In the past I’ve shared Joel and Kathy Davisson’s theology of women as responders. Joel explains in their book:
“Can’t the woman be the problem? The man is not always the problem in marriage.” Of course I gestured toward my problem wife! This continued into the second day until Dr. Hegstrom finally had enough. He told me point blank that I was the problem in my marriage. He told me that Kathy was desperate to have a great marriage relationship for that is how God made her.
…
Paul told me that God made Kathy a responder and that her problems were a reflection of her responding to my treatment of her. He said that when I grow up and lay my life down for my wife as Christ did for the church that I would be amazed at how wonderful a wife I have.
The first edition of the book is from 2004, but Joel learned this theology from Dr. Paul Hegestrom (the man FofF sends readers to for Christian counseling). For some time I’ve been curious where this theology came from and when it first cropped up. I doubt I’ll ever find the definitive answer, but I recently stumbled on more of the back-story of this disastrous theology.
It turns out that Dr. Richard L. Strauss preached this terrible theology way back in 1972, when second wave feminism was rampaging through both secular and Christian culture. The sermon is titled What Every Husband Needs to Know, and you can see the sermon in article form here or here, and download the audio here*. 1972 is an interesting year because by then the nation was in the full throes of feminist rebellion. Divorce rates wouldn’t level off for another ten years, but they had already exploded to over 150% of the rate from 1960**. This left pastors understandably in fear of provoking the wrath of the by now well established and very open rebellion***, while wanting to find a biblical solution to the skyrocketing divorce rate. Strauss opens the sermon by suggesting that an important cause of the divorce revolution is men not understanding their wives (all emphasis in quotes below is mine):
God tells men to dwell with their wives according to knowledge—an understanding of their basic nature and needs—but most men know very little about the makeup and mechanism of the female of the species. Could this be one of the reasons why so many marriages are floundering?
This of course is no idle question, and Strauss goes on to explain how men are causing the divorce revolution by not sufficiently loving their wives.
The God who created these tremendous emotional needs in women intends that husbands should meet them…
How does the husband do it? How can any man satisfy a woman’s basic needs? This may sound like a gross oversimplification, but one little four-letter word is actually the complete answer to this entire complex problem. The husband’s primary responsibility in a Christian marriage is to love his wife… All of these verses require agape, that highest level of love that keeps on giving even when it gets nothing in return and seeks only good for the one loved regardless of the personal cost or sacrifice.
Surely Strauss was not the first to make this argument, and he would not be the last to try to explain away the modern feminist rebellion against marriage and headship as stemming from a lack of love on men’s part****. He explains that women will not be tempted to feminist rebellion, and will want to submit if only their husbands love them:
This gives an entirely new meaning to the misunderstood doctrine of male headship. Headship is not some masculine doctrine cleverly designed to bolster the husband’s sagging ego. Headship involves the husband’s solemn obligation to establish an atmosphere of love in which the basic needs of his wife are fulfilled—an environment in which she is free to grow and develop into all that God wants her to be. Her submission will then be the voluntary response to his loving leadership.
It is at this point that Strauss introduces the theology of women as responders:
The key word here is response. The woman is a responder. This is the obvious role of someone who depends on another person. Flowers depend on sunshine and rain; when they get it, they respond by blossoming into gorgeous beauty. This is how God made a woman too. She responds to what she receives. If she receives irritability, criticism, disapproval, unkindness, indifference, lack of appreciation, or lack of affection, she will respond with a defense mechanism, such as bitterness, coolness, defiance, or nagging. Some women turn to drinking or submerge themselves in social activities.
But if the woman receives love she will respond with love, and will blossom into the most beautiful creature under God’s heaven. When a man claims that his wife doesn’t love him anymore he is unwittingly admitting that he hasn’t loved her as he should have. If he had, she would most likely have responded with love in return. A man gets from his wife what he invests in her. He cannot force her to love him, but he can show love to her and enjoy her loving response. Thus the responsibility for a successful marriage rests initially with the husband. He makes the first move—that of loving his wife with the totally unselfish love of Jesus Christ.
Strauss goes on to explain that when the Apostles Peter and Paul tell husbands to have Agape love, they meant the kinds of acts of beta comfort that modern marriage counselors teach men. If you want to understand Epistles from ancient Rome and Greece, you need to watch Oprah. If a husband practices enough beta game, his wife will love him and want to submit. This boils down to an all too familiar list:
- Buy her gifts:
“…love gives. It will involve giving the material things a wife needs as finances permit, and perhaps even a little gift now and then that says, I really care. I think about you when we’re apart.” - Do the housework:
“If the wife is really the weaker vessel, then wiping the dishes, sweeping the floor, supervising the children, cleaning the windows, or dozens of other little helpful acts are just other ways of saying, I love you.” - Complete your wife’s Honey Do list:
“Some husbands are too busy to run an errand, fix a gadget, or devote an evening to their wives alone. They are saying in subtle little ways, You’re really not worth very much personal sacrifice, and this is like spraying weed killer on a beautiful flower.” - Show her that she is appreciated:
“She needs to know that he cares—that he appreciates the things she does to please him, like maintaining his home and cooking his meals. She needs to know that he comes home because she is there—not just for meals and a bed! One of the most prevalent complaints of wives is that their husbands take them for granted, treating them as if they were maids. Here is what one woman said she needed most from her husband: I need to feel needed, that what I am doing for him and for our children is important to him. Then, I want to be appreciated for the things I do.” Most wives try hard to please, and they need to know that their husbands approve of their efforts and appreciate them.” - Stop having so much fun at work:
“Giving ourselves may not demand dying for our wives, but it certainly demands living for them, and that is the very thing many husbands are unwilling to do. They exclude their wives from their lives. They think working hard and providing an abundance of material things will make their wives happy. And while they are at work getting rich, their wives are at home with aching hearts, yearning to share their husbands’ lives as God intended them to do, yearning for the appreciation, approval, attention, and affection which God intended them to have, yearning for the sympathetic understanding their God-given natures demand.” - Be a sensitive new age guy:
“One woman wrote, My husband needs to let me know that he is aware of my problems and understands them. I need to feel that we are working together toward a common goal. The one word that occurs most frequently when wives are discussing what they need from their husbands is understanding. No amount of material things can take the place of a husband who listens to his wife with undivided attention when she unfolds her heart, who tries to understand even her most complicated moods, and who lets her know that he loves her even during her most illogical and unreasonable moments.”
The problem is not that husbands should never buy their wives gifts, or fix things around the house, or tell their wives they love them. The problem is that:
- Modern Christians have substituted pop culture in place of the instructions in the Bible, and as the Strauss sermon shows this dates back to the heydays of second wave feminism.
- Responding to feminist rebellion and discontentment with more beta comfort is a prescription for frustrating your wife. The reason wives are in rebellion (in general) is not because Christian men aren’t being nice enough to Christian women, but because Christian men are terrified of saying no to rebellious women. Ironically, if husbands were to do the truly loving thing and stand up to the rebellion their wives would be far more likely to feel loved.
See Also: Why Christians need Game.
*The article form has been edited some for brevity, but the lesson is not fundamentally changed. Since the recording is from 1972 and has a large amount of noise, I suggest running it through a noise reduction filter using Audacity or a similar tool.
**See “Figure 5. Number of Divorces per 1,000 Married Women Age 15 and Older, by Year, United States” from The State of Our Unions 2010.
***On the other hand Strauss’ companion sermon What Every Wife Needs to Know is very strong in teaching submission, although he adopts what has become the standard posture that husbands are not to instruct their wives regarding their role as a Christian wife, and says that husbands must not call wives out when they are being moody or childish.
****Without a doubt all husbands across the ages have fallen short of loving their wives as commanded in the Bible, but this by itself should prove the absurdity of asserting that our modern feminist rebellion is due to men suddenly not being sensitive new age guys.
“ in the full throws [sic] of feminist rebellion.”
The word is ‘throes’
[D: Thank you! Fixed.]
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Pretty much what I pieced together seeing much of this growing up. Church caught unawares of the rebellion that had been brewing for 100 years, and recently ramped up during the “peaceful” 1950s.
Dobson also responded with a book similarly entitled, “What wives wish their husbands knew about women” While not a heavy-handed attack on men, the thesis is that women will be less rebellious if men are more loving.
The Protestant church in the USA embraced divorce. From then on what do you expect?
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE COUNSELING?
by Mike J. Baron, President, AMBEC
Should you and your wife finally decide to get some marriage counseling, don’t be surprised if the “Christian” therapist you choose comes prepackaged with an “anti-male bias!”
Three out of the four MCs I’ve used were clearly “anti-male,” and yet all of them came highly recommended by pastors and divorced women. (Why am I not surprised?)
One rather feminine male counselor gave me 2 things to do over the next three weeks, and he gave my wife 2 things to do as well. He said these assignments would improve our ability to relate. I did my 2 assignments. She only did one of hers, the easy one. And he just gave her a pass as though this issue of mine had no importance.
You are probably going to get one of these “pro-female” marriage counselors, so you’ll begin parting with your hard-earned money for some bad advice and some blood pressure meds!
And now you are in BIGGER TROUBLE than before you began “counseling” because you agreed to it, but when you try to explain your unhappiness about the counselor to your wife, she’ll be shocked ….because she’s already IN LOVE with Mr./Ms. amazingly insightful therapist!
*******************
Want more info on “anti-male” bias in the church? Click this AMBEC fb link and find out what AMBEC stands for!…and sign-on!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/reportAMBEC/
I think you’ll find that the core of the men bad/women good theology goes back quite a long way. British scholar Callum Brown dates the big shift to somewhere around the year 1800. He surveys the evangelical literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and writings from the 1800s are almost identical to Glenn Stanton. His book The Death of Christian Britain is about secularization in the UK, but basically argues that this feminization of faith (or more precisely, the merger of Christian and feminine identity), is what ultimately caused the collapse of Christianity in the west.
Churchians deserve it for believing lies and not actually listening to God. I’d personally love to see the church crumble to bits, but I do believe the elite have a good way to herd their cattle now
Paul told me that God made Kathy a responder and that her problems were a reflection of her responding to my treatment of her.
Let’s test this. God calls women to submit to him. And, according to Paul Hegstrom, women are made to be responders. So, do all women submit when God calls? If not, why not? Does Hegstrom’s feminist theology imply that God is at fault and is unable to cause women to submit to Him? Maybe the problem is that God is male? Maybe Hegstrom needs a feminine deity?
Where are the ‘just do the damned commandments of God and stop making excuses’ from the counselors? Christians keep measuring by carnal standards; by ‘experience.’ That is spiritual suicide with a smile on their face. Stop it. [see Bob Newhart’s “Stop It” on YouTube] Measure by scripture alone — that will guide to understanding.
“There is a conspiracy of her [the church] prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening their prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasures and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof. Her priests have violated my law and profaned mine holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and the profane …I am profane among them.” Ezel 22:25-26.
They willingly blow off the simple and clear instruction of ‘do this and you will know Me’ – because they are busy merchandising people……
“And many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of who the way of the truth shall be spoken evil of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you …their damnation slumbereth not.” 2 Pet 2:2-3 The church has consciously been hiding the truth of God, the anger and damnation of God …to MERCHANDISE church goers; to gain power and money.
They “Cunningly devised fables.” 2 Pet 1:16.
“But there were false prophets among the people even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, [yes, God damned lies] even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” 2 Pet 2:1
That is Strauss and Hegstrom, among most preachers in the church.
British scholar Callum Brown dates the big shift to somewhere around the year 1800. He surveys the evangelical literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and writings from the 1800s are almost identical to Glenn Stanton
Thanks, I’ll try to look into this. “Evangelical literature,” once again evangelicalism shows that it’s largely idolatry.
Worship of women in the West was noticed by Schopenhauer. I also got a good taste of it in grammar school–in the rhyme that implied girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Some girls are maybe made of that stuff but I would not say it is a rule.
Marriage seems like hell, I’m just going to state that quite unabashedly. These pastors are wrecked cucks who couldn’t work out a solution to feminist rebellion that didn’t involve a complete labotamy before one prostates themselves before their new masters.
I know so many people who need to read this…
and now I know from whence comes the “men have to man up and be manly first. Then, and only then, are women to be expected to submit” crowd. Now I know the source of the “women cannot submit to air, to nothingness” argument that has taken on even more prominence of late.
“But if the woman receives love she will respond with love, and will blossom into the most beautiful creature under God’s heaven. When a man claims that his wife doesn’t love him anymore he is unwittingly admitting that he hasn’t loved her as he should have. If he had, she would most likely have responded with love in return. A man gets from his wife what he invests in her. He cannot force her to love him, but he can show love to her and enjoy her loving response. Thus the responsibility for a successful marriage rests initially with the husband. He makes the first move—that of loving his wife with the totally unselfish love of Jesus Christ.”
“Buy her gifts
Complete her Honey Do list
Stop having so much “fun” at work
Help with chores”
etc.
I’d just challenge any man who think these things will improve a marriage, or get him more sex or better sex, to try them. Just try them. See how it works.
Running a marriage like this is the ENTIRE reason why married men started turning to Game to help their marriages. Advice like this is why there is such a thing as Married Game. This is why there’s a manosphere.
Men were doing EXACTLY these things, and they weren’t working. They just pissed off their wives even more.
Just like every other type of marriage counseling, then
Dang, Dalrock, you should go out and buy an Indiana Jones style had to wear, what you’ve done is like archeology in the deepest, dankest jungle. You’ve followed the faint track of, hmm, the giant snake cult back to its lair. 1972, eh? I bet a lot of changes in churches date back to about that time, all the mass-guitar-rock-band Worship Praise Team stuff, when did that start? “Relevance” in teaching, when did that start? The Boomers were, what, 25 years old at the time? Marrying and such? Reagan’s divorce law in California was 3 years old or so, and other state were rushing to catch up? And here is the smoking gun on the floor.
Anyway, looking over the transcript is like reading an ancient hieroglyph on the wall of an Egyptian pyramid that when translated turns out to say “Girls rule, boys drool, throw rocks at them!”. Here is the original “choreplay”, here is the original “buy her STUFF” [*] and the original “Spend more time with the kids so she doesn’t have to”, etc.
This is very ironic. Richly ironic, in fact. Because there is a school of practice that teaches “women as responders”, and their teachings have been demonstrated to work by many men. There is a praxology that teaches “women are like water, they will take the shape of the vessel they are poured into”.
It is ironic indeed that Game in general and Pick Up Artists in particular put into action every day the notion of “women as responders”. Just not the way that supplicating, White Knight pedestalizers want them to – pretty much the opposite, in fact. PUA’s tell men that women need to ride their “emotional roller coaster”, but not the way that this sermon teaches, in fact pretty much the opposite.
40-odd years after this sermon was written, the only men who really understand What Women Want are the cads and those dads who do the opposite of what this sermon tells them to do.
This far exceeds my Daily Requirement for irony. Thanks again for sifting through the sands of time to find it.
* I’m not very good at digging through the Bible, so I can’t find the passage where husbands are comanded, “Husbands, buy lots of STUFF for your wives that they will be happy” but I’m sure it must be in there someplace. Anyone want to help me out? Is it in the Book of Betas?
Christian followers of the zeitgeist are tapped into our culture just enough to absorb all the lies and nonsense but not enough to actually see for themselves that the BS secular ideas they are getting from Oprah do not match reality (i.e. that women adore manly men who, to put it crassly, put them in their place while they despise beta boys). If they were more immersed in our promiscuous, prurient secular culture, they might start to see through it. Of course, they have no excuse because they shouldn’t be seeking truth from popular culture but should instead just go to the Bible. But it’s a phenomenon that I find interesting. That is, when people are sheltered from our secular culture but not our secular culture’s propaganda they are worse off than if they were completely shut off from the world, ignorant of both the culture and the propaganda.
I notice it a lot in politics. People who are utterly uninterested in politics and who never read a newspaper are in a way less foolish than people are uninterested in political issues but read just enough New York ‘Times to look they know what they are talking about. Ignorance + propaganda is far worse than just pure ignorance.
Here are some excerpts from Callum Brown:
After 1800, the religiosity of women was paramount to the evangelical scheme for moral revolution. They were regarded as having special qualities which placed them at the fulcrum of family sanctity.
Though the female evangelical narrative structure might vary in these ways, there were uniform characteristics. First, women’s conversions were usually taken for granted; the issue was their ability to choose a godly husband or reform an ungodly one. Second, women’s spiritual destiny was virtually never portrayed as a battle with temptation or real sin; fallen women did not appear as central characters, and none of the usual temptations like drink or gambling ever seemed to be an issue with them. The problem is the man, sometimes the father, but more commonly the boyfriend, fiancé, or husband, who is a drinker, a gambler, keeps the ‘bad company’ of ‘rough lads’ and is commonly a womanizer. The man is the agency of the virtuous woman’s downfall; he does not make her bad, but does make her suffer and poor. She is not always portrayed as having undergone a major conversion experience, but to have emerged from childhood into a disciplined and natural ‘goodness.’
In evangelical stories about piety, women appeared throughout as good but not always converted; men, by contrast, almost always appeared as in a perilous sinful state until near the end. Men were the problem, given manifold temptations: drink (nearly always), gambling (increasingly after 1890), and ‘rough’ in overall cultural terms. They lived dissipated lives which caused suffering and ruination to mothers, wives, and children. Nowhere did evangelical literature have such a powerful influence in the public domain, including in ‘secular’ fiction, as in its demonization of men.
If the wife is the responder shouldn’t we be the ones supplying the “honey do” lists?
This responder line is nonsense. If they are responders isn’t that open admission of their lack of agency? I would say so. If that is true men are really the leaders and we KNOW that us not what these heretics are saying.
We are the bride of Christ, does that make us responders too? How could God possibly require an appropriate response when nothing is up to us? Again, nonsense and heresy.
“One woman wrote, ‘My husband needs to let me know that he is aware of my problems and understands them. I need to feel that we are working together toward a common goal’.”
Okay. So ask him what his goals are and help him achieve them. You know, like a HELP MATE. Problem solved.
It has been a long time since I looked at the book, but I don’t recall any assertion about female rebellion in the book.
It is not unreasonable to know what women think, but that is not necessarily the same as what they believe they are thinking.
My soon to be ex-wife blames me for the things I bought for her, so that point is definitely way off target.
This sounds like another attempt at having the man be a chauffeur leader. She should lead her wherever she already wants to go.
A key issue instead is that many (most?) women are not really teachable. A man cannot lead her anyplace if she is completely unwilling to learn from him. Yet that is one of the key roles a man should have in his family.
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1 Peter 3:7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
Like what? What knowledge? Paul’s parallel charges to Christian masters prove informative.
Ephesians 6:9 And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: *knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.*
Colossians 3:25 But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons. 4:1 Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; *knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.*
The instructions that Peter gives to husbands is very similar to the instructions that Paul gives to masters. Rule gently, as God rules you. Don’t abuse the one under your charge, they are your brother in Christ. Dwell with your wives in the knowledge that you also have a Master in heaven.
God is not here commanding men to understand the inner nature, makeup and mechanism of women.
Indications of this rebellion go back farther. Women in most US churches ceased to wear a covering (the God given Biblical symbol of their submission) in the 50’s and 60’s at latest. But that erosion began 100 years prior when in many places it was transformed from a modest covering to a fashion item.
For the 1900 years prior, women of every sect in every country wore coverings in the worship service, and often at all other times outside of it as well (esp. the medieval period and before). This isn’t a Protestant/Catholic thing; the rebellion happened in both. (Do orthodox women still cover?)
But even farther back, the marriage vows for the husband from the 16th century English Book of Common Prayer had the husband promise to ‘worship’ his wife. The vows date back to the Catholic Sarum rite of the11th century; well before the Anglican split from the Catholics (though I’m as yet unclear if the original called for ‘worship’).
But one only has to look at the veneration of Mary, Queen of Heaven and co-redemptrix to see that the church’s issue with pedestaling women goes way back. There are also many indications of spiritualizing dead bedrooms all the way back to the early church fathers.
But while the roots go way back, the full flower of feminist rebellion seemed occur in the fertile soil of the US. I suspect our pedestalization of women has a great deal to do with their scarcity during our many frontier phases combined with the terminal niceness of the founding Anglican stock. (You will note the last holdouts on the headcovering are mostly German descendants).
A recent exchange with my wife is related to this and is a good example of why women shouldn’t preach.
As is the case in many marriages, one of my wife and I’s most common areas of disagreement and trouble is finances. I think she spends too much (no matter how much I make, she almost has radar to detect and deplete). She, of course, is very good at arguing her justifications. This is Standard Operating Procedure for most marriages.
My wife recently joined a bible study group. Their recent topic was “what the devil whispers in your ear.” She “confessed” that money is a huge stress on me (and I also worry about spoiling our kids), and believes the devil is doing a lot of whispering in ears. I admit I was naive enough to think she was realizing that our clutter filled house and empty bank account was due in large part (although I can’t blame her solely) to the devil whispering her common catch phrases in her ear: “it’s a good deal,” “it’s on sale,” “you deserve it,” “it will save you money later,” “but the girls will love it,” “it would be great for the family to have season passes to a theme park 100 miles away,” etc.
But she didn’t conclude the devil was whispering about money in her ear…. she concluded he was whispering in my ear trying to convince me I wasn’t good enough to take care of my family. But she has complete faith in me to handle everything. Translation: She’s justified in all the times i spent money against my wishes, it is the devil that tells me to be upset about it.
So, I asked her, then what does the devil whisper in your ear? “To make me worry about my family too much, that’s why I call you constantly when you’re gone.”
So the devil isn’t whispering to influence her actions, just my reactions. Except that she worries too much about the right things, whereas I worry too much about the wrong things.
I’ll leave how I’m handling this for another day. It’s just a good example of why women aren’t allowed to preach. They are very adept at interpreting anything to fit their desires. Just like Eve twisted right and wrong to justifying eating the fruit… she wanted MORE, just as the devil told her she deserved.
This “theology” blatantly puts the man in a position of submission. It may achieve an equilibrium in the relationship, but one that is destructive and ultimately reaps misery.
For example, in my parents marriage, my father initially pushed back against my mother’s baby-boomer, feminist, rebelliousness, but threat-point eventually put him in his place. I remember many arguments with my mother making threats of divorce. When I was around 10 things settled into an equilibrium with my mother leading the family, commanding my father, criticizing him, subtly belittling him, and my father “loving” my mother by doing pretty much anything and everything she wanted. Presto! My mother “responded” to my father’s “love” by consolidating her power and becoming more bold in her sin. The Davisson’s marriage model in action!
God is Laughing @ 12:26 pm:
“If the wife is the responder shouldn’t we be the ones supplying the “honey do” lists?”
Flicking Amen. “Your wife responds to you, therefore you must respond to her feelings and needs”, what? .How did this hypocrisy get missed the first time around?
OP: “But if the woman receives love she will respond with love, and will blossom into the most beautiful creature under God’s heaven.”
This is how. Men believe in cause and effect and have the fix-it instinct. “Be nice to her and she won’t want to leave” is solid male logic. We accepted the blame because that made the problem easy to fix, but it never worked because we were never the problem’s source.
“It’s not my problem and I won’t try to fix it” is a hard thing for a Delta to say. Me included.
This “responder” thing is actually very brilliant. It’s wrong, but hits all the right cords to appeal to women.
You don’t refer to headship, submission, etc. Just say women respond in kind to what they get. This places full responsibility for everything on men without women having any obligation to behave any way. She is nasty all the time, well she’s just responding to his nastiness. But he isn’t nasty to her you might say? Well, his niceness must be a show and he has mean intentions, that must be it since she’s a responder.
Some may not see the difference between submitting and responding, but the difference is profound in that submitting requires taking responsibility, whereas responding does not.
@Gunner Q: How did this hypocrisy get missed the first time around?
_____________
Because we are so marinated in it from cradle to adulthood that we don’t see it anymore. If someone told wives to do their husbands honey do list, everyone, men and women alike, would think subservience.
A few years back I went to the “Love and Respect” seminar, and it is amusing how many women marched their husbands in thinking it was about showing love and respect to wives. The thought that their was guidance for them was not even considered. Even though Dr. Eggrichs devoted exactly the same minutes to husbands as wives, had exactly the same number of chapters for each in his book, and his scriptural references and instructions were deliberately balanced… women were sure that it was tilted to the man.
Women grabbing Illicit Authority in America goes back to at least the 1600’s. Margaret Fell, a founder of the Religious Society of Friends – Quakers – in 1666 wrote “Women’s Speaking Justified”. Quakers were selling mercy over law & judgment? Now the modern church shows that in no accountability to the Word and born out in, as Doug Wilson noted, a woman’s sin being “untouchable.” This has been baking in the oven for 350 years. And fellow Quaker of the period Geo Fox said ‘Inner Light’, not scripture, is ultimate authority, now the hallmark of the church, claiming to be of Christ.
No wonder John Adams was noting that America was failing before it ever began. He was seeing it in his wife Abigail, which I have to believe prompted him to observe the following:
“From all that I had read of History and Government, of human Life and manners, I had drawn this Conclusion, that the manners of Women were the most infallible Barometer, to ascertain the degree of Morality and Virtue in a Nation. All that I have since read and all the observations I have made in different Nations, have confirmed me in this opinion. The Manners of Women, are the surest Criterion by which to determine whether a Republican Government is practicable, in a Nation or not. The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Swiss, the Dutch, all lost their public Spirit, their Republican Principles and habits, and their Republican Forms of Government, when they lost the Modesty and Domestic Virtues of their Women.” John Adams Jun 2, 1778
This shit is all about women and pastors. It is a crock packed full of shit that stinketh to high heaven; an offense to the nostrils of our God. And His fury is about to let loose.
Went to a “Christian” marriage counselor and was disturbed that after four visits not once did he involve prayer before engaging my wife and I. When I finally decided we weren’t going anymore she accuses me of not liking what he was saying (I didn’t, he grilled me while letting her slide for the greater sin). Paid marriage counseling is a joke, and unpaid must be better first. Big hint, if they don’t say. “let’s pray”, get right up and walk away.
SnapperTrx says: November 8, 2016 at 3:00 pm
Also, key in on whether a counselor has significant fixation on ‘authority.’ If they do not emphasize authority, chances are they do not recognize scripture [despite saying ‘Lord, Lord.’].
But why am I even wasting my words on counselors or marriage books, for I have never seen one get it remotely right? Any good lie has some observable truth mixed in and all of the books and counselors will sell some good principle to make you think they are good, but they end up doing more damage, despite some honeymoon feel for a while.
I recommend a man just study what the words says and exhort that to himself and his wife and, with some pain, both will be better off in time. When men begin to see the authority of the Word at work in them and women begin to see their husbands stick to their guns, good things will happen. Not over night, but it will begin to happen.
@ Dalrock
Another link drop for ya for a possible blog post.
Brings a whole new meaning to the motto “Be Prepared.”
RPChristian
I remember many arguments with my mother making threats of divorce.
This is very common, as Dalrock has documented for years. There is a solution.
“Go ahead. Make my day”.
Now, that’s really extreme in the modern world. But since the 1970’s, if a woman wants to divorce, she can easily do so. I have become convinced that such threats, usually deployed against a father, are bluffs. They are attempts to gain the upper hand, because men fear losing their children (there was a reason divorces were few in the 19th century when default custody of children went to the father).
Again, no man can stop his wife from divorcing him if she really wants to. He can negotiate terms, but he can’t stop her. Therefore he should prepare his mind for that possibility, which is much like the Kubler-Ross sequence in coming to terms with death.
From a purely relationship point of view, a man who is not threatened by the Threatpoint cannot be blackmailed. From a religious point of view, divorce for any reason other than adultery is going against the Bible, although some denominations include abandonment and lately of course we have seen “abuse” added as justification.
Wrongful divorce will be on her head, and only on her head. It’s the same as in cases where she cheats, or were to commit murder – it is on her and her alone should she choose to commit such an action.
Callling a woman’s bluff is extreme, yes, but the alternative is ugly and betaizing. That in turn may well lead to divorce anyway.
This is a very hard thing for men to come to grips with. However, if a man truly in his heart does not fear divorce then his wife cannot use it to threaten him. This actually will make him more attractive to her. She will respond to his position.
However he has to be certain he can take the worst case, because he can’t bluff on this point.
(I’d include the obligatory YouTube link to Dirty Harry IV at this point, but it’s not really Safe For Work anymore)
Dr. Strauss almost had it.
Headship involves the husband’s solemn obligation to establish an atmosphere of love in which the basic needs of his wife are fulfilled—
This should say desires, not basic needs. You can be sure that meeting basic needs will fall far short of the mark, given that men and women usually have different ideas of what constitutes a need.
Once these desires are “fulfilled”, they will be changed. So keep on plugging away at it my good man. Chin up. I mean – man up! It’s a heavy responsibility I know, but we’re all counting on you.
Looking at this in the context of the current state of the west, media and government have catered to marxists/feminist (with the globalist goal of flooding the job market thus reducing wages, breaking up the father as the head of the household to make it more susceptible to manipulation) and where are we?
Government is nearly bankrupt, culture is moronic and filthy, women are hostile, whiny and competitive, men are dropping out of the marriage market. The marxist victim mentality removes individuals from bettering themselves and seeing a greater societal purpose.
With this comes churchianity with a concurrent pollution of values.
My comments never seem to end up here lately. Test.
Gunner Q
“Your wife responds to you, therefore you must respond to her feelings and needs”, what? .How did this hypocrisy get missed the first time around?
At a guess, in 1972 women’s rebellion wasn’t nearly as blatant and obvious as it has been for the last 20+ years, and the Victorian pedestalization of women was still strongly in force. A 30 year old man would have been born in 1942, and his father born back maybe in 1919 – end of WW I and the Edwardian era.
We can excuse this preacher for not knowing as much about women’s true nature as we know now, but if he mangled Bible quotes to get his result, what excuse does he have for that?
Gunner Q
“It’s not my problem and I won’t try to fix it” is a hard thing for a Delta to say. Me included.
Worse yet, the reality is this: “It’s not my problem, and I cannot fix it“. We men do not like to have a problem in the house that we cannot fix. Like dripping water in a tent on a rainy day. Or grasping oil.
Part of managing any team is truly understanding the weaknesses of each team member, and planning accordingly. In the modern, YouGoGrrl world women supposedly don’t have any weaknesses…
Anon Reader:
Yeah, I am convinced that if a woman threatens divorce, her husband really should drop the proverbial hammer and say “Go ahead and do it. If you really want a divorce, then do it. And don’t threaten me again with that. The next time you threaten me with it, I’ll bring you the papers myself.”
And then do it.
I don’t agree that openly threatening and talking about divorce is a bluff or a shit test. I personally think that if a wife is really threatening divorce, it’s pretty much over, really. If she is openly talking about divorce, the husband really should just get a lawyer and be done with it.
We must have all learnt Dr Strauss’ theology growing up, perhaps not consciously, but subconsciously, very much like the way poison gas used to kill men sleeping in dugouts in World War 1.It seeped into Sunday School, sermons, popular entertainment – you name it. It meant that we men who grew up with this did exactly as the good Doctor said. We had a list and tried to keep her happy. So we ticked off the list to find…not wedded bliss, but more discontent.
The phrase “Her basic needs are being met” pops up a lot. My understanding of basic needs are: Food, water, shelter, warmth. These have been provided by husbands to wives for millennia. Anything else as a subject for a wife’s discontent is simply a “First World Problem” that she needs to get over.
“Can’t the woman be the problem? The man is not always the problem in marriage.”
Joel Davisson was actually onto something here, before he got derailed. How can it be that Western men – those inept bumblers, idiots and brain dead morons who are even more stupid than their kids – can get such a perfect record of being the problem, 100% of the cause, 100% of the time? It requires a competence that the script says Western men don’t have!
deti
I don’t agree that openly threatening and talking about divorce is a bluff or a shit test. I personally think that if a wife is really threatening divorce, it’s pretty much over, really.
NAWALT, really. Depends on how high her personal emotional roller coaster goes. Some women have neural pathways tuned to high drama – a low drama man should avoid such a woman, but if that’s how she is and he’s married, well, he needs to teach her to manage that.
This is one of those things that should be laid out coldly at the start of any marriage.
Double so for any churchgoing couple: there is no place for threats of any kind in marriage.
Anyone who claims to be following the BIble has no business making threats to their till-death-do-us-part, right?
I can vouch for this.
@Neguy
Great stuff. Thanks!
Billy S I just want you to know that someone is praying for you during this time of great trial. I pray your wife’s eyes are opened and that she may be granted repentance.
@The Question’s BSA video
I used to be a Wolf Cub leader in Canada. When it was announced that every Scouts Canada group at every level had to accept girls I wasn’t happy about it. Neither were the boys, but.
They revamped the program the following year. One boy brought in a great jeasly garden spider. There was a black star (natural world) requirement for a cub to keep an insect of some other animal. I told the boy he had met that requirement! I opened his book for the new program, and that requirement was removed.
I raised a stink asking why it had been removed, and was told that girls don’t like keeping spiders and things. I said what the hell! Some girls will but most boys will. They removed activities that most boys like, because gurllzzz.
I was asked to leave the following year, because my attitude was not supportive of scouting. The Wolf Cub pack at my church did not survive for another two years. Scouts Canada has just hemorrhaged membership since then.
I got to know some of the leaders of one of the biggest groups in that county. They had Beavers, Wolf Cubs, Scouts, Venturers, and Rovers (ages 7 to 21), It was sponsored by a mosque. I lost contact so didn’t get feedback as to how they handled the must have girls rule. That mosque had no problem expecting the scouting groups to promise to do their duty to God and the Queen. Well integrated Moslems they were, and the SJWs, manginas, and feminists had to go kick them in the teeth.
@ RICanuck
SJWs have done a lot of damage to the Scouts, but there are alternatives.
1. Buy her gifts:
2. Do the housework:
3. Complete your wife’s Honey Do list:
4. Show her that she is appreciated:
5. “while they are at work getting rich,”
6. Be a sensitive new age guy:
1 and 4 are redundant, which is just another example of a mangina doubling down as that is all they know.
But that list is horrible. Forget misandry, such advice is even cruel to the woman. The husband will become so unattractive to the woman that this list is identical to a list that tells a woman to become obese, become smelly, get tattoos, never shave legs, armpits, or upper lips, fart often, and swear often. This is list is just as sinister as a list like that.
P.S. “while they are at work getting rich,” . This is a new angle in mangina idiocy. What a man earns is more the woman’s property than his own, by law. It is women who don’t share their paychecks with their family (even their children). There is no shortage of women who think their paychecks should only be for them, while the man’s earnings go towards the children and the wife’s shopping.
Funny how they all equate headship with ego. I thought headship was more like an office, an authority, a responsibility; more like an ego humbler than bolsterer. How can they mix things up so badly? Also, I suppose women’s supposed ‘responder’ status insofar as their submission being a response to the husband’s love, removes the idea of the woman actually having an agency of her own; convenient, eh?
Thanks JDG. Please also pray I keep a soft heart and keep my sarcasm under control. I only have her in the house until Saturday, but I still have to keep myself focused after that. Though I still want restoration. I was almost in tears today after talking with her and seeing her coldness, with a smile. I know women can be cold, but seeing it this close is jarring.
I got over it and will continue to do so, but I hate the path now.
Anon,
It is especially bad if she doesn’t like the gifts her got her.
asdgamer: very astute observation.
Dalrock or other: I’m interested to hear your thoughts on Paul tying together Eve and deception in the NT.
In 1 Cor 11:3, Paul talks of the Corinthian church as a virgin bride promised to Christ, but who is being deceived “as the serpent deceived Eve”. On one hand, vulnerability to deception is not being noted as specifically female (since he’s talking to the Church as a whole). On the other, it’s a clear analogy of a “woman” (Eve, the Church) being lead away from loyalty to God by Satan.
The more direct passage is 1 Tim 2:13. After urging men to pray rather than quarrel and women to value good works over worldly finery, Paul instructs women to learn with submission. And he bolsters this argument by pointing to Eve being deceived (identifying her with woman as contrasted to Adam / man). Given the frequent and general nature of warnings against being deceived in the NT (arguably primarily delivered to men), why this particular personification at this one point?
“If she receives irritability, criticism, disapproval, unkindness, indifference, lack of appreciation, or lack of affection, she will respond with a defense mechanism, such as bitterness, coolness, defiance, or nagging.”
Unfortunately, this is all many girls receive for much of their life from their single mom. They never know the power and security of a man’s love from the men her mom occasionally allows to be a part of her life. They grow up to be bitter, cold, defiant, nagging women. They have formed their response before they ever met their husband. With these women, the only winning move is not to play. A great relationship comes from leadership and submission, you can’t have one without the other. A wife must giver her husband leadership through submission. One cannot force submission through leadership, that would be bargaining, and it’s not leadership to serve, nor submission to expect something in return.
The bible says a woman needs leadership, these false teachings say she needs gifts. It says we need to give her things to receive her love. But what is it that she must give to receive our love? “Nothing”. Not love, not submission, not appreciation. And if she tells you she doesn’t feel appreciated for what she does, that’s a sure sign that she doesn’t appreciate her partner for what he does. When she says he doesn’t appreciate her for doing the laundry, what she means is she doesn’t appreciate him for working 8 hour days to buy their clothes and pay for her laundry machine.
While it’s true that men have been mislead towards blue pill leadership, they ultimately want to lead, but are being taught the wrong principles. Women aren’t being taught to submit incorrectly, they’re being taught not to submit at all! Blue pill leadership is practically not leading at all. Once men truly understand leadership, which the manosphere is teaching, all that’s left is for men to screen out the women incapable of following. This will have a huge impact, even as women learn in their late 20s learn how to act to get married.
Anon
P.S. “while they are at work getting rich,” . This is a new angle in mangina idiocy.
The sermon was written in 1972, so it is an old angle, obviously.
@BillyS
Why did she come back?
She is packing up the things she wants to take. She is only here from 10-5 or so, then she relaxes the rest of the time, or something.
I keep making attempts to break through, but logic is worthless and she has flipped the bit in her head so she is convinced this is necessary, even though she seems to know she will be worse off. She will “have her own life back” though, which is the main goal now.
This is harder than just having it cut, but I keep reaching out and the pain of seeing the death in progress does get easier, somewhat.
OT, but your old friend Jenny Erikson, divorced and single after blowing up her marriage, has announced on Twitter that she’s pregnant! No mention of the Dad . . .
OT:
A portable DNA lab!
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/nyregion/rolling-dna-labs-address-the-ultimate-question-whos-your-daddy.html
When I read the subject, my first thought was emergency responder.
Having consumed the piece, that obviously isn’t the focus.
One of the things about actually being an emergency responder is that skill, situation awareness, speed, and execution is something that drives you, and everyone on your response is aware of your execution. Dead weight is not welcomed.
In emergency response, there is a reason that women typically serve as EMTs, and not Fire Fighters in segregated units; the physical demands, the controlled aggression, and the capability to risk life and limb in saving others is something far more suited to the men who don bunker gear.
Most women are not equipped to be emergency responders, much less the ones who enter a burning building searching for survivors.
In similar fashion, women typically react, they don’t RESPOND. Ask anyone who has worked a structure fire.
should have been REACT, don’t respond.
@ Anonymous Reader, deti
Little late to the party but
and
Was Jesus afraid of anyone walking away from Him? Nope.
60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?” 61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble? 62 What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would [j]betray Him. 65 And He was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.”
66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” 68 Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. 69 We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”
I don’t think as many words as that are needed deti. This is better, said blandly and unemotionally: “Since you want a divorce, I’ll go get the papers and sign them.”
This will essentially force her to backpeddle and apologize, or it will get you a divorce which if she has her mind set on it then it’s better for you to be away from a contentious woman anyway. A “do not threaten me again” can come after she back peddles and apologizes, if it is needed at all. The power dynamic will have already shifted, so it’s not needed.
Offering to get the papers is calling the bluff to an extent, but by itself may not be enough to weigh her options in your favor given the financial calculus that is at play. I’ve been threatened that way and took some drastic steps to see it didn’t happen, but I also had to steel my resolve in case if it ever came up again, something like this:
“I will not participate in the destruction of my family nor support that process with one voluntary penny. If you file for divorce, then you and the courts and the lawyers will get from me only what you can steal. Drop this right now and I will pay the court costs and the lawyers. Pursue it, and I will quit my job and go to jail before writing a single check for alimony or child support. I will sign nothing and agree to nothing. I can’t stop you from doing what you want to do, but if you leave, you are on your own, and the children will know that I had nothing to do with their suffering.”
If she really wants to go, then let her prove it by leaving the children with you to take care of. If the threat is merely for leverage, then rob it of any benefits to her by refusing to play.
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“The correct treatment of a girl does not always preclude courtesy and gentleness no more than it always involves them. There is a time for courtesy and gentleness, and a time for harshness. The master must remember that he owns the girl; if he keeps this in mind he will generally treat her correctly. He must be strong, and he must be capable of administering discipline if she is not pleasing. Sex in a woman, as in a man, is not only richly biological but psychological as well, and the words suggest a distinction which is somewhat misleading. We are psycho-physical organisms, or better perhaps, thinking, feeling organisms. Part of the correct treatment of a woman is treating her as you wish; she has genetic dispositions for submission bred into every cell of her body, a function of both natural and sexual selection. Accordingly, what might seem brutal or quick to a man can be taken by a woman in the dimensions of her sentience as irrefutable evidence of his domination of her, her being owned by him, which thrills her to the core for it touches the ancient biological meaning of her womanhood. He simply uses her for his pleasure, because he wished to do so. He is her master.”
John Norman
So sad when pagans make more sense than supposed Christians who never open a Bible .
Male dominance is central to female arousal but those wishy washy pastors just hide the truth and make marriage a thing of “courtesy and gentleness” only . No wonder why so many are totally turned off .
Isn’t it the right balance between female submission and male love and consideration that John Normal is stating here ? And this is exactly what the LORD advocates and commands !!
A woman who does not feel “under the joke” will never respond to a man afraid of himself and of his own sexual desires (like most of wimpy western men today ) .
Notice how he says ” her being owned by him”
Doesn’t the Bible say that the wife does not own her body but her husband does ?
The thrill lies in there . And even pagans get it better than dumb churchians who do not obey what the Lord says but rather listen to so called pastors who have been led them astray for decades .
With all due respect, and coming from the expert position of being a woman myself, I contend that you are woefully wrong. The pastor, Strauss, has heard from God!
[D: Approved solely for comedic value. No need to reply.]
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