On Christian Female Bloggers II: The Gold Standard of Reverent

Prepare to be offended.

But as for you [Titus], teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

I think my readers know what is meant by “not slanderers” and “or slaves to much wine”, but “reverent in behavior” means what for people in our society? Towards the end of his post (and him with no knowledge my post was in the works) Dalrock translated the specific Greek words used in Ephesians for fear and reverence.

Fearing women, however, is not something that the Bible teaches.  Christians are to fear God, and wives are to fear their husbands.  As every Christian feminist’s favorite verse in Ephesians 5 explains, Christians in general are to submit to one another in fear (also translated as reverence) of God:

21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

A bit later, in Ephesians 5:33, Paul explains that a wife is to fear (also translated as reverence) her husband (ISV):

33 But each individual man among you must love his wife as he loves himself; and may the wife fear her husband.

Interestingly in some translations fear is used in verse 21 while reverence is used in verse 33***, as is the case with the King James version:

21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

…33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

Other times we see it the other way around as is the case with the International Standard Version:

21 and you will submit to one another out of reverence for the Messiah.

…33 But each individual man among you must love his wife as he loves himself; and may the wife fear her husband.

Translation is a necessary and noble endeavor, but it is one I am happy to trust to professionals and my friends[1].

My process is much simpler. I performed a Google search of every blog recommended to me for the word knee because kneeling is the gold standard of submission and reverence. That (should have) found even comments with knee and its derivatives. Then I bookmarked each result. Of them all, only one post contained a reference of one spouse kneeling to another. It was at “A Peaceful Wife”, by April Cassidy[2]

It came from an email from a reader which April posted for mutual inspiration. She wrote:

I finally found out what he meant by “arguing” by reading your blog. I seriously had NO IDEA!! I didn’t understand why he would get mad when I “shared my feelings” with him until reading your blog. I felt absolutely baffled by it! He also notoriously calls me “negative” and tells me I “complain” a lot, which would make me furious! And so I would defend myself thinking that he would then see that he was hurting me and fall on his knees to apologize.. I had no idea that I was actually perpetuating the disrespect by defending myself. This is still the hardest thing for me because I hate being wrong and being the person who needs to apologize, etc.[3]

She knew that the right thing to do when asking forgiveness was assume a humble posture, but when she realized it was herself who should apologize: She didn’t kneel as she had wanted her husband to do. Instead she took April’s advice and walked out of the room. Later she told her husband he’s a very good boy:

One other huge break through, I have tried many times in the past to tell him things I do respect about him but he has never believed me and he knew I was just doing an exercise I read in a book or something. However, after reading your blog and comments on there, etc, I realized that he has never withdrawn from me or our boys and he has never stopped leading, even in the face of my disrespect and attempts to control.

• So I told him that I was very impressed that he still continues to lead, to tell me my sin, and to try to engage in the family even when I’m wrong and even when most men do the opposite.[3]

April posted this to her own blog as an example of a submissive wife. That–walking out of a room, and saying what a good boy a husband is– is not a picture of submissive wife. That is a picture of a doting mother. I must assume she knows the difference. Remember: This woman wanted her husband to give her the gold standard in submission. She knows that standard is kneeling.

In fact none of the female Christian blogs I searched ever mentioned a wife assuming the posture of submission; of her kneeling. There are admonitions for tone of voice, and silence, and just about any other vagaries of action which are only nonchalance disguised as submission. This lack shows in a couple ways. First, you can see it in wordiness and meandering of posts on submission by otherwise well-meaning women. (One has to shovel a lot of vagaries to fill the hole left by kneeling.) Second, even women who are trying to be submissive leave comment after comment about “running out of ideas” on how to make their submission apparent to their husbands; as if men hadn’t the eyes to see submission. I’m sorry to say that is often the charge leveled at husbands. If a wife kneeled, could her submission be in question? No.

This topic makes me uncomfortable. I don’t think I’m alone in that. Dalrock’s post continues:

This is not to say that Christian wives are to worship their husbands as Christian men today so often worship women, but clearly there is a healthy reverence wives are instructed to have for their husbands in line with headship and submission.

I know I’ve said the same. While it is murmured elsewhere that I am an oppressive dolt, the fact is you can’t keep me from tripping over myself to make clear my haste to demonstrate my lack of need for submission…which is a lie that I’ve been telling myself since I began thinking about submission. I do need my wife’s submission if I want a wife at all!

The truth is that I I had been overlooking it forever. And–in my defense–I’ve been warned away from female submission my entire life. In the post this series corrects, I erroneously wrote:

Submission is the absence of rebellion. Wives don’t have to learn “how to be submissive”; they just have to decide not to rebel.

It’s true that one way to define submission is the absence of rebellion, but I was wrong in that women do have to learn to submit. And I do have to learn how to accept it. My mind has put forth to me every kind of excuse against kneeling, but–discomforting or not–the fact is irrefutable that the gold standard of submission is kneeling. Therefore, can we say of anyone who disdains (or even merely eschews) kneeling, that they are in submission?

I’m a bit timid of this line of thinking. There is some sickness in me that wants my wife to find me…what? Equal? Unworthy? Something. At the same time: The sickness makes me bitter when it gets its wish! It is a stupid sickness of the Old Adam and it must be crucified within me. Healthy marriage is too important.

Here’s why: I see the ships of those who pilot for Biblical Marriage repeatedly crash on the shoals of questions like this:

• What if my husband asks me to sin?
• What if my husband won’t follow-through on (church, praying, controlling finances, etc.)?
• What if my husband ignores me?
• What if my husband won’t forgive me for my mistakes?
• What if I really need (food, clothes, etc.) but my husband won’t provide it?
• What if I’ve tried everything and nothing works?

Here’s my response from now on: After you tried smiling sweetly, and doting on him, and the silent treatment, and standing up for yourself, and going behind his back, and taking matters into your own hands, and bringing in the pastor: Did you try kneeling before your husband in submission?

Are Christian female bloggers aware that kneeling is the gold standard of submission? Yes. In fact, the more “spiritual” the blogger wants to sound, the more she mentions kneeling submissively in prayer. “Hit my knees!” “Fell to my knees!” “Knelt right there on the linoleum!” They know submission during prayer is important.

As I said: Not one of the Christian female bloggers suggest kneeling to her husband. To be reverent to their husbands, and to teach young women to be submissive, they must start.

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[1] I’m looking at you, Deep Strength, Jonadab, and others!

[2] Who is not 60, nor a grandmother, nor post-menopausal. In no way do I find her to be an elder woman.

[3] Emphasis in original

On Christian Female Bloggers I: Who Should They Be?

Author’s Note: I hope my readers find this first entry worth the wait. It’s been tough to decide how to section up this piece. On the plus side: Just me talking about this has stirred up a lot of conversation on the topic. As I followed the links to female Christian bloggers that were left to me, I found several of them have been writing scurrilously about female teachers. That doesn’t even include Dalrock, Deep Strength, and others from the blogs I read for my own pleasure and edification.

But as for you [Titus], teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

In this passage we have the most robust statement in the Scriptures of what women teachers look like, what they should teach, and who they should teach. Bloggers on Christian marriage, I think one must agree, are a kind of teacher so in whatever way we judge them, St. Paul’s instructions to Titus must figure largely–if not prominently!–in any discussion of how to judge a female Christian blogger.

In the post I mean to correct, I brought up a distinction between an indicative (a description of what and how a this is) and an imperative (commands on what it is to do). St. Paul was fond of pairing up a set of linked indicatives with an set of imperatives. We see them throughout his letters to the churches. What sort of woman should qualify for a teacher of women?

All of them.

Well, at least the older ones. Paul says, “Older women are likewise to…” and then goes into a list of indicatives of older Christian women. Are there any Christian woman who are to be irreverent in behavior, slanderers, or slaves to much wine? No. In the same way as all Christian women are to be reverent, all Christian women are to be teachers of the younger women. He gives an imperative: “They are to teach”, Paul wrote, once they are older.

What does older mean? I think it could be fairly interpreted a couple ways. The first is a mother of a mother. It is unavoidably natural that a mother of a mother would have teachings for the younger. A grandmother has successfully raised her own children, and if she is a Christian grandmother then she should still be married, or a widow, or–at worst–a repentant and chaste woman who confesses her foolishness to the younger women that they might learn from her sins.

The second demarcation I can countenance for an older woman is menopause. It has been my experience that once a woman sails beyond the Red Tide that she ceases to become so irrational and carried away, and often becomes (emotionally and mentally) something nearer to an old man than a young woman. In a word: Self-controlled.

Part of that self-control will be exhibited in her long hair (if she can help it; covered if she can’t). It will also show in her lack of public prophecy (“The Lord spoke to my heart…”) which is rampant and shameless among female Christian writers. Unless she is prepared to be sought out, questioned mightily, and ready to confess that she heard an audible voice as the prophets of old did, I want to hear nothing of the Lord “speaking to her”. It’s blasphemy at the least and likely an evil spirit.

She, the older woman teacher, will also confess and profess what is good; the list of which is greater than this post, but I will cover in the near future. Mind you: She doesn’t just teach what she is good at, or what she would like to be good, but what is good.

Of the female Christian bloggers which were recommended to me as good teachers only one met this simple criteria: Lori Alexander; who has been on my blogroll. The rest are young by any standard except a teenager’s. Again, I want to point out that older women teaching the younger is an imperative; they all ought to be doing it. So what we’re seeing isn’t just a bunch of young foolish whipper-snappers, but a dearth of old, self-controlled, biddies.

This wasn’t the conclusion I thought I’d reach when I started thinking seriously about female teachers, but I can’t see any other explanation.

Someone suggested “Thatmom.com” (the authoress of which is a grandmother) but after reading some of her posts I have concluded that she was suggested to me so that I would put the torch to her…literarily. Perhaps later I will, but I already have the next post mostly done so she will have to wait.

On Christian Female Bloggers: A Preface

I was never happy with this post. Because I know my inner thoughts, I know what I tried to say. However; it is not what I wanted to say, and it’s not what I should have wrote. Reading it again I find it confused; an early concoction of an idea with the right ingredients, but in wrong states of emphasis. Since then I’ve been brewing and distilling (with the help of other Christian men) and I hope what follows is better.

West Pennsylvania Takes it in a Landslide

The women on the streets of Philadelphia are not very pretty. Pittsburgh’s women are much kinder to the eye.

Back to you in the studio, Bob.

No Mercy for the Functionally Perfect

When the question is posed “If abortion were illegal, should women who get abortions be punished?” and the answer comes back “No, because…” you should disregard everything that follows. The truth isn’t in that person. If it were, then they wouldn’t make up a litany of excuses that wouldn’t pass the muster of third-grade education.

Understand that what Pro-Life groups and other abortion apologists are seeking is a way to keep women from having to ask for mercy. Instead they demand it. Anyone guilty of any crime can ask for mercy. It’s legal and everything. No one–not myself, not Zippy, not Trump–have spoken against mercy for women who killed their children in ignorance, or under duress. But demanding mercy destroys the opportunity for mercy to do its work because anyone in a position to demand mercy can’t actually use it.

That’s it, though. That’s why Pro-Lifers refuse to even discuss theoretically, if abortion was hypothetically illegal, whether women who murder their children should be punished. It is is the plank of the Pro-Life movement which codifies their belief that women are above the need for asking for mercy. To be above the need for mercy is to be functionally perfect, and that is a characteristic of the divine.

A Venn Diagram of the Enemies of N.I.C.E.

Vox writes:

Don’t think that the SJWs are not organizing against us as well. They are doing their level best to identify all of those against whom they intend to run their usual game of discredit, disemploy, and destroy. From Mediated Feminisms: Activism and Resistance to Gender and Sexual Violence in the Digital Age at UCL Institute of Education.

Who is the “us” to which Vox refers?

The Venn Diagram of those who won’t bend the knee to Jezebel.

Vox continues:

Notice who they have right in the center sweet spot. Twice. Translaton: I’m not a PUA, an MGTOW, an MRA, or a TradCon,

Nor is is this blog’s host.

so she has no idea where to put me. And their total inability to make any sense of us, judging by their interpretive babble, suggests that the more open this culture warfare becomes, the more people are forced to choose sides, the more it will be to our advantage. And this is good, because Western civilization cannot survive social justice convergence.

It looks to me as she has the ability to group us properly, but not to name us. There is a common core to that central group which she has erroneously called “Trad Cons”.

• Vox Day (also owner of AlphaGamePlan) is a patriarchal Christian
• Dalrock is a patriarchal Christian
• 8to12 (owner of Masculine by Design) is a patriarchal Christian
• I am a patriarchal Christian

A cursory review of the other two sites doesn’t reveal to me whether the other two blogs are written by patriarchal Christians, but if they are not now they should be before the sun sets because this is where the fight is.

These blind and deaf feminists of N.I.C.E. University College London don’t know what to call this thing upon which they have stumbled, or what is the stuff of which we are made. But they know it is central, and they instinctively know to fear it most. That core which we cling to in strength and stand upon in surety, and that fear which they cannot properly name, is Jesus Christ.

More Haystack!

I’ve been in D.C. this week and work activities left little time to blog. (A single lengthy comment I wrote yesterday took four brief breaks to compose.) D.C. is beautiful, and if you need to find a church it is easy: Just look for the rainbow-incorporated imagery.

I’m still looking for more recommendations on a Christian female blogger who writes advice for women; especially on marriage. Please leave a link either here or in the comments of the original post. Let’s see if Moose was right.