Your mother and father divorced when you were young. She married another man sometime later, but there wasn’t much if anything you could do about it. You didn’t even know there could be a problem from a Biblical perspective.
You are grown and learned and you have decided to accept the Bible’s teaching on marriage and remarriage. Now it is Thanksgiving, and your mother and step-father have invited the whole family over for Thanksgiving.
What do you do?
This is the final post in this series Discussion on Whores.It is long and full of Bible quotes. I believe them to be necessary, but perhaps someone else could have summarized more succinctly. Frustratingly, this won’t be the last time we have to deal with it because sentiments like below are everywhere in Christian culture:
Certainly not all young females who delay marriage do so because they want to fornicate with multiple men, and in the church this demographic is rarer. Normal women tend to want to get married. The number of loving Christian fathers who are okay with their daughters whoring around is zero. Let’s put aside foolish and worldly talk.
The bolded part is meant to be a coup de grâce for the whole conversation on why Christian women have the reputation for being whores. It is a reference to this passage of Ephesians 4:
29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
Good stuff, but I do not believe that God (through St. Paul) gave us this command to keep us from right thought and speech about corrupted things. Like the vast majority of Christians, GW lifted this one verse out of its context; which is much larger; in fact the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5:
4 25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. 26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. 29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not become partners with them; 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
The bold part is what this blog is all about. I am sure that at times I am guilty of corrupting talk, but what Christians mean when they bring up Ephesians 4:29 is “Shut up! It sounds dirty when you bring the works of darkness into the light! The way of women is upon her. She’s not choosing to be disrespectful to her father and filthy. She’s just the way God made her.” Like Rachel, they want to hide their beloved household gods of romance and female headship under the cover of filthiness.
33 So Laban went into Jacob’s tent and into Leah’s tent and into the tent of the two female servants, but he did not find [his household idols]. And he went out of Leah’s tent and entered Rachel’s. 34 Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel’s saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but did not find them. 35 And she said to her father, “Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me.” So he searched but did not find the household gods.
I do not believe God meant us to avoid clear speech on sin. Here is God, speaking through His prophet Ezekiel about the kingdoms of Israel and Judah:
5 “Oholah played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers the Assyrians, warriors 6 clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. 7 She bestowed her whoring upon them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them, and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. 8 She did not give up her whoring that she had begun in Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and handled her virgin bosom and poured out their whoring lust upon her.
[…]
11 “Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. […] 18 When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. 19 Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt 20 and lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. 21 Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your bosom and pressed your young breasts.”
Ezekiel wrote figuratively about the kingdoms. [1] What I write about (and the term Dalrock used which prompted GW’s comment: “cock carousel”) are these exact filthy acts which actually occur among confessing Christians at a rate which is much closer to 100% than to 0%. It is the pathetic case that Biblical teaching has been totally crushed among American Christians because we prefer worldly notions of success to Christ, and all Christians can do is refuse to talk about it, hope no one notices, and rebuke those who bring into the light one of the 90%+ cases.
Most of us are or will be married to former whores; like Hosea except that most of us weren’t any better. So don’t miss Hosea’s lessons because of silly sentiments.
[1] See more here.
I want to redirect a little bit from Dalrock’s post The perfect response to Patrairchy Chicken in which he highlighted a response from commenter Junkyard Dawg:
That actually happened to me a number of years ago. I was in a park where there is a wide walking path. People walking toward one another from opposite directions usually each moved to the right (like on the roads) to let one another pass. I saw a woman coming my way and moved all the way to the right, to the edge of the path. I soon saw that she had no intention of moving and she also was all the way over on the right (in her case, the left), and for sure, I was not going to step off onto the grass to let her pass, nor move to the center of the path – why should I?
I didn’t know how I was going to handle it, as she was almost face to face and I didn’t have much time to consider. But just seconds before, I stopped, put on a big spontaneous smile and said, “Good morning, how are you?” (We were now both standing still, face-to-face, about a foot apart.) This apparently was unexpected and she seemed to come to her senses, said, “OK,” and then moved over and kept going, and I resumed walking.
Dalrock added:
This is perfect, because it defeats the passive aggressive intent of the “empowerment” and forces the ugly feminist to choose one of three responses:
- State outright that she is playing childish power games.
- Go around.
- Engage in a friendly conversation.
If she chooses option 1, you can then respond with appropriate amusement. But chances are she will do as the ugly feminist did in Junkyard Dawg’s experience and move out of the way. Option three isn’t ideal, but keep in mind that being friendly is pure torture to an ugly feminist, so no matter how much you would prefer not to talk to one, she is far more bothered by being polite than you are.
It is also possible that she wasn’t actually an ugly feminist at all, but instead just not paying attention. Note that this response is perfect for that scenario as well.
As Dalrock notes, this is an excellent response, but often the best response doesn’t come to us in the moment. I have a rule that I keep and tell other men; especially younger men and boys.
Never arm wrestle a woman. If you win: Then, big whoop, you beat a girl. If you lose: You got beat by a girl. But if you do: Win.
Here’s what I suggest men should keep in mind even if the response is less than perfect: Win. It is best not to fight with women if for no other reason than we men who are not raging psychopaths do not like the feel of it, but if she is bound and determined to have a confrontation with you: Win.
You can get lost in caveats and exceptions (and if you want to do so in the comments, go nuts) but in our liberal and egalitarian democracy there are few stations in life to be respected. This is a failure of our culture. Our correction of the economy of respect must start at the fundamentals.
HT: Dalrock and Junkyard Dawg
Carrying on from the two previous posts in the series, we’ll look GW’s second objection from his comment at Dalrock’s:
Certainly not all young females who delay marriage do so because they want to fornicate with multiple men, and in the church this demographic is rarer. Normal women tend to want to get married. The number of loving Christian fathers who are okay with their daughters whoring around is zero. Let’s put aside foolish and worldly talk.
Unlike the first two sentences, the third is a kind of word-choice Gotcha! trick instead of misleading statements. (Follow the first two links for my meaning of misleading.) The design here is to drag you into a game of word tennis so that you can no longer have the time or energy to follow the target.
If you ask a loving father if he wants his daughter to be a whore, he’ll say no; very likely he will emphasize the response with anger and disgust. So, GW’s statement sounds true enough. But, in America, fathers who love their daughters regularly and routinely allow their daughters to descend into Dorm Brothels. They not only allow it, but cultivate in their daughters an aspiration and love for campus life. If he suspects that she is not chaste, he will ignore it unless it is shoved in his face; which his daughter knows and so will take pains to avoid until she is sufficiently comfortable that she can disregard his disapproval. If he cannot ignore her sleeping around, then he will invent for himself soothing statements like, “Well, at least she’s with her boyfriend and not just anybody.”
And not only campus life, but whatever desire she wishes to follow as long as it is not lived at the service of a man until she is ready to give-up on chasing her dream and have her Best Life Ever “cut short” in marriage. If she lives with her boyfriend, her father may not approve, but he will still invite her and her boyfriend to come around. He will not reclaim the car he gave her. He won’t bring up her whoring at family gatherings because technically–he soothes himself–she’s earning her money at work. It doesn’t count if her boyfriend pays half her rent and food. Better yet if the boyfriend a layabout: No one can say that she’s taking a man’s dick for the money when she’s paying for everything! Come to think of it (he tells himself ironically): That boy needs to learn to be a man and pay his non-whore when she’s screwing him.
If his daughter marries one of them (there are almost always more than one screwed boyfriend in the past if there is one), and then later divorces him, her father will take her side because he will feel she needs support in her time of desertion.All those past feelings of her boyfriend-cum-husband’s worthlessness will boil back to the surface. He will “remember” how the boyfriend just used her for sex while she was supposed to be out living her Best Life Ever and then abused her emotions and sentiments to trick her to cut short that life in a marriage that he fooled her to desire.
It is at this point that the word-tennis is played. GW, or someone like him, will respond to all this by saying, “Well, that father wasn’t really loving. If he were really loving then he wouldn’t have let her do those things.” If someone like him is steeped in Christian conservative culture he may well add that if such a father had been loving enough, then she wouldn’t have wanted in the first place to go out whoring in the world. In a moment of cynical rhetoric the father’s investment of time and money and compassion otherwise are wholly discounted by men like GW.
That’s not a just judgment of the situation, but at the same time it’s true that the loving thing to do isn’t to excuse or ignore the daughter whoring around. The point of the statement is to keep the conversation from progressing; to keep anyone from asking, “Hey, maybe we need to actually discipline, rebuke, and punish our daughters in both word and deed?” If you ask that, and seek the answer, you’ll see the impotence of the Christian conservative culture which is on display all around us.
Over the weekend Dalrock sent me a link posted to his comments by seventiesjason about about yet one more program to train Christian men to be Christian men:
Theology Professor Launches ‘Christian Man Academy’ to Combat Destruction of Biblical Masculinity
You can read it if you like. The short version is it’s another self-improvement scam perpetrated by the would-be teachers not only upon other men, but upon themselves. From the Christian Man Academy’s Welcome page:
Which brings me to the question: “Why should you listen to me? What are my qualifications for teaching on this subject?” First, I’m a man, have been for 52 years. Second, I’m a Christian man. I’ve been a Christian for thirty years. I’ve been a husband for 28 years, I’ve been a father for 22 years with five kids ranging from 22 to five years old (including three sons aged 22, 21, and 5). I’ve been a pastor for 23 years. I’ve been involved in training young men for the ministry for 16 years. I’ve taught leadership courses for 11 years. I’ve counseled hundreds of young men and I teach a Sunday School class made up of junior and senior High School kids.
Look: If you’re a Christian man then you’re a Christian man. Army Basic Training produces soldiers and baseball camp produces baseball players. You don’t need specialized training in how to be a man because you already are. Congratulations, you’ve arrived. You can skip the man camps and academies. In fact you should. Application of reason (you’re already a Christian man) and Dalrock’s Law of Feminism: (Feminism is the assertion that men are evil and naturally want to harm women, followed by pleas to men to solve all of women’s problems.) reveals these training courses will only form more useful idiots for the Feminists. And you would also enable the false projections of these men, and they have enough problems without our encouragement.
Commenter 7817 at Dalrock’s (and sometimes here) brought to my attention a newsletter from (I believe) Bnonn and Michael Foster which argues the case that Christians are to order their homes in either recognition–or avoidance–of things like: “the locus of control”, “masculine hypoagency”, “toxic matriarchy”, “gyneolatry”, and several other strange terms which normal men should mock.
What all those words have in common is that they are set within a nearly 3,000 word screed which never actually quotes the Biblical instructions we Christians are given for the ordering of our households. I will list below, again, the instructions with which God blessed us, through his apostles, in the order they appear in the Bible.
1 Corinthians 11:8-10
8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
1 Corinthians 14:33-35
33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.
As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
Ephesians 5:22-24
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Colossians 3:18-19
18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
1 Timothy 2:11-12
11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
Titus 2:3-5
3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good,4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
1 Peter 3:1-7
3 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives,2 when they see your respectful and pure conduct. 3 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— 4 but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. 5 For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.
What the Word of God says–if we trouble to read it– is that men are the heads. There is a distinction. I wrote last year in Though the Best Retort is to Live It:
“Husbands are not called to ALWAYS lead, but wives are called to ALWAYS obey. Sometimes the head may give a subordinate the lead because that is the prudent thing to do. He does not give up the rule. He may take back the lead at his pleasure, and the subordinate is only right if she gives it up in submission. A wife is to submit and obey her husband.”
Men are to love, care for, instruct, provision, and protect our wives and children. You will not find one single verse which explicitly says that a wife’s or child’s obedience is dependent on the goodness of the husband’s or father’s leadership. 1 Peter 3 says the opposite is possible, in fact.
There is in the Scriptures the strong implication of the goodness of leadership skills for husbands and fathers; certainly for the selection of elders and deacons from among the men of the church in 1 Timothy 3. We should consider it soberly, and that means we consider that good leadership or good submission may win over apathetic husbands or rebellious wives. Sober consideration also shows that the great emphasis of ordering Christian households is for husbands is to love their wives, and for wives to obey their husbands. We are both to follow Christ: Men are to love women while they follow, and women obey men while they follow. I encourage the writers of the newsletter and everyone else to go dig into the surrounding passages of the verses I quoted above; verses which the authors of the newsletter eschewed in favor of long-winded theories of “gyneolatry” and “masculine hypoagency” that interest no normal man, and which–if they did interest him–would not do him good.
One more thing: The newsletter never mentions headcovers except in a quote of my words and they never address that point. It was utterly disregarded.
Okrahead asks:
If you have any thoughts I’d like to here them about what to do when you have older relatives/parents who espouse the teachings you deal with in this article. If, for example, (just for a friend who was asking, of course) you have older relatives who teach that women can and should speak out in the assembly, need not bother with head coverings, etc., how can you deal with that situation. I don’t believe that the lack of respect that they’re teaching women justifies a lack of respect to my elders, and they do not seem very inclined to listen when I object to their teachings and practices; teachings and practices with which I was raised.
The answer I have is not thrilling, but what I do is, basically, two things.
First, I practice and teach (repeat) what the Bible plainly says. Know it yourself, and tell others that God expects it to be obeyed as He does all His commands. Study the surrounding texts. Know the context so that you can refute arguments and redirect distractions back to the text.
Second, I keep in mind that my behavior is the ambassador of my message. If I am wild and unruly I won’t be respected when I speak up. And if I ignore the traditions they ask of me which sometimes aren’t so clear from the text, then they will disregard me as apathetic, or a reviler.
Third, I don’t back down from arguing what the Bible plainly says. It is not inherently disrespectful to disagree with elders. I think this remark from Peter and John in Acts 4 is the guide:
“Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
I can picture them bowing their heads as the say, “you must judge”, but then standing tall as they finish, “for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” They don’t challenge the authority of the priests; in fact they recognize it. They don’t mock them, nor insult them. This is the opposite of common and childish attitude of today which demands, “Who are you to judge?”, or, “I don’t have to listen to you!” They are to judge. We do have to listen. But we don’t have to agree, and we shouldn’t pretend we do.
Within the Christians Men’s Sphere (and even in the larger Men’s Sphere) a theory holds sways when it should not. It is the idea that if a man will be virtuous enough, then it will overflow, and his virtue will overrun onto his wife and daughters. Those who believe in this theory are suffering under one or more errors. One of which is that every aspect of life can be explained with modern economic theories.
But the main error is this: They will not confront the truth that women sin because they want to sin. This is why the same man who says that he should be a better man so that his wife will be “attracted” to follow him (Hahahaha!) will–with his next breath–boast that he will teach his son to be virtuous. They do not believe that their virtue will trickle down to other men such as their son. No, no: Men must be taught virtue!
Do you smell the Traditionalist Feminism I’m stepping in?
It’s actually even worse than I have so far stated because the virtues of a man are not the same as those of women. Some expect that the man’s virtue of speaking a word in church will magically be transmuted into a woman’s virtue of silence in church. Others expect worse: That his women will take up manly virtue and raise their voices.
Every Christian men’s outlet I know runs away from this truth: The New Testament, especially The Epistles, explains to us clearly and forthrightly that:
The impulse of men like Tim Bayly, Michael Foster, and Aaron Renn (Hey man, I been there.) is that men must be somehow able to fix themselves. They think this because they want to address our current distress, and because they rightly know that no one can control another person; we aren’t even good at controlling ourselves.
The truth is that American Christians have raised at least four generations of brassy whores[1] and all we can do is talk about how to be the kind of men brassy whores prefer to marry. Throughout these generations Christian leaders and men have been exhorting one another to virtue and godliness with the same terrible results. There are enough books and sermons telling men to be better to fill a hundred libraries. If we want more virtuous men and women, then order must be restored. This means church leaders (bishops, pastors, elders, husbands, fathers, older women [2]) must charge women to be submissive, and to display the signs of submission: covered heads and their silence in church.
The prudential nature of pastoral care demands that we consider the currents of popular culture swirling around us. Because of that I suggest for any leader who wishes to be taken seriously that no less than half of his engendered instructions should be directed at women to be quiet and have some respect.
Do NOT get distracted by the fact that many men within those generations were vicious rather than virtuous. This has always been the case. We’re Christians, we know this. There was not a sudden decline in male virtue which heralded in the generations of whores. Generation-wide whoring began after men signaled the sharing of headship when women were given the vote alongside us, and it accelerated when women stopped covering their heads at church. When American Christian women gave up submission and the sign of submission, their next step was to become whores..and not even for the economics. They are whores for the romance and excitement. They whore for the love of the Game.
If you need an economics tie-in to hear me: It’s the brassy whores, stupid.
[1] If she wasn’t a virgin at marriage, and she wasn’t raped, she whored around at some point. We used to discreetly acknowledge this with the phrase “make an honest woman of her”, but we’re way past the point now where discretion can be understood.
[2] As in, something like a grandmother. Paul wasn’t referring to a five years older bestie.
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
Jesus was a carpenter. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fisherman. Paul was a pharisee who had to repent, and he began making tents. If you’re too smart to work, you’re too dumb to teach. The Bible is incomprehensible to the man who doesn’t know how to manipulate the material, unrighteous, world.
10 “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?
Servants. Masters. Farmers. Vinedressers. Fishermen. Plowmen. Oxen. Donkey. Deer. These are the words of the Bible. There are–in the Bible–no parables, metaphors, or allegories for instruction for us to be like the righteous philosopher or the worthy wordsmith.
Several people have tried to convince me that authoritarianism is not the right word to describe a form of government (whether in the home or over a country) in which the head creates a real obligation of submission for his body when he gives a command. My reading on the etymology of authoritarian is that it used to mean someone is in charge, and those under him are obliged to obey him, but that Communists (somewhat ironically) habitually used the word authoritarian as a synonym for totalitarian; which is a different thing.
Gee, I am so surprised to find that Communists told lies to subvert common knowledge…
Nevertheless, leave your suggestions in the comments.
Things that We have Heard and Known 