendency- then OK. If you mean it as an absolute rule with zero exception under penalty of grave sin- then I disagree.
As far as callings a father might not accept- Overseas missionary work, inner city non-profit work, joining a convent, marrying a particular man, marrying young, marrying at all, etc.
Speaking of another scenario where this patrio-centrist philosophy seems like it isn’t going well – the notorious Botkins girls. Both beautiful. Both pushing 30. And there father hasn’t found them a suitable match. Those ovaries are drying up and if I were them I’d be sorely tempted to forget the whole courtship model and find myself my own man since Dad doesn’t seem to be trying hard enough.
@Gabby
This is your first comment:
Do not comeback and say, “Hey, I’m just asking questions here.” No: you implied that I might be ruining the lives of at least my daughters, and possibly others’, as well. You further reinforce this argument NOW by speaking of the Botkins girls (of whom I’ve never heard.) You imply their ovaries are drying up because of controlling men like me. Shame on you!
Our culture does not suffer from an overabundance of fathers laying out a clear path, but fathers being beaten down by other men, at the behest of women. I offer a chance of hope, (as I imagine the Botkins do, again, never having heard of them, but understanding the movement) that there is another way that just crossing your fingers that women will be good little pryncesses in the world and your first reaction is to try to crush it–as an understanding of women’s sinful nature predicts.
In a way, this is good because I’ve been working on a series of posts about the Book of James, and your theoretical trap is addressed straightaway:
That goes for women, too. God does not call us to disorder. You have presented us with a double-minded case. It is a trap.
I am tired and don’t think I am capable of a coherent response right now.
My first comment was just an emotional reaction. I wish I had not said it. You obviously can’t ruin your daughters life unless you kill her or seriously maim her. She has a free-will and can follow it. If she loses your parental support or you disown her then she is in no different position than many young women find themselves in.
Why are my questions a “trap”?
What is the difference between having a disagreement and laying a trap?. I’d like to know because this is an allegation I am getting frequently.
@Cane: I posted this in reply to the shorter version at SoP, but I’ll repost here, slightly expanded.
I’ve got a couple of questions, and a caution, about the end of that.
First, I’m reminded of a part at the end of ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ – just saw at SoP that I should explain (and that you should read it!) – wherein a woman, trying to decide whether to endure suffering in faith or take an easy, if sinful, way out, gets caught also between a priest’s counsel and the State’s incentives, and chooses as you can imagine. The priest reflects afterwards on it: “He was certain she had been ready to change her mind, had needed only the command, I, a priest of God, adjure thee, and the grace to hear it – if only they had not forced him to stop where she could witness ‘God’s priest’ summarily overruled by ‘Caesar’s traffic cop.’ Never to him had Christ’s Kingship seemed more distant.”
Many men in many things, not just this, have authority by right, which is in practice usurped by stronger men – and God lets it happen. What then? And it is very easy to sound, even if you don’t mean to, as if you’re saying to them, ‘This is your fault.’ How to get around that, I wot not.
And then: God has promised miracles? Someone in a recent Dalrock thread posted this, and …well…
Faithlessness? I don’t know. I do know I’m not the only one who is no longer sure what faith is supposed to look like. I do know the church has little to say to those for whom the miracles are not forthcoming – both in the sense that there probably isn’t a lot for it to say, and that what little there is to say, it often doesn’t.
I know he’s not your favorite person on earth, but elsewhere, van Rooinek posted a link to this article, addressed to the case of singles, and particularly those who, as he says, ‘have kept the law but have little to show for it’ – and who, realistically, may never have anything to show for it this side of the grave. Something of the same doubtlessly applies to many of the unhappily-marrieds.
@unger
I haven’t read that article yet, and I will keep my longer reply. I did reply shortly at SoP.
In the meantime:
Over at Dalrock’s someone posited the case that men have it awful because we get sent to die on the battlefield. I retorted, “I would kill to die on the battlefield.”, which was a truth told as pun. That’s my frame of reference. Death is not the end, and a good death is better than a happy life; or
To anyone who thinks otherwise I can say nothing.
[Edit: Having now read the article from singleness.org, I stand by my answer on SoP (reposted below)
It is not fair, and the church should not teach that God has someone for everyone. Fairness is not the defining facet of this world. All I can say is that whenever I lose sight of the fact that this life is fleeting, I get discouraged. But when I remember it in those times I am thankful for it, and wish it would come sooner.
What the church should teach is that we are one in Christ already, and to wish to be joined to a woman in marriage is a grace given for the sake of our weakness in the flesh. I do not say that all singles are holier than married folk (for why do they wish vociferously for marriage?); nor do I say that they do not deserve such a grace a marriage; except as we recognize that any grace can only exist where it is undeserved. In fact: to expect it, to demand grace be given to you, is to kill any chance of it happening.]
Gabby asks if obeying and submitting to godly fathers is an absolute rule sa single adult woman…
I can think of no better way for God to ensure her protection. Why do you suppose, Gabby, that God chooses to call pure and undefiled religion the care of fatherless and widows? Do you suppose it is these are the most vulnerable people in society? Of course if a widow or an orphan loves Jesus, he is their heavenly authority, but do you suppose God knew they would be easily picked off by the enemy without an advocate in a father or husband here on earth?
[CC: fixed]
“Our culture does not suffer from an overabundance of fathers laying out a clear path, but fathers being beaten down by other men, at the behest of women. I offer a chance of hope, (as I imagine the Botkins do, again, never having heard of them, but understanding the movement) that there is another way that just crossing your fingers that women will be good little pryncesses in the world and your first reaction is to try to crush it–as an understanding of women’s sinful nature predicts.”
My instinct is not to crush it. My instinct is to reject anything that infantilizes women or lets them believe they have a get-out-of-hell-free card if they choose pleasing someone else over what is being required of them by God.
I do not believe women are less culpable for sin in anyway shape or form and that we must always carefully discern between obedience to godly authority and obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit because they are at times in conflict.
The RCC has canonized women who at times went against godly authority. I must assume that there are times when this is necessary and I must assume we are judged more harshly for disobeying the promptings of God than the promptings of earthly authority.
I don’t believe women are less capable of judgment. I believe women are very much capable of proper judgment but they choose not to use proper judgment because they don’t have to. They blame many things for their bad behavior because they can get away with it. Society has been duped into believing women are overgrown children. That is a lie.
In fact, as a woman with many instincts, emotions, and tendencies I have a pretty easy way of judging what it is I should and shouldn’t do. The more I want it, the more likely it is a bad idea. All I have to do is ask myself is “What would Satan have me do” and chances are it is the very thing I feel an urge towards. The answer is usually simple: Don’t. Go find some laundry to fold and pray for strength.
Which is probably what I should have done rather than comment on this blog.
@gabby
1) You witness that you love God’s way.
2) Yet you advocate a way that is not Godly; always searching for the exception to the rule. You’re chronically inclined to NAWALT.
3) Every woman is inclined to NAWALT thinking at times, and the combination of 1 and 2 gives cover to the enemies of God that would use women’s inclinations and your example (in text; not life perhaps) of seeking exceptions to become legally unrighteous–as all of us are inclined. By legally unrighteous I mean to in the way Satan is. Love and mercy are God’s righteousness; punishment as revenge, or pure consequence is legal, but not God’s way. It is Satan’s domain.
My “chronic inclination to NAWALT” as you put it is my concern that what is being treated as features in design are really bugs created by social conditioning..and what is being treated as socially-conditioned flaws are really features created by design.
And I am not trying to sew seeds of doubt just for the heck of it. I am trying to figure it out myself through the discussion..asking questions..getting answers..and then reflecting.
I very much believe in rules. I didn’t convert to a Church known for its rules if I didn’t respect rules. I just want them to be the RIGHT rules. Once I am convinced something is right I am pretty determined in doing it.
In the closing arguments to the Second Vatican Council there was a lengthy list of ways women are great and then a bunch of exhortations to save the world. such as:
“Women, you do know how to make truth sweet, tender and accessible, make it your task to bring the spirit of this council into institutions, schools, homes and daily life. Women of the entire universe, whether Christian or non-believing, you to whom life is entrusted at this grave moment in history, it is for you to save the peace of the world.”
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6closin.htm
No pressure! So I read the manosphere saying “WOMEN! Listen to your husbands and please try not to be a nuisance because your shit-tests are distracting our whining on the interwebs”..and others saying “WOMEN! You messed it all up..go fix it while we sit here with our PSP and bag of cheetohs singing along to our anthem Free Bird and pat each other on the back for all this civilization stuff”
And the Church says some cryptic message akin to “Save the Teenager, Save the World”. They tell me I am suppose to make the Truth sweet but I have yet to see it itemized well enough for me bake a cake with it.
So I feel a little bit of pressure to 1. not be a nuisance but 2. SAVE THE WORLD..but in a non-annoying kinda way.
And on top of all that I can’t seem to break the habit of starting a paragraph with a conjunction. And my husband expects me to homeschool!
@gabby
I am not your enemy, Gabby. I do not oppress you, nor am I responsible for you; nor is there any reason to suspect that I might be allowed authority over you. I am not your husband.
Nevertheless, I’m going to respond for everyone else out there.
That’s because you lack good sense when it comes to the personal, and you personalize everything. Paul explicits says that women lack good judgment, and it’s why the RCC does not allow female priests.
She will be saved because in her children she will see in her children this same sense of undue entitlement that she suffers under; while simultaneously recognizing their utter lack of competency to exercise good use of authority (They would choose to eat candy all day, watch TV, beat their siblings mercilessly, and crap themselves.) should we have the bad sense to give it to them.
That bit made no sense whatsoever. See 1 Timothy 2:8-14, or the RCC. Conversely, you could listen to the Archbishop of the ECUSA, and hear what it sounds like when a bear rides a bicycle.
I think you’re confusing Godly authority, and Godly authority as recognized by man. The RCC tries very hard to get this right, but sometimes they don’t. There have been bad popes. That doesn’t mean they weren’t legitimate authority, but it also doesn’t mean that whatever they did was a Godly thing to do simply because God gave them the authority.
Thereby demonstrating women’s pronation to bad judgment. If I were writing the response in an attempt to sound like I had poor judgment, it would look just like the sentence I just quoted.
It is a lie that women are overgrown children. It is also a lie that women are men. Women are in-between, as it relates to authority.
This is why I don’t ban you. For all you say that is in error, your spirit seems to be in genuine confusion; not informed rebellion. Of course, the minute I perceive you are merely fitness-testing me, I will change that policy.
From your last comment:
This is why, even though I believe you are not informed, you are still in rebellion. God, as He has revealed HImself in scripture, does not care about convincing Gabby, or Cane. It never works this way. Right behavior–that is: attitudes–are the fruit of the good work that He does in us when we have faith; which is unproved belief. Waiting to be convinced is a long wait for a train that don’t come.
+++I am not your enemy, Gabby. I do not oppress you, nor am I responsible for you; nor is there any reason to suspect that I might be allowed authority over you. I am not your husband.+++
I’m not sure why you felt a need to say that. Am I coming across hostile?
+++That’s because you lack good sense when it comes to the personal, and you personalize everything. Paul explicits says that women lack good judgment, and it’s why the RCC does not allow female priests.+++
Why would God give women such poor judgment? And I know you are not a scientist but I’d be curious to know a specific neurobiological reason to explain bad judgment.
I think poor judgment is a result of not being held accountable for poor judgment. I think women are capable of good judgment if the consequences were not withheld. Why wouldn’t they be? Cause and effect isn’t such a complicated concept. If a woman can do math why can’t she figure out the difference between a good idea and a bad idea?
+++This is why, even though I believe you are not informed, you are still in rebellion. God, as He has revealed HImself in scripture, does not care about convincing Gabby, or Cane. It never works this way. Right behavior–that is: attitudes–are the fruit of the good work that He does in us when we have faith; which is unproved belief. Waiting to be convinced is a long wait for a train that don’t come+++
There are a lot of philosophies to choose from. I need to pick one, and to do that I need to see things from multiple angles. You seem to believe the Scripture is very clear and I am just refusing to see it out of rebelliousness. I think Scripture is kind of cryptic and doesn’t go into very specific detail about how culpable women are for sin when they are acting under authority. I am terrified of going to hell..or even just being accused of cowardice at the judgment.. so all of my “what ifs” are not just to be obnoxious. I am genuinely concerned that I am going to come across one of these “ifs”, choose poorly, and then find out that I was very wrong. Or perhaps I will give bad advice to my children and they will make the wrong choice when confronted with a “what if”.
Also- It isn’t fair to judge other women’s judgment based on mine. I am not very bright compared to other women in the blogosphere and I am on pain pills that make me a little loopy. Let the other women represent themselves as they are probably better at making sense and understanding what you are saying. I don’t want to have every word I say be representative of womankind as a whole when I am probably among the worst of bunch when it comes to making sense of these subjects and expressing myself.
If you believe in a Fall, not every characteristic has to be explained by God’s design.
If you’re asking that from the supposition that thought is purely reducible to physical processes in the brain, you’re in some very deep and shark-infested philosophical waters, such that it’s far from obvious why we should grant the supposition.
This has been a fascinating conversation. My husband’s position is this: We have raised our daughters in the word. Prayed for them, nurtured them, guided them. We have made it clear that if we are to offer any support of their college attendance, they will attend college while living here, at home.
However, and my husband is in no way egalitarian or feminist in his thinking, once they are ready to branch off from home as fully adult, he believes that they have to follow the path that God directs them on, not a path that he charts for them. That they are fully capable, given the tools and foundation he has lain for them, to make decisions about their life and future.
Yes, he believes that as long as they are unmarried they should seek the blessing and guidance of their father, but that he has no right to make decisions for, say, a 30-year-old woman simply because she is unmarried. That is not his understanding of Scripture.
We agree in practice, but our terms, and therefore the implications, are different.
What I am coming to hate, is talk of “rights”. It is a confusing term. We have no “right” to make decisions for a two-year old. If it has a mind, it makes its own decisions. Period. Its decisions may be insane, and we can tie a child up and throw it in the closet, but we have not made its decision for it, we have merely exercised power over it, not necessarily authority. We parents have the authority and responsibility to correct, and punish-as-discipline, but we’ve never had the right to decide for them.
An adult daughter, who chooses her own path–whether born of a true calling of God, or marriage, or merely her own selfish will–has the chosen a path that has removed her from the protection of her father. What I am saying is that we must acknowledge that truth by giving guidance to those who are in submission to our authority, and removing all responsibility when they are not in submission to us. We should acknowledge the truth of what is going on, and stop trying to intercede when we have no authority to do so.
In practice, this means if a daughter of mine starts dating someone of whom I disapprove: she is on her own. If she takes a job that I think should be reserved in spirit and practice for men: she is on her own. If she pursues college in her own way–not at home, or in a silly discipline–she is on her own.
What do I mean by on her own? She has left the family in spirit, and can no longer enjoy our resources of time or money until she repents. Lest anyone think that this sounds fun to me: I suspect at least one for sure, probably two, and it is not unlikely that all three of them will test me on this. If this sounds frightening to anyone, then they have the beginnings of parental wisdom.
Won’t that be fun dealing with Mrs. Caldo then? I must keep the foundation shored up now, so that when it is too late and those storms come, my house doesn’t fall down.
I already know that it might be a nightmare dealing with Mrs. Caldo if that should occur. I know a father who is dealing with a rebellious adult daughter and a wife who continues to do for her against his wishes.
In fact, watching the drama has helped me to solidify my resolve that I will not allow my children to put me in the position. In fact, I’ve already told them not to even try it. It helps that I don’t have “my own” source of income to be rebellious with.
You read my blog so I know that you know full well my thoughts on the notion of “rights, rights, rights.” Maybe it was a poor choice of words, but the point was that my husband believes that adults have to be treated as such. He is already on record with our girls that he will not bankroll foolishness and rebellion nor the fruits of it.
Cane Caldo: below is a link to The Botkin sisters recent article on LAF. From reading their bio, I see that they are 24 years and 22 years, respectively. Unless the bio is hopelessly outdated, their ovaries are not drying up anytime in the next year.
http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/for-the-unmarried/why-am-i-not-married/
In the article, should you decide not to read it in its entirety, they make mention of a daughter’s relationship with her father, among other causes for young women’s relational dissatisfaction:
“Some of us girls still have weak relationships and poor communication with our fathers, which makes everything surrounding courtship difficult. Some of us still have traces of our feminist culture or our Barbie culture in our personalities and character, which make us unappealing to young men who share our convictions on biblical femininity.”
Although it is a simple article, I believe they make some good and valid points.
I do not get the flavor that they are hyper-controlled by their father, but that they are submitted to him while living in his home, in a biblical way.
I haven’t read the article, but:
Bingo. I am not hyper-controlling, and most men aren’t. If we read between the lines of what I have posted, and the negative responses to it: It is not the expressed fear that I will come to dominate my wife and daughters every decision, but the silent dread that I will let them sink into this fetid swamp of a world if they decide to jump out of my boat against my DEMONSTRABLY AND NECESSARILY better judgment; as it pertains to what is good for them.
And I will, because I am supposed to.
[Edit: Excellent article, Ezra. I forwarded it to Mrs. Caldo, who will appreciate it. Last night, her and my oldest daughter started a women’s study with another mother and older daughter (both our daughters near or at college age), at my suggestion.* My wife reported back that the discussion took a humbling turn when she confronted the two girls that they are making choices that will almost surely make them bad candidates for marriage. Which of them will pay and study for half of their best procreative years, and then suddenly give that up–in peace!–when a man they want to marry and bear children for comes along? Crap-loads of NAWALT ensued from the girls, but the other mother**, against all her previous actions and admonitions, joined with my wife in echoing the cost in time, money, and humility–not to mention the very real potential for loss of chastity.
*The father of the other family–though still married and in the house–is not involved–he’s a textbook example of the crux of the problem in our churches, but not the power behind it. I tried speaking to him first, but he hemmed and hawed and said he’d get back to me. Yet, it is not my place to guide them, so I sent my wife in my place. See? Women have real authority and responsibility when they choose to accept their place in it! Not because I’m good, but despite that I am not, God is.
**Who has been vociferously advocating for college even unto paying for it, as she’s the breadwinner (are we seeing a familiar pattern yet?) and has sent the daughter to the other side of the very big state of Texas for this purpose.]
I always understood this passage as pointing back to the authority structure. As in: women cannot use the “vow to God” as a way to avoid obeying their husbands/fathers. It does not say or imply that women have lesser moral culpability. It does say that the man, who bears final responsibility for his family, has the authority to determine the best course for his family- and she has no ability to swear an oath without the authority figure having his say. What this shows me is that women have very crafty brains and will think of any way to avoid the authority structure…
You know, Cane Caldo, this whole thing is reminding me of a real-life example that I find myself inextricably enmeshed in at the present time. If you don’t mind me sharing with you:
I work for a professional woman, caring for her children approximately thirty hours per week while she works. (Our little children accompany me.) Their father and mother are still married (on paper), but the marriage is not fulfilling (or biblical). When you work in someone’s home, you learn more about them than you ever wanted to know. Since this is an anonymous place, I feel safe in sharing this here, for the sake of example. My apologies in advance for the length – feel free to edit, of course!
In any event, the professional woman watched her parents divorce when she was two. She never knew her father, and watched her mother struggle at single motherhood. I think she “decided” that she would “never be stuck” like her mother, so she pursued a nursing degree and nursing career. Fine enough so far.
She met her fiance’ (now her husband) thirteen years ago when she was eighteen. She must’ve been in college. Her husband worked blue collar work at the time, and still does. Eight years ago, they married. She was still in college, but now working as well. She graduated college, and began pursuing advanced education (her Master’s), so that she could become, oddly enough, a Midwife. Three years later, they had their first child. Since she was new in her career, she prompty left the child with a daycare at twelve weeks old. They moved two hours from his work, in order to be fifteen minutes from hers, as she became the primary breadwinner at this point.
They lived in a small home, a rental, when their first child was born. At some point between first child and second, “someone” decided they needed a custom-built home. Right before moving into their “perfect, forever” home, they had their second child, whom she left at daycare at twelve weeks as well.
Now, I’m not saying there’s anything intrinsically wrong with being a Midwife; it’s a good thing for society. All I’m saying is that there remains a more excellent way, if this woman is like most women, and wanted a family. I say this because of what I now know is the reality of their lives.
She just gave birth to her third child (whom she will be leaving at ten weeks old). She does not truly love her job, and I know this because she complains about it incessantly, and rolls her eyes when she gets telephone calls from patients at home. She is frequently gone overnight, over twenty-four hours, and literally wonders why “God is allowing this to happen” – when she CHOSE this career! It amazes me to hear her speak. She thinks her mother who is now married, should quit her job and take care of her children for free. She thinks her husband should stay home with her children when she’s away on call for 24 hours, and then work fifteen hours after he’s been up all night with little ones. She thinks everone owes her something because she has a career. That she chose. In order to be independent.
She is totally disgusted at the state of affairs in her marriage. Her husband has committed a very serious breach of her trust, and she feels victimized to say the least. He still works at least two hours away from their home (one way), so he no longer drives home at night to see her and his children. She is angry that he does not “know” their new baby. When I’ve seen them together, which is rare, she is so incredibly condescending to him – like she’s his mother. He spews venom right back at her. I am really surprised they are still married. Compound all of this with the mountainous debt they share: student loans of hers, the house, and tens of thousands of revolving debt.
In any event, without entering into true verbal diarrhea here, I think a lot of this could’ve been prevented HAD SHE BEEN UNDER THE AUTHORITY of a God-fearing father. He could have shared with her, as your wife shared in that small study, about the consequences of choosing “career independence from men”, only to find yourself in “lurve” with a man a few minutes later! He could have shared with her that there is no such thing as “having it all” – something’s gotta’ give, and it’s usually to the detriment of the marriage relationship and the children. He could have warned her that the man she’s in “lurve” with in college may not be in love with the idea of her independence – he may want femininity, especially in the mother of his children.
It is truly sad to watch from the front-row seat I’ve been given. I pray for them, but sometimes honestly I don’t know what to pray. I’ve found myself praying that God would set their house in His order, whatever that takes, whatever that looks like, so as to save their family. As you said earlier in your exegesis of women being saved in childbirth, it is easy for pride to remain in us women if we do not spend TIME with our children in the full-time work of raising them. I am blessed to be able to be with our children full-time; I don’t think my husband would have it any other way, no matter how much money I “could” bring home in a career. When the Mrs. in my story is off of work, she runs hither and yon, bouncing the children from this place to that place (with friends, or family, or appointments of hers) – she is not really ever at home with her children, excepting the three months off for maternity leave.
A mess of a family exists, at least in part, because there was no one with male authority and anointing and wisdom to guide this woman in her life choices as an eighteen year old. That’s sad.
One more observation: Could a just God give women the same punishment as men if we are not equals in moral culpability?
In the garden of Eden, man’s sin was idolatry (woman before God) and woman’s sin was rebellion. Placing the passage into its proper context gives it more clarity. Rebellion is insidious and this passage makes it impossible for women to Biblically use their own spiritual promises to undermine their husband’s authority.
Sure. It’s the parable of the talents.
We are judged according to what we do with the talents we are given. The fact remains there is ultimately only one fruit of sin: death. The way Jesus tells the story, He even chooses the servant who was given merely one talent as the one who did the worst. My guess (guess, I say) is that one reason for this is to caution us against the error of thinking because someone is weaker, that they have no responsibility.
It relates to this conversation in that men are–in virutally all circumstances–given more talents of judgment, than women. We should expect them to be richer in judgment. That doesn’t remove ultimate and damnable culpability from women. It is a recognition of the state of things, of God’s order. He gives more talents to the greater servants. Thus we can know who the greater servants are based on the number of talents they have.
We read that it is better for a man to have a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into the water, than to lead a little one astray. Yes, it is bad, but we have a tendency to make it into a story of: “Well, that’s why God should cut me some slack. He knows I’m not supposed to lead, so I’m not as culpable as a pastor, or my husband.” That is the error of the foolish servant who buries his talent, or the foolish helpmeet who says that it’s all her husband’s fault because he’s not leading properly. Pay attention to your own talents, because He will demand an accounting, and He is a jealous God. To covet more talents is pride. To diminish the importance of the talent you have is sloth.
What is the consequence of such mill-stoning? Death. Who escapes death? No one.
One last thing: Remove the comparative aspect for a minute, and think like a child: If you want more talents (in this case, judgment), and we know that our master has given many talents to another servant: To whom should we ask for more talent? Who has them to spend and give out?
I just don’t get the connection between greater talents (which I am not necessarily arguing over- my husband is decidedly more gifted than I am and whenever we disagree, he is normally right… but then again anecdote is not data) and greater moral culpability. Maybe I don’t understand what you mean by this- do you mean men are more righteous, less sinful, more capable of seeing morality, etc?
I do believe that where God gives greater responsibility (like man’s responsibility for his family), He gives greater ability. BUT, that does not necessarily mean moral superiority.
@Ellie: I wouldn’t say the other two, but ‘more capable of seeing morality’, yes. I’d reword it as ‘less prone to moral self-deception’. You can hardly name a classical philosopher who didn’t observe that women, in the main, do not have quite the sense for justice that men do. Solomon, in Ecclesiastes 7, added his observation of the fact to Scripture. Paul, in 1 Timothy 2, seems to share something of that view, and explicitly links it to the Fall, and gives it as a reason for a now-unpopular sort of church order.
…as usual, CSL has something to say on the matter too…
@Gabby,
There is no divide on this it is taught be Aquinas and Luther.
@Cane,
I agree that your comment seems to presume a sort of wealth gospel. That all will work out in the (immediate) end. I don’t think that is what you mean, but you could clean up the wording.
@Leslie,
One more observation: Could a just God give women the same punishment as men if we are not equals in moral culpability?
I admit to not reading the thread thuroughly but your comment proposes something that the Fathers don’t teach. Women do not receive the same punishment as men. From the founding their punishment is different. You also, I think, assume a rather “static” hell. That is, its all “just” fire and brimstone as compared to a more dynamic place like Dante’s Inferno. If it is like the inferno there is no guarantee at all that the punishment is the “same”.
Cane, I think you are forgetting that authority is not limited to the home. Why should authority end simply because an unmarried daughter is not living under the same roof? Why should one assume authority will be dismissed simply because of a change in address, going to college, etc.? It seems to me that if you are concerned about ensuring your authority, wouldn’t the best course of action be to instill a sense of intrinsic responsibility and duty to one’s family, so they build the foundation of their adult lives on the beliefs and expectations you taught them?
Intrinsic motivation is more powerful and more faith-based than extrinsic motivation. If a young woman knows punishment is coming, she won’t internalize it in a way that shapes her conscience to do what is an absolute truth and is the Godly thing to do. I’m not here to disagree with or criticize you on your beliefs for your children; that’s your place as their parent and rightly so. What I don’t understand is if these are really your concerns, why not do the things in order to teach them why they’re so important, so they can accept it for themselves? Isn’t that the point of authority, to guide and persuade on what is right, and why?
I see the role of the father’s authority as a precursor to a husband’s authority. When my husband isn’t around, I am still under his authority even when I leave the house and am far from him. Should he assume I’m in rebellion because I’m not under his protection? What would that say about his leadership and protection?
You don’t need to agree with me on this and I’d be interested to hear what you have to say. Perhaps I am misunderstanding your OP. From what I understand, you’re saying women need an authority figure but I do not agree based on your comments that this authority figure has to be ever-present.
Why not just assume a spiritual attitude instead of pray aloud?
Do we need to attend mass/church on a regular basis?
Why memorize scripture–can’t we just take the book with us?
Do we really need to get baptized?
Because it means something to live one place while our authority lives another, and we should not be stupid. This is the psychologizing of scripture and order than I have been on about.
My thoughts on obedience:
If I am obedient out of love then I can respect myself. If I am obedient out of fear then I can’t.
So if I had been your daughter I would have had to move out and make choices you might not have approved of because to do otherwise would have made me feel like a coward and as far as I am concerned there is nothing worse than being a coward.
Fatherly love is nice but not an absolute necessity. Protection? Unnecessary. I’ll take my own bullets. Death is not the worst of all fates but having someone die because of me is a terrible burden. Provision? I’ll make my own money or get married and make sure that I earn my keep one way or another.
The manosphere makes me think I must have some form of gender identity disorder. While I don’t want to be a man, I have zero desire to be their definition of a good woman. I can’t respect myself and be like that. I need to prove myself to myself..I need to prove that I am smart, confident, capable, and courageous. Living under a mans authority as a young woman did not allow me to prove myself. How could I ever know what I really am, what I am really capable of, how I can manage life’s challenges if I am never fully independent?
You say women don’t have good judgment. Maybe..but if I don’t then I can’t respect myself. So I have to prove to myself that either I do have good judgment or that I am capable of learning from mistakes. Letting other people make my choices is not an option that allows me any sense of dignity.
How I feel about myself is important. If I don’t feel like I am strong, capable, intelligent, and independent then I get depressed..because I don’t embody the attributes I consider most valuable in a human being.
Therefore, if your children are anything like me I would expect that they will leave the home and never look back. For many young people there is no stronger desire than to find out exactly what they are made of. The only way to do that is to get away from their parents protection and provision and test themselves against the world.
…but, having proved yourself ‘independent’ (I leave aside the fact that, in Tolkien’s words, “it usually really means economic subservience to male commercial employers instead of to a father or a family”), can you respect the average man, who, by that metric of status, has not exceeded you – whom your experience will tell you (quite rightly, mind you) is unexceptional?
I’m sure you’ll say that you can, and I won’t presume to dispute it. But if you do say you can: why? Looking around, it appears for all the world as if women in that position generally cannot. What makes – or made – you different?
My husband has done things that I would have found too difficult. He has a mind for engineering and I have a mind for sales. If I had stayed single I probably would have done well in my own business but I can still admire my husbands abilities to do well things I would find impossible to do at all.
But biblical respect is different than admiration. I admire my husbands skills, but I respect him simply because I am suppose to due to his place in God’s hierarchy.
I’m not sure if that’s a ‘yes I can’ or ‘no I can’t’.
Yes, I can admire my husband for the skills he has that I do not.
No, I don’t consider “financial provision” one of those skills that he has that I do not. Earning an income isn’t that difficult. It only takes an average intelligence and modicum of discipline. Those are things even a woman should have.
One of the reasons I find it easy to admire my husbands specific skills is because we often compete for the fun of it and he frequently beats me at certain types of sports. Painball, first-person shooters, play wrestling, certain types of card games, assembling ANYTHING. He is also really good at getting people to do things they don’t want to do. I call it his Jedi-mind tricks.
And then there is Angry Birds. Nothing frustrates me more than how freaking good he is at Angry Birds.
…which didn’t really answer the question. I’ll ask it another way: suppose he made less than you: would you admire him/be attracted to him/find it easy to respect him and follow his household leadership because of his ability to pwn in Arma 2 (or whatever)?
As of right now in our relationship he does not work (disabled) and I work part-time. I notice no significant difference in the ease of following his headship (which is to say it isn’t easy but never has been) but as far as sexual attraction there is no issue there.
Do you think you’re normal in that, or unusual?
Unger- I don’t know because of selection bias. The kind of women who I get along with are the kind of women that are more similar to me than different. So my anecdotal experiences are often very different than those of the men in the manosphere.
If not as comprehensive an answer as I’d have liked, it’s as honest as I could have liked. Thank you.
Because it means something to live one place while our authority lives another, and we should not be stupid. This is the psychologizing of scripture and order than I have been on about.
Do you really think people are not able to get away with rebellion even while living under authority? Do you really think people can put up airs when it comes to obedience? My point is faith has to be accepted– we have to actually accept Jesus as God before it means anything. Why is it safe to presume that living under an authority figure means acceptance? It just means obedience, which is different from submission. Submission is about an act of the will, and it’s possible to be obedient without being submissive. You can be submissive without being around authority, and I think you’re ignoring that point and calling it “psychologizing.”
I believe that admiration is a component of respect (towards one’s father or husband, as a woman), and also that obedience is an aspect of submission (toward’s one’s father or husband). I believe that neither admiration nor respect exists without the other. I believe that one cannot truly obey without at least some form of submission in mind, heart and spirit, whether it is motivated solely by fleshly fear of consequence (like a child), or more highly and maturely, out of worship for our Creator and respect for the delegated position of the one unto whom we are submitted.
I believe that admiration is a component of respect (towards one’s father or husband, as a woman), and also that obedience is an aspect of submission (toward’s one’s father or husband). I believe that neither admiration nor respect exists without the other.
I’d like you to expand more on that. Admiration wasn’t something strongly noted in scripture for providing the basis for respect, as I understand respect. There is strong teaching for how respect, obedience, and submission to follow one another.
@Laceagate:
I agree that in scripture, there is a great deal of information in the fifth chapter of Ephesians alone, teaching how respect, obedience and submission follow one another.
In “fleshing this out” in daily life, I have found (and learned from Fascinating Womanhood teachings) that it is very, very easy to fall into contempt (the opposite of respect) toward one’s husband or other male authority if one is not seeking to focus on the admirable character traits in said person, and letting the eyes and mind fall away from focusing on negative traits. I have found in walking this out, that it helps to speak forth one’s admiration out loud, during the day alone if it is not something that has been practiced from a young age, and later, out loud to one’s spouse daily. I am certain it would work with a father and daughter as well.
It is difficult to respect someone that you do not find admirable (if you are puffed up with pride and think more highly of yourself than you ought, or if you have mistakenly focused upon all the flaws and none of the admirable qualities of the other person.)
It is tremendously difficult to admire someone that you have been able to disrespect for so long – it is a merry-go-round – the disrespected one (the husband) quietly tolerates the disrespect, and so appears even less admirable (as a man and husband) for being a doormat unto the wife. It is a vicious cycle.
This is why I believe that one cannot exist without the other. I believe admiration is a WAY of respecting one’s husband and building him up, preventing contempt from the wife. The simple act of speaking life-giving words of admiration in and of itself is respectful, and submissive.
Would you say admiration can be a way of respecting one’s father? If so, how does admiration come about? It’s easier for us to conceptualize how a wife can admire her husband, but what about a father?
http://visionarydaughters.com/category/fathers
@Laceagate: the link above says it far more eloquently than I ever could. It’s a letter from a frustrated (and somewhat disrespectful, at least in heart) daughter living at home with her father, trying to honor him. It is answered by the Botkin sisters, who are stay-at-home adult daughters, with biblical references and also a specific answer to your question to me.
Hope you like it.
Wish I had been given this advice as a young woman living in my father’s home.
@unger and GKC
I changed one sentence; the one that contained “immediately”
We should keep the concept that the priest can lay claim to the house at any time, and it become his right (a real right!) immediately; though he may not be able to take possession of it for some time. Regardless, it is his. This is important if we need to assign responsibility if someone were to burn down the house in the interim between claiming and taking possession. In such a case, it is the Levite who has been offended by harming his house.
@Lacey
James disagrees with you strongly. You refer to dead faith. (Aren’t you Catholic? 400 years of popes are rolling over in their sepulchers. Obedience is the only proper response to legitimate authority.)
I have swapped two words with our topic, and it read the same.
I don’t think you know what you’re saying, Lacey. What you’re advocating is the position that gabby finds herself in: dead submission struggling to respect her husband. I do not want this for my daughters.
@Gabby
Scripture never once directs us to respect ourselves. The serpent did. You are so steeped in Satanism that you use it to defend your bad behavior, curse my daughters follow your example, and–yes–lay a trap for every woman reading this blog. Nearly every sentence in the comment I ripped the above sentence from drips with poison.
You don’t respect your husband, that I can tell–you barely have the dead faith “submission” that Lacey refers to above. And when someone lays out a path for how to avoid that same fate–you deride it. I do not spit this at you in anger, but you are very sick.
@Cane: …well, you could’ve worded it a bit less confrontationally…
@gabby: An exercise which might help you see where Cane is coming from: reread your 3 PM post, but strike out the gender-specific terms. Does it not sound strangely like Invictus? At the very least, you should see that that mode of thinking strays pretty close to a theological minefield…
What I wrote was less confrontational, compared to the fisking I had in mind.
That bit has Hell written all over it.
What bad behavior? It would help if you would be more specific. Your chastisement is strongly worded but vague.
[CC: Seeking to prove yourself through independence.]
Good thing I don’t really have feelings or all this talk of being in league with Satan might get dangerously close to hurting them.
I would have called it “Leaving behind childish things”.
I was not suggesting independence as a lifestyle choice but as a phase where one tests ones metal and learns about their strengths and weaknesses. I think this is a good idea for men and women…both for the purposes of developing confidence and humility. When one ventures out into the world where it is sink or swim they learn to swim, but they also learn that swimming is hard and tiresome and it is nice to have a raft to lay one once in awhile..and that is when they can fully appreciate the gift that is interdependence in marriage and family life.
And if you allow me a bit of snark (and another sentence beginning with a conjunction) may I say that if I am a satanist I am a pathetically lukewarm one. If I am going to hell anyway one must wonder why I don’t join team Hedonist and at least have some fun before I die. But I won’t…because I am the worst kind of moralist. Too bad for heaven, but too good to have any real fun being bad.
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Doesn’t that rather leave open the original question of whether women are made for independence or interdependence, and, if the latter, beg the question of whether a woman seeking independence is behaving in the manner of the prodigal son?
I wot not if you intended it so, but you could be read as saying that the single state is where one best develops confidence and humility. As an outsider looking in, though – with all the grass-is-greener caveats that implies, of course – I’d have to say that the single state definitely offers plenty of hindrances to both, and the married state appears to offer, at least to those who marry reasonably well, a great deal of aid to both. If nothing else, I have to object: where are all the happy, well-adjusted, aging singles?
I’ll give this more thought but I am inclined to think it depends on the individual woman.
For instance- not all women are called to marriage. Not all unmarried women are called to religious orders. Fathers do not live forever and some die quite young. Independent women is just going to happen sometimes even if you create a society where it isn’t the norm or is discouraged. And, of course, husbands die as well leaving widows left to fend for themselves.
I would say the single state is where one best learns what they are like without a partner and I think that can be valuable knowledge.
@Gabby
The wise father or husband will provide for her care before he dies. Yes, some die quite young: this means having a plan for what to do before you get in that situation. Paul has laid out the plan already in 1 Timothy 5
Gabby says:
“How could I ever know what I really am, what I am really capable of, how I can manage life’s challenges if I am never fully independent?”
I don’t know if you read the story I recounted about my boss a few comments North of here, Gabby, but this thought probably entered my boss’ mind as well. To hell with men, she said (not entirely her fault, but she bears some responsibility for her rebellion). This choice has affected her entire future, her marriage, her family and her children – very negatively.
The problem is, once a woman has tasted of the fruit of independence (from God’s authority, and man’s authority), she becomes drunk on it. The bible says as much, when it says that her husband will rule over her, but her desire will be to rule over him.
She has now eaten from the wrong tree, and she’s never getting back to the right one (Tree of Life) short of living in total submission to God via Jesus Christ. I know that you know this in your head (intellectually), but I fear you have no concept of it in your heart.
If you are honest, I am sure you will admit that because of your sinful nature, your incessant desire to be independent of man vs. dependent upon man (I believe you are truly afraid to depend on a man, but prefer to compete with him), that you find it now very difficult to submit to your man. Upon tasting the fruit of rebellion, you thirst for more.
Wouldn’t it have been preferred (and even simpler and easier for you), had you remained submitted to fatherly male authority under God until God moved you from under the authority of your father to under the authority of your husband? Even if your father wasn’t “perfect?” I think that is the crux of what Cane Caldo is trying to say; it is the more excellent way. It is the preferred way. It is what God originally designed; it is an ancient path.
Following Christ (submitting to Him)is all about HIM: discovering Him, and His will for our lives. Following Christ has little to do with “finding yourself”, other than seeing with eyes wide open, the truly wretched and sinful and filthy nature that exists in you without accepting His blood sacrifice.
I suppose that if I said I assumed those widow passages referred to financial dependency more than a woman needing to be protected from her own stupidity…that you would find that interpretation deficient and it would go over like a lead balloon. So I won’t bother. 🙂
Ezra- But that is exactly what I mean. Seeing with eyes wide open is the benefit of putting yourself through a trial and seeing how you do.
If you do well then you know your strengths but you also know how tiring it is to be strong all the time. If you do poorly you know your weaknesses. And as I said…I believe that is valuable knowledge.
I think that a lot of marriage problems are because the couple can’t appreciate how the other adds to their life. If you go straight from Dad’s house to Husband’s house can you ever really fully appreciate what life is like with a protector and provider compared to otherwise?
I’ve lived both ways.. even though I married young my husband was in the Army and spent a lot of time away. While I had his financial provision I still usually worked at least part-time while caring for young children with little outside help from family. While I know I can survive such circumstances it makes me all the more grateful for not having to live like that permanently.
I don’t have divorce fantasies because I know my life is better with my husband. I KNOW it..because I have experienced life without him.
If you’re going to use personal anecdote, Gabby: Let’s be explicitly personal, so that if we want to buy Gabby’s personal view on the importance of independence for knowledge and self-improvement, we know what the cost is of your towering independence.
Sex is a huge cost-driver for men, especially husbands–they won’t shut up about it!–so let’s start with the biggest physical price-tag of female empowerment and self-awareness:
Were you chaste during this time of independence, before your marriage? What about while you were separated?
If not, was that sufficient? Too few? Too many?
Does your husband thank you for your comparative knowledge and skills gained in independent training?
Is he quantitatively aware of exactly how empowered you are?
Does your father know the worth of your independence, as a cost?
What you don’t understand is that you don’t deserve to be married. Now, no one deserves to be married. Marriage doesn’t happen because of just desserts. If you answered “No” to the first question, then you not only don’t deserve to be married, but you deserve to be treated as un-marriageable. That your husband married you is evidence of either his gross stupidity, or his love for you is so overwhelming that it makes him blind to your unfitness, in a manner not unlike how Christ’s blood blinds God from our sin. You ought to be thanking God every day–with a joyful heart–that a man has taken you as a wife.
But in your view, it is your sin itself that makes you a worthy candidate for marriage. So, in context: In a world where no one deserves to get married, you not only feel you deserve to get married–unlike the rest of us poor slobs–, but you believe you actually increased your value by screwing around with other men!
How do you not see how unholy, how self-worshipping, how satanic this philosophy of “independence creates knowledge” is?
If I got the hint that you were leading another woman astray, you’d be banned.
I don’t think you know what you’re saying, Lacey. What you’re advocating is the position that gabby finds herself in: dead submission struggling to respect her husband. I do not want this for my daughters.
Oh yes, that’s exactly what I was saying, uh-huh.
No, I believe you don’t know what I was talking about so I’m done here. You’re so intent on believing your views are absolutely correct in this area that you aren’t willing to consider this can be coddling, and not guidance. Like I said before, you’re free to raise your children as you see fit but it’s your unwillingness to understand what I’m saying that has caused me to lose interest with this topic.
I don’t know why you assumed I screwed around with other men when my husband was away in the military. What a terrible thought.
We were both unfit for marriage by the Christian definition of being “fit”..but he wanted a woman who could take care of herself so HE considered my independence a plus. He also considered my * comparative* chasteness a plus because I was not promiscuous. I was unchaste in my mid-teens (and before my conversion) which he knew about, but he was also unchaste and so he believed our flaws and attributes were a good fit. I was also quite repentant and told him that I wasn’t quite sure I was fit for marriage but if he felt like taking the risk on me then I’d let him.
You seem to equate independence with promiscuity and I don’t know why you are doing that. I did sew some wild oats but it was when I was 16 and living at home. I had chosen to live chastely when I left home.
I don’t talk to my Dad. That is all kinds of crazy drama that I don’t want to talk about it publicly because to do so would be disrespectful to him.
I would never advocate promiscuity.
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.
@Cane (and Gabby, for clarification’s sake): Is ‘independence’ a code word for (or at least inclusive of) screwing around? I didn’t get the sense that gabby was suggesting it was wise, non-sinful, or otherwise defensible for a woman (or anyone else) to spend one’s youth doing that. It didn’t look like she thought of it at all. (She of course needs to: it’s extremely naive to hope that most people, no matter how well they were brought up, will endure years of such free and independent youth without indulging themselves.)
@unger
She has stated, here on my blog, that she was promiscuous as a teen. She has said no such thing about the duration her husband was deployed, so that was an honest question. Well, honest in the sense that it is a factor in considering the wisdom of her advice. However; I have put her in moderation because I’m not interested in goading her into spilling her guts on my blog; which she didn’t, as you can see from the released comment.
“Independence” is not code for “fornication”; it’s code for “I don’t want to be accountable”. But every woman I’ve known who didn’t want to be accountable was easy. The inferences are sobering enough, to the man investigating the wisdom of marrying a Christian woman. It’s not enough that she profess Christ: Does she love and obey her father?
I am far from a saint, but I do NOT prescribe either my past or current sinful ways as something worthy for others to investigate.
@Gabby
I don’t think you’re honest. I don’t get the sense that you’re fitness-testing me, but you do not understand half of what I say, and none of the implications. Regardless, nothing I explain here is going to help you. I could be wrong (though I strongly believe I am not); or you could be simply be unprepared to hear. Whatever the case: the Bible doesn’t instruct me to present Gabby with an explanation of order, authority, or responsibility that she agrees with. It says Gabby is saved through obeying her father, her husband, and in child-bearing. I think my blog is distracting you from that. For both our sakes, you’re in moderation.
@Lacey
This space is not meant for you. I’m sure you’re a fine girl, but you’re not serious. It’s probably best for everyone that you’re leaving.
@Women
This is a man’s space. Women are welcome to comment, but you should have either:
1) questions
2) supportive comments
3) scriptural backing for any criticism
I take pains to construct what I say–and I’ll be damned if I’ll let some flippant woman equate my time in research and prayer with her time feeling tradition is really lame.
Also, I will be far more forgiving of men because I believe they will generally be more worthwhile. Besides: men get shutdown everywhere–especially Christian men–so if something moves a man to speak out, it is usually serious. Those that are not will be sussed out, and I may ban them too. This is not fair, since I know none of you, male or female. It is still the best course of action.
Think of it this way: Women have all of TV; even sportscasting.
Oh, I get it. This is like your little Shopping Mall Ministry. Without the overhead.
Got it. Don’t let me interrupt the Preacher Man.
[CC: Annnnnd there’s the fitness test. My requirements are just good manners; which you lack. Goodbye, Pryncess Gabby.]
Well, despite the fact that I risk being put into moderation, I have very thoughtfully considered the conversation here, and have decided that I do have a question:
How do you reconcile your assertions with the Scripture saying that there is only One Mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5). I took the time to do a Strong’s search and “man” here is indicative of mankind, not maleness. I’m sure you know that but for the sake of those reading along I thought I’d add that.
What’s more, I was always under the impression that the Scriptures you referenced from Numbers were legal in nature, not spiritual. I am not objecting to proper authority for married women or single women, but am questioning if you have taken the temporal applications of these safeguards and made them spiritual. In effect, you seem to remove from women responsibility for their own sin and imply that constant monitoring will somehow keep a woman from making decisions that place her in danger of Hell’s fire.
Even if it were true that we should corral women into a physical and moral straightjacket for the purposes of protecting them from themselves, what good does it do to save her body if her soul ends up in hell?
And how do we know if our daughters have internalized the truth of Christ if they are never given the opportunity to stand for him separate from us just as they will on Judgement Day?
@Elspeth
Not only do I reconcile it: the former foreshadows the latter. Numbers is a foreshadowing of what Christ’s role is for mankind. Here’s a paragraph from the OP
As God is a God of order and obedience, there is a continuity here that is breathtaking when we consider the implications. More to follow in posts.
As an aside: Elspeth, you have always disagreed honestly, and I do not recall a time where you ever set out to lead anyone astray from scripture. I do not foresee that changing, and you have accumulated quite a stockpile of favor with me, anyway.
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“It says Gabby is saved through obeying her father, her husband, and in child-bearing. ”
Saved from what and for what purpose? Because we certainly are not talking about salvation from sin here. The Bible is clear that salvation is through Christ alone (Rom 10:13 and others).
Yes, I am. The work of obedience to her husband and father, and taking authority and responsibility for her children will lead her to be closer to Christ.
Of course we must always understand that it is Christ who saves. This is about understanding how marriage and children are part of God’s plan to bring about that salvation, and as an expression of that plan, and His nature.
This is true on an absolute level, and in the abstract. It is a transcendant understanding of mankind’s purpose, and God’s supremacy. Christ couldn’t just descend from Heaven as the Logos of God, and tell us the truth. He had to be born, become a man, obey his parents and authorities even unto death, and be resurrected. In other words: He walked the path that we are called to walk.
Jesus was crucified by legitimate earthly authorities, and did not resist them. He transcends them when God brings Jesus back to life. We, too, shall be justified by God’s love even while submitting to authorities; even when they are clearly wrong.
“We, too, shall be justified by God’s love even while submitting to authorities; even when they are clearly wrong.”
Interesting. This seems to be the basis of St. Augustine’s statement, “There is no excuse for schism” and ergo there is no good reason to split off from the Church.
I know you put me in moderation…which is fine..but you didn’t specifically ask me to stop writing to you and I had another thought I wanted to share. This one is all mine, and not my husbands..as he isn’t Catholic and these are all very Catholic opinions.
If you said that I am purified through motherhood and obedience to lawful authority then I could agree with you. There is Purifying Grace and Salvific Grace. Salvific Grace gets you out of Hell. Purifying grace cleanses you and makes you capable of enduring the Beatific Vision (and what Catholics believe purgatory does as a continuation of our life on earth). You have only this life to accept Salvific Grace (that is the acknowledgment that you are a sinner that needs saving) but purifying Grace often takes much longer than our time on this earth will allow.
I believe I have submitted to Salvific Grace and I believe I will likely be spared Hell. I have a long way to go as far as being Purified. Perhaps you are right that all that independence talk above is indicative of what is still lacking in my purification. My only reason for mentioning it is because I don’t believe I am a special snowflake in that regard so tread carefully with your own children. Fire and Brimstone preaching’s need to be balanced with empathy or you come across as crazy and scary and will make a woman’s (or daughter’s) creep radar start beeping and she will slowly back away..obviously are not-so-obviously. Instead of hanging on your every word she will start sounding you out and start looking up homes to put Crazy Daddy in when he finally goes off the deep-end.
Women want a hero, and they love for their Dad to be the hero. But the line between hero and villain is thin, and the difference is that the hero knows the right ratio of alpha and beta..while the villain is by all appearance an ego-maniacal tyrant who will gladly use the scriptures to get his way because he gets off on the power.
I do believe women have an inherent ability discern and have to when a man is either not present (dead, missing) or incapacitated (drunk, insane, etc). Remember Ruth:
“Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.” (Ruth 1:16–17 NKJV)
This is also (I believe) a pre-figuration of Mary becoming the mother of all Mankind “Your people will be my people” prefigures Jesus on the cross: “Here, Behold your Mother”.
I’m not saying you are an ego-maniacal tyrant, but you do say you have a mission here, and you do say that you are trying to preach to men..and I think it is worth cautioning against tyranny for its own sake and advocating for a spirit of humility. A “this hurts me more than a hurts you” attitude of discipline rather than a haughty “Get behind me Satan”. Only Jesus can get away with that (Or at least an ordained exorcist).
I really think you should just become Catholic and go read some Peter Kreeft, Fr Barron, Thomas Howard, and Scott Hahn.
[CC: I probably should not have done this, but I was moved to sympathy in my flinty heart, and I’ve let it out to play. Please do not make me regret it, and let me repeat what I said above:
This is a man’s space. Women are welcome to comment, but you should have either:
1) questions
2) supportive comments
3) scriptural backing for any criticism
I take pains to construct what I say–and I’ll be damned if I’ll let some flippant woman equate my time in research and prayer with her time feeling tradition is really lame.
Also, I will be far more forgiving of men because I believe they will generally be more worthwhile. Besides: men get shutdown everywhere–especially Christian men–so if something moves a man to speak out, it is usually serious. Those that are not will be sussed out, and I may ban them too. This is not fair, since I know none of you, male or female. It is still the best course of action.]
I appreciate your mercy by putting me on probation rather than ban me forever. Your blog is thought-provoking and I enjoy participating in discussion.
I am going to try and only comment when I think what I have to say is really relevant. Sometimes on other blogs I comment just because I think I am funny and I like the attention being funny gets me. You accused a certain someone of being an internet slut. It made me wonder if it is possible to like attention and get attention in a way that doesn’t make one any form of a slut but just someone enjoying a hobby that others also find amusing (like…a musician or artist).
I decided the difference is whether you try and steal the spotlight on someone else’s stage..and that is the point where you become an attention whore. So next-time I feel the urge to be funny I will keep to my own blog and keep the snark on other blogs..like here, Dalrocks, and wherever…to an absolute minimum.
Just out of curiosity- Do you agree with that distinction?
The line is this: If someone of the opposite sex tries to manipulate my emotions–not appeal, but manipulate–then I will begin to assume she is a slut. If she continues after a warning then I will act as if she is, and discontinue the dialogue.
In the case of the person you reference, it was a legitimate concern.
For people who overly like attention, that is a danger for them everywhere they go. Women are prone to this; especially if they are unsatisfied. Since it is our sin nature to be both dissatisfied, and to reject the proper source of satisfaction, venturing out into the world (real or Internet) is where women ought to be on-guard.
It’s also possible to simply be misunderstood. For example: If I am being very serious, and someone is flippant, I will react very strongly in response. That is not fair, but it generally works. Some may wonder how I get along. Do I speak like this in real life? Do I write the way I speak? No. I write the way I think. In real life, I censor myself quite heavily.
“The line is this: If someone of the opposite sex tries to manipulate my emotions–not appeal, but manipulate–then I will begin to assume she is a slut.”
What’s happening here is pretty obvious. The annoying one is following the tingles as provided by Cane. That is why she can’t cease commenting even though she has been modded. Cane, your assumption seems to ring true.
This is a very simple concept. God, the ultimate authority, has placed earthly authorities over me. On of these authorities are my parents and more specifically, my father. I’m technically an “adult” but my father still has authority over me and I, mostly obey(I hate to say that I have dishonored him in the past, disappointing both him and God but I have repented and I seek to not do that anymore because it is deathworthy).
Cane’s daughter is a minor. Cane has legitimate authority over her, vested in him by both God and the state. If she disobeys him, she is disobeying God.
I don’t see what is so difficult about that. And there is no Catholic/Protestant divide on this matter. As someone said, Aquinas and Luther agree upon the matter. On top of that, Anglicans of the traditional variety are very similar in outlook to traditional Roman Catholics not the post V2 Americanized “Catholics”. On top of that, the Roman Catholic Church is heavily concerned about authority, what would make anyone think that she approves of female “independence”(read: rebellion)?
Svar is back. I do hope you’re doing well.I see you haven’t lost your edge.
@Svar
“Be angry, and do not sin.”, and “Be quick to listen, and slow to speak, and slow to anger.”
Gabby is trying; which is more than we can say for most people. I believe you are trying too; which is why I emailed you first. I don’t set out to disparage anyone. (To do so is acting like a misguided woman–that is what they do, isn’t it?)
The problem with addressing women is that it is a bad idea for me to email them. As you see: some of them respond to me more emotionally than they should. That represents a temptation for me to investigate them further–and to imagine the pleasure that can be had with a willing female body. That is: they are inviting me to lust. Generally, men must guard their hearts to keep from sinning. Women, again generally, must do so to avoid tempting men to sin.
I travel for work, so it would be fairly easy for me to get into an email dialogue with them, which could quickly segue into an emotional relationship–which she would call merely, “an understanding”. Of course, this is an invitation to understand her more intimately. If and when I traveled to a town near them, and if they are attractive enough…
This is why I argue with women publicly, and why my wife has access to my email accounts.
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This truly is an outstanding post Cane, and I am in your debt for the education you provided here. I just recently finished reading all of the comments. Having now read both the post and the comments, my thoughts are:
1) It would be difficult to overstate the nature of the rebellion of women here, and the comments should bear this out to anyone who questions this. As you point out, there is protection but that protection comes only with accepting the authority of a father or husband. Nearly no women today are prepared to do this, even among “Traditional” Christian women in the manosphere. The Scripture you quote is a sort of wedge of truth on the question of women’s culpability. In theory they might not be as culpable, but in practice they have rejected the very shelter they wish to claim. We do women a massive disservice if we allow this message to be diluted or rationalized.
2) You are right to point out the culpability of husbands/fathers, but I’m very surprised that you left out another group. While husbands and fathers are probably in one sense happy not to bear the weight of this responsibility, who is teaching them that such authority/responsibility exists? One could spend a lifetime in 99% of the churches today and never truly hear this message, even on the odd chance that this piece of Scripture is referenced. The men who have accepted the mantle of pastor (and above) are the men who most need to repent, and that repentance must by its very nature be profoundly humbling. While we should never have an ounce of shame for the Word of God, modern Christians in general don’t have a track record regarding feminism to be proud of. Each of us must accept our own (previous) culpability here, but the higher up you are the more culpability you must accept. Men like Stanton and Mohler are leading millions of husbands and fathers astray.
3) Focusing on MRAs and PUAs for not following the Word of God while overlooking the very men who are charged with teaching the Word of God is symptomatic of the fundamental problem in my mind. If we are contrite about our own failure to confront feminism we are in a better position to be taken seriously by men who see the obvious absurdity of the system.
@Dalrock
You are more than welcome, and less that indebted.
I am very cautious to criticize pastors.
1) They live in a world of shit, in the best times. I am exercising a bit of mercy…for now.
2) Scripture is clear that criticizing pastors is dangerous business.
That being said: I do not think you are giving me enough credit for this line:
By those words I explicitly meant pastors, ministers, bishops, etc.
I have to go. I probably should have waited to respond when I had more time.
Thanks Cane.
@Dalrock
I don’t think you are being fair. The fact that women are shocked at what his post implies because it is so radically different from what most of us have been taught shouldn’t mean that we can’t possibly be convinced. Since he wrote this a while back I’ve been doing research into what the early Church Fathers taught on this issue. I’d like to get it right for the sake of my own daughters.
It still doesn’t sit right with me because I was raised that weakness is the worst of all the various character flaws, so a teaching that states that a woman is never to be outside direct male authority is going to be a bitter pill because of what it implies about our inherent weaknesses. That doesn’t mean I have outright rejected it.
@Gabriella
But this isn’t what it states. It states that if you want protection, you have to accept being under the authority of your husband or father. You have argued frequently that the women who sleep with players aren’t the ones who are culpable for their own actions, that the players are. You essentially argue that young women can’t help themselves. This passage wouldn’t offer protection for harlotry, but it does point out the cost of moral protection, and you rejected that with the same zeal you reject the culpability of loose women. You want it both ways, and you are far from alone here.
The players are responsible for leading them into temptation, the women are responsible for succumbing to temptation and not doing a better job of avoiding it. Basically, If I wave chocolate cake in front of a hungry person on a diet then I am guilty of tempting them and they are guilty if they eat it.
But my problem with it is that I think a person can only strengthen their moral resolve by exposing themselves to temptation incrementally. The dieter trying to avoid the chocolate cake shouldn’t spend hours in a bakery, but if they never have to tell themselves “no” then they can’t develop the moral strength to do so.
If we say that a woman should stay under authority so that they always have someone to say “no” for them, then I worry that the woman doesn’t have the opportunity to reach moral maturity and is always like a sheltered child.
By saying that it is in her best interest to stay under authority, isn’t that strongly implying that she can’t develop the moral strength to avoid temptation on her own?
@Gabriella
But the women are also tempting the players. If the players were middle aged husbands, you would understand this. So each sins in fornication, and each sins by tempting the other.
This is pure rationalization of your feminist impulse, the same impulse you described here:
and
and
As a modern feminist submission to men offends you. The rest is just rationalization.
To lighten things up a bit, am I the only one who sees the irony in this?
You might have a point…
But the role of the player is active while the female role is passive. You seem to be suggesting that she is a temptation by the mere fact that she is not married? Is that what you are saying?
I actually had an odd thought the other day where I imagined that automobiles were autonomous and in order to have a car you had to woo them to come home with you, rather than going to a lot and buying them. I imagined it would be stressful to have unclaimed Porches and Ferrari’s running around knowing that if you can just say and do all the right things you could convince them to let you drive them around for awhile. It might be hard not to spend an inordinate amount of mental energy trying to get in their drivers seat.
Those comments were made in Sep 2012 when I was going through a particularly anti-traditionalist phase. I’ve since amended some of my opinions.
@Gabriella
Look at it from the macro perspective. Young women are the rock stars of the SMP. They are the reason men are tempted to become players. If the best way to have sex with young women is to make something of yourself and get married, that is what men (in general) will do. If the best way to have sex with young women is to study from Roissy, that is what young men (in general) will do. It isn’t just that women aren’t marrying but that they offer their most attractive years to the men who do it all wrong. This doesn’t change the morality of the choices by the men, but young women are the ones in the drivers seat and they are the ones who elected to change the rules of the SMP.
So who is seducing whom?
What changed was when I spent some time living with the woman who raised me and saw from a new perspective how this hyper-sensitivity to being “weak” and “needy” had a corrupting influence on her, and I have since been putting more effort into changing my paradigm.
I see what you are saying about the SMP seducing men into sin. How that effects individual culpability is still confusing.
I do think we need to differentiate between the types of feminism. I have an egalitarian impulse, but I associate feminism with female supremacy so I would not say I have a feminist impulse since I don’t believe that women are better than men.
Egalitarianism is trickier. Perhaps not to you, 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.
By equal I mean equally capable of moral behavior. I don’t mean equal in the sense that there is no hierarchy in marriage roles.
In case you can’t tell, I am the kind of person who has to think about something for a long long long loooooooong time before I come to a conclusion, and often I flesh out all the angles through conversation. You might be surprised to know how frequently I re-read the same thought provoking articles. I have been thinking about the theology of male and female for about 5 years.
So my point is..It takes me a long time to make up my mind but once I do it might as well be cast in stone. Egalitarianism, feminism, authority, submission, etc…those are things I am still marinating on. 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.
Scripture is clear that criticizing pastors is dangerous business.
This is a big one. As you know I go AT pastors directly, but I try to not talk ABOUT the man, the pastor…though its easy to slip into that. Ive learned though lots of experience that when i ultimately sit down with them I end up liking them even though being frustrated by them. They do live at the foot of shit hill.
@Empath
I can understand the reticence to cut down those in authority, but these men tend to make a cottage industry of using their own authority cutting down husbands and fathers. In fact, I would suggest they do this as a way to avoid having to address their own failure of leadership. Attacking the common man is easy yet you can pretend it takes courage. Calling out women is hard. It is exhausting breaking through the hamster spinning. When you do finally break through it doesn’t feel right, and you will be called all sorts of awful things mostly behind your back. Likewise, calling out players is easy. So we end up where we are. Nearly all of our focus is on the awful men who make the mistake of following the authority we dare not challenge, and on the awful men who aren’t following the authority we dare not challenge. Very little focus goes to the women who are in open rebellion to the authority we denigrate (ordinary husbands and fathers), or who elect to flock to the other men we denigrate (players).
Dalrock
I dont know, and I mean that as stated, I dont know if, for example, parsing the words of these men as you (and others) do on blogs and illustrating their hypocrisy actually falls under the spirit of not criticizing pastors. And as reluctant as I am to wade into this arena because it opens things up to all manner of present shenanigans, the historical and cultural context of criticizing a Christian leader in the days the original gang were running around could be much different than criticizing a CAREER pastor. The Christian leaders then quite literally sacrificed everything in many cases, even those unheralded in scripture by name, even those who were stationary and led “the church of ________(fill in Greek city)”. I could explain more, Im sure you get the point.
I would afford the Christian leader now some deference, targeted deference, not drag in charges of heresy or such when addressing the stuff that we are about, but make no mistake, plainly speak to exactly what you are saying in the post above. I have many email exchanges over years of doing it, I once , maybe 7 years ago, plastered some of that on a forum and it was in bad taste at the least. I could curl your hair (assuming its straight) with some of the stuff I’ve come across when addressing pastors. I don’t do that.
I never fail to close with unless and until they begin to address the 60% of their crowd that goes unaddressed their efforts at marriage and divorce will not only remain futile, but the situation will degenerate more.
Cane I think takes some exception though i haven’t yet figured out precisely what it is….but he and I are trying to sort that out because I am always open to being rightly rebuked or rebutted.
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@Empath: “charges of heresy”
This quoted fragment is critical. Heresy speaks of deviance from the truth and damage to the church. We have a huge practical problem here: The Church is fragmented and adherence to the Word of God is spotty at best.
To what standard do we hold a pastor? I’m not trying to be cute or fatalistic. This is a common roadblock that I’ve encountered when addressing unscriptural teaching, I point out a variance from the truth of God, and it’s summarily dismissed, because the Apostle Paul was a product of his culture, and scripture is subject to interpretation, and I should go to a church that speaks to my beliefs. [And we pause here for a collective groan.]
All of these claims are smokescreens, of course, meant to distract us from the ruin all around and provide teaching for our itching ears. Notice the common thread throughout: Truth is deconstructed and reduced to nothing but personal opinion. At large, we judge matters via public debate. All things are politicized and we live in the shadow of the tower of Babel.
How do we repond? Situationally? I join with you in saying that I’m not entirely sure.
In the case of media darling pastors, Dalrock may be pursuing the best course, criticizing their published comments in an equaly public forum. I don’t know how else one might effectively reach them and mitigate the damage. If I take issue with something that Cane Caldo says here on his forum, I will try to refute it (respectfully) in like manner. If I see my brother sin, I will speak to him, personally, hoping to rectify the matter in a private setting. Open correction is available as necessary. If a problem is widespread and well documented, it will need to be refuted publicly so that all may learn.
We’re not to rebuke an elder but intreat him as a father. (1 Tim 5:1) Nonetheless, when error multiplies and the damage is already done, should we still refrain? (1 Tim 5:20)
This is an old conundrum. Where is the line between prayer and action? What matters do we leave with the Lord (in submission, per Ex 14:13) and what matters do we we condemn openly? We are — as always — reliant upon scriptural guidance, answered prayer, and a tender conscience.
Alan and Emopath,
I appreciate the seriousness with which you are considering this question, and I have no question that Cane is as well. I also don’t know the answer, but I think this is a foundational problem and while it has nagged at me for some time it didn’t crystallize until this thread. As I mentioned in my previous comment I think it has become far too easy to hammer the men who are trying to get it right and leave off the rebellious women and church leaders. Interestingly if we call out ordinary fathers and husbands for not obeying the Scripture on an issue the church doesn’t see fit to call them to obey, aren’t we already undermining the authority of the church itself? Part of the issue here is the game of make believe we all see; virtually no church will outright admit it is in disagreement with the parts of Scripture in question. But still, if we are instructing men to behave in ways practically no pastor speaks on, aren’t we already challenging the pastor’s authority in some way? I would say the same for calling women to account where the church has refused.
I take this back to Cane’s point:
If responsibility rolls uphill, then it needs to roll all the way to the (earthly) top. If it can’t roll up, then we must make peace with that and not intervene where the church doesn’t see fit to lead.
Moreover, as I see it the true rebellion is on the part of women and the church, although most of this is cloaked in passive aggressiveness. It is easy enough to provoke the truth here though and I think we all can see this. It isn’t that ordinary men don’t need to take responsibility in their own families, but that expecting this to happen on a large scale without first addressing the church and the rebellion of women is a prescription for failure. For the most part the men who are listening to us need more encouragement than scolding, as they are fighting everything in the process.
@Dalrock
Is this a criticism of the thrust of my posts, or of Christian advice in general; found in Christian bookstores, from pulpits, etc?
I like this topic. Its rubber-road contact.
I still cannot tell if there are sides to choose; if there are, I’m with Dalrock in what he said in the clip Cane pasted above. Its been my MO for nearly a decade. Practically speaking, in terms of action, I cannot find another choice in a corporate sense. Sure I can choose the treatment of wife and daughters per Cane’s sage words. The part about encouraging other men to do that in the absence of pushing back on the corporate side has necessarily the unintended consequence of synergy with what the church is screwing up already in their misguided men step up programs.
My intentions may be perfect were I to make it to men, about men. The effect serves to reinforce the sale of crap though. This can get circular in a hurry like arguing more taste verses less filling or something.
The thrust of your post was larger than what I am pointing out, and the issue is pervasive even in the manosphere. Simon Grey had some recent posts which had me thinking about this. I would however offer it as something for consideration as part of the larger question I raised above.
Here is the link to the second of two posts by Simon Grey which had me thinking about this issue. I don’t know which Christian married men in the manosphere he is complaining about, but generalized attacks on unnamed men seems to be par for the course here. One can be brave and heroic in boldly smacking down other men while remaining safely passive aggressive. He does address the church in the end of the first post, but his criticism there is fairly specific to the church not teaching about sexual attraction.
Dalrok, I’m not sure that I’m following. Maybe the wrong link, or not. Are these the (rather vague) claims you’re referencing?
1. “Most modern American men couldn’t tell you why they believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God”
2. “Men have forsaken God and have pursued everything the world has to offer. And that’s why women get away with being whores.”
Without requiring real stats to back it up, I do get the general accusation. HOWEVER, the application is questionable. Feminism is a blunt object that doesn’t discriminate amongst targets. It infects with equal opportunity and doesn’t weigh consequences. Many faithful men are plagued by the disease, while unscrupulous sorts go unscathed.
The charge has some validity, but we would have to dig it out. The cause(s) are actually many and are not confined to Christian failure, to be sure.
There is a link to the first post in the beginning of the second one, which starts with:
Yup, I missed the link: http://cygne-gris.blogspot.com/2013/01/god-man-and-marriage.html
I’ll go read and come right back…
Oh.
Well that’s a nice how-do-you-do. I got about halfway through it without much trouble, but then… whoa. The bias hit me with both barrels. If the ‘sphere has a bias against women, then this post is equally biased against men. The terminology is clear. I’ll hit a few points, but there isn’t enough time for all:
1.) idolization of women — making women the focus of their lives
2.) the common male lament: “but I thought women wanted nice3 guys.”
3.) God clearly expects men to lead their wives, and do what it is best for them, their wives’ protestations notwithstanding.
This is quite a task in light of the punitive measures in place, like oh, jail, destitution, ruin.
4.) most men are trying—but failing—to manipulate women by being nice.
And here I thought that quite a few men wanted to salvage marriages out of this mess. Apparently I was wrong.
5.) If a man knows that God expects him to behave a certain way, he had bloody well better behave that way.
Well, I guess we understand the thrust behind MGTOW, now. Men are following the Apostle Paul’s advice to the letter, avoiding entanglements. Well done, gents.
6.) if man subverts the hierarchy by submitting to/worshiping his wife (or if the wife tries to subvert the hierarchy by ruling over her husband and her husband goes along with it), then the marriage breaks down.
Hey, I’m giving it my all, but it would be nice if someone were in my corner!
7.) One thing that whiny Christian MRAs should consider doing is spending a little bit more time examining their lives, to see whether they are truly worshiping God.
This is unsubstantiated and downright mean.
8.) If God’s word is to be believed, it is far more likely that a good number of marital problems—and the attendant social ills that accompany them—are largely results of men shirking their God-given duty.
And we’re back to the premise that women don’t sin (as much, as often, as badly) as men do.
There is more, but I’m tired. I have no problem with laying the responsibility to follow God’s Word initially at men’s feet, but have pity as he’s ground to mulch by the machinery.
Just saw this.
LOL!
Cane….I saw that too and nearly responded immediately, rather, I spent the time directing my bangs across one eye and applying make up.
I was not particularly moved by Simon’s words. I’m not sure why we need even consider them. Dalrock, what about those accusations compels you?
He has an accurate societal lament. So?
There is Biblical admonition to back his, and most of these types of suggestions, to be sure, and some of us discuss that. Cane even more than most. I would suggest that some of us are OK with hearing it because of the truth wrapped in it. But like I said above it is still synergistic with what the boyz behind the pulpit are doing, too close for comfort.
Imagine the antidote that would satisfy him. It would look like traditional scriptural men step up admonitions perhaps better referenced, and better written/spoken, and Dalrock in your case you could even avail us to a plethora of statistics to show how badly men are messing up.
Yawn.
@Empath: “Imagine the antidote that would satisfy him. It would look like traditional scriptural men step up admonitions perhaps better referenced,”
True.
Q: So, if men dutifully put it all on the line, promoting scriptural obedience in their homes and communities, what will happen?
A: Many wives will revolt under the hand of oppression, marriages will detonate, husbands and fathers will be ostracized and cast off, children will be sacrificed upon the alter of choice, AND the platitudes from the pulpit will rise in pitch, urging the few survivors to “MAN UP!”
This approach has been disasterous, and a 38% failure rate should convince us.
We are losing, and this is a waste of good men. Where is the support? How does a man get help on his island of responsibility? Yes, we may be called upon, at any time, to sacrifice ourselves as Christians, husbands and fathers. This is undeniable, but I cannot in good conscience urge young men into this form of an unequal yoke. If marriage vows are not to be upheld, then the relationship is strictly unilateral. The threefold cord is not to be found where each individual follows his(her) own spirit.
Humility and adherence to God’s Word are indispensible, but we need to address the reality of our fallen natures and move to counter it more effectively. Let’s provide the restraint that women need (and naturally desire) while exhorting men to fulfill their roles as teachers and protectors (which we naturally desire). The one-sided equation simply doesn’t work. I’ll sit down now.
@Alan
Isn’t that what he is complaining about in the first place?
[CC: I went to fix the first one, and this one appeared. Let me know if this is right. Also: Who is “he” in your last sentence: Empath, Simon Grey, or I?]
Thanks Cane. I figured that would make it easier. “he” in that sentence is Simon Grey.
We are losing, and this is a waste of good men. Where is the support? How does a man get help on his island of responsibility?
Not from a lot of traditional churches….
OK, what follows is terribly long winded…as one who blogged for many years in the political world, I would loathe this kind of comment, even if it was mostly on topic. It is my cautionary tale of what happens when you do not confront sin head on, especially the sin of a woman against her husband and family. Keep in mind I’m still living through the aftermath….
I have learned it is very difficult for Pastors to get it right when it comes to being strong in calling out sin and encouraging repentance, especially if a huge amount of shame will flow toward a woman from the admission of sin.
Going back five and a half years to the event that cemented the doom of my marriage, on the day of my wife’s transgression, outside of immediate family, I made one call and one personal visit. The long distance call (near midnight mind you) was to the man who married my wife and I, who is still my therapist and closest spiritual adviser today….the personal visit was to my local pastor. I respect and love the first man, I now despise the second.
Why? because over time (and through lots of phone calls and emails) the first had the courage to help me, and eventually, after I healed from the trauma and additional sin that befell me (and is still being dealt with), he helped me reclaim enough of my authority to divorce my wife…and don’t think he didn’t have a stake in that decision…we were the first couple he ever married as a minister. It was an honor he gave to us, because there were several couples he was counseling at the time and he turned down officiating some of their weddings.
The second, well, he basically enabled me to keep the incident quiet inside our church. There was no support for me, there was no calls for my wife to confess her sin and repent. It was so unthinkable that a woman would do what my wife did….she just needed a huge dose of the Church’s love, without shame and condemnation…and that will turn her heart to confess and ultimate forgiveness in her time.
What happened was it enabled her to think it was not a big deal, the legal system didn’t do anything to me, if I keep my mouth shut the church won’t do anything but affirm me and my salvation and goodness. Look, even my broken husband, who had all his dreams dashed by my actions may be a little depressed, but he is working hard on my behalf trying to figure out how to fix what I did……hey! all is well. When is my next massage appointment?
So, on the day of that monumental sin, I sought the help of my pastor and church to guide and advise me, because the event was so bad and traumatic that I was destroyed. They provided nothing. I suspect a man coming into his pastors office saying he had an affair because his wife quit having sex with him months or years ago would never think to haul the wife in and read them both the riot act for their sins…and lay some of the affair at her feet, where it belongs.
In the end it took me five years and additional sin (which I could not resist because of my state) to heal to the point where I quit covering for what my wife had done, and I started correcting a white lie told years ago to pretty much everybody. I had my rationalizations, save public face, give her space to heal, protect her, etc….she despises me now for correcting that lie, I am free of sin.
Eventually, I commanded her to confess what she had done to all the people who had supported us and were lied to. I said if you confess and give testimony to the huge amount of grace you have been given, it will be better in the end.
Her solution was to try and get us to change churches and start fresh…clean and washed of our past “..just like in Christ”. She called me to be the spiritual head of our marriage, but refused to confess to the multitudes of friends and fellow church goers what had been lied to…a lie know to the senior pastoral staff. I refused to go to church with her and be in a Sunday School class until she did these things..I volunteered in the church in other ways and served. She called me out on not being the spiritual leader of our house by saying I wasn’t dragging her butt out of bed and making her go to church. I went and served, I was obedient and I had told her what she needed to do. She said I wasn’t leading because I was not actively forcing her.
Until you specifically confess the actual sin publicly you will never be free of it. I freely admit that in my abject brokenness I had an affair…with a woman that my wife literally brought into our bed because she knew I needed sex and her fat and unattractive self didn’t care to provide it to her broken husband anymore….it holds no power over me. However, my wife was quick to point out I had the affair “to bring me down a notch,” all while omitting her involvement. Now I have the ability to immediately follow with a yes, and I’d like to thank my wife for introducing my thin and sexier adulteress into our marital bed. At the end that pissed my wife off something fierce…she accused me of not owning up to my transgression…ummm I admitted I had an affair, is it not a sin of omission to not detail the process of how that affair happened? She was really just mad we had sex a few times outside her control and watchful eye.
If you are wondering the affair came a couple of years after the horrible event….that is the further sin.
My case and circumstances are extreme, but for those of you dealing with much smaller issues of unhapppppppiness and rebellion, especially women, if you have a godly husband and you rebel and rebel and rebel, you will lead him to sin. He may be the leader, but as one who has led lots of things, being undermined by your first-officer is worlds different than being undermined by a private deep in the ranks. He gave you a position of trust and you are abusing it..and sabotaging him. He may have to exert his authority over you from time to time, but he should not have to discipline and correct you all the time… it takes away from his task of leadership.
You may not be as extreme as actually going and physically placing another woman into your marital bed, but you might as well…your hamster prevents you from actually admitting “My husband can’t be this good…he can’t have that much authority over me…I must bring him down several notches and make him my equal in sin” and then doing it directly….you just do it with Plausible deniability….and Feminism.
“He may be the leader, but as one who has led lots of things, being undermined by your first-officer is worlds different than being undermined by a private deep in the ranks. He gave you a position of trust and you are abusing it..and sabotaging him. He may have to exert his authority over you from time to time, but he should not have to discipline and correct you all the time… it takes away from his task of leadership.”
This is good.
Amos 3:3
If you are having to fight your best “helper” all the time, it must be exhausting. I know my husband has said the same thing to me before.
Ospurt, a blunt question for you: Do you recognize a failure to lead, instruct, or discipline your wife, that contributed to the events that you describe?
Personally, I find that any Christian husband will acknowledge weakness and lost opportunities over the course of his marriage. (The flesh is always present, the enemy is always active, and we are apt to stumble at any time — barring His grace.) I look back and shake my head. Thankfully, my marriage endured — not due to my superior character, I assure you! I see many weak moments that could have brought us down, but for the grace of God. None among us is impervious to sin.
What do you see looking back? I won’t blindly transfer responsibility for sin to the nearest man and leave women untouched, but I’m curious how you perceive the cycle of one sin begetting another. Can you trace your troubles back to a root cause? Where was the thin edge of the wedge? You could claim, “Yeah, my wife started it all, the lousy so-and-so…” but I don’t think that you’re so naive. There is normally more to these matters, but I can only guess, in your case.
If you are having to fight your best “helper” all the time, it must be exhausting. I know my husband has said the same thing to me before.
It is exhausting and a selfish and sinful waste of your Husband’s gifts. It is one thing for the Husband to totally give up (which the Wife needs to examine her part…I mean she did at least marry a guy with some ambition and pulse)…it is another if he is trying to lead and being undermined.
I guess my point is that the christian side of the manosphere is trying to get churches to look to the bible and see the disservice they have done to men these past 3~4 generations by not holding women to the same standards of sin and shame as men. The point being they need to drop “Man Up” for “Confess Sinner.”
My example is extreme, but when confronted with a CLEAR path to help a husband who had a wife sin so completely against him and the family…and I got “help to cover the sin until she’s ready to confront it” tells you how bad it really is. I live in a very conservative area and attend a largi-ish (~1,000 member) fundamental protestant church in the depth of the Bible Belt Texas. Don’t get them started on alcohol.
My wife is lucky I was friends with one of the most respected lawyers in town…if I had done what she did I would be typing this from jail serving 5-10. My kindness really was paid back with a snake.
Back then a lot of people lacked the nerve to do the right thing….in the end as I heal I am building the nerve to do a lot of things right.
@Alan:
I’ve been over this multiple times in the months leading to and following the separation/divorce. For the first three years of our marriage I did lead, financially, spiritually, life goals…we were doing very well and I was happy and the sex was magnetic.
As I have said elsewhere, when we started to try and have children my wife could not conceive. It was determined that what was causing it was a rare auto-immune disease that ravaged her kidneys…she had end stage renal disease and was on the cusp of dialysis and transplant, at 28/29.
This was pretty crushing for both of us…but we muddled through, changed some priorities to travel some places that may be difficult once you are on dialysis and awaiting transplant. She was struggling with the renal diet and losing weight, but doing something. I kind of turned my thoughts away from family, but she still wanted me to have one, so she helped me through my depression/apprehension about *our* dreams and we took the long road to become foster/adoptive parents.
Somewhere in that process something changed…and it wasn’t necessarily a failure of leadership on my part, but having a wife with such a disease does soften your frame…..and it isn’t just feminism doing it….there are covenant and other forces at work. How do you not soften when the one you love is in such a state by happenstance?
We did wind up getting toddlers placed with us for eventual adoption from foster care. However, I think now, my wife had not processed her grief of not being able to have her own children from her own body…and though she wanted me to be a father..she was really angry at God for her plight. I was having a grand time with the kids…and she was getting more and more anxious, and complaining about not bonding with the kids. Then , she started doing things that were troublesome enough that I was making her self report those actions to our foster home coordinator, which was driving up her anxiety. The end result was, she bit one of the kids on the face because he was having a crying fit like any normal 18 month old would. She snapped. She was arrested (charges dropped BTW), but the state revoked our foster licenses, and blacklisted her in the central registry as a child abuser….family was gone.
Kinda hard to figure out where my leadership went wrong in that. In fact it was my leadership that kept her out of jail and kept me from even being implicated.
It is a weird place to be…in retrospect I really kind of wanted somebody to punish and shame her…because I was too blown out from my SECOND loss of family…and this one was deeper because I actually had kids for thee months. The lie that was told was how we didn’t wind up adopting the kids…I lied to the dozens of church members who threw us “adoptive showers” and help us through my wife’s illness and surgeries…and the entire time the senior pastoral staff knew exactly why we did not adopt those kids.
I’d like to meet the man who can hold perfect frame through all that tragedy.
“I’d like to meet the man who can hold perfect frame through all that tragedy.”
Thanks for the history, Ospurt. I’m not looking for perfection, just an understanding of how it all fits together, where the problems begin, and where our obedience is lacking. Without getting in too deeply, you’re probably right about the impact of health problems and kid frustrations. In retrospect, the warrning signs become clearer. When looking back over my own life, I see a lot of things that I missed before. The hardest lessons are the ones that make the most difference.
I have said this in a couple of other places, but in some intensive therapy I did last year, the central theme came from a book by Edwin Friedman, called “A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.” Kind of odd to use a leadership book to put a man back together, but in Red Pill terms it was perfect. It dovetails with Red Pill thinking in that trauma and sabotage had severely undermined and weakened my leadership ability.
It also taught me the one thing I had never learned to do as a leader, expel the virus that had infected my system. My wife had given herself over to sin and I had to expel her..
I say it was hard to figure out where my leadership failed, but I believe my failure of leadership was to give into empathy in her sickness. I crossed over from compassion and sympathy into empathy. The bad part was, this is what is taught and encouraged by modern society. Which again is a component of the manosphere’s complaints. We are taught to be empathetic, i.e. to understand and feel what a person is going through…when we should be compassionate and sympathetic and acknowledge their struggle, but remain differentiated from it. White Knights are the empathy brigade.
Which is all fine and good, but it does not address the problem of women. I’m not totally unsympathetic to women’s plight in all of this. Neither side has been taught correctly from ANYWHERE, save a few small pockets. I think the manosphere is doing a good job identifying the SMP/MMP and marital strife that is driving men to Red Pill / Blue Bill choices, but what is driving women. “There’s no good men left” seems to be a start, but a woman’s path to reclaim value is almost a fools errand after she hits the wall…it doesn’t seem to help that many married women are undermining their husbands.
I’m sorry, but in my experience the burden of leadership is lighter, and everyone is happier, when there are enthusiastic followers. Even weak leaders can gain confidence and grow with good followers.
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Ospurt, for my names sake I have to respond to your excellent comment.
You have written, here, about the dark side of empathy very in a very helpful way. I have been my own quest to expose the ugliness of unrestrained empathy for a few years now, and your tale framed it better than I ever have. One reason your frame is superior is that you are using yourself as the example, where I consistently refer to women seeking empathy. Your words open men’s eyes to the notion of empathy actually being something that is to be tempered, handled with care, even avoided, rather than something for which we literally plan our lives around to experience. That a man sees how his allowing empathy to be dominant, a drive in a circumstance, is essential, because as you allude, empathy is the better air we breath according to the church and society.
When you immerse yourself in empathy, you feel what they feel (or something akin), hence you are likely to do what they (would) do. You act on their feelings. That is different than reacting TO their feelings or being aware of and sensitive to their feelings. Those lines are erased and “whatever feels good do it” is applicable to vicarious feelings born of empathy as well as one’s own. You cannot lead that way.
Thank you for sharing that.
@empath. After browsing your blog I would Highly recommend Friedman’s book. After reading his chapter that covers the history and pitfalls of empathy I actually went back to several relationship and even a meditation book I was using to reduce stress in the midst of this and struck out entire sections and chapters that advocated using empathy to improve interpersonal relationships.
Friedman will resonate with you.
@Ospurt
One of the good things about writing is that you can detect and correct habits of speech that you never really considered before. I used to have a bad habit of saying things like, “I’m sorry, but…”. I stopped. Here, you are apologizing for making the same case that that St. Peter did in 1 Peter 3:1-7. We should not apologize for that, but proclaim it.
I know it’s just a figure of speech, but on the other hand: it is a figure of speech. It is meant to reveal our posture to the reader. In this case, to appear to be bowing in apology, but actually unbending in spirit. On this matter we should be unbending, so let us not bow, or even feign to.
Thanks Cane. I hadn’t noticed that in particular, but it is something I have noticed in other aspects of my life. I have been working to correct those. As it was put to me by another, “there is a lot in you that just needs to be sinched up and tightened.”
Not many voices tell a man to be unapologetic for truth.
This “sorry” thing creeps into my writing a lot. This is good practical advice Cane. I’m sorry, but I gotta say thanks.
But seriously, it is, and the uber-imperative tone of your writing comes through, I like that, whether I like or agree with what is stated.
@ospurt & empath
Men have stronger feelings of empathy than do women, especially considering how often we fail to follow God’s will, opting instead to follow a woman’s. Genesis 3 is only the beginning of the pattern. I have observed that men routinely absorb women’s preferences, allowing them to mingle and compete with their own. In marked contrast, women normally project their views outward onto anyone and anything without regarding external realities.
My wife and I discuss many things, big and small. I expected this from the beginning, but spent years learning how to do it effectively. In order to communicate with her, I need to conduct the entire conversation in my own head; absorbing her views and sifting out all of the relevant facts. I distill her subjective ideas into objective truth, apply reason, and then translate the result into something that she can recognize. So help me, it’s the only method that works reliably for us. The difference between male and female thought is profound and underscores the need for distinct roles within our homes, our communities, and the Church.
Empathy, like all of our emotions, exists on a sliding scale. Raving insanity waits at each extreme. Too much empathy will subsume a man’s identity and undermine his purpose (Eph 5:23) while too little empathy will isolate a man and prevent him from being an effective witness (2 Tim 4:2). A proper balance is essential. I expect that this idea of equilibrium would generate a lengthy post, all on its own. In short, a human being with excessive emotions wreaks havoc; one with degenerated emotions is sociopathic.
Some Christians believe that emotions tend only toward evil, and therefore try to minimize them — or eliminate them entirely. This view is biased and unscriptural. The Lord Himself demonstrated that emotions do not cause sin, but should be employed in pursuit of God’s will. The Son of Man displayed fiery anger, weeping, and great sadness, to name a few — all apart from sin (1 Pet 2:20-23). We should master these traits, instead of trying to stamp them out or letting them run wild.
I have to disagree that the Lord showed that emotions do not cause sin….He showed that they do not necessarily cause sin.
I can demonstrate that my sex drive doesnt necessarily cause sin as well, that does not mean it cannot.
Each are proclivities. I do not believe that “emotions tend towards evil” anymore than same re sex drive. I do believe they are at one root of sin.
First off, Edwin Friedman was a scholar and Rabbi…though he passed in the late 1990’s I’ve heard his work referenced in various places…including the best bit of Christian Therapy I have ever received.
That being said, Friedman would argue that Empathy should be stamped out, because it is not biblical. Period.
To quote from “A Failure of Nerve” pg 24:
“However lofty the original concept of empathy (a word that only came into the English language in 1922), societal regression has distorted it to the point at which is has become a power tool in the hands of the weak to sabotage the strong, It also serves as a rationalization for the inability of those in helping positions to develop any self control and not enable or interfere, a disguise for unacknowledged anxiety that desires a quick fix, and an indulgence for those who are not in a position where they have to make tough decisions. But the most deleterious effect on leaders is that empathy misleads them as to the factors that go into growth and survival and the nature of what is toxic to life itself.”
Friedman points out that Empathy is a modern construct. It started as a word used for Art Appreciation from a German word, meaning to project oneself into the work…only to be co-opted for use in human relationships after World War II.
Sympathy as a word is over 450 years and Compassion is more than 700 years old. He asks, has this new vocabulary word made us any more caring for our fellow humans than we were 450 or more than 700 years ago?
@empath
Disagreement? I don’t see any. Maybe a hiccup in parsing the language.
I typically cast anything of human nature as good, prior to the fall of man, as doing otherwise reflects poorly on the Creator. Of course, when sin entered, corruption abounded, and our nature became morally dubious. Now, we (wisely) cast a wary eye toward our impulses…
Emotions did not spring into being when man fell. We are each endowed with a living soul, as the “seat of our passions,” if you’ll forgive the loose terminology. Our bodies know corruption (lasting only about three-score and ten years) and yet we should treat our physical form with due respect, in deference to His beautiful design. So, I approach my emotional nature with similar reverence. Hopefully, you can see the sense in this.
Notice the qualifying phrase that I included: “emotions do not cause sin, but should be employed in pursuit of God’s will.” Any misapplication of emotion is sin, but this is not a fault of the design. Any faculty can be misused. *grin*
I agree wholeheartedly with your amplification. Regrets for any ambiguity.
@ospurt
Don’t get me going on the malleability of the English language! A ninety-year old word is positively ancient by comparison to much of the tripe in our current dictionary.
“Friedman would argue that Empathy should be stamped out, because it is not biblical.”
Because it doesn’t appear in the scriptural lexicon, or because it is heretical? I share his disgust with squishy psuedo-science, but I’m not clear about his objection. He seems to be mostly (and rightly) concerned with social mischief. Is there more to it?
Idiots in the sixties would quote from Greek philosophers as they were setting fire to college campuses. Go figure what people will do with a little bit of information — and too much societal tolerance.
Ospurt,….sold, I will read it straight away.
@Cane Caldo
This fits with the point I was making above. There is an overwhelming tendency to blame men whenever women rebel. If men were leading properly the argument goes, then none of this would happen. Brendan challenges this basic claim in the comments on SSM’s site here. There is a sort of catch-22 where women in rebellion is proof that men aren’t leading correctly, but men who attempt to learn tools to be more effective leaders (game), are condemned because they should rely on their wife’s submission. Surely the answer must then be to challenge the church leaders who are undermining the husbands and fathers, but no, this too is forbidden.
I think it isn’t an oversight that the NT focus is on telling wives to submit and not to husbands to convince or force their wives to submit. This of course is spun as proof that the woman doesn’t owe submission to her husband (we need a ritual), but this is another way of claiming that since our marriage vows involve a promise to God that we aren’t at the same time promising to uphold them to our spouse, family, and community (but no one would argue that a man who commits adultery hasn’t betrayed his wife for some reason). It isn’t an either or, but the important part is that even those who oppose submission in practice (while assuring us they absolutely love the idea in theory of course) notice what is plainly obvious. To blame men for women being in rebellion is to profoundly re-shift the responsibility as defined in the NT. This isn’t to say that husbands aren’t called to lead, but that the men in open rebellion are the ones most likely to be blaming the common man (pastors, the author of the article SSM quoted, Stanton, Mohler, etc.). But blaming ordinary men is easy. As a man it feels like courageous self accountability while avoiding challenging the groups which take courage to challenge.
I guess my question becomes, how does this combination of “Failures of Leadership” and “Failures of Submission” work themselves out in the macro? The state of things at a cultural level just seems terrible.
I think men have reached the point where they are deciding to deal with the only thing they can deal with, work on themselves and their leadership component (i.e. learn game, or something similar). I’m not sensing women are deciding to deal with the submission component in mass. I I think this is because of the sheer size of the denial and mitigation machinery that has been erected to try and protect women from their own anxieties (government programs, church unwilling to shame, divorce laws, etc.).
Some days this all just seems to break down into a childish impasse like. “If you would follow I would lead….Well, if you would lead, I would follow, but YOU FIRST, and not **that** kind of leading.” Wait, do you know what the definition of follow is?
How do those circular questions work themselves out? Great question. There are the pat answers like ” if everyone would just submit to God it would all fall into place”, that being the corollary to “if we’d all stop sinning divorce would cease”. True….no utility however. If we never go within reach of a drop of water, drowning would stop, and if we all walked to work, imagine the problems that would solve. True….no utility.
These circular discussions will persist as long as they are taking place among the regular folks, even with strident men who are pushing our case. Its no different than any other cultural phenomenon and in the end it is a failure of make leadership. But that is Leadership, capital L, as in church leaders. It is amazing that the church decries the encroachment of every sort of cultural trend, yet persists in its assertion that on gender relations, its still stuck in dominant overbearing patriarchy and getting worse. How stupid is that? Why would that trend be so counter culture? Why as they attempt to guilt men over and again, for decades, do they not see that the familial destruction grows? It is truly maddening, and leaves one with only a few choices
Men are stupid
Men are spiritually inferior
or
The Leadership is painfully obviously wrong.
Hence, the debate about whose fault it is as a gender, as we discuss it, is more academic than practical, as we will convince a trivial number of women to re-look at this. I listened in person to a clear “men step up” message Sunday over Ephesians 5, from Dr Russell Moore (Google him, go to his site and see eloquent pandering in action)
http://www.russellmoore.com/
This man is hugely respected among Baptists, whose extremely large church he was a guest speaker at Sunday and when he finished his message the crowd literally was on its feet in applause and amens. What he said was as simple as it is ubiquitous.
Men stop the porn and fornication and abuse, and lead as a servant.
Women, stop letting men ruin your self esteem.
I know I get repetitive on this. Someone needs to stay on it.
He ran afoul of scripture once in an extremely blatant way. he was naturally using Jesus “servant leadership” as the example, and predictably the foot washing where Jesus insisted despite the disciples objections. This example actually works, and I respect it. Its context is important though and rarely do they add a bigger picture.
Well, he tried to add a bigger picture. he used Matthew 16 21-22
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Unbelievably he then he just made stuff up saying that Jesus response was not any kind of authoritarian imperative drawing on position, he led the disciples as a servant. Im paraphrasing his words, but he simply didn’t finish with verse 23:
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Truly unbelievable that. My wife didn’t even catch that omission until I mentioned it on the way out, and she is not lost among the church feminists. These guys are smooth. They are the problem, along with their minions in the associate pastorate and the lay leadership.
Basically we are having to overcome the sins of our Fathers, Mothers and Leaders. Are we dealing with a generational sin and those of us born in these times may just be destined to wander until the sinful generation has passed…(kind of Exodus like waiting for the bitter old cat laden feminists and corrupted boomer church leadership to die before we can enter the promised land?).
Does it really come down to failures of current leadership to have the nerve to expel the virus from their church bodies? That doesn’t seem to happening. Could it be they don’t even know what they are sick with? Seems they are fighting the wrong virus with cries against porn and fornication for men and “egos” for women? Talk about Plank and Speck between John and Jane with the blind church leadership judging who has the Speck and who has the Plank. No, I think Auto-Immune Disease is better. They are not working to expel the virus, they are working to destroy their own body.
Now, with my age, credibility, and influence in certain circles I know might make a drop of change locally. I am gaining confidence that I can deliver a righteous rebuke, and I am on FIRM scriptural ground, but now for the ultimate question…why?
I have no children and the window for me to be a biological father and enjoy my offspring is narrowing…so there is little incentive to set things right for my progeny. The blow back might not be worth it…at least to come at the leaders directly.
Being very recently divorced I’m very, very new to this side of the moral and spiritual fence in these matters of the current sexual marketplace. I am finding a lot of convoluted ground that is pot-marked with cultural and church incongruities….making it very hard to navigate living in the world (being a fleshy creature with physical and sexual needs) and not of it will look like for me.
I am also discovering that as a man coming back into his game frame I can have the trappings of relationships with “christian” women that *I* desire from a large pool of those near wall and post-wall…and as I grow older I can definitely see multitudes of divorced “christian” women with grown children “lamenting their journey”….and for lack of a better way to say it, ready to live happier with an “attractive man in a more submissive and traditional role,” until they don’t.
Why do I think “making the best of the situation” may rule for a while?
@empathologism: Ok I looked at Moore’s blog and read the entry on Chris Rock and the part about marriage to a woman being like the Supreme Court made me ill.
Saying divorce is like impeaching a Supreme Court Justice, it isn’t a normal state of affairs, but a constitutional crisis. I can’t even name the last Supreme Court Justice that was impeached…and if there was ever a body that says one thing to “get the job” and after some time on the job does whatever they can RATIONALIZE within the constructs of not only the Constitution, but foreign laws….ladies and gentlemen….welcome to the entitled Hamster of Government being held as a good example of marriage.
we’re doomed.
What Dr. Moore should have said:
Men stop the porn and fornication and abuse, and lead as a servant.
Women, stop refusing to have sex with your husbands and follow them with respect
@Empath,
Just a note, Dr. Moore is brilliant and deserving of the respect that he receives. He does “lead by example” and is an adoptive father. That he is caught up in at least some of the zeitgeist should be respectfully pointed out and not beaten into him. He is in the end more likely to be your ally than your enemy.
Men do need to “man up”, it is after all what we should do, and Moore is not a woman and therefore in a place to say so. Fornication and porn _are_ evils. No Christian preacher should say otherwise. I should also note that Dr. Moore has been repeatedly villified by all the right people for his old fashioned views. In fact I feel reasonably confident that if you pointed this out to him in private he’d at least think about it for a good long time.
As Cane said to me….why apologize for truth? Must we talk with a church leader in private and be pleased that he will thoughtfully consider it? Feminism is 50~60 years old at this point, what is old fashioned?
@GK. wait, are you saying Dr. Moore because he is not a woman has authority to tell these thugs to men? What about his authority to tell of equally weighty sexual sins and attitudes and habits to women? Do women not formicate or view porn? Is their ego the only thing?
@John and GKChesterton
I’d like to know exactly what Moor said. If I imagine myself as a speaker, or pastor, I do not imagine myself saying that in this climate.
Some of you may be away, ahem, aware that I have recently and thoroughly excoriated a woman on this blog. She is actually guilty of the things I said. What Moore did–if Empath is fully accurate–is accuse the group for the sins of individuals, and he did so sloppily. Where is the condemnation for Cosmo magazine; which does much greater damage to marriage than Vivid video ever has? I cannot imagine that a man left his wife because his favorite porn star had bigger breasts than his wife, but I am damn sure that wives have left their husbands over the coordinated barrage of Cosmo articles, Oprah, Style mag, Dove advertisements, etc. on “self-empowerment” and “self-realization”.
Moore is probably a decent fellow, and probably should be a compatriot. Would he sign off on the advice I have given on my blog? I doubt it very much. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but it does lead me to suspect that he has not truly reckoned with the situation; neither the ranks of the enemy, nor the troops that we have fielded.
I don’t have time for a further response now. I owe a couple of you emails, and many of you responses to the comments. Please bear with me a little longer.
GKC
If you read my recent post on my blog you will see I afforded him respect and allowed that he is due respect. I have never, not once, intimated that these sins he points to in men are either not sins, or not primarily male (in the case of photo and video pornography) even with the fact that more and more women are using it. I have owned that for my gender many times. I do not see why these points must be raised except to turn an emotion driven tide for a reader. Yes , no preacher should say otherwise…never been the point, and to raise it comes dangerously close to creating a straw man which you are not prone to do in my experience.
You and I are on the same page in that I agree that he could be an ally, he and others like him. I’ve discussed that with Dalrock before as well, that writing off the conservative Christian leaders, and being on assault mode to the so called trad cons all the time is somehow a dichotomy. Its both valid criticism but also potentially pushing away hardest at those who have an ideology that is innately sympathetic to ‘sphere issues yet they are badly deceived. Presently, they do harm. To see it writ large see my recent post where at the end I pasted the fawning comments that men and women made about his submission talks.
Ive written to both Moore and to the pastor of the church where Moore spoke, and I have contact with an associate pastor at that church and we will be having lunch in a few days. When there, I lay out a narrative thats not an attack, rather i walk them through the hypothetical life of a girl raised in church and what she hears over her life, what expectations it builds, what wrong headed ideas she hears. Even though some were not the intended message, the message she hears is soluble in the culture of feminism at large, and they mix well leaving no meniscus to separate them.
Cane,
Just to clarify, what you quoted was my version of what Moore *should have said*…IMHO, that is.
According to Empath, Moore’s sermon could be summarized as follows:
“Men stop the porn and fornication and abuse, and lead as a servant.
Women, stop letting men ruin your self esteem.”
There’s a bit of personal bias in my version (withholding sex). He could have mentioned female “porn” (romance novels, chick flicks, etc.) just as easily. The point being that men got a swift a-kicking (deserved by some of us) and women got pyschobabble that was really another attack on men.
Moore is in “friend of a friend” territory. I know quite a few people that know him personally so I may be defensive. I also have quite a bit of personal respect for him. I haven’t seen the video and was frankly unaware that you had a blog. Until I do I’ll reserve judgement but will again point out that he could be a very valuable ally rather than a very pointed enemy.
GKC, at present he is not an ally on this. His blog, I think I put the link up here already, has the Women Stop Submitting post from 2011, and lots of comments after. There is no need to defend the man as I am narrowly focused on this one sermon and any others of the same vein.
There is no video, I have a sound file only…which I need to pull off my phone and upload. But it parrots this:
http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/12/05/women-stop-submitting-to-men/
But adds some sermon type flourish, some of which I mention in my blog entry.
While he is not an ally, he is neither an enemy. This distinction is one where some of the disagreements, perhaps in word, more likely in spirit of the word, between me and Dalrock and Cane, each with our own take. I think the real differences we have are differences of emphasis not of ideas.
I have framed this as I mentioned above, by walking through a hypothetical story and getting into what is said, what is heard, and the cumulative impact that has on women, men, and marriages. I presented this in person several months ago to the pastor of another large mega church where I live and he found it compelling…I mention that because I have done this many times and found the same pat objections and preconceptions to my case when I simply laid out facts. He was the first to whom I told it in the frame as above, and it resonated. Maybe I should write a full entry with that reasoning and see if it resonates with you and others.
@Empath, Dalrock & GKC
Forgive the ensuing nerdery.
There are elements of LotR here: deluded Rohan; the exile of the Rohirrim; the savage Wild Men; Corrupted Saruman; the mating of orcs and humans; Arrogant Gondor–narrowmindedly “fighting the true fight”, but compromised from above…
Rohan and Gondor should be allies. Shall the signal fires go unlit, or lit and unanswered? We will see. Justice requires that the leaders must die so that mercy may be fulfilled, but I will not be the one to thrust the sword into them for the simple fact that it is not right. Scripture is clear: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord”–for it is Him who has been utterly offended. To whatever extent we are near to God, the more we get caught in the blast–and count it a blessing! Whatever Moore’s, Mohler’s, Stanton’s, and JPII’s wrongs be, they are more of an affront to God than us if we will recognize it.
Like David, I will cut the hem from the cloak, but I will not touch the Lord’s anointed.
I have much more to say and owe several of you emails, but I barely have time for this.
Unforgivable nerdery
Here’s a useful reminder: Note the significant difference between thrusting the sword into them and offering a stern rebuke.
Many zealous and well-meaning souls will hear one word of truth and ignore another, thereby adopting an extreme bias. We need guidance, and scripture provides invaluable examples:
* David acted in faith according to the Lord’s mind, and as a result, his actions were measured. He would not kill Saul, but he would discover his shame and speak against his foolish pursuit of David and his men. Vengeance will fall in due course, but I trust, not at my hands. After learning that Jonathan was slain by the Philistines and that Saul had attempted to take his own life — only to be slain by an Amalekite, David “mourned, and wept, and fasted until even, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of the LORD, and for the house of Israel….” There is no animosity or ambition displayed, except to smite the foreigner who had casually taken Saul’s life. (2 Sam 1:1-27)
* Moses declined a similar offer from the Lord, to elevate his own position (and his family’s) at the expense of Jacob’s house. Again, recognizing the mind of God, he declined, speaking of mercy and honouring Jehovah’s Name. (Ex 32:9-12) Do we seek His glory or ours?
These are helpful and cautionary tales, to be sure. We should always scrutinize short-cuts that promote, “health, wealth, and prosperity,” while making light work of our own responsibility. One can almost hear the enemy’s whisper, “Ye shall not surely die […] ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Good AND evil. Indeed.
One other note in passing: Saul was anointed by the prophet Samuel, as he was instructed of God. Moses, despite his reluctance, was sent to deliver Israel from bondage. I hear many populist teachers, who speak confidently with flowing words, and yet I know not from whence they come. I am wary of (potential) wolves in sheep’s clothing, and will try their words according to scripture. The light will make manifest the true nature, meanwhile, there is a suitable humility that can keep us from much trouble. The Lord is faithful.
I’m confused by the “thrusting the sword” imagery. I don’t think anyone here entertains a desire to harm the people we disagree with. This is a discussion of ideas and more importantly a discussion of Scripture. With this said, the ideal solution in my mind would be repentance on the part of the Christian leaders who are in my view ashamed of the parts of Scripture which offend feminism. I have absolutely no desire to harm them, and I have no desire to take over. Either way I would be delighted to have Mohler, Stanton, or the Kendrick brothers etc. decide to repent and lead the way back to biblical marriage and sexual morality.
But I also believe that repentance is essential, and those who today are fomenting rebellion and cutting down fathers and husbands need not only to stop doing harm but to repent as publicly as they did the harm itself. This might need to start with a quiet one on one conversation for an individual man (correctly placed) to confront the feminist corruption, but the repentance must not be limited to a private “I’ll see if I can’t do a little better next time”.
Alan, I assume your imagery is to suggest we not get too aggressive with these people. That’s fine, its very subjective, but fine.
My wife warned me, similarly, when I made a remark about Russell Moore after we heard him. She was correct, in her remark, in her reminding me, and importantly, in how she reminded me. It was a personal remark, and uncalled for.
In public or private , writing or speaking, yes we would do well to remember not to attack the man, and its a huge temptation I can tend to fall into.
But holding their own words up and then holding up the effects of the words, even then attempting to surmise their motives, none of that enters a realm where physical violence metaphors are apt.
After a leader comes to see the point, I wonder what his ministry looks like then. One thing for certain…….initially lots smaller as they respond to the siren call of 1st Mega of Oprahville down the street.
So that was posted a long while ago and it is my _understanding_ that he took some flack for it and has hopefully learned to tighten it up a bit.
@Dalrock
I’m confused by the “thrusting the sword” imagery.
I’m looking forward to this explanation as well. It should be entertaining! I’m guessing that Cane was putting it forward as a hard boundary and figuring to work backward toward constructive criticism. We’ll see….
“I don’t think anyone here entertains a desire to harm the people we disagree with. This is a discussion of ideas and more importantly a discussion of Scripture.”
Exactly. The distinction between rebuke and harm is clear: “love the sinner, hate the sin.” We (too often) confuse the individual and the idea: “Hate my idea, hate me,” or, “like me, accept my idea.” This is logical rubbish and childish thinking.
Part of the problem rests with our adversarial culture, constantly fighting for rights and advantages. This antagonistic view gained popularity during the sixties and has been embraced wholeheartedly by feminists for decades. Politicians are absolutely addicted to it. It has become ingrained in our thinking.
We need to move in a positive direction and rebuild our culture, starting with faith in God and His plan of salvation wrought in Christ. From this foundation, we stress personal responsibility and healthy families. Otherwise, we’re done.
Carry on…
GKC
Check my blog….not a traffic trick, I explain I just listened to him give this message last Sunday. Check Moores diary, he was at a large Baptist church in the Germantown TN. I was there too. I hope to upload the recording this evening.
No, he didn’t learn and tighten. He doubled down.
In response to Empath, primarily:
Obedience to God is paramount. Period.
So, how do we defend the truth? Can we speak clearly as out of a pure heart, or does our flesh show itself in murmerings and attempts to undermine authorities? This is often difficult:
* Should a believer argue with God? No. He’s never wrong, in the first place. This one is easy, but we still see many attempts to get around it.
* Should a Christian argue against the Church’s dictates? Rarely, as the Church is subject to the direct authority (and discipline) of the Lord. We are on shaky ground here, despite countless schisms within the body. This is a very touchy subject in mixed Christian company. Some will say, “never.” Others will say, “yes, whenever I perceive a fault.” The truth lies somewhere in between, but we cannot resolve this 2000-year-old arguement on this thread. Please, don’t try. Save it for another time.
* Should a Christian argue with a man of God for cause? Perhaps, but very gently and respectively.
* Should a Christian violate civil law? Only when it directly opposes God’s law.
* Should a wife complain about her husband when he is wrong? Not necessarily. She often does better to entreat him or seek to win him in some respectful manner. Should she remain silent always? No, she is a helpmeet with a role to play.
* Should a child complain to a parent? Hardly, and certainly not in rebellion or disrespect.
* Should a slave complain about his master? Not generally, accepting it from God.
* Should I suffer any ill quietly? Typically, with some exceptions, such as a false murder charge.
Faith and prayer are exceedingly powerful, and yet, we acknowledge practicality measures. Will a word of correction save sorrow and suffering; or, will it expose my own rebellious heart and make matters worse? Is my understanding of scripture sufficient to a cause; or, should I be quietly fasting and waiting upon the Lord? Do I exercise my right to vote; or, do I pray to the Lord that He will set up authorities according to His will?
Are these things subjective? Perhaps to my feeble mind, but not to the Lord. If I truly desire His mind and obey His will, I shall see His truth and never put a foot out of place.
I have had this discussion many times Alan. And it boils down to someone listing off truths that we agree on, yet in context they are assumed to be rebukes or rebuttals. Its a particularly insidious form of the simple straw man. Most times it comes in the form of “we are called to” statements. Its insidious because its a rhetorical trap, a cheap one. Its also a pernicious form of witness often used for just that….witnessing. More times than I can remember I have run afoul of it.
You do not even take a position. You can easily maneuver within a set of absolute truths as stated, that in reality are not even applicable to the topic, meaning we have not staked out a position that invites them. If you want to suggest where we are wrong, please be specific on what we are saying or doing wrong and why.
Faith and prayer are exceedingly powerful, and yet, we acknowledge practicality measures.
We do? Who does? Who is making the choice you infer here, the choice to ignore prayer and faith and the choice to put same in worldly actions only.
Why the list of random irrelevant examples?
we cannot resolve this 2000-year-old arguement on this thread. Please, don’t try. Save it for another time.
Sorry Alan, I sincerely have no interest whatsoever in settling this “2000 year old argument”, here, or anywhere at any other time.
I’ve decided that these entreaties are self edification driven because i cannot imagine any other motive other than having no motive whatsoever. I did prison ministry with lots of men who communicated matters of faith in this way. It worked in keeping the less initiated hanging on their every ministerial utterance. Not me sir.
Unpuff, then try again, or not.
If I truly desire His mind and obey His will, I shall see His truth and never put a foot out of place.
The crux of your problem is in this declaration. You will have to figure it out for yourself, I cannot help you, because I will not enter your contest.
I do. Let me be clear: I desire to harm them. I want to slap the shit out of Dr. Moore because I strongly doubt that’s ever happened to him, and I think that would be a good introduction on how not to be a sissy–which I believe he is. I seriously doubt he could stand a punch. Men like him continue the RUINATION of the ideals of manliness with their cheap rhetoric. The term “spiritual warrior” should be powerful, but I whenever it is fed to me what should be nourishing is only fit to vomit back up. It is my visceral response to the pathetic screeds from the pulpits of men who have never known war in the flesh; whether personal, or on official battlefields. It’s a fucking ad campaign for a “better society”. I imagine this is the reaction you have, Dalrock, to the term “man-up”.
Those are my visceral reactions to the public words of men like Stanton, and Moore. In the same way: that is also my visceral reaction to the words of anyone–psychologists, players, or talkshow hosts–who speaks in terms of “self-esteem”, or “self-respect”. Unfortunately for those folks, there is no scriptural admonition that I afford them “double-honor“, or “touch not the Lord’s anointed“. There’s a scripture where some kids call Elijah names, and bears eat the kids because of it. If we are right, then good. If we are wrong: it is very serious–and I don’t know what I might be risking anymore than the kids did.
Take it as a reminder to myself because the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. It is my effort to confront and rule over my desires.
I see this in others, as well, Empath.
I have listened to the sermon, and Empath is right. I know, Empath, that you grind your teeth at my parsing of language (you big STEM stud, you), but perhaps my artistic sensibilities can be of some use to you. I will try to have a post up tonight. It would be faster if I had a transcript.
I do? You are responsible for some enamel shavings but I don’t think it’s as simple as your parsing of language. But let’s see, and for heavens sake lets not begin debating minutia from his sermon,,,please,
My STEM is woefully inadequate, with measuring, the stack of great books is larger in all s directions
I’ll un-puff myself (which is always a good practice) and use only a few words to say the following:
* Based on the link provided, Dr Moore follows the regular pattern of men=bad, women=sad, and I don’t fault anyone for tearing his statements to shreds. But, I regard his doctrine as an obstacle to overcome, not his person as an enemy to destroy. Words matter and I won’t speak of “harming” even a nominal Christian.
* If you claim that Dr. Moore, Glen Stanton, and many others have absolutely no standing as Christian teachers or elders, that is your choice. I understand the temptation, but you are on thin ice — especially in a thread touting the authority of human husbands and fathers. Accept the peril at your discretion. I am content to leave the matter with the Lord.
I know where I stand, and the risks involved. Do you? I am trying to gather up what remains and move forward without compromising the truth. What is your solution?
Should we discuss either of these (apparently trivial) issues or simply gloat over the carcass of another popular, yet naive minister?
I apologize for activating anyone’s latent holier-than-thou tendencies with my “hem-of-the-cloak” comment. My comment was not directed at anyone, as I do not think either Dalrock, nor Empath have maligned either Moore’s or Stanton’s message(s).
Now take it to Empath’s. I have resigned myself from the subject of Moore before anyone starts rending their shirts. Plus, Empath wants to write a follow-up post, and I’d rather add to or help with that, than have a competing post.
So Empath here is what I’d suggest (I’ve read about half-way through your post). Send it directly to him in snail mail. He’s the type that will read snail mail with fondness. Also, do a _minor_ rewrite where you remove the jargon (frivorce and redpill for example). Then pray that a seed takes root. I know in my own experience this has paid off well.
And I have to chuckle Cane, in that my priest is a former South Korean ranger. He’s the biggest softy I know about all the right things and a total hard case about the others. And for the record I’ve only taken a few punches.
And one more thing, the story of “Elijah and the She-Bears” is one of the most under read stories in the modern church. I’ve personally volunteered to read it to the five to eight year olds on St. Elijah’s memorial day in the Sunday School (July 20/Aug 2 depending on your calendar)[1]. It is a good thing for all of us to keep in mind especially when we’re angry. The boys in the story weren’t angry, just stupid, and angry can make you really stupid.
[1] The female Sunday school teacher was at first horrified. My wife and I are slowly turning the staff around. Hard persistent work that. They’re good folk, but for all of the reasons Empath outlined in his post completely unaware of the “Tough Jesus”.
GKC, thank you for that tip. I will both edit it and mail it to him, its a great idea.
Just for my own curiosity, tell me how you received what I said.
GKC, Scratch my fast reaction. I need to do more work, and I am embarrassed at how quickly I banged out that piece and posted it. I went rooting around in Mohlers blog and found a ton of stuff that deserves attention before I am anywhere near ready to spring this on Moore directly. I am remiss in not doing it sooner.
Mohler has 4 pages of blog entries, 10 to a page, regarding the plain spoken evils of divorce. He even rebukes the cacophony of anti gay marriage screeds in the absence of any mention of divorce. He rightly indicts the church for the numbers. But a quick shift over to his writing on marriage quickly takes one down Moore Lane, or maybe Russell was on Mohler street. No matter.
I should have structured my approach better and still will try and rehabilitate it that way, but before I send anything to Moore, knowing what is there on the Mohler blog is very useful to draw some points from. Ive parsed Mohler before, in a one off, but the corpus of work there is comprehensive and low fruit for teaching.
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I know it has been over 2 weeks since the last comment on this thread. I’ve barely skimmed through the last set of comments, but it appears as if the topic of OP might even to some extent be dead. But as a new reader to this blog, I was directed back here when skimming over some the more, let’s say, vehement reactions to this post in the past month. I’ve been thinking over the ideas here in this post for a while, and debating on whether or not to post here. But I’ve been continuing to think on this post, so while realizing this conversion might be dead, I’ve decided to post anyway. I’m not sure if this will profit anyone but myself, so please forgive this intrusion.
What I’d like to consider is the question that I believe was raised at some point in the comments- do women need a mediator before God / and or Jesus in order to determine God’s will in their lives? I believe, the OP thinks the answer is yes “Scripture is clear that women as a sex were given a mediator because of this weakness.” Originally Cane was referring to moral acts, yet in his comments he goes on to state that women would need a mediator in other decisions, like where to go school, get a job, who to marry, etc… as well. He thinks that this need for a mediator is clear from Scripture, yet I don’t think the scripture is so clear, particularly if we look at the Gospels and Acts.
To begin with, I’d like to look at 3 big examples- Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus in Lk 10:38-42, Mary the mother of God’s presence at Pentecost along with other women in Acts 1:14; 2:1-4, and finally the wedding feast at Cana in Jn 2:1-12. Then I’d like briefly mention other smaller examples throughout the gospels of Jesus’ interactions with women, and finally I will conclude with a link to some examples of women in the early Church by Pope Benedict. I recognize that this is a largely protestant blog, read by protestants, and in no way am I citing Benedict as an authority. I found this in my own research on this topic, and as is generally known, Ratzinger is a scholarly well learned man, who speaks on this subject much better than I. I cite him as a learned expert, nothing more. Also the address is deeply saturated in scripture, which is universal to all.
In Lk 10:39 we see Mary sitting directly at the feet of Jesus listening to Him. There is no mediator here between Him her, in fact, we see her learning from Jesus as one of His disciples. Jesus defends her in this. We do not know whether these 2 sisters are married, but certainly they are considered among Jesus’ followers. If they are the same ones who are Lazarus’ sisters’ we know that are specially listed as people Jesus’ loved: Jn 11:5. And here Mary (and Martha too) receives the Lord and follows Him without reference to whatever her proper authority would be (perhaps her brother Lazarus?). She follows Him like His other disciples. Moreover, we see women directly receiving the Holy Spirit in Act 2:1, along with the Apostles: “When the time for Pentecost for fulfilled they were all in one place together.” Who is the they in Acts 2:1? For this we turn back to Acts 1:14 “All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” We can see the place where they are gathered in 2:1 in Acts 1:13: “When they reached the city they went into the upper room where they were staying.” Here, we have women directly receiving the Holy Spirit, without any other mediator, in the same manner as the Apostles. They speak in tongues with those present, and are heard by those outside. No verification by their earthly authority is needed to confirm that they have received the Spirit. And finally, and perhaps most powerfully, we have the wedding feast at Cana. Mary asks Jesus to do something for her, and in the standard translation, Jesus pretty much tells her off: “Woman, how does your concern affect me?” (From what I understand, this is not a literal rendering of the Greek, the Greek actually says “Woman, what is to me, is to you.” Which offers a different understanding, but for this we go with how this usually translated into English.) Mary blithely ignores this, and tells the servers to do whatever Jesus tells them. Rather than a woman needing a mediator to Christ, here we see a woman, Mary, being a mediator to Christ for others! It does not appear from the text that Jesus would have changed the water into wine on His own accord. If women by their weaker nature need mediators to God, then why do we see Mary here acting as mediator for others? Is she somehow not a women?
Also, we can Christ directly interacting with women on multiple accounts: the women who follow Him and support Him in His ministry in Luke, likely these same women at the foot of the cross, Mary at the foot of the cross (The only man there is John, and he is only mentioned in John. The synoptic just have the women.), Mary Magdalene, the women who anoints Jesus for His burial, the women at the well (although, granted, Jesus does ask after her husband), and obliviously the women who are the first witness of the Resurrection. There is no mention of the need of a mediator between Christ and these women to determine His will for them (perhaps with the exception of the women at well. But even she receives the Lord without a mediator).
Lastly, we can see some women in early Church working in the Church without need of a mediator. For this I refer you Benedict’s address: http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/b16ChrstChrch30.htm. I note in particular where Paul address his letter to Philemon to Apphia as well, and of course, Priscilla.
As to those passages where Paul says that women should be silent in churches, I again point to Benedict’s address where he illustrates other passages that specifically state that women are to prophesy in church. At the very best here we have a contradiction in scripture. I would add to Benedict’s brief statements that there does seem to be relativity to the passages forbidding women to speak as many of them begin with “I say”. Compare this with famous Eph 5 where Paul does not use the phrase “I.”
Finally, while this is non-Biblical, I do offer 2 examples of women who heard a command from God, and disobeyed her Christian dad to follow it: St. Joan of Arc, and Catherine of Siena. Both of these women lived prior to protestant reformation, prior to in the translation of the Bible into vernacular, prior to the invention of the printing press. Neither of the women themselves could read or write. I do not believe their dads could (certainly Joan’s could not being a peasant). It was therefore impossible for their fathers to be God fearing men steeped in scripture, despite both their fathers being Christian men. I think everyone would agree that at this time it was possible to be a Christian, and not read the Bible, or else all the poor people for hundreds of years who couldn’t read Latin had no way of being Christian. St. Joan of Arc’s dad never received peace about her calling (she ran away), and St. Catherine’s had to disobey her parents many times to avoid marring before they gave up. Again, I realize most readers on here are not Catholic, I just present an example of 2 women who are considered holy with callings from God their Christian father’s did not approve of.
Regardless of these examples, I still use refer to the Biblical references above to show that it appears with the coming of Christ, women also only need Him as a mediator to God. “But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of spirit and not under the obsolete letter.” Rm 7:6.
@Begging for Scraps
If you’d like to point out real quick which of these women were wives at the times of the mentioned events: I’d be grateful. While we’re waiting, we can ponder why the disciples balked at marriage when Jesus explained what it really entailed, and why St. Paul said, “I would rather you remain as I am, unbound”.
To the larger point you make: We are in agreement. We are each to mediate–to intercede–on one another’s behalf. In our times the accepted premise (especially in churches) is the old:
What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails
And puppy-dogs’ tails,
That’s what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And everything nice,
That’s what little girls are made of
And you’re putting on a pretty good show of it here by highlighting a couple of exceptions to the rule. It would be like interpreting the rest of scripture through the actions of Deborah. God is God: He can make Deborahs and Joans if he likes. The fact is that His revelation is that those are special occurrences in times of spiritual depravity among men. Furthermore: these blessed women behaved like the men who could not be found–they really were the exceptions that prove the rule, in both the original intent of the phrase, and the modern misuse.
Oh- cool. I’m glad to hear we agree that each sex does intercede for the other. We seem largely be in agreement, then.
And if you are going to site examples that run counter to your claim as execptions, then you are taking your claims of how things are and making oughts from is-es rather than letting reality or scripture speak for itself. For anyone can come up with a system of how things are and when shown something different than that say “Those are clearly execptions!”
And indeed, here I refer again to Benedict’s address, as he’s a better scripture scholar than I. There appears to be a contridiction in the rule itself in the scripture. For there are many women prophetess, as Benedict meantions we can begin with Anna Lk 2:36-38, the unnamed daughters of Philip, plus it does appear somewhat normal for women to prophesy in the church, as Paul makes a rule about it in I Cor 11:5 (not that he equating women and men in this passage, I did read the rest). Then there are women who receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And in I Cor 13:5 we see that prophesy is public act in the Church. Yet they are exorted to be silent (often precluded by the phrase “I say”). I do not meantion this to be execptions- it seems that prophesy is normative for women in the early Church.
Married women. Ah. I did not realize we were dealing with an issue for married women only. In the OP you meantion that women first have the mediator of their fathers when they are unmarried, and then their husbands. In several of the following comments there is discussion about what should be done when daughters receive a calling their fathers do not recognize- I don’t think there was discussion in the comments about wives. I believe in Jewish society of old that we would like to harken back to, women were under their fathers/husbands and of those were all those people might be dead, their brother, or their husband brother might the next authority figure. Mostly, we don’t know if the women in the above examples were married or not. Martha and Mary- unknown. Mary mother of God, at time example given, unknown. One of the women who provided for Jesus is spefically named as married- Joanna, the others (except for Mary Magdalene), unknown. Women at Pentecost (other than Mary, mother of God), unknown, although a likely conjecture is that some of them might the women Luke mentions and/or the apostle’s wives. Women annointing Jesus- unknown. Priscilla is of course married. Apphia, unknown.
But again, much of the discussion centered around daugters and fathers, and the fact that daughters remain under their fathers, no matter their age. This was certainly true in Jesus’ time. In Jewish society, women would have remained under some male authority, given as so long as one was alive.
@Begging for Scraps
It was a bit unfair of me to respond last night. It seems I’ve given you a false impression that our agreement on the supremacy of God’s will is equivalent seeing the situation the same.
Oh- cool. I’m glad to hear we agree that each sex does intercede for the other. We seem largely be in agreement, then.
I am not inclined to think so at the moment. Your phrasing of Mary’s intercession on behalf of the wedding at Cana is combative, when the passage is the epitome of graceful submission. Skillfully did Mary thread the needle of representing the interests of the wedding party and its servants. Her response is neither blithe nor ignorant of Jesus: quite the opposite, and it is offensive to me for you to claim it different.
“What is it to me, woman?” Mary’s silence says, “Nothing but me.”; which happens to be the very thing that Christ and the Father ask for. Her verbal response is to turn to the servants and say, “Give yourselves (your authority and responsibility) to my son, also.” because she believes (rightly) they are what is due and proper for Jesus to receive. Her words are to the effect of join me on my proverbial knees.
You make a struggle of what is a profound picture of coming together. Your version is a description of Judo of the Soul: making Jesus an opponent and using His strength against him. It’s the equivalent of having read the Song of Solomon, and concluding that proper marriage means a good dose of mixed martial arts. Your feminism is showing.
Married women. Ah. I did not realize we were dealing with an issue for married women only.
I’m plain that the focus of my blog is married Christian men. Things they should know, but do not because the line of Numenor has failed, and we have leaderless men knowing not what. These are the things we should have heard and known…secrets that are kept in a book; a book produced from and protected by the Church, which is the body of the Holy Spirit.
On Fathers and Daugthers: Catherine of Siena was an interesting choice. Show me a woman who exults in accepted shame (important bit there) by cutting her hair; who fasts with extraordinary dedication; who serves her family utterly; and who falls prey to mystical fevers and rash near a cloister of –and I’ll show you a father who blesses and accepts her sacrifice long before her mother does. Otherwise: hers is an interesting tale. My cursory investigation reveals a woman who started off on the right track, but ended up going off the rails. (It happens to the best of us.) In her defense: those were dark days for the Church: antipopes, nepotism, cronyism, overt muddling of murderous politics and decadent religion… That is to say: she rose to prominence in a time of real bitches. Shrug. We should expect such exceptions–your protestations of the word not withstanding.
Finally: We should probably expect women to prophecy more, as there’s more than a bit of spiritual in-dwelling. Sex itself is a shadow cast by these lights. That being said: Prophecy has clear rules, means of testing, and is in fact the Holy Spirit speaking through the person (That is: masculine words born from feminine acceptance.), and not the man himself, or woman. So, by all means prophetesses should speak forth, and bear the glory or guilt of their utterances.
Having said all of that: If these scriptural admonitions and your Catholic sensibilities cannot convince you of the need for feminine and submissive behavior from persons bent to a feminine pose by both the spiritually feminine nature of mankind in general, and their specifically feminine nature in the flesh (let’s call it two marks in the female column: XX), then is there much chance this comment will help either?
No matter: A woman responds to touch, and was made to follow whether she likes it or not. It’s not a matter of whether she will follow, but who.
Ah, yes. I often have to think a while before replying on these sorts of things. (Hence, the time lag here).
Ah, yes, sorry, I was being flippant with the Mary comment. I didn’t mean to portray it as her being combative, but I was being flippant, and I see the combative thing. Of course Mary wasn’t actually being combative with Jesus here, or anywhere else. Hell, I’m from the group of people who say Mary was the perfect follower of Jesus at all times, so no definitely not. We agree. I’m not sure what Mary’s silence says, the scripture just has her as silent, but your thoughts make sense as an option. Especially if we look at what I believe the literal translation is. And yes, Mary leads the hosts, who she is mediating for, and the stewards to Jesus. Just as Mary points us to Jesus, and invites us to join her in perfect discipleship, and follow Jesus, on our knees.
Be that as the case may be, we still Mary here mediating for others.
So perhaps we are more in agreement? “We are each to mediate on one another’s others behalf.” We each, men and women, are to mediate, like Mary in the above, for each other? Yes, then I would say we largely agree, although we perhaps disagree about the importance of Mary’s mediation. (Yes, now my Cat holism is showing, if it wasn’t before ;)).
“I’m plain that the focus of my blog is married Christian men.”- This strikes me as a dodge(although I appreciated the explanation of the things they should know bit). I wasn’t addressing the topic of the blog as whole, rather the specific issue in OP and ensuing comments about whether or not women needed some male authority as a mediator for God. Hence, I provided examples of women, regardless of marital status (Which, as it turns out, we don’t know what that is for the majority of the women listed, and where we do know, they are married.). I can see asking about it, that made sense, but not limiting the discussion to married women only. It wasn’t limited there before…. But perhaps, we are not limiting the discussion and I’m missing something….
In any case, I still think second century Palestine Jews would have seen almost all women as under some male authority figure, regardless of marital status. Either their husbands, fathers, or in the case of the dead of one or both, another male relative. I’m guessing this b/c there was a difference between widows with no family (poorest of the poor) and those with some family. I think Jesus’ interactions with these women shows Christ bringing in a new relationship between God and women. The male mediator under the law in Numbers is done away with- women now worship with men in God and Spirit (Gal 3:28). They talk with the Lord directly, listen and serve Him directly, and he openly calls to them (women at the well, Martha and Mary). They are the Apostle to the Apostles (to steal from Aquinas), and serve in the early Church (although I am not arguing for equality here). Later, we see holy women arising who are occasionally go against their father (and mother’s) wishes to serve the Lord in their freedom in Christ. I believe you see these as exceptions. For this I think we are at impasse. I’m ok with that.
@BfS
No, I don’t think so, because you’re either a really bad liar (kudos on that), or pretty senseless in your arguments. You say you don’t seek equality here. Come, now…
The difference between the way a man mediates for a woman, and a woman mediates for a man is the same as the difference between love and respect, or the difference between being a mother and a father. These are very different poses (as a mother’s body will testify, but a father’s will not) for the mutual act of raising children. They are not interchangeable. They are not equal. They are complementary. They are different. “Honor they father and mother” is more powerful than “honor your parents”. The wife wins her husband without a word through service, but the man loves his wife by washing her with the word (talking to her).
You’re granulating this too much. You’re trying to put pieces of the puzzle together from the whole history of the Church under a scientific microscope. Like most Catholics, you’re problem isn’t that you’re Catholic, it’s that you’re not catholic enough. (This is why I’m not one.) Draw back, and look at the whole picture instead of trying to determine if that bit over there is red-brown #6, or sienna #13. Stop bothering with what second century Jews thought.
This is one of those idiosyncrasies of Christians scholars in general, but Catholics in particular: They hold forth that the tradition is more important than the scripture because it was the tradition that birthed and nourished, and protects the scriptures. They go to school to study this God-inspired book good for all instruction, and come back declaring the meaning and use of the book is occluded (to those who need instruction) by the mists of time, and vagaries of culture. It gets lost that God is literally timeless, and that we were made in His image. It gets forgotten that God does not change, but it is what He reveals to us of Himself, that changes…
In the beginning, God created man, and gave him one law. Then He said it wasn’t good that man was alone, so He coupled him a servant. Adam give the one law to Eve, and they live for who knows how long, working together in the garden. Adam’s work is given to him by God. Eve’s work is given to her by Adam. From the beginning, before sin, and while God still communed directly with Adam and Eve, Eve was under Adam’s authority even though God was there to talk to her directly. What the New Adam restored, restores, and will restore, is a return to that state.
That is a pretty good example of why women should be in submission to their fathers and husbands, and why older women should instruct younger ones in how to be submissive. When they talk, they confuse, but when they are observed they are glorious.
“No, I don’t think so, because you’re either a really bad liar (kudos on that), or pretty senseless in your arguments. You say you don’t seek equality here. Come, now…”
Of course. My personal views are ones of equality between men and women, but I wasn’t seeking to argue those in this post. Certainly, my agruements were related.
As to making what you call a granulated argument, you should read the final paragraph of my previous post. While not addressing equality between men and women on the whole, it is the least granular response to the original topic that I provided.
In any case, at this point, I am bowing out. Mostly because the converstation is shifting towards a discussion of the equality between men and women on the whole. That’s a fight I can’t win, not because I believe myself to be wrong, but mostly because of grounds on which I would be fighting it here. Also, the weapons keep shifting on me. You request that criticisms come from scripture, I provide them, and you say I am being granular, and negate my argument. I’m not fighting where I have no say in the weapon selection, especially against such difficult odds.
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I found your post via Sunshine Mary, and I have to say, you have captured in words what I have sensed in my heart but was unable to express myself. I know it is an old post, but thank you for taking the time to consider and write what you did.
I didn’t have time to read all the comments, but concerning the first part on fathers and daughters, I always thought 1 Cor. 7:36-39 made kind of a case for a daughter remaining under a father’s authority until marriage. Sons I’m not sure about (and I only have sons — of course!) but the case for a daughter remaining under her father is pretty clear to me. Anyway, excellent post!
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Rights comes with authority. Authority will be useless without rights. And with authority comes responsibility.
So of course any man who wants his wife and his family to submit to him, will be in favour of a Mens Rights Movement instead of a Mens Responsibility Movement. For the Feminist World has already thrown all the responsibilities of being a man/father/husband unto him, while depriving him of any rights and authority he is due.