Screaming abuse is a brilliant feminist tool to keep husbands compliant because while there are some abusive men who mistreat women, feminists know they can appeal to men as a group to do pretty much anything to try to help or protect women. Ironically calling good men abusers only makes the falsely accused men even more willing to do feminists’ bidding. By expanding the definition of abuse to absurdity feminists can henpeck men into doing exactly as the feminists bid, since anything other than what the feminists say to do becomes by definition “abuse”. Feminists tyrannize good men by accusing good men of being tyrants. It is sheer evil brilliance.
It isn’t just secular feminists who have figured this out. Christian feminists have seen how incredibly effective this is and followed suit. Joel and Kathy Davisson label anything husbands do that wives don’t like “abuse”. Accusing the husband of abuse (for the crime of making his wife unhappy) then sets the stage for the wife to lower the boom on her husband, in order to force him to buy the Davisson’s products as well as those of their mentor Dr. Paul Hegstrom (emphasis mine):
She must demand that he get into counseling and begin a journey of discovery, BEFORE the marriage is restored.
Our books are perfect for this man. Paul Hegstrom’s books are perfect for this man. Ken Nair’s books are perfect for this man.
Our Intensive Marriage Weekend is a required necessity for this couple, BEFORE the marriage is restored.
This should by now be a familiar pattern for my readers. What the Davissons call “abuse”, Dr Harley calls “neglect” and Dr. Clarke and Focus on the Family imply is abandonment. The solution in all three cases is to put the wife in charge so she can make the husband purchase their products. All three advise the same basic strategy of causing terror in the husband that he is going to lose his family. While the specifics of how to accomplish this vary somewhat, the basic plan is the same. What Joel and Kathy call “Lowering the Boom”, Dr. Harley calls “Plan B” and Dr. Clarke and FotF calls “Hitting him over the head with a shovel”.
But Focus on the Family doesn’t stop with implying that husbands are abandoning wives (and thereby causing them to lose the tingle). FotF has a dedicated series on their website explaining “emotional abuse”. They declare that Christian husbands emotionally abusing their wives is a rampant problem in Emotional Abuse in the Local Church:
Emotional abuse is rampant in our culture, and Christians are not immune.
They also explain that it isn’t just women who suffer, men suffer too. Women suffer from being emotionally abused by men, and men suffer from emotionally abusing women:
Dr. Margaret Rinck, a clinical psychologist and author, dissects what happens in emotionally abusive relationships and offers sound and compassionate advice in her book, Christian Men Who Hate Women (Zondervan).
She writes, “We need to set women—and men—free from the terrible bondage that entraps them.” It might seem that a husband is the “bad guy” in the relationship, but “in reality he is in no less pain than the woman, but he usually does not know it.”
If you are a man, you are likely abusing your wife and don’t even know it. But what is emotional abuse? Pretty much anything and everything, including a husband who instructs his wife on Scripture and submission. Focus on the Family asks if the reader knows any emotionally abusive Christian men, men like Mark:
Mark instructed Janet not to speak during the Bible study, telling her “women are to keep silent in the churches” (1 Cor. 14:34).
Although Janet had questions, she remained silent in order to “submit” to her husband. Like many abusers, Mark distorted Scripture to manipulate his wife’s behavior.
There is some misdirection here because some will be tempted to assume this is merely FotF disagreeing with the husband’s interpretation of “church” in 1 Cor 14:33b-35. But this would be a disagreement on a difficult question, not abuse. What the article is saying is that it is abuse for a husband to instruct his wife on Scripture (contrary to 1 Cor 14:35 and Eph 5:26). FotF reinforces this same point in My Spouse Is Verbally and Emotionally Abusive*:
…it isn’t up to a man to see to it that his wife “submits.” The apostle has given tasks to each partner in the relationship. Each partner is responsible only for his or her own assignment. To put it bluntly, men need to forget about “submission.” Their job is to learn what it means to love their spouses “as Christ loved the church.”
The Abuse in the Local Church article quotes the Davissons’ mentor Dr. Paul Hegstrom, explaining that Scripture is used to condone abuse (emphasis mine):
It is a sad state of affairs in the church that when a woman has been abused, it seems that the congregation, her friends, and her clergy shy away from dealing with the situation…
Many times in a Church world, submission is held over the heads of women by men who are emotionally manipulative or abusive in order to get their way and maintain power and control.
Power and control. That phrase should ring a bell, because it is the language of the radical feminist domestic violence paradigm. Specifically, it comes from the Duluth Model, and the Duluth Power and Control Wheel. One of the spokes of the Duluth wheel is the feminist term “Male Privilege”:
Treating her like a servant: making all the big decisions, acting like the “master of the castle,” being the one to define men’s and women’s roles.
Hegstrom uses the language of radical feminism, a paradigm entirely hostile to biblical headship and submission. As the Duluth Model website explains, the community which subscribes to the Duluth Model (emphasis mine):
Believes that battering is a pattern of actions used to intentionally control or dominate an intimate partner and actively works to change societal conditions that support men’s use of tactics of power and control over women.
This isn’t about abuse, this is about changing the power dynamic between men and women. This is about obliterating headship. This is Hegstrom’s field, so he wouldn’t accidentally adopt the language of a paradigm he didn’t agree with, and his framing of the issue is the same as the Duluth framing. He is concerned that the church uses submission to give husbands “power and control” in marriage. This is important. Hegstrom isn’t objecting to how husbands are exercising headship, he is objecting to headship itself. True to the Duluth model, he is working to change societal conditions that support men having power and control. And here is Focus on the Family citing Hegstrom as the expert in Christian “emotional abuse”. FotF’s endorsement of the Duluth model can also be seen in the Spouse article where they implore readers to (emphasis mine):
Make sure that the therapist you choose understands the dynamics of abuse, power, and control, and that he or she is well trained in the highly specialized field of marital conflict.
If you ask for a therapist using the language above, you are asking for a therapist trained in the Duluth Model.
After a great deal more straight out of the feminist playbook, the Local Church article advises pastors to send husbands accused of emotional abuse to Dr. Hegstrom’s program Life Skills International for treatment:
Along with loving confrontation, pastors should encourage the abuser to join a treatment program. An organization that can help is Life Skills International, found online at http://www.lifeskillsintl.org/. Founded by Paul Hegstrom, a former abuser, the program addresses abuse from a biblical perspective.
The website for Hegstrom’s Life Skills International will obliterate any remaining doubt you might have that Focus on the Family is selling the radical feminist paradigm of domestic violence. Among other things, the Life Skills website contains a Power and Control Wheel, including Male Privilege and Religious Abuse. See the full wheel and click on each item, as there is too much radical feminist insanity to quote. See also the Signs of Abuse page where any of the bulleted items indicates abuse, including a husband not sharing equally in the housework:
· Household responsibilities are not shared.
As I mentioned above, not only is Hegstrom the Christian authority Focus on the Family turns to in order to define how using Scripture on submission, etc. constitutes “abuse”, he is also the mentor of Joel and Kathy Davisson. Joel Davisson is a proud graduate of Life Skills International and credits Hegstrom for teaching him the proper interpretation of Scripture regarding husbands and wives. For his part, Hegstrom is so proud of Joel and Kathy’s work that he wrote the preface to their book The Man of Her Dreams The Woman of His!. Check out the book on Amazon to see Hegstrom’s name right there on the cover. Use the “search inside” feature to see the preface and to see how Joel and Kathy credit Hegstrom and Life Skills for their theology of marriage, including their doctrine of “women as responders”.
*In the Spouse article FotF also endorses Hegstrom’s Life Skills International.
See also:
Thanks for doing the research and making the connection here. These academic schools of thought, and their influence, is hard for a layman to keep track of, and recognize the connections and the implications.
I keep getting solicitations from FotF, I need to take the time and write a rebuke to them for what they have become.
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Dalrock: You are a Warrior for Christ and I am proud to count myself as one of your followers. FOTF is so far gone- along with our entire culture that I cannot imagine recovering without a lot of bloodshed. The Churches have teamed with the Marxists, the Feminists, those who HATE Western Civilization, and assorted Misandrists to destroy us. They are open about their aims if you just read some of the papers- and they are winning.
Other than exposing the beast, is there anything we can do?
Now I don’t want to violate your new guidelines already, but just yesterday I was discussing men’s rights with a group of guys. One of them is about to get divorced to a shrill, screeching, raging harpy and his 17 y/o son was there. I claimed that the loss of the marital “rape” laws in the 1970’s was the reason for the loss marriage in our culture. He had never heard of such a thing.
I explained that before 1975, all a man had to do with his vile, screaming wife was to smack her on the butt and tell her to get in the bedroom right now and get your clothes off. She complied and calmed down after a good rodgering, and everybody was happy.
He could not imagine such a thing. “Wait, but that’s rape.” The notion of “forcing” a woman to actually keep her promises and only giving her the option to file for divorce of separation if she doesn’t like it was so horrifying to the Matrix he could not imagine a world where men, and not women, are in control Such a world was completely outside his frame of reference. OF COURSE women get to decide what they do with their bodies.\
“Do men always get to decide how their sperm is used” I asked? He did not have an answer.
I tried to explain about ongoing consent- that is a man promises to forsake all others and to love, honor, and support his wife and the wife (AT ONE TIME) promised to have and to hold from this day forth. That was the exchange of promises or the “consideration” in marriage to use the legal term. Today there is NOT valid “consideration” in marriages because the man promises something tangible and the woman promises NOTHING. The man gives up his freedom and checks his balls at the banquet door while the culture gleefully paints him as incompetent and in need of guidance from the Goddess. The culture trains men to bow down to the false vagina goddesses and trains women to assume the throne. In Marriage 2.0, the woman keeps her freedom- and picks up her new husbands testicles at the banquet door. Then- because her husband is now an optionless man who is TOTALLY DEPENDENT on the wife’s capricious whims whether he has performed enough to ‘earn sex’ and a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SHELL of a man than before the wedding- she invariably loses sexual interest in him.
Dalrock, I think the feminists and assorted Marxists knew- and KNOW- EXACTLY what they are doing. The goal was to destroy the family. They succeeded in creating an entirely new institution called marriage 2.0 in which ALL of the benefits go to women and ALL of the duties go to men. The Churches continue to impose Marriage 1.0 rules on men and and entirely new set of books for the benefit of women.
The Churches took away the Polygamy option and now the rules governing female infidelity have morphed into an equalitarian nightmare where the “one flesh” is controlled by the women. The sex is controlled by the women. The tone is controlled by the woman and her lists of chores. The culture give women not just a threatpoint but a hammer and chisel. It gives them control of the Children and the husbands income. It give them control of the pets and the home and the marital bed to such an extent it is not uncommon for a woman to file for divorce, and then continue collecting money while she rails her new lover on the marital bed, screaming loudly for the young children in the next room. The at-fault woman gets the house, the kids, the pets, and 1/2 of her former husband’s money for the next 2 decades. The man gets the bills, the child sex abuse allegations, the parental alienation, and a single bedroom apartment in the inner-city.
Welcome to Utopia where sex is as easy to get as a drink of water- but love and commitment? Not even close. Enjoy the decline.
Looks like FotF is making the case for MGTOW. Outstanding work Dalrock. One of the things people falsely believe is the only place where feminism is not present and “families’ of Christians exist is in the church. It is still believed that a “good” woman can be found at church.
“The apostle has given tasks to each partner in the relationship. Each partner is responsible only for his or her own assignment.”
Interesting. Because wives are often the first to stand up and shriek about how their husbands aren’t loving them as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. Wives are often the first to complain loudly about their husbands not living up to their own assignments.
The truth is that spouses are supposed to help each other in this regard. A husband should lovingly and firmly confront his wife’s failures in submission; and a wife can simply submit (“winning over her husband without a word”). Men, husbands, are impressed greatly with wives who make efforts simply to do their part in their marriages “without a word”. Does that mean she is to put up with real, physical, violent abuse? No. It does mean that she is to bear her burdens; just as he is to bear his.
The Duluth model is enshrined and codified into law in most states.
Specifically, California where I have personal, first hand experience with this.
It is kind of an old story to many around these parts, but still one I want to go over from time to time.
During graduate school, I worked for a private counseling agency whose clientele was 100% provided to them by the state. Domestic Violence “abusers” (as we have seen is very loosely defined by Duluth) are required to attend 52 weeks of Domestic Violence Batterers Intervention, at their own expense with heavy penalties for non-compliance. The program is 100% Duluth. The Power and Control Wheel, the videos, the language is all over the “curriculum.”
What is interesting is the way in which the system absolutely ignores the data coming from the gay/lesbian DV literature as well as the overwhelming stuff coming in about “mutual combat.”
The bottom line, there is some violence going on and that is a tragedy. But those relationships, however unhealthy are “working” for those couples and the state makes a big mess by trying to intervene when the “abuse” is nothing more than a dramatic, intense relationship and the neighbors heard them yelling one night.
And yes, it is a business. Just as the “Christian” counselors are selling their books and seminars, these agencies are for-profit and they have no interest in actually helping these relationships get better.
And you are right. The issue isn’t “abuse.”
The model seeks to destroy hierarchy (at least with the man at the head) in marriage–no matter how mild it may look in real life. It came out in the 80s, by the way so the effort is well under way and anyone who is just figuring it out is way behind the power curve.
I remember discussing my “wife’s” adultery with my bishop. He kept asking me in what ways I was abusive. Me!!! He wanted to know what was I was abusive! She was the abusive one! He honestly seemed to believe that my not being ok with two affairs, one going on for three years and the other for eight months, meant I was abusive and “still in denial” about it.
I have no idea what he and my “wife” discussed. Having spoken with some of my sisters at that church I’ve been told it’s common for them to be asked about the ways that their husbands are abusive. Especially the ways that they are “secretly abusive”. So that the church can “fix us”.
Is it any wonder I left my position and left the church?
Thanks for doing the research and making the connection here.
+1
Connecting the dots is important for a variety of reasons. The anti-scientific Duluth model is a lot more common that most people realize, and the “research” that went into it is pure 2nd stage feminism. It would be easy in most churches in North America to find women who totally buy into what the Davidson’s are selling who would at the same time insist “I”m not a feminist!”, because they oppose abortion and pay some empty lip service to their own vision of “headship”. Meh. Watch what they do, disregard what they say. When the action items for saving a marriage include choreplay, that’s a tell. When the Duluth model is dragged in, we know what we are dealing with – misandrous 2nd stage feminism with a different coat of paint slapped onto it.
Exposing the rot in Focus is a very useful thing to do, as there are still many, many churches where Focus materials are commonly used, “because we’ve always done that way”. People are prone to accept this stuff because they don’t bother to actually look into what they are buying, they just see “Oh, it’s Focus!” or some other organization and buy the materials.
There’s a larger issue here of “Christianese” – string the right set of buzzwords together and you can often say just about anything you want, so long as it’s couched in the right terms, and the OP shows this clearly. But that’s beyond the scope of the posting, most likely.
Women INITIATE more than 70% of violence in relationships with nonreciprocal violence:
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020
A survey of 18,761 heterosexual relationships
@Dalrock
I imagine Focus on the Family to be something of a secretive organization, with a lot of terrifying goings-on behind the scenes. Perhaps they are the group Tom Cruise witnessed in Eyes Wide Shut. Regardless, this reeks of an agenda which flies in the face of Scripture – and even common sense! It reeks of the profiteering one can no longer do with televangelism.
More so, however, it suggests that feminism is taking over ALL of their theology; after all, we never quite hear about other subject of Scripture, do we? I imagine that if I asked their position on Solomon’s praise of wisdom, they would say that he simply knew about “most holy Sophia” and recommend I read the Secret book of James or the Gospel of Thomas. If they are willing to allow secular thought to replace the Biblical prescription in marriage, why not other areas? I predict they will no longer be pro-life within the next decade, and soon after will drop the charade of being a Christian organization.
Their “foundational beliefs” section makes them look like they stay within orthodoxy. I think they’re liars. I quote, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”
…
You’ve proven them to be liars, Dalrock.
Scott, I knew a man some 10 years or so ago who had to go through one of those 52 week re-education camps. It acted like a time bomb on the marriage – by handing essentially unlimited power to “her” over “him”, he was put into no-win situations on a regular basis; if “she” screamed at “him” he had to just remain silent and take it, because if he yelled back and the cops were called he’d be a repeat offender. In typical male fashion he did his duty towards their child by remaining “married” until high school graduation, and then he was done. D. O. N. E. Apparently she was surprised by this, because “the marriage has been so much better for years”.
No idea if either of them ever remarried. But the sheer humiliation, the grind-his-face-in-the-dirt-and-make-him-pretend-to-like-it aspect of not just the year-long re-education, but the casual cruelty that she wielded on a daily basis during and afterwards…that seems to have pretty much killed any affection he had towards “her”, leaving only what he felt was a duty to his child.
IMO this is the intended outcome of the Duluth model – to give a woman permanent dominance in any relationship. No matter what the cost in the longer run.
@bkilbour
I don’t see them as secretive. They are surprisingly open about what they believe. The problem is, Christians read and hear what FotF says and writes and don’t find anything objectionable. FotF, the Kendrick Brothers, etc. aren’t just leading Christian culture, they are following it as well. At the very least, they are leading Christian culture where modern Christians want to be lead.
Reading this makes me sick. It’s exactly what I’m dealing with as my Christian wife is currently dropping the boom. She has started playing game after game ever since I realized how much of a blue pill husband I’ve become. Respect has become an expectation for me that wasn’t in the past, and I no longer stop perusing sex at the first feign of her disinterest.
While I’ve started to gladly make more decisions, become less nitpicky, and speak to her more confidently, she has started claiming I’m a narcissist, emotionally abusive, and unloving. She even taught me about the term gas lighting. Needless to say, I’m stunned. She even stated that a pastor told her the “emotional abuse” she experienced was grounds for divorce. My wife even admitted she was surprised to hear it at the time and didn’t expect such an easy green light.
While I absolutely hate the thought of divorce and am trying to meet her part of the way, I refuse to let her control me by threatening to take away my family, since it would all be over at that point anyways.
I swear, I’m the nicest “abuser” you will ever meet, but the church and her church ladies seem determined to see her single and “save” her from a man who has recently repented for not being the leader of their household.
Just like the world, “it’s always about the money”
Not just the selling of books and classes for their immediate benefit, but even to the point of pastors pandering to women to keep the bills (and their salary) paid. They discard scripture to make a buck, and mislead people badly. They will surely be judged like the Pharisees.
I wonder, Dalrock – when you do these excellent pieces, do you ever send them to the perpetrators? Like, email them a link and let them know you have done a blog that discusses them, that they should come and review? I wonder if such a move would ever help any of them to see the light of their terrible, destructive behavior?
I also see cowards, in these folks. These are the same sort of Christians that, with a gun to their heads, would give up Christ and deny Him, because they are too concerned about pleasing the world, and their place in the world. Jesus is not their true King.
…it isn’t up to a woman to see to it that her husband “loves” her. The apostle has given tasks to each partner in the relationship. Each partner is responsible only for his or her own assignment. To put it bluntly, women need to forget about “love.” Their job is to learn what it means to submit to their spouses “as unto the Lord.”
Solomon
They are huge cowards. They are the best recruiters for atheism and people that walk away from the church there is.
“Dr. Paul Hegstrom (emphasis mine):
She must demand”
So he’s demanding that she demand. He’s supplanting her husband’s headship with his own.
He’d rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Enlightening post.
@Desi
You have it, there.
Specifically, because they operate under the delusions that women who have lost their heads will, somehow, by some instinctual female goodness, seek a meritocratic and technocratic head like themselves.
” snowdensjacket0x0x0 says:
October 26, 2015 at 9:47 am
I remember discussing my “wife’s” adultery with my bishop….”
And people wonder why I have nothing to do with these woman worshiping “Christians”?
” Tryggrd says:
October 26, 2015 at 10:10 am
Reading this makes me sick. It’s exactly what I’m dealing with as my Christian wife is currently dropping the boom….”
And this is why I’m MGTOW. You have ZERO authority in your own house. What’s worse so-called Christians back up this BS. They’re woman worshipers. Divorce her a** and go MGTOW. There’s no reason to be married in a land where you’re nothing but a slave to whoever is in your house that happens to own a vagina. It shocks me how blind people are these days.
And you’ll also see why I’m in favor of something that has now been idiotically banned from this site.
On the topic, “no”.
On the post, as I’ve said before, you do the Lord’s work, Dalrock.
On the topic in general, what’s the saying “conservatives are just liberals 30 years late”? Their foundation wasn’t in the Lord and never has been. Their foundation was in “Christian culture”. They were doomed to failure, like all of those that did the same thing before them. (Granted, I really liked their Children’s Radio Programming growing up. I’d hate to know how bad it actually was now.)
But it is insane how we’ve enshrined into law that Men are automatically guilty, but Women have no accountability. A lot of “Christians” are going to burn for that one.
Though the hypocrisy is still what gets me most. They somehow are incapable of realizing that giving Women all of the power wouldn’t, by their own statements & assumptions, be “abusive”. Power can only be “good” in the hands of the Righteous, by their reckoning. And I just realized where we’ve seen all of this before. “Nothing new under the sun” indeed. This is Divine Right writ society wide.
Dal,
I love your site but I’m getting war-weary listening to all this twisted-Christisn crap! I am a Christian man who has not been in church in over twenty years and can’t see that I’ve missed or lost out on ANYTHING!
I have seriously considered going back to my Catholic roots because of the liturgical basis of the service, but the doctrinal problems are insurmountable.
“Be not many teachers, knowing we will receive the harsher judgment.” I don’t know if I’d want to be Dobson on that day. Of course, it will be all I can do to stand as myself.
“My King died in my place.” What more can be pled?
I skimmed through the power and control wheel and I like how all the examples are either neutral or along the lines of “he does this” or “forces partner to listen to him.” I’m looking through this and see so many of the items listed in my marriage. The problem being 90% of them have come from the wife when she’s not getting her way.
But we know it’s all my fault in the end and I just drove her to do what she did because of my selfish actions. /s
@pacguy
You are clearly guilty of “Knowledge Abuse” for writing that. Abusers often use the words and standards of groups like Life Skills Int to turn the tables on their victims. http://www.lifeskillsintl.org/images/knowledge_abuse.jpg
Also, keep in mind the fact that you say you aren’t an abuser is proof that you are an abuser, just like if you acknowledged that you are an abuser would be proof that you are an abuser. It really is quite simple when you think about it.
Edit: I forgot to tell you to check your male privilege.
The “Lord’s Anvil” was pointing out to me that the Church doesn’t follow culture, it leads it.
Our candlestick is in the process of being removed. As I’ve stated before the culture isn’t going to make it into the Kingdom (thank God). We aren’t going to be able to preserve ANYTHING and we might as well get used to that notion.
Ezekial 14 pertains. In this culture even Job, Daniel and Moses would only be able to “save” themselves. Sounds like Men Going God’s Way to me.
That much FotF has right, you can’t force rebels to submit and enter the Kingdom. That is their responsibility.
Also, Tom K., Dobson left years ago.
Pingback: FotF and Dr. Hegstrom: Check your male privilege. | Reaction Times
http://therationalmale.com/2012/09/04/play-nice/
@Tom K.
As a member of a liturgical group, I should point out that while liturgy does a good job of abjuring the problems that arise in modern worship, it is, itself, no protection against modern people and their thoughts. It cannot protect from how we define abuse.
@Dalrock:
Life Skills International is brutally Ableist. What horrible bigots.
More seriously, they would be a good example of how Matthew 25:41-46 happens. [ Matthew 25:41 ESV “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” ]
@God is Laughing:
I’ve got the same conclusion as you as a result of the last few years in my intercessory work. All that is left is the stroke of the Divine Hammer:
Jeremiah 15:1 – “Then the LORD said to me: “Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people. Send them away from my presence! Let them go!”
@TomK
” ‘Be not many teachers, knowing we will receive the harsher judgment.’ I don’t know if I’d want to be Dobson on that day. Of course, it will be all I can do to stand as myself.”
I’m with you. Psalm 2 has been running through my mind a lot, especially the conclusion:
“Serve the Lord with fear
and celebrate His rule with trembling.
Kiss the Son, or He will be angry
and your way will lead to your destruction,
for His wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
Law 31
Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards you Deal
The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel
they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your
favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils,
both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored
wherever they turn.
That Power and Control Wheel is off the freaking chain! It literally means NOTHING, but says EVERYTHING.
The “Religious Abuse” flag on the wheel is so anti-christ that if Christian women are going to subscribe to that, then, contrary to those who say that we shouldn’t forbid others to marry, I say that we should forbid devout men from marrying ANY Christian woman who cosigns that bullshit.
@ Shadescale,
I wrote a blog that centered on Psalm 2. I’ve been thinking of starting again (after construction season) on Psalm 3.
https://ragingvanity.wordpress.com/
The problem is, Christians read and hear what FotF says and writes and don’t find anything objectionable. FotF, the Kendrick Brothers, etc. aren’t just leading Christian culture, they are following it as well. At the very least, they are leading Christian culture where modern Christians want to be lead.
As I’ve said before, the average “Christian” wouldn’t know the contents of the Bible from the contents of the TV Guide. Reading and understanding Scripture takes time, prayer, humility, and effort – four things most modern “Christians” can’t be bothered with. Easier to lap up someome else’s predigested regurgitations (can we call people who do this “Pelican Christians?”) of Scripture, however corrupted and nutrient-free these slops, than to seek fresh and untainted feedings of the word straight from the source. This is of course how the culture has so easily corrupted the church; the preference for spiritual junk food over spiritual fruits and vegetables.
So long as the Holy Spirit is replaced with the Feminine Imperative Christ’s love for the church will be interpreted in ways that align with feminine primacy. Christ’s sacrifice becomes men’s sacrifice to the FI.
It’s an interesting progress to see the feminization efforts in the church shift from patriarchy to egalitarianism to feminine primacy. It’s to the point where the ostensibly patriarchal men in power parrot the memes of secular feminine primacy to the church without even realizing it. It sounds correct.
I don’t think it’s really about church leaders consciously pandering to the empowered female congregation to keep the church financially solvent anymore. The Holy Spirit = The Feminine Spirit and it’s become a natural, unquestionable association now.
@ Rollo, it’s no accident that dethroning the temporal patriarch also dethrone the Eternal Patriarch (in their hearts). The Holy Spirit has to go as He requires obedience. Requiring obedience is abusive (see the Duluth Model).
Also, what happens when we grieve the Holy Spirit? He removes Himself. Otherwise known as “silent abuse”.
God is just so unfair and unjust. I think we should team up with Satan and enforce social justice upon God.
I don’t think it’s really about church leaders consciously pandering to the empowered female congregation to keep the church financially solvent anymore.
Agreed. I watched a frivorce train wreck way back in the late 90s, I did not even get the sense then. The narrative (from the elders through the entire church) quickly turned to one where he was “neglecting” (read: normal, hard working, boring husband–she did not assert violence, yelling, adultery, etc) and he quickly got to work on himself to improve his poverty of attentiveness in order to win the girl back (to no avail).
He never had a chance. He needed to regurgitate the narrative immediately. It wasn’t to keep the money controllers happy and in the seats. It was just “the way things are with men” and that was 15 + years ago.
@Rollo Tomassi
“The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel
they are in control, but are actually your puppets.”
The art of diplomacy is letting others have it your way.
Copy-edit note: Dr. Hegstrom’s name turns into “Hegestrom” in the last paragraph. Feel free to delete this comment.
[D: Thank you. Fixed.]
Not being married this means little to me, but tangentially I wanted to relate this:
On Saturday I made an OT comment about a very nice American girl I had met that evening. The next day (in Poundshop will you believe) I bumped into a friend who had been part of the previous night’s group. We commented on the young American woman and were in agreement as to her understated pleasantness. We were surprised; for my friend had feared, as indeed had I, that she would be a loud-mouthed, brash, know-it-all, ball-busting bitch.
Is there not something terribly wrong when two men – myself and friend – (and the fact that she was American is not especially the point) are so wary of females that meeting a nice one is an unexpected surprise?
@ Tryggrd
Gas lighting is a real thing. The technique involves deliberately remembering things wrongly in order to support your arguments. It’s a type of selective memory combined with pushiness.
About the pastor, this man is a worthless, ungodly charlatan. If I were in your shoes, I’d get out of that congregation for the sake of your marriage.
@ Rebecca, I don’t know how you are going to stand up under the iron rod. I suspect that you’ll find God’s authority abusive.
… such as new-girl Rebecca at 01.43pm above.
Just in case folks wonder why Dalrock instituted his new policy.
I’m sure Jesus will be more than happy to sacrifice for someone willing to declare Him a rapist the minute He takes what He bought with His blood. (not)
@God-Is-Laughing:
Thank you, I will read it when I get the chance. May I suggest the following (I’ve either purchased or will purchase it):
-A.W. Tozer (I’m reading the Pursuit of God, and it is very challenging in my Christian walk. Probably going to get more of his writings)
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Mostly good [a little easier to understand than Oswald Chamber, and just as deep], but some of his earlier works sound vaguely progressivist.
-1950 Interpreter’s Bible (George Buttrick): I chose this version over the modern version as that one seems to have a more feminist interpretation, but it also covers the Apocrypha.
-Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Bible (written in the 1600s): Very Good, except the times he goes off on an anti-Catholic rant (and I do not exaggerate when I say ‘rant’). Some criticisms could be valid, but he gets wild at times.
@feeriker:
“As I’ve said before, the average “Christian” wouldn’t know the contents of the Bible from the contents of the TV Guide.”
“Easier to lap up someome else’s predigested regurgitations (can we call people who do this “Pelican Christians?”) of Scripture”
How about ‘Baby Food’ Christians? Not only does it have to be pre-digested, feeding them can be…messy (the food ends up everywhere but in the mouth).
Problem is, even if you quietly deviate from the approved ‘party line’, they do some combination of ignoring you, declaring you a heretic, and/or act surprised that you would confront them (even the teachers).
Saw Rollo’s comment about options, and he’s bang on.
My wife got into a pattern of screaming the worst nastiness at me to get her way. She then had the tenacity to claim I was abusing her. Several times she got into hitting me, so I restrained her. She pointed to some bruises from the restraint, and said they were evidence of my abuse. Got some advice where this happened to another man, which was get away from her, so the very next time she tried hitting, I bolted out of the house like a rocket. She stopped the hitting after that.
That frustrated her even more. From my view it all came down to a power struggle where she wanted to continue to dominate in our marriage. She got me off to couples counselling where they had a weekend retreat to get me straight. Along with more counselling telling me how wrong I was.
My crime, after shaking off my blue pill conditioning, was to try and take back control of my marriage as husband and head of the family. I’m just an average feminized male, working away, taking care of stuff. Wouldn’t hit a woman under any circumstance. Wouldn’t raise my voice to one either.
So I developed options, and just did those, which meant I spent less and less time with this woman. Options are a very powerful response. What I learned is that she cannot be allowed to control my options, though she sure tried, and she doesn’t need to know what those options are, just that I had other choices besides her. Before I ended it, the couple’s counselling tried to get me to surrender my options to her primacy. I refused, and then wouldn’t go back to that counselling. Her final tactic was to separate from me, which I quietly accepted.
@Rollo,
“It’s an interesting progress to see the feminization efforts in the church shift from patriarchy to egalitarianism to feminine primacy. ”
The next step is goddess worship. It has already started – some churches are now singing Hymns to “Mother God”.
I apologize in advance for responding to a female commenter, but please indulge me because I haven’t seen her comment, and think she’s in earnest.
@ Rebecca LuElla Miller
Take into account Dalrock’s argument about the cultural redefining of abuse as anything women don’t like. If women could be service-leadershipped back into love, the advice of churchian pastors would be working. The point raised is we have observed the opposite; it makes things worse. This leads us to the conclusion that depriving women of a man’s charisma and assertiveness is a cruel and unchristlike act.
@ shadescale, I have Tozer on my phone (intending to read). My wife just read through “Pursuit”.
Bonhoeffer’s “Living Together” is excellent, as is his other work and Chambers is also very good.
I haven’t hear of Buttrick but I’ll check it out. I tend to stick to pre-dispensational commentaries, (such as Barnes).
>God draws near to us if we draw near to Him–He doesn’t push us into a bedroom, slapping our behinds, and rape us.
And when you refuse to draw near God- aka a sexually withdrawing unpleasant harpy we call “wife” in America- what is God’s example? If we love our wives like Christ loved the Church or like God loved the Israelite’s what is our example? Do you even have the vaguest idea about what is actually in Scripture or do you just know the parts that make you tingle?
>it sounds as if you believe power and control define headship, but that view doesn’t take into account Christ as our example of headship.
Because Christ never became angry, never overturned tables, never admonished the pharisees, never displayed power and might, never told us that the laws of Moses would not be done away until all was fulfilled? Jesus was just your BFF? Your own personal Beta Boyfriend who will forgive you no matter what you do? Why He is so faithful and loyal to you that He will comfort you in your rebellion and he would never, ever remove his face from you for disobedience. Of course it goes without saying He would never consign and judge you for eternal punishment in the fire.
Still want your husband to “love” you like He loves the church and Israel? Do you REALLY want your Husband to have the power to judge you and your behavior? Even with the forgiving love of a just judge? Read the Bible. Read Lamentations, and Ezekiel and Job and Psalms and Isaiah. Heck, just for laughs how bout you try to read Ephesians, Romans, or Peter?
Nah, forget these dead white men. Their are men out their who do not obey and worship their wives! Some men are not washing the feet of their wives! Call the police! Start with the abuse allegations. Take away the kids! Praise Jesus and His holy single mother Mary!
Pro tip1: The Disciples did not DEMAND their feet washed. In fact they objected.
Pro tip 2: These directives from Scripture that a woman be submissive and a man love his wife are reciprocal obligations that make the other’s burden tolerable!
If a woman is submissive and sexually compliant her husband will move Heaven and Earth for her in most cases. If she is not, he should “love” her like the Lord loved the disobedient and rebellious Israelite’s- by abandoning her until she has been tortured, raped, and mutilated enough to cry to their Lord for relief. Or forever, whichever comes first.
Power and control DO define relationships. Women have all the cultural, social, and legal power. Men have the bills. Your problem is that you are well aware of your advantage and you don’t care if continuing your advantage is anti-biblical. You only care about continuing to wield your power and preventing men from obtaining the knowledge which translate into power.
Pro tip 3: That “knowledge” is the understanding of what women are, how they lie, how they reframe and change the topic, how they use their superior verbal skills (on average) to browbeat their men into submission, and MOST IMPORTANT how their sexuality is predicated on losing that struggle! You know all this, your problem is you don’t want men to know it.
Too late. That cat is out the door but don’t worry! You and your intellectual and biological progeny will have plenty more where that came from.
The new comment policy prohibiting womynz from rebuilding the mound here was badly needed and long overdue. Ms. Marital Rape concern troll’s post deletion a few minutes ago was the perfect application and demonstration of why it was necessary for the new policy.
I do have a suggestion for future enforcement, Dalrock: in the future, rather than deleting the offending post, why not just delete the post contents and replace it with [contents removed for comment policy violation].
That way we can still say the screen name of the offender and help us all to identify the Mound rebuilders and churchian feminists when they try to play entryist games at other redpill sites.
The only problem is it makes BPP excellent rebuttal look weird. 🙂
(But its still a good policy nevertheless)
“they operate under the delusions that women who have lost their heads will, somehow, by some instinctual female goodness, seek a meritocratic and technocratic head like themselves.”
You give them too much credit.
They offer a strong head in exchange for a weak one. Hypergamy does the rest.
Some are responding to a commenter (Rebecca) who has evidently had a comment whacked under the new policy. I can’t say that’s a helpful outcome. If the responses are going to stay up, I’d be interested in the context.
Those who follow the Bible are rapidly being relegated to cult status. These false teachers are leading many astray and doing much harm to Christians everywhere.
If you are man, and obey what is taught in the Bible, you are a homophobic, wife abusing sexist pig who is just one brow beating step away from raping an innocent women. Sign me up.
Some are responding to a commenter (Rebecca) who has evidently had a comment whacked under the new policy. I can’t say that’s a helpful outcome. If the responses are going to stay up, I’d be interested in the context.
Meh. Dalrock’s new policy is short and simple. By reading BPP’s response, one should easily be able to discern what was being responded to and deduce why it was deleted.
women = woman at 2:48 pm
If the responses are going to stay up, I’d be interested in the context.
C’mon, if you’ve been reading here or other androsphere sites for even a few months you can fill in the blanks on your own. One thing about mound-rebuilders – they are totally uncreative and predictable.
Rollo’s comment about the shift in churches from patriarchy to equalitarianism to matriarchy is on the money. That goes for the “traditional” ones all too often as well, where the women limit themselves to backleading.
A relative of mine some years back went to a Bible study with an elderly preacher who said “We are going to study the book of John” and someone asked “What book will we use?”. The old man said “John”. End of discussion.
So here is an open question for those who attend churches that have Sunday school lessons on a regular basis (regular attendance): what percentage of classes consists of studying a part of the Bible straight up, vs. the percentage that are essentially reading some book either about the Bible or about some “life issue”? I’ll speculate that most places it’s 1 to 4 or worse – one class reading the Bible straight up vs. 4 other classes on Pastor Whozis or Mrs. Mission’s new book on “mindful living”. 1 to 4 at best, that’s my guess. Might be a part of the problem, hmmm?
I mean, what’s the point of having a Fine Manual if no one ever RTFM?
Also, a message to any female lurkers reading this who believe that emotional abuse is an actual thing:
GO MAKE ME A SAMMICH!!!
JDG, you forgot to include a trigger warning on the word “sammich”….
Anonymous Reader, good point about Bible studies and sunday schools not actually studying the Bible.
@Dalrock
Went to the wheel site to check it out. Something about the graphics gives them a dark and sinister look. That’s before I even started reading the “abuse” categories???
What are emotions anyway?
Emotions are mental delusions.
A person’s feelings may bear no relationship to objective reality. That it so say that one can be universally reviled and yet feel they are universally loved. One might feel ugly when objectively they are attractive. People often say that they feel like they’re going to die, but it is almost universally not true.
Ergo, feelings are mental delusions and we would all be better served to ignore them.
Feelings do not define reality.
AR,
We use just the Bible. Pastor favors KJV. I prefer ESV.
However, I get your point. I remember past churches who use the Bible studies during the weekly sessions. I was okay with it, at the time. Of course, I was BP then.
I made a mistake there and started using feelings interchangeably for emotions. We feel pain and pleasure when the appropriate nerves are excited. Emotions are mental delusions.
GO MAKE ME A SAMMICH!!!
More ale wench!
@AR & JBro:
That’s a topic I’ve harped on extensively in the recent past, one that ties in to my previous comment about modern Christians being pagan-ignorant of the Bible. If churches aren’t going to lead the way in biblical literacy, who will? As it is, most churches are, to refer back to my previous post again, feeding their congregants the “Spiritual Twinkie Diet,” making them spiritually obese, sick, and stupid (and frankly, I’m cynical enought to believe that this being done by deliberate design) by reading churchian Book of the Month Club drivel rather than the Bible. It’s no wonder there is such herectical dysfunction and breakdown at all levels. If pastors and elders of today’s churches were subject to the same temporal laws as parents in today’s nanny-state dystopian society (which churchian heresy and negligience has helped create, by the way), they’d have been arrested and jailed on charges of parental neglect and child endangerment.
@Caspar
I didn’t see Whatsherface’s comment, either. We must be disciplined enough to recall: It doesn’t matter what she said because it’s not important that women “get it”. It’s important that they’re obedient to, and inquiring of, their fathers or husbands. Whatever she said was irrelevant.
Thank you, Dalrock.
JDG, you forgot to include a trigger warning on the word “sammich”….
lol
I should probably put a disclaimer right after “JDG”. I mention two of the three dreaded “S” words quite often and the third one every now and then (submit, sammiches, and sex).
If only I could write an eloquent post illustrating that there is a hard fast linkage between all of what Dalrock describes here and the simple force that drives men to treat self effacement as a competitive sport.
The force is The Lift. That these leaders are supplanting the husbands as head is a great point, and they do it because they achieve The Lift. Once they are fully emasculated by their wives either by yielding voluntarily or by falling under the spell of some like minded idiot, they need The Lift from other men’s wives because they sure and crap ain’t gettin’ it at home.
I didn’t see Whatsherface’s comment, either. We must be disciplined enough to recall: It doesn’t matter what she said because it’s not important that women “get it”. It’s important that they’re obedient to, and inquiring of, their fathers or husbands. Whatever she said was irrelevant.
How will women who don’t get it be obedient enough to inquire of their fathers or husbands? They have to get that they should be obedient!
This is my attempt at being PC and helpful to women.
Attention female lurkers. If you want satisfaction from your marriage then follow the advice below:
SUBMIT to, make SAMMICHES for, and have SEX with your husbands regularly.
‘Those who follow the Bible are rapidly being relegated to cult status. ‘…
Lol, Lol…..
Errr ..I am not one of your like-minded Bible friends on this blog….I am from Byzantium.
But, just in case you don’t get what is going on, bad guys in charge really, really hate true Christians like you and aim to kill you all, once and forever.
In case you are wondering who are your enemies, I am afraid they are many.
You must be truly blind not to see what is going on.
To be honest, this sounds like racketeering.
Byzantine, Psalm 2 lets us know. A “conspiracy”? No way!
The 2015 edition of the U.S. Wedding Forecast (from Demographic Intelligence) states that 2016 will field the lowest marriage rate in U.S. history. Fewer people will marry, per capita, in the U.S. than during the Civil War, the Great Depression, WWII, etc… They stated that while the marriage rate can fluctuate year-to-year, it has been in decline for decades and the trend is expected to continue.
Note: The U.S. Wedding Forecast is typically more than 99 percent accurate in predicting U.S. wedding trends. For example, the forecast model proved 99.39 percent accurate in predicting total 2012 marriages.
MGTOW and enjoying the decline. No wife, no ex, no kids. Enjoy your 10 cats “ladies.”
Tryggrd,
I would stand on what is right and let things fall where they do. Do some research here on the stats of divorcees the age of your wife and let her know about that. Mostly change your own frame and live with what comes up.
I have noted elsewhere that I refused to live in constant strife and I will not follow this crud. You can’t change it otherwise, so seek to change yourself and drag her along if you can. Lead your family as much as possible, but leave it up to God to work on her at this point.
I do not believe I would stay at a church that claimed divorce would be justified in this case, but let them bear the results of such teaching if they must.
Tom K.,
I can relate to a lot of what you say, but I will note that pastors are out there who have at least some things right. I think very few really realize the depths of the challenge, but they are out there. It took us moving across town to get to a church that is much better in this area. I grew up RC, but I could never return to it for the doctrinal issues you note. I am not heavily motivated for church right now, but God is working on how to funnel that now.
Note that Dobson is no longer with FotF. He may be similar, but has diverged at least a bit.
Did FotF force Dobson out?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/did-focus-on-the-family-board-force-dobson-out
Ministry wanted to present a softer image on abortion, gay marriage, and warmer relationship with 0bama administration…..
You’ve hit a raw nerve, with this one Dalrock. FoTF, the Davissons, Dr Hegstrom and others tacitly invert the Biblical model of marriage – which is an economically efficient model, proven over 5-10 000 years of civilization.
In doing so, they mimic exactly what is occurring in the secular society around them.
A family consisting of husband, wife and children live under one roof, have one car, one mortgage, one set of furniture. Kick the husband out, and now you need two houses, two cars, two sets of furniture. Dilute the husband’s authority and you can sell a woman almost anything.
Don’t believe me? Go to your shopping mall and look: wall-to-wall women’s fashion shops, women’s jewelry, women’s shoes, women’s lingerie, women’s sport and leisure gear. Even the food mall means women don’t have to prepare food for their children or man-of-the-moment.
It’s great for the economy, great for retail, generates jobs, but…..destroys everyone involved in the process.
When Jesus Christ said,
“You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. 43″But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant” (Mark 10:42),
He was saying it for our benefit. That Christian “leaders” and “ministers” must ape the secular world, an evil place, tells us everything we need to know about them.
From Fotf website article entitled Emotional Abuse in the Local Church by Mary J. Yerkes
(With comments in italics)
Besides helping men understand their role as husbands, (Submit to their wives feelings)
Silva says there are ways pastors can show compassion to victims of emotional abuse—and foster a compassionate atmosphere within the church:
– Validate her feelings. His feeling do not matter only hers. If feels that his wife holds him contempt it is becasue he does not love her correctly
– Listen to the victim’s story. Prejudging the wife to be a victim is assumed.
-Provide a safe place for women and children in crisis. Provide wise counsel to victims that will not put her in more danger. No mention of safe place for men where they are not endanger of having their children removed and forced by the courts to give up one half of their livelihood.
– Assess her level of safety, and if she is in danger, take action to help her get to a safe place.
Refer the victim and abuser to a professional Christian counselor who is experienced with domestic violence issues.The sooner a real feminist can take over the headship duty from the husband the sooner the aforementioned divorce can be filled.
– Educate yourself, your staff and your congregation on issues of domestic violence.
Invite guest speakers to address the topic. Let’s manufacture a crisis. Wouldn’t hurt to have speakers on spousal rape and women speakers on remaining silent in the assembly
-Include a study on family violence and the prevention of violence in the adult Sunday school curriculum. The Bible get old so lets have a gender study bitch fest in Sunday School
-Display brochures, newsletters and information about domestic violence where others can easily access them. Because if you are going to be an abuser, you should at least learn how to do it right. I wonder how many of those brochures mention wives inflicting harm on their husbands?
– Offer support and unconditional love. (To women, and judgement toward men) Connect victims with support groups, prayer partners and provide ongoing emotional and practical support. Prepare to offer support and guidance for years, not days or months, even if the victim is receiving professional counseling. With out an angry feminist in charge a woman might accidentally repent of her divorce proceedings and FOTF is all about helping the divorce proceedings.
– Confront the abuser in accordance with Matthew 18:15-17. Remove the individual from leadership or fellowship, as appropriate. However, the ultimate goal of confrontation, as emphasized in Galatians 6:1, is repentance and restoration. And loss of headship, submission to female authority and divorce.
– Along with loving confrontation, pastors should encourage the abuser to join a treatment program. An organization that can help is Life Skills International, found online at http://www.lifeskillsintl.org/. Founded by Paul Hegstrom, a former abuser, the program addresses abuse from a biblical perspective. Ca Ching! Make sure we get the doe or you are a no go! Or to quote John Tetzel “As soon as the gold in the casket rings; the rescued soul to heaven springs”.
————–
The confounding of real physical abuse with a fiction called emotional abuse in this piece is criminal and can only have one real objective: the destruction and annihilation of the biblical family. Yeah hath God rally said “because you listened to the woman instead of God” . Yes, Yes he did!
Errr ..I am not one of your like-minded Bible friends on this blog
So are you just another enemy then?
….I am from Byzantium.
What, the movie or the ancient Greek colony that later became Constantinople and then Istanbul? Or are you referring to the Eastern Roman Empire?
In case you are wondering who are your enemies, I am afraid they are many.
Thank you, but no I wasn’t wondering.
Phil 3:18 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
John 15:18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
You must be truly blind not to see what is going on.
Jesus told us what would happen a long time ago. Not only are they blind that don’t have the Son, but dead men walking. Zombies if you will.
Looks like MGTOW/family with surrogacy is a way to go.
The reality is that there is no such thing as a feminist Christian – Male or Female- Feminism is a force of Satan and any “Christian” Pastor who uses it is doomed to the darkness along with all the others he drags with him. Revelation tells Christians to stay far away from such Churches or suffer the same fate – destruction – The Bible needs to be read and understood – Willful ignorance is no excuse.
We need red pill therapists. And let’s not forget about softcore in a movie equaling !Affair!
Feminism views men as the problem, and their ideology as the solution. Likewise Marxism sees the bourgeois as the problem (and killing them the solution). The problem is sin and the answer is Jesus Christ (and Him crucified) as the solution. All other ways are like the thief climbing in another way.
Point out the sin of abortion to a “Christian” feminist and you will as likely as not find that the problem is somewhere a man did a woman wrong and that you shouldn’t judge women. The reframe always is men are bad and women never sin, they just make tough choices.
@ Byzantine says:
October 26, 2015 at 4:33 pm
“I am from Byzantium.”
Time traveler?
From the Life Skills list of abusive behavior:
“There is destruction of my personal property”
Does that include destroying the fine china with a hammer?
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/the-wake-up-call/
Pingback: A good piece from Dalrock | Poetry Girl for Creative Men
What really amazes me is why western men still insist that their spouses must come from certain parts of the world? The way most folks write here, it is as if there were no attractive, chaste and godly women outside the USA. So, it must be American women, or no one else.
Well, fact is, there are great women everywhere. Plenty of them. And they love American men, too (actually, American men are universally loved by women the world over).
It has always been my belief that unless you are a eunuch, MGTOW is a defeatist approach to the American women’s problem. You don’t stop eating because the grocery store closest to your home sells bad frozen meat. You go shop elsewhere.
In another part of town, a man argues that men get most damaged by premarital sex; that women are naturally wired to overcome their promiscuity:
“Even though a woman also can suffer negative consequences from promiscuity, I believe that men can have the most to lose. Why? Because a sexually promiscuous woman, despite lowered levels of oxytocin and a less than positive attitude toward sex in general, still is internally wired to WANT to connect with her husband. Indeed, that desire is so strong, it causes her to fight through many of the negative side affects of her previous sexual experiences. A man, however, has no such natural “wiring”. If he fails to properly “imprint” and bond to the wife of his youth, he may spend the rest of his life in a disconnected state from her – indeed, from any woman. What he may do is attempt to re-connect with what he had imprinted on so many years earlier and foolishly turn to porn, affairs, lust, etc… All which can have severe negative consequences to his marriage.”
You can read the rest of his White Knight Theology here
Already happening in the PCUSA.
And if you state that this is antibiblical, and normally the worship of Astarte == Artemis == Venus leads to both temple prostitution and ritualized infanticide, you are going be broken on the Duluth wheel.
Scott is correct about how this is applied. And the data — there is data — is that it makes not a freaking difference. What I see — anecdotally — in NZ, where you can be required to leave your house at a moment’s notice after a domestic violence incident at the request of the police (no judge required) is that men kill themselves.
Or disconnect.
Gentlemen, if she will not agree to worship you with her body and obey you in the vows and mean it, why are you going there? You don’t need the grief of a Duluth woman.
Ladies, can I refer to to the works of Edith Schaeffer on how to behave. Better still, consider the fate of the female neomartyrs.
@Dave,
“You can read the rest of his White Knight Theology here”
I’ve watched some of Mark Gungor’s video’s on youtube. He is a talented speaker but much of his marriage information is feminist inspired. One clip shows him railing against what he claims is a multitude of Christian Pastors who advocate hard core submission by wives. I have not found or heard these Pastors or Sermons. Empath has been looking for them for the last 10 years and he has not found them either.
Puke,
I don’t want my wife to worship me. I am not God and I would not want the consequences of claiming that.
Greyghost,
Nope. The command went to a married couple, not a single guy using some guy by himself. Intentionally depriving a child of a parent is wrong, whatever the sex of that parent.
Dave,
Why the fixation with foreign women? Marry one if that is what you want, but it is not a solution for all.
The reality is that there is no such thing as a feminist Christian – Male or Female- Feminism is a force of Satan and any “Christian” Pastor who uses it is doomed to the darkness along with all the others he drags with him.
Totally agree. Feminism started even before the fall of Adam and Eve, conceived and executed by the serpent himself. Modern feminism is a propagation of the devil’s original ideas, and all those embrace it have become “corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ”.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 2 Corinthians 11:3
Dave, when Elijah was contending with Jezebel,where was his wife? Or do you suppose he was a eunuch? Elisha too? Obadiah?
Also, I think God created feminism, when He cursed Eve. Satan has built a mighty stronghold around that damage. What was the purpose of the curse? To wreak havoc and bring to an end those that wouldn’t submit to the Father and come back into covenant relationship. To ensure our brokenness apart from him. Boy are we broke.
Or rather, God prepared the ground (in women) from which feminism could spring.
I would prefer that Christendom return to ethics given in the Bible and discard a synthesis with modern psychology and gender ethics, it is clear to me that such strongholds although nonsense must first be torn down by using the faulty ethic on its self.
While reading the FotF series on “Emotional Abuse” I discovered that nearly every husband I know has suffered from emotional abuse. Some of that at the hand of his abuser wife and some from other sources like the abusers at FotF.
According to the FAQs About Emotional Abuse page: Examples of emotionally abusive behaviors include:
I am assuming that the possession of a penis is independent of the above examples.
So hear ye hear ye! A wife who withholds affection (sex) is an emotionally abuser, likewise a wife who gives her husband a contemptuous look or disproves of his behavior. This can often be observed when he asks her to make a sammich. Perhaps on such occasions as a contemptuous look or a cold shoulder, a husband should metaphorically “hit her over the head with a shovel”, “lower the boom” or make threats of separation, but wouldn’t that be abusive? Maybe he should just get her to counseling to get his feelings validate, and then go on a “marriage-weekend” and buy books and tapes and such to know the right way to hit his wife over the head with a shovel and change her or change the relationship.
Yet the greatest amount of emotional abuse that victimizes men is from those that accuse him of abuse and blame him for his wife’s sins of discontent and discount his emotional pain and distort his actions. These most prominent abusers go by the names of “Counselor”, “Ministry” and often “Pastor”. They decry abuse, but then advise women how to hit her husband in the head with a shovel. Irony is lost on these folks and so are the ethics concerning the household contained the Bible.
Bee
Yes I have looked and looked. When addressing the faux fear of hard core submission teaching I never fail to admit that there are likely a couple of Appalachian churches , one room, coal fired stove, snake handling mandatory, where that teaching exists.
But Ive challenged the fear mongers countless times and been handed back a name or two that have national ministries, and when I chased down the horror they are supposedly spreading found it to be benign unless heavily edited. The source the women making those claims would be able to cite, if they had a smidgen of integrity would be that they read another histrionic woman claiming that she knew these evil pastors exist. The whole urban legend if fueled in a circular myth spreading fashion where the myth is its own proof text.
@Dave
Feminism is only a Western expression of female on male manipulation. Women of every culture have their own breed of control tactics. Marrying a foreign woman is not a guarantee of anything. I don’t mean to say that American women are the answer, but I spent two years working in Tokyo, with an office full of Japanese girls, and they are no better than we are. They are a lot sneaker about it, though. I saw a lot of broken American-Japanese marriages. They’re feminine and very sweet, but that doesn’t stop them from cutting off the sex, abusing the children, or seizing complete control of the family finances.
That aside, things like this go a long way in explaining why it’s so difficult to find a man who doesn’t openly mock religion, and why so many people my age are atheist. Modern Christianity has become repellant in so many ways.
Dave,
Why the fixation with foreign women?
Obviously, Brad, you’ve never traveled or lived outside of the U.S. in a non-Anglosphere country for any length of time.
Also, I think God created feminism, when He cursed Eve. Satan has built a mighty stronghold around that damage.
Or rather, God prepared the ground (in women) from which feminism could spring.
Nope; He did not. Feminism is evil, and when God finished His creative work, He reassessed them all, and concluded that they were all good:
Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day. Genesis 1:31
Feminism is a perversion of God’s creation. Just as He did not create the devil, but the devil chose to become one, so He did not create feminism; feminists decided to embrace the devil’s ideas, becoming “corrupted” in the process.
Jonadab
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/06/09/874495/-To-Halt-Emotional-Abuse-French-Law-Teaches-Bullies-A-Lesson#
The law described in the link also codified emotional abuse in marriage, not just bullying. Feminists got rightly concerned that a whole list of common female behaviors could then be called abuse. Cant have that.
One quibble Dave. God cursed Adam and Eve. AFTER He made them perfect and declared it “good”. I already corrected myself as to God creating evil. I don’t care how you slice it though God made us corruptible and He made us corruptible in distinct ways. Women are prone to the failing of Eve, the desire to be like God I think as perhaps a parallel to the way that His covering cherub was corruptible.
BradA says: “I don’t want my wife to worship me. I am not God and I would not want the consequences of claiming that.”
Worship here refers not to the honors due only to God, but only to honor in general. It’s archaic English. Puke is making reference to the Book of Common Prayer marriage rite (ironically, it was the husband who vowed this, as explained in the quote below):
Neglect is not abuse. It is only the inevitable result of the fact that men are less interested in romance or “bonding” than are women, for a fairly obvious reason: men don’t get pregnant. I do recommend compromise: a level of bonding that is both less than the wife wants and more than comes naturally to the husband. I do not recommend capitulation. But the bottom line is that because women value relationships more than do men, husbands pretty much always have “frame control”, even if they do not realize it before it is too late: before their wives have made their fashion statement by leaving.
Cynthia:
Absolutely right about foreign women. They aren’t the salvation some posters make them out to be. Yes they can be sweeter and more feminine, but be careful. I’ve been dating Asian women, and see the same control tactics, as Cybthia says, cutting off sex, grabbing control of the money, trashing the boyfriend/husband. It’s the same thing in a different package.
When truly nice guys (80-90% of the masculine sphere) read a line like “Nice Guys are the real jerks” something snaps in their heads. Black is white, up is down and Nice Guys are Jerks.
Yet films are full of the “Girls want nice guys” message.
Just recently I saw part of a 2000 English film, Gossip. The female lead, Lena Headey, tells her male friend (a friend friend) to go over and talk to this girl that he likes, because, “You’re a nice guy. And contrary to what Derek says, nice guys are what girls really want.”
Derek (or whatever his name is) is the cocky Alpha male.
Still, I’m not sure of the film’s message. The Headey character was going out with Derek, and the nice guy struck out with the girl he liked. But this was the film’s beginning, which was all I saw.
Exactly empath. I hear a lot of this, even from preachers who should know better. I have yet to hear such teaching and I listen to a wide range of Bible teachers.
Craig,
We walk in this world, so I would use terms as they are used now, not in an older book. That snippet does not make it very likely I would trust much in that book, even if it had merit in some applications.
Freeriker,
They may have merits, but they are not the perfect solution. Note the discussion about the curse on Eve and her descendants. No silver bullets exist.
At comment 110+ I bet only Dalrock will read this.
I see both parties in the modern marriage as failing. I see men fed the idea that women will just fall for them like some bond girl falling for James Bond in the movies. I see women thinking that men will fall for them and wait forever like the characters in a Twilight book. The culture shows to each gender a false reality and says to them “believe this” And the realities are opposite each other, so we have strife.
I see that the men are sitting around frustrated that they are asked much in marriage and given little reward. I see that the women are wanting men to lead but keep trying to take it instead.
Anyhow, the answer for all of this is simple. So simple a man was literally nailed up for suggesting it. “Take up your cross and follow me.” A corrilary is to “first remove the plank from your own eye before you attempt to remove the mote from your neighbor’s eye”… perhaps we can substitute “spouse” for “neighbor” in that sentence for a marriage specific ideal. The advice St. Peter gives to wife’s to win over their husbands still applies. The writing in Ephesians that St. Paul gives to the married isn’t contractual, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church, even on to death. Wives submit to your husbands as the Church does to Christ” Can someone show me the “If your husband gives up your life” or “if you wife submits?” No because THERE IS NO “IF” it says “DO THIS”
And on the idea of a Servant Leader, we should look to our very own servant leader. Who (to give away my gender) was like first or second Lieutenant on D-Day. he wasn’t the General saying “ok boys go and storm that beach” He said “Follow Me” and went forward into enemy positions. Men if we want to be servant leaders, we need to be those low level officers, standing up and saying “Follow me” to our wives and our children. Watch “Band of Brothers” and watch how Dick Winters is portrayed in the episode “Day of Day’s.”
I grant that knowing what to do, and how to do it in war are in some ways easier than the individual decisions we must make and figure out how to respond to in our daily lives, but the mentality is the same. We must point ourselves towards the Cross and say to our families “Follow me.”
mike @ October 26, 2015 at 9:07 pm:
“We need red pill therapists.”
Counselor: “Did your husband tell you to do something?”
Wife: “Yes, he…”
Counselor: “Did you do it?”
Wife: “Huh? No.”
Counselor: “Why are you being difficult?”
Wife: “But I didn’t even say…”
Counselor: “I don’t care. He’s your husband. He’s in charge.”
Wife: *speechless*
Counselor: “I charge a one-hour minimum. That’ll be one hour of my time, please.”
…
Dave @ 12:30 am:
“What really amazes me is why western men still insist that their spouses must come from certain parts of the world?”
What really amazes me is your determined ignorance about racial, cultural, linguistic and geographic barriers. When looking for a wife requires malaria shots and thousand-dollar plane tickets, video games start looking reeeeally good.
Make us MGTOWs a better offer.
@ ACThinker….go ahead lead out. It’ll make you easier for those closest to you to shoot you in the back.
I don’t remember General Eisenhower storming any beaches on D-Day.
Pingback: Way ahead of you | Dalrock
@ Pokesalad, I was the same way when I was a red-pill neophyte. Just be Christlike! There, fixed that for you. LOL
PokeSalad, GiL,
Wash her feet!! Don’t you know this is what a servant leader does. Oh, and feed her, sit and discuss for ever. Don’t forget to have long flowing hair, and a light beard…
Gross dude, I don’t have a foot fetish. What am I some kind of pervert?
@ empathologism Feminists got rightly concerned that a whole list of common female behaviors could then be called abuse. Cant have that.
Equality is a female dog!
One more objection with the methods of “christian counseling” is the disregard of the family jurisdiction. A counselor becomes the head of the marriage, even if temporarily, usurping what God has ordained as the covenant head of the family. Christ does not command wives to be subject to counselors, nor does he command elders to rule the home. It is a jurisdictional encroachment that supplants rightful authority.
Further because the counselor has a predisposition to protect the weaker vessel, he/she has a bias against men as potential threats to women. This bias predisposes that women are victims not because of any circumstance other than she is weaker, and the predisposition dismisses the possibility that she, as the weaker one, might be guilty of wrongful actions against the stronger including neglect or fraud. The predisposition is full blown prejudice against the male, who is presumed as an abuser to some degree and negligent to the “needs” of the weaker vessel. Thus a husband is presumed to be either ignorant of how to love his wife or malevolent toward her. The prejudice is antithetical to the idea that the husband has authority over the wife and is to sanctify her the Word if he uses the word according to the uses in 1 Tim 3:16, that is for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. In the counselor’s view a husband using the scriptures in this manner is to manipulate (repentance and sanctification are manipulation according to these white-knights) and to Lord it over the wife; it is not servant leadership, because she doesn’t like it, therefore she does not feel loved, therefore it must not be loving. If it were loving she would feel all tingly and not rebel; so she cannot be corrected from rebellion because to lead her to repentance only provokes bad feeling in her which is unloving and manipulative.
IMO, the counselor should have a strong inclination to see to that a woman fears her husband (Eph 5:33), that she be subject to him in all things, (Col 3:18, Titus 2:5), that she refrain from complaining (1 Peter 3:1-4) and that the husband also be in subject to elders who rule in the ecclesial jurisdiction. That in husbands submitting to elders over matters of the church and wives submitting to husbands in matters of the family, both are subjecting themselves to Christ (Heb 12:9).
When a couple walks into counseling for “relationship issues” the counselors first line of questioning is why are they here. Some of the most likely possibilities include: 1) the wife is not cheerfully submitting to her husband – remedy admonish her to submit to her husband in all things even as Christ submitted tot the Father even unto death. 2) The wife has a complaint against her husband’s treatment of her – remedy admonish her to win him over without a word and act in such a manner that he will observe her behavior characterized by respect and purity. 3) Sexual sin in the relationship – remedy first forgive as Christ has forgiven you, then stop defrauding and step up your game in bed so that the other will not burn in lust but enraptured with the love of the other. 4) Bona fide medical complications that require prayer and perhaps fasting.
In no instance should a counselor cast doubt or aspersions on the manner in which the husband runs his house. That is between God and him, even if the counselor thinks he is ham-handed in his approach he must not hint at such in the presence of the wife as this will only feed her discontent. He must not receive an accusation against the husband except for proven adultery or verified physical abuse that required medical treatment. Any such discussion where a husband’s obvious sin is not present, the counselor must tread lightly with all humility knowing that there is always more to the picture than meets the eye. While it is good to encourage men to improve themselves including how to manage their households, it is wrongheaded to assume a best practice for all situations and it is foolhardy to confound love (actions) with feelings that are provoked. After all God is love, but he still disciplines His own.
Feminist often accuse God of abuse!
@Pokesalad – Your point on Gen Eisenhower I made in my bit. We as men as followers of Christ, are not to be above it, but in the fray. In the gospels Jesus tells us each individually to act directly, not to act indirectly.
@GiL – if we take the Gospel seriously, (we do don’t we? maybe not, with your name perhaps you feel the opposite way) We are supposed to go out there and risk it. But maybe you don’t find the actions of men like Dick Winters * or perhaps Joshua Chamberlin** (US Army, 1862 to 1865) inspiring. Or the actions of St. Paul going to be martyred, or any of the other early ones. To be a man is to face risk, whatever that risk might be. To be a man is to have virtues like courage and prudence.
@Jeff, It might be appropriate to wash her feet. OTOH, it might be appropriate to NOT wash her feet, and have her wash yours. Or perhaps the point of Jesus washing feet is to show that pride should not be our driving emotion, but more humility.
The point is our first calling is to be holy. From that being a good husband will flow. Someone motioned the fall of man earlier in this thread. Consider a few points of the story not explicitly said, but there. One Adam was standing next to Eve when the serpent said “have some fruit.” Adam would have been understood to be armed with a sword. His response should have been to cut the head off the snake. Instead in fear, he allowed the snake to tempt Eve with power, which she takes. Failing for Males – not being courageous and taking the lead, even if it gets us shot in the back. Failing for Females – not being lead, or when led, shooting the male in the back. That weakness has been inside our sexes ever since.
*for more or Major Dick Winters see Band of Brothers video series. Specifically the ‘day of day’s episode’ -2nd episode – and the taking of the guns at Brecourt Manor, or episode 3 Carteen where Lt. Winters is in the middle of the road telling his men to get up and charge the city, because lying in the ditch is death.
**For more on Major General Joshua Chamberlin, particularly his key role in saving the Union at Gettysburg (then as a Col.) see movie Killer Angels. Specifically his order to fix bayonets and charge (which he led).
@Pokesalad – Your point on Gen Eisenhower I made in my bit. We as men as followers of Christ, are not to be above it, but in the fray. In the gospels Jesus tells us each individually to act directly, not to act indirectly.
To carry this a bit farther (against my better judgement), General Eisenhower was certainly ‘in the fray,’ but what were the obligations of his subordinates to obey his orders to charge that beach, even though it was almost certainly distasteful and horrifying to them? IOW, those subordinates would rather be doing something else according to their own desires, but they were ordered otherwise? From where did this obligation come?
From whence came GEN Eisenhower’s authority to order that beach charged? Did his subordinates recognize that authority as binding upon them? Or did they rationalize and seek their own, self-serving interpretation(s) of that authority?
Assuming some disobeyed and failed to charge that beach, what do you think was the proper punishment for GEN Eisenhower to mete out? By what authority could he deliver that punishment?
Brad: stop trolling. Yes I was referring to the Book of Common Prayer: the last good edition was printed in 1928. And I am pointing out dynamics: if she is not head over heels in lurve and willing to be a wife, not an ersatz copy thereof,… Next.
Becuase a wife executes the plans made: the husband leads.
Or, more simply, Follow the teachings of St Paul, not the Duluth Committee.
@ ACThinker, Psalm 2:4
Asking for more sacrifices because that is what we are called to do is insane. My Bible warns me to be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove. If you want to storm the beach and die on the sand, good for you. Marriage isn’t the hill men are required to die on. We’re told to take up our cross and follow Him, that is an entirely different proposition. It seems heroic to shrug at male sacrifice, seems manly even. I think it’s foolhardy. Stacking up piles of corpses around Marriage 2.0 is stupid on steroids.
His sheep hear His voice and will not hear the voice of another.
Also, if you think storming the beach in Normandy was either wise or necessary you haven’t seriously considered the position Germany was in on June 6th, 1944. The Battle of Smolensk and the Lower Dnieper Offensive had already broken the back of the German army the previous fall. D-Day was another bite at the apple of the failed tactics implemented by Winston Churchill at Galipolli. Don’t expect a “king of the Earth” to miss a chance to waste human life, especially of God-fearing Christian lives.
BradA says: “We walk in this world, so I would use terms as they are used now, not in an older book. That snippet does not make it very likely I would trust much in that book, even if it had merit in some applications.”
First, your statement is stunningly modern in outlook. It mirrors the now-commonplace prejudice of the present age against Scripture on the same grounds (alleged obsolescence), and for that reason alone you ought to be suspicious of your own instinct against it.
Second, the extended quote was not from the BCP but from a commentary on it. The BCP marriage rite itself is not only immediately familiar even to people who don’t know it came from the BCP, but is one of the most sublime and theologically accurate statements about marriage in the English language:
Etc.
They [foreign, bon-English-speaking women] may have merits, but they are not the perfect solution. Note the discussion about the curse on Eve and her descendants. No silver bullets exist.
Nice straw man. No one ever even hinted at a (non-existent) “perfect solution” or “silver bullet.” My (very obvious, to eyes not willfully blind) point was that such women, for all their myriad drawbacks and imperfections, are, collectively and in general, a far better option for the American single man, especially a Christian single man, than the domestic brand of rebellious refuse currently on offer at home. But of course you knew that already.
J1J2
Was this sarcasm or serious? Women do not value relationships more than men. Women crave empathy and they get it from other people. They get the strongest infusion by convincing another woman that the man they are in relationship with is a jerk. Then both women can extract empathy from the marrow of the other. Secondarily, they can sometimes get empathy from their man if they can adequately convince him -not to fix…..just to listen- when they ventilate. The perfect source of empathogasm is to get it from the female friends about the husband and to get it from the husband about the female friends. This is like a vibration that reaches standing wave characteristics. Luckily these are disrupted quickly or all manner of bizarre things start to happen.
Need more attenuation by increasing the characteristic impedance of the medium or decreasing the reflectivity coefficient.
I never troll Puke. I may be the idiot some think, but I am definitely not a troll.
Worship is a serious thing and I will stand against it for any man based on the modern commonly accepted usage of the term. Adjust your reference to modern language if you wish, but don’t use older language today and expect no pushback.
Craig,
Accusing me of ignoring Scripture is quite laughable.
Feeriker, (got the name wrong last time)
Dave pretty much sees them as the solution:
Some may have merit, as I noted, but they are not necessarily better than a US bride, which is my point. Others have correctly noted that they come with their own issues and can also be transformed into the same as a US bride. Marrying and moving overseas has its own challenges.
The root point is that they are not a solution. Fixing the problem and legal system where you live is the more important challenge for those who favor civilization. It will take a long time, probably longer than we will be alive, but it will happen. I want to do my part to lay the groundwork for it.
@PokeSalad,
Kind a missing my point. And a bit off topic. My point was that in the instant of the battle, Those low level officers didn’t order then men forward from a position of safety, but charged ahead themselves. Gen Eisenhower’s role was one of determining how to do that battle, not fighting it. We are all everyday in that battle, and we have to fight it.
@GiL
You second comment first on D-Day – Off topic, from the whole thread. And off my point of oh, see the above paragraph.
As to your first point in response, I’m not the one asking for sacrifice. I think your same bible would point out HE is the one asking for it – “Take up your cross and follow me” You can choose to disagree, you are free to see that.
As for marriage being a hill to die on consider Matthew 19:8-10
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
“10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
So for the married person (both men and women) we are called to not divorce, it is our hill to die on. As to “giving more, sacrificing more” Christians are called to do just that. To act in love.
I am not saying Men must sacrifice more. I’m saying Everyone is to do so. Men and women. In fact I’d say based on how the legal system coddles them, women more than men need to be strengthen through sacrifice.
Our culture says that women can have it all. They can’t. Neither can men. Our culture is toxic.
If we are not personally advocating in love to the people in our lives to live holy lives, then something is missing. We aren’t holy when we go on strike.
I don’t care how you slice it though God made us corruptible and He made us corruptible in distinct ways.
If by granting us the power of choice, God “made us corruptible”, I might reluctantly agree with you. But if you mean that the responsibility for our corruptibility somehow lies with God, I will have to disagree. “How then shall God judge the world?” (Romans 3:6). If God were to make us corruptible, then turn around and punish us for being corrupt, isn’t that patently unfair? “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25).
Fact is, God did not make us corruptible. Even if He knew that our power of choice could expose us to corruptibility, He gave us a way out by telling us to choose right. It is our choices that corrupt us, not God. If God were responsible, He could not, in all good conscience, rightly judge the world; he would be judging Himself.
When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. James 1:13-15
God is the most powerful “Pro-choice” Being in existence, and He made all of us pro-choice. However, every choice comes with an associated consequence.
ACthinker,
Men are and do sacrifice… it is women who want it all and are not willing to sacrifice.
You’re not the type of husband who actually thinks that a SAHM is the hardest job, are you?
Do you think that if they got paid based on what they do it would be $200,000/year do you?
My wife and I have the same grad degrees, but she is a SAHM. I have told her repeatedly I will exchange places with her in a heart beat. We actually did it and it was murderous for her, and I found it relaxing and easy. Laundry, cleaning, carpooling, making lunches, having dinner done and cleaning up after? I had time to do extra things around the house and took a nap!
Dalrock,
ACthinker: women more than men need to be strengthened through sacrifice.
AC,
Are you a pastor? Don’t you get it? Women will not take correction because they truly believe they are superior in every way to men. They need and will be eventually brought back to reality.
Either you are female or a pastor
@ ACThinker, you used the example and I continued it. If that is off topic then so was your analogy, Blithely ignoring the realities on the battlefield is what I would say you are doing with a blanket call to sacrifice. Yes, we are to sacrifice. We are to lead. Here is the rub, you aren’t leading if nobody is following. If Satan is eviscerating your family with lies it might be best to address this before you assume anybody is going to follow you to the cross. Seems to me that you are still regurgitating blue pills. Maybe that is just me.
@Gunner:
What really amazes me is your determined ignorance about racial, cultural, linguistic and geographic barriers. When looking for a wife requires malaria shots and thousand-dollar plane tickets, video games start looking reeeeally good.
Enjoy your video games then. But please stop complaining about American women; they are a problem you can’t solve, but whose solution you chose to ignore.
Alternatively, you could stop whining, and “be a man”, taking your malaria, typhoid and polio shots “like a real man”, and begin the journey into the belly of the beast to go claim your spouse.
On a more serious note, until you date non-American women, you simply won’t have an idea what you are missing. If you pick a reasonably intelligent woman, she is more likely to adapt to you quickly. Many Americans here are married to non-Americans even when they never planned to do so.
One of the best women I have ever sort of dated was a polish woman. She was not only beautiful, modest and highly intelligent, she exuded femininity from every pore in her body. No woman ever got under my skin the way she did. For the first time in my life I knew I could indeed fall in love with a woman.
There have been a number of studies out recently on family structure and the effect on boys. It may be useful for your research (I found the fact the mother’s education greatly improved marital outcomes interesting). Feel free not to publish publicly. Here is the linkspam and names of the papers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/20/why-states-with-more-marriages-are-richer-states/
http://www.aei.org/publication/strong-families-prosperous-states/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/upshot/a-disadvantaged-start-hurts-boys-more-than-girls.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
http://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/publications/papers/2015/ipr-wp-15-16.html
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17541
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16435957
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html
http://stateofourunions.org/2010/when-marriage-disappears.php
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425957/family-structure-matters-w-bradford-wilcox
Marriage and Child Wellbeing Revisited:Introducing the Issue, Sara McLanahan and Isabel Sawhill
Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap in Behavioral and Educational Outcomes
David Autor Professor of Economics and Associate Department Head, MIT;
David Figlio Orrington Lunt Professor of Human Development and Social Policy Northwestern
Jeffrey Roth Research Professor of Pediatrics, College of Medicine University of Florida
[D: Thank you.]
“Take Hill 937!”
“Why sir?”
“Are you disobeying an order soldier?”
ACThinker, apparently thinks that all that is wrong with the Church is that men have not sufficiently Manned Up and led properly. A version of men messing up Evangelical Feminism. Do you have a particular set of sluts in mind that men need to “lead” Thinker?
I would agree with you that we have corrupted ourselves and blaming God for that is not correct Dave, but you are off when you keep pushing American women. You have anecdotes, others have anecdotes. Nothing prevents a foreign women from becoming an American woman if you marry them.
I am married to an American woman. She is quite human, but far more responsive than you claim she could be. She isn’t perfect, but neither am I. You are not perfect either, nor are your foreign women.
No silver bullet, however much you claim such.
Expat before marriage?
Making the Power and Control Wheel gender neutral would hide the power imbalances in relationships between men and women that reflect power imbalances in society. By naming the power differences, we can more clearly provide advocacy and support for victims, accountability and opportunities for change for offenders, and system and societal changes that end violence against women.
During my time at the agency, I had the opportunity to substitute facilitate (when the regular facilitator was out) in a couple of female batterer groups. I was curious about this and asked as much as I could, because they did not like male facilitators running these.
When asked “why did you batter” a couple of trends emerged:
1. “I was taught growing up that boys never hit girls and I knew I would get away with it.”
2. “My brother used to get in way more trouble for hitting me than the other way around.”
3. “My plan was to tell the police that I was defending myself and I knew they would believe me.”
In some of the relationships, the women were the more in the dominant “male” role.
I tried to understand these relationship dynamics in sort of “reverse” power and control terms, as I was very invested in the narrative at the time and believed the Duluth model to be, for the most part an accurate way to map out what was happening in these homes.
Most of the relationships were violent in both directions and both parties were annoyed that the police had become involved at all.
Shoot–that was supposed to be in the “way ahead of you” thread. I will repost, and you can delete if you like.
GiL,
That would solve the problem of her becoming an American woman, but would put you in a fairly vulnerable spot as a foreigner in the country. No easy solution as I have said.
Foreign women may not be perfect, but they are much more likely to respect and not hate men then Western girls. How many Western girls have any of us heard admit she was wrong, much less apologize, for anything?
I know many foreign women, and they all are feminine, polite, and treat their men with respect. Yes they are female and have female faults, but the problems with Western women go beyond just being female. It’s the very worst in female behavior, usually without any of the benefits of a proper upbringing (this in addition to the influence that a lack of moral societal expectations for women brings).
@BradA & JDG
Only those who have never dated non-American women will fail to see the difference. I have never said that non-Americans were angels, though I have consistently said they are far better in many respects compared to American women.
To date an American woman requires that you bring your A-game at all times, and be constantly on your toes. She is quite predictable and her sense of “relationship” is quite brittle. She doesn’t understand what loyalty means. When you have an argument with her the relationship probably ends there, unless you re-initiate it by trying to end the fight, and placate her in some way. She is used to the silly idea of “50/50”.
A foreign woman, for the most part, is a woman in every sense of the term. You don’t need to “game” her as such (you might realize how much “game” you’ve armed yourself with until you are with a foreign woman).
Not long ago, I was talking to a 23-year-old college woman about relationship.
“When you get married, how many kids would you like to have?” I asked her.
She laughed a bit, then responded, “That will depend on my future husband”.
Now, tell me, how many American women will give such a response?
“My body, my rules”, you see.
I salute the American man married to a typical American woman. He is carrying a heavy burden he may not even be aware of.
Dave , Gunner
Life goes on and men do what it takes. This is from a you tuber Mad Bus Driver
I have to agree with Dave. I was married to a North American woman for s long time, and it was only when I dated an Asian woman that I saw the huge difference. The Asian woman wanted to please me, whereas my North American ex-wife kept asking what I was doing for her and meeting her needs, but nothing about her meeting any of my needs. 50/50 is generous, it felt like 20/80 on a good day.
When you have an argument with her the relationship probably ends there, unless you re-initiate it by trying to end the fight, and placate her in some way.
This is why I advise that every suitor make his intended good and mad before he commits. He needs to see what she is like before the big guns of the government are involved. Most American girls will fail this test big time, and making them mad is usually easy. Just as you said, all he has to do is disagree with her.
I also advise men to keep the government out of it as much as possible. I know, I know, easier said then done, but not impossible.
On the topic of marrying foreign women, some of the worst wives I’ve seen are Filipino women who married American men. All of the examples I know personally are far worse than the average American wife. However, this is a sample size of four and either way may not reflect accurately on Filipino women who marry American men in general, because all of the men but one were former Navy. I suspect US sailors may tend to get to know a less than random sampling of Filipino women. I imagine understanding the culture well ahead of time would be essential to understanding how to vet a foreign wife.
Dairock
As marine that was over there when we still had bases there. Those guys married hookers. If you asked them they will all say she was a shop keeper or restaurant owners daughter.
Also, most Western girls are used goods. Why would anyone settle for used goods when the cost of the included baggage is so high? The more the mileage, the less likely she will stick around or even be pleasant to be around after the honeymoon is over. N count is another single factor that excludes most Western girls from any sane marriage material list.
However, this is a sample size of four and either way may not reflect accurately on Filipino women who marry American men in general, because all of the men but one were former Navy.
As I’ve mentioned previously, My sample size is over 100, and about half of those I’ve interacted with repeatedly over the last few years. Out of that sample only three have divorced and the man filed in one of those cases.
Again they aren’t angels, and I’m not privy to everything that goes on behind closed doors, but from what I’ve seen they treat their men much better then the US women I see interacting with their husbands (with exceptions from the women that I attend church with).
All I have to do is take my son to the park and watch how the local couples interact to see the difference.
I suspect US sailors may tend to get to know a less than random sampling of Filipino women. I imagine understanding the culture well ahead of time would be essential to understanding how to vet a foreign wife.
Yep! Sailors on leave tend to meet women that are hanging out where respectable girls don’t hang out. Knowing the culture is important, but I used the same standard for every woman I vetted. It is based on the Bible and leaves no room for popular opinion or PC think.
I’ve made quite a few women mad at me just by asking questions (and I wasn’t even at the point where I was trying to make them mad yet).
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/fotf-and-dr-hegstrom-check-your-male-privilege/#comment-192361
Female comment spotted… Zap!
@BradA: You asked Dave
>Why the fixation with foreign women? Marry one if that is what you want, but it is not a solution for all.
No one (wisely) claims that all people from one group, sub-culture or nation are sinless. In my experience, 98% of Canadian “Christian” women live in open disobedience to God, even in church in Sunday morning service. 100% if you include head covering.
In my very limited experience, about 50% of women in the churches I went to in Ukraine live at least in outward obedience to God, when you include hair length, self-control/weight, head covering and women’s clothing. If you go for 3 out of 4, then the percentage is about 85%.
2% or 85%. Take your pick.
I was not attracted to the typical North American women before I lived in another culture. Now I know why — I was not created to desire a woman who seeks to be a man and is thus detestable (Deut 22:5), or who refuses to obey God (Josh 24:14-15) in her actions (1 John 3:16-18).
LOL, head covering. Skewing Amish tonight.
I wonder do you also only count women who greet each other with a “holy kiss” Dale? (Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:26 and 1 Peter 5:14.
I’ve known plenty of head covering women who would give radical feminists a run for their money.
But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
(1Co 11:15)
@Jonadab,
“One more objection with the methods of “christian counseling” is the disregard of the family jurisdiction. A counselor becomes the head of the marriage, even if temporarily, usurping what God has ordained as the covenant head of the family. ”
Great comment. Good job outlining the Biblical guidelines marriage counselors should follow.
Where you able to find a good marriage counselor?
Absolutely right about foreign women. They aren’t the salvation some posters make them out to be. Yes they can be sweeter and more feminine, but be careful. I’ve been dating Asian women, and see the same control tactics, as Cynthia says, cutting off sex, grabbing control of the money, trashing the boyfriend/husband. It’s the same thing in a different package.
This only proves that women are sinners and naturally selfish, like everyone else. What sets the typical American woman apart is that she has become mutated to be something else. She is like a man with boobs. She’s gone feral, and needs to be re-educated about domesticity.
Sad to say, this is actually not limited to American women; it is true of all women who, through training or culture, have become immersed in female masculinization. I once dated a South African lawyer. Her degree of masculinity was totally off-putting too.
Kind a missing my point. And a bit off topic. My point was that in the instant of the battle, Those low level officers didn’t order then men forward from a position of safety, but charged ahead themselves. Gen Eisenhower’s role was one of determining how to do that battle, not fighting it. We are all everyday in that battle, and we have to fight it.
That’s your point? How refreshing. Never heard the “Man up!” point before.
The point actually is, you aren’t talking about the structure/system of military hierarchy that makes your whimsical examples of “charging the enemy” viable. You really think taking two isolated examples of personal heroism in combat is an appropriate analogy for today’s decayed intersexual/Biblical situation?
As GIL ably pointed out, what good would it have done MAJ Winters and COL Chamberlain (he was a COL at the time of Gettysburg, you need to read Wikipedia more closely) to “charge” if no one would follow? Then they would have died foolishly, needlessly, and to no purpose.
Sort of like men who “charge”….right into Divorce and Family Court. And get slaughtered by both the wife and the State.
It’s amusing (sorta) to see yet another “HQ Hero” (to use another military term, since you think military analogies will buy you credit here) come in here and spout yet another version of “It sucks, but you men just gotta sack up and get slaughtered on that feminist beach!”…..like we haven’t heard that 10,000 times before. We know that already. The discussion here has evolved far, far beyond such meaningless platitudes…which even a cursory review of past material would tell you. Doesn’t a good military officer study his intelligence reports?
The issue is not that the “low-level officers” won’t lead – its that the “troops” wont follow, and even worse, actively work to destroy the “officers” with the enthusiastic assistance of the State and Churchianity. That’s what’s being discussed here. You are the one off-topic.
The problem with the foreign wife fixation is that some younger man will follow it and get whacked when reality intrudes. The fantasy of the special foreign snowflake being the norm is just that.
I guess my wife is one of the 2%. She is definitely not a man with boobs, but then I wouldn’t put up with that for long. I guess I really do have my own snowflake rainbow unicorn….
‘The solution in all three cases is to put the wife in charge so she can make the husband purchase their products. All three advise the same basic strategy of causing terror in the husband that he is going to lose his family. While the specifics of how to accomplish this vary somewhat, the basic plan is the same. What Joel and Kathy call “Lowering the Boom”, Dr. Harley calls “Plan B” and Dr. Clarke and FotF calls “Hitting him over the head with a shovel”.’
Exactly, and a fine job tying these apostasies together. All a single strategy, appearances notwithstanding.
Reading through the lies of these predatory punks is a task in itself! one I doubt I’d have patience or stomach for.
And these ‘ministries’ certainly ARE what the mainstream and ‘traditional’ churches have been chumping to satisfied parishioners for decades, across the denominations. Parishioners of the world and of it’s anti-Christ systems. Most of these churches and pastors, of course, are much more subtle than FotF and Friends at selling rebellion against God and men to modern females, who run the churches much as they run the polities.
I’ve never identified as a Christian and still don’t. I do not want His name (nor my own) mixed-in with the cowardice, lies, and hypocrisy that’s ubiquitous in western Christianity. I resent that I can’t call myself a Christian and I will be taking that out on some folks, too.
May King Jeshua grant continued success to this blog in pursuing Father’s business, and in pursuing His enemies. All of us fall short, way short, but there is no excuse for not confronting the overt evils of our times, and no excuse will be accepted.
@ Bee
My experience with Christian marriage counselors is that they all skew toward the feminine prime directive. Even if they believe a woman to be in sin their treatment begins with validating her feelings rather than admonish her to repent or rebuke her in her sin. They tend to blame men for both his sins and hers, working from the fundamental supposition that women are passive responders and men are active initiators. Either the man is providing the wrong inputs or is failing to initiate in a way that she can respond in holiness.
Pokesalad, I understand the term they used for what we are describing here is what was known in Vietnam as being “fragged”.
http://www.historynet.com/the-hard-truth-about-fragging.htm
Washington Post columnist Chalmer Roberts wrote in 1971: “U.S. forces, now knowing they are on the way out but not knowing just when, have developed an enclave mentality and a philosophy of ‘Why take the risks in a war that’s winding down?’ Recent reports from Vietnam talk of demoralization and of draftees ‘fragging’ gung-ho officers; that is tossing hand grenades at them to put a stop to aggressiveness.”
ACThinker, seems to be a gung-ho cheerleader. Lost the culture war, you can have the grenade…….I’ll keep the pin.
The problem with the foreign wife fixation is that some younger man will follow it and get whacked when reality intrudes. The fantasy of the special foreign snowflake being the norm is just that.
It’s not a fixation. The numbers don’t lie.
Divorce rates with US women: 50%
Divorce rates with foreign women (includes arrangement marriages for visa’s): 20%
At this time, the product is better over seas. It may not be in a few more years at the rate Western countries are exporting feminism, but right now the foreign market is superior than the local one.
superior TO the local one.
at 7:09 pm
A list of Focus on the Family board members:
http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/FOTF%20Board.html
ray,
The term Christian was not used by those at first, it was an outside accusation. If you are not earning it you may not be Christ like enough to be following what you should be following.
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“Like many abusers, Mark distorted Scripture to manipulate his wife’s behavior.”
That’s a rather convenient accusation. In a predominantly Protestant setting, differences in understanding of the Bible are inevitable. If any difference can be framed as distortion of scripture for manipulative purposes, is there any man about whom a pretext cannot be found to condemn him as an abuser?
Harmony
@Red Knight,
“………is there any man about whom a pretext cannot be found to condemn him as an abuser?”
Red Knight….. You are correct. The whole Christian Fem-Centric culture has devolved to a state that any Christian husband can at any time be condemned as an abuser. There is no fault to trivial or misspoken phrase to benign or raised voice so tepid that can’t be used to condemn a husband of abuse. It’s the final trump card that any christian wife can pull which will instantly be believed by the church, family and society. The husband has no defense and is automatically guilty. The wife has the ultimate tool to garner her husbands submission or he might be condemned by the church, ditched by his family, arrested by society’s FI enforcers (Law enforcement) and will most likely finally succumb to total brokenness. Because of the unjust power balance he will likely have to divorce.
He might be financially ruined forever but being a man he will (at some point) pull himself off the ground, dust himself off, start lifting, gain some self respect and confidence and be the man of God that God has called him to be. But, (as I’m now finding) it can take quite awhile.
Women have this power and just the fact that they have this power (whether it’s used or not) will destroy the man’s ability to lead his family. How can effectively lead his family when the wife has this kind of control. It’s impossible as even this knowledge of his wife’s power puts him at such a disadvantage that every decision, every interaction with his wife, correction of his kids will be corrupted and influenced by this ungodly power imbalance.
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