Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game–The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
There is another aspect to the Dr. Russell Moore sermon I wrote about in my previous post. It contains something astoundingly common for modern Christian leaders, and that is a provocation to marital strife:
Some of you—in your marriages, right now—are experiencing deadness, and mistrust, and conflict because you, husbands, led that woman into fornication.
Feminism has weaponized female discontentment and sown marital strife. Pastors and other Christian leaders have responded to this not by countering it with relevant Scripture like 1 Peter 3:1-6, but by joining in. The reasons for feminists to encourage female discontentment and marital strife are fairly obvious, but for Christian leaders the reason for their perverse delight in sowing marital strife is more puzzling.
While the reasons are puzzling, the pattern is crystal clear. I’ll share just a few examples in this post, but you will see it everywhere. Pastor Caleb Suko opens his post How to Make Your Wife Submit to Your Authority -6 Tips with:
Alright men here’s another post for you! Let’s not beat around the bush, the Bible commands our wives to submit to us!
This is of course carefully calculated to stir up feminist resentment in the wives who are reading. Suko knows that the modern Christian men reading aren’t clamoring to force their wives into submission, they are cowering in fear of contentiousness from their feminist wives. The whole point of the opening line was to fan the smouldering feminist resentment right off the bat. The same is true for:
Don’t think for second that you need to lay down the law and “show her who’s boss”!
Likewise, Pastor Sam Powell writes in Headship is not Hierarchy:
Did Adam sit on the couch and say “Woman, beer me and shut those kids up!” I think not.
Dr. Richard L. Strauss preached in What Every Husband Needs to Know (background) that if wives are unhappy, their husband is to blame:
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.
…
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.
Dr. David Clarke at Focus on the Family explains that women being discontented in marriage and men being happy is a sign that God made women better at marriage than men. A wife’s discontentment isn’t something she needs to overcome, it is a virtue, and proof that she is better at marriage than her fool of a husband:
Well, these little stories we heard just a few minutes ago from these ladies, I have heard a million times at my seminars, in my therapy office, oh, just one after the other, good solid Christian women… There’s no real intimacy. I’m dying inside. And the key is, they’re not letting the husband know that. The guy has no clue. He’s perfectly happy. So, when that woman hits the wall and leaves him, he is the most stunned guy on earth.
…
Now He’s got a master plan, because if we work together and let the woman actually teach us, ’cause she has many more skills interpersonally that we will … ever will have. She’s got a Ph.D. in emotional intimacy and spiritual intimacy very often. We have like a third-grade education.
Clarke is so concerned that wives might follow the instructions in 1 Pet 3:1-6 and try to win their husbands without a word that he insists that wives schedule time for strife:
…many Christians and pastors, the Christian community are on board with this problem in trying to get their attention, ’cause the wife is told … I see this in books all the time and from pastors from the pulpit. If you just love your husband, uh … treat him well, meet his needs, then he’s gonna turn around and just love you back the way you really need to be loved. Absolutely false. He’s a guy. He doesn’t know how anyway. He doesn’t know there’s a problem. And if you keep loving him, he’ll think everything’s fine. He will never get it. You have to get the man’s attention. You gotta sit down and say, “Honey, I’m not happy in our marriage. Here’s why. Let’s change it.”
…
The woman’s got to tell the man, “Look, Honey, I want to have a meeting with you in three days. It’s about our marriage. It’s gonna be very serious. In fact, it’s extremely serious and I want the kids aren’t gonna be in the house when we have this meeting.” And you set a time and that will get his attention…
You gotta get a man with a shovel to the head, metaphorically speaking, of course.
Some pastors don’t trust the wife to schedule the strife, so they schedule it for her. Former Acts 29 president Pastor Mark Driscoll suggested in Marriage and Men (“How dare you!”) that the strife begin during his sermon and continue on the ride home:
…some of you guys have already given her that look, “Don’t cry, don’t let ’em know they’re talking about me. Just hold it together.” You’ve already intimidating her right here. Some of you guys have already whispered in her ear, “I don’t want to hear it. We’re not talking about this in the car on the way home.” Some of you have already whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Trust me. Let’s just move on real quickly.”
How dare you! Who in the hell do you think you are?! Abusing a woman, neglecting a woman, being a coward, a fool, being like your father, Adam! Who do you think you are?! You’re not God! You’re just a man! You’re not an impressive man! You’re not a responsible man! You’re not a noble man! You’re not a respectable man! You’re not a responsible man in any regard!
Likewise, in his sermon Women’s Hurdles current Acts 29 president Pastor Matt Chandler explains that if the wife is in any way tempted to feminist discontentment it is the husband’s fault, and schedules the strife for the ride home:
Really, men, here is a great way to gauge how you’re serving, loving, and practicing your headship. If the most secularized feminist in the world showed up in your home and began to kind of coach your wife toward freedom and liberation from your tyranny, our wives should be so well cared for, so nourished, so sowed into and loved, they would say, “What you’re describing is actually tyranny. I love where I am…
Men, here is a good opportunity. If you’re like, “Well, gosh, I don’t think she would say that at all,” then, men, I think on the way home, you should probably repent and confess before the Lord to your wife.
As disturbing as it is that Christian leaders are deliberately sowing strife in Christian marriages, it is even more disturbing that this has become so commonplace that it now feels normal. No one notices this, because this is what we have come to expect from Christian leaders, especially complementarian leaders, in our feminist age. But this evil compulsion (for it truly is evil) is anything but normal for Christian leaders to practice. It only feels normal because we have become numb to this profound wickedness.
“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.”
Please excuse my language but how come modern preaching and Christian writings sound like faggoty, self-help BS when the Bible never sounds like faggoty, self-help BS?
Thank you Dalrock for pointing out these deceivers to us. Since we get so many bad examples of feminist-inspired preachers, do you have any posts of preachers actually “laying down the law” to the women in their congregations?
I can’t help but flip Matt Chandler’s little pandering statement around to prove my point.
“Really, ladies, here is a great way to gauge how you’re serving, loving, and practicing your submissiveness. If the most beautiful, attractive woman in the world showed up in your home and began to kind of seduce your husband by offering sexual ecstasy and liberation from your prudishness, your husbands should be so well cared for, so respected, so thoroughly pleased in the bedroom, they would say, “What you’re describing is adulterous. I love where I am…
Women, here is a good opportunity. If you’re like, “Well, gosh, I don’t think he would say that at all,” then, women, I think on the way home, you should probably repent and confess before the Lord to your husband – then fix him a sammich and put on some revealing outfit.”
All these pastors are doing is encouraging shit tests, and setting the men up to flunk! It’s the perfect recipe to make your wife less attracted to you.
The woman’s got to tell the man, “Look, Honey, I want to have a meeting with you in three days. It’s about our marriage. It’s gonna be very serious. In fact, it’s extremely serious and I want the kids aren’t gonna be in the house when we have this meeting.” And you set a time and that will get his attention…
Lol. If my wife EVER said something like this to me (and thank God she hasn’t, and never will), I would just look her straight in the eyes and say “uhhh, no.”
@TheQuestion
That is an excellent observation.
Husband’s temptations = husband’s fault.
Wife’s temptations = husband’s fault.
Please excuse my language but how come modern preaching and Christian writings sound like faggoty, self-help BS when the Bible never sounds like faggoty, self-help BS?
Maybe because seminaries spend more time teaching out of self help books and don’t bother with Bible scholarships?
Perhaps a rephrase of your question and my reply can make this clearer.
RPC
Lol. If my wife EVER said something like this to me (and thank God she hasn’t, and never will), I would just look her straight in the eyes and say “uhhh, no.”‘
That’s one answer. Another would be to Agree and Ampify with “Great! I’ve been wanting to do your performance evaluation for a while now, this should be a perfect time. Be sure you have two pencils and several sheets of paper so you can take notes as I speak”. There are other responses possible, to be sure. However, the average, frustrated, churchgoing man won’t know of any of them, because he’s been taught, carefully taught, to defer and submit to women as a group, and his wife in particular. Taught in part by church leaders and speakers such as we see Dalrock dissecting in this post.
Dalrock, a cynic would suggest at this point that since some of these men make money off of counseling people with trouble in their marriages, by encouraging women to be contentiious they are merely building future business. Like a corrupt dentist handing out caramels, or a crooked tire repair shop owner strewing roofing nails on the highway outside of town, they are just talking their own book.
“Please excuse my language but how come modern preaching and Christian writings sound like faggoty, self-help BS when the Bible never sounds like faggoty, self-help BS?”
He who pays the Piper calls the tune – and it sure as hell ain’t straight, masculine, assertive men calling it.
“As disturbing as it is that Christian leaders are deliberately sowing strife in Christian marriages, it is even more disturbing that this has become so commonplace that it now feels normal.”
Sadly, it appears Evangelicalism is following the same path that the so called mainline Protestant churches have journeyed down already. It is interesting to see the names that some of these give themselves. One I saw recently was a church that is located in a former hardware store. It calls itself “Element Church”. I’m still trying figure out what that’s supposed to mean,
What do you think about the role of responsibility and headship, as espoused by Douglas Wilson. For example, if a wife isn’t doing the dishes and leaving things a mess, the husband needs to sit her down and confront. But it starts off with the husband saying that it is primarily his fault, repenting of his lapse of leadership, and then calmly and clearly laying out his expectations for his wife in regards to doing the dishes. Is she starts to lapse, you do it again. If she is willfully rebellious, you get help from the elders (if you’re in a good church).
Isn’t there a sense of “the buck stops here” in regards to male leadership?For men, it can primarily be a failure to communicate and not living in an understanding manner. We hole up and ignore a problem. Which also isn’t a loving thing to do, to allow your wife to live in sin.
The wife is still guilty of her sin, but the husband is responsible, to an extent, for anything that goes on under his authority.
Genuinely curious what people here think.
You know, a dark alley and some ball bats would fix a lot of these preachers.
Either women have agency or they do not. If they, do, then they are not simply “responders” who will act only in accordance with whatever man is influencing them at any one time… and they are responsible for their own decisions and the consequences of those decisions (including the decision to sin).
If they do not, then their thoughts should be treated with no more consideration than you would give to what SIRI says.
What you cannot have is a doctrine wherein women are considered to have agency when they do good things, but not when they do bad things, which is precisely what Russell Moore, Sam Powell, Richard Strauss, David Clarke, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, the Kendrick brothers, and countless others insist on peddling.
Of course the correct way to deal with the “dilemma” is to embrace the Biblical understanding: woman is the weaker vessel. She is endowed with agency (and is thus responsible for owning her actions), but still requires the leadership of, first, her father and, later, her husband. A husband can and should solicit his wife’s input, and delegate things to her as well (that’s what help-meets are for), but he should not allow her to usurp the leadership role that rightly belongs to him, and for which he holds responsibility to God.
I know that we’ve long-since gotten away from the idea found in 1 Timothy and Titus that church leaders must be husbands and fathers, but nowadays I also tend to reserve judgement on guys who have never served in the military… these days that’s one of the few institutions where leadership is practiced and backed by the force of law. Exercising leadership and followership has severe, real-world consequences for soldiers that do not exist in any civilian setting I can think of. There’s a reason why the most faith-strong person Jesus ever encountered was a Roman military officer (Matt 8:10 and Luke 7:9). Obviously I would never make a doctrine about that, but if a pastor knows very little about leadership, does it call into question his counsel to husbands regarding leadership within families? Does that increase the likelihood of “the blind leading the blind?”
The guys Dalrock cites are once-again displaying their lack of understanding about leadership and responsibilities: he who has responsibility has the authority he needs to carry it out. Conversely, he who has the authority is responsible for how he uses it. These charlatans give the wives the authority to lead their husbands (by commanding the husbands to respond to their wives’ cues and giving wives the right to counsel and reprimand their husbands), while not recognizing that any such authority must be balanced by equal responsibility. In their worldview, wives wield authority and husbands bear responsibility. A military man is less likely to make that mistake than a guy whose entire life has been spent in schools and pulpits. If God has endowed my wife with superior knowledge on what’s best for our marriage, then she is the one responsible for the state of our marriage, not me. Fortunately, my wife has no such delusions, but too many husbands and wives listen to those guys who don’t know any more about authority and responsibility than they know about constructing an Air Tasking Order.
The Bible balances authority with responsibility within marriage perfectly. The great irony is that these heretics are calling that balance “tyranny” and seeking to replace it with actual tyranny – giving one party authority without responsibility and the other party responsibility without authority.
Matt Robison,
I think if you are in a church that advises a man to get help from the elders because a wife isn’t doing the dishes you’re in the wrong church. And no the husband is not responsible.
I’ll add that the more they push this crap, the worse the reaction will be. I’m genuinely curious to see how far they’ll go before things turn around.
It’s simple physics; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The backlash to this kind of misandry in the church and society will be very ugly before things get better.
@squid hunt
“You know, a dark alley and some ball bats would fix a lot of these preachers.”
No joke, don’t be surprise if it ever gets that bad.
Consider these words from Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s book “Two Years Before the Mast” reflecting on the city of San Francisco.
“It has been through its season of Heaven-defying crime, violence, and blood, from which it was rescued and handed back to soberness, morality, and good governance by that peculiar invention of Anglo-Saxon Republican America, the solemn, awe-inspiring Vigilance Committee of the most grave and responsible citizens, the last resort of the thinking and the good, taken to only when vice, fraud, and ruffianism have entrenched themselves behind the forms of law, suffrage, and ballot, and there is no hope but in organized force, whose action must be instant and thorough, or its state will be worse than before.”
“If the most secularized feminist in the world showed up in your home and began to kind of coach your wife toward freedom and liberation from your tyranny, our wives should be so well cared for, so nourished, so sowed into and loved, they would say, “What you’re describing is actually tyranny. I love where I am…”
The Bible literally starts off striking down the above. life. Eve is in the world/garden as God made it. It is without sin. Adam has received perfect instruction from God. He has executed it without sin/error. And God is regularly there himself to commune with Adam and Eve. He’s directly overseeing it–in person (if you will). Can there be a more perfect environment for a woman? God’s perfect plan being perfectly executed. In walks (apparently serpents were still walking then) the greatest deceiver ever and starts tempting Eve with tales of her own grandeur. Of how she should be, not just Adam’s equal, but God’s equal.
So Eve, who lacks for nothing, and is receiving all perfect things perfectly, is tempted solely by the vision of her own unlimited greatness. And does she cling to God in all his glory and perfection? No, she bolts at the first invitation, it was barely out of the serpent’s moth before it was in hers, to be greater. And having sinned and immediately understanding what she had done, what is her very next act? To take her husband down with her.
It contains something astoundingly common for modern Christian leaders, and that is a provocation to marital strife:
While the reasons are puzzling, the pattern is crystal clear.
I am puzzled why these guys would provoke marital strife, and I have seen this in person from other pastors with similar messages (some of the wording is so exact that I am certain they are using the works of these more well known guys). I understand about going for “The LIft”, and seeking approval from the women, but they could achieve this by simply continuing to worship the women per normal. No real need for marriage poisoning at first glance.
I’ll give benefit of the doubt in regards to their collective lack of leadership skills. We have reliable first and second hand accounts that seminaries do not provide a grounding in how to lead people. Unless they have gleaned the knowledge from other sources, most men will leave the seminary unprepared to lead a flock, even though you would think preparation for this would be a central focus. But if it were merely this, a fair minded man would likely be making mistakes in how he addressed both men and women. He would be fumbling on both fronts as he worked out the best method for exhorting both sexes. This doesn’t seem to happen enough to be worthy of note. This alone is not why they are provoking strife.
I’ll posit that most of these guys are scared of women. They are often on eggshells around their own wives, and don’t have to preach many sermons before they learn how quickly the parish females will call out anything they don’t like. This combination of irate home wife and church wives would have a deleterious effect on most men, and especially the types we are discussing here (to generalize: blue pill, beta, men of words more than action, insert whatever term from the sphere that is appropriate – yes, I know this because I was that guy). However, once again there is no particular requirement to drag anyone’s marriage into this. The pastor can simply continue to exalt the women and avoid saying anything to get their dander up. Fear of the women alone is not why they provoke marital strife.
@Anonymous Reader posits that by provoking marital strife, a guy that does marriage counseling for a living could really keep that industry going. I had not thought of that, it is logical; but I have a hard time ascribing those motives to any of the many chaplains or pastors I’ve known personally. This doesn’t make the idea any less legitimate of course, but it doesn’t seem like that would be many of them, or given the way people talk, that they could get away with it for very long. Nevertheless, this must remain as one of the possibilities.
The last thing I can think of is the classic AMOG. But even this seems to beg more risk taking than this group is known for. There are likely men in his congregation that 1) know more than him, and 2) could really give him a mental and/or physical beat-down, that would wreck his AMOG posturing for all time at that church. He would get mileage off his efforts in the near term, but eventually a man, or some men are going to bridle at this if he keeps it up.
Very interested in other views as to why the pastors believe marital strife has to be provoked in order to achieve their goals.
Yogi,
What you just wrote is the exact argument I used on Sam Powell’s blog. Eve: a woman living in unimaginable paradise, without the taint of original sin, married to a literally perfect man, with daily personal communion with God Himself… and she rebelled anyway.
He called it “creepy” and banned me.
It’s an impossible burden to follow. No can do, not one to sign up for impossible. I’m sorry mates but you lost the marriage battleground. No one took it seriously and these faggots are the result. Pack up your shit, go home and have a beer. Shits all retarded.
Eve sinned, God punished her. That means she has agency, no one forced her to sin. She was deceived and she willfully partook in that deception. Women are always deceived, it is their great flaw. Look how they lap up this shit even though it’s not true. They lap it up and bask in the deception.
Headship is leading, there is a certain responsibility but that responsibility begins and ends with the tasks you dish out. It does not extend to actions taken outside your ability to control or with the willful intent of others to disobey your order.
Come on, you cannot say someone has responsibility for others on one hand and yet demand that they have no authority over them on the other. These two go hand in hand, think of them as ‘sliders’. If one goes up, the other goes up too, if one goes down, likewise, the other goes down too. To not have them go hand in hand is to necessitate disorder and strife.
Explain how the buck stops anywhere instead of the person who commits an act? If you delegate a task to an insubordinate and they fail, the failure is theirs but the responsibility of delegation to an incompetent rests on the one with authority, important to note the distinction. The insubordinate still has agency. They committed the wrongful act and suffer the consequences. In such a case, you fire the incompetent person or train them better for future. In the case of a wife, the husband cannot fire her, he can’t discipline her, he cannot do much of anything as he as NO authority and thus cannot be held responsible, not for the act she took, nor for the fact that he delegated the task to her. The sin is hers, always has been and always will be. The is no buck to stop.
If you are seriously going for that sort of buck, then you must hand the husband complete and total authority, the authority to do as he needs to do, no strings attached. Willing to do that?
Heck, if the wife decides to go and commit murder. Is the husband responsible?
Only if he gave the order, a husband has no more control over another person’s actions than anyone else in this world. He can only provide guidance before, correction during and punishment afterwards. Those are the only tools in his box. If you remove his ability to use them…
So, in hindsight, the husband’s responsibility only pertains to how he uses his authority, not the acts committed by others under his authority and if you remove that authority, his responsibility is unequivocally revoked.
Just for interest sake. God has authority over us, right? Now go with that thought experiment, Matt.
Matt,
I’m going to go back to military hierarchy to answer your question. Unless you’re at the very top or the very bottom you have both authority and responsibility (only God is at the top). Think about it this way:
As an officer I had authority that was delegated to me by the President of the United States (it says so right on my commission). I was obligated to follow any order that came down from that chain of command, as long as the order was lawful (the President himself is bound by higher law, and nobody anywhere in the chain of command may override the lawful order of a superior). I, in turn, had subordinates who were answerable to me, and they had subordinates who answered to them.
Let’s say my boss ordered me to achieve some goal. He would typically tell me the end-state he desired and give me any pertinent guidance on how he wanted it done, if he cared. Chances are, I wouldn’t perform the entire mission myself personally, but I would delegate portions of it to various subordinates (with my guidance, if I had any), and might well set one of them in charge of the overall accomplishment, since I might have numerous other missions besides that one. My superior would hold me responsible for the mission, and although I delegated authority to my subordinates to get it done, I could not delegate the responsibility to my boss for it. My boss didn’t give the order to my sergeants – he gave it to me. Having said that, if my subordinates screwed up, they still had to answer to me, but only I answered to my boss. But… within that organization, there is a general rule that all subordinates must follow the lawful orders of their superiors, so if my subordinates disobeyed my orders, they could be punished by the higher authority for that.
Now… if – when I delegated the sub-tasks to my subordinates – I neglected to tell any of them to do a particular sub-task that was essential, I couldn’t blame any of them, since they would have done what I told them to do… making sure the task was adequately covered is my duty, not theirs. Of course I would confer with them to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, but if we all missed something important, it was my @$$.
That sets the stage to answer your question. There is no Biblical commandment to do the dishes, so that mission originates with you. If your wife isn’t doing them, there are three possibilities: 1) you didn’t tell her to (entirely your fault), 2) you didn’t provide her the means to (your fault for not empowering your subordinate to do the task you assigned – her fault for not telling you that she didn’t have the means to accomplish her mission), or 3) she has the means to do them but is just blowing you off (entirely her fault). Since that mission originated with you and is not one passed to you from your chain of command, you’re off the hook with your superior if it doesn’t get done. (You won’t miss the rapture because of dirty dishes in the sink.) But… if she just didn’t do it (Option 3), she is not only answerable to you for not doing the dishes: she is answerable to God (the higher authority) for failing to submit to her husband. (Because he violated the general order that wives are to obey their husbands, not because she broke the non-existent command, “Thou shalt do the dishes.”)
You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.
See the parallel?
Church leadership in America isn’t leadership–sure, it bears the name, but functionally it’s just passing down orders from the dominant culture. This is why the church follows the culture so closely.
This is like watching someone from a far off hill secretly dump poison into a community’s water supply, and you cannot do a damn thing about it except warn people.. and only about 1 in 10 will listen.
“If God has endowed my wife with superior knowledge on what’s best for our marriage, then she is the one responsible for the state of our marriage, not me. ” So, so well said, Lyn87. Lay that on a Christo-feminist sometime. The reaction would probably be very entertaining. Make sure you bring along your popcorn popper.
@Matt Robinson
I’m not familiar with the teaching by Pastor Wilson you are referring to. Wilson is certainly good on some things, but has a profound aversion to holding women accountable, as he demonstrated in his absurd gyrations to avoid enacting any form of punishment if a woman aborts her unborn child. When pressed on this, he doubled down by saying well, perhaps we could hold women accountable in a theoretical future 1,000 years from now. Likewise, I recall another post where he said if a wife withholds sex after not getting her way in an argument, a husband would be in the wrong for objecting to this, as this would be proof that the husband felt unreasonably entitled.
What I would say is to be careful not to jump into just another form of attacking headship by laying all fault on the man (perhaps at the same time setting yourself up as the only real man in the room). We have at least 5 decades of denying feminist rebellion by redirecting all of our energy to how terrible men are. The temptation to continue to do so in order to avoid the terrifying idea of holding wives accountable will be huge. The husband is responsible for clearly communicating what he expects, and I would say this is an area we probably all fail in. So if the husband sulks instead of pointing out that the wife is neglecting the dishes, yes, that (sulking) is on him. I know Cane Caldo had some good posts on this a while back, and I think Scott has done some posts on this as well. But if the wife is avoiding work due to laziness (as we all are wont to do), or if she is rebelling against what she sees as the patriarchal oppression of gender roles, that is on her. The idea that all of the sins of a wife start with the husband is nonsense. Women are perfectly capable of sinning all on their own. Just like men, they are in fact experts at it.
Lyn87
but nowadays I also tend to reserve judgement on guys who have never served in the military… these days that’s one of the few institutions where leadership is practiced and backed by the force of law.
I agree wholeheartedly that most pastors have no training in real leadership I would even go a step further and argue that many pastors come from families where the father was absent or dysfunctional, so whatever perspective they do have on headship tends to be distorted by their personal experiences. Dalrock has mentioned this before in regards to Driscoll. Ironically, my pastor, who is the passive white-knighter type and is frequently guilty of feminism from the pulpit, has talked many times during sermons about how his father was an angry alcoholic. I can’t help but connect the dots.
I’m not sure why so many of these men pursue pastorships. Maybe because on some subconscious level they are trying to compensate for the lack of approval they received from their own fathers. Then, when they get into a position of authority, they re-enact their personal father-son dynamic with their congregations.
I would also point out that the idea of conflating asking a wife to do the dishes and her rebelling and a wife going to cheat on her husband but still blaming him is out of this world.
Clearly in the first case, the husband actually gave a task to the wife. The second, not so much. Lyn can correct me if I’m wrong but if an subordinate decides, with no given task from their superior, to undertake a mission, the superior isn’t to be held responsible. The buck stops with free will, the subordinate has agency and thus can choose to follow or choose to rebel. That is entirely on them, if they choose to follow and receive incorrect information, the responsibility of failure rests on the superior, if they choose to rebel, the responsibly or buck, stops with them.
@ Lost Patrol:
“I am puzzled why these guys would provoke marital strife, and I have seen this in person from other pastors with similar messages (some of the wording is so exact that I am certain they are using the works of these more well known guys).”
These men don’t believe they are provoking marital strife. They believe they’re helping married folks with their marriages. They are also telling their clientele (mostly women) what they want to hear. They would never tell these women to submit respectfully and to help their husbands.
At bottom it is because the women want (or think they need) power in their marriages, and leveraging pastoral messages is a good way to do it.
Vagina-worshipping men-bashers.
Heck, if the wife decides to go and commit murder. Is the husband responsible?
Would it surprise you to learn that a huge percentage of churchian “leaders” would respond in the affirmative?
As disturbing as it is that Christian leaders are deliberately sowing strife in Christian marriages, it is even more disturbing that this has become so commonplace that it now feels normal. No one notices this, because this is what we have come to expect from Christian leaders, especially complementarian leaders, in our feminist age. But this evil compulsion (for it truly is evil) is anything but normal for Christian leaders to practice. It only feels normal because we have become numb to this profound wickedness.
Is any more evidence than this required to prove the Satan has co-opted the church?
Fem H8r,
The responsibility for accomplishing a mission stops at the echelon that originated the mission, although the general responsibility to obey lawful orders goes all the way to the top. But if one of my subordinates does something stupid (not like that ever happened…) that was not related to an order I had given, he could be in trouble from every level of the chain of command, depending on what it was… up to and including criminal prosecution under the UCMJ.
Take SGT Bergdahl, for example (the guy who left his FOB in Afghanistan and got scooped up by the Taliban). In order to not muddy the example, let’s assume that he was not trying to defect, and was simply conducting a patrol “on his own authority,” when he was captured.
His failure to accomplish his “mission” is not an issue, since nobody above him gave him a mission. He disobeyed a lawful order to not leave the FOB, though, which is his mistake and his alone, since his chain-of-command made it VERY clear that wandering off alone is forbidden. Because there was no mission, and he had been informed of the constraints, nobody in his chain of command bears any responsibility for his capture.
If no order is given, and no dereliction or negligence is attributable to the superior, the mistakes of the subordinate do not flow up the chain.
No but as soon as they do answer in the affirmative, they’ve lost the Biblical, moral and logical argument and the case is closed. Not in it to get women to submit or these manginas to agree with me, only to prove a point. Once the point is proven, they can do what they like, I don’t care.
Thanks Lyn, I believe that is confirmation of the point I made.
“Thanks Lyn, I believe that is confirmation of the point I made.”
Yes. That was my intent.
Pingback: For the love of marital strife. | Reaction Times
>And the key is, they’re not letting the husband know that
Nothing says “great interpersonal skills” like letting a problem boil over before seeking to address it.
I find it to be a useful personal mantra to assume that everything bad that happens in my life is my fault. I don’t mean that in a self-pitying way… rather it’s a way to avoid the victim mentality.
But there’s a big difference between saying something is the man’s fault in general (which implies the woman is the virtuous one) vs. simply taking responsibility for the problems in your own life (whether they come from your own character flaws or tolerating bad behavior in others.)
>He called it “creepy” and banned me.
Of course he did, you were a threat to his gravy train.
Dalrock. I don’t know who you are or how you have such time to do such in depth research and constant reading. But you have nailed it here. Thank you for putting so much of your time and effort into these articles. This one is truly masterful. It probably serves you well that you can be anonymous. I’m sure articles like this would fetch death threats.
“Some of you—in your marriages, right now—are experiencing deadness, and mistrust, and conflict because you, husbands, led that woman into fornication”.
Pr Dr Russell Moore.
Surveys tells us that women arrive at marriage with more sexual experience, from more partners, than ever before. Numbers from Different surveys vary, but most agree with a number in the high single or low double, digits (8-11).
The husband, who very often has FEWER sexual partners (husbands are not Alphas, usually), and Christian husbands, FEWER STILL – is thus at the end of the line, the last of the fornicators.
And he’s to blame.
The husband is also to blame for all of the accumulated stresses and dramas that successive “boyfriends” have inflicted – the alcoholism, drug taking, violent outbursts, kink sex, – all of the characteristics of the “abusive” relationship, that lead to infertility / sterility, vaginismus, and general mistrust generated “because he might leave her” – which is why she put out for successive “boyfriends” in the first place.
The husband is responsible for these by projection – his now wifes’ projections of all that was bad about the ghosts of lovers past is now on him. he is responsible ….because he married her and can’t get away easily.
Has anyone pointed this out to Dr Moore?
“Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.”
http://biblehub.com/jeremiah/23-1.htm
“Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.”
As Chris Rock would put it, the typical pastorbator would respond with “he ain’t talkin’ about ME!”
@LP
The qualification of leadership of both Elders and deacons is that of a well ordered household,gentle not given to drunkeness. He who rules the roost yet is gentle in desposition.
By this qualification alone. All the this kind of bad leadership demonstrating cowardice and lack of genuine faith would not exist.
Yet Americans have a uniquely narrow-minded take on infidelity, says Perel. “Most Europeans see it as an imperfection, and not something worth destroying your marriage over.” But Americans, who tend to see sex as corrupting and approach pleasure with scepticism, often view affairs in more binary terms. “Here there’s a persecutor and a victim, these are the only two options,” Perel says. “The language is criminal. I think that speaks volumes.”
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/whats-wrong-with-infidelity
These pastors are trying really hard to insert themselves where they do not belong.
As far as the marital home is concerned, the pastor has no authority whatsoever. None. Zero. Zilch. The home is under the authority of the man, just as the local church is under the authority of the local pastor.
Of course the pastor can exhort and counsel, but he cannot, and dare not, as a routine matter, usurp the authority of the man in his own home and over his own wife. To do otherwise is to overstep his calling.
“Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.”
I Corinthians 7:24
Even when the wife becomes rebellious and tries to enlist the support of the pastor to undermine he husbands’ authority over her, it is the duty of the pastor to encourage her to go listen to her husband and be subject to him. When a husband catches a local pastor trying to undermine his marital authority, the husband reserves the right to terminate the membership of his family in that local congregation.
Imagine Driscoll lecturing American women on their obesity;
…some of you women have already given him that look, “Don’t touch that bundt cake, don’t let ’em know we have some leftover Tikki Masala. Just get that cheese plate together.” You’re already intimidating him right here. Some of you girls have already whispered in his ear, “I don’t want to save it for lunch tomorrow. We’re not talking about this in the car on the way home, my mouth will be full.” Some of you have already whispered in his ear, “I’m sorry, but that last slice of pizza is mine. Trust me. Let’s just move on to the Cheesecake Factory real quickly.”
How dare you! Who in the hell do you think you are?! Abusing a carton of Haagen-Dazs, neglecting a man, being a glutton, a gourmand, being like your mother, Eve! Who do you think you are?! You’re not Takeru Kobayashi! You’re just a woman! You’re not a satiated woman! You’re not a thin woman! You’re not an unbloated woman! You’re not a woman under 250 pounds! You’re not a responsible woman in any deli!
It seems, as has been mentioned above, that these pastors do not believe they are sowing strife but helping marriages to be more loving. The problem is they have already swallowed the feminist lie that marriages led by men are tyrannical and therefore for a man to properly love his wife he must defer to her leadership. This is interesting, because women tend to feel unloved if their husbands do not lead them (Dalrock has another post on this relating his own personal experience). It appears once again that women are failing to properly diagnose the cause of their bad feelings in a relationship (a trait many game-aware men will be familiar with). The fact remains that women want to be led by a man they genuinely admire, a man who is actually more powerful than her and thus isn’t trying to lead her but actually can and does lead her. It is such a man that they fall in love with, dream of, fantasise about and have affairs with. And if these women cannot feel loved unless that man lives his role and leads her, it becomes quite glaring why the message of “love her by deferring to her” does not and will never help.
Incidentally, this also indicates these pastors’ gross incomptetence. It is one thing to know the theory but not have experience, but a worse incompetence to not even get the theory right. There is no way they are qualified to teach a congregation.
@ Lyn87 says:
December 7, 2016 at 2:16 pm
“He called it ‘creepy’ and banned me.”
Then he called me your “enabler” and banned me. Good times!
Dave II,
Wrong. We have all seen leaders who run successful businesses who have wife’s that will not follow. Wives have agency. They rebel period. This is about wives who either resist the temptation to usurp the husband or they don’t.
Your comment is similar to “if he leads correctly, she will follow.” This has been proven false over and over.
“The reasons for feminists to encourage female discontentment and marital strife are fairly obvious, but for Christian leaders the reason for their perverse delight in sowing marital strife is more puzzling.”
The puzzlement dissappears when you realize those leaders are not Christian. Mark Driscoll is not a Christian. Neither is Glenn Stanton nor is Beth Moore. Those people are the wolves in sheeps clothing. They destroy the church.
Incidentally, this also indicates these pastors’ gross incomptetence. It is one thing to know the theory but not have experience, but a worse incompetence to not even get the theory right. There is no way they are qualified to teach a congregation.
They despise the Scriptures. Period. They know that most of their congregation does too (to the extent that they’re even familiar with them at all). Therefore they don’t feel the need to adhere to them or to try very hard to mask their contempt.
Same bullshit, different day. They will cheat on your perfect man as soon as something better comes along. Either hold them to their vows, or don’t, stop the shit end of denigrating men.
Do you think following this advice from John Piper will lead to marital strife?
http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/talk-to-your-wife-about-lust
>They despise the Scriptures. Period. They know that most of their congregation does too.
So in a nutshell, they are turning into “mainline Protestant” churches.
We all know how that ends. When the Gospel becomes irrelevant, the flock realizes that “church” is a club, and a boring one at that. They realize they have better things to do with their time. Plus the men get the message that they aren’t welcome, so they avoid the place like the plague.
@Daniel,
I thought this was noteworthy, insofar as an advertisement for the joys of wedded bliss.
“…my wife and I, said divorce is not an option to each other over the last 47 years many times,…”
Been married 47 years, felt the need to discuss divorce many times. I would actually like to hear more about that. How many is many? Did that come up early, middle, or do they still need to mention it even lately? If Mr. Piper is so knowledgeable about the subject of husbands and wives, why wasn’t he able to put divorce talk to rest in his own home without having to address it many times?
Thanks to all for replies on the subject of provoking marital strife. I still can’t decide if most of these guys are well meaning but hapless, or if something else is going on.
OT and NT have numerous verses on false prophets and shepherds leading His people astray with fables. There is a ‘new church’ coming and it is His Kingdom and it is made up of individual men knowing God by knowing scripture FOR THEMSELVES including ‘iron sharpening iron.’
The days of the church with steeple are over. The days of the paid full-time pastor are over. Sure, you will see them but they are not of God and they are simply there to ‘merchandise’ willingly ignorant people who say ‘Lord, Lord’ and He will say ‘I never knew you.’
I am puzzled why these guys would provoke marital strife, and I have seen this in person from other pastors with similar messages
Prestige, money (for now), attention, maybe even a shot at the “majors.”
Prestige- they have the only working marriage in the church, b/c they have destroyed the others. They are the AMOG, and a shining role model.
Money- People come in to hear the dynamic speaker. He promises all sorts of renewed relationships for congregants, so they give, excited to think there will be healing in their lives/marriages. And I’m beginning to wonder if there are sponsorships for pastors repeating the nonsense in the books and on the radio. Maybe some kick backs for units sold. Look at the rampant corruption and heresy that SALM broadcasts, yet they make money. Not crazy to think they hire pushers for their dope. Which leads to…
Shot at the majors- Lots of pastors want to write books, be on radio/TV, get invited to speak at major conferences, maybe even host their own simulcasts. Well, you gotta have some initial capital, and SALM, Zondervan, etc have exactly that.
@Squid Hunt
No need to repay evil with evil. We just need to shine a light on it. This theme is especially indefensible.
Pingback: Are you sure you aren’t unhappy? | Dalrock
@Daniel,
The ways of men are far too wonderful for women to handle or give counsel about.
Confessions that you make in good faith to your wife about your thought life will become ammo against you later, especially if she sees you as weak.
I did it early in the marriage as that was the advice from the pulpit. “It will help your marriage”, they said. “Your wife will love you for it”, they said. She despised me for it. Every instance of lust or infatuation I confessed to my wife became an “affair” when she chronicled my “abuses” to the pastor in a seventeen-page screed that I came to refer to as “the indictment” (which she hated).
No need to repay evil with evil.
Evil? Or Justice? What are the consequences in OT for false prophets? What does the NT say to those to whom much has been given?
Not a perfect comparison, but for men who have endured thru divorce theft, for kids who have had their lives torn apart b/c of churches stoking the FI, maybe it’s time that these leaders realize that consequences are real.
No need to repay evil with evil. We just need to shine a light on it. This theme is especially indefensible.
That may be true, but I will never begrudge any man an expression of the disgust or (fully understandable) desire for retribution prompted by these depths of depravity, which are themselves even more indefensible, however much support they enjoy from popular churchian culture.
Confessions that you make in good faith to your wife about your thought life will become ammo against you later, especially if she sees you as weak.
THIS.
Never, Ever, EVER confess anything weighty to your wife, no matter how much of a resilient unicorn she appears to be. Once you’ve choked down the RP and your eyes have been opened, you realize that the only reason your wife wants anything whatsoever to do with you is that she has judged you, at least on some visceral level, to be stronger than she is. To remove that assurance is to remove your raison d’etre as a husband.
This used to be much less of an issue for men in the past. Strong fraternal and familial bonds existed between men who could confide in each other and count on the advice and counsel of their peers and elders, thus eliminating the urge or need to share with wives what they were never designed to be burdened with. The obliteration of male fraternal structures and the extended family as a result of feminism has removed this pillar of support for most men. The inability of men to share their burdens with others, forcing them to carry it all themselves, no doubt contributes to men’s health issues, as well as their earlier mortality.
@ Daniel
@Caspar Reyes
Confessions that you make in good faith to your wife about your thought life will become ammo against you later, especially if she sees you as weak.‘
I’ve mentioned before the man I knew who had an application on his laptop that captured every URL he browsed, saved it, and at regular intervals sent all recent URL’s in an email to his wife. This was to protect him from temptation to surf sites that were considered inappropriate, I’m sure.
It seems to be very fashionable in some churches for a man to make his wife into something like a confessor, to report every bad action or bad thought to her. Are the wives supposed to do that as well, report to their husbands? From the purely practical point of view, is it a good idea for married people to routinely tell each other their worst flaws? The various “marriage weekends” that friends of mine have gone to seem to always include a time for each person to tell the other what they like, to dwell mentally on good things. Wouldn’t that be a useful thing to do every day, and how would that fit in with self-reporting every stray thought?
Finally I agree with the question regarding Piper and his 47 year marriage in which he and his wife have said “Divorce is not an option many times“; is this what a real expert on marriage would say? It’s probably a form of self-deprecation, or perhaps it was a running joke between Piper and his wife; someone drops a plate in the kitchen, says “Remember, divorce is not an option!” in a humorous way. It is rather tone deaf in some ways.
@Jeff, you seem to have missed the point of my post. I was trying to point out the irony in that, assuming these false teachers genuinely (though misguidedly) intend on healing marriages by making the wives feel loved, it would be more effective to teach the husbands to be leaders of their wives rather than to insist on deference to them. Of course there will always be rebellious women (especially those of the high n-count type), and of course they have agency. I do not deny this. Nor does your comment disprove my point.
And I just want to point out that the fact that a man is a successful leader in business is irrelevant. I am specifically talking about leading the wife. I don’t care about what else a man leads if he is abstaining from his God-given position in the home. There are far too many men who are leaders in the public sphere and become as beta as the letter B in the home. It doesn’t work, as far as marriage is concerned. Such men are especially lucrative divorce-rape bait because their success usually guarantees cash and prizes comparable with winning the lotto.
@Dave II
Or we could do the truly unthinkable, and follow the biblical model and teach wives to submit to their husbands.
Confessions that you make in good faith to your wife about your thought life will become ammo against you later, especially if she sees you as weak.
Never, Ever, EVER confess anything weighty to your wife, no matter how much of a resilient unicorn she appears to be.
Bedrock life advice for the ages. Opening up every thought and emotion to your wife is what the women do among themselves. Doing this with your wife makes you just another one of the girls. It will NOT have the effect you were hoping for, whatever that was, though it will have some sort of permanent consequences.
DrTorch @ 11:42 am:
“No need to repay evil with evil.
Evil? Or Justice? What are the consequences in OT for false prophets? What does the NT say to those to whom much has been given?”
Does this look like justice?
https://infogalactic.com/info/Tyler_courthouse_shooting
…
Dave II @ 12:54 pm:
“…it would be more effective to teach the husbands to be leaders of their wives rather than to insist on deference to them.”
Seriously? If she won’t follow then he can’t lead, it’s that simple.
“And I just want to point out that the fact that a man is a successful leader in business is irrelevant. I am specifically talking about leading the wife. I don’t care about what else a man leads if he is abstaining from his God-given position in the home.”
What makes you think these are separate skills? Why do you think Ernie Engineer’s marital problems are caused by his lack of leadership instead of her malicious treatment of him? Do you believe that if a man tries hard enough, God owes him success?
@Dalrock,
“Or we could do the truly unthinkable, and follow the biblical model and teach wives to submit to their husbands.”
That is true. And I am blessed to be one of the few readers on this blog (apparently) who attends a church where wives are indeed taught to submit to their husbands. We are also taught about the devil’s wholesale usurpation of leadership in the nominal church so this churchian-feminist rebellion is all no surprise to me. I don’t expect it to get better. It may get better in a few, very small groups of people around the world who purposely choose to swim against the stream but on the grand scale of things it will continue this way until we reach the point where God will have had enough, will take His own and judge the rest. Sad, but “the Scriptures cannot be broken.”
Dalrock, speaking of the unthinkable, anyone here ever read this book?
“Me? Obey Him?” by Elizabeth Rice Hanford
https://www.amazon.com/Me-Obey-Him-Obedient-Happiness/dp/0873985516
Gunner Q at 1:30 pm
Does this look like justice?
Does this?
https://infogalactic.com/info/Gold_Diggers_of_%2749
@GunnerQ,
“Seriously? If she won’t follow then he can’t lead, it’s that simple.”
Yes, seriously. As with Jeff above, I do not disagree with your latter statement and it too does not disprove my point. Struggling to understand what exactly you guys think it is that I am saying. Thought I was pretty clear the last time.
“What makes you think these are separate skills?”
I don’t believe they are separate skills. Rather it is the same, necessary skill (leadership) but being applied in one case (business) while not being applied in the other (relationship). In other words all Ernie has to do is apply his leadership skill, which he clearly already has, into leading his wife. His marriage is threatened if he doesn’t, not because he can’t lead but because he isn’t leading. It is just like if my house was on fire and I have the fire extinguisher but decide not to use it. My house is threatened not because I can’t put the fire out but because I am refusing to put it out. The fire won’t stop because it recognises that I can put it out if I want to. Skill is useless if it isn’t used where it is needed. Likewise leadership applied in the workplace will do next to nothing for your relationship if it is abandoned in the home. Again, that doesn’t mean that the woman can’t rebel. But that is not the topic of my post.
“Why do you think Ernie Engineer’s marital problems are caused by his lack of leadership instead of her malicious treatment of him?”
Nope, must’ve misunderstood something there. I never meant to imply that.
“Do you believe that if a man tries hard enough, God owes him success?”
Nope. I believe God owes nobody success except where that person acted on His instructions and was promised that success by Him in return.
Oh, yes you did… if Ernie just led like a real man, like you, then his wife would follow him.
Same shit, different day, you’re the tradcon to their femcon. Your statement reads exactly like these bogus self-help books that promise the world but deliver nothing. Do your part of the contract perfectly and the other party will perform theirs, right?.. and then not holding the other party to account. No, most of these women’s issues are not that their husbands can’t lead. The husbands make money, they take care of them, they are protected. In every sense besides being the Chad Thumper, these men are performing but the whispers telling these women they can do better are endless and then Dave 2.0 comes along and tells these same men, lead better chumps, and it’ll all work out. Just be like him, and it’s all daises.
Gentlemen, don’t put words in my mouth now.
1. What people here seem to think I was saying: Lead her properly (like a real man) and the woman will follow. Ergo if she is rebellious you must not have been leading her properly.
2. What I was actually trying to say: Leading her properly (like a real man) actually contributes to the wife feeling loved. Which is why these pastors’ advice to men to follow their wives’ lead is ironically going to achieve the exact opposite of their supposed intention.
Notice that in point 2 I am in no way insinuating that leadership will be enough to secure the wife’s loyalty or prevent her rebellion. I am merely pointing out that what the pastors are advising is going to make these marriages worse rather than better.
If this is still confusing then perhaps English is not your first language. Not entertaining this any more. Done.
Fuck you Dave 2.0. We all already knew that. Thanks for your worthless input.
Gentlemen, don’t put words in my mouth now.
We don’t need to. You put them there yourself. Just more of the usual tradcuck pablum. Not gonna sell in these parts.
Now isn´t that a beautiful diode bridge: man´s unsatisfied = man screwed up; woman´s unsatisfied = man screwed up. Time to go papist.
@Lost
“@Anonymous Reader posits that by provoking marital strife, a guy that does marriage counseling for a living could really keep that industry going. I had not thought of that, it is logical; but I have a hard time ascribing those motives to any of the many chaplains or pastors I’ve known personally.”
I can see this at my local church (damn that 20/20 hindsight). My pastors’ specialty is apparently “divorce recovery”, At least that is something he said recently. I am very sure that it is not “divorce prevention” because the church hasn’t been willing to be involved in the last three years while we went through that hell.
While the Bible clearly says to have your own house in order before leading others, he never asked my (ex)wife to step down from her position in a children’s program leadership. IN FACT, I think you will find that the advise given to ANYONE having strife is to just get busier IN THE CHURCH.
Make no mistake, if a woman gets divorced (regardless of who filed or why) the church will tell her to get busy in the church. They will “support” her (although this is surface deep as she keeps telling me there is no one she can talk to about us) and make her FEEL loved. They gain a loyal worker bee who is sure to tithe well with her husbands money.
I told my pastor once during a discussion. “I don’t think she likes the word of God much, but she sure loves this Church.” It was not well received.
@Hose,
Sorry to hear that. It seems no matter how much something may appear to be out in left field, there is a man here who has seen it and/or lived it personally. Or as a friend of mine is fond of saying – unbelievable, but not surprising.
@ DrTorch says:
December 8, 2016 at 11:42 am
“Evil? Or Justice? What are the consequences in OT for false prophets? What does the NT say to those to whom much has been given?”
A better question would be; “how does the NT instruct us to deal with false teachers?”
We’re supposed to identify false by name and expose their false doctrines.
2 Timothy 2:16 Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. 17 Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, 18 who have departed from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.
We’re supposed to warn false teachers to stop spreading false doctrines.
1 Timothy 1:3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
And we’re supposed to deliver them to God’s judgement.
2 Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
…
9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.
Revelation 2:20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.
We’re NOT supposed to beat them with baseball bats in dark alleys.
[D: Thank you.]
Again, this sort of thing is extremely pernicious.
It is not just that borderline marriages are being tipped over into divorce, it is that marriages that could have been very happy get downgraded to just ‘somewhat happy’. This does not show up in divorce stats, but is a huge cost nonetheless.
Even the ‘happy’ marriages of today have hence been robbed of something even better.
I told my pastor once during a discussion. “I don’t think she likes the word of God much, but she sure loves this Church.” It was not well received.
Talk about holding up a mirror in front of a vampire…
If the VP gives his management team their orders, and they ignore to ad lib it on the trading floor, it’s not really the fault of anyone else. VP wasn’t leading them properly.
If the MD gives his RN orders to administer ibuprofen 400 mg QID, and instead she gives patient cyanide, it’s not really RN’s fault. MD wasn’t leading him properly.
If I tell my gardener to cut my lawn, and he saws down all my trees instead, it’s not really his fault. It’s mine. Right?
>Does this look like justice?
Not sure what you were looking for, but let’s make a couple assumptions.
1) The man’s wife, now an ex-wife, left the marriage. Whether for “good” reasons or not is irrelevant.
2) The man’s “son” is 23, as indicated in the article you referenced. Hardly a child in need of “child support”, but that also is irrelevant.
3) The man’s ex-wife wants the man, to whom she no longer fulfills the obligations of wife, to continue providing her with financial support, as if he was still her husband.
4) The man’s ex-wife wants #3 so much, that she is willing to use the threat of force, by men armed with guns, if the man does not agree to regularly surrender even more of his property to the ex-wife.
5) The man’s ex-wife is not merely contemplating doing #4, but has already acted to have it done, and is continuing in that action. (This is referenced in the article; she was “entering the courthouse for a hearing regarding her ex-husband’s failure to pay child support after their 2004 divorce”.)
Let us further admit that the highest authority says that a man’s property, upon his death, is to go to his sons; nothing is owed to the ex-wife. Or even to the wife, should she have been faithful. (Good reason to have sons and train them properly, BTW.)
Let us also admit that a man is to have the ability to choose what to do with his own money. There are a few limitations to this; he is to pay taxes and revenue that he owes; Rom 13:1-7. He is to pay his workers their wages, even promptly at the end of each day.
But as a general statement, unless he agrees to something, I have no right to demand his money from him.
So in the situation above, we have a case of theft. Not only theft, but armed theft. Not only armed theft, but hired, armed theft. The police officers who threaten to kill or imprison the man who fails to surrender his property are paid to go around extorting property. The fact that the same men are paid to do good things also is irrelevant, although it does confuse many people, giving these naive people the illusion that all that police do is good.
So, what should a man do when a person uses hired, armed men to steal his property? And when this occurs not just once, but every month. And not merely for a few months, but for years, with no reasonable hope for a quick end?
I agree with you that justice was not done. The man shot the people responsible for the armed theft, and then experienced the armed men fulfill their threat to kill him if he did not go along with their armed theft. The man was killed as a direct result of his refusal to allow continuing armed theft. You are right; this is not just. *I am not saying what the man should have done; I am only saying the result was unjust.
I think it unfortunate that Mark Alan Wilson was killed. From the sound of it, he saw the police fighting with a man, and made the naive assumption that the police must be doing only what is good, and therefore that the man fighting to protect his life from those police must be in the wrong. It is very possible that Mark thought he was doing a good thing, and died as a result of his actions.
>Do you believe that if a man tries hard enough, God owes him success?
The rhetorical answer of no is very true. Unfortunate, but still a fact.
Revelation 2:22 from above: So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.
Interesting… I never noticed that before
I’m late to the party and many have already commented on the motives of some of these pastors. At a very deep level many pastors need to feel loved and validated especially by women; they covet respect. Matt 5:28 is often used wrongly to condemn porn and justify divorce. (It is best translated “But I say to you that whoever looks at another man’s wife to covet her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.) Many of these pastors covet the honor and respect from wives in the congregation that belongs to other men; in essence they are in violation of Matt 5:28 far more than the porn user. The emphasis on sex is a result of dualism that created a false virtue of prudishness, the idea Jesus is encompasses includes everything that is due to another man by the covenant of marriage.
These pastors in their eagerness to satisfy their vain ambition, do not fear crossing into the family jurisdiction and making mischief, because it gains them female admiration. Like Adam they crave the approval of women more than they fear God. They stir up strife and teach the violation of OT family law and the abuse of Matt 19:3 to encourage divorce and adultery because of feelings they themselves stir up. They pose as the fire department but are really pyro’s who enjoy watching things burn so they can comfort the women. Oh, the penalty for taking another man wife is found in Leviticus 20:10 “The man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, he who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress, shall surely be put to death.” He need not sleep with her, but taking her to himself as in spiritual headship and her honor is indeed a form of adultery.
@Boxer, yes, but that is not an accurate analogy. The difference is the VP/MD/yourself did not get taught that you need to choose a management team/RN/gardener on the basis of how much love you feel for them while disregarding their willingness and ability to do the job you’re hiring them for, because no such employee truly wants to work under you and doing so is oppressing them. This is essentially the message being taught to blue pill men for years upon years about how to choose a wife. Because of this I pin the blame for men marrying the “unsuitably qualified” type of wife on the general society at large, and especially churches, for failing to teach our boys and girls properly.
Now if a red pill aware man voluntarily chooses such a woman, that is quite another story.
To put the fact that a man that leads his woman properly will ensure that she follows him. Need only to compare that to the relationship between God and Israel. Even Israel led by a perfect being still rebelled.
One cannot blame God for failing to lead Israel properly.
On the other hand proper leadership making following easier is an argument that can be made.
Controlled Opposition…
I told my pastor once during a discussion. “I don’t think she likes the word of God much, but she sure loves this Church.” It was not well received.
That is awesome.
One cannot blame God for failing to lead Israel properly.
That’s something to rub in a pastorbator/”Christian ‘marriage counselors’s'” face: If Israel couldn’t be made to submit while being led by the Universe’s ultimate and omnipotent Alpha, does that not mean that God failed? By their “logic,” they would have no choice but to answer in the affirmative if they were to remain consistent.
God didn’t say that Adam would lead Eve (look it up; you won’t find it). God DID say that Adam would rule over Eve. Whatever Paul says in the New Testament MUST be consistant with this fact.
Upthread it was stated that a man cannot lead his wife if she will not follow. That is the downside of leadership, and may be why God did not say that Adam would lead Eve. Rulership suffers no such problem. One can rule over even the most resistant. Perhaps that is why God did say that Adam would rule over Eve.
God did not say that Eve would submit to Adam. Whatever Paul says in the New Testament MUST be consistant with this fact. God DID say that Eve would desire Adam (in both Biblical meanings of the word) and that Adam’s response would be to rule over her.
When God spoke at creation, the words ‘lead” and “submit” did not cross his lips. Perhaps that is why marriages that are taught to use both of those words continue to struggle. The words God actually used imply the wife’s desire to have at her husband, but he will rule over her. Not lead. Rule over. That is God’s description of the natural state of the husband and wife. It is no wonder that attempts to teach that the wife should submit bear little if any fruit. I wonder if God laughs at that. He didn’t say that Eve would submit to Adam – he basically said the opposite. And that the cure for Eve coming at Adam (whether armourously or with intent to do harm) was that Adam would rule over her. Not lead her. Rule over her.
Interpret Paul’s words to mean something different than God’s actual words at your own peril.
P.S. – I’m not getting militant here. I’m simply pointing to the word that God actually used. I mean nothing more than whatever God meant by the phrase ‘rule over’. But this fact remains: ruling over is an activity quite different from leading. That becomes most obvious when we apply both leading and ruling over to one who will not follow – and see which approach bears fruit. Unfortunately, we can no longer do this with the current laws on the books. Can’t ‘rule over’ really well from a prison cell. And so we have pastors saying what God himself never did say: “lead her”.
“The reasons for feminists to encourage female discontentment and marital strife are fairly obvious, but for Christian leaders the reason for their perverse delight in sowing marital strife is more puzzling.”
The more broken marriages there are, the more the women and their kids need these pastors as counselors. Sewing dissent is job security for clergy — just as sewing racial division is a jobs program for “community leaders” and the like. If we all got along, these people would all be out of jobs.
@RichardP,
Can you imagine trying to make that case in a modern church setting?
1. Rule over? I’ll have you arrested.
2. You can clearly see from the text that God is talking specifically to Eve, then Adam, when He outlines their punishment. Just those two people. No implications for their offspring or descendants.
3. That’s creepy. You’re banned.
Oscar at 6:14 pm wrote:
We’re NOT supposed to beat them with baseball bats in dark alleys
You make a great case that the Church isn’t supposed to deliver this sort of consequence. However, I wasn’t talking about the Church per se, I’m suggesting that the victims may be inclined to strike back, with just as much impact as they’d deliver to a thief who has broken into their homes at night. That’s exactly what these false teachers have done. And it may be part of the retribution that scripture assures they will receive.
It’s worth noting that these teachings didn’t prosper so much when men were expected that they’d protect their own homes.
Jonadab-the-Rechabite at 9:08 pm wrote:
Many of these pastors covet the honor and respect from wives in the congregation that belongs to other men; in essence they are in violation of Matt 5:28
An excellent point.
Days of Broken Arrows @ 4:16 am:
“The more broken marriages there are, the more the women and their kids need these pastors as counselors. Sewing dissent is job security for clergy — just as sewing racial division is a jobs program for “community leaders” and the like. If we all got along, these people would all be out of jobs.”
Thanks, I’ve been trying to find a good way to say this for a couple days. You beat me to it.
@ DrTorch says:
December 9, 2016 at 10:02 am
“You make a great case that the Church isn’t supposed to deliver this sort of consequence. However, I wasn’t talking about the Church per se, I’m suggesting that the victims may be inclined to strike back, with just as much impact as they’d deliver to a thief who has broken into their homes at night. That’s exactly what these false teachers have done. And it may be part of the retribution that scripture assures they will receive.”
And, who is The Church? We are. How are we to behave when we are wronged?
Romans 12:19 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 Therefore
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
If he is thirsty, give him a drink;
For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Keep in mind that Paul wrote that while in prison, to Christians in Rome who were being persecuted.
Look, I get it. My natural inclination is to physically harm those who harm me and mine. I’m a hot head by nature. And I agree that false teachers who sow marital strife do great harm. That’s why we’re all here. Every man here has either experienced the harm caused by false teachers, or observed it up close.
Dalrock is already doing what the Bible instructs us to do with false teachers; expose them, identify them by name, warn other Christians about them, warn the false teachers to stop spreading false doctrines or face God’s judgement, and release them to God’s judgement.
The rest of us use this blog as a resource so we can do the same within our circle of influence.
What else can we do? We can pray Psalm 58 over these false teachers.
Psalm 58
1 Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
2 No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
…
6 Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions!
7 Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short.
8 May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
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“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.”
This is the fundamental problem with the current view of marriage. The man is obligated to lead, the woman voluntarily submits. Society just can’t imagine enforcing someone’s submission, but has no problem enforcing someone’s obligation of responsibility (even if she chose marriage voluntarily, or even pressured him into it). It can’t allow someone to be expected to do something that they do not want to do (unless it’s a man) (same with abortion, we can’t force her to carry the baby if she doesn’t want to, even if she chose the sex voluntarily). The assumption is that women are the victims of marriage, and so men must be the victims of divorce. Unfortunately, the burden of leadership is always more difficult than the burden of submission. We recognize this everywhere but marriage. The General gets more respect than the private, the CEO gets more pay than the employee because it’s harder.
Yet in marriage, they would have you believe that the woman is the one who does all the work and deserves all the credit. Even as they tell her the man needs to do all the work and take all the blame. Leadership without submission is the very tyranny these people decry, while their solution is to submit to their wives. That doesn’t improve his leadership, it just puts his burden on her. Allowing her to voluntarily submit to her own leadership, and to leave her useless husband.
How are we to behave when we are wronged?
It’s not wrong to seek justice. Conflating justice w/ vengeance is a problem within the church.
Certainly Dalrock’s work is vitally important. But pretending that the Church has no job seeking justice? That’s not righteousness, that’s cowardice.
Justice may not be the baseball bat scenario, but it’s well past time the Church remembered to be doers of the word, not just hearers.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice
For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrong
Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to kill, and a time to heal;…
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;…
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
Look, I get it. My natural inclination is to physically harm those who harm me and mine. I’m a hot head by nature.
Say it ain’t so, O!
Me too.
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