We live in an age obsessed with women’s self esteem. Feminists assure us that all (or nearly all) of our problems would be solved if only women held themselves in higher regard. This is closely tied to the idea that women being “true to themselves” is a central virtue. According to our modern thought process women are innately good, so if they have the confidence to be true to themselves they will point men towards virtue. Instead of looking to God for our moral compass, women are to follow their hearts and men are to follow women. These ideas are contrary to the Bible, yet they have been widely adopted by modern Christians.
In Matt Walsh’s letter to his daughter, his greatest fear is that she will grow up to lack self esteem because our society will tell her she isn’t good enough:
That’s why I wrote this letter. For the times when the pressures of the world — the constant, deafening din, screaming “you’re not pretty enough, you’re not good enough” — become a little too heavy to shoulder. Whether it’s 7 years from now, or 17, or 70 — whenever you need a reminder, here it is:
You’re beautiful.
Similarly, Glenn Stanton teaches parents that unlike their sons, their daughters will naturally develop virtue, so long as society doesn’t get in the way:
What are the essential qualities that transform our daughters into mature, secure women?
As you read through the qualities described below, please keep in mind that much of this is innate, but because our culture seems to fight so hard to suppress certain natural tendencies, it’s our privilege and responsibility as parents to watch out for opportunities to nurture and guide in these areas.
Christian women are of course hearing the message, as the blogger at Drurywriting discovered when teaching college students about sin. In Do Women sin? he explains that while his students have no trouble identifying a list of sins men are tempted by, they are reliably stumped when he asks them to list sins women tend to be tempted by. After he sets only the women in the class to come up with a female sin, they eventually find one:
Lack of self esteem
Part of the problem is that we have redefined women’s sins as virtue. A wife who smashes the couple’s wedding china in order to get her own way is now said to be “submitting” to her husband by throwing a godly tantrum. A wife with a frigid and incredibly unkind attitude towards her husband is said to be channeling God’s will through her vagina. Discontent is yet another newly minted virtue. Along with sins recast as virtues, there is also virtue recast as sin. The CBMW’s founding document created a new sin for wives which fits perfectly in our feminist age, the sin of servility.
Another part of the problem is that when women do sin, modern Christians simply pretend it isn’t happening. This is easiest to see with the game of make believe complementarians play whenever considering the question of women in the military. Women aren’t demanding to usurp men’s roles, they tell us, men are refusing to fight and thereby forcing women to stand in their place.
The Christian cult of women’s self esteem.
But denying the obvious isn’t enough. To truly follow the wisdom of the world Christians need to cast women’s self esteem as the highest virtue. In this regard there is a slight disagreement as to whether a woman lacking self esteem is in itself a sin (as the college women decided), or if a woman lacking self esteem is merely the root of women’s sins. But this is a minor disagreement that I will leave modern theologians to sort out. What is widely agreed is that women need to be constantly told they are awesome. Pastor Matt Chandler explains the importance of telling Christian women they are awesome in his sermon A Beautiful Design (Part 3) Man’s Purpose*:
When women go to women’s retreats, they just get encouraged. “You guys are awesome. You can do it! All right!” Men get blown up. You go to a man thing. You’re just going to hear how much you’ve failed and how bad you stink and why the whole world is broken because you’re so worthless. That’s kind of how we do it, and it’s the right way to do it.
Pastor Chandler explains that a father’s highest calling with his daughter is to make sure she has high self esteem, since a woman sinning is evidence of low self esteem, and high self esteem leads to virtue in women:
We don’t neglect spiritual direction and sacrificial love because we provide. I say this all the time. I’m telling you, I did college ministry for 10-15 years before I became a pastor. I have met many a young women with BMWs and fashionable clothes who hated their Daddy and treated themselves cheaply because what they didn’t have is Daddy in their life. I have met many a young woman in just an old ghetto, beat-up, backfiring hooptie and just whatever Mom and Dad could afford to get her who had a glad confidence about her and a high expectation of how she was treated because Daddy would kiss her and crawl in bed with her and ask her about her heart and encourage her and cheer her on.
Chandler explains to the women in the congregation that if they have enough self esteem, their natural virtue will serve as a beacon for men to follow. All women need to do is know they deserve better than the men who are around them, and men will learn to be godly:
Single ladies, if you’re like, “Do you know what? I like the look of you, but the way you act, the way you carry yourself, the way you live your life, no thank you,” that will send a brother off to maturation school. You can giggle all you want, but I’m telling you, ladies, you have a profound amount of power when it comes to an expectation of males being men. You put the bar on pre-pubescent ridiculousness, I promise you, you’ll find a herd of morons who will come trampling toward your door.
But if you’ll put the bar up and go, “No, thank you. Get out of my face. No, I’m not signing up for that,” if you raise your expectations, we raise the bar on what we expect out of men, I think by and large by the grace of God, they’ll rise to it. You keep it low; they’ll stay low. I promise you. I promise you sin has bent us in that direction. That’s why this is important for women, that you might encourage and that you might expect.
In one sense he is right; men do respond to what women demonstrate by their actions that they want. There is also a certain twisted logic here that fits with the non biblical claim that women are naturally attracted to virtuous men. If a woman finds herself chasing after bad boys, she must not have the self confidence to go after the men she is really attracted to.
However, by pretending that women who chase bad boys merely lack enough self esteem to demand what they really want, Pastor Chandler is doing these women a terrible disservice. We know that left to follow their hearts, women will seek out badboys while telling themselves that the men they are selecting are really good men. By telling women that they are naturally virtuous and blaming their choice of men on men in general, we are all but driving them into the arms of the badboy. This is not only unloving to tempted women and good men, but unloving to the badboy himself. We are creating a stumbling block for the bad boy by sending our daughters out to follow their hearts and sending temptation directly in the path of every badboy out there.
H/T Darwinian American
In his own crude way, Matt Forney correctly lays out a case against excessive importance to female self-esteem.
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High self esteem is corelated to narcissism and justification of violence.
http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/papers/baumeistersmartboden1996%5B1%5D.pdf
Heartiste had a classic post about this back in 2010:
“From the cradle, women are groomed by their peers, family, society and DNA-coded algorithms alike to embrace the joys of big-headedness. It used to be only beautiful women had this problem (and with at least a semblance of justification based on real value), but now ugly women, fat women, and lawyers are all riding the phony low self-esteem grievance chariot to the entitled princess winners’ circle. The result has been to produce a nation of broads hell-bent on seeing themselves as god’s gift to god himself.”
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/the-problem-with-women-is-too-much-self-esteem/
Those pesky fruits of the Spirit aren’t good enough. Gotta build up that self esteem which unsurprisingly leads to pride, narcissism, and entitlement. In fact, everyone deserves grace… regardless of whether they repent or not.
Cheap grace. Seems familiar.
Instead of looking to God for our moral compass, women are to follow their hearts and men are to follow women. These ideas are contrary to the Bible, yet they have been widely adopted by modern Christians.
Once again: if what passes for “Bible study” in most churches today is group readings out of the latest churchian Oprah Book of the Month club, most offerings of which only vaguely refer to Scripture, if they touch on it at all, and then often in a negative way, are we really to be surprised that most self-described “Christians” are pig-ignorant of what the Bible has to say?
The ugly truth is that the LAST thing that 95-plus percent of churchians are interested in is anything that the Bible has to say on godly human behavior. Given that modernism and hedonistic materialism are their real gods, the Bible contains too many feel-bads for these people to stomach.
I was reflecting on a few modern Christian Worship songs (the better one), and I notice the heavy trend to attempting to reinforce, constantly, the themes “what you should feel” and “what God does for you”. While the ones that have made it into rotation at my church are theologically correct, I was pondering the need for the constant reinforcement of the points.
I came to the conclusion that these things have to be reinforced because most in Church don’t actually believe in the Lord. That’s not to say they don’t believe in their Salvation, but their conception of the Lord hasn’t progressed from “Shiny Guy that offers Free Salvation”. So the impulse to reinforce even the proper stuff, to the point that you highly question the motives of those involved, would seem to stem from the need to use self-propaganda. There’s a reason the Lord tells us to “be” certain things. You have little need to convince yourself of what you already are.
For most of the “Christian” writers on the main topic, however, I think it’s just the post hoc rationalization. The Feminists are simply attempting to use propaganda to mimic what they think Alpha Men actually have. And since they want to be Alpha Men, what they want to copy isn’t understood properly anyway. Then you have to take in the Virtue Shaming aspect for most of this stuff, because almost everything with Women is about shaming other Women for them not being as good as the one doing the shaming.
Vox really has put it best: SJWs always lie. So much of the built up cultural insanity is due to supposedly honest Men taking liars at their word and never realizing it. It’s would seem that a natural Male instinct is to hide in the delusion rather than face the Truth, which is the Lord. Which shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
kind of funny about this post coming in the context of my experience…last night at a country bar a woman apologized to me for being a hot mess…while we were dancing, one of her falsies had come peeking up out of her top…it was amusing to me, but I figured that she’d be embarrassed…I don’t think she was…maybe she had lots of self esteem despite being flat-chested…also, a broad came by looking for a grind on me and I declined…likely she was looking for validation…kind of touches on self-esteem…does all this focus on self-esteem lead women to seek validation all the time
Yet another reason why I never date Christian women.
Good post again Dalrock. I especially liked your comment at the end noting the mix of truth with the wrong focus. Women do need to be taught to not go after the bad boys, but they need to learn to do so because it is sin and something they must overcome, not something they fell into because of influences outside their control.
I was listening to a preacher the other day (Pastor Paul in California) and he has many good things to say, but that day he was commenting on the need for men in the church to not be players. That is accurate, but only a part of the story. The women need to be told to not follow after the players or they will undermine far more than they realize.
You can fix each tom cat you can find, but one will always be available to take care of all females in heat. We have to change the focus of our efforts to accomplish what is needed..
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Instead of looking to God for our moral compass, women are to follow their hearts and men are to follow women.
Eve followed her heart. Adam followed Eve.
@: “By telling women that they are naturally virtuous and blaming their choice of men on men in general, we are all but driving them into the arms of the badboy. This is not only unloving to tempted women and good men, but unloving to the badboy himself. We are creating a stumbling block for the bad boy by sending our daughters out to follow their hearts and sending temptation directly in the path of every badboy out there.”
________
Classic. We encourage women to cleanse good husbands by making them live celibate, and to cleanse bad boys with a sex smorgasbord.
Women: “where have all the good men gone?”
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God created men to desire a woman’s love. But most women have been corrupted to the point that they’re incapable of offering devoted, faithful love.
And so men seek love elsewhere. The results are increasingly sick, sad, and pathetic. I think we will see more of this, and other sexual/emotional oddities, in the future:
“if you raise your expectations, we raise the bar on what we expect out of men, I think by and large by the grace of God, they’ll rise to it.”
Yeah, yeah.
Meanwhile if men so much as mutter something under their breath about a woman maybe going for a walk on occasion to keep her health then watch the shitstorm that follows.
Also, it would be interesting if there has ever been a study done correlating self-esteem levels between the ages of 13-19 to brain growth. Actual brain waves, dendrites, axons and stuff. My guess is; The lower the self-esteem, the more the brain grows. Muscles grow under stress. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stressed out, low self-esteem teenage brain is growing inordinately under the same framework.
The stupidity of millenials confirms this to me. K-12 has been a self-esteem workshop in the last 20 years and millenials are just weak brained, imo. I mean actually less neurons, neurotransmitters, dendrites etc. I’m not making a social statement but a neurophysical one. The internet surely didn’t help either. What a charming generation; stupid combined with a supremacy complex. Likeable, isn’t it?
Redpill latecomer,
The Japanese are always so zany with what turns them on. I see a lot of people using the Japanese as a bellwether for things to come for men in general but they’ve always been off the charts with their fetishes. I wouldn’t look to them as just another group of guys, if you will.
About a decade ago, Christian apologist Dave Hunt wrote in one of his books about the Cult of Self Esteem. He mentioned that prisoners in penitentiaries always thought of themselves highly, always considered that the predicament they were in was due to the actions of others, and they themselves weren’t to blame and had nothing to be remorseful about. Penitentiaries are the prisons that contain multiple murderers, serial rapists and other hardened criminals.
Christian pastors should occasionally go incognito and visit bars where young men congregate and drink beer. There they will tell those same pastors the rule, “Whatever number she tells you, double it”. Whatever number he says, halve it”.
If women are so virtuous, why are their N counts so high? If men are such animals why such low N counts? The data only gets explained by the 80-20 rule (’80’ being the percentage of women).
One would also presume that if men are the drivers of sin, then expelling them from social presence should improve it. This experiment has been done in vast estates of England where in public housing there are very few men. The same places are rife with drugs, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, academic underachievement, unemployment and underemployment and theft. Lesbian relationships would also be the safest and healthiest ones for women. They aren’t, with life expectancy rates among lesbians reaching third-world levels.
The sad truth is that the church is following, not leading culture. It is not standing up and out, but dragging behind. This will only change when the church’s constituents change by waking up to the effects of the various social- sexual revolutions in their own lives and rejecting those effects.
Just gotta thank dalrock for the continual new materiel.
He’s been hitting them out of the ballpark almost daily for years now.
Incredible.
This is very nice blog. tasteful, tactful and insightful.
Self-esteem = pride and vanity = sin.
This isn’t hard. Amazing that so-called Christians are inverting sin into virtue.
The sad truth is that the church is following, not leading culture. It is not standing up and out, but dragging behind.
Proof positive, sez me, of the obvious that not only do the majority of congregants and the clergy who “lead” them not believe in what Scripture has to say about leading a godly life, but doubt tbe very existence of an omnipotent God in their hearts. If, after all, they either 1) really believed in an omnipotent God who “had their backs,” 2) believed in the biblical prescriptions for a chaste and godly life, or 3) really despised modernism as ungodly and hedonistic paganism instead of embracing it with all their hearts and souls, they would be at the forefront of the movement in the opposite direction (i.e., toward the light and away from darkness) instead of salespeople for infrared goggles to navigate through the prevailing darkness.
No salt and light, just sand and leading people further astray in darkness.
Amazing that so-called Christians are inverting sin into virtue.
Christians aren’t doing this, churchians are. Proof positive of how preciously few of the former there are and how all-pervasive are the latter.
Thank you Dalrock. This causes me to add to the notion of The Lift. The essence of The Lift is to somehow esteem a woman or women. This is done by agreeing and amplifying them, by protecting them against the ogres who would hold other opinions, by parroting the woman’s own belief set no matter how ridiculous or contradictory, because when the basis for relationship is stated as -know her heart- its has to dwell often in la la land.
By lifting her esteem, by offering faux gestures that are Pavlovian pre-responses, or offering simple entertainment like the monkey with the grinder, the man gets his crumbs from the floor near the table…..he gets his Lift.
Remember, now…everyone gets a trophy, but a girl must be rescued from the sameness of that,and told that she, of all the jewels on display, she is the crown jewel and not only is she special, her trophy is specialer that the other trophies.
The Japanese are always so zany with what turns them on. I see a lot of people using the Japanese as a bellwether for things to come for men in general but they’ve always been off the charts with their fetishes. I wouldn’t look to them as just another group of guys, if you will.
The main issue here isn’t Japanese fetishes, it’s that Japan is the perfect environment for MGTOW. Crime rates are very low, and society in general is neatly ordered and administered. There’s no draft, and no military threat to speak of. The country is ethnically homogenous and immigration laws are very strict, so there’s no ethnic tension. There’s no Churchianity there either. The entertainment industry is huge, and you can find dozens of things for your own entertainment. All this means there’s practically zero social pressure on men to man up.
Compare this with, say, Germany, where we’re seeing the proliferation of underclass slums where crime rates are high, and racial tension is palpable due to the widespread presence of Arabs, Kurds, Africans and other nonwhites. This puts pressure on underclass and working class young German men to man up, which usually means becoming chavs. There’s also little entertainment marketed for young men, because it’s a gynocentric, completely feminist society.
I can’t remember how many times I heard it growing up, or how many times I got the message at church (either implicitly or openly): being a good Christian comes more “naturally” to women; it’s men who have to work really hard at it. Not only do I no longer accept that “factoid” (more like a “false-oid”), but I believe that the very opposite is true. That is, in our current cultural climate, it is much more difficult for women to be true Christians. I recall reading the same entry at Drurywriting that Dalrock cites, and not being very surprised by it. It points to a very striking difference in confessional psychology between men and women. It has been my experience that men are more likely to acknowledge their faults. I’ve seen it countless times at church, where even before the entire congregation men will acknowledge shortcomings. I can’t think of many times when women have done that.
Christianity is a religion of redemption, of salvation from sin. If you think you have nothing to be redeemed from or saved from, then it’s rather difficult to be a true Christian, isn’t it? As soon as we start to think “There’s nothing wrong with me that a bit more self-esteem won’t fix,” then we’re really off the Christian track. But that’s exactly what our contemporary culture tells women: “Don’t think for a minute that there’s anything wrong with you! Even if you do something that appears wrong, remember, the blame can always be laid at the feet of some man.” People with that mind set are far removed from the spirit of the Christian gospel.
@ Red Pill Latecomer
How in the hell did Japan destroy its men?! Women really have to despise their own tribe toget this extreme reaction.
I realize American elites are doing the same to this country; is Japan just that much further along than the U.S.? MGTOW is a healthier though still unfortunate reaction to the modern American women.
The fundamental problem that underlies all of this nonsense teaching is the premise that women, by default, are moral and good unless somehow corrupted by a failure of proper male leadership.
This stems from an improper, and that’s being charitable, reading of Genesis 3. The problematic reading in question is that Eve sins in Genesis 3 only because Adam was failing to exercise proper headship over her, and that if he had been, she would not have sinned, so in a sense her sin is less real, or at the very least, derivative from, Adam’s failure to supervise/lead her properly. This reading really refuses to take the text at its own word (and God at His own word as He speaks in the text). Adam does sin by listening to his wife and eating of the apple, breaking the commandment – God is clear enough about that. But nothing is said of Adam’s culpability for Eve’s sin by God here — not one word. In Genesis 3: 14-19, God is remarkably clear about what was Adam’s sin in 3:17, and it consisted in (1) listening to his wife’s suggestion that he eat the apple and (2) actually doing so in violation of the commandment. So, yes, by listening to his wife, Adam failed to exercise moral agency over his own actions, and that is a part of his sin, together with the actual breaking of the commandment concerning eating of the fruit of the tree.
But this sin — his “listening to his wife” — has nothing to do with Eve’s own sin, as we see in 3:6. The sequence is clear — Eve partakes of the apple, finds it good tasting, and then gives some to Adam to eat and he takes it and eats — his “listening to his wife” and eating of the fruit both take place *after* Eve has already eaten of the tree, and therefore after her sin has already occurred. Eve’s sin here is portrayed in 3:6, and also by God in 3: 14-19, as being independent of Adam’s two sins, and is separately called out and punished by God in itself, and for its own sake. This makes sense given how the events are timed, sequentially, in 3:6.
The rest of the argument is extra-textual it seems to me (or at least extraneous to the specific narrative of these events in Gen 3 — other texts that are extrinsic to the narrative tend to be bought in to buttress the argument). It runs something along the lines of “well, Adam was tasked with being Eve’s steward, and failed at that, so he’s responsible for her sin, too” — which is an interesting argument, because God Himself fails to mention this sin when he rebukes Adam in Gen 3:17, while otherwise being quite specific in calling out the sins Adam committed (listening to his wife rather than following God’s commandment). If Adam’s sin had really been failing to exercise proper stewardship over Eve, and therefore bearing responsibility for her sin as was as his own, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that God would have overlooked this in His rebuke of Adam in 3:17, yet this is the precise argument that is often made in support of the idea that Eve wasn’t really responsible for her own sin, but Adam was.
This isn’t merely academic. The issue goes to the root of how some (many?) churches today are teaching about men and women and male/female relationships. A proper reading of Genesis 3 precludes any notion of women being innately good and virtuous unless corrupted by men. So Genesis 3 must be read in a very specific, and odd in the sense of being extrinsic to the actual narrative itself, way in order to support the idea that all corruption comes from men and women are innately virtuous, or at least will continue to be so unless corrupted by men’s evil.
When the actual narrative itself is read, the sequencing and delineation of the sins *is* instructive to male/female relations, but it isn’t the message that much of the contemporary church wants to hear.
It is this: women are somewhat more easily subject to demonic temptation than men are, and will tend to give in to that temptation, whereas men are subject to being morally weak in the presence of women and female suggestion, such that they will prefer honoring that to keeping God’s laws — and that therefore the way the demons will seek to corrupt men is by corrupting the women first, and then using men’s natural predisposition to please women against them by making them choose between that and obeying God, knowing full well that many (most?) men will fail and become corrupted themselves in that process. That is the story of Genesis 3, full stop. It’s also exactly what is happening in the contemporary culture, and the contemporary church. Almost to the tee, actually. And yet this is precisely the message that the church by and large refuses to take from the clear narrative of Genesis 3.
The reasons for this have been long-discussed on this blog, I think, and I’m not going to rehash them. But suffice to say that there is no way back on these issues for the contemporary church unless it gets back to a proper understanding of Genesis 3.
Is there anywhere to turn for good Christian advice for newlyweds? It appears the church bookstore has been infiltrated with the gender reversal message
These idiot “pastors” are pastoring souls to continue their reckless path to destruction. They need to read Thomas Boston’s “Human Nature in its Fourfold State” especially the second part on ‘The State of Nature’, and realise that the unregenerate woman’s natural stock is in fallen Adam, just the same as the unregenerate man. These idiot “pastors” need to get themselves some real religion.
Christians aren’t doing this, churchians are.
That’s why I said “so-called” Christians.
I go to a men’s bible study Wednesday mornings when I can make it. It’s generally quite good.
I missed a few weeks and popped in a week and a half ago, and they had moved to study called 33 The Series. Some of you may be familiar with it. I was not.
After a 30 minutes berating by 3 Christian men who seemingly could not use the phrase “Man Up” nearly enough, I was toast. And so I wasn’t sure I completely grasped what I thought I heard…. That Eve’s sin was Adam’s fault. But, as Novaseeker pointed out above, evidently Adam’s lack of headship is WHY Eve sinned.
So, I left pissed off.
First…. Who the F are these 3 clowns to tell me to man up? Are they insinuating that I must accept them as role models? How about……. Fuck off.
Second….. Adam is to blame?? What?
The handful of men in my group had done this program a year or two before, but all admitted that they had not followed a single one of the action steps they were browbeaten into writing down.
I haven’t been back, and was not intending to until this infernal series is over and we can actually crack open a Bible again. You know, read the real thing instead of some alpha dog wannabe’s feminist interpretation.
But now I’m tempted. This problem is deeper Than I had realized. It might be worth going back just to vent.
“…because Daddy would kiss her and crawl in bed with her and ask her about her heart and encourage her and cheer her on.”
.
Disturbing.
I just looked at Walsh’s blog in the letter to his daughter entry, and of course, you’ve got the requisite comments from women about how beautiful the post is, but it appears he only has facebook and disqus comments on his blog anymore, and I personally just don’t find comments through those media that interesting. There also tend to be much less comments through those sources and understandably so. Walsh even seems to have deleted or hidden all of the wordpress comments on his older posts, too. I don’t know why Walsh (or any blogger) would want to limit his commenters’ options, since that would likely cause people to bore with his blog and quit visiting. Anyway, when he did have wordpress comments active, he got plenty of resistance on the more controversial topics, but has anyone challenged him or these other writers on their view that women are good, and men are bad?
That Chandler guy faked me out. He started talking about things with which we’re familiar like how women’s retreats are positive and encouraging, whereas men’s retreats are negative and discouraging, and then suddenly, he states that’s the way it’s supposed to be! Then, he goes contradictory by saying he wants to encourage men. Yeah, tearing men down is really encouraging and really biblical! (One Thessalonians 5:11, Hebrews 3:13)
The most telling thing is that when Satan was allowed to bring Job down and take every worldly thing from him, even his health, he still left his wife… Just like Adam, Satan tried to use a woman to bring Job to cursing God. I think Satan knows a woman’s heart really well…
OT for Valentine’s Day:
http://fox59.com/2016/02/12/high-school-senior-hands-out-900-flowers-to-girls-at-his-school/
“In Matt Walsh’s letter to his daughter”
He’s poisoning his daughter with his own feelings of inadequacy. So does the castration of men end up hurting the women feminists and their churchian enablers intended to help.
Tarl
Amazing that so-called Christians are inverting sin into virtue.
feeriker
Christians aren’t doing this, churchians are.
By and large, churchians are still Christians. That is, these individuals still know and would profess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. That’s an important distinction from someone who merely goes to church but has no relationship or even belief in God, but the Christian feminists (or feminists-lite like the CBMW or Matt Walsh) would most likely claim Christ as their Lords and Saviors, meaning these people are our brothers and sisters in the Lord whose influence we have to fight against. In a way, that’s a worse situation than merely having to guard against the influence of those who will transparently tell you they have no belief in God or His Son or in following Him or His teachings laid out in the Bible.
That Japanese video is the saddest thing I have seen in a long, long time. I think it is THE saddest, after various forms of torture. SMH
Still, I disagree with MGTOW. As a believer in the Biblical God, I will ask Him for the right wife like Eliezer did when seeking a wife for Isaac. I will not marry a moment sooner. Yes, it will be a miracle, but sadly that seems to be the only decent option we have left.
Josh commented, “Yet another reason why I never date
Christian women.” tftfy lolNovaseeker at 8:11am on 2/14/2016
What he said.
What doesn’t seem to register with the proponents of the “failure of leadership” camp is:
1) Explain Satan’s fall. God’s leadership was lacking?
2) If Adam’s sin was failure to lead, why is he not reprimanded for that? The implication I have most often heard is not that he should have simply said “no” when offered the fruit, but something well beyond this: that his wife should never have been left alone long enough to wander the garden and be tempted. I.e., his failure was in “leaving her to the wolves” so to speak. But this would mean Adam sinned first, and it had nothing to do with “listening to his wife”.
It ties in closely to the trope that if the husband would simply meet all of the wife’s needs, she’d never be tempted to stray and female-instigated adultery rates would plummet. I.e., it’s his fault yet again.
I think something that is often missed in debate on religion is that calling your deity “God, as in the Christian God”, does not make it the Christian God. If you decide that your God approves homosexuality, understands and respects greed, desires female headship and doesn’t care if you’re obese, then you are not worshiping the Christian God. Even if you go to Church and call your deity God, it is not the Christian God. It is a false deity according to the Bible.
In other words, any attempt to redefine God outside of the actual flexibilities in the Bible (of which there are a few), is idolatry.
funny how the lack of control over women’s sexuality is framed as an opression against women:
https://newrepublic.com/article/119119/secular-sociologist-studies-evangelical-virgin-men-who-got-married?utm_medium=social&utm_source=nfrb&utm_campaign=20160212
“The church, and the men that I interviewed, don’t believe that women would need a space to talk through these issues. They believe that men are highly sexual beings and they have “natural urges” that need to be controlled, but they don’t believe that women have that natural desire to be sexually active. Women are the providers of sexual activity for their husbands.”
RobJ says:
February 14, 2016 at 9:14 am
“…because Daddy would kiss her and crawl in bed with her and ask her about her heart and encourage her and cheer her on.”
.
Disturbing.
Glad I’m not the only one that thought that weird.
Lots of humans think they have plenty of self-esteem. Too bad so many utterly lack SELF-RESPECT.
They get whiny and shrill when challenged on just about anything. Someone in the right that knows it doesn’t act like that.
If I ever whelp a son, God grant that I raise him well enough that his self-respect is dang near bulletproof. I would hope he’s happy and likes himself, but I’d much rather him be strong instead.
I scanned the transcripts of this sermon series. It’s not all terrible, but basically a Chandlerized hybrid of Keller and Driscoll. You could play buzzword bingo with all the manosphere tropes it contains. Here are a few extracts I copy/pasted.
“As a believer in the Biblical God, I will ask Him for the right wife like Eliezer did when seeking a wife for Isaac. I will not marry a moment sooner. Yes, it will be a miracle, but sadly that seems to be the only decent option we have left.”
It’s been my experience that when we seek His will in the big decisions in life, He comes through in a big way.
Those Christian ‘leaders’ are all about tearing Christian men down and not lifting them up, screw the lot of them. That speech is ridiculous on the face, for fudge sake! What the heck is it with these mofos, are they that stupid and screwed up in the head?
Screw it. If you don’t want to be screwed ever again, get married..
“As a believer in the Biblical God, I will ask Him for the right wife like Eliezer did when seeking a wife for Isaac. I will not marry a moment sooner. Yes, it will be a miracle, but sadly that seems to be the only decent option we have left.”
It’s been my experience that when we seek His will in the big decisions in life, He comes through in a big way.
Seconded. Thus has always been my belief as well. Most of those who complain that there were no more good women left probably need to do a bit more searching. There are men right here who have found godly and chaste women to marry
Vagintine’s Day Sunday report from the trenches:
Went to both services at my church today (one in English, one in Spanish). A mixed bag. The English service featured a message from a brother, a lay pastor, who usually is spot on in his messages, but who this morning did the all-too-typical “bow down in praise in front of the wife who’s too good for me” (she’s an obese harpy). Worst of all was his citation of Ephesians 5:25 and 26. I waited with baited breath for him to back up to the three previous verses, thinking that he of all people would remind us that there are two mutually sustaining sets of responsibilities and obligations, one for each spouse, that are God’s commandments to each sex.
Nope. Either the landwhale had warned him ahead of time against bringing up said verses, or he didn’t want so risk igniting her wrath by doing so.
In the Spanish service the pastor mercifully spared us the Ode to the Vagina, but apparently decided that an indirect attack was still in order. The subject of the message was raising godly children – and guess whose fault it is, ALWAYS, if they don’t turn out that way?
Note to self: add “Vagintine’s Day” to the list of secular holidays on which one should not attend church if they fall on a Sunday.
It has gone far beyond self-esteem. The term for churchian women, even the divorcees, is HAUGHTY. I watched divorced women, who should be disgraced, swagger through the church and the social settings; loud, arrogant, obnoxious. They even serve in ministry. My ex was one who served in YOUTH teaching TEEN GIRLS throughout the divorce and even after destroying our family. I brought this to the attention of a friend who still attends there and he merely shrugged. There is a clear Biblical standard for what older women are to image and teach to the younger ones. There are divorcees heading up the singles groups as well, acting like wise and seasoned examples to the younger set. There is a very clear distinction between single and divorced and it is fraud to claim the former if you are the latter. I get it. I am now a divorced man and though I could do nothing to stop it and was a solid husband, it is still my life’s greatest failure and shame. As much as I would sometimes like to sweep it under, I can’t.
@RPL:
The Japanese aren’t Westerners, so it’s always wise to keep that in mind. They do operate a lot of things rather differently. One of which is “keeping almost everything to yourself”. What we see is only the fringe elements of their society that pops out of their media sphere. For the most part, the society is the living embodiment of the Pareto Principle: 80% of the people live as utterly stereotypical Japanese and 20% are wild freaks that we hear about.
It’s also funny that Western Feminists look on the Japanese as this repressive & regressive culture. The reality is that the Women actually do run most things there. The society has been utterly feminized for the last 1500 years because the Mothers all raise their sons. “Father-Son bonding time” pretty much doesn’t exist in the society. The mothers rule the roost, and that’s simply the reality of their society. Which isn’t surprising when the majority of the Men work 60+ hour weeks. (The “numbers” have been massaged down. They still work insane amounts of hours for really stupid reasons.)
Just how can there be so many moron men in that church when he’s preached/taught on manhood “a bunch”? Shouldn’t that “herd of morons” be following him and the elders? Seems to me that he and the elder board has failed to lead.
Has he ever taught on womanhood? Did he teach wives to submit to their husbands in everything?
Per Chandler, all of men’s sins are selfishly passive or selfishly aggressive. (It’s a digression, but I don’t know how he considers pornography to be selfishly aggressive.)
All of women’s sins are comparison or perfectionism with no mention of selfishness. I guess he missed the memo on self-esteem being the chief sin of women.
“Remove the skin from the peach. I don’t like that part.” said my daughter once. “Hell, no” was my response. I’m always setting boundaries with my three girls. I do not worry about their self-esteem. My girls and I once had a good laugh when a friend’s mother asked my oldest if “she had fun and learned something” after her v-ball team lost a match. My girls know losing sucks. We celebrate wins, not ‘having fun and learning”. When it comes to dating, my girls know I’m not politically correct, yet back my views on statistics. Guess what? One daughter fact-checked me once and saw I was right.
The other thing about Chandler’s sermons is that he is obviously playing the AMOG game in the same way as Driscoll. He even uses the exact time rhetoric like “boys who can shave” to denigrate men (by implication those in his congregation).
Sometimes low self esteem is just good common sense, because it is warranted.
not to mention we are to be lowly and humble and contrite per God’s Word.
I guess that scripture is ‘outdated’ today?
Like many men, I am divorced (she was basically a non-practicing Catholic), this was many years ago. But what I noticed, back when I was blue-emerging-red pill, was among ALL her craziness, and yet her ability to pass as normal at work, etc…she was a complete, utter narcissistic with the highest self-esteem, no joke, of almost any human being I had ever known (athletes, military, cop, Ivy League’rs).
It may go without saying that so many women are, but I think until you really get to know a woman and see her for who she is, you don’t TRULY understand how deep that esteem, arrogance and entitlement and self-importance/centerment is, until you get balls-deep in a relationship and you have your “oh wow…did she actually just say/do that? and with a straight, “let them eat cake” manner?”
And then, as relationships tend to do (more than short interactions with women), you see with ex-wives and girlfriends the after effects…the complete, UTTER, almost sociopathic lack of introspection that boggles the male mind.
It reminds me of the final (or next to final) scene of Ex Machina, a movie prospectively about AI, but which actually showed (LOL) female hypergamy and narcissism on full display–even through a freakin’ robot. That scene where he has already committed to “staying” (at her request) then watches her walk right past him, the glass door shuts/locks, and she gets in the elevator and leaves him to basically die alone. That scene would have made JUST AS MUCH SENSE if it has NOT been an AI/Robot, but just a regular Russian chick. Her lack of empathy was so on target, as part of the larger narcissism and hypergamy he didn’t see coming.
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I guess that scripture is ‘outdated’ today?
If churchians were honest they would admit that they consider pretty much ALL of Scripture to be outdated except those few portions that comport with the current culture (i.e., those portions of Scripture that don’t make it so darned hard to be OF this world and not just in it).
And then, as relationships tend to do (more than short interactions with women), you see with ex-wives and girlfriends the after effects…the complete, UTTER, almost sociopathic lack of introspection that boggles the male mind.
The capacity for introspection, while arguably one of men’s weakest attributes, is non-existent in women. While even empathy is generally present in minute, residual quantities in women, they do not even have the wiring within their emotional and neurological architecture to support such an attribute as introspection.
I will assert that one of the key reasons behind the breakdown of so many relationships is that we as men simply fail to appreciate how completely handicapped women are in this respect, that self-analysis is so utterly alien to their being that expecting it from them is akin to expecting a newborn baby to use a toilet or feed itself solid food with utensils. I wish I could say that I have a ready solution at hand, but short of a return to Patriarchy, where women’s weaknesses in this regard are recognized as self-evident and social customs adapted accordingly, the future looks bleak.
If feminists were truly concerned about the self-esteem of young women they would encourage women not to divorce their husbands and instead work on creating and maintaining a good marriage for the good of their children. Happy children come from happy homes. But this would require sacrifice and putting the needs of others ahead of themselves, not something feminists are fond of doing.
@freeriker,
And if women ever do delve into introspection/self-analysis then they are immediately in a state of self-congratulation over it. “I admitted some faults today. AWESOME!” It’s just a means to a humblebrag post on social media.
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If women think so highly of themselves, why do they constantly require validation? In my experience, while women do have an entitlement mentality, they are also very insecure.
Per Chandler, all of men’s sins are selfishly passive or selfishly aggressive. (It’s a digression, but I don’t know how he considers pornography to be selfishly aggressive.)
All of women’s sins are comparison or perfectionism with no mention of selfishness. I guess he missed the memo on self-esteem being the chief sin of women.
He is obviously ignorant about what sin really is.
All of our sins–male or female– can be conveniently put inside one bucket: the bucket of Selfishness, because all sins consist in choosing to gratify our own desires at the expense of God’s laws. Even Eve, the chief of sinners, chose to gratify her curiosity at the expense of God’s clear directive not to do so.
@feeriker:
I think it’s a little more complex than even what you highlight.
Most Women are actually capable of decent “self analysis”, *if* they can get past their emotional interaction with the topic. This is what confuses most Men. Women seem very capable, at times, of much of what Men think about. But a Woman getting beyond her emotions can be a rare event. It takes structure around her and a “tether” on which to find her bearing. This is one of the major outward effects of a Woman’s inner solipsism.
And the “tether” bit is the reason Women are capable of self-analysis but are rarely capable of true introspection. They lack the native ability to “tether” themselves to any proper understanding of reality. Rather than being tethered to a single point, Women are boxed in by their surroundings. It is those surroundings on which they build a “tether”. The main outcropping is that Women hew to their surroundings in nearly all cases. This is how you can notice the rare, faithful Woman around. She willingly rejected the World and tethered herself within Christ.
It’s actually pretty hateful to treat Women the same as Men. The self-deception in their own Soul is always the source of their downfall. It’s why a Woman’s Vanity has to always be kept in check.
RobJ,
The note about crawling into bed with his daughter creeped me out a bit as well. I have no problem with sitting on the edge of the bed and talking with a daughter, but crawling into bed gives a far different image that is pretty repulsive.
I’m going to do a little “devil’s advocacy” here and throw out a suggestion:
Are Christians vulnerable to the Cult of Women’s Self Esteem particularly and feminism in general, because of the way the New Testament is written?
As I see it, the Gospels and letters were written to churches run by men, to be read, understood and propagated among men, who learned the lessons and then taught their families.
This tradition worked due to the primacy of fatherhood for the majority of the two millennia the church has been in existence. Men learned and taught, learned and taught.
The Protestant Reformation meant that Scripture alone was authoritative. Fair enough. Since the “feminist revolution” though, women have read scripture for themselves and interpreted for themselves, writings that were meant for men. They see how commands apply to men but not themselves, thus giving them a pass.
Can it be that Christian women read scripture but simply do not see it applying to them due to the context being meant for men?
@Spike:
That’s not really playing “devil’s advocate”. 🙂
The attack is a bit deeper. The entry-point attack from Socialism works because it was constructed to be specifically anti-Christian, but not in a way that’s easily noticeable. The corruption was rarely overt, rather seeking to come in via the backdoor and corrupt everything. And that process started, in this age, in the 1830s. (There’s a reason for the ecumenical councils that happened, so it really isn’t a “new” issue. Just a version of recent vintage.)
What is mostly preyed upon is the natural failures that happened in the Garden. The Devil, having a significantly better understanding of Humans than we do, knows where both Men & Women are always most tempted. And that’s the attack point. It’s just the brilliance of this version is he was able to convince Christians to believe their own press. This is actually why what we have been exiting for the past few decades is the great of age of Christian hypocrisy.
feeriker: The capacity for introspection, while arguably one of men’s weakest attributes, is non-existent in women. While even empathy is generally present in minute, residual quantities in women, they do not even have the wiring within their emotional and neurological architecture to support such an attribute as introspection.
And a common media stereotype — popular in romantic comedies — is that the woman is overly introspective, always over-analyzing “the relationship,” questioning her feelings, the man’s feelings, what every minor event means about the relationship. And the man is always a lunkhead, a dufus, a neanderthal who hasn’t a clue.
The woman expounds deeply upon their relationship, to which the man responds by asking, “Are we out of beer?”
Emily: If feminists were truly concerned about the self-esteem of young women they would encourage women not to divorce their husbands and instead work on creating and maintaining a good marriage for the good of their children. Happy children come from happy homes.
Feminists often use “happy children” as their justification for divorce, and for every selfish act on their part. “How can my children be happy if their mother isn’t happy? How can my children be happy if I’m not fulfilled in my marriage or career? The best gift I can give my daughter is to show her a mother who is a strong, independent woman. I want my daughter to grow up knowing that she too can be whatever she wants to be, and do whatever she wants to do. That it’s okay for her to assert herself, and demand respect for whatever choices she makes on her life journey, yada, yada.”
Deny the authority of the source of Scripture* and don’t be surprised later when women deny the authority of husbands and children deny the authority of parents.
*Jesus didn’t pass out first edition Bibles just before He ascended into heaven. Instead He gave His authority to a few men who held offices to which He appointed them and to their successors. From them came the Bible.
It’s not only esteem-ing / aggrandising oneself too highly that is the problem, but the problem is with self; I’d hazard a guess that these “pastors” and their ilk that follow them need to be made both new creatures and truly converted. They’re not yet over “self”.
I’ve noticed this, too. The female protagonists are often so thoughtful and analytical about themselves, their growths as individuals, and their relationships, whereas the males in the story are thinking about football or some other equally inconsequential topic. The woman in the joke, which both men and women know “tells it like it is” is concerned that the relationship with her man is at risk, because he hasn’t said much all evening. Her man, meanwhile, has just been thinking about why his motorcycle won’t start.
Dalrock’s post here made me think, too about how if a girl sins or makes bad choices, it’s because she has low self-esteem, as her base desire if propped up by enough self-esteem, is to do the right thing. If a guy sins, it’s because he can’t control himself and gives into his sinful, base desires.
I also don’t understand this concept of “male privilege.” Which sex has special empowerment seminars and initiatives just for them at work? Which sex not only gets more consideration in jobs if their qualifications are equal but even if they’re not equal in order to fulfill “diversity” goals?
Is it men or women who get things bought for them or given to them by complete strangers without their even asking for it? How much more likely is a man or a woman to get that meal, that drink, that $20, or that ride to town if he or she does ask for it? Would 11 female strangers offer to shovel a man’s driveway?
http://www.businessinsider.com/woman-uses-tinder-to-find-a-guy-to-shovel-her-car-2015-3
Which sex gets consistent and frequent praise from both men and women and gets told they “deserve” things just for breathing by both secular
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a42669/signs-youre-not-getting-the-love-you-deserve/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/jamie-varon/2014/05/what-it-takes-to-get-the-love-you-deserve/
(The titles in the URL are enough to get the point across. I don’t recommend actually clicking the articles.)
and Christian culture:
The guy in that video’s hard to watch, but he actually does have some decent things to say about how women bond to their men chemically. Unfortunately, that’s not all he says, and also unfortunately, as we’ve seen, his “men bad, women good” sentiments seem to be echoed by many others in the Christian (churchian?) culture. While I’ve always had some sense that women got special treatment and consideration, it’s just becoming clearer to me all the time how true that is and how much many of them are in denial about it by going on about mythical concepts like “male privilege.”
*That is, I’ve noticed this:
Red Pill Latecomer
And a common media stereotype — popular in romantic comedies — is that the woman is overly introspective, always over-analyzing “the relationship,” questioning her feelings, the man’s feelings, what every minor event means about the relationship. And the man is always a lunkhead, a dufus, a neanderthal who hasn’t a clue.
Looking again, I’m not sure that guy in the video is a Christian necessarily, but his words about guys and girls are so indistinguishable from what you hear in many Christian circles that I thought he was.
I guess he is a Christian, judging from his facebook page.
I also don’t understand this concept of “male privilege.” Which sex has special empowerment seminars and initiatives just for them at work? Which sex not only gets more consideration in jobs if their qualifications are equal but even if they’re not equal in order to fulfill “diversity” goals?
Is it men or women who get things bought for them or given to them by complete strangers without their even asking for it? How much more likely is a man or a woman to get that meal, that drink, that $20, or that ride to town if he or she does ask for it? Would 11 female strangers offer to shovel a man’s driveway?
It’s a made-up idea that, if it ever had any currency, currently has none. The idea is based on creating a pseudo-history of endless male oppression of women just for the heck of it, and the privileging of males over females historically, supposedly. They point to things like not being able to vote (as was also the case for almost all men for almost all of history), not being able to own property (ditto) and the like, but really these are complaints of upper-class women historically vis-a-vis upper-class men (which is where feminism started, and where feminism has always been, and continues to be led — it’s a grievance committee for a very specific subset of women, generally — upper class white women). In any case, none of this applies any longer so even if they were indicators of a generalized male privilege historically — and they were not — they simply do not exist today. So today, they complain instead of things like “mansplaining”, “manspreading”, getting to pee while standing up, the “male gaze”, “male beauty standards”, the “pay gap” (based as it is on women’s choices in work/life/family) and so on — basically anything women don’t like about men.
Fundamentally you have to understand that women are naturally very insecure vis-a-vis men because of their physical vulnerability relative to us. That is the case regardless of laws against violence, and the fact that violence is not very common. Nevertheless women are insecure because we are the physically stronger sex. So they’re going to see everything more or less through that lens, and see “male advantage” virtually everywhere they look, simply because they are looking at it through a lens of insecurity based on actual male physical advantages. So women will likely always be grumbling, as a group, about perceived male advantages, seeing life, as they do, from the perspective of the sex that is relatively physically disadvantaged. That despite all of the “corrective measures” that have been taken legally and in terms of policy and preferences specifically to advance women at men’s expense.
I think the brainwashing of the western male is nearly complete.
The guy in the video is a perfect illustration of the “Stockholm Syndrome”. I could not get past his repeated self flagellation and unabashed bashing of the crown and leader of God’s creation.
Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors.
@Novaseeker
Yes. He even touches on this in the same sermon, although he very quickly veers back to cartoonish chivalry:
Building up self-esteem only treats the symptom as the disease when the disease is too much self-esteem. Another word for self-esteem is vanity and this is a sin. If is funny to hear the father (above) tell his daughter that she is beautiful. This is not the self-esteem that we need to build up for it focuses on a woman’s beauty instead of her character. No one should be told they are beautiful. It is true or it is not. It is also true that character can be beautiful if one earns it from humility, warmth, righteousness, and empathy. Behave!!!
Adam is the one held accountable for bringing sin into the world, because he did have the leadership role. Eve was not absolved, but she was not the named guilty party.
This doesn’t justify the idea that women are inherently good, but we need to watch we do not push the wrong message either.
I do wonder what would have happened if Adam had come to God after Eve had fallen rather than eating himself.
Too bad we don’t have more backstory as well, as we have no idea if Adam ever had a chance to exercise his authority in the Garden of Eden or if this was the first time the serpent showed its colors.
I believe God first blames Satan, not Adam, for the first sin and curses him. He then curses Eve before he, last of all, curses Adam.
[Note: In his curse of Adam, God first chastises Adam for listening to his wife, even before mentioning his sin in eating the fruit. That ought to put a damper on the idea that husbands should listen to their “moral and good”, “spiritually superior” wives!]
In his curse of Adam, God does not mention “spiritual headship, of covering and protection”. I don’t think Adam had been given such a charge regarding Eve. However, Chandler states it as fact.
Even supposing Adam was expected to cover and protect Eve, is he expected to constantly be with her and control her every action? I believe that Eve was not with Adam when Satan tempted her. Whatever the case, she knew she was not to eat the fruit, but she exercised her free will and sinned by eating the fruit.
Husbands cannot prevent their wives from sinning, because the wives have free will. In this case, God Himself did not prevent Eve from sinning. Eve sinned knowing that God had commanded her not to eat the fruit. If Eve, who walked and talked with God, and knew his command, sinned anyway, does anyone say that God is responsible for her sin? If God is not responsible for Eve’s sin, why would anyone think a husband is responsible for his wife sinning? That is just ridiculous!
What do we say of a man who vaunts his excellence? I need not answer my own question. Yet women (being equal to men) are now expected to assert their self-regarding. Far too many men (in fact) are self-effacing sometimes cripplingly so.
How then can a woman who only has to put up a new portrait of herself on Facebook to garner fifty likes and any number of comments telling her that she is hot lack self esteem? Is it perhaps that she knows that the adulation is either mistaken perhaps insincere and ultimately the equivalent of putting rouge on a pig.
The Japanese are fascinating; it is hard not to like a country that drives on the left.
Fundamentally you have to understand that women are naturally very insecure vis-a-vis men because of their physical vulnerability relative to us.
Except that this is largely a groundless sentiment. Who is the more likely target of male physical aggression, a young man or a young woman? What percent of men have any propensity for violently attacking or abusing a woman? How difficult is it for women to filter out violent, abusive tendencies in men? What percent of men are predisposed to want to protect women from harm? How difficult it is for a woman to recruit beta orbiters as unpaid security guards? The answers are obvious.
@OKRickety
Per Chandler, all of men’s sins are selfishly passive or selfishly aggressive. (It’s a digression, but I don’t know how he considers pornography to be selfishly aggressive.) All of women’s sins are comparison or perfectionism with no mention of selfishness. I guess he missed the memo on self-esteem being the chief sin of women.
He didn’t miss it at all. Fast forward to the end of that sermon where he identified women’s chief sins (“Women’s Hurdles” was the name, I think). He closes his message with a prayer for the women and their sins in which he identifies why “comparison” and “perfectionism” are so awful. And just why are they so awful? Because — wait for it — they make women feel bad about themselves! He then takes a moment to thump his chest and remind the men in the audience on the role they play in the women’s sin:
So to sum it up . . . when a woman sins, it’s from a place of weakness and pain, and we should all feel sympathy for her over the circumstances that brought her to her acts. But when a man sins, it’s from a place of malice and avarice, and we should all curse and despise him for the inborn evil that lives within him and inspired him to his deeds.
Stick a fork in the American evangelical church, it’s done. It has nothing to offer to men, not even its own precious notion of “free grace.” And Pastor Matt Chandler now stands as a flashing neon advertisement of that.
From Facebook…
This is one of the best posts I’ve read about woman… Please read it completely… it’s worth it…
WOMAN. . . . . . . . .
When God created woman he was working late on the 6th day…….
An angel came by and asked.” Why spend so much time on her?”
The lord answered. “Have you seen all the specifications I have to meet to shape her?”
She must function on all kinds of situations,
She must be able to embrace several kids at the same time,
Have a hug that can heal anything from a bruised knee to a broken heart,
She must do all this with only two hands,”
She cures herself when sick and can work 18 hours a day”
THE ANGEL was impressed” Just two hands…..impossible!
And this is the standard model?”
The Angel came closer and touched the woman”
“But you have made her so soft, Lord”.
“She is soft”, said the Lord,
“But I have made her strong. You can’t imagine what she can endure and overcome”
“Can she think?” The Angel asked…
The Lord answered. “Not only can she think, she can reason and negotiate”
The Angel touched her cheeks….
“Lord, it seems this creation is leaking! You have put too many burdens on her”
“She is not leaking…it is a tear” The Lord corrected the Angel…
“What’s it for?” Asked the Angel….. .
The Lord said. “Tears are her way of expressing her grief, her doubts, her love, her loneliness, her suffering and her pride.”…
This made a big impression on the Angel,
“Lord, you are a genius. You thought of everything.
A woman is indeed marvellous”
Lord said.”Indeed she is.
She has strength that amazes a man.
She can handle trouble and carry heavy burdens.
She holds happiness, love and opinions.
She smiles when she feels like screaming.
She sings when she feels like crying, cries when happy and laughs when afraid.
She fights for what she believes in.
Her love is unconditional.
Her heart is broken when a next-of-kin or a friend dies but she finds strength to get on with life”
The Angel asked: So she is a perfect being?
The lord replied: No. She has just one drawback
“She often forgets what she is worth”
The current buzzword in women’s self-esteem is “amazing” as in “you’re amazing!”
Darwinian American, seeing your comment reminded me that I had intended to include a hat tip for sharing the sermon in the OP. I just fixed the oversight.
I am wondering if there is biblical support for the idea of a man in authority being held “more responsible.” Let’s say things like a couple’s sexual behavior before marriage, training children, and having a good marriage/household. If these things go wrong, is the man to be more responsible, since he’s in the position of authority? (if he actually has authority– mostly not true in our current culture)
This is a very interesting post, and I have a million questions to ask you – but – ugh – too lengthy for a comment.
I have never been in even one church in my entire life that even dignified the existence and the importance of Genesis-3.
although he very quickly veers back to cartoonish chivalry
Good. Repetition of this term will be useful in provoking the right people.
Of course, in 2016, is there any form of ‘chivalry’ that is not cartoonish?
@Anon
I do plan on repeating it, at least some. I think this will be a wedge issue, as the kind of chivalry being espoused is what we would expect from a 15 year old boy. More serious Trad Cons should be able to viscerally feel the problem with this kind of enthusiastic, vicarious blood lust.
For a teaser on cartoonish chivalry, here is Mad Dog Chandler from the same sermon:
The whole thing sounds like bar story to impress women.
Guy sounds like a utter fruit bag, best avoided at all cost. He’s crazier than Hilary on crack.
@feeriker:
I just drove two hours to my elderly mother’s house (this is in the rural South). On the way, I passed a tiny white clapboard church in a very small town. The message board out front said, “Let Jesus Be Your Valentine!” Back in the 60s/70s, people in a church like that one would have been dead set against any translation of the Bible other than the King James. If a teenage boy had written “Let Jesus Be Your Valentine” on a slip of paper as a joke, he would have been beaten for blasphemy, mocking God, etc. Apparently the slippage has been so gradual that the average churchgoer is blind to how much has changed. My mother is disturbed that I haven’t gotten around to joining a church in my new neighborhood, but I don’t think that I’m missing much. I tried to explain it to her without causing any offense (her own church is A-OK with marrying people an infinite number of times, etc.)
@patchasaurus: Numerous cousins of mine are now reaching their 25th to 40th wedding anniversaries, milestones that I will never reach. They have someone to grow old with, and I don’t. I still have a huge sense of failure due to my divorce, even though there was nothing that I could have done to prevent it. With more wisdom, I might have been able to postpone the divorce for a couple of years until I was back in the workforce, but there is no certainty that even that would have been possible.
The whole thing sounds like a bar story to impress women.
It’s incredible really. The way they have drunk so deeply of the cultural trends and mores and then wrapped them up in Christian garb is disturbing, but perhaps more disturbing is that they can’t see that this is what they are doing.
“Still, I disagree with MGTOW. As a believer in the Biblical God, I will ask Him for the right wife like Eliezer did when seeking a wife for Isaac. I will not marry a moment sooner. Yes, it will be a miracle, but sadly that seems to be the only decent option we have left.”
Abraham never asked God for help in wife-choosing. God approached him and made a covenant with him to turn his future children into a powerful nation.
Did you know Abraham was a very wealthy and powerful man? He even owned a PRIVATE STANDING ARMY capable of routing a military alliance of four kings (Gen. 14:14). Here’s a modern take on Genesis 24:
Abraham Rockefeller calls in his chief of staff. “My son is ready for a wife. I own this city but none of the women here are good enough for him. I want my son to marry another Rockefeller. Go to my clan’s holdings on the East Coast and pick one of their girls for him. Here’s a suitcase with $2 million cash. Use it as proof that you really are bride-hunting for the heir to Abe Rockefeller.”
And Rebekah’s family was wealthy enough that she had her own attendants to accompany her (24:61). She was no Cinderella.
The story of Abraham getting his son a wife is how old-money billionaires keep their dynasties intact. It is completely useless as a pattern for ordinary men to find wives of their own. We are not rich and powerful; we have no divine guarantees of success; notice Isaac himself played no part in this story; Abraham insisted on NOT going outside his ethnic group; and why would any desirable virgin agree to become the wife of a nobody she just met from a faraway land who couldn’t get a wife among his own people?
I believe Adam did NOT have the leadership role before the fall. Man’s rulership over his wife was instituted in Gen 3:16, as a result of Eve’s disobedience, which occurred in Gen 3:6. So why blame Adam for sin? Well, the churchians are probably just blaming men for everything as they usually do, but I suspect that it has to do with Gen 1:12 where the law of reproduction was instituted, namely that every seed must bring forth its own kind. Men, as we know, are the seed-carriers of humanity. The woman only bears it prior to giving birth. Adam carried an unfallen seed until he disobeyed God, and thus his seed became imperfect as he was. So we are all fallen by Adam’s mistake, not Eve’s, even though this mistake occurred because he listened to Eve. This is paralleled by the fact that by the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ, we are all made righteous (we do have a choice to reject this, but that is beyond the point of this post). Romans 5:12-19 will confirm this. Christ spoke of Himself as a seed which had to be planted into the ground and die in order to bring forth the true Christians (see John 12:23-24). Notice here that each seed must bring forth of its kind – the churchians are not at all like Him because they are not actually of Him. They call themselves Christians but they are only so in form, not substance. The Bible did predict this would happen – see 2 Timothy 4:3-4, for example – but now I am really getting off the point of this post (that Adam was not in charge of the woman until the fall).
@GunnerQ,
“Abraham never asked God for help in wife-choosing.” True. It was his servant, faced with so many choices, who did. I may be mistaken about that servant’s name (I thought it was Eliezer). Genesis 24:10-14.
“The story of Abraham getting his son a wife is how old-money billionaires keep their dynasties intact. It is completely useless as a pattern for ordinary men to find wives of their own.” I refuse to make the dangerous mistake of trusting in riches over trusting in God. The former carries a curse with it, the latter a blessing (Jeremiah 17:5 and 7, 1 Timothy 6:17, Proverbs 11:28 – I could go on). Even if the example of Abraham’s servant was not given in scripture, I still have the right to ask God based on “Ask and it shall be given to you… ” – Luke 11:9, John 15:7, 1 John 5:14 etc. Therefore, that I can ask God for a proper wife is undeniable, according to the Bible. The only remaiming issue here is whether God is a figment of my imagination and thus unreliable, or not. I personally have no time for a god who makes example other gods for their inability to help in time of need (Isaiah 46:5-7 – a beautiful verse), and yet fails to answer my prayers. Fortunately I have experience that He in fact can be called on when the right conditions are met (if you read the scriptures I mentioned, usually the conditions are attached in the preceding or following verses). In all honesty this is the ONLY reason I am not a MGTOW. I fully realise that those who do not have this kind of faith have a terribly difficult choice to make, and I hope some day my gratitude will match the level He deserves.
payne325 says:
February 15, 2016 at 2:29 pm
From Facebook…
This is one of the best posts I’ve read about woman… Please read it completely… it’s worth it…
WOMAN. . . . . . . . .
…If only it were true….
Dalrock, WOW ! With 101 posts in this short a period of time as I am writing this (is 101 in this short a time a new record ?), I guess that you have hit a nerve with us guys, huh ?
First – thanks for this post/conversation – it is a conversation that I have been trying to frame and to get online for a couple of years now.
With your words to start the discussion and the follow-on posts, this is a Bible Study.
So many, many things to say/add:
– I am a fan of Matt Chandler (no, I do not attend his church), but when I saw his words (and I listened to the sermon audio online), it did put me into ‘monkey-tilt’. He’s usually ‘spot on’ on so many things, but this time …. ??? While speaking of Chandler – I’ll bring pastors in general into this discussion and specifically with respect to the comment that Spike made – the sad truth is that the church is following , not leading culture (in this area). SO TRUE !! But pastors will never stand up and lead in this area because (1) the 1st lady of the church will never allow them to speak about this subject (lest it shatter the façade of their perfect marriage); (2) they will offend the administrative staff of the church (female) with whom they have to work every day and (3) they will offend more than 50% of the population of their church (assuming that if norms hold, their congregation is attended by more women than men (because alter all, we don’t go to church because when we do – we get ‘beat up’))
– Trust provided: ‘we encourage women to cleanse good husbands by making them celibate’. How true ! And if you are unsure of this – check out The Experience Project and look in the ‘Sexless Marriage’ forum and within that forum, do a search on ‘christian’. You will be interested to see the # of men Within that forum. But more importantly, in terms of only one sin that the class led by the blogger from ‘Do Women Sin ? could identify … it is truly amazing that women could not face the reality and admit that in light of 1 Cor 7:1-5, they are a sinner.
I have been in a sexless marriage since ’07 and yes, according to my wife – it is my fault. She can’t trust me (I have never cheated on her, withheld information, etc); she never knows where I am coming from; I am too quiet/don’t share enough, and on, and on.
– Which leads me to grace and forgiveness. I often look to see the grace that women in general show their husbands (or better said, ‘don’t show their husbands’). Pay attention to this in church on next Sunday and note how a woman talks to her husband as compared to how she speaks to and demonstrates grace to one of the greeters, to one of the women in the nursery, or to one of her ‘sisters in Christ’. Total strangers in effect. None to whom she has made a covenant. Which them leads me to:
–
– Women’s studies: take a look at some of the titles of the studies authored by some of today’s more popular studies: ‘So Long Insecurity’, ‘ A Woman’s Heart’, ‘Breaking Free’ (where the introduction tells the reader that ‘we’ll see that God wants to surpass our best dreams’), ‘The Promise of Security’ and my favorite – ‘Audacious’ described as the path to the life you were born to live. Why these topics ? Because if Beth Moore beat women up to steal some of Chandler’s words – no woman would show up to a conference, buy a book, etc.
How about a Bible study for woman that really, really, really has them identify the sins that are in their lives ? Not the sins that are in their husbands lives, but the ones in their lives ? Not about the path you were born to live or how to surpass our best dreams – but how to demonstrate grace and forgiveness to the one who needs it the most from you, your husband ?
And I could go on with so much more. As I said, this is a topic that has had me itching for a study or to lead a study for a few years now (I did develop an outline of a study based on this and asked the husband and wife team at our church who do pre-marital counseling to consider a study for married couples on this topic and in this vein .. they ran from the idea !!!).
As I said above, there is a great Bible study in this blog post … but let me finish with a reference to the entry from Worldskipper:
‘ … Just like Adam, Satan tried to use a woman to bring Job to cursing God. I think Satan knows a woman’s heart really well …’
Maybe right there is the prayer for us, for our wives, our daughters …
Thanks again Dalrock. You rock !
payne325, your worship of women is not going to do any good here.
More serious Trad Cons
Yeah, along with all the truly introspective women & other unicorns…
Funny thing is the number one reason for low self esteem is insecurity for Alpha Fucks. They’re certainly not dressing up for their husbands.
I’ve seen ‘insecure’ women evicerate lowly betas with the force of a thousand lions and then cower with insecurity in the presence of an alpha.
May the Holy FI imbue their spirits with the power of Wonder Woman and give them the strength and fortitude to receive the blessings of a sexy alpha. Through the Holy writ of the Fifty and Shades of Grey and the prophetess of Eat Pray and Love may they find the wisdom to overcome.
She who overcomes will be granted eternal blessings of sexy and status.
What I got out of this article is the churchian climbs into bed with his little daughter, probably because his own wife is so disgusted she won’t have him- aka, just a “normal” marriage in Ameri-KKK-a.
>>>>>”The boy goes down, and the girl goes free. That’s how God designed it to work in the home, in the church, and in culture by and large.”
WTF is wrong with this man? I am astounded they can invert the creation story but this was all prophesied some time ago.
>>20Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
>>1 Remember this! In the last days there will be many troubles, 2 because people will love themselves, love money, brag, and be proud. They will say evil things against others and will not obey their parents or be thankful or be the kind of people God wants. 3 They will not love others, will refuse to forgive, will gossip, and will not control themselves. They will be cruel, will hate what is good, 4 will turn against their friends, and will do foolish things without thinking. They will be conceited, will love pleasure instead of God, 5 and will act as if they serve God but will not have his power. Stay away from those people.
The real gem immediately follows the verse I was searching quoted above.
Methinks the Cult of Womyn and Vagina worship in modern Churchianity should read the book:
2nd Timothy Chapter 5:
6 Some of them go into homes and get control of *silly women who are full of sin and are led by many evil desires.* 7 These women are always learning new teachings, but they are never able to understand the truth fully. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres were against Moses, these people are against the truth. Their thinking has been ruined, and they have failed in trying to follow the faith.
SILLY WOMEN WHO ARE FULL OF SIN AND ARE LED BY MANY EVIL DESIRES……..
@Bill: “Adam is the one held accountable for bringing sin into the world, because he did have the leadership role. Eve was not absolved, but she was not the named guilty party.”
Total Fracking Horse Shit! Read the motha fricking Book DAMMIT! Fuckkkkk this pisses me off. God CLEARLY dealt with the sin in the order of prominence. He cursed the serpent FIRST because the Devil is what we call the PRIMARY evil doer and sinner. The serpent is given the most severe curse.
NEXT the WOMAN is cursed because she is the next most culpable (after Satan himself). The woman is told she is to be in subjugation to the man even though she wants to be the one in charge. She is to be severely tortured during her singular function as a woman- during childbirth.
Finally, the MAN is cursed and because he is least culpable his penalty is by far the least severe. EVEN THOUGH he had both sinned AND had the additional responsibility of being the caretaker (yes I concede that) his penalty is MUCH less severe than the woman’s or the serpent. The man is told he is going to have to work for his food now and that’s it. Both he and the woman are kicked out of paradise.
Let us do a thought experiment, shall we? What if Eve ate the apple and Adam refused and THEN threw his wife under the bus when God started in with the prosecution. Would Adam had been punished for NOT eating the fruit? Who really thinks that Adam’s failure to prevent the action of another human being with free will was a SIN?
OK, what if he admonished his wife when he found out and took her to God begging His forgiveness? Would Adam have been cursed? Would he have sinned at any point in this alternate universe?
You can easily and logically see that Adam would NOT have been punished for this “dominion and control” horse-hockey and that his failure to exercise dominion over his wife may have been irksome and worthy of mention by God, but it was NOT a sin. To say otherwise is to say that Jesus sinned when Judas betrayed him- failure of leadership over His disciples. Or God sinned when he failed to control Adam.
TLDR: Adam sinned by disobeying God, AND BY LISTENING TO HIS WIFE. It is possible his failure to exercise control over his wife was worthy of a minor rebuke but it was not a Sin nor was it part of the curse.
That kid in the video goes all out into understanding men and women in relationships. I think there is a whole lot of overcompensation going on there. I don’t think he’s interested in women but hasn’t admitted it to himself yet. He is pure estrogen.
@Anonymous Reader: I think Payne was mocking the sentiment, actually, by showing how ludicrous it can easily become.
@Chip Pacer: Dah ho needs the Dread. My book and the Married Red Pill blog is the final solution that can resolve the issues with your abusive wife. Yes, I said abusive, and I mean it. Sexually withdrawing wives are abusive abusers who have broken the marriage vows in many cases MUCH, MUCH MUCH worse than if she had merely slept with another man.
The evangelical church is dead. This was inevitable because pastors, to keep the following of their congregation, will always bend Scripture to follow cultural norms. And today, radical feminism is the norm. I can’t imagine why anyone would attend any of the so called “Bible” churches mentioned often in this blog.
Let’s face it. Marriage in western society is dead for the time being. There is nothing wrong with this. Paul clearly said that marriage is not the favored status of men, but only a fallback for those who would otherwise be condemned by lust and fornication. The preferred status for men was always to follow Jesus and devote your entire life to Jesus without a distraction created by a spouse and family, That’s why Roman Catholic clergy and some Orthodox clergy are celibate and single; they can devote their life to Jesus without any distractions. In today’s world, religious orders (monks, nuns) are a great option to get closer to God and live a Christian life and more men of all ages are taking advantage.
For me, as a divorced single father, I abandoned my Bible church for the Catholic Church and couldn’t be happier. The priest never lectures on female self esteem or most of the other complaints raised in this blog because he knows, that as a single, celibate man, no one would really listen to him on these issues anyway. He focuses on Jesus, humility, service, and charity and refers to the feminists, divorcees, sluts, and other various categories of sinful women to the teachings of the Bible and the Church which have stood for centuries. Some of these women come to church and even take the Eucharist, but have no role in guiding the church or influencing church teachings. Maybe not every RCC or Orthodox church is like this, but most are where I live.
I can attend mass, go to confession, participate in parish activities and work on my relationship with Jesus, without all of the distractions that seem to consume many of my evangelical friends. Marriage as we know it is dead and it will take generations for Christians to fix our society, if we can at all. All I can say to men here is this: focus on raising your children right, develop bonds with other Christian men, serve others through your church and community, and focus on your salvation. Forget about women and marriage for now!
Not if you rely on the Holy Spirit to play the Eleazor role, keeping your own eyes wide open and seeking God. That doesn’t guarantee things, but will do much better than following the standard worldly plans, especially those of today.
Chip,
Your wife would have to be repentant to be forgiven. Jesus said to seek those who asked for forgiveness. Dispensation was given in specific cases, but the idea is that someone must first turn from their sin to be forgiven of it.
Allowing such a situation (a sexless marriage) leaves significant blame on you. I would walk myself if that was the case and nothing could be done to change it, but most are not that strong willed. I am not sure how much sin that would be as it is a Biblically required part of marriage, so she has already abandoned the marriage herself.
Not an easy road to walk though. I pray you have wisdom to find the right path to follow now.
You do need some “game” principles.
====
My wife has been working with her siblings to have a reunion this summer. I regularly puncture her bubble that this will be a wonderful time for all and emphasize the need for some rationality, such as all not staying in a single house and instead having our own hotel room to return to. She fought me several times when I brought it up, but I decided to just make light of some views and note the idiocy of some things. I found her repeat many of the things I said as her ideas when talking to family on the phone.
That shows me that we men must learn to handle ourselves well and not get hung up with the immediate response. Be firm, in charge and as Godly as we can be, but don’t sweat the reception. It won’t all go well, but many things sink in that seem to not stick at first!
Patrick,
That claim has been repeated here many times. It has yet to be proven however and has a great deal of Scripture arguing against it.
I grew up with the RCC stuff. It is not appealing at all. The current Pope shows that it is not foolproof either.
Men are men and live in the societies they live in. Don’t be shocked that things aren’t perfect. They are not supposed to be perfect until He returns. Good that you are seeking good things, but nothing is perfect and only are focus on God and His Word will ultimately transform ourselves and others.
“Methinks the Cult of Womyn and Vagina worship in modern Churchianity should read the book:
2nd Timothy Chapter 5:
6 Some of them go into homes and get control of *silly women who are full of sin and are led by many evil desires.* 7 These women are always learning new teachings, but they are never able to understand the truth fully. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres were against Moses, these people are against the truth.”
I also find that passage instructive in context of churchianity.
Modern female-ism (Right) and feminism (Left) similarly are split into ‘twin brothers’ like Jannes and Jambres. These two were ‘magicians’ at Pharaoh’s court — so simultaneously they had spirituo-priestly and practical/administrative influence in Egypt proper and beyond.
2 Timothy equates these occult-brethren sorcerers with ‘silly women’ who are ‘full of sin’. So spiritually, we can infer that a pact and confluence existed and exists amongst these entities. Jannes and Jambres were chumps before Moses, but their power was very real, if limited, and was demonically derived. Scripture describes a few of their capacities and manifestations.
A chief duty of a court sorcerer is mass popular manipulation, and it is no coincidence that — past or present — it is ‘silly women’ who are the chief targets of this aspect of sorcerous or satanic influence. So what we’re witnessing in female-ism and feminism is in part a recapitulation of ancient goddess and solar cults, disguised as civil rights, female liberation, ‘modernized churches’, and so forth. Thus it’s broad appeal and staying power, which arose neither spontaneously nor originally in the modern period.
The boy in that video, warning girls not to fall for male manipulation, is manipulating women to fall for his BS.
Unrestrained pursuit of empathy by women when it meets the unfettered chasing of The Lift by men leads to what we have now. The system is closed to the outside for those that are chasing neither empathy nor The Lift.
@ BPP —
Keep in mind that it is true that original sin is referred to as the “sin of Adam”, and that it is Adam’s sin which is seen as causing the fall. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is in Romans 5:
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.” (Rm 5:12-14).
The “traditional” explanation for this is that Adam, as the first created, and as capstone of creation, had a special place which, for example, Eve, being derivative of Adam, did not have — so it was his sin that caused the entirety of creation to fall, and not Eve’s. That does not mean, however, that Adam was responsible for Eve’s sin, but rather that, due to Adam’s status as first created and capstone of creation, it is his own sin which leads to the fall of man, and creation as well. One simply does not need Adam to be “responsible for” Eve’s sin in order for Adam’s own sin to have triggered the fall. It’s an interesting speculative question as to whether there would have been a fall at all had only Eve and not Adam sinned, but that isn’t what happened, so it isn’t very relevant, I think.
I am new here. I noticed the self esteem thing got deeply into the Western psyche. But that was a little bit after I had been cloistered in a Musar yeshiva in NY. Musar means ethical works written during the Middle Ages. In Musar pride in oneself and abilities are universally considered the primary sin and the cause of all other sins. Mainly I think they derive this from Proverbs. So when people around me started talking about the importance of self esteem internally I always translated that to mean the importance of being wicked. It did not seem to make sense. I am not sure from where it comes from but I don’t think they are getting it from Proverbs.
@Dalrock
This is completely off topic, but I can’t find your email on here. You’ve written several times blasting the complementarians for their unscriptural positions on marriage. Before reading your blog, I wasn’t aware of their force in the average church, since I’m not heavily involved. I mostly just read my Bible, and find that the average Churchian holds views completely different from the Word.
All of that being said, I recently came across this open letter. https://natesparks130.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/injustice-an-open-letter-to-the-gospel-coalition/
It surprises me, considering the things revealed seem so different from stuff like the godly tantrum. I don’t agree with a lot of what the writer says, since several cases seem to be upholding the Feminist Mandate, vis a vis Nagmeh. However, there are some things which I know are true, and very despicable. I’m interested in your breakdown, since I’ve found your writing insightful in the past.
Patrick @ February 15, 2016 at 10:07 pm:
“The evangelical church is dead. This was inevitable because pastors, to keep the following of their congregation, will always bend Scripture to follow cultural norms.”
Except the congregations are emptying out because of pastors bending Scripture….
…
Avraham rosenblum @ 9:10 am:
“I am new here. I noticed the self esteem thing got deeply into the Western psyche.”
Hardly. Western men are seriously lacking self-esteem-driven behaviors such as Muslim honor killings, Asian ritual suicide or ancient practices like burying dead kings with their living harems.
Patrick: “The evangelical church is dead.”
To me (on the outside, looking in) the evangelical church seems obsessed with Israel and End Times Prophecy. That seems to occupy the bulk of their preaching.
I agree with you that, Biblically, repentance is necessary for forgiveness, whether from God or from a brother. This is contrary to the popular churchian belief that you must forgive regardless of the offender’s behavior. [This makes no sense, as God does not forgive without our repentance. Yet churchians expect mankind to do this.]
However, please tell me where “Jesus said to seek those who asked for forgiveness”. I cannot find a Bible instance where the victim is expected to seek the offender, but there are multiple scriptures where the offender is expected or required to request forgiveness. Are you possibly referring to Matthew 5:23,24 where the man at the altar goes to find the brother he has offended in order to reconcile, suggesting that he asks for forgiveness and receives it?
Whether she was one of the originators, one of the more influential authors of self-esteem books in the 20th century was a Mormon chick from Utah named Anita Canfield.
http://www.amazon.com/Self-Esteem-Physical-You-Anita-Canfield/dp/0934126216
My tribe may have more culpability for this disastrous trend than most realize, as her memes were widely spread in our society, and probably filtered out into the general North American consciousness shortly after.
You have to marvel at how Mormonism changed from a strict monotheistic revision of traditional religious movements to a cult focused on following the whims of its women, in no more than two generations.
Boxer
You have to marvel at how Mormonism changed from a strict monotheistic revision of traditional religious movements to a cult focused on following the whims of its women, in no more than two generations.
Indeed, as do the mainline Protestant denoms. It’s deeply ironic that it’s the Catholics who are sometimes accused of Mary-worship.
Matt Walsh is a mangina prick. His greatest fear should be that his daughter is fat, not that his daighter has low self-esteem. I’d happily bang a slim girl with no self-esteem. All the s-e in the world wo.’t persuade me to bang a porker.
Just look at that awful All About That Bass song. Basically, it’s trying to SHAME men into liking porkers. Proof by assertion.
”The boy goes down, and the girl goes free. That’s how God designed it to work in the home, in the church, and in culture by and large.”
Pastors say things like this all the time, but where’s the Biblical justification for it? I’m still trying to find some kind of scriptural reference that makes men as a class responsible for the safety and flourishing of any woman in any circumstance simply because she is a woman. The closest I can think of is the Ephesians 5:25-26 passage where husbands are instructed “to love their wives as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her so that he might sanctify her.” As near as I can tell, that’s a specific command for husbands, who I’d presume are only giving it to one woman, their wives (unless the evangelicals are now open to polygamy). Yet theological “conservatives” will take that and conflate it into a new law that makes service from men towards women a divine command from the Lord. Our old pal Al Mohler weighs in here:
And ironically the same people, who use this verse to justify obligating men towards women will then take the ones preceding them — commanding wives to submit to husbands — and stress that in no way do they mean that women should submit to all men. Here’s Mohler’s former protege Russell Moore on the subject (in a post called, “Women, stop submitting to men!”):
You can find his post here: http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/12/05/women-stop-submitting-to-men/
They’re happy to say that the idea of female deference to men is an archaic cultural practice we can easily discard, but then they take a medieval code of manners for men, dub it “chivalry,” and state that it’s nothing less than a mandate from Heaven for true masculine behavior. Even though it’s nowhere in the Bible. Or can someone help me figure out how they’re managing to find it there?
The link below is a jumpting-off point for any one interested in the issues of self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-regulation, etc. Bandura is cited in this link. His general point was/is that, if a person is helped to think that they can suceed, then they will try. My personal experience, being raised in a farming community, is that confidence comes from trying, and discovering that one succeeded. That confidence, born of success, fuels confidence to try other things. (I’m picturing small children rising before school to help with the farm chores. Children being called upon to act, and being able to see first-hand the fruits of that action.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy
——————-
Here are some thoughts generated from reading through the comments. They are meant to be useful, not antagonistic.
“Man” is the old-english term used to refer to both male and female. The King James version was written in old english. The term “man” is used throughout to refer to both male and female.
Male and female created he (God) them; and blessed them, and (God) CALLED THEIR NAME ADAM, in the day when they were created. (Genesis 5:2; kjv)
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24; niv)
God united Adam and Eve into one unit, one flesh, referred to in old english as “man” (or mankind). God called that one unit “Adam” – both male and female, the two items to which the old-english word “man” refers. Both of the words “Adam” and “man” can refer to Adam and Eve as a single unit.
Paul said something in the New Testament. Most of us only know what he said by hearing it in the old english: Sin came into the world by one man. Paul calls that man “Adam”. Sin did come into the world through the old-english term “man” – that term which refers to both male and female, united into a single unit by God (Adam and Eve). And that “man” through which sin came into the world, both of them, was called “Adam” by God (again, using the old-english words; see Genesis 5:2, quoted above). What proof do we have that Paul wasn’t using the old-english terms “Adam” and “man” in the same way God used the term?
Nowhere in the Protestant Bible does it say that God cursed Adam or Eve or the ground. He did tell the serpent that that the reason the ground was cursed was because of him (the serpent). That is not the same as saying that God cursed the ground. (Although we can presume God did curse the ground, the protestant Bible does not specifically state that he did.)
The serpent was cursed to spend the rest of its days crawling on its belly. In other scripture we see Satan going to and fro, from across the earth and between earth and heaven (Book of Job; Satan taking Jesus up to a high point in the New Testament, etc.). I think it is safe to assume that Satan didn’t do this on his belly. The serpent was some entity other than Satan.
We can all see what the Bible actually says (assuming that we look). It’s quite another thing to be certain about what it means. That uncertainty can be reduced (but not eliminated) by interpreting scripture with scripture.
The players in the Garden: Adam; Eve; God; the Serpent.
Who encouraged Eve to eat the forbidden fruit? Adam? God? the Serpent?
Who encouraged Adam to eat the forbidden fruit? God? the Serpent? Eve?
Moses had a story to tell. We don’t know what God actually inspired Moses to write down. We only know what copies of copies of copies said. But the men responsible for turning those copies into what we have of the Bible today understood the importance of using the narrative to help the audience understand the story. Therefore, we are told which voice Eve listened to, and which voice Adam listened to – so that the audience would not be confused over whether Adam also ate the forbidden fruit because of what the serpent said. Consider how confusing the story would be if all we are told is God said don’t eat, but Adam and Eve both ate. With the story the way it is written, we know that Adam and Eve each disobeyed God for different reasons. They didn’t both disobey for the same reason. We wouldn’t know that if the author of the story hadn’t told us that each individually responded to a different voice. And we can make that distinction only because God, when speaking, tells us which voice Adam listened to, and that it was a voice different from the one Eve listened to.
God didn’t say anywhere when he gave Eve to Adam that Adam should not listen to what she said. Otherwise, if Eve suggested that Adam call these animals goats instead of sheep, and so Adam did, do we expected that God would have condemned Adam and driven him from the Garden for listening to the voice of his wife?
The condemnation in the Adam and Eve story comes from the fact that both did what God said not to do – eat of the forbidden fruit. The fact that Adam sinned by listening to his wife’s voice is useful to us in that it supports the argument that we can sin all by ourselves, by listening to the voice of family and friends, we don’t need Satan to tempt us to sin. But that is a discussion for a different time.
Let’s use Pauls New Testament argument that sin was in the world – but before the law existed, a particular sin was not credited to a person’s account. Sin existed but was non visible. Therefore, one could not be accused of intentionally disobeying God, because one had never had God’s commandment made known to him. God’s commands became visible by virtue of the Law (his Word) being published. A person to whom the law is given can then be justifiably held accountable for sinning when they knowingly violate a commandment given by God. We know that God said not to eat the forbidden fruit – so we can understand God punishing Adam and Eve for disobying him and eating the forbidden fruit. But where in the story does God tell Adam to not listen to the voice of his wife. According to Paul’s New Testament argument, that “law” (don’t listen to your wife) was not visible, and therefore it makes no sense to think that God would hold Adam accountable for violating it.
Think. What did God actually say? It was not good that Adam was alone – and so God made a help proper and suitable for Adam. Think through what it actually means to be helped. At a minimum, it places an obligation on the helped to listen to the helper. She would not be of any use otherwise. Why, then, does it make sense to turn around and believe that Adam was punished for listening to the voice of his wife (rather than being punished for what God actually told Adam not to do – eat the forbidden fruit)? The businessman who surrounds himself with folks who are smarter than he is is not going to benefit from those smarts if he does not listen to what they have to say. But the helpers surrounding the businessman are also not useful if the businessman listens to what they say, but never acts on any of it. In that situation, what is the point of having the helpers to begin with if he never acts on their advice? Same for Adam.
Knowing what the Bible actually means is probably best accomplished by studying the meanings of the text in the original language, not simply by the translated words (in any language or translation).
“[1 Tim. 2:14 NASB] 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.”
It seems clear that Eve sinned first, not Adam by failing to prevent Eve from sinning. I think it is important to see this in contrast to Chandler’s assertion: “Do you know who God blames for sin introducing itself into the cosmos? Adam.”
As to the cursing (or not) in Genesis 3, I agree that neither Eve or Adam are said to be “cursed”, but what is a curse? One definition of “curse” is “a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.”. The God-given consequences of Adam’s and Eve’s behavior were extreme punishment. I think God’s words to Eve and Adam fit that definition quite well.
In the recent discussion on the post “Not listening”, listening was discussed at length. It is one thing to listen (hear what they say and consider it), and another thing to listen (act unwisely on foolish advice).
Think. What did God actually say?
[Gen. 3:17-19 NASB] 17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread,Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
God said “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you,….”, followed by the consequences. If it wasn’t significant that Adam listened to Eve, why would God say it? You don’t know everything God told Adam to do or not. Silence is not proof that God did not say “Listen to Eve, but don’t trust that she knows more than you do.”.
You agree that Adam sinned by listening to his wife, but then you argue vehemently that a husband should listen to his wife. A perfect helper would be terrific, but women are not perfect and their words should be weighed carefully before following their advice. In this scripture, we see that Adam valued the words of Eve more than he valued the words of God, resulting in his sin in eating the forbidden fruit. It is an excellent example of the danger of believing women (or men) more than God.
This is contrary to the popular churchian belief that you must forgive regardless of the offender’s behavior. [This makes no sense, as God does not forgive without our repentance. Yet churchians expect mankind to do this.]
So how then do you interprete the passage below?
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:31, 32
Or this:
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Matthew 6:14-15
Where did it say “Unless the offender repents, you may not forgive them”?
The basis of our forgiveness of people has nothing to do with whether or not they asked for forgiveness, but on the fact that we received God’s forgiveness for our own sins.
Forgiveness needs to be immediate, even as soon as the offence is being committed against us. Jesus demonstrated this while hanging on the cross, even while He was still being mocked by his persecutors.
However, the Bible did not say to forget. Those who forgive and forget have not learned to prevent a reocurrence of the offence.
Also, just because a person forgives does not mean they cannot seek a just redress. You can forgive a thief who stole your car, in that you don’t necessarily want him thrown in jail, but that does not mean you cannot sue him to get your car back, or for him to fix the locks and other items he damaged in the process of stealing the car.
Richard P. That Wiki info. reads like an up-defined version of mindfulness and/or so called intentional living. I confess its easier to read and digest as presented in the wiki summary than it is from the cacophony of consultants and gurus teaching mindfulness and intentional living.
All of it falls under the scriptural prophetic description of man running to and fro having a form of knowledge. its exhausting to read the obvious so heavily parsed. Its astounding that so many are mesmerized by it.
@BillSmith
You wrote:
‘Allowing such a situation (a sexless marriage) leaves significant blame on you’
So are you saying – and I am choosing my words carefully here – that I am responsible for the sin of my wife (i.e., because she has chosen to foster a sexless marriage, in conflict of the instruction in Corinthians) ?
This is sort of on topic, but I have to share where I’m at right now, I have to:
Confessions of Captain Sav-a-ho.
I’m a 5 most days, if I work at it I can be a 6+. My parents were homecoming king and queen in their respective high schools, but I got the short straw, a cleft lip and bad teeth and ZERO Game, my nickname in college was snaggletooth, nice huh. Being a Believer in a college setting, I had given up hope finding a Christian woman and did not expect to have what my grandparents or great grandparents had.
Most girls I could get on more than a few dates were never more than 5 or 6 themselves, forget 7 or 8’s, the only time they would talk to me was to get directions. I fell into temptation a couple of times and slept with a few women, it still bothers me today that I was so weak and gave into sin.
I’m now 28 and lonely, I said the next woman I was going to be intimate with would be my wife, so no messing around. I gave dating one last try and used a dating service, low and behold a former high 8 woman (she did modeling in high school), a nurse, who is 32 at the time, gives me the attention I’ve been lacking, and me be a AFC beta boy/white knight fell head over heels for her. Married 6 months to the day that I met her.
Fast forward 13 years, I’m 41 and have 2 kids, a dog, a house with a pool etc, life not going as expected and very frustrated with life most of the time.
I just swallowed the red pill 2 weeks ago, and it is bitter.
Now the facts as I’ve come to understand them:
My wife is 40 lbs overweight, some of this can be traced back to some weird genetic issues, but still.
She dresses like she just doesn’t care.
She complains, a lot, about my family and life in general.
When we married she said she didn’t cook or clean or do any of that, and told me as such (boy was I wimp and said “I don’t care”)
She’s a stay at home mom, and home schools the kids, but I still do more than half the cooking and pay for a maid service every 2 weeks.
I have to negotiate for sex, and most times in no more than every 2 weeks if I’m ‘lucky’.
When we do, it’s almost like she doesn’t want to be there.
She can be a very hard/jaded woman, and will cuss like a sailor more often than not. This come from a woman who says she goes to bible class every day. (a tape ministry) —-This tape ministry is destructive, almost cult like, but it did force me to bring my bible study up, I grew up methodist so no bible knowledge
I found out through one of my kids that my wife has had 6 marriage proposals before me! She didn’t deny them either. As far as I know she never accepted any of the proposals, thank the Lord for that.
We had a hard time having those 2 kids, both high risk pregnancies (read high cost), so bad that I got the big V to avoid any more complications.
She’s adamant about allowing abortion up to 16 weeks, and she can’t take birth control, makes her sick.
When we were dating she mentioned that it was when I was under my car she decided I had a hot bod’ (i.e. when she couldn’t see my face).
When the old marriage proposals came up last night when in bed, (the hamster went into overdrive) she told me that they didn’t matter because it was in the past, she didn’t accept them because she didn’t trust marriage (she did come from a broken home with a father who was a serial adulterer) but she trusts it (marriage) now so all those other times don’t count.
Conclusion:
I am Captain Save-a-ho. I married a woman who has at minimum a N=6+ and my guess had at least one abortion. There is something unnerving about thinking your wife is a, Lord I hate to even say it, a whore.
If my memory is correct her first marriage proposal was when she was 19’ish. So she rode the Carousel for at least 10+ years, and then hit the Wall, panicked and found her ‘old faith’ and became a good Christian woman and married down to a beta chump.
And I thought I hit the jackpot, a Christian woman, a 7 who used to be a model, who loved me despite my faults and failings.
Here I am getting used to the red pill, I would just start running some Game and add a little stability to our home and fire to the bedroom, but now that these multiple marriage proposals have come to light plus the red pill, I don’t know if I want to even share a bed with her. All I feel right now is anger, disappointment, and the thought of being used. I want to just get on plane and leave, but I made a commitment to God that I would marry this woman and stay married to her, for better or for worse.
What burns me up the most about all of this is, she is so haughty and self-righteous, telling the world she KNOWS more about the Bible than anyone, even with her past. One would think humility would be the word to describe her, but nope. she is a woman, and can’t do any wrong.
I had a rough childhood, the world was not kind to me growing up, I was mocked and taken advantage of at every turn of my young life, but it made me stronger, so I thought, this just cuts me to my core.
I don’t see any way out but prayer and forgiveness.
Captain:
Your wife is not particularly horrible. All women are like this, and they always have been, and always will be. You made a foolish mistake, but you have kids that you love and you have to make the best of it. Fortunately, help is available.
If you’re a serious Christian, then you won’t divorce your wife because she hasn’t fucked around since your marriage (that you know about). Personally, I wouldn’t fault you for divorcing a disrespectful woman, but I know it’s against the rules and I respect them.
There are things other men in your situation have done to improve such situations, though. Here’s a good place to start:
http://marriedmansexlife.com
I would also look at Glover’s No More Mr. Nice Guy and maybe start reading Heartiste, if you can stomach it.
Women like consistency from their man. You may need to start doing things that feel very alien at first. Start slow, be consistent, and find ways to break through this negative pattern. If you feel angry at your wife for fucking dudes before she met you, then you should go see your priest. Most women these days have a history, and you may just have to learn to live with that. Remember that you’re in charge of your own emotions. In the end, she’s really of no significance. Don’t give her the power to push your buttons.
Good Luck,
Boxer
“Captain my Captain says:
February 16, 2016 at 8:30 pm”
Every time I see a post like that I very quickly thank God that I never married. It’s just not worth it these days. The woman has all the power and can do and say anything she wants while the man can only shut up and take it or divorce her. And even when you do that she gets the kids, car, home, half your shit, child support and sometimes alimony. Uh, no thanks.
Six marriage proposals doesn’t necessarily mean six lovers. Some men will propose marriage to a woman, even though they’ve never had sex.
My sister — in her 50s and never married — received several proposals in her youth from men who were only friends. She never even dated them, much less slept with them. Lots of Thirsty Betas out there.
OTOH, your wife might have had lovers who never proposed marriage. A woman’s lovers, and her marriage proposals, might overlap. But they’re two separate groups.
@Dave:
I think you need to re-read the passages very closely. As you smacked an assumption you’ve been taught right into the passage and missed what the Lord is pretty clear about. The Ephesians quote being the easiest to explain:
“forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”
So, inside the Church (which is the context of that entire part of Ephesians), part of dealing with each other is to forgive each others by the same means that the Lord has forgiven us our Sins. Which requires the Sinner to: humble themselves, go the injured party and repent, and ask for forgiveness. The requirement on the person Sinned against is to forgive, when approached in repentance. Not before.
The Jesus on the Cross did not forgive the murders their sin. Something he had done before. He asked God to forgive them. (Luke 23:34) In the same manner, Stephen asked the Lord not to hold the sin against the stoners. (Acts 7:60)
Without being able to spend too much time on this, what you’re operating from is a fairly classic error. (I know of examples back to at least 700 AD.) We logically infer a center-point between two paths the Lord gives us and create a 3rd. But that 3rd does nothing but cause problems. A Christian that is sinned against should forgive *if* the other Christian comes in repentance. But, in a lot of cases, that won’t happen. So what the Christian should do is turn the injury over to the Lord and move beyond the injury. This, however, doesn’t mean that consequences are suddenly not to be enforced. “Forgiveness” is to wipe the slate clean. Until there is repentance, there can no forgiveness.
Coincidentally, I’m currently in the midst of studying Hosea, one of the minor prophets.
The first three chapters appear to be very blue pill. God instructs Hosea to marry a whore. So Hosea marries Gomer, a temple prostitute for Baal, who betrays Hosea and sleeps with other men. But in the end, after letting Gomer suffer the life of a prostitute and regret her decision, Hosea forgives Gomer and buys her back. Apparently she is reformed.
Gomer is a metaphor for Israel, which broke its covenant with God by whoring after Baal. Hosea punishes Gomer, then forgives her. God punishes Israel, then forgives her.
Although Gomer is clearly used as a metaphor for Israel, scholars debate whether Gomer was an actual person or purely fictitious.
Although Gomer is clearly used as a metaphor for Israel, scholars debate whether Gomer was an actual person or purely fictitious.
I am so amused by so-called Bible scholars who arrogate to themselves the power to assign new and often fabulous meanings to clear statements in scripture.
The Bible was painfully clear that
1. Hosea was a man and a prophet of God
2. God instructed him to marry a harlot, and to have kids through her
3. Hosea married Gomer, a harlot and the daughter of Diblaim
4. Hosea and Gomer had three kids: 2 boys and a girl, whose names were given in scripture.
YET, “scholars” still debate if Gomer was fictitious. I think these scholars were retards.
The Jesus on the Cross did not forgive the murders their sin. Something he had done before. He asked God to forgive them. (Luke 23:34) In the same manner, Stephen asked the Lord not to hold the sin against the stoners. (Acts 7:60)
Sorry but I have to disagree.
When a person is maltreated, the offender not only sins against that person, but also against God, who created and “owns” that person. We may also go so far as to say that the offender sins against the victim’s family and their other dependents, depending on the nature and effects of the offence.
For the offender to be fully forgiven, forgiveness must come from every party offended.
We can assume that Jesus indeed forgave His offenders and then went further to ask God to do the same, because He taught us to forgive others without conditions, and it is unlikely that Jesus would violate His own teachings.
Stephen was a devoted minister in the early church, and we can similarly assume that he followed Christ’s teachings on forgiveness.
Maybe you want to show us from scripture the conditions that the offender must fulfill before we forgive them? personal opinions don’t count. Let’s see it in black and white.
Nietzsche was the source of the cult of self esteem
In a way, I’m pretty blessed to not be married. I cannot sympathize with you enough Captain. I wouldn’t know what to do in a situation similar to yours.
Be there for your kids, focus on raising them to skip the pitfalls you and your wife fell into. That and take charge of your life. If you’re working most days, get your wife to learn to cook. It’s not hard, I do it most days myself. She’s lying if she says it is. Also, stand by your convictions, if you believe abortion is wrong, tell her. Have the disagreement but also let her know exactly where you stand on issues.
Furthermore, you can’t change the past. She is what she is, you have to discover if you can live with that and still continue your marriage. I’m afraid only you can decide that. Pray, ask you family for advice and if you have a counselor or someone who you can talk to, talk your problems through with them. It helps just to vent and get it out to someone who takes the time to listen.
I’ll be praying you find at least some comfort in this.
I equate the term “self-esteem” with haughtiness of heart, pride; the opposite of humility. Everything we have, we’ve received from God. What do we have to be proud about; our sin? Pride is our sin. A proud heart can have no relationship with God. The way up (heavenward) is down.
But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
(James 4: 6 & 10)
Everything we have, we’ve received from God. What do we have to be proud about; our sin? Pride is our sin. A proud heart can have no relationship with God. The way up (heavenward) is down.
Other than calling women out on their sins based on Scriptural precepts, this is one topic that most pastors avoid like the plague. Why? Because churches of any size are full of prideful people who would rather not remember that any talents that they have are God-given and that what God giveth He can most certainly take away from those who prove that they don’t deserve to keep them.
Just look at that awful All About That Bass song. Basically, it’s trying to SHAME men into liking porkers. Proof by assertion.
Moving the cultural window…look at the ‘mainstream’ mags like Sports Illustrated and the like glorifying “plus size” (or perhaps an Orwellian ‘doubleplussize’) ‘models’.
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Agreed: Most women see themselves as wronged princesses, most men see them as mediocre-quality breeding stock. The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between.
It’s not about high or low self-esteem, it’s about healthy self-esteem.
“Do you love me?” Hell yes.
“Am I pretty?” Yes, but not as pretty as you think you are.
“Can I have my own way?” Hell no.
Captain, I never married. My goal was to marry before age 30, but it was not to be. However, even while in my 20s — in New York City, in the 1980s — I always assumed that any future wife would have more past lovers than I did.
My hope was to find a wife for whom I would be her “first and true love” emotionally, not physically. That she would love me more than any previous lover, and would remain happily faithful to me for the rest of our lives. I was ready to settle for that. Yes, I was a Thirsty Beta.
Finding a wife who would provide love and fidelity after marriage is hard enough. To expect to find a virgin — in New York City, in the 1980s — is to seek a unicorn.
So I wouldn’t worry much about your wife not being a virgin when she met you, provided she’s remained faithful since marrying you. The bigger problem is that she sounds like she isn’t a loving wife to you now, but is a cold, conceited woman.
Good piece. We should not engage in the fanciful notions that the self of the woman is the primary form of virile expression. Women are at their apex expressed through their devotion to their children and their husband.
Looking Glass has already “interpreted” Ephesians 4:32, as well as covered the fact that Jesus did not forgive on the cross, but asked the Father to forgive them, demonstrating what I call a heart of forgiveness.
If you study the Jewish teachings on repentance and forgiveness (which I do not think I have ever heard taught at length in person), you will find that the Jews consider this topic to be very important. For example, Repentance in Judaism has 14 items listed in the section “How to Repent”.
[Matt. 6:14-15 NASB] 14 “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
You are supposing this means you must forgive without condition. It doesn’t say that. In fact, I think that His Jewish audience would have expected that repentance was necessary for forgiveness. I can’t find the reference, but I think Jews believe it is wrong to forgive another without their repentance.
You ask where it says “Unless the offender repents, you may not forgive them”. That is never stated. Nor does it say “You must forgive them whether they repent or not.” which is what you are claiming. In fact, here are the words of Jesus that quite clearly delineate what action to take with your sinning brother based on his repentance or not:
[Luk 17:3-4 NASB] 3 “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 “And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
Jesus clearly does not here teach us “to forgive others without conditions”. Nor does He say that you cannot forgive your brother without repentance. But if Jesus meant to teach to forgive unconditionally, why did He mention rebuke? Why didn’t He just say “If your brother sins, forgive him whether he repents or not.”?
Jesus also teaches about how to act toward a sinning brother in Matthew 18:15-17:
[Matt. 18:15-17 NASB] 15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
This is also consistent with the idea that repentance (“listen to them”) is needed for reconciliation (equivalent to forgiveness in this case). It says that if he doesn’t “listen”, treat him as a Gentile and a tax collector, not “forgive him regardless and treat him just like any other fellow believer.”
You say “He taught us to forgive others without conditions”. You can assume that, but I’m not going to. Where is the evidence?
In summary, I say the basis for forgiving a fellow Christian is that God commanded us to do so when they repent. I will not claim that you cannot forgive a sinning brother without repentance, because, although I think it’s inconsistent with the scripture, I do not think it is ever explicitly stated. So, if you wish to forgive a sinning brother without repentance, go ahead. But don’t tell others they must forgive without repentance, because the Bible doesn’t teach that.
@Red Pill Latecomer
Thanks for that perspective, it helps. Yeah the virginity thing doesn’t bother me as much as the ‘flippant’ way she said that their (the other men’s) marriage proposals weren’t serious, more like she didn’t treat them seriously. – Gotta love that hamster.
But then she added this: “I really do believe that I’m still undefeated. Because being defeated is a choice. Everyone has losses in their life, but I choose to always be undefeated.”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/entertainment/ronda-rousey-feat/index.html
Oh Captain-Captain: You may want to try Married Red Pill. Click on my name for your liberation but you will need to drop that attitude lest you get your ass kicked. Don’t worry, most people go through the anger stage and “everybody falls the first time……”
“Six marriage proposals doesn’t necessarily mean six lovers. ”
Yah, by the rules of manosphere it probably means 18.
Captain my Captain @ February 16, 2016 at 8:30 pm:
“Here I am getting used to the red pill… All I feel right now is anger, disappointment, and the thought of being used.”
This is a normal phase of unplugging from the Matrix. The fact that you can acknowledge you were used puts you ahead of most men. Changing one’s way of viewing the world, especially in midlife, takes time and often a bit of grieving.
What I would do now, if I was in your place, is start with self-improvement. Add a little style to your dress, do some gym work, focus on buffing your self-image with tricks like good eye contact. Being strong feels good. Looking sharp feels good. Your wife will probably notice but don’t tell her about the Red Pill; leave her guessing with vague “I make this shirt look good” or “just getting fit at the gym” statements.
Once your confidence and SMV are up, you’ll be in a good position to “redefine the relationship”, as they say.
She wasn’t a virgin when she married him. She joins the majority of women in that regard, and dwelling on that won’t make anything improve.
The point is to make her a better wife in the present/future, not to build a time machine and keep her from banging her boyfriend at the high school prom. Deed is done, and you should try not to be too hung up on it if you have to stay married.
I know it’s hard for Captain to believe right now, but I’ve heard many stories of horrible marriages that got better through applying some principles on this blog, going to retrouvaille, and other such things. Lots of married bros here and at other manosphere sites talk about their wives being total bitches, and turning things around with some consistent application of masculine principles. Don’t give up on your marriage until you try this.
Ya. It’s a lot harder to run “game” on women when they have high self esteem. Anything that gets in the way of men getting what they want needs to be eliminated. Fuck that shit.
“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” — 1 Tim. 2
Christ’s apostle says the woman was deceived and in the transgression. After making clear that females aren’t to do all the stuff that they now do in the churches and out.
_______
Novaseeker — “One simply does not need Adam to be “responsible for” Eve’s sin in order for Adam’s own sin to have triggered the fall.”
Right those two don’t necessarily follow. However, your opinion about Adam’s primal culpability is refuted by 1 Timothy. The passage you quote from Romans neither states nor infers that Adam ‘triggered the fall’. Not aware of anything supporting that in the Bible.
Dear Kooky Wimminz:
What wimminz and male feminists call “high self esteem” is almost always irrational pride in merely being born a woman.
Normal women in a healthy society would be proud of attracting and keeping a quality man, superior skills at housekeeping, running a small business, knowledge of literature, dance, music, history, arithmetic and philosophy, so that she could teach these things to her children and be a valuable help to her husband.
Wimminz of today have none of these qualities, and no other real-world achievements either. Most are fat losers who are horrible mothers and can’t keep a man. That goes double for all the wimminz who pretend at careers (PR hacks, HR drones, Lawyerbitches, etc.) which they are almost always mediocre at.
Normal women would get what they want by giving their man what he wants. Ordinarily I’d suggest a look at your grandmother to get the idea. Chances are good that with your attitude, the healthy and functional members of your extended family had died out long before you were born, so that won’t work. I see you as a bluehair, from a line of single-moms. Am I right? Of course I am. Brother Boxer is a Prophet, Seer and Revelator, like Brigham Young himself. He knows you better than you know yourself.
Regards,
Boxer
“Because churches of any size are full of prideful people who would rather not remember that any talents that they have are God-given and that what God giveth He can most certainly take away from those who prove that they don’t deserve to keep them.”
Can and will. Good reminder for us all.
Even King Jeshua said that his miracles and power came from Father. Our puny works of art and culture aren’t near that standard. How much more humble should we be? Instead we pomp and strut and put our names on plaques.
A little gratitude towards God goes a long way, fast. A lot of gratitude goes even faster.
Ya. It’s a lot harder to run “game” on women when they have high self esteem.
There’s an inverse ratio at work here — the louder women brag about their high self-esteem, the more insecure they are.
I think we’ve all seen examples of this. Men and women who toil in silence are often more competent than are the boastful egomaniacs.
I once knew a woman in her early 40s, a self-admitted “former addict” with many past lovers, and still on the prowl for younger men. I say “former” addict because she still drank alcohol and smoked pot, but she didn’t consider those drugs. She also claimed to be a Christian.
She was always telling me how “strong” she was. How God had made her “strong.” How “proud” she was to be “such a strong woman.”
In truth, she was an extremely needy, emotional basket case. Not strong at all. Always exploding over every imagined slight. Always in a state of road rage when driving. Always complaining about how mean everyone was to her — her employers, landlord, neighbors, the people at her church.
She could also be demure and charming, which is how I initially came to date her, and briefly White Knight for her, before I found out what she was really like.
Every time I hear a women bragging about how strong she is, how awesome and amazing and full of self-esteem, I think of the above female basket case.
Every time I hear a women bragging about how strong she is, how awesome and amazing and full of self-esteem, I think of the above female basket case.
Strong, and awesome, and amazing people don’t go around bragging about those qualities. They simply be, and allow others to describe them as such.
“Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips.”
Provers 27:2
Did I hit a nerve, boxer? You couldn’t be more wrong in your assumptions about me. But that’s hardly a surprise.
You couldn’t be more wrong in your assumptions about me.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …
Shut up, kook. Nobody gave you permission to speak.
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The only self-esteem both women or men need is from God: He created you because He loves you and He created you to fellowship with Him. Love God with all your heart and soul, obey Him and love your neighbor as yourself – not sexually- but with the same love that God shows you. This is all one needs.
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Here’s a site I found last night:
http://queensalons.net/
If you look at the photos, a fair percentage of these women aren’t the sort that most men would instantly be attracted to or regard as “queens.” They’re looking for men who will think as highly of them as they think of themselves. I could be wrong about Queen Salons, but this is the impression I get from visiting their site.
Go to the testimonials
http://queensalons.net/testimonials/
and they come across as women exercising masculine characteristics. It calls itself a grassroots movement, but I smell the odor of Social Justice Warriors. I also detect New Age views, such as on this page:
http://queensalons.net/what-is-a-salon/
The power of the Salons is in that WE are the source of wisdom and learning:
There’s no mention anywhere of God being the source of wisdom.
Their Year 2 and Beyond program seems like the sort of thing typically found in a pyramid scheme:
http://queensalons.net/year-2-and-beyond/
What It Looks Like
4.5 hours group topic, connection, and support calls (September, January, May)
45 minutes personalized private coaching
15-33 hours leadership in action
Continued access to the online resources and forums – Including a new interactive Topics List that you can edit and add to!
Continued assistance in growing your Salons
Plus we guarantee your experience!
“Cooperative Pricing”, meaning the final cost depends on how many Salons are participating. We anticipate $180-$290 per group* per year, assuming 5-10 groups participate. The more Salons that participate and support each other, the lower the cost.
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