Pastor Wilson has a response of sorts up to some of my recent posts.
In the meantime, my original 21 theses had apparently been responded to here, which I just now read in the writing of this post, and I am afraid my response to the corporal punishment aficionados was taken as an assertion on my part that any disagreement with me from my right must be coming from wife beaters. Such poisoning the well would be a bad thing, and so for any readers who were disappointed in what they considered charitably to be uncharacteristic squid ink, please know that I did not do this thing. I was not responding to any possible conservative critic in that second post. I was responding a particular problem in my own comment thread.
While it is true the only conservative critics Wilson acknowledged in And Now a Brief Word for the Wife Beaters were wifebeaters, the post wasn’t solely a reply to wifebeaters. Wilson spent roughly half of the wifebeaters post responding to feminists who objected to his assertion that submission was an erotic necessity, and even a bit of energy criticizing complementarians on the topic of headship. The wifebeaters post was not a response to a specific group of wifebeating critics, it was a response to critics in general*. Either way, by repeatedly focusing on what I can only assume is a strong Wilsonian** streak of wifebeatery, Wilson did in fact poison the well. We are now in our third (out of three in the series) post by Wilson on submission that chums the waters with accusations that men who believe in headship are really just abusers. This is textbook well poisoning, not that it is a difficult maneuver to pull off. Whenever the topic of submission comes up, if you want to nuke the discussion simply imply that men who believe in headship are likely wife abusers. The women reading will get their feminist dander up, and the men reading will flee from the idea of headship and submission in terror. Calm, rational discussion of headship and submission is now impossible, even for the few who are wise enough to try to look past the bait. Note that you can repeat this pattern as often as you like, and it even works when you yourself are the one who brought up the topic of headship and submission in the first place. Wilson either doesn’t understand how this works, or is intentionally and repeatedly poisoning the well.
This brings us to Wilson’s odd attack on some women’s hairstyles and fashion choices (emphasis mine):
…words like patriarchy do have accumulated cultural connotations, and those connotations are not simply manufactured by the feminists. In other words, biblical practice is caricatured by the feminists, sure enough, but there are more than a few self-professed advocates of the biblical understanding who do their level best to live out the caricature.
So this means that when you come across some rabid feminist online who was brought up in a prairie muffin jumper, and who had her hair in a bun for a couple decades, but who is now a lesbian queer theorist, we have to keep in mind the fact that when she attacks the patriarchy as an absurdity, she is quite possibly doing so as someone who grew up in the middle of such absurdity, frequently presented to her on a daily basis and in technicolor. In other words, she is not necessarily hallucinating. What she is rejecting is actually out there.
…Their mistake is that they (too conveniently perhaps) ascribe the errors they have known personally to absolutely everyone who ascribes to the label they reject. She grew up with her mother browbeaten and harassed by her jerk of a father, the kind who would use Ephesians 5 as a club, and so she simply asserts that any married couple that seeks to live out Ephesians 5 must be doing exactly the same thing her parents did.
Wilson is either being catty here, or he is implying that such hairstyles and clothes on a woman are a sign of an abusive husband (or both). The term prairie muffin jumper threw me for a bit of a loop, as while I’m familiar with the basic form of cattiness I’ve never heard that particular term. Long time readers of this blog will recall a similar snide comment by a different blogger:
And that I tend to strongly disagree with the flavor of “trads” who think that women shouldn’t be educated or pursue careers while single. This is for the simple reason that I find educated and accomplished women far more interesting than those whose only accomplishments are long hair, lack of makeup and prairie skirts.
So I had heard of prairie skirts, but not prairie muffin jumpers. However, a search of the term immediately brought up the Prairie Muffin Manifesto, where the author explained why she chose to embrace this term:
What is a Prairie Muffin? I borrowed the term from R.C. Sproul, Jr. who jokingly and lovingly called his wife a Prairie Muffin (note: R.C. Sproul, Jr. has nothing to do with the writing of this manifesto). This was in response to those who make snide and derogatory remarks about those of us who choose a quiet life, diligently pursuing our biblical role as women and protecting the innocence of our children. Some women have been caricatured as denim jumper-wearing, Little House on the Prairie-worshiping, baby machines who never trim their hair or wear makeup. Like the Americans who bore the name Yankee Doodle as a badge of honor rather than be cowed by the enemy who used it in a derogatory way, the name Prairie Muffin is meant to convey the message that we are sticking to our convictions despite the silly labels people try to stick on us.
This is all I have to share about the post, as Wilson explained in the end that he will come back to the substantive questions in a future post. I look forward to his clarifications on the issues I raised, especially in my response to his first post in the series.
*For clarity, Wilson’s wifebeaters post was written before my response to his 21 Theses on Submission in Marriage, so the wifebeaters post could not have been a response to me. However, when I wrote my initial post on the series I had not yet noticed his wifebeaters post defending his 21 theses.
**I’m not referring to Wilson himself here, but referring to Wilson’s comment section, following Wilson’s pattern with the term Dalrockian.
Dalrock, Small world. Haven’t spent much time on your blog, but i’d hazard to guess our circles cross if you are engaged in responding to Doug Wilson via posts like these our circles have crossed. CREC is a small pond.
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Well, it’s the focus on headship-as-abuse which leads directly to the concept, completely absent in Paul but quite present in things like Duluth, that wifely submission is expressly conditioned upon prior, perfect, hubsandly Christ-like love, and must only follow, at the wife’s discretion, after such love has been firmly established to her satisfaction. This is done precisely to avoid “headship-as-abuse”, because if submission (without which there is no headship other than “figureheadship”) is conditioned in this way, it will never occur in the context of abuse. So it’s a way to counter the “headship is just a cover for male abuse” critique, which Wilson seems to either care about as a critique or think is often valid as a critique (take your pick) by basically countering with “well, see, my version of headship is immune to abuse because of the way I define submission in a restricted way, so you can’t say that headship, as properly understood (i.e., by himself), is a cover for male abuse”.
This is, I think, where this is coming from in terms of proximate cause. In terms of the broader context, it has to do with Genesis 3 interpretation and the lack of interest in female moral agency, and so on, but in terms of proximate cause in terms of specific contemporary critiques he is trying to circumvent, I suspect this is where it is coming from.
You have to wonder how these kinds of people understand the stuff about being as good of a slave as you can and serving your master well. It’s not as though only women are given a directive to obey a flawed authority due to the positions you and they hold.
Remember, the unnatural inversion of headship is appropriately called : Buttship
That is a very accurate term for what the feminists/pastorbators want to foist onto others, against the natural order.
I don’t know which is the case…however putting conditions on headship-submission other than how God outlined it has to be from the evil one.
Nowhere in Scripture did I find where husbandry authority is null and void if he ‘wife-abuses’. He is certainly an immoral husband but that doesn’t negate his authority.
Would these preacher say the same thing about parental authority if they are ‘child-beaters’?
I like that term…a similar term when I took dance lessons where the woman would try to lead the teachers called it ‘back leading’. And there were plenty of women who would try that.
@Earl
More to the point, Wilson said in his 21 theses that in the case of an abusive husband the point of church discipline should be to help the wife stand against her husband (it should be to protect her and win a brother back from serious sin):
Would he say the same about abusive parents? Would his objective be to help children stand against their parents if he deems the parents’ authority has “turned rancid”?
It sounds like he is confusing authority with morality or trying to blend the two together.
Wilson has muddied the marriage waters with his posts. Men don’t know where they stand, women don’t know where they stand. Nobody knows anymore and because the risk of failure is so high, one dare not tread into marriage.
He knows what he is doing. He’s undermining men at every turn and then bashing them over the head when they refuse to be undermined.
The problem with Wilson’s approach is that it undermines marriage itself in the end. If Christian men are really such bad leaders and abusers, as it would seem Mr Wilson and his flock believe, it would behoove Mr Wilson to tell women not to get married full stop or to get married to a secular man or a man of another religion, that would be the right and proper thing to do. The disconnect is unreal, either he is knowingly sending women into abusive marriages or he really doesn’t believe the majority of men are abusers but thinks women should treat them as such, just in case.
I don’t see that it matters much though as marriage is now a contract between the husband, wife and the state, with the state being the arbiter. God is nowhere to be found. The arbiter has determined that headship is abuse. Thus, Christian Marriage is abuse. Thus the God ordained Biblical Marriage is abusive.
The choice becomes which Master do they follow.. Christ or their beloved state that will come in to rescue them from a boring husband.. in the end, Christian women have made their choice known, they prefer the cucked form of state marriage and trust in the state to deal with men and not God.
I have no qualms with their choice but men need to know that the former ideals of marriage no longer exist and when you do get married, your Master is now the state..
What he has in fact stated is that he believes in headship but only if the husband is like Christ. For all others, no submission is needed and in fact the husband needs to be disrespected and told to shut up, to take his punishment it like a man and may the beatings long continue until his morale has improved.
I read culture war. I was raised around buns and prairie muffin dresses and patriarchy. It’s substantially better than the post-modernist garbage that Wilson is spewing. He’s trying to ride the post-Modernism, negotiate it.
“And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?”
I remember when the Duggars used to dress their daughters like prairie muffins – maybe Jim Bob is a wife beater.
“Wilson said in his 21 theses”
The guy must think he’s a latter day Martin Luther.
“Wilson has muddied the marriage waters with his posts. Men don’t know where they stand, women don’t know where they stand.”
I think men increasingly know where they stand, should they put a ring on it: servitude. And women know that once the marriage license is signed, that they’re in the driver’s seat.
Sure, Churchian men will continue to wife up women with high N counts, then get taken to the cleaners when she decides it’s time to trade him in (he was only a “starter husband”, after all) for a newer model; but men in general are becoming more and more loathe to put a ring on it, and for good reason.
Yeah…I don’t loathe the institution and sacrament of marriage, I loathe the undermining pastors, the usurping court system and the choice of rebellious women.
but men in general are becoming more and more loathe to put a ring on it, and for good reason.
Why validate serial monogamy? Chapter and verse from any Wilsonians?
Understood. The men and women I was talking about are still of the blue pill mindset and still interested in trying to have a ‘proper marriage’. The ones looking for advice in all the wrong places because they think those people have their best interests at heart. When they get advice like Mr Wilson’s they have no clue where they stand.
Wilson is either being catty here…
“Catty.” That’s a very apt term, Dalrock. I’ve never seen anyone else use it to describe a man’s behavior, but since Wilson talks and thinks like a woman, it fully fits here.
The Bible never mentions women’s accomplishments but it does tell them to have long hair, modest clothes and a submission to their husbands.
I find it unseemly for a pastor to discuss these women in terms of their attractiveness to him.
Long skirts & buns are scriptural ly sound. Lusting after “educated” women, not so much.
firmly established to her satisfaction
Here it is. She decides when the husband has achieved adequate levels of obsequiousness, then rewards him (good dog!) by submitting to her pre-approved course of action or behaviors.
This is a standard model and is certainly understood by Doug Wilson and all the other smoke screen generating clerical writers that Dalrock calls out. It is the foundational basis of the church man’s fear of his wife.
Just put it out there boys. Say it in your next sermon, write it in your next article on marriage relationships. Call it what you know it is.
“Look guys we all know the wife decides when or if the husband can be head of the family”. It would be healthier for all of us to admit how the system works. Easier too. So much work involved in trying to keep this fact hidden – though it is already well known to everyone involved.
Gents, help me out here, I have a question.
There has been a lot of fixation here lately on Mr. Wilson. To be honest, I have never heard of the guy outside of this blog, meaning he’s kind of an obscure person, at least to me. Outside of his little churchian circle, does he have any real gravitas or is considered some sort of authority?
Sometimes, to little old Catholic me, Evangelicalism seems like a free for all, where any bozo can self proclaim himself as a “Pastor” and mislead people with his heresies. There is no one with any authority who can censure or defrock him, regardless of what he preaches.
One might argue that his congregation can defrock him by abandoning him. But when so many of these pastors preach what people want to hear, that is unlikely to happen, which probably explains why the more “successful” pastors, the ones with megachurches, remind me more of an entertainer or a showman than an apostle.
But getting back to my question, is he supposed to be some sort of “giant” in evangelicalism?
@Dalrock
So ‘prairie muffin’ is term of endearment for modest Christian women of the Midwest, but to Wilson it is a slam. It’s shameful.
@LP
Many men in churches are exactly that honest about their homes. He means it when he says, “I’ll have to ask The Boss.”, before he commits to a scheduled event.
From Wilson’s post:
What does this actually mean, from the comments:
The only response in the comments is from a women:
What should an abused wife do?
“Her fear of God is the starting point, along with a repentant understanding that she married a man who was not submitted to God. She is getting what she originally agreed to. If God chooses to be merciful, He will give her what she does not deserve. But as long as she thinks he deserves it, chances are it won’t happen.”
Or maybe a man should set rules and breaking them involves removing of privileges (spending less of his money on his wife).
@Frank K
He became famous when he debated Christopher Hitchens. There are YT videos.
“Look guys we all know the wife decides when or if the husband can be head of the family”
@Lost Patrol
Can you imagine the shock and discomfort if you were to say this out loud? While everyone acts on it, no one would want you to come right out and say it. You’d probably get railroaded for saying such a thing.
The feminised mindset is to ignore, deny and generally sweep under the rug ideas, memories and even YouTube videos that aren’t *nice*. This spares people’s feelings which is a vital part of building a family. However, for the sake of the long-term big picture there also has to be a masculine headship. Capable of facing unpleasant realities and the hard problems which life throws up. For the man who would win honour there are *always* hard problems to chew on, even in so-called good times. The problem *here* as I see it is that the feminised collective wishes to sweep the very notion of headship under the rug, too. And men are at last chewing on *this* problem, thank goodness.
Dalrock: “… accusations that men who believe in headship are really just abusers.”
From Wilson’s post: “So now we come to those who say that if a husband doesn’t have the right, nay, sometimes even the responsibility, to exercise corporal punishment on his wife, then one of the tools for ensuring domestic tranquility has been taken away from him.”
Having read Wilson’s posts carefully, I think you misunderstand who Wilson refers to as “wife-beaters”. He is, in fact, specifically referring to men who believe they have the right to physically discipline their wife. In other words, he is not maintaining that all “men who believe in headship are really just abusers”.
From Wilson’s post: “So now we come to those who say that if a husband doesn’t have the right, nay, sometimes even the responsibility, to exercise corporal punishment on his wife, then one of the tools for ensuring domestic tranquility has been taken away from him.”
To which Caesar does Wilson propose to appeal too? Clearly, the men of the Church don’t measure up to his standard.
AnonS said on August 2, 2017 at 1:53 pm
“The only response in the comments is from a women:”
Presuming this is an implied criticism of Wilson’s failure to respond directly to a commenter, I fail to recognize any significant difference between Wilson’s behavior and Dalrock’s behavior. Read through the comments on any of Dalrock’s posts of recent times and you will find that Dalrock responds directly to very few of the comments.
@OKRickety. Reframers gonna reframe.
The abuse canard is a long beaten dead horse. It’s well poisoning and there was no misunderstanding.
“Many men in churches are exactly that honest about their homes. He means it when he says, “I’ll have to ask The Boss.”, before he commits to a scheduled event.”
I have witnessed this cringe worthy admission, along with the classic “I had to sleep on the couch last night, you know what that’s like, heh, heh” come out of the mouths of men who externally portray themselves as “masculine”. You know the type: a boat in the driveway, or maybe a motorcycle in the garage. Big pickup truck. Then you witness them kowtowing to their wives. Perhaps they understand that if they don’t kiss her oversized butt that all the toys will have to be sold after the divorce to pay her.
“He became famous when he debated Christopher Hitchens”
That’s it?
@OKRickety
He uses these men to excuse poisoning the well, but he implies that all men who believe in headship should be suspected of being abusers. Look at his treatment of the “prarie muffin jumper” women. Why make such a catty comment? His only defense would be that he is claiming that such an outward appearance is the sign of an abused woman, and indeed he goes on to say that a young woman who was raised in such a home:
So he doesn’t call them wife beaters, but he does accuse them of being abusers. The point is, he is repeatedly poisoning the well, and smearing whole groups of Christian husbands with vague accusations. This is boilerplate for feminists, but quite striking coming from him. It may not be purposeful, as he may not understand why he should take greater care. But that he is doing so is indisputable.
Calm rational discussion of headship will never happen because all exercise of power by men and submission by women is defacto abuse under the deluth regime.
Until men are willing to respond in kind and take back power feminism will continue destroying us.
But the it’s not an option as the prime virtue of churchianity in it’s women worship is niceness.
Well, that’s nice and all. However, his response was directed at men who stated ‘disciplining of the wife’ and not physically beating her. Mr Wilson refused to even acknowledge that husbands are allowed to discipline their wives for failing to submit and honour her wedding vows. It’s a bait and switch, he was caught out and now tries to cover his tracks.
Once again, just like a feminist, he categorised disciplining someone with actual violent abuse. That will cost him. When you place proper interactions that happen within a hierarchy with those that happen under tyranny, you get less of the former hierarchy and more of the tyranny.
Just look at marriage now, after all the feminist huff and puff, men are now choosing to forego marriage in fear of the state, women and the Church. The demonisation of normal male behaviour within marriage, with such normal behaviour being demeaned as abusive and such, has led to the male sex itself being deemed problematic. Mr Wilson and those like him have created a real dilemma. God unilaterally gives men absolute authority over their families, wives and children. Complete authority. However, society says that men are to blame for everything and are evil, abusive and hate women, therefore, how can women submit to that? Well certainly, they can’t and shouldn’t and thus Mr Wilson needs to make excuses for them.
Once again, Mr Wilson needs to shed his feminist ways. You cannot be a feminist and a Christian.
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Once again, Mr Wilson needs to shed his feminist ways. You cannot be a feminist and a Christian.
Wilson and the rest of that gang have already made their choice
I posted the “How?” comment because Wilson said a couple of times that husbands have the authority to execute their responsibility to “get her there.” He says he’s going to write a fuller treatment, and I genuinely wish that he would specify the means.
A commenter responded saying basically: Husband, blame yourself and realize you’re not worthy.
@feministhater & Novaseeker:
Wilson hates the Word, so he’s trying to find a way to be “faithful” about get around the “problematic” issues with the text. Everything else is “details”. I can remember that position; trying not to be offensive while defending the Lord.
The difference is that “freedom in Christ” comes with physical consequences. No one in the West is willing to pay those because they assume they know more about the Lord than the Lord does. The Enlightenment assumptions produce a massive arrogance in the modern Christian.
“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” John 8:31-38 ESV
“The Truth will set you free!”. No it won’t. The Truth is coming to destroy you; sinew & bone. The Second Death is terror beyond the conception of the human mind. They fear the wrong thing: the loss of their attention & money. That’s human instinct, not actual fear.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” Proverbs 9:10 ESV
I quote these passages a lot around here, mostly due to the fact they’re correct. However, my hope is, also, that someone sees them and listens, then they get the point. The current “Christian Leadership” can occasionally do “good things”, however they simply aren’t properly afraid of the things they should be afraid of. They fear societal & personal sanction. What they should be in terror of is the Wrath of the Lord.
Their priorities are misaligned, so they fall away. As a result, they have no ability to defend the Lord’s Word because they don’t completely believe it. Their assumptions are skewed and they simply lack the ability to listen. They’ve all given sermons on the Parable of the Sower, but they never really had ears to hear. Or, a little further in Matthew, they never understood this one:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Matthew 13:45-46 ESV
They can’t be “all in” because they don’t believe the logic, thus they can’t see the interconnections. God has to be “nice”; Love is coming to “gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.” (Matthew 13:41-42 ESV)
And if Pastor Wilson happens to read this, don’t think I’m saying you’re not a Christian. I’m saying you should be very afraid, as you’re simply trying to “fix” the World into a Christian frame. That’s an instinct because it’s your real religion. I would recommend getting very afraid of the Lord and let the real fear bury deep into your soul. From there you’ll start to actually understand. That’s the real freedom in Christ; you are no longer bound to the chains of the false gods, simply the physical body you inhabit. But realize it’s going to cost you pretty much your entire public persona, since you have no experience actually dealing from a properly aligned Faith. One shouldn’t try to teach when they know nothing.
I marveled at that bit of willful blindness. The truth is that on Sundays when Ephesians 5 is going to be preached: A husband wears a cup to church because he knows who is going to be clubbed, and where.
Cane, it’s not a cup that a man needs to wear on those days but needs to bring a jar of K-Y!
In response to Dalrock, Earl says,
“I don’t know which is the case…however putting conditions on headship-submission other than how God outlined it has to be from the evil one.”
Totally agree 100%.
So by his definition Jesus was being abusive by driving the money changers out, right? He had authority over them, and he could have talked to them. He chose to use a variety of corporal punishment on them.
What if the cops come to arrest you? Does the state need to ask you nicely and hope you comply? Can you reject their orders until the entire state structure is perfect? Or are they allowed to use force to make you obey their authority?
God analogizes Israel as His bride, right? Did he never discipline her, even harshly? I seem to recall that he essentially divorced her on some occasions, leading to the near destruction of the Israelites. I seem to recall Him saying that He would curse His bride for her unfaithfulness, though He would always take her back if she returned to Him. He didn’t refrain from exercising His authority over His bride.
It’s easy for some men to call other men abusers. What if your wife has mental issues, say severe depression, and she decides to take action to kill herself? Is the loving thing to do to simply tell her she really shouldn’t do that, and do nothing to restrain her? “It’s too bad she’s dead, but at least no wimpy pastors will say I abused her, and that’s the important thing.”
Yup…as I continue to find in the current book I am reading about Catholic feminists…the farther down the feminist hole they go, the more they give up parts or all of the dogma and faith of the church in exchange for an apostasy.
From Wilson’s response:
“I freely acknowledge that I am part of the patriarchy that feminists want to smash—but I also acknowledge that there are aspects of the patriarchy that God wants to smash also.”
God IS the patriarchy. He is the Platonic form of it and created marriage as a human form of His relationship to humanity. Patriarchy is not some linguistic construct that has Christian parts and unChristian parts. Patriarchy is Christianity.
To sit in judgment of a husband’s command of a wife is to sit in judgment of God who gave the husband his authority. Do not support the servant’s rebellion against her master; that is the human form of devil worship.
And personal note to Wilson, you are not part of the patriarchy. The proof is you still have your job. The persecution of Christianity has already begun and if feminists wanted to smash a highly placed public figure like you, they would have by now. A false rape accusation or frivolous lawsuit is all it takes, no proof needed.
…
Frank K @ 1:36 pm:
“Sometimes, to little old Catholic me, Evangelicalism seems like a free for all, where any bozo can self proclaim himself as a “Pastor” and mislead people with his heresies.”
Protestantism isn’t a free-for-all except in the sense that there are no gatekeeping seminaries or other credentialing. Anybody can be a pastor (Scripture permitting) but inevitably, some pastors become more famous and/or influential than others. Doug Wilson is one of those apex pastors and is therefore representative of what many lesser pastors believe & do.
You can call yourself a pastor and found the “Church of Frank”, sure, but soon you’ll have to defend what you teach from laymen who understand the Bible at least as well as you do. The more divergent from healthy Christianity you get, the harder it’ll be to answer your questioners. “Priesthood of the believer” means you must engage with your opponents as equals.
To Wilson’s credit, he’s doing this. Many so-called Protestant leaders today would give us the silent treatment or claim we aren’t qualified to second-guess his teachings. That would make them Catholics in Protestant clothing.
Wilson thinks he’s an AMOG. He thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women and men. He’s very wrong in his thinking.
I have often found these pastors to be more afraid of their wife than of God, care more about attendance than truth, worry more about the world’s opinion than the Bibles.
Let’s break down the modern concept of male headship to its simple message: “Men, you’re fully responsible, but you’re not ultimately in charge, and if you want to be, it’s only because you have ulterior motives.”
Pastors should bear in mind that it’s not just married men who can read this stuff. Bachelors like myself can, too, and when the modern church culture stresses that, should we get married, someone else is actually calling the shots at the end of the day, yet we’re the ones to blame when things go wrong, and any desire to take charge to rectify the situation will only be interpreted as abusive or attempted abuse….it makes us less than gung-ho to seek out a woman to offer lifelong commitment to.
They should really think through how they are marketing marriage to unmarried men when they ask themselves “where have all the good men gone?”
The “particular problem” in his comment thread only arose because, despite offering 21 thesis points on wifely submission, Wilson couldn’t find time or ink to comment on what Christian husbandly authority should look like. This seems to be important area for pastoral council, particularly under today’s confused and worldly social structure.
This oversight would be bad enough, but Wilson made it worse by chastising the theoretical husband for thinking it was his duty to make his wife submit. In other words, when it came to the topic of wifely submission the harshest words Wilson could muster were against hypothetical overzealous husbands. What this signals to the church about the topic of authority and submission is disastrous, as it leaves women thinking not about submission (nor men about loving their wives), but that abuse and discord is commonplace and expected in marriage. For evidence this is happening, read many of his women commenters. Do they seem convicted? Are they rejoicing in God’s commands to submit?
Mandy addressed it above, but I’d like to follow up….
Wilson is actually making fun of women who dress modestly, have long hair, and are homemakers. He makes fun of them specifically for those traits, and then states that a woman who grows up in such an environment is a de facto victim of abuse. On the other hand, at least he specified he is not at all into homoerotic imagery. Even if he does fantasize about flogging other men. All the time. But seriously, he has it under control. That little scene he brought up with two men was just about how there is submission everywhere. Especially when some man is about to be flogged….. Uh… never mind.
Wilson’s model of male headship… Someone is going to be flogged… and if you think it should ever be the woman you are a sick individual…. because everyone knows you should only flog men. And maybe a prairie muffin…. Yeah, he could maybe flog one of those.
@ Dalrock:
I don’t know. You’re a much more nuanced, intelligent, discerning commenter on these things than I am. And you’re clearly working to see what’s behind the prolix prose.
I got a much simpler message. Wilson is like all churchians. He acknowledges male headship, but has a really, really hard time accepting what it truly is. He is having a hard time with “wives, submit to your husbands” and “submit in all things” and “man is the head of woman, and Christ is the head of man, and God is the Head of Christ.” He reads the words. He knows them. He knows what the words say. And way, way deep down, he knows what they mean. But he just cannot bring himself to say that.
Notice:
“But on to the weightier matters, areas where I would have a more substantive difference with the Dalrockians. I do not maintain that a husband has responsibility but no authority. [Recitation of applicable biblical provisions on husband love and wifely submission.] If she is not there, he is responsible to get her there, and he has the authority from God Himself to accomplish it. This is an authority that commissions and equips him in the task.”
He then tells men they are to dwell with their wives with knowledge, as it says in I Pet 3.
“And so this brings us to what I would call the position I am arguing for. The Pauline name for it would be headship. “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). I freely acknowledge that I am part of the patriarchy that feminists want to smash—but I also acknowledge that there are aspects of the patriarchy that God wants to smash also.”
Translation:
“Look, the Dalrockians are correct that a husband has to have authority to lead the family. She has a duty to submit to her husband. But by God he’s got a duty to love her and not be stupid about it. He also is responsible for her. But he has to do it in a way that is acceptable to her.
“I am a pastor and I know what Ephesians 5 and I Peter 3 say. I know the words St. Paul used. I know he got them from God. But I’m just having a hard time with what I know it looks like in practice. I know it makes the women mad. I know the women don’t like it. I know I’ll catch all kinds of hell if I advocate that wives actually do what the words say. I know that the words mean that sometimes, the wives won’t get to do what they want, and that their husbands will, uh, do what it says in Genesis 3 and actually have to rule over them. I know the words mean their husbands make the final decisions. And I know if I am honest about what the words say and about Christian tradition, I will have to tell them “yup, he’s the husband and yes, you have to submit, and no, I’m not going to overrule him or discipline him, and go home and make peace with your husband according to what it says in the Word.” And the wives are going to HATE that.
“So I’m just going to hem and haw around it, and say the words that are in Eph. 5 and I Peter 3, but then I’m going to defang and disempower those words with all sorts of admonitions, instructions, limitations, qualifications, and then call the men selfish for good measure while also calling the women rebellious. I don’t actually intend to do anything about women’s rebellion, but if I say it and counterbalance it with how mean and self centered the men are being, then I’m safe. And hopefully I won’t have to talk about this anymore because all this rationalization and dancing around the plain meaning of the words Paul used is really hard.”
Impossible. They simply cannot believe that any man would willingly choose not to marry or that a man might have very valid reasons why he wouldn’t consider getting married. To them it’s a closed deal. It’s the same reason the marriage contract kept changing for the last 100 hundred or more years. The assumption was that men will keep on picking up the slack, that men would value sex above their own freedom and choice.
When you understand that they put women on a pedestal, you can then start to understand their motive. Unmarried men are only unmarried because no women has found them worthy enough, yet. From that premise, the idea that a single man might read Wilson’s work and decide that marriage just isn’t worth it, is simply unfathomable; and obviously, the problem lies with that man, he needs to sort himself out, quit being such a lazy sloth, get himself hitched to the nearest 30 year old women and work himself to death and pay, pay, pay… pay the Church, pay the state, pay the wife, pay.
No one cares about what men truly want out of the arrangement that is marriage. As long as men get into it and pay, that’s all that matters.
Hence, the only way to stop this is to stop getting married and to agree and amplify. Yes, Mr Wilson, men are heartless abusers, good for nothing louts, who deserve ample scorn. Any women who gets married is stupid. Smart women avoid marriage and trust in the state. There, no more worries over headship or abusive men, problem solved. Can we go home now?
@squid_hunt
Can you imagine the shock and discomfort if you were to say this out loud?
I do say it out loud to individual men or small groups of men now. I don’t bring it out of left field, but if anything like that subject comes along on its own I offer up the idea that wives tend to decide if or when husbands get to be head of the family; and why is that?, what’s changed?, etc. I try to do it disarmingly so to speak, and not with malice or open accusation; but you have captured the exact two words that describe what I see when I say it.
I haven’t said it to any women nor in mixed company, as I’m not actively trying to piss people off. Though I admit there is an amusement factor, I always remember I was very like these men in my beliefs and actions prior to my education at Dalrock U and other places, so I am mostly looking for potential paisanos. It’s like a barometer for which men might be more open to further discussion.
”She grew up with her mother browbeaten and harassed by her jerk of a father, the kind who would use Ephesians 5 as a club, and so she simply asserts that any married couple that seeks to live out Ephesians 5 must be doing exactly the same thing her parents did…”
If I was giving any support to Wilson, I’d drop it on this quote alone.
When it comes to fatherhood, every psychologist from Biddulph to Amneus who relies on statistics and not feelz states categorically that children need a defined understanding of fatherhood in order to grow up properly civilized. This is particularly true for boys, for whom fatherhood as a social construct, defines the roles they aspire to later in life.
For girls, fatherhood models responsible manhood. Girls who grow to womanhood under the guiding hand of a strong father make far less irresponsible and stupid career, drug and sexual choices. This is simply a proven fact.
Wilson’s referred rebel daughter is far more likely to grow up in an environment of squalor, where her mother, having selected a man who patently would not stay with her for the long haul regarding children, has ejected him or driven him away, replacing him with a revolving door of boyfriend wannabes. This is the environment where young girls are abused, either by the ”boyfriend”, his brother/ cousin/best friend or other relative. Single parent / Mother-led families account for 75-80% of teen runaways.
Studies suggest the rate of abuse in intact (father-led) families is 0.25% – 1.25%, depending on the study and the selection criteria used.
The rate of sexual abuse in single-parent (mother-led) families rises to 16%, a figure that has remained constant throughout decades of sociological research.
The biological father – whom Wilson calls a ”jerk”, is the best protector of the child, as he always has been
You know, part of the problem with all of this, is how pastors and scholars continue to pervert the meaning of how exactly “christ loved the church”. When women in the congregation here this, they assume it means that their husband should basically let them get away with everything and expect forgiveness later. After all, that’s essentially what has been taught to women in regards to their own sins.
With ideas being pushed like born again virginity, why wouldn’t a modern women expect their husband to act like a total pushover if that’s what they have been taught regarding how Christ acted with the church. Are we ever going to get one of these pastors to preach about how Christ actually loved the church? I’m sure that a true evaluation would reveal that Christ was actually abusive to the church if he was treated with same perverse logic they apply to Christian husbands.
Unless they are like Christ…who was also flogged under trumped up charges. Perhaps his idea of headship is beating up innocent men and trying to usurp their authority.
Yeah if there’s one thing abusive men use to justify their abuse…it’s Scripture. Sometimes they just want to flog somebody.
Wilson is playing the moderate here, snidely sniping at those to the left and right.
And like most moderates he seems concerned about niceness and approval while reserving his sharpest contempt for his supposed allies to the right.
But it’s hard to take him too seriously if his slander against the worst oppressive men is to call them jerks. Don’t think he really gets what makes women tick. His kind will never defeat feminism.
When the authority of a husband turns rancid, a wife should receive the help of fathers, brothers, friends, and/or elders to help her stand up against it.
Trying to find a new definition of cleave…hmmm…when does "cleave" mean, "with caveats?"
I hope he has a good explanation of executing authority in a way that he approves of, that needs an imaginative answer and for God’s glory it would be beneficial to hear it. However, I don’t have the imagination to see how he can exceed the truth and soundness of many of the comments here.
Dear Gary Eden:
Good point about playing the moderate to sell out your side. People who do this are most often motivated by cowardice rather than evenhandedness.
My impression is that he doesn’t want to defeat feminism. His reliance on labelling people “wife-beaters” (despite his newfound backpedaling) marks him, in fact, a radical feminist. He’s consciously playing the judas goat, pretending to give good advice, while leading good men to the slaughter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat
Best,
Boxer
You are exactly right. And we should expect nothing less from someone whose scaled to the top of the churchian gynocracy.
Judas goat is an enlightening way to look at it. I’ve noticed a few different ardent promen antifeminists preachers who in the details actually push the same tired old tripe that leads men astray.
“I am a pastor and I know what Ephesians 5 and I Peter 3 say. I know the words St. Paul used. I know he got them from God. But I’m just having a hard time with what I know it looks like in practice. I know it makes the women mad. I know the women don’t like it. I know I’ll catch all kinds of hell if I advocate that wives actually do what the words say. “
Wilson, like all churchians and even most real Christians, is a modernist, even if only unconsciously (I wish I could find Escoffier’s post on this from a few years back). Anything in Scripture that offends modern sensibilities, especially prescribed roles for and relationship rules between men and women, is reflexively choked on and tossed aside. In short, God, His Son, and the early church fathers whom they divinely lead were all reactionary misogynists. But sometimes they said “nice things,” so it’s worth it to continue to pay them lip service, even if you just aren’t really into the whole Word of God thing and don’t really believe you’ll be held accountable for that after yourr earthly life is over.
As for the bolded part of deti’s quote above, a real pastor (i.e., someone unashamed of the Word and unafraid of “not nice” reactions to it from unbelievers) would tell women “you’re either angry at God and in rebellion against His commandments to you, or you don’t believe that the Scriptural prescriptions on headship and submission are really from God. You need to decide which of these is the case and BE OPEN AND HONEST ABOUT IT WITH EVERYONE.”
Her choice: “flip God the bird,” or call His Word a lie and a forgery. Eitber way, she reveals herself as the unbeliever that she obviously is.
Well, I’ve spent some time the last few hours trying to learn just what, exactly, a prairie muffin is… As already stated above, the term is a reference to women who live quiet and humble lives, in subjection to God and their husbands, concentrating on raising their children and being homemakers, and trying to dress and act modestly. Now the interesting thing is that the term is DERISIVE in the our culture, and is used in such a manner. Additionally, this is EXACTLY how Wilson uses the term. Just as he condemns men as wife beaters, he mocks women who are striving to live Godly lives with this term, suggesting that their lives must be miserable in such an existence to the point it drives them to become lesbians (back with that gay thing of his again). Wilson is clearly playing up to the feminists in his congregation by condemning not only strong leadership in men, but Godly submission in women. Typical of fauxvangelical feminists, whenever called on it he hurls ridiculous personal attacks and then starts crawdaddying away from what he said earlier and claiming to believe in Biblical submission… But he can never give a definition of what that actually looks like. Other than maybe his getting to flog the husbands of women in his church. Which is still just a really disturbing image.
Why are all of you waiting for someone earthly to give you permission to exercise headship and absolute authority over a woman, your wife? Nobody needs to give you permission. No pastor needs to tell you, or any woman, that this is ok to do. You do it. She will respond.
Do you take a risk? Sure of course. If anyone ever told you that life was safe they were lying to you. You waiting around for some earthly person to tell you that headship is safe is you just waiting for more lies. But women do respond to true headship, absolutely authority, even as they deny it in every comment section.
There is no reason for you all to keep waiting, like cowards. Go and find a wife, and be her head, absolute authority, with absolute responsibility, and never allow her to think otherwise, or to take control, as she will try to do.
I’m currently listening to Jordan Peterson’s series on biblical stories, so Wilson’s mention of patriarchy called this to mind. From 35:35 to 38:00
“It may not be purposeful”
The purpose is the usual above-it-all vanity that is the plague of the age. The feminists must have a point, and the trads must have a point, and Wilson is the lone wise sage able to bring the two together. The radical Left has been gaming that vanity for fifty years.
snowdensjacket0x0x0 says:
“But women do respond to true headship, absolutely authority, even as they deny it in every comment section.”
Or their repressed desire for this healthy control manifests itself in extreme ways, e.g., BDSM, 50 SOG, etc.
Earl said: “Yeah…I don’t loathe the institution and sacrament of marriage, I loathe the undermining pastors, the usurping court system and the choice of rebellious women.”
+1
@Frank K
>Sometimes, to little old Catholic me, Evangelicalism seems like a free for all, where any bozo can self proclaim himself as a “Pastor” and mislead people with his heresies. There is no one with any authority who can censure or defrock him, regardless of what he preaches.
I understand the critique, and agree that there is substantial potential for abuse. Scripture shows Paul delegating to Titus the selection of elders; Paul was not going to vet or review the people chosen (Titus 1:1-16) — Titus was to choose (verse 5).
The passages for elders, in 1 Tim 2-3 and Titus 1, make candidacy very open. Yes, there are about 20 requirements in Titus; but except for a polygamist, any man who really wants could become qualified to be an elder. And WITHOUT any paid-for religious training.
This is actually a good thing. Suppose a religious order decides that everyone who disagrees with itself are, by virtual of that disagreement, sinning or, at best, wrong and misguided. The men in that order will have a vast temptation to think people should be in submission to them; to try to control families and nations in ways God never authorized. Consider the history of the RCC, with respect to repeatedly sending men to die in crusades not ordered by God, killing people in inquisitions, killing those who had different scientific views, etc.
A foolish “protestant” preacher can do vast damage. But at least he is not going to literally try to kill me or my children. He will restrain himself to merely helping and approving of the woman / feminist / leftist / whoever that does. (Admittedly, not good either.)
I am afraid we only had experience with perfect authority in the Garden of Eden. And Eve was not satisfied with what she had, and Adam chose to please his wife over pleasing God.
Gunner Q
>You can call yourself a pastor and found the “Church of Frank”, sure, but soon you’ll have to defend what you teach from laymen who understand the Bible at least as well as you do
I wish this was correct. In my experience, pastors have drunk their own cool-aid, and believe their words/opinions have authority, simply because they said it.
How often does a typical pastor quote Scripture, to provide the basis for the answer he is giving? If his answer is not based on Scripture, it is based on him.
I have read only your posts, not Wilsons, but given your disclaimer in the end of this blogpost, it seems to me, that you’re becoming too fixated on these wife beaters from his first answer and using it just as a tool to beat him in argument instead of progressing it in a meaningful way any further (evidence: wife beaters in title).
That said I maybe just projecting, because admittedly I have history of discussions where I decided to beat a dead horse just to degrade opponent instead of actually help him find the truth/learn something myself…
It’s the biggest indicator that he has basically taken on the feminist ethos himself.
Yeah being a keyboard jockey and calling men cowards isn’t going to do anything. Why don’t you direct your ire towards the real problem with modern marriage…usurping court systems and undermining pastors, other females, other males, and feminist dominated media and education.
@ earlthomas786
Regarding snowdensjacket0x0x0 — this obvious troll is mightily obvious. Don’t feed him buddy.
On “prairie muffin”:
Wilson: “So this means that when you come across some rabid feminist online who was brought up in a prairie muffin jumper, and who had her hair in a bun for a couple decades, but who is now a lesbian queer theorist, we have to keep in mind the fact that when she attacks the patriarchy as an absurdity, she is quite possibly doing so as someone who grew up in the middle of such absurdity, frequently presented to her on a daily basis and in technicolor. In other words, she is not necessarily hallucinating. What she is rejecting is actually out there.”
Some choose prairie muffinhood, and some have prairie muffinhood thrust upon them. Wilson is clearly citing the latter. This is a “thing” I have seen within the homeschooling movement, in what might be called the “modesty subculture”. But the reaction Wilson mentions is more often not against an abusive father, but against parents who together chose this expression of their faith, and which the young muffin sees as part of the essence of their faith. This kind of expression unfortunately keeps their children strange even within the larger conservative evangelical subculture – and to young people, strangeness they didn’t choose tends toward the intolerable.
It is not a group of zero size, though, that has muffinhood thrust upon them (wife and daughters) by the father, from an almost Islamic view that if a man is tempted by a woman it is always her fault. This is the inverse of “the woman is never at fault” so common in modern culture – one that says in effect, “if I find you tempting, this must mean you are offering sex to me.” And so the women must be dressed in a way that tempts no one. Except, as we know, some women are enticing whatever they wear.
Wilson in his paragraph above tempts us to the fallacy of affirming the consequent: Abusive men will muffin their women, therefore if a woman is a prairie muffin, it must be due to an abusive man. And when he refers to “other women” in the following paragraph (not necessarily meaning “all”), the damage is done.
So…Pastor Wilson has a fetish for flogging men? That’s a weird fetish.
Perhaps…by that rationale Pastor Wilson could just be a bigger troll we are feeding.
@ dragnet
Re the trolls dropping in to Dalrock’s:
Yes, it’s been said before by other commenters here far more astute than I that such things show that we must be over the target.
And indeed we are: the quality of some of the comments here on this post (troll comments excepted, of course) have been of some of the highest calibre on record; they’re bound to incite enemy retaliation: congratulations, men!
@Frank K
I’ve tried to leave this comment a number of times, but it keeps ending up in the bit bucket:
Wilson has been very well known in reformed circles for decades. As it happens, his circles and mine are at one degree of separation, i.e., my acquaintance is a former associate of his.
Part of his fame has come from the daughter of one of his parishoners who ended up in a sexual relationship at age 13 with a young man whom her father took into the home as a sort of apprentice, apparently at the behest of Wilson and his elders. This unfortunate but toxic female is pretty well nationally known herself and writes of nothing else but her history of being abused. She sees Wilson as the epitome of patriarchy. Unfortunately, her father’s ability to protect her was compromised by Wilson and the elders. Her influence is wide and reaches to my state where there is a similar female who does nothing but push equalism and patriarchy-smashing and female teachers in the church. It’s all very nasty and unseemly. I won’t mention any names, but these soul-sucking dementors are easy enough to find. Just go north till you smell it, then west till you step in it.
While I identify comfortably as a calvinist and as holding reformed doctrines (as in London Baptist Confession of 1689), I have never belonged to the type of elder-run church that those doctrines seem to lead to, and never will. They are always full of drama, because the overbearing leadership structure and blue-pill mindset allows wives to leverage the predisposition to pedestalizing so as to stir the shit by getting the elders hopping at their bidding to undermine the husband’s authority in the home. I see it with my reformed friends all the time. Wives who would never think of obeying their husband suddenly become all about submission to authority when it comes to the husband obeying the elders, who are rubber-stamping her wishes. All the while posting pious women’s-conference-level garbage on facebook. It’s some ugly shite.
Trying to find a new definition of cleave…hmmm…when does “cleave” mean, “with caveats?”
It means to cut in two….
Been in the manosphere for half a decade myself. Now I’m married to a beautiful woman, obedient, kind, submissive, etc, but not a unicorn. She’s only this way for me because I demand that she be, and I lead in all things, and I do discipline her when she requires it. I’ve been watching you guys whine for years and I’m telling you that complaining and demanding someone else change things isn’t going to work. You have to be the change you want.
I saw badger attempt to guide you guys a few posts ago. That was good and healthy. I’d like to see more of that.
It is absurd to believe that many women who were reared by over-controlling patriarchs left home to become anything like “rabid feminist … lesbian queer theorist[s].” I’ve read a few things at No Longer Quivering and see none of this over there. It is more likely that most of those who march to “smash the patriarchy” are from broken homes and have feminist mothers.
I guess Wilson is trying to be funny with his description of “Elias One-Tooth” and “prairie muffin jumper.” But the portrayals are not just exaggerations, they’re just plain wrong. He is not illustrating a good point using the hyperbole.
@Daniel
You’d be surprised. See my comment above for some counterexamples. Some of the most rabid feminists I know are former homeschooled, reformed, patriarchal, SAHD (stay-at-home daughters), long hair, headship-submission, complementarian, Vision Forum, elder-run church types. And these are the circles my family run in. I walk a fine line, and I feel it every day. I tell my daughters that I walk a fine line with them. There are no guarantees. I tell them what I hold to be the truth and expect them, not to come to their own conclusions, but to come to the right ones.
Wilson is basically equating wifely submission to abuse. Any woman that is actually Godly is only so because she is abused into being an “prairie muffin” by her husband. It cannot be out of obedience to God. The rebellion against the tyranny of the patriarch is what he attributes the arrival of the radical feminist to, ommiting that the ULTIMATE Patriarch inspired Ephesians 5 and laid out the archtype for the prairie muffin Himself.
When you boil it down to it’s essence Wilson hates the sovereign authority of God and it’s earthly delegates and adherents.
@snowdensjacket0x0x0
Regarding ‘waiting’ to assume headship I think there’s a distinction to make. It’s important that a man knows, in his own mind, *why* he should assume headship and why his wife should submit to him. This thought process takes time and it’s the safe and responsible way to overcome blue pill conditioning. Social conditioning and tradition should not be cast aside lightly: most of our traditions are good. However I think the mistake a lot of men make is to think that if only they explained and re-explained to feminist women the error of their ways then they’ll agree and submit. This doesn’t work! It is unfailingly interpreted as weakness and (as far as I can tell) women are simply not interested in intellectual explanations.
@Caspar Reyes
I know who you’re referring to, as I referenced her in some of Dalrock’s previous posts. It was a very ugly bit of nastiness, and I think it demonstrates Wilson’s unfitness to be an elder.
@Daniel
Part of what makes feminism so insidious is how it slides in under the radar due to the culture. So much of everything is steeped in it that even the “good” ones have mostly feminist views. Dalrock does an excellent job of shining a light on these squared circles.
@Ron Tomlinson
Women are emotion based thinkers. Emotion based thinkers are rhetoric users. If you have to explain, you lose the rhetoric battle. The trouble is that rhetoric doesn’t get passed along to men, and they fall back to the only tool they have, explanations and cajoling.
Which is really the problem here with Wilson. What tools does a man have? He hems and haws over the matter. We end up with the “approved” tools being explanations, cajoling, and whining to mommy church. These are not the things a ruler does. I would suggest any man considering marriage would be better off reading Machiavelli than Wilson.
@Workin’ for the Weekend:
So you did. I had either missed it or forgotten.
Exactly…you don’t win converts with rhetoric. They need a change of heart…and considering God is the one who sets up how a marriage goes, that’s who feminists need to submit to first.
There is something deeply suspicious about pastors who assert their spiritual headship over their congregants for the purpose of undermining the spiritual headship of husbands over their wives. If we believe the notion that all headship is abusive, where does this leave the pastor? Taking the Duluth model to its logical conclusion, pastors are the worst abusers of all. If all headship is abuse, why should anyone listen to a pastor? They seem to have painted themselves into a logical corner.
** Disclaimer: I DO believe in the spiritual authority of some pastors, but I believe that most who occupy the position of pastor have not truly been called to the ministry by God. This is a very important distinction.
More power to you if you can control a rebellious woman through your own means…many men have tried and failed,
However, does she submit to you as her husband as she does to the Lord?
@Earl
You do win converts with rhetoric. You don’t win converts with facts or explanations.
We were told in a homily that when it comes to the Catholic Church it is a witness when it comes to the Sacrament of Matrimony but it is the couple who administers it to one another. So I don’t think it can be used as a usurper.
Besides these usurping pastors should remember this passage:
“What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
That’s correct…I got confused there.
@wraithburn
I couldn’t agree more. It saddens me how I too used to only consider use of ‘approved’ tools. However misguided, people don’t appreciate how honourable that stance can be. Many blue pill men are still desperately trying to do the right thing and are being shamelessly exploited for it. Quite aside from the fact that they’ve never experienced the joy of a deeply happy wife.
The principle tool is ‘dread game’ — to emotionally withdraw and to *not see* the rebellious women while she is in the act of rebelling.
That’s certainly a better option than kissing up, going choreplay, or giving into her demands. But I’m not sure how well dread game can work as a discipline in the long run to correct rebellion. She has to somehow connected your emotional pulling away correlates to her rebellion and I’m not sure how well women ‘get’ that because I’ve seen plenty who are oblivious to it.
There’s plenty of theories out there on how to convert a rebellious woman…but in the end I can’t think of anything that works better than Scriptural correction. And that’s only if she isn’t going full bore rebellion against God too.
@Pilgrim of the East
This is America in the 21st Century, and in this place and time there are some crimes that are so rhetorically inflammatory that to assign it to another, even flippantly, destroys conversation. “Wife beater” is one; so are ” rapist”, and “pedophile”. Wilson knows that, and Wilson started it. You noticed that Dalrock used “wife beaters” in a title, but you didn’t notice that Wilson used it first in his title, “And Now a Brief Word for the Wife Beaters”; complete with pictures of men spanking women.
@snowdensjacket
For what it’s worth: I don’t think you’re a troll. It’s good advice for a man to be bold if he marries. But it’s wrong to point to yourself (and your wife right now) as evidence that other men are doing it wrong.
Especially since you can be the perfect husband when it comes to headship…but there’s numerous usurpers out there who can whisper doubt into your wife’s ear. All it takes is one to convince her.
I can’t tell you how many times a woman broke off the relationship just because she talked with someone.
@Ron Tomlinson
Yes no one appreciates the effort to act honorably. Actually, you have reminded me of the chapter in Machiavelli where he talks about ruling a city which followed it’s own rules before annexation. He states there are three ways to deal with the city. Ruin them, reside in person, or allow them to follow their own laws under a friendly oligarchy. Women are like that independent city, used to following their own laws. A man has to choose one of those paths if he is to rule over his wife.
Here’s some “interesting” accusation about Doug Wilson…
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/scandal-in-moscow/
I have no idea if they are true or not.
@Pilgrim of the East
This is good advice, as we can all fall into this trap. Thank you. I will take it as an always needed reminder.
However, I would strongly encourage you to read Wilson’s posts as well. It isn’t that he brought up wifebeaters in the first post, and I’ve beaten him with that even as he has advanced his argument in the next two. He brought up wifebeaters in the first post. Then he brought them up again in his defense of the first post, going so far as to title the post as a response to wifebeaters. Then after seeing my responses to his first two posts, he again brought up abusive husbands. One could be forgiven for suspecting that Wilson doesn’t really want to talk about headship and submission, he wants to talk about wifebeaters. I very much would like to get on topic, and this is my point. We are now on three posts in the series, and at the end of post three after criticizing women whom he thinks dress funny and have strange hairstyles, he says he needs a fourth post to start to get to the point:
As Cane wrote in the comments at Wilson’s latest post:
I would by far prefer to discuss the topic. But when someone persists in refusing to discuss the topic, that pattern of refusal itself becomes the topic. But either way, I would strongly encourage you to read Wilson’s posts for yourself. This is always the best way to get the full picture.
We have to get over out terminal niceness and quit worrying about feelbads. Authority is force and it isn’t nice. We can’t ask women to allow us to lead them. They will rebel against such niceties. They’ll complain about submission, but that’s for show, only the weak listen. Like children they are happier under control.
Look at what they do, not what they say. Frankly, the altright has demonstrated that the things which make them crow the loudest are the rhetorical pain points we need to press.
This is a post 50 shades world. Women would rather be with a dangerous even abusive leader than a safe beta.
Is there a shiv to the heart of a churchian sharper than that?
Dale @ August 2, 2017 at 11:48 pm:
“I wish this was correct. In my experience, pastors have drunk their own cool-aid, and believe their words/opinions have authority, simply because they said it.”
Not their own cool-aid. I can hear the same Pastor Feelgood sermon from a dozen unrelated clergy. Becoming a cult leader would be an improvement over plagiarizing feminist talking points like every other simpering wannabe AMOG in Christendom. Do we really have “thousands” of different denominations? Everywhere I go, it’s the Church of Skirt. If women still wore skirts.
How gloriously different the saints, how monotonously alike the wicked. –Somebody
I think it was talked about before in a previous post…women want both traits, leader and provider. Asserting your authority as a husband will take care of the ‘safe’ part of the provider and instead of using threats and abuse…use Scripture and Godly authority to husbands to provide the justification as the leader.
For those who might want more perspective on Doug Wilson, it seems Pooh resurrected his blog albeit without all the original posts:
http://www.poohsthink.com/
http://www.poohsthink.com/praise-for-poohs-think/
And a nice sample:
http://www.poohsthink.com/academic-tenure-and-the-contrarian/
Every woman I have met IN church under the age of 45 has had: a stalker / stalkers, a bad boyfriend(s) who hit / abused / threatened / made-her-do-bad-things. A mean, alcoholic absentee dad. Her kids father, whom she never wed who “doesn’t pay child support” (what? no man has a Social Security number? The courts can’t “find” these men???) She also had the Christian guy who “wasn’t” really Christian and made her do “bad” things and of course beat, hit, abused, and threatened her……but she never “called” the police or went to a “womens shelter” because you know……..the police don’t “believe” women and “women’s shelters” have “stupid rules” that she just cannot follow…….but “she loves Jesus more than anything else / her kids come first on everything” (but yet continues to bring all these abusive men into her life???)
I mean…….I understand there are men who do these things….but I still don’t understand EVERY woman? Every man in church lives a double life? In church on Sunday, and the rest of the week he beats women, rapes them? Every man is somehow not to be trusted, even IF he is living a devout and Holy life??????
The victim mentality is so steeped now, even in church culture. It is no wonder that MGTOW grows by the day. The feminist schema has worked perfectly. It was meant to not empower women. It never was. It was meant to destroy “trust” between men and women. Ruined bonds between them. It has effectively destroyed marriage, and has replaced it with a shallow expensive “wedding day” and hyper-sexuality on looks, family courts backed by the muscle of the law and weak and spineless pastors who posture tough in front of men, but kow-tow to every minor splinter in a womens happiness.
Give everyone a penny that cries. I am so tired of hearing this nonsense. It’s not true. Men need to be given a reason to step up and women have to stop being told how “wonderful” they are.
@ Dalrock
Check out the article below……..worthy of an article re: the female need to abolish male spaces.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/08/harvard-final-clubs-fraternities-end
@ Jason
I fear that this is now simply the culture we have to live within.
Women make themselves utterly unattractive to men (in both looks and demeanor) and yet expect there to remain plentifully stocked waters in which they can fish for a man.
Agreed, women have to stop being told how ‘wonderful’ they are……when they are not ‘wonderful’.
Praise should be forthcoming when women do societal things that are ‘right’.
When they are not, they should be criticized for their pivotal role in destroying same society.
Here’s some “interesting” accusation about Doug Wilson…
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/scandal-in-moscow/
I have no idea if they are true or not.
Wow. If true, Wilson is a monster.
Roles of men and women in marriage
https://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1060046
Giving up (going my own way) (BlueEyedLady makes a characteristically bitter comment, in contrast to the near-universally pleasant comments.)
https://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1060334
@PokeSalad
That’s the second instance of that type of thing. As I linked in a previous post, there is at least one other case in the same vein. This is a pattern Wilson has repeated multiple times, which was one reason why Pooh blogged about him a decade ago.
It appears that while Wilson thinks some hypothetical abusive husband should have his authority usurped…he is quite fine giving husbandry authority to known pedophiles.
This man is no preacher…he’s a con man with a fake church.
@Laboris Gloria Ludi (@wraithburn)
I only looked at the last link, and only skimmed that one, but it is incredibly oblique.
There are many references to an elder, but the elder is not named. Likewise reference to “evidence”, which also is neither described nor linked to. Then as proof that the evidence was real, we are told that another church didn’t agree with Pooh’s version of the evidence.
snowdensjacket0x0x0,
A man can attempt to walk out leadership, but sites like this can provide encouragement and support. All woman will also not respond properly to such attempts. Some will nuke things on a man who does that, even if they actively “love” 50SoG or quickly get into such a relationship.
You are greatly lacking practical experience.
So we should bow down to you, mighty alpha? Give it a rest. You won the wife lottery, if your story is completely accurate. I did some of the same steps and I am now single. I must just not have done it right. I should have apprenticed under you and everything would be wonderful for me now, right? The long term rebellion in the heart of my ex-wife had nothing to do with it….
Dale,
Very true. This was clearly brought out in my past church in my recent divorce, but it was an ongoing problem with most leaders I have talked with. They will justify what they want to justify and ignore anything they don’t really have a good justification for. (At least in general, that is the human way, but seems worse in many who claim a church leadership role.)
Not in the passage noted above. You couldn’t cut in two something that was already two.
I will leave the Hebrew study to others. Clearly the word meant something different when the KJV was written. The NKJV shows something that makes more sense to our modern usage.
Dalrock,
The original blog was lost some time ago. At that time, Pooh was a member of Wilson’s congregation. According to some of his other posts, his new blog is not intended to focus primarily on his past altercations with Wilson. I have not read through all of his posts, so that was the first one I grabbed as touching on his previous topics.
It might have been better to just provide this quote from his newest article:
Laboris,
Very true. We all can use good ways to use rhetoric to walk out the walk. Just being the AMOG is not going to cut it for most. Those who already know what to do, or who more likely already have a wife who is mostly compliant, have no value being here and should probably stop spending their time reading the comments here if they find them so incredible. Why do they waste their time here if it is such a waste of time?
Methinks someone doth protest too much.
Not true. That may work, but it may also blow things up. It contributed to the end of my marriage, though I believe God has been showing me that end was inevitable, He just sped things along. The heart of the woman ultimately determines her response to any consequences for her action, however mild.
Applying a PUA’s dread game is not going to convert a rebellious wife. It doesn’t even do that perfectly in the world. PUAs are just willing to fish in a much larger pond, so 1 success is sufficient. I am not willing to fish with that many wives, so I am not going to apply even the principle (do bad and connections get cut) in any similar manner.
Earl,
The problem is that too many churches will give her spiritual cover for her rebellion if she makes the right claims. Many also have a false view of a God who will accept whatever they do. (This goes across Protestant vs. Catholic, I have seen women on both sides with this idea.)
The modern idea that we should pursue happiness at all costs bites all, whatever their spiritual background.
Gary,
Not necessarily. Read about the curse on Eve after The Fall. She would always desire to control her husband. She would be better off following the leadership of a man under God’s leadership, but no men walk the latter part out perfectly and she still has the sinful desire to rule over her husband pushing at her.
The focus on happiness is the core problem. My ex is far happier, at least in her own mind, now than she was when she had to live with me and occasionally do things to meet my needs and desires. She could have found more long term contentment following God’s plan, but she would not have been happy in it at all given her underlying mindset. Any temporary happiness would have been blown away when I did something she viewed harshly.
BillyS, you are right, I was speaking rhetorically. More accurately, most wives will be more content and joyful if under authority.
‘Cleave’ means to separate. It also means to join. It’s one of those words.
The principle tool is ‘dread game’ — to emotionally withdraw and to *not see* the rebellious women while she is in the act of rebelling.
The heart of “dread game” is male ZFG, aka “outcome independence.” A single man has that option, or convince her that he does….an honorable married man does not.
“Asserting your authority as a husband will take care of the ‘safe’ part of the provider and instead of using threats and abuse…use Scripture and Godly authority to husbands to provide the justification as the leader.”
Very close earl. Where most go wrong is in showing scripture to the wife while trying to convince her to allow him to lead. You can’t ask or cajole or make threats, you just do and she follows or bears consequences for disobedience. All the while you wash her in the Word.
You are very right about the safe part. They feel safe in the arms of a strong man, even if harsh and not nice. They feel insecure with weak betas, no matter how much financial security he showers her with.
Ow, I had not been aware that Wilson defended a pastor who was defrocked for fraud.
https://ministrywatchman.wordpress.com/2007/01/30/christian-leaders-ignore-sin-when-its-advantageous/
Well my point wasn’t to use it to have her allow leadership. Just that it is justified by God. It’s not based on her anyway.
Oops, I think I missed a proper attribution after “methinks” in my reply above. That should have referred to Ron.
Yup…the only thing those tactics do is bring out that response. Whether successful or not. This sentence is probably as ‘red pill’ as someone can get.
@Caspar Reyes
The spam filter generally works amazingly well, but sometimes it does strange things. I found either three or four versions of the same comment in the spam bin and unspammed them before moving to the trash (since it had already let this last one through). Hopefully the unspamming action will have an effect on the logic in the future.
@BillyS
If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away … the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: … But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace. For … how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?
When a believing man takes a stand for the Lord and rules his home with sanctifying love, there is no guarantee that his wife will respond positively. She might rather depart than submit. But you do what is right in the sight of God.
Mandy says:
August 2, 2017 at 1:33 pm
“The Bible never mentions women’s accomplishments but it does tell them to have long hair, modest clothes and a submission to their husbands.”
What do you call Proverbs 31?
“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.
11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
14 She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.
18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.
19 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
20 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.
21 She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
22 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.
23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.
24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
25 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.
27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.”
Daniel,
I believe my ex-wife is a believer, though a selective one. (Some would argue she is not at all, especially based on her actions.) I would use that to allow me to do whatever I want in the future.
Though I view my situation like that of the comic that would not join any organization that wanted him. I am not sure I would trust any woman who was available in my target age range. I highly doubt I am going to marry that young and older ones come with their own baggage.
I wish I could be like Boxer or Feministhater and simply write it off completely, but God said that it is not good for man to be alone and the desire for a godly wife still pulls at me, even if it is highly unlikely.
I have to walk out the next stage and see what plays out in my case. I do think I can give a perspective to others, so I am willing to speak up, though I am trying to funnel even that properly.
@BillyS
Actions betray belief. Either she does not really believe or she is ignorant of God, the word, implications, consequences, etc to a degree that others notice. I think the first is worse but the second doesn’t appear to rise even to the level of Dante’s virtuous pagans.
@earl
>That’s certainly a better option than kissing up, going choreplay, or giving into her demands. She has to somehow connected your emotional pulling away correlates to her rebellion and I’m not sure how well women ‘get’ that because I’ve seen plenty who are oblivious to it.
Well it’s the principal tool, not the only one. Perhaps ’emotional withdrawal’ is the wrong description. It kind of suggests disengaging from the relationship. How about ‘withdrawal of favour and affection combined with a calm insistence and expectation of her compliance’?
It must be intelligently applied.The battleground must be chosen and your frame established. Then you must hold frame even if she screams like a banshee. Aside from planning for various practical contingencies, there are two components to this: (1) having a good private explanation of your internal frame, (2) anticipating the blasts of raging anger. A preparation for the latter might be to take a few cold showers. (Seriously.)
Even so It’s possible that you’re going to feel significant fear and discombobulation. I think sociopaths deal with this using aggressive self-talk (along the lines of “I don’t care if I end up in jail, I refuse to live under her thumb”). They may also physically withdraw.
Christians deal with this using prayer (e.g. Psalms 23:4) Unlike sociopaths and secular types, they are able to feel fear without being taken over by it (I think there’s a connection with 1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
>But I’m not sure how well dread game can work as a discipline in the long run to correct rebellion.
I think you can expect to be tested a few times before peace is established. It has worked for me, though I accept that not all women are the same; perhaps I was lucky. It might be better to start with small issues and work up. I guess best of all would be to *begin the relationship* with compliance testing. Use it as a filter. Whatever happens though, it’s important that a wife feels strength from her husband and becomes accustomed to the calmness and peace that results from her compliance. She *also* has to overcome a lot of bad programming from modernity.
After reading Dalrock’s timeline of Wilson’s posts, I think it unlikely he comes up with much, other than the sweats, alternating with the giggles. I think his specific steps of authority will match what Daniel says. Lay the expectations out, help her when possible, be calm, withstand outbursts, and let her separate as a final step. Even the fem therapy radio show by Arterburn condones separation as a legit consequence of setting godly boundaries and expectations, except they usually only say that to the women trying to change their husbands.
But even if Wilson says such, it leaves a funny feeling that it was such a struggle to get here. Ideally, he thanks Dalrock for helping expose an ungodly fear of women he didn’t realize was so potent in his life.
Oh believe me I am not lacking in experience. Imagine the hubris for those on here to even allow themselves to think such a thing.
And yes @gary eden that very mistake is what I see my brothers in failing marriages continue to make.
Anyway whether you guys try or not it’s no skin off my back. It does seem a tad bit hypocritical to never even try but still complain. And believe it or not but plenty of people do not get divorced and are happy married.
That’s what I would guess. It most likely depends on what she responds to as to the best course of action rather than thinking it’ll work for every woman. Even though they’ll share a lot of similar characteristics…they still have their own unique personality.
One last guess about Wilson’s upcoming response- based on what I read from him regarding the 2015 controversy, his response won’t match the depth that the comments here reach. They can’t when his main belief about godliness seems to be playing the middle, or being above it all, as was pointed out earlier. My former pastor did that often, using Rush Limbaugh as his righty-foil. When a pastor goes there, the outcome is usually saltless and bland.
Gary Eden,
I have lamented many times on here about how politeness is killing the church. Sometimes I use Mr. Rogers as my archetype of the ultimately sanctified protestant. Since you brought it up, calling it niceness, what are your thoughts on why it has so quickly and thoroughly become predominant?
I don’t know that I’d relate “not good for man to be alone” to “great for Billy S. to sign another unjust marriage contract, so that what monies he has left after the first divorce can be parceled out to a second ex wife, the state, and whoever he hires as attorneys.”
More generally, I’d assume that any woman worth her salt would be open to the idea of a private religious marriage, with perhaps other religious bros as arbiters; or, perhaps, a hermetic “self-marriage” that only you two know about. You keep your promises, she keeps hers, and you keep the state and its meddlers out of it.
Any woman who balks at this is probably looking at a future payoff rather than a life with Brother Billy, and (imo) could be used and discarded accordingly.
Best,
Boxer
Swanny,
On politeness killing the church…. Our current version of “politeness” is feminized communication. It is concerned primarily with no one getting his/her/its feelings hurt.
Part of the problem is that the aggressor against the church is excused, and established church members, especially men, are to keep silent against infiltration and aggression. I know this sounds vague, so let me give two illustrations.
1) A teenage girl, about sixteen, was a member with her parents at the church I used to attend (pre-frivorce). She would come to Wednesday night Bible study wearing outrageously immodest clothing. What was worse, she was attending a local, private, “Christian” school with a very strict dress code, which meant she was actually changing into her slut clothes in order to go to church. Everyone could see what she was doing, but no one said anything for fear of offending her very sensitive mother. It just would not be polite to tell her to dress modestly, especially at church Bible study.
2) An older man at a church Bible study held forth that if a transvestite in full regalia, including a mini-skirt, were to enter the worship services we should receive him/her/it just as we would anyone else. This was followed by a wildly inaccurate application of James 2. The main gist of his argument, however, was that we should be “nice” and “polite” to any visitor… Even if said visitor was there to disrupt the peaceful and orderly worship of the church. It would offend too many people if such a person were escorted out of the building.
In each example above the offender (teen girl slutting it up in church, transvestite disrupting worship) was/would be an aggressor against the church, and should be treated accordingly by the shepherds of the church. Yet our feminized fear of confrontation demands that we politely refuse to defend the church against such wolves.
Oh one quick correction to a comment I made earlier. I didn’t see badger trying to help out our fellow men a few posts ago. I saw boxer trying to.
And I’ll expand on it now. As I have very little time and mental energy left, after everything I have done to contribute over so many years. When so few hear.
You will not be marrying a virgin. This is not going to happen. So you do have to find a way to come to grips with this. And this is how I think you should do it;
Get rid of your envy. Do not allow your inner words to become words of envy. “Why didn’t, why can’t, I have that girl at seventeen. Why didn’t can’t I have that girls virginity? Why didn’t can’t I have been that or this?”. Envy is a toxic poison, evil, but it is there inside all of us. You cannot not feel it. Really hard *feel* it. The demi-god of envy is real. The the one true God rules us all.
When you find yourself in envy with a woman change your thoughts. Though prayer. There is incredible power in prayer this way. You say a prayer of gratitude. Thank God for what you actually have. Look at that woman, see your envy of what “could” have been, get rid of that poison, and then change your words through prayer to words of thankfulness. Thank you my Lord for what I have. For what you have chosen to give me. It is not what I want, through my envy and greed, but it is what you, my Lord, father in heaven, have chosen to give me.
And by you I will make what you have chosen to give me, the greatest it can ever be. No envy. No regret. With gratitude.
“That’s what I would guess. It most likely depends on what she responds to as to the best course of action rather than thinking it’ll work for every woman. Even though they’ll share a lot of similar characteristics…they still have their own unique personality.”
This is exactly what is meant by living with our wives ‘according to knowledge’. Some people want to use that verse as hammer against husbands why they can’t do this or that but its not. Its real simple really. There is lots of good advise out there, apply it intelligently to your situation.
Swanny,
Its a confluence of forces. No short answer…
Some of it is a multi-generational selection by the church for beta men low in testosterone and high in agreeableness. Society has also shiften from bold straightforwardness to passive-aggressive communication as we’ve neutered men.
The church has adopted a business marketing approach (customer is always right) which seeks to avoid offending parishioners at all costs; even if it means violating scripture or kicking out members who cause offense by more closely following scripture. Wallets and butts in the seats matter most.
Tied to that is the worshipful appeal to women while making the church a safe space. Causing feel-bads literally called out as sin. The church has shifted its approach to appeal to women as they are the major demographic and control the money.
People don’t go to church to get right with God, but to purchase the feel-goods of salvation. So no one is called out for sin and no one is allowed to advance beyond others in holiness or religious practice lest they make the others feel bad or doubt their salvation. Total stand down on holiness.
Even our gospel has changed. We watered it down for the broadest appeal with the fewest hurdles to maximize evangelism and tailored it for emotional appeal to women; total opposite of Jesus’s approach.
The American experience plays a part. Our forefathers prized niceness and cooperation, frontier life lead to the over-valuation of women, our revival history emphases emotion over tradition, and at each step in the feminist movement, from suffrage to free love, the church surrendered to women in the culture war.
Finally the no-spanking, everyone gets trophies, safe spaces millennial experience is the capstone of it all. From stay at home moms to daycare to school, we’re raised by women with minimal interaction by men. Women who prize niceness, fairness and cooperation over competition. Don’t hit girls, women are more spiritual but boys are mean and defective so need to be drugged. Small families also means boys have much less interaction with girls growing up.
Thats a lot of different reasons, though I still feel like I’m missing something behind this gut level objection to not being nice to women. Thats a big part of the revulsion at husbands disciplining wives, no matter how tame the method. Its not nice, it offends them, it causes feel-bads. To even contemplate the matter is gut wrenching, triggering many.
Still praying for you Swanny.
Snowdensjacket
Snowdensjacket,
How many long term marriage ending divorces have you been through?
I am almost certain I have been through one more than you have, and I certainly didn’t see the rebellion as being as significant as it was until afterward, though parts are clear in hindsight. (As is almost always to be expected.) You are certainly quite arrogant.
And you know this how? Quit playing the AMOG and get some humility. Or quit trolling if you want to claim to not be that. I married a virgin (which I believe for various reasons I won’t share here), but even that didn’t solve the problem. My biggest problem was marrying a woman who did not have a submissive spirit and who was relatively older.
I am not sure what your other crap is about. I don’t lament the things you proclaim, though I would not have married my ex-wife if I knew then what I know now about female nature. She had plenty of warning signs (not wanting to be married and the active behavior of her mother among them). God led me to marry her, but I would not walk such a foolish path nor encourage a young man to do so unless God clearly spoke such to me. I would have handled many things differently along the way, but the more control you advocate would have backfired even more, as she would not get over her rebellion.
You are showing yourself to be like an SJW, doubling down rather than admitting that you might not really know everything. Grow up, whatever your physical age is.
Boxer,
Perhaps, but those methods still don’t sit well with me or the churches I would likely attend. (I have been in enough that I know what I generally feel are appropriate, even if I have major issues with many right now.)
I don’t think you can solve problems even with the steps you mention, especially since even living together creates a marriage in the eyes of many states, including Texas IIRC.
I agree it may not be a good course of action and it may be that I will ultimately settle down for the solo life as I adapt to my new circumstances. God has a call on my life and that does not necessarily include another wife, unless He decides that is His route. I ultimately live to serve Him as my Lord, however annoying that can be at times.
@ Luke
Excellent, mate! Proverbs 31 is a beautiful tribute to the Godly woman, the Godly wife.
We’re talking about the rebellious spirit in women…not envy over not marrying a virgin. Quit deflecting.
Earl said, “We’re talking about the rebellious spirit in women…not envy over not marrying a virgin. Quit deflecting.”
Thanks for clearing that up for us Earl. I had no idea what he was on about. Looney Tune, perhaps? I thought he might have been saying that men are envious of women, which is itself absurd. But that men are envious of other men who have married virgins? Insane! Are you sure it’s not another manifestation of Insanity Bytes, or whatever her name is?
7824’s linked article,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/scandal-in-moscow/
seems to reveal further depths to Wilson’s weird innuendos, especially those sexual in nature. He’s one strange fellow.
It’s a bit long, but it’s well worth the read. Wilson and his cohorts seem no better, and in fact worse, in their behaviour than their secular counterparts. Is Wilson even Christian? Mind boggling stuff.
OT – another brick in the wall normalizing divorce among Christians.
http://gentlereformation.com/2017/07/20/a-high-view-of-marriage-includes-divorce/
Note that I am part of the Reformed camp, and we generally have accepted divorce for causes of adultery and abuse. But the author goes farther than that (emphasis mine):
“This fact is especially true for women, who suffer at the hands of men whose actions mock servant leadership and so blaspheme the name of the Christ whom they are called to represent. Denying a woman legitimate divorce allows an unrepentant man to continue in this abuse and blasphemy. If we want to value and treat marriage rightly, we need to think about Jesus! His care for His Church is not an abstract idea. We see it lived out in the gospels every day in purity, tender care for widows, and intolerance of the Pharisees who thought they could be right with God while checking out beautiful women at the market. Christ’s love for His church found very concrete expression on the cross—willingness to die to save His beloved people. Yes, God hates divorce. And there are some things that He hates even more.”
So if my wife doesn’t consider my servant leadership sufficient, it’s OK to divorce me.
Now the author probably has a rather more conservative view of divorce, but this seems to give cover to women who aren’t haaapy with their current guy.
It’s basically the same rationale the Pharisee’s used to test Jesus with the Moses option for divorce. Although with women it’s more unhappiness. Sure God hates divorce but ‘he’ hates it more when a woman is unhappy.
And she forgets Jesus’s response…”Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
We know this already, buttercup. However, marrying a virgin is the best possible option, the rest raise the chance of divorce by 50 or more percent. I will never get married and would only ever ‘think’ about getting married to a virgin. There is no envy in this, I don’t care that other men got their virgin and I must take the scraps. I simply care that the scraps are not worth shit.
OT – another brick in the wall normalizing divorce among Christians.
http://gentlereformation.com/2017/07/20/a-high-view-of-marriage-includes-divorce/
I don’t think I could stomach reading through that. But they want divorce to be easily obtained and stigma free? The problem is marriage is supposed to be a permanent lifelong legal bond. The law regards it as such. Divorce is supposed to be rare, which is the justification for typically awarding the wife the generous “cash and prizes” you see in many divorce settlements. This is a big problem I have with the feminist attitude to marriage. Feminists believe it is a moral obligation to leave any relationship which isn’t making you happy, yet most still support marriage in its current form? If you want divorce to be easy to get, fine and dandy. But then redesign marriage to be an expressly temporary union.
I cast my mind back to the lovely, virginal, modest Naghmeh Abedini — on her wedding day. I’m sure she had all the trappings of a devout, submissive, chaste and respectful Muslim girl. She loved God, and was surely sincere when she told her husband’s parents that her highest aspiration was to be a good and devoted wife to their son, for all the days of his life. She wanted to raise his children, and she was exactly the type to grow old being a faithful wife and good mother, basking in the respect of a life well lived.
The entire rotten edifice needs to be destroyed, gentlemen. Thankfully, it’s collapsing due to its own internal contradictions.
Boxer
Hmm, thanks for the link. I see that they mentioned TGC. Am glad I don’t visit the TGC site anymore, but the Gentle Reformation site seems slightly better, but equally incapable of fighting the fight for husband’s authority. Sounds like TGC is wringing their sensitive hands about an abused Christian wife’s letter. What next, a story of racism? They love establishing their reasonableness and sensitivity to PC issues, with Christian words, more than anything else.
You know what TGC should get into, global warming and living a sustainable lifestyle. That would be good for them.
Here’s one way to get men to start wanting more submissive partners:
http://nypost.com/2017/08/03/boys-who-watch-porn-are-more-likely-to-become-misogynists/
Yeah which is why I wouldn’t disagree with a guy only wanting to marry a virgin submissive woman. Trying to tell us ‘you aren’t going to get one’ and ‘you are envious’ isn’t going to shame us into accepting Feminist Felicity and Rebellious Renae with her brood of children from men she fornicated with…because if she isn’t happy, she’ll find someone else and have the courts bleed you dry. Why would we want to take a chance on a higher divorce risk?
“Niceness” as high virtue, and “Not Nice” as lack of same. Some good points have been raised about that concept in this thread.
Oh the irony. I can see that I have been marked by some at my church as “not nice”, because I sometimes bring up concepts and material I’ve learned here that make people uncomfortable. In my mind I am in fact being nice enough to share some valuable information that might lead to introspection and growth. To this point I have not been called out on my perceived lack of niceness – because to call me out for causing discomfort wouldn’t be nice.
I can see that I have been marked by some at my church as “not nice”, because I sometimes bring up concepts and material I’ve learned here that make people uncomfortable.
Well, as we all know, the Lord was nothing but niceness itself to the Pharisees.
Wilson and his cohorts seem no better, and in fact worse, in their behaviour than their secular counterparts. Is Wilson even Christian? Mind boggling stuff.
Wilson is, I believe, 71 years old, which means he would have graduated from seminary/bible college in the late 60s or early 70s – right at the same time when those institutions were at peak infestation with heretical modernist rot. This probably contributes in no small measure to who he is and what he preaches.
OT – another brick in the wall normalizing divorce among Christians.
http://gentlereformation.com/2017/07/20/a-high-view-of-marriage-includes-divorce/
Once again: Modernism is the dominant philosphy that guides 99.999 percent of those who self-describe as “Christians.” They are “Christians” only to the extent that their” faith” doesn’t clash too uncomfortably with the culture. Once the disparity passes a certain point, out the window Christianity goes.
What prominent churchian figures like Wilson are attempting to do, consciously or not, is invent an entirely new religion that cherrypicks the “nicest” parts of Christianity while avoiding all the unpleasant stuff (e.g., repentance, judgment, self-denial and self-sacrifice, submission to authority, love of one’s neighbors, and [self-]discipline). Since Christianity can only be effective by REJECTING the World and all that it stands for, this “new religion” is doomed to failure, as it is based on shallow, hedonistic, empty emotion and shallow gains without spiritual nourishment.
TL;DR version: making a religion out of the feminine pysche will only lead to legions of miserably unhappy men who mirror the misery of the rebellious feminist nags to whom they are so obsequious.
‘They are “Christians” only to the extent that their” faith” doesn’t clash too uncomfortably with the culture. Once the disparity passes a certain point, out the window Christianity goes.’
Yes.
Which flies in the face of…
And if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. 1 Cor 7: 14-15
Earl,
Why take the risk? So many poems, stories and songs about why, all of which engage parts of a person that don’t overlap with your logical question. My boring answer would be, we take the risk because we are led to it and part of that leading is the internal desire to have a helpmeet and to lead a family you love and whom loves and respects you. The risks are way higher than they should be, and I think Wilson and the TGC and CBMW contribute to making women a higher risk and to encouraging men to take risks they shouldn’t take.
@PokeSalad
>The heart of “dread game” is male ZFG, aka “outcome independence.” A single man has that option, or convince her that he does….an honorable married man does not
He can’t abandon his family, sure, but he can withdraw affection from his shrewish wife and reward her with his countenance when she complies. If it is done with the intention of protecting the family (e.g. from divorce) then it can’t be dishonourable. Does it seem cruel or unnatural? On the contrary, it’s entirely natural to withdraw affection from things which disgust us. We either forgot to do this or were tricked into acting against our proper feelings. But the tools and the correction are becoming available now. We can make a conscious decision.
Dear Boxer,
re Naghmeh Abedini as an example/argument against holding woman’s virginity for an important criterion when it comes to choosing life mate (if I interpret you correctly):
firstly, only her and God know whether she really was one.
Also, nobody suggests virginity should be the only thing to look at when vetting a marriage prospect.
Then: men have their standards, when it comes to to whom they will dedicate their life, energy, commitment, for whom they’ll suppress their natural urge for sexual variety, whom they will publicly claim to belong to them, whom they will make mother of their children. Given the massive investment and limitation of his freedom, that marriage means for a man, there must be some big incentive to do so, and for some men this includes that the woman is exclusively (in a narrower sense, ‘only ever’) his sexually.
Men’s preference for virgin doesn’t need to be rational, but is no less real because of that.
(Would anybody demand a woman to rationally explain why she wouldn’t want eg short, bald guy? She must be obviously insecure..)
The relationship between number of premarital partners and stability of marriage, oft stated as a (practical) reason for the preference for virgin bride, often seems to me, when brought up in a discussion, rather a handy explanation men go to, when they feel they should explain themselves and have rational reasoning for their preference, while the preference itself rather stems from some very base gut instinct. Men first feel they don’t want a non-virgin and only afterwards, when pressed or feeling they should (rationally) back up their preference or explain why, tends to come: ah, because Jay Teachman..
I consider the let’s say ’emotional’ motivation absolutely sufficient.
Apart from that, there are some valid rational practical questions that appear automatically with woman’s sexual past, even with very low N:
– her criteria for choosing sexual partners,
– her loyalty.
Then there can be some other questions, that probably were not seriously studied (I don’t know), but are valid nevertheless and the eventual answers can be possibly interesting/surprising:
How do women relate/bond to children they have with a (in her subjective perception) lesser man than the top one(s) they ever mated with, compared to how they relate and bond to children of one and only partner?
How does it affect the child-parent relationship eg in the sensitive (pre)adolescent age, when boys happen to realize that mom got in past fucked by other men than dad, how does it affect their perception of her and how do they see the father with that awareness, and when girls realize there were other (maybe more interesting and hot and whatever) men in mom’s past than the boring father who (apart from other) establishes boundaries and demands following rules?
Then with a woman who was a virgin for her husband there is eg no chance that she could ever drop some unprompted careless remark, that can trigger in the husband some very disturbing mental image of her being penetrated by other people, which can bring the husband some very gut wrenching time, and can take huge effort and time to put that shit back behind the blindspot, so to speak, and still can leave a little crack in the relationship. (been there, not with a wife, but still, sucks enormously)
Withdrawal of affection doesn’t necessarily work if she’s checked out of the relationship. It’s also a very passive agressive move.
It’s advised because more direct methods don’t work if you haven’t the spine or you’re trying to re-establish control surreptitiously over time.
@Gary Eden
You can maintain eye contact and be verbally explicit why you’re displeased with her. So not passive aggressive. What are these ‘direct methods’ you mention?
Don’t forget that the rebellious wife uses her husband as a form of comfort as well as a resource-provider. The threat of withdrawing that comfort can be leveraged in the process of taming her. Once she has experienced the deeper comfort of knowing her place she won’t want to go back.
To be honest, I have never heard of the guy outside of this blog, meaning he’s kind of an obscure person, at least to me. Outside of his little churchian circle, does he have any real gravitas or is considered some sort of authority?
That’s it?
I don’t know all of Wilson’s history, but he wrote for this publication
http://www.credenda.org/
For a couple of decades. I became aware of him thru this when I lived out west. Proximity matters. I wish that had never happened.
He also has been mentioned by some prominent Reformed/Covenent theologians, and other educators who like his school. http://logosschool.com/about/history/
Ron (and Gary),
That only works if she cares about the loss of connection. No amount of action on a husband’s part can change her internal desires. Telling her you don’t like what she is doing, however you justified it, will do almost nothing in most cases and will just be part of an ongoing argument.
You overlook that she has the power of the State to enforce your continued provision, for at least a period. She doesn’t like the contact anyway, so cutting it or threatening to do so is no problem to her at all.
That is why dread game is so much more difficult in a Christian marriage, especially today.,
@BillyS
Good point. I’m reminded of the fact that if you have a close relationship with your children then their punishments need only be mild.
Good point Ron. My viewpoint on the matter was informed by the majority of testimonies of its use doing so without saying anything to the wife.
And a balance to that, it still worked sometimes with checked out wives as they’d been taking advantage of monopolizing hubby’s time and attention.
snowdenjacket says:
“You will not be marrying a virgin. This is not going to happen. So you do have to find a way to come to grips with this.”
While it is not absolutely the case that a Christian man cannot find a virgin it is perhaps unlikely. Also unlikely is that a man will find a wife who;
Will not be overweight.
Will not be disrespectful.
Will not be demanding.
Will not be miserly with sex, affection, etc.
“Coming to grips” is something married men who have already accepted such poor quality wives have to do. As a single man with options, I can say for myself, “this is not going to happen”. Envy of a reformed harlots past is not something I deal with, it’s disgust.
Reblogged this on Patriactionary and commented:
This is most instructive: Douglas Wilson likes to pose as a reactionary, e.g. defending the Confederacy, pretending to oppose feminism, but then he employs a term for very traditionalist rural Christian women who dress very modestly and traditionally in a disparaging fashion, similar to how feminists invoke ‘Stepford wives’. IOW, he reveals himself as the feminist he is.
Re: prairie muffins. I believe this started because Doug’s wife once spoke to a bunch of women somewhere (probably a homeschooling conference). She was dressed modestly, but in a fairly modern/trendy way, while most of the females wore the stereotypical denim jumpers, etc. Some questioned her style of dress and thus the tension started.
Re snowdensjacket0x0x0’s comment:
>There is no envy in this, I don’t care that other men got their virgin and I must take the scraps. I simply care that the scraps are not worth shit.
Either this guy is a troll, or is not a (knowledgable) Christian.
A refusal to take a non-virgin woman is Biblical. If a husband complains that his wife was not a virgin, the proper and required response is to kill her. God’s commands are different than the commands of cupcake. Try Deut 22.
Alas, our foolish nations refuse to either follow God’s law, or permit others to do so. It is really strange that I seem to have more in common with Muslims than I do with my so-called “Christian nation”. Or with the wimps who get paid money to pretend they are shepherds of God’s flock.
As others noted, many men feel an instinctive, or emotional, desire for a virgin. Given this is supposed to be a requirement, as shown by God’s penalty for the non-virgin bride, it should be no surprise that men, who are created by God, would have such desire.
And for the Christian man who reads, memorizes, and meditates upon, the word of God, it should only be a surprise if he does NOT have such desire. Romans 12:1-2 “be transformed”, Josh 1:8 “meditate on [the book of the law] day and night”, Col 3:15-17 “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another”.
It is unfortunate when those who claim to love us, or claim to be trying to help us, try to compel us to do something both disgusting and self-harming.
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I think it’s self-evident that Wilson condones abuse in its various forms. Perhaps not implicitly physical abuse of a wife, but he has no problem with, for example, spiritual abuse. He’s guilty of a great deal of it himself. Then there’s the sexual abuse and pedophilia he condones ala Steven Sitler. Wilson also rolled out the red carpet to RC Sproul Jr as he was being defrocked for spiritual abuse, tax fraud, alcohol abuse. Birds of a feather flock together. Between Wilson and Sproul it may be that Wilson is a somewhat tamer abuser. No one, for example has (to my knowledge) ever accused Wilson of being a wife spanker as Sproul has been accused. No one has ever accused Wilson of physically and psychologically abusing his infant children as Sproul has been accused.