Foolish and Worldly Talk, by Okrahead

After my last post Okrahead had a great comment.  I asked him to expand into a guest post. It’s very good. 

---

 

GW commented on Dalrock, and was then addressed by Cane, on the issue of young Christian women “whoring around,” and whther are not “loving Christian fathers” are okay with it; as Cane observed GW’s “coup de grace” was that this is “foolish and worldly talk.”

This statement caused me to reflect on what “foolish and worldly talk” really is in relation to what many churches teach young women today.  First, we need to be aware of what wise and spiritual talking is so we can tell the difference.  In Titus 2 the apostle Paul commands that the older women are to “teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children.  To be discreet, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”  (Titus 2:4, 5) In 1 Timothy 5 Paul addresses some young widows who apparently wanted to be strong, independent women who didn’t need a man, ordering them “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.  For some have already turned aside after Satan.”  (I Tim. 5:14, 15)

What I find striking is that Paul specifically forbids the actions and attitudes that lead to the lifestyle of “finding herself”, or as Dalrock wryly noted, the “season of singleness.”  Paul describes young women who pursue the “season of singleness” as following Satan, even though they were members of the church.

What then might truly be foolish and worldly talk?  Foolish and worldly talk, as practiced in many churches today, as I have seen and heard first hand, is encouraging young women to put off marriage for college and career.  If a young woman loses her virginity at 17 on prom night the members of her church may act mildly embarrassed and titter, but few see it as a real problem.  If a young woman from that same church stays a virgin until her wedding night at age 18 the church will be scandalized; especially if she is a bright and pretty girl with “good college prospects.”  This is foolish and worldly.

Foolish and worldly talk, as I have seen and heard first hand in churches I have attended, is when Christian fathers send their 18 year old daughters off alone to a college campus in a far off city where they will be surrounded by sexual immorality and expected to join in with the general bacchanalia.  She may be drunk and passed out in a frat house, but at least she’s in college and unmarried.  This is foolish and worldly.

Foolish and worldly talk, as I have seen first hand, is churches that discourage young Christians from getting married because they “aren’t ready yet,” and who mock Christian families who have “too many” children, often with snide remarks such as “don’t they know what causes that yet?”  It would be unthinkable in these churches to criticize a “godly single mother” who has a brood of bastards in tow when she shows up looking for a handout, but a young married woman who has never asked a dime of anyone at the church is fair game for ridicule because she and her husband believe that children are a gift from the Lord.  Truly, they call good evil and evil good.  This is foolish and worldly.

Foolish and worldly talk is the practice by some Christian fathers of teaching their daughters from an early age that they must get as much education as possible, and advance their careers as far as possible, because there is no way that they can count on their future husbands to support them; because these good Christian fathers just know deep down that all those awful young men are going to leave their daughters destitute and abandon them, so it is imperative in them to inculcate distrust and disrespect for their daughters’ future Christian husbands as early as possible.  I have seen this one up close and personal; the fall out is more ugly than I can describe, but he was a good Christian father so what can I say?  This is foolish and worldly.

Foolish and worldly talk is the good Christian father, who together with his good Christian wife, calls their good Christian teenage daughter in and tells her how much they really, really trust her; but just to be on the safe side they are putting her on the pill.  They know she’ll always make good choices, but just in case she doesn’t, the pill will be there to save her.  This goes on at pretty much every evangelical church I’ve ever seen.  This is foolish and worldly.

Foolish and worldly talk is defending the practice of sending your daughter to a public high school where the school counselor will provide her with condoms and advice on the best ways to be sodomized; and where the English teacher she really admires and looks up to is also sponsor for the gay-straight alliance club, and will happily introduce her to a cute lesbian just her age.  Of course this never happens at your local public high school; just some far off place.  I see good Christian fathers sending their good Christian sons and daughters to those places right now.  This is foolish and worldly.

Foolish and worldly talk is defending the fact that you sent your daughter to prom dressed as a high dollar hooker.  Or defending the fact that you rented her a hotel room for her after party so that she would be in a “safe place.”  Because after all, you really, really trust her, but just in case she makes a mistake, at least she’s on the pill, and is headed off to a good college next fall and is definitely not getting married any time soon.  I have seen all this first hand for more than thirty years now, going back to when I was a teen and so many of my good Christian friends had these wonderful experiences provided by their parents.  This is foolish and worldly.

Foolish and worldly talk is members of the church mocking young women who somehow find the strength to resist the culture and set their hearts and souls to follow Paul’s admonitions.  Good Christian men and women, men and women with whom I prayed and sang hymns, mocking that strange young woman who has a head covering, who married young and never got to go to college, who has four or five young children, who makes a public show of being deferential and respectful to her husband.  She’s so odd.  I wonder if she’ll show up in a prairie jumper next week?  It’s so sad that she missed out on life.  This is what their own good Christian daughters here them say of such a woman.  God forgive me, in ignorance I did so as well.  No more.  Because this is foolish and worldly.

DoW IV: No Good Words for Bad Deeds

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.

DoW III: A Disagreeable Game

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.

DoW II: Diversity Plus Proximity Equals Whore

Carrying on from the previous post 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.

Just as with the first sentence (you can read about it by following the first link in this post), the second is, again, factually true, yet still misleading; just as anti-missile flares distract because factually they are hot.

Normal women want to get married, but normal women don’t necessarily get normal  instruction and discipline (by historical standards) to be good wives. It is also quite normal for normal women to want to end their marriages. This is because of sin nature; both what women suffer directly and also what they have to suffer by proximity to their husbands’ sinful natures.

Nature teaches us that women should be submissive to men, and that women are most beautiful when covered. Men grow in stature and their heads are uncovered when at their most manful. This is not true of women, who are covered even at their most feminine; yet they want that kind of manly glory even though it is harmful to them.

Today weddings are practiced in such a way that they begin with a man’s submission to a woman when he bribes her to marry him with expensive jewelry (preferably while kneeling). The wedding proceed as a celebration of her in as full feminine regalia as can be purchased; usually beyond affording. It ends without her declaration to obey him. All of which is to say that a modern wedding conveys no symbolism about the thing it mocks. I mean it has nothing to say about Christian marriage. So why do normal women want to get “married” if they are in rebellion against, or in ignorance of, Christian marriage? Two reasons: They want to be celebrated, and because if she doesn’t get a husband she can’t pursue her sinful desire to rule him. When that doesn’t work out to her satisfaction (It never will; that’s some of the trouble with sin.) she starts thinking that she must have been fooled into marrying the wrong man. She begins to think she needs someone stronger, gentler, kinder, tougher…better. Thus normal women are strongly tempted to entertain the idea that what they need is a new marriage to a new man.

This brings us back to the motivation behind GW’s objection that, “Normal women tend to want to get married.” The unavoidable implication is that generally what normal women need are superior men than what God has provided them from which to choose. It is a statement of encouragement to a woman that they deserve a better man; that in a just world they’d get a man who understands her needs. He is saying women should get a man like him.

Another Feminist Club Opens Up

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.

DoW I: Celebrating Hay in a Needle Stack

This essay (or, rather, one like it) was supposed to be posted last week, but I must admit that I lost the specific line of thought I wanted to attack. Then I read this comment at Dalrock’s by GW:

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.

I don’t know whether he means to be disingenuous or if he is just remarkably unobservant, but what he wrote is exactly the sort of thing Christians say to themselves and one another to excuse whores from being described as whores. It was these statements I had in mind when I decided to write discussion posts on four generations of whores.

The paragraph itself is a give-away of it’s intent to pretend the real world isn’t really here; as it’s actually a list of well-practiced objections rather than a cohesive statement. That’s fair enough play in the truncated world of blogs and comments, but their combined purpose is to disorient and so I hate them and will smite them individually as I go forward.; with–I should add–no ridicule meant towards GW himself. Everyone here came from there.

• 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.

This statement must be factually true, (I doubt all women do anything for exactly the same reasons every time), but it is functionally a useless statement meant to lull cracking eyes back to sleep. A lot of women are tempted to fornicate with multiple men. My observation is that most woman, like most men, are fully capable of desiring the affections of more than one man. They are just less likely to admit it if they think such insight might harm them.

Notice also the descriptor rarer. Rarer than what? The implication is that women’s desire to fornicate is rare among non-church females. Just like the “all” statement this is meant to distract us from the facts found in the study Relationships in America:

Figure 12.1Premarital sex, by age group

In what might appear at first glance as ironic, older married respondents tend to report higher levels of premarital sex. The percentage of each age group reporting premarital sex increases as the age of the respondent increases through the age group 35-44, where the percentage of each group reporting premarital sex levels off. But before you conclude too much about this, remember that younger married respondents likely exhibit lower frequencies of premarital sex because more religious young adults are more apt to marry prior to age 25, or shortly thereafter. Which brings us to the key question we hear about premarital sex: does religion matter?

In short, yes. Increased religious service attendance is negatively associated with reports of premarital sex. Among married weekly religious service attenders, 65 percent reported first sex prior to getting married, compared to 88 percent who report occasional attendance and a full 96 percent of those who never attend religious services. But perhaps those who attend regularly are more prone to social desirability bias and less likely to give a straight answer to the question.

Just before the graph the authors of the Relationships in America study include a caveat about these numbers:

In these analyses, then, we are talking about premarital sex in the technical use of the term—sexual experience with a spouse prior to getting married (among currently-married persons). Because we define premarital sex in this way, we focus our attention on married respondents and tally those who report having sex with their current spouse before they married as those indicating premarital sex.

If you were cheering about that lower 65% number among 18-24s, I must interrupt your party to let you know that these numbers only account for people who actually married, and only counts the pre-marital partner. They did not count the sexual partners before the sexual partner who was eventually joined in marriage. So if Tammy slept with Brad only to get dumped, and then she decided no more sleeping around before she eventually married Bobby (who she made wait), Tammy and Bobby are not included in the percentage of pre-marital sex because the bridal bit with Brad never occurred.

How many people do you know unmarried by 24? How many people do you know who didn’t marry their first sexual partner?

So how much “rarer” did churched people practice premarital sex with their eventual spouse, but not counting the ones they didn’t marry, or those of the same age who haven’t married yet?

Figure 12.2Premarital sex, by religious service attendance

If you read those numbers and think, “See? That’s much rarer.”, then… I can’t even.

When All Else Fails Read the Instructions

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.

For the Love of the Game

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:

1. Men are the heads of women. Men are in charge and are to act like it; corporately and individually as the relationship defines. The Author of the Bible does not even say, “Christian men”, or, “Godly men”. It is so ordered through all Creation.
2. Women individually are to be submissive and therefore obedient to their heads of households.
3. Women are to be silent in church.
4. Women are to pray with their heads covered as a sign of submission. There is to be no question about it. Everyone who sees a praying women should see a woman who accepts that her God-given role and glory is to be submissive to God, and her husband or father.

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.

Thar Be Monsters in our Sea of Chivalry

Game/MTGOW and Feminism aren’t Christians’ problems except as they appeal to Christians because modern Christian practice is both anti-Christian AND a losing proposition. Our problem is that Christians don’t actually believe in the word of God. They don’t believe that–as whole beings–women are weaker than men…even though we all observe it every day. They don’t believe that it is good that God gave women fathers and husbands to rule them… even though we live in a society of liberated whores. They don’t believe that women are more easily deceived…even though marketing and scams are overwhelmingly aimed at susceptible women.

What Christians actually practice is chivalry because they believe that chivalry is “real” Christianity”. Chivalry is the water in which Feminism and Game/MTGOW swim; what is necessary for their existence. If we want Feminism and Game/MTGOW to go away, we have to destroy the cultural environment created by chivalry.

---

Repurposed from this comment at Dalrock’s.

COE VI: We Have No Such Custom, on Head Coverings

In March of 2016 I wrote a post about the “Head Coverings” passage from 1 Corinthians 11.

³ But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

⁴ Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.

⁵ But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.

⁶ For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.

⁷ For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

A pretty good discussion followed in the comments. One of the parts which was not good was my reply to GK CHesterton wherein I wrote:

I think a fair reading of Paul’s teaching is that a woman’s long hair is an acceptable covering of itself, but perhaps I am just a big lib. But it must be long, and–as one under authority–the owner of the hair is not the one to decide how long is long enough to be a covering.

It’s one of those times where what I wrote was correct, but yet still not good. A woman’s long hair is an acceptable covering generally, but it is not an acceptable covering for prayer or prophecy, if I accept that 1 Corinthians 11 is truly God’s word. Verse 6 is the lynchpin.

⁶ For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.

Paul said that a long-haired woman who won’t cover her hair should have her hair cut off. That is a simple statement which makes it clear that obedience on head coverings is not covered (rimshot) by long hair. Paul addressed my mistake directly because it is important that the conspicuous sign of submission by head coverings was not optional.

I had no excuse for my error except that:

1. I lacked the imagination to think that there was a time when women really were disciplined (discipled) at church.
2. I feared a battle with my female relations over something that no one else obeyed; which signaled that it was an unimportant custom. Did I really need to start a fight that would end with me being angry at them all, and them at me? I would have been angry if I did not get obedience, and they all would have bound together.

Well, after I wrote that post in March 2016 I was, in my spare time, hassled by 1 Cor. 11:6 until the following fall when I read the passage to my wife and daughters and asked them if they could see any way around it. They did: They said (like I had) that long hair was a covering. I brought it back to verse 6. They were unhappy, but they obeyed God and did not grumble at me too much…though they were sometimes “forgetful” until I was “remindful”.

“But! But! But! Times have changed…” Indeed they have. It is common in Christian circles, when it comes to time pray, for one man to remind another that he still has his hat on. When we do that we harken back to that custom that a man should not pray with his head covered. What time changed was whenever it was that a woman would be reminded to cover hers up.

Paul closes the section on head coverings with:

But if any man seem to be contentious [CC: about the custom of head coverings], we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.