Note: This started as a comment on Cane Caldo’s blog, and has been slightly cleaned up and modified into post form.
In Real Men Don’t Impede Her Desires, Cane Caldo explains:
Now, once in a great while a man will set a very general expectation on women. If he is a bold Christian he might say, “The Bible says wives should submit to their husbands.” It’s hard to imagine a safer statement than that. The man himself hasn’t actually placed any expectation on women. Yet even then he will surround it with quibbles and bromides and caveats and exceptions so that the plain and unoffensive statement has no practical meaning whatsoever; lest some man out there start to actually believe what the Bible says. But at least he made some vague attempt at something that might look like an expectation if it is seen at some distance in a dark alley on a moonless night.
Cane is right. Even when it initially seems like they are placing this expectation, the surrounding words negate it. After Cane’s post on the Nashville Statement Fortified I looked to see who the fortified statement came from, and found the names of the authors here. While I recognized Pastor Wilson, the other names weren’t familiar. One of the signers is Pastor Tim Bayly, an early Executive Director of the CBMW. Bayly still supports the CBMW founding document, which invented the sin of a wife submitting to her husband in a servile way. He also supports the CBMW founding book, which carved out space for women preachers like Beth Moore, so long as they aren’t technically in authority over men*. But he subsequently broke from the group for (among other things) not promoting one of Pastor Wilson’s books. Bayly is also surprisingly critical of fellow PCA Pastor Tim Keller, calling him a feminist.
So Bayly is not only an ally of Pastor Wilson, but like Wilson is on the bleeding edge of pastors publicly defending “traditional” sex roles. He supports some of the terrible things the CBMW did at their founding, but not the worse things they have done since then. Not surprisingly, Bayly has written a book titled Daddy Tried: Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood. In promoting the book he did a Q&A at the Barnabas blog where he was asked what wives can do to help their husbands stop failing as fathers:
Q: What can wives do to help their husbands better fulfill their role as fathers? What about sons and daughters, how can they help?
A: Well, this is the million-dollar question, but here are some thoughts.
WIVES: Don’t nag, but pray. Don’t become bitter, but sweeten up. Don’t try to fill in the gaps in you and your children’s emotional lives by doubling down on your own intimacy with your children. Teach your children to honor their father, and honor and submit to him yourself without complaining or giving subtle looks that tell your children your resentment.
If he had ended here, his answer would be quite good. He tells wives not to nag, and to submit. But of course, he can’t end there, as that would prove Cane’s observation to be incorrect. Starting with the very next sentence, he undoes his good work and tells wives to nag their husbands for not making them feel loved (where did that come from?), and to use their Pastor as a sock puppet through whom they can lead their husbands:
Explain to your husband that you wonder if he loves you because real love between a man and his wife is as emotionally intimate as it is physically intimate. Ask your husband to go with you to meet with the pastor; tell him that there are some things you’d like the pastor’s help explaining to him. Don’t baby him. Ask questions that are open-ended. Study him. Learn his fears.
Pray for your husband. Neither parade nor hide his failures. Don’t use your emotional intelligence to show him up in front of your children. Let him make mistakes. Sometimes, you’ll be surprised to find out he was right. Many men learn fatherhood by watching their wife’s motherhood and doing what helps and strengthens and protects her.
*To argue this feminist interpretation, the CBMW founders Piper and Grudem brought in Dr. Douglass Moo to explain that when Paul wrote in 1 Tim 2:14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner that Paul didn’t mean that women are more easily deceived. Dr. Moo joined the NIV Committee on Bible Translation in 1996, which means he was on the committee at the time Grudem says they were secretly working on a gender neutral translation after lying to Grudem by claiming they had abandoned the project.
“Many men learn fatherhood by watching their wife’s motherhood and doing what helps and strengthens and protects her.”
Well there’s your problem right there. The old switcheroo. In the infamous words of Willy Wonka:
“Strike that. Reverse it.”
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I will never again sit in a pastor’s office getting marriage counseling. It won’t happen. If my behavior is wrong, then they can bring it before the entire church. Enough with the closed door, underhanded browbeating of men.
If they don’t like how I run my marriage, then they can come talk to me about it and I can very helpfully point them the way out of my marriage. (I’m fairly confident this will never happen.) If they decide to take my wife aside, they will find themselves in a less subtle confrontation.
Agreed that he completely undoes everything.
But what if she’s the one with the ‘lack of spark’.
Pastors always seem to assume the man has not emotional intimacy and the woman is just filled to the brim with it.
“Q: What can wives do to help their husbands better fulfill their role as fathers?”
Do. What. He. Says.
Cheerfully.
And tell the kids to shut their mouth if they grumble about their father.
Funny how that was worded…’emotional intelligence’. I’d call that ‘rebellion’.
For the wimpy control freak it is not sufficient that the actions of the wife agrees with the husband. He must manipulate her heart and mind to agree also. He must make her believe what he believes.
That causes all kinds of practical and emotional problems; one of which is that if he is successful, he has convinced his wife to not offer the ordinary sacrifice of service to her husband as service to God, which is Christ-likeness.
It is a bit more subtle version of the usual feminization, but…it’s still “If you want to be a Good Man, turn yourself into a woman”.
Expect to see more of this. Far as I can tell all the men referenced in this latest goat rodeo are Baby Boomers. The feminization of boys in K – 12 back then was minimal. Nothing like the last 20 years or so. Millennial preachers are going to know the words, but not the meaning, and “cater to her every whim no matter what it costs” will be the go-to advice.
Some of the 20-something men are rejecting all of that. It will be interesting to see what develops.
Whoa!
The Equifax hack happened on the watch of a woman with a music degree, who inexplicably was an executive at Equifax :
http://www.returnofkings.com/130013/female-executive-with-music-degree-oversees-largest-computer-hack-in-world-history?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ReturnOfKings+%28Return+Of+Kings%29
Every time I think I’ve seen it all when it comes to Christians running down men, along comes another example.
If it weren’t so tragic it’d be funny.
Off Topic Anon
The Equifax hack happened on the watch of a woman with a music degree, who inexplicably was an executive at Equifax
Golly. What a surprise.
thedeti
Every time I think I’ve seen it all when it comes to Christians running down men, along comes another example.
It’s almost like a compulsion, isn’t it? Something more like Stockholm Syndrome than any kind of thinking. This is why is is important to push back, to actively resist feminism in order to avoid passively accepting it.
I wrote a couple blog posts a while ago. The first one was explaining biblical female role. The second one was a response to a “Women would follow if men were good leaders” a meme. I started the second one with “This isn’t the other shoe dropping.” It was not very well received. Turns out women are fine with you roasting them if you turn around and do the same with men. But if you don’t beat up the men at the end, then they get upset.
If women are not more easily deceived, then why didn’t Satan succeed at deceiving Adam?
Adam had been around a lot longer. Eve was new to the scene.
So either Satan tried to deceive Adam and failed, or he never bothered to even try. Why not?
There is the possibility that Satan and Eve arrived on the scene at the same time I suppose…
Either Satan tried to get Adam and failed, or he never bothered trying. By deceiving Eve, he got a twofer. He must have known it would take a woman to make a man do something stupid.
“O Lord, give me dominance, but not yet!”
squid_hunt
Turns out women are fine with you roasting them if you turn around and do the same with men.
That appeals to their sense of what is “fair”. Since women can’t take criticism and their first inclination is to blame-shift rather than take responsibility, failure to chastise men is deemed “unfair” and that triggers deep female emotions that are tied to possible abandonment by the tribe.
This gets demonstrated in androsphere blogs with monotonous regularity:
1. Men are discussing a problem, some are just complaining while others are trying to understand it and others are offering solutions of varying quality. The problem is “wives” or “women” in some other format.
2. One or more women pop in and start asking why the men can’t discuss all the bad things that men do, because Men Do That Too!
3. If any man with any leadership cred caves in, the discussion is ended and replaced by gossip.
If no cave in, the women get angry and eventually flounce away.
The women want to be where the men are, but want the men to not say anything critical about women because of their ingroup preference AKA “Team Woman”. Everything is personal all the time.
Bonus:
Women confuse the word “fair” with the word “just”, leading to many problems.
Bayly says:
Explain to your husband…..
Everything after that looks a lot like this –
https://www.petfinder.com/dogs/dog-training/dog-training-tips/
Good dog, atta boy!
Ha. My pastor talked about social roles in Colossians 3 recently. Six years ago, I’d have said his message on submission (Col. 3:18) was outstanding; now I count all of the qualifications and note that his discussion of both this verse and the following, “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them” contained directives for the men. I do give him points for not mentioning any “sin of servility,” and for not mentioning “abuse” in the whole sermon.
Scripture…’wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord’
Churchian pastors….’wives submit to your husbands when he performs the 10 things you and I say he needs to do’
@Anonymous Reader
I’m pretty well convinced that disrupting male groups is a deliberate strategy of feminism. I’m not really sure how it got so deeply entrenched or what mechanism was used. Even just looking in the church, you see a healthy, robust women’s study group typically and the men won’t ever show up unless you offer them food, in which case, not a lot of Bible study gets done. If men try to get together, women are fiercely opposed and even sweet married women want to know “Why do you want to exclude me?” Try that when she has her girl’s night out.
@Heidi
Just the other day, I got the joy of sitting through a sermon it was seriously preached, “If you’re not acting right with your wife, then God removes your authority and you’re a fake husband. Just like if you were pretending to be a cop.”
He got done and I turned to my son and told him, “Just to be clear, if you’re married, you are the head of your house. You are responsible to God for how you behave, but you absolutely have the authority to run your home.”
Atleast he had the decency not to say it in the full church service in front of the women.
squid_hunt
I’m pretty well convinced that disrupting male groups is a deliberate strategy of feminism.
Feminist territory marking is well documented, sure, but it works because of underlying desires in women to “be where the guys are”.
I’m not really sure how it got so deeply entrenched or what mechanism was used.
One way feminist territory marking became deeply entrenched: White Knighting men who insist that other men “be fair to the girls”. Fathers who have only daughters tend this way. Older traditional conservatives who grew up when deference to women was a counterpoint to women’s submission are this way.
The underlying mechanism in many cases is envy combined with projection and insecurity.
Even just looking in the church, you see a healthy, robust women’s study group typically and the men won’t ever show up unless you offer them food, in which case, not a lot of Bible study gets done.
How healthy and robust are those women’s studies, if they are all reading a book by Beth Moore or some other similar thing?
If men try to get together, women are fiercely opposed and even sweet married women want to know “Why do you want to exclude me?” Try that when she has her girl’s night out.
Insecurity that the men might be doing something fun, envy of men’s physical prowess, insecurity…
Listen to the recent shows on “Lonely Wives” by David Jeremiah. He is not who I would expect to go into female worship, but that is just what he did. He started by negating submission with the “mutual submission” idea. Then he read from a woman who left her husband because of feelz. He went on to beat on men a lot more. Not one comment to wives about controlling their emotions.
He also made the husband the wife’s helpmeet – The husband was supposed to supporter her in all things. Nothing was said about the reverse of course, since the script has been flipped even in his more traditional church.
(I had 2 comments on this eaten in the other thread, possibly because I linked to the audio location.)
[D: I just checked the spam bin and found one of them. It is restored now.]
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I picked up on that one a while ago. One of the biggest gripes in and out of the church is men just aren’t HELPING around the house. And then the pastor gives a scolding look and the man looks sheepish and agrees to start doing chores around the house. Which is, of course, typically a death kiss.
I would do like Boxer and ask…’what chapter and verse?’ Considering there are Scripture passages where God gives the husband the authority in the marriage and there is no ‘but’ behind that.
He used the verse about the centurion who said he was under authority and had men under him. He said it meant that the authority he had came from above him. And no one has authority unless they submit to authority. Which isn’t what the guy was saying. The centurion said he understood authority because he had authority and was under authority. It’s a really weird reading of that text.
I knew as soon as they said a special mens meeting it was going to be one of those. I went expecting the worst and wasn’t disappointed.
By the way, this:
is hilarious. talk about stroking egos. “You’re so much smarter than him….emotionally…
What’s that equate to in the modern job market?
I’d say so…and I’d add, the centurion’s authority wasn’t removed by God in this case either (in fact he was one of the few people who actually ‘marveled’ Jesus with his faith because he understood authority) ..so I don’t get where God said He removes authority if you don’t treat your wife right.
His argument was the only reason the man had authority was because he was in submission to authority, so if you disobey God, he removes your authority. It’s just mental gymnastics.
I’d say so…that’s like saying if a wife disobeys God or her husband He removes her authority over her children.
I’d keep that template when you try to refute the ‘yeah buts’ when it comes to rationalizing a husband’s authority over a wife being removed.
@earl
I have to admit, I’m done arguing. I’m not putting up with this nonsense. Their opinions aren’t going to affect me because I’m not going to change how I run my family based on them. And as soon as they get done talking, I correct it in my own home. I can’t do anything else. If I never get close to a pulpit again, I have enough children, it’s going to have some effect.
Lost Patrol says:
September 14, 2017 at 1:43 pm
Bayly says:
“Explain to your husband…..
Everything after that looks a lot like this –
https://www.petfinder.com/dogs/dog-training/dog-training-tips/
Good dog, atta boy!”
That reminds me of the classic Youtube video about Brad Alex the Girlfriend Trainer.
Good topic Dalrock
For the thirty-odd years I have been a Christian, EVERY TIME I have heard this passage preached on, the sermon comes with all sorts of panic-like caveats, qualifications and evasions to negate what the Word of God says.
Do we apply this to ”Be subject to earthly authorities” (Romans 13: 1)? Or , perhaps the Old Testament’s clear commandment, ”You shall not commit Adultery” ( I personally would really like the same caveats applied to women’s submission applied to that verse. So would most other men!).
It’s the Word of God. Do what it says. No ”if’s”, ”buts”, ”’provideds” etc. Men can do that, because they’re binary.
Women can’t, because it upsets their feelings….
If its any consolation, this document was signed by the Orthodox clergy in the Houston area. I know several of them personally, including the very first one on the list, Fr. Serge.
https://www.goarch.org/whats-new/-/asset_publisher/rlvS19snJYAk/content/houston-orthodox-clergy-issue-statement-about-city-s-gay-ordinance?inheritRedirect=false&redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goarch.org%2Fwhats-new%3Fp_p_id%3D101_INSTANCE_rlvS19snJYAk%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-1%26p_p_col_pos%3D1%26p_p_col_count%3D2%26_101_INSTANCE_rlvS19snJYAk_advancedSearch%3Dfalse%26_101_INSTANCE_rlvS19snJYAk_keywords%3D%26_101_INSTANCE_rlvS19snJYAk_delta%3D20%26p_r_p_564233524_resetCur%3Dfalse%26_101_INSTANCE_rlvS19snJYAk_cur%3D76%26_101_INSTANCE_rlvS19snJYAk_andOperator%3Dtrue
Very refreshing to see Scott. Really. The Salvation Army recently pulled its statement of marriage and homosexual behavior from its national webpage………..
It’s going be kettle season again soon…..wouldn’t want to “offend” anyone…it will pop back up sometime after the new year
…so if you disobey God, he removes your authority.
To which my next question would be “and HOW do you believe that God removes that authority, specifically, the authority a husband has over his wife? Cite chapter and verse from Scripture, please.”
Thanks Scott. That is great to see.
Sadly, Bayly’s advice is not only unbiblical but also unsound. In fact, I can’t see how it could be much worse. Expecting your husband to behave as if he is one of your girl friends, or even worse, forcing him to listen to a third party with an undeserved sense of authority attempt to dissect the cause of his “marital problems” will only exacerbate feelings of disrespect and he will genuinely loath you for it.
“Many men learn fatherhood by watching their wife’s motherhood and doing what helps and strengthens and protects her.”
I think I throw up a little in my mouth.
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Dalrock,
I had a post before that with a link to the audio of the shows. That is likely also in the spam folder, but says about the same thing, so no need to dig it out. WordPress is acting quite wonky.
Disappointing. Bayly has said some very good things on a few subjects. Hard to find a pastor who hits this subject well, though.
This is very true and very frustrating. Everyone seems terrified to say the word submit without making exception.
I did a Sunday School class where my first instruction was “Don’t take notes on what your spouse is supposed to be doing and then beat each other up when you get home. Worry about what you’re supposed to be doing.” I taught that women have the obligation to submit even if they’re husband is doing wrong or they disagree and if they disagree, to take it to God and let him sort it out. (Taught from this book: https://victorybaptistpress.com/product/gods-blueprint-for-home-builders/) It was well received by both sides. I don’t know what was said after they left, but I didn’t hear anything about it.
The cranky wife voting block in the church is mostly bluff. They aren’t going to do anything but grumble. Just ignore them. I don’t know why that’s so hard. Verses on marriatal responsibilities are very cut and dried if you ignore outside ideologies.
I agree, Squid, Re: the cranky wife voting block. They may vote through their husbands…
In my church, if a biblical stance was taken on one of the submission passages, some of the women may be unhappy, but I think their husbands would be even more upset, on the whole.
In what way? I think a lot of men are trying to do the right thing and the pastors and women of the church are ripping the rug out from under them through their wives.
Dalrock’s blog literally changed my entire world. I gorged on thirty pages at the get-go and a light switch went on that this was what had been going on making things in my marriage so insufferably hard. Preachers were gleefully lighting the fuse on my wife and rolling her back into my house in church after church over the years just to laugh at me and tell me I need to try harder.
It made me angry at the way the church is manipulating men, but the good kind of angry. My wife kept complaining that I was different and I would just shrug. We’re not doing things the hard way any more.
Makes me wonder if pastors have some sort of sweetheart deal with divorce lawyers.
I’m only half-joking here.
I think it’s 1. They’re miserable husbands and fathers. They overcompensate by attaking other men and 2. standard ego stroking/white knighting. They get to play the hero.
Squid-
I understand your dilemma and believe you. But, you are, by your presence here and testimony, “red-pilled” or have “put the glasses on” etc. It’s different for men who haven’t done that yet. There are 4 men in my church, at least, who I know would white-knight for their wives and say their wives don’t need to work on submitting, THEY need to work on being better husbands, fathers, etc.
There are a handful of men who I think would give cries of relief, also, if the sin of wives was confronted.
Your second comment to Earl is also on point. Pastors are little different than most men.They are probably sassed and disrespected by their wives as much as any other men, on average. Getting to beat up on other men helps them: 1) feel more manly; 2) feel they are doing the right thing (as Dalrock noted); 3) Get the lift-chase (hat tip to Empath’s blog) and receive approval from women who are not their wives; 4) Again, think that the problem is men. Because if their problem is women, that means it’s their wife, not themselves. Which is a more terrifying prospect.
I find the use of “emotional intelligence” particularly amusing. As Jordan Peterson notes in the url below EQ is basically the Big 5 Trait of Agreeableness. Being high in this trait has both strengths and weaknesses. However Bayly, and others, use the term EQ which gives being emotional and/or Big 5 Agreeable a degree of authority and superiority. It’s very convenient for making women the emotional authority of any relationship.
(https://www.quora.com/What-is-more-beneficial-in-all-aspects-of-life-a-high-EQ-or-IQ-This-question-is-based-on-the-assumption-that-only-your-EQ-or-IQ-is-high-with-the-other-being-average-or-below-this-average/answer/Jordan-B-Peterson)
Probably double if his wife ‘co-pastors’ with him.
Ick.
@ys
I agree that men will generally stick to their beliefs, however I think you have to give some recognition of the power of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the Bible. We just don’t get enough of that. I am sure that there could be an ugly backlash by the women, often through their husbands, but the Bible is still the cure to what is ailing the church. In my opinion, if you’re going to take money from the church and stand up as the man of God, how can you refuse to preach the truth? That’s unacceptable. It’s something that has to be endured, but in the long run, the church will be doing what it is actually designed to do: Bringing sinners to God. You won’t get that with a lot of brow beating and dishonest preaching and sowing of strife.
squid_hunt
Earl
Makes me wonder if pastors have some sort of sweetheart deal with divorce lawyers.
Doubt it. More like the Female Imperative pushes on all of us all the time, and the kind of man most likely to become a pastor or priest, etc. is the kind of man most likely to want to get along with women. This brings up something that I’ve been thinking about. From listening to preachers talk both in and out of church, I’ve noted that some of them talk about their mothers as being a key part of their Christian upbringing. Not the fathers, the mothers. One of them talked about his “stern father”, another about a “distant” father, etc.
It would be interesting to poll a few hundred pastors with maybe 50 questions of all sorts pertaining to religion, society, etc. but a few of them homing in on their relationship with their mother and their father. Because if modern preachers tend to be “mama’s boys” that would really explain a lot.
“Because if modern preachers tend to be “mama’s boys” that would really explain a lot.”
Also if they have no real-world job experience. Unbroken School->college->seminary is a great way to know a lot about nothing important.
Squid-
You and I are in agreement on the power of preaching the Word. The marriage issue is just one, as this blog has amply demonstrated, that it’s hard to get people to be straight and biblical on.
Anonymous Reader-
You are probably right on pastors being Mama’s boys, but in general, I see that a lot with my parents’ generation (Baby Boomer). A lot of male baby boomers think back and see their fathers as harsh. Not sure if the feminization of society caused them to think that, or what, but it’s something I’ve seen.
Don’t nag, but pray
While the “don’t nag” is useful, the “pray” isn’t and it probably won’t help… Just keep a small chalk board of “Things that need done”. As he does them he’ll mark them off – and you can put on more things. But let him do them in his order. Long ago I lived with a woman and she would ask when this will be done – I was remodeling the down stairs. She wanted the exterior, I wanted the infrastructure right. So she couldn’t see the rewiring, the Cat6 cable, the power, the sub-flooring, the insulation, etc… She annoyed me so that when it was done, I told her not to let the door hit her on the way out. That was the last time I had a woman live with me, about 25 years ago. That was also the last time I had one woman that I used to meet my needs. Now I have at least 3 so that I can lose one, or even two, but my needs are met…
That is what nagging will get you. It sure won’t get you what you expect, or want… But in general women have completely abrogated all of their usefulness in everything except sex. I hire people to clean my house, do my laundry, etc… If I could hire attractive, acceptable young women for sex I would, but the ones you pay for aren’t worth it. Cheaper, to get young ones that are more attractive than anything you could pay for anyway. Of course, it depends on what you are willing to do to keep an unending supply of women. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to switch things up – starting a band was the best thing, and it’s kept me in young women for years. Those are all short term – for long term I do other things. But I like to have a “string of pearls” that I can call upon as one drops off… Sometimes, thing happen unexpectedly and I end up with more than I want, but that is better than the alternative.
Anyway… You mileage may vary…
“Because if modern preachers tend to be “mama’s boys” that would really explain a lot.”
Also if they have no real-world job experience. Unbroken School->college->seminary is a great way to know a lot about nothing important.
I’ve been saying for years that the WORST thing to do is to send a wet-behind-the-ears kid straight out of high school to seminary/Bible college. Make him spend a decade out in the real world in a 9-to-5, a trade, or day labor to give him experience in what the men of his congregation will be facing in their daily lives. If he can’t relate to the trials and tribulations associated with survival in the World, he will be USELESS as a spiritual leader.
Unfortunately, most guys who become pastors, IME, are hopelessly inept at and unqualified to do anything useful in the real world. That’s why they go straight to seminary/Bible college and become pastors in the first place. That also explains a great deal by itself.
@Dal
Speaking of quibbles and bromides, I thought maybe you could put together a post about this guy’s rationalizations for egalitarian Christian marriage.
https://leewoof.org/2017/09/16/wives-submit-to-your-husbands/
The hip dudes that pass for preachers in many of the largest mega-churches I’m aware of inherited the position. Mama’s boy, Daddy’s boy, either way it’s the family business and it shouldn’t be that way. I grew up around some of these spoiled rotten arrogant rich boys. In my experience they seem to think they’re superior. Popularity is automatic and people just assume they’ll be in the ministry, just like Dad.. They live like royalty nearly isolated from the real world. The circumstances of their lives eliminate them as candidates to teach others about life, they don’t live in the real world.
Oh wow…talk about thinking they are more wise about what Paul said.
If Paul told wives to not submit to their husband, he would of told them not to.
Again Christ and the church is the model for a husband and wife marriage. Would a pastor then rationalize that Paul didn’t really say for the church to submit to Christ?
I would agree…that’s what Jesus did before He started his ministry.
I’m personally of the opinion their boomer dads are no better. A pack of lazy, arrogant, mealy mouth, self indulgent slugs who think the church is there to provide them with a platform and a paycheck. Generally speaking, of course.
@Rollo Tomassi (& @Dalrock)
Re: Your comment on my recent article, “Wives, submit to your husbands.”
Reasonable disagreement and discussion are welcome, either here or on my blog. Rants and insults will be quickly sent to the circular file on my blog. (See my comments policy linked at the top of every page.)
Before you jump to too many conclusions, however, I am also a “complementarian” in the sense that I believe that men and women are distinctly different not only physically but psychologically and spiritually, and will continue to play different roles in society and in marriage due to their inherent differences. However, I don’t believe in externally imposing specific gender roles on men and women. I believe men and women should be free to choose and determine their own roles based on their own character. And I believe that in the highest God-created form of marriage between man and woman there is no need for one to lead the other, but both will lead each other mutually, the man still being fully a man and the woman still being fully a woman. I believe that the interplay of our created differences makes us stronger as a whole.
I should add, though, that I have no problem with married couples who prefer the more unequal male-female relations that began when humans started to fall away from God’s original plan very early in Genesis. As covered in the articles linked below, I see three general types of marriage relationships, ranging from equal to very unequal. All three of them can work well for both the husband and the wife as long as the arrangement is mutually agreeable, and they each treat other in a Christian fashion.
I have laid out the basics of my perspective on marriage, equality, complementarity, and gender roles in these three articles:
What are the Roles of Men and Women toward Each Other and in Society?
Man, Woman, and the Two Creation Stories of Genesis
What Do Women Really Want?
I have no problem with critiques of my writing and my perspective as long as they are well thought out and not just dogmatic knee-jerk reactions. However, before responding to the recent one on wives submitting to their husbands I would recommend that you read these three articles to gain some perspective on my views, which, while they certainly lean more toward egalitarianism, don’t fit neatly into either the “egalitarian” or the “complementarian” camp.
Rollo Tomassi @ September 17, 2017 at 9:43 am:
“Speaking of quibbles and bromides, I thought maybe you could put together a post about this guy’s rationalizations for egalitarian Christian marriage.”
It’s a fun scratching post for us but nothing new. Wives don’t have to submit to husbands, they have to submit to husbands “as to the Lord!” But God ordered women to obey their husbands so this is actually another way of saying that a wife who disobeys hubby also disobeys God Himself. Which is true.
He claims Adam & Eve were equals before the fall, then God said Adam would rule over Eve as a consequence, then that we can reverse the Fall by freeing women from men… conveniently forgetting the other half of the verse (Gen. 3:16) that warns us what women would do to men if given that freedom.
(For the record, human nature didn’t change at the Fall. The flaws already in us tripped us into a state of rebellion, the reversal of which is the single purpose of Christianity.)
He references Ephesians 5:25-33 as an example of how husbands are to submit to wives but those verses don’t say husbands are to submit to wives. The only people he’s fooling are the ones who don’t read their own Bibles.
Later on, he claims Paul didn’t endorse slavery when Paul sent a slave back into slavery in Philemon. This guy can’t even get Biblical doctrine on slavery right (it’s legal but the slave is to be treated as a human being and the worker is worth his wages) let alone marriage.
He isn’t even trying to be rational. Which means, I suspect… hmm… *checks bio*
Yep, Stockholm Syndrome.
@Gunner_Q
Yet another member of the “Bad Beards for Guys” club. Come to think of it, the “is he gay or isn’t he?” younger married-with-children preacher I met a couple of years back was working on a beard, badly. It’s becoming a ‘tell”.
Don’t look at her eyes too closely.
His wife is the one doing the ‘preaching’ and he’s parroting it.
The combo of jaded and hopeless…much like any woman who seeks to be the leader in the marriage.
@Gunner Q:
Assuming I am allowed to comment here, you’ll soon see a comment above yours linking to some articles that deal with most of the issues you have brought up.
The usual traditional Christian analysis of pre-Fall vs. post-Fall marriage arrangements is flawed in that it doesn’t distinguish between the situation in Genesis 1 and the situation in the second half of Genesis 2, when God has already declared (pre-Fall) that something is “not good.”
And where in the Bible does God order women to obey their husbands?
If you wish to take Ephesians 5:25-33 out of context and read it as if it were an isolated statement, go for it. But that is not a sound way to read any text, including the Bible. I have already dealt with your objection in the article itself:
It is hard for me to believe that you read Philemon so superficially and sloppily as to think that its point is that Paul is sending a slave back to his master, and thus endorsing slavery. Paul even says in verse 16 that he is sending Onesimus back so that Philemon may receive him “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” No ringing endorsement of slavery here! If you read between the lines, it is clear that Paul is hoping Philemon will voluntarily release Onesimus from slavery, or at least not treat him as a slave, while leaving that to Philemon’s own free choice and will. The institution of slavery was deeply embedded in 1st century society. Paul didn’t confront it head-on. But his writings (including Philemon itself) make it clear enough that he considered slavery a less than ideal situation, and ultimately that the master/slave relationship is something that faith in Christ erases as a meaningful distinction between people.
And interesting that you think you know the nature of my relationship with my wife from seeing one picture that you interpret to confirm your own prejudices. I have continued to pursue the same goals and work—my goals and work that I envisioned for myself from the time I was a young boy—through two marriages. If my wife did not support me in that, she would not be my wife.
Occasionally, I get to see and assess patients with internally constructed realities that require a tremendous amount of sophistry, obfuscation, innuendo, and what is known in the literature as “magical thinking.”
One of the ways I have fun in my profession is by testing the bounds and limits of the persons internal consistency and go along with it for a while. In one such case, I was driving some patients (these were patients on a lock down ward) back to the hospital from an “outing” and had such an interaction. The set up here is that our hospital had what are know as interstitial floors–floors between the floors dedicated to mechanics (conduit, wires, plumbing, etc) so although it was a 6 story building, it appeared to have 12 floors from the outside. As we got close to the building, one such patient said,
hey I noticed the hospital looks like its 12 stories high, but we are on the 6th, and highest floor. What’s the deal there?
I replied, “well, you know, that’s where we conduct the medical experiments on humans.”
This particular patient had already been spilling the beans about his theory that the army was conducting experiments on him to find out how angry they could make him, so naturally he would have incorporated the fact that a hospital official had confirmed his suspicions. No harm done, because the nature of the thought disorder here was so chronic, so ingrained that it would not have mattered what I said at that point. He would have incorporated anything I reported about the interstitial floors into his internal reality.
The harm actually comes when the magical thinking part is believed over a period of time by a great many people. The idea that roughly one thousand, nine hundred and some odd years of fathers, apostles, doctors, theologians, scholars were wrong about submission and God’s hierarchy in marriage until “complimentarians” came along and set us straight has, as we now know been swallowed by all but a tiny remnant of folks — many of whom write right here — and are known as the cooks.
No matter all the evidence that the state of marriage and families has never been in worse, less stable shape than ever in the history of the world. We must keep hearing about the secret plan God had all along.
The only thing to do here is go along with the narrative to see how far from the plain meaning of the text it goes. You will feel less crazy that way.
I do believe that Lee should be connected up with Artisinal Toad.
@Anonymous Reader
Yeah, I was going to refute the guy, but then I kept reading and it kept getting worse. He believes Adam and Eve were equal before the fall, which has zero support in scripture, but doesn’t believe that a woman is commanded to obey her husband. (Where is that written? Out of context? C’mon, man…)
It’s what happens when someone can’t see the forest from the trees. The whole point Paul is trying to make is that Christ and the church is THE model for marriage. So if you start telling Christian wives they don’t have any obligation to submit to their husbands…it’s basically saying the church can rebel from Christ.
That’s a really solid argument for it. As well as the inverse. What evidence is there that Christ gives the church everything she thinks she needs? Where is the proof that Christ does everything she asks? He gives her what he determines she needs to make her what he needs her to be. That’s not a popular argument.
Lee summarizes his position on intersexual relations in the comment section of his blog thusly:
Basically, I believe that there are three general models for male/female relations:
Full equality and partnership
The woman being a helper for the man (and sometimes the reverse)
The man ruling over the woman (and sometimes the reverse)
I believe that we started out with the first one, then over our spiritual history descended first to the second, then to the third, and that we are now climbing back up to the first one—which I believe is the highest form of marriage. However, this doesn’t mean men and women are the same. I believe in complementarity; I simply don’t believe this means one must rule or lead and the other must obey or follow.
It depends on what people mean by “equal”. I love all my children equally, but I act differently towards them based on their actions. I also expect different things from each one, according to how God has made them.
That is far different from being “partners” but many people cannot see the difference.
The context is within Adam and Eve’s marriage. I’m not even arguing that. I’m just stating that there’s no evidence for that position which he apparently holds dogmatically, but he refutes the commandment for wives to obey their husbands, which is a clear and repeated instruction in scripture.
I wasn’t meaning to dispute what you said squid_hunt. I was just talking about the term “equal” that is applied inappropriately in many places today. Adam and Eve were definitely not equal in their assignments before God, as can be clearly seen in how God deals with the results of the sin.
Equality has been a god to many. We have idols, we just don’t call them what they did in the distant past.
Your point is certainly valid as well.
@BillyS
Ok, I understand now. I’ve been pushing that point for a while now. What’s so great about being equal?
Dear Lee,
Please see inside text…
You write to our host, Dalrock…
It’s truly astounding to see someone appear on this blog and attempt to tell others what they can or can not say. I’m sure Dalrock knows his own comments policy. He wrote it, after all.
You write to GunnerQ…
GunnerQ doesn’t know how to read, granted. But, then, neither do you. Here you are, indulging in some world-class spinnage, in a lame attempt to peddle Christian feminism to the masses:
“Paul absolutely says that wives must submit to their husbands!”
No, he does not.
Every single one of those “quotes” is a misquote of Paul. There is no period after “husbands.” What Paul did say was:
Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.
So, Paul doesn’t tell wives to submit, he actually tells them to submit. A & ~A
Regards,
Boxer
Paul addressed marriage from Christ and the church perspective. Many modern pastors are trying to jam their personal marriage relation into Scripture. My wife doesn’t submit to me…so that must be what God and Paul meant. Nope, not the truth. Your wife is in rebellion and you aren’t loving your wife by washing her in the Word.
Lee, congrats on showing up, not many pastors have the guts to do so.
Your invitation to discuss things at your Blogspot blog is no doubt meant well, but some of the men here have had the experience of entering some other man’s echo-chamber to “debate” only to find it a waste of time. Comments here remain fairly calm and Dalrock moderates with a very light touch. The good news is you can debate positions here with Bible quotes, the bad news is some men will never agree with other men’s reading of the Bible and the “angels on a pin” can go on a long time. But at least there is some common culture for you to work within. You probably would not like Rollos’s site as comments there are a “very hot kitchen”, and you would find a wider range of men whose worldview is different from yours.
Nothing personal, but you appear to be in your own isolation on a low traffic blog, translating a man that few have heard of. So your perspective is likely to be narrow when it comes to the issue of male / female relationships, because much of the discussion including ongoing scientific research has not appeared in your field of view. So you can suggest that equalism, or even a female-led relationship is in harmony with the Bible as you read it, and will “work”. The Bible quotes are not ambiguous, and there is a growing body of knowledge about long term relationships / marriage between men and women that demolishes the notion of equalism as workable.
For example, it’s not clear if you have children. Men who actively post here and other places can tell you from their personal lives how even one child changes marriage, and how equalism begins to crumble when a woman becomes “mommy”. For a start, her brain structure changes due to the effects of estrogen.
The three “styles” or “modes” of marriage you describe are not new, they are quite common within the feminized Western world, and they show you as a conservative feminist. Men and women are not interchangeable; women are not “just like men except for babies”. That alone demolishes the equalist approach.
Finally:
I have continued to pursue the same goals and work—my goals and work that I envisioned for myself from the time I was a young boy—through two marriages.
Two marriages? Lee, you should be a bit more humble in your approach to advising other men if this is your second try. There are men here and elsewhere who have had the same experience, and learned painfully from it. There are other men who came close to the edge of divorce but were able to pull their team back from it – make no mistake, those men did the work needed, it was no team effort. He led, she followed – not always gracefully.
I am not the man to argue the Bible with, but I have enough personal experience and have observed enough other men’s lives to have a sound opinion on your three modalities of marriage. There are couples I know who live a sham of equalism, but in reality one can observe that the woman is the leader, and both of them are miserable to some degree.
Welcome, Lee! As a Protestant, I’m happy to debate and be questioned.
“And where in the Bible does God order women to obey their husbands?”
As you yourself referenced, Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.” God’s commands are to be fully obeyed, yes?
Also 1 Peter 3:5-6. “For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord.”
You have this strange yet commonplace notion that submission can include disobedience.
“It is hard for me to believe that you read Philemon so superficially and sloppily as to think that its point is that Paul is sending a slave back to his master…”
Philemon 12, Paul writes: “I am sending [Onesimus]—who is my very heart—back to you.” Whatever flowery language you use, Onesimus was legally, factually, the slave of Philemon.
“And interesting that you think you know the nature of my relationship with my wife from seeing one picture that you interpret to confirm your own prejudices.”
Not just “one picture”. It’s THE picture that YOU chose to present yourself to the world with. Even apart from the pic, you are obviously not controlling your wife as you should. You make her an equal in your theological work, a crime against God per 1 Corinthians 14:34. “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.” But that picture has her completely dominant over you, not equal. She’s practically gripping your throat with both hands. Body language is not to be ignored.
Dude, you look like an insane hippie being wheeled into shock therapy by a female sadist. Why did you choose this pose for the world to see? What were we supposed to think?
True…equalism is just a yellow happy face sticker covering the reality of what it is. The wife rules the marriage and the husband is the helpmate…and both are miserable because God didn’t set up marriage to be that way.
His logic is obviously flawless.
It’s the slippery slope that when the devil’s advocate comes to town the thought…if she doesn’t have to submit to her husband, why submit to the Lord. You already disagreed with the first half of that statement in Scripture…what makes it so that you have to agree with the second part?
@GunnerQ
Indeed. 1 Pet 3:1-6 blows the whole “Paul is being misquoted in Eph 5 and Coll 3” argument up, along with the argument that submission was rooted in the times, as well as the claim that wives need only submit to sufficiently godly husbands. Titus 2 is another one.
Not only is the command timeless, but two of the reasons given are:
1) This is what is beautiful to God (1 Pet 3).
2) Wives not submitting to their husbands would cause the word of God to be reviled (Titus 2).
@Earl
After all, doesn’t God want us to be happy? Why would he ask us to do something we don’t want to do if he wanted us to be happy?
Lee’s writings are those of a thoroughly modern and effeminate man. From his article “If You’ve been Married More than Once, Which One will you be With in the Afterlife?”
It’s all there: Unbiblical mysticism, personal revelation as the boundary of truth, rule by feelings, rejection of regret (and therefore rejection of repentance and need for salvation), equation of divorce with physical death, “growing apart”, the belief in soulmates…
In my blog comments (where Rollo found him) Lee wrote in response to my criticism of his interpretation of Scripture:
It looks to me like his theological system was written over a martini lunch by three chicks from Cosmo. I could be wrong. Lee claims to be a follower of someone called Swedenborg. Among the various things Swedenborgians believe is that only the four Gospels and Revelation are Scripture. One wonders why Lee interacts with St. Paul’s writings at all. As a Protestant, I don’t argue with people on the basis of the deuterocanonical texts.
Any religion that requires a “complex theological system” to understand and live out daily is useless for the common man because his average IQ is 100.
Again, either millennia of wisdom
Literature, apostles, fathers, etc were wrong about marriage until the mid 20th century, or not.
Then there’s the problem that wives don’t find “egalitarian” husbands the least bit sexy. Of course some women don’t get married for that reason anyway.
‘Then there’s the problem that wives don’t find “egalitarian” husbands the least bit sexy. Of course some women don’t get married for that reason anyway.’
Whereas some do get married because they are control freaks and they found the servile whipping boy of their dreams.
@squid_hunt
You say:
No, I do not believe that, nor did I ever say that, as you will discover if you read the first two of the list of three linked article in my first comment above (here).
What believe, rather, as stated in those articles, is that man and woman were originally created equal in the first Creation story found in Genesis 1. The beginnings of inequality between man and woman came in the second Creation story, specifically, in the second half of Genesis 2 after God first identifies something as “not good” in Genesis 2:18. By the time Eve was created from Adam in the second Creation story, there was already inequality in the relationship, as is commonly noted by traditional Christians.
What’s got me intrigued is this business of a “first” and “second” creation story as two distinct instances.
It appears to be an obfuscation or way negating the obvious implications of the specific details of the fall.
Like there was kind of do over. Or it’s very text critical.
Weird.
In his blog Lee describes the KJV as God’s Own translation and thus authentic version in English of The Bible and he is correct for as everyone knows or should know God is an Englishman.
Lee is looking for wiggle room because in my view Lee is having trouble accepting what a Christian must perforce acknowledge. His problem would be resolved by ditching Jesus and Paul and joining the local Marxist Feminist Chapter. His re-interpretation of Paul – a perennial problem – is much as if a Professor of Literature should determine that after all Hamlet was not indecisive, Othello not wracked by Jealousy nor Lady Macbeth an uber-bitch. I am sure it has happened.
Even if there had been nothing in The Bible which frankly looks to me about as clear as it could be no one before about ten years ago whether Xtian or otherwise ever proposed seriously the view that Lee proposes. Shakespeare – nor any other writer of merit – certainly doesn’t. There is a reason for this which Lyn 87 expounded here so brilliantly on an earlier occasion. Perhaps he will return and set it out again.
Werd. Games. I don’t engage in semantic hair splitting, sir. It’s dishonest.
Countdown to gamma meltdown in 10…9…8…7…
@Boxer
You say:
I did read Dalrock’s comments policy more than once before commenting here. It spends most of its time talking about if and when women will be allowed to comment here. The rest is pretty basic and reasonable, and nothing I have said here violates it.
Of course, people can say whatever they want here subject to Dalrock’s moderation. I was just putting folks on notice that I have no interest in flame fests, and won’t bother responding to that sort of thing either here or on my own blog, but am happy to engage in reasonable biblical and theological debate with those who disagree with my perspective.
And:
For the record, I am not, nor have I ever been, a feminist. But if it is easier to tar me with Red Pill swear words than to actually engage with what I’m saying, that’s your choice.
Of course Paul believed that women should submit to their husbands. That was simply the standard, unquestioned pattern of male/female relations in 1st century Mediterranean culture, not to mention in most cultures throughout the world through most of human history.
What I’m saying is that his statements along those lines are completely unremarkable to the point that they don’t constitute a “command” but an observation on how things were. In particular, when he makes such statements his Greek never uses words such as “should” and “must” that commonly appear in English translations, supplied by the translator. It is important to pay attention to the precise wording of the original Greek rather than relying solely on English translations, which are usually, if not always, slanted toward the doctrinal and social perspective of the translators.
It would be odd for Paul to make a “commandment” out of something that everyone does as a matter of course anyway. It would be like “commanding” someone to walk by putting one foot forward, then the other. And his wording in the original Greek indicates that in his statements about wives submitting to their husbands, he was simply recognizing how things are.
Feminism did not exist in 1st century Palestine. Paul was not fighting a valiant battle against rampant feminazis out to destroy male authority. This entire reading of Paul as if his main point is to make sure women submit to their husbands is entirely anachronistic. It is reading 20th and 21st century social issues into 1st century writings. And not to put to fine a point on it, but that is the wrong way to read the Bible, and is guaranteed to lead to all kinds of wrong conclusions about what the Bible says. Saying that Paul commands women to submit to their husbands is one of those wrong conclusions based on reading Paul’s writings as if he wrote them 2,000 years after he actually did.
It is what Paul says after the part about “wives, submit to your husbands” that is remarkable and different from the surrounding culture, and therefore constitutes an actual command made by Paul.
Dear Lee:
This is truly an amusing screed. Thanks for playing. Please see inside text…
Straw man. I didn’t call you a feminist. I called you a peddler of Christian feminism. You quoted me saying this… only hours after you called various other Dalrock readers sloppy… and superficial readers. What part of that bit you quoted do you not understand?
You are, of course, a peddler of Christian feminism, by any reasonable definition of that term. See Wioleta Polinska, Jenny Daggers, and any number of your fellow Christian feminists, who regularly publish nonsense precisely similar to your own.
St. Paul either told women to submit, or not to submit. You claim he told them to do both, simultaneously. This is ridiculous. You know this yourself, which is why you posted another wall of fallacies, rather than address your own obvious contradiction.
Regards,
Boxer
“If we look back over our various relationships, and reflect on why we were with each partner, we may be able to discern how each relationship expressed something of our character at that time. As we went through changes in our beliefs, attitudes, and goals—and in our general level of maturity—we moved from one partner to another.”
(Supposing this is talking about ‘serious’ relationships with sexual component), this would actually imply that for example my grandparents (both couples) or parents never reached above certain level of (im)maturity only and were therefore kinda’ underdeveloped, being each others only partners.. Interesting.
@Lee
Like I commented on my blog: It’s as if you’ve never raised children. Toddlers don’t walk except that they are taught by example and effort. Sometimes children decide not to walk, and throw themselves onto the floor in fits. Teenagers shuffle in a mope. Even grown men are taught to march–walking with a purpose and discipline–in the military.
What you claim to be obvious is to you oblivious. All your writing is so darkened.
Dear Earl:
That’s a very good point. If she doesn’t submit to her husband, or if her husband doesn’t call her to submission, then a reasonable reading of St. Paul would suggest that such people were not living the discipline of Christianity.
People like Lee want to have things both ways. They want to excuse their infidelity to the text with long, tortuous lines of (un)reasoning, while still calling themselves Christians, and pretending to speak as authorities about the text.
The New Testament is both beautiful and useful because it gives good advice in plain language. When I read the KJV, I generally get the basics without any expert or “guru” to interpret its propositions for me. People who can’t or won’t abide by the text should be honest with themselves, and quit pretending to be sincere students of its thought. Lee’s arguments would be a lot simpler and sensible if he just admitted that he’s not a Christian and that he disagrees with the simple principles embedded therein.
Best,
Boxer
I think I get it now: Paul in his injunction to wives to submit to their husbands was a supporter of Marital Rape. Is that the elephant in the room here? – or am I going off at a tangent.
Paul whatever he said about Slavery (never gets a good press these days does it though employees and job seekers are often far worse off than slaves) was not that bleeding-heart liberal William Wilberforce.
The combo of jaded and hopeless…
Also a feature of the 1KCS.
@Scott
This is all covered in detail in my article (also linked above) “Man, Woman, and the Two Creation Stories of Genesis.”
Biblical literalists have made valiant efforts to harmonize the two Creation stories found in Genesis 1:1–2:3 and Genesis 2:4–25. But even the most basic reading of the two stories shows that they are two entirely distinct Creation stories that give radically different accounts of how God created the world and everything in it, including two completely different, and conflicting, orders of creation events. To put it bluntly: a literal reading of these stories, as if they told the story of God’s creation of the physical world, simply doesn’t work, and is therefore false.
The only reasonable conclusion is that these stories were never meant by their original authors or by the compilers of the biblical text, still less by God, to be taken literally as accounts of how God created the physical world and everything in it. Moses, or whoever put these stories together, was not so stupid as not to notice the glaring inconsistencies between the two Creation stories if they are taken literally. Ancient transcribers and editors of the Scriptures would have long since harmonized the two stories if they had read them as literal history. But the fact of the matter is that if taken literally, they flatly contradict one another in the order and method of creation.
These stories are, instead, talking about what Paul calls humans becoming “new creations” (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15). I.e., they are talking about our spiritual creation, or the process of being born again that Jesus spoke of to Nicodemus in John 3:1-10. And they are talking about the early spiritual history of humankind. That is the basis on which I read and interpret the two Creation stories that occupy the first two chapters of Genesis, and on to the Fall of Man described in Genesis 3.
Biblical literalism of the sort that fundamentalist Christians have been attempting to apply to the Bible over the last couple of centuries in reaction to the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution will always cause people to draw wrong conclusions about the sequence and meaning of the Bible story.
The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
But see my article linked above for a fuller account of the two Creation stories, and how they relate to male/female relations.
I believe that we started out with the first one, then over our spiritual history descended first to the second, then to the third, and that we are now climbing back up to the first one—which I believe is the highest form of marriage. However, this doesn’t mean men and women are the same. I believe in complementarity; I simply don’t believe this means one must rule or lead and the other must obey or follow.
So Lee believes in a form of “spiritual evolution,” in which God doesn’t set down absolute, hard requirements and standards for His children to follow and obey, but creates temporary rules that they can follow as they feel like and think they are able to obey. In other words, God is a pushover parent who changes with the wind and bows to pressure from His own creations.
I’d be very interested in hearing Lee’s version of from where in Scripture any evidence for such a bizarre theory is to be found.
This is a condescending lie. You haven’t attempted to reconcile because your teachers taught you otherwise. You just stick your nose up in arrogance. There are no conflicts in a literal interpretation. That doesn’t mean there isn’t imagery in the Bible, but just saying it’s all allegory makes you the interpreter and the Bible is not open to private interpretation. There is on correct interpretation for God’s word. Just one. You don’t get there with allegory.
That’s what your problem is. You don’t like the BIble, so you pick and choose. You throw out pieces you don’t like at a whim. You casually disregard plain text instructions because it interferes with your political views, which really have no bearing on God’s Word ever. Nor ever have. Let God be true and every man a liar.
Jesus Christ being the firstborn from the dead, it is impossible that the Old Testament was talking about people becoming a new creature. No one became a new creature before Christ. That’s just sloppy doctrine.
The letter is the law of God. Which condemns all.. And the Spirit, which we receive after accepting Christ gives life through grace. This is explained quite clearly in Romans.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with your Bible rejection. God’s word is forever settled in heaven, Bub. He puts it even above his own name’s sake. I would not be so casual to dismiss significant chunks of the Bible as fantasy.
There’s a reason the Bible cautions for not many to be masters. You’ll receive greater condemnation for doing what you’re doing, setting yourself up as a Bible scholar and teaching false doctrine.
@Cane
I’ve raised three children. And never once did I “teach” them how to walk. They learned that by their own observation and by their own efforts through trial and error. Anyone who tried to “teach” babies how to walk would only hinder the process. Sure, parents might sometimes hold babies up by the hands while they take steps. But the real process of learning to walk is something babies must accomplish on their own. You can’t really learn to walk while someone is holding you up. You have to learn to hold yourself up while walking. And that happens when over-zealous parents get out of the way and let you do the work of learning to walk.
I recall learning to ride a bike when I was little. My older brothers and sisters tried to “help” me by running along behind holding the bike upright. And whenever they let go, I ran off the road and crashed into the ditch. Then one day I decided that today I was going to learn to ride a bike. I spent the whole afternoon on my own coasting down a grassy hill until I stopped crashing and got the hang of balancing the bike. From that day forward I was able to ride a bike.
The military doesn’t teach soldiers to walk. Any potential soldier who applied for a position in the military and was unable to walk would be laughed out of the recruitment office. Rather, the military teaches soldiers the manner in which they are expected to walk.
In the very same way, Paul doesn’t command wives to submit to their husbands. He commands them on the manner in which they are to submit to their husbands.
Lee’s writings are those of a thoroughly modern and effeminate man. From his article “If You’ve been Married More than Once, Which One will you be With in the Afterlife?”
Our various partners reflect our developing self
That last line is pure New Age twaddle. If Lee serious thinks that such a sentiment is in any way compatible with Scriptural Christianity, he is deluded beyond a point where anylne should be paying any serious attention to him.
For your viewing pleasure: His book:
http://a.co/1oqgY8J
Please note that one of his 5 star reviews is from himself. (I’m wondering if the other was from his mom?)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,701,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#34,586 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Ministry & Evangelism
#66,330 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Literature & Fiction
#77,280 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Religious & Inspirational
AND one more because I’m procrastinating at work
http://a.co/iETHK7u
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,052,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#146,494 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Christian Living
#666,120 in Books > Religion & Spirituality
Hum, another 5 star review from the author as well…
Lee, stick with fiction, I can see it’s your bread and butter.
@squid_hunt
This is wishful thinking, and a reckless disregard for what the text of the Bible actually says. You can’t wish the two stories into agreeing with one another.
From my linked article:
The order in which things are created is completely different in the two stories. And the two stories are very clear and explicit about the order in which things are created.
For example, the second Creation story says very clearly that God formed Adam (mankind) out of the ground “when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up.” And yet, in the first Creation story, God creates plants on Day 3, so that the earth was already fully vegetated before humans were created in Day 6. And both Creation stories use the Hebrew word ‘esev for “plant,” so there is no quibbling and saying that the second Creation story is talking about different plants than the first Creation story.
Same goes for the animals. In the first Creation story they are created on Day 5 (fish and birds) and on Day 6 (land animals) before the creation of humans. But the second Creation story has God create the rest of the animals after creating Adam (humankind). There is no “had”
You can’t just wave a magic wand over the story and say “Hocus pocus! They agree with one another!”
The plain fact of the matter is that biblical literalists are just plain wrong in interpreting Genesis 1 and 2 as being about God creating the physical world. A plain reading of the plain text shows how wrong they are.
Oops, I accidentally hit the post button before finishing. The end of the third paragraph from the end should read:
There is no “had” in the original Hebrew of Genesis 2:19. That is a gloss by translators attempting to reconcile the two stories. The Hebrew itself simply says that after God formed humans from the dust of the ground, God similarly formed all of the animals out of the ground and brought them to Adam to name them.
@Lee
So, no one teaches children how to walk by example and effort. Children learn to walk by observation and some help.
So, Paul doesn’t tell women the manner of walking, he tells them to walk in this manner.
The stopped ear can’t hear it’s own mouth. Or, as SirHamster quoted from James:
I think we’ve found our very own John Scalzi.
https://heartiste.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/scalzimarriage2.jpeg?w=500&h=375
It is, in fact, biblical literalists who play fast and loose with the text of the Bible in their attempts to support a doctrine and interpretation that is taught nowhere in the Bible, and that goes contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the Bible.
@Cane
Have you raised children? You say:
You left out “trial and error.” Children mostly learn to walk by their own continual efforts to walk. They dearly want to walk, and they work at it until they master it. Parents’ “help” is a very minor part of the process. In fact, as I suggested, over-zealous helicopter parents commonly retard their children’s efforts to learn to do things, such as walking, by not getting out of the way and letting children accomplish things on their own.
Obviously that’s a distinction without a difference. And just as obviously, it’s not what I said.
For the record, I am not, nor have I ever been, a feminist. But if it is easier to tar me with Red Pill swear words than to actually engage with what I’m saying, that’s your choice.
The typical ‘male conservative feminist’ is one who thinks they oppose ‘feminism’, while still agreeing with 95% of it.
@Boxer
Since there is no actual content in your comment, but just a lot of uninformed name-calling, I won’t bother to respond further than simply to say that you are wrong, and if you actually bothered to pay attention to what I’m saying rather than jumping on the quickest way to excuse yourself from paying attention to what I’m saying, you might begin to realize exactly why you’re wrong.
The second account doesn’t set a time. There’s no after. It says and. It’s descriptive. But if you want to hang your blatant disregard for the scripture on that one segment, go right ahead. Just a question, though. If that part is wrong, what part of the Bible is accurate and how do we know? What does any of it mean? How can we trust any of it? No wonder you ended up with all this gobbledy-gook.
Oh, yes. Hebrew. Very nice. There’s no had in my Bible either. Therefore I’m clearly correct.
Fast and loose, huh? From the guy that says Paul doesn’t command women to submit and obey their husbands. Doctrine isn’t hard. Doctrine is consistent. If you read your Bible and follow your Bible literally. I don’t have to go back and check with my wife and her feminist buddies what to believe. I have a Bible to teach me.
Lee, you talk as though Paul wanted one thing and God something different. You do realize that Peter agreed with Paul about female submission to men, as I quoted in my last post? This is not a matter of you disagreeing with Paul’s personal opinion. This is you disagreeing with Almighty God who supernaturally taught Paul everything he knew.
“That was simply the standard, unquestioned pattern of male/female relations in 1st century
Mediterranean culture, not to mention in most cultures throughout the world through most of human history.”
No, it wasn’t. Roman law allowed men to kill their wives for any reason or none at all. Paul’s commands to husbands neither allowed nor described such behavior.
I’m curious. Can you list all the topics of the New Testament that used to be mandatory but now are optional or even bad ideas? When did God change His mind and who did He tell?
@ 2:57 pm:
“The plain fact of the matter is that biblical literalists are just plain wrong in interpreting Genesis 1 and 2 as being about God creating the physical world.”
How scientific of you to use an example that was never observed and only recorded by a single individual centuries after the fact. Why do you follow Christ if you think the first two chapters of His book contain such obvious, fatal errors?
@Lee
I have four children; two are adults.
You think babies watching adults walk is minor, and you think parents don’t encourage their children to walk. Nor do you believe they ever instruct children to walk instead of crawl, or roll around in a fit at the store, or living room.
No shit. You do the same thing with the Creation Story. Either there is one time–one sequence of events of the creation of the physical world–or there isn’t and this is all just make believe. But, there really is a real world here, and there really is some one point in time when it was created. That you, Lee–that due to a lack on your part–cannot reconcile two tellings of a single event isn’t anybody else’s problem.
Squid, go back and look at that picture on the website again.
He HAS to check with his wife, her hands can quite easily reach around his neck…
A new Red Pill Truth discovered: If your woman’s hands are bigger than the circumference of your neck, you’re a male feminist. To remedy, either get a different woman or LIFT lots of heavy stuff, your life depends on it.
I haven’t been to his website. I’m not interested in what he says. He’s a liar and not even a very good one. He refutes his own ridiculous claims in a single post and thinks his smug little patched elbow condescension provides any sort of cover.
GO check his picture out in his bio, it’s worth it. It will explain a GREAT many things. (Plus he can go tell his ‘cough’ wife he’s had an increase in traffic!)
One more then I’m bowing out.
Lee is a follower of a long dead NUT, he’s no Christian.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Emanuel_Swedenborg
Lee take your false gospel and LEAVE.
@Gunnar Q
You say:
Heh! My wife and I had a good laugh about all of this “analysis” of our relationship based on that picture. Her pithy comment: “It’s like a Rorschach blot test.” You guys are seeing what you want to see in that picture, bringing to it your already formed opinions and prejudices about anyone who disagrees with your Red Pill worldview. Your interpretation of the picture says more about how your brain works than it does about my relationship with my wife.
But for those of you who just loooove this armchair psychologist stuff, here’s another interpretation:
“He is sitting in a chair because his views of life are solid, stable, and well-grounded through many years of study, learning, and experience. He is leaning into his wife because he loves her and feels great affection for her. She is standing behind her man, her hands resting on his shoulders, supported by the strength of his character.”
Yep. That sounds pretty good, too. Hey! This is kind of fun!
Any other armchair psychologists want take the Rorschach test? Anyone else want to reveal the tangled workings of his own mind? Please, give me and my wife something more to chuckle about!
Now let’s get back to the subject at hand. Aside from the fact that you are rather stupidly wrong, my relationship with my wife is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the various beliefs and interpretations being put forward here.
For the record, I’m not an armchair psychologist. I’m a psychologist.
https://monoskop.org/images/4/49/Queneau_Raymond_Exercises_in_Style_pp_1-26.pdf
Just leaving this here..
@Lee
You mean your second wife. Did the first leave you a widower?
Was Swedenborg to the eighteenth century what Joseph Smith was to the Nineteenth? I am hardly impressed by Smith and so neither am I impressed by Swedenborg. Is physiognomy real (Heartiste thinks so) – the juxtaposition of the Scalsi pic and that of Lee with Annette is eerily similar. I had come across that pose before (parents of a fling) and I must say even then it left me feeling uneasy.
Lee is clearly an intellectual; certainly looks like one.
I’ve taken the Rorschach, and studied it’s interpretation using the Exner system, under Schiavo. I’ve administered, coded, scored and interpreted it hundreds of times.
@Cane
Instructing children to walk instead of crawling or rolling around in a fit at the store or in the living room when they already know how to walk is not “teaching children to walk.” It’s just telling them to use the skills they already have. And obviously, when they’re throwing a fit, it’s imposing some discipline on them, as parents are meant to do.
Paul did not have to teach or command women to submit to their husbands because that was a basic expectation and practice of the culture. Girls growing up learned it along with learning to walk and talk because that’s what they saw adult men and women doing. Just as there is no need to “teach” children to walk or talk, there was no need to “teach” or “command” wives to submit to their husbands.
Once again, you’re projecting 20th and 21st century issues of feminism and such back into a culture in which those social issues did not exist. And because you’re seeing the text through a 21st century anti-feminist lens, you are missing Paul’s point, which has absolutely nothing to do with either feminism or anti-feminism.
Opus, that’s my feeling too, Swedenborg was just a Joseph Smith without the chicks. If you’re gonna push a fake religion, you’ve got to bring the ‘honeys’ in, or no one will follow you (except the odd gamma male)
Dear Fellas:
Lee sez, to me…
I called you no gratuitous (or “uninformed”) names. I described you accurately, and posted the names of two of your sisters who regularly promote identical claptrap to your own. Your inability to follow sources isn’t surprising. tl;dr: Given that they proudly wear the descriptor “Christian feminist,” I have to wonder about the source of your own reluctance.
Later on, you describe Brother GunnarQ as stupidly wrong while never answering the original contention, namely, how St. Paul could tell women to simultaneously not submit, and to submit. You are aware that this is a contradiction, no? Why so liberal with the insults, when you are being treated well for the same behavior?
Later on, Squiddy sez:
It’s actually fairly entertaining, even by the usual standards of the Christian feminists. He ties himself into some funny knots trying to squeeze feminism out of Saul of Tarsus. My main interest at this point is whether he actually believes the transparently ridiculous claptrap he writes, or if he’s secretly on our side, running black propaganda, trying to make the sisterhood look as dopey as possible. It could go either way.
Regards,
Boxer
Really, this whole modern practice of reading the Bible as if it were either:
1. A forward-thinking, feminist text
or:
2. A strong bulwark against feminism
is completely wrong. I reject both feminist and anti-feminist readings of the Bible because both are reading the Bible anachronistically. Both views twist and misunderstand the text because both are attempting to project our 21st century social issues onto the Bible rather than reading the Bible in the context of its own culture.
How bad does your logic have to be that it’s hard to discern whether you’re deliberately trying to subvert the cause you claim to represent?
(there’s only a few out of the 99 takes unfortunately in the pdf, the thing just popped in my mind when reading Lee’s interpretations of the writers presumed intentions in the two creation stories)
The secret king wins again.
Not impressed by Joseph Smith? Why not? He raised an army and fought a guerrilla war before Che Guevara or Mao Tse Tung were born. He started a system of collective farms before Lenin and Trotsky were out of diapers. He banged tons of hot (well, for the time) chicks, then died in a blazing gunfight with his enemies.
I’ll cop to not being too enthusiastic about the folk religion he founded, but he did live a helluva life.
Boxer
Dear Squiddy:
If I were in a sensitive position or otherwise frightened of retribution, I’d be doing exactly this. I’d start a “pro-feminist” blog, with prominent links to places like Dalrock and American Dad, regularly denouncing both. Then I’d post under a persona that looked as absurd as possible… making a ^ ~a arguments, for example (fuck’n lol) in support of feminism.
Any brother who is reading silently at work ought to try this. It doesn’t hurt our side to have feminists looking stupid, throwing around insults while showing total ignorance about basic logical concepts, all while promoting us, making us look like scary badasses in the process.
Best,
Boxer
@Boxer
I was inclined to write (but thought better of it) that whatever I said about Smith was not for your eyes. All men even Swedenborg who was a scientist before he found God have as they must their good points.
@Lee
You appear (at least according to certain commentors here to be guilty of the principium tertii exclusi {for the illiterate: The Law of the excluded middle).
Lee:
One of the things you build your interpretation about the nature of pre-fall and post-fall intersexual relationships upon – “it was very good” in Genesis 1:31 – does *not* refer to the creation of humans particularly, but to everything, all he had made in general, on a contrary to all those “it was good” after previous days, that relate directly to each day’s part of creation. How would you explain that?
@Boxer
There’s only one of me, and a lot of you to respond to. It takes time to provide intelligent responses rather than merely hurling ad hominems. I’m attempting to respond to prior comments while keeping up with current ones. So yes, I’m behind on responding to everything, and realistically, probably won’t be able to respond to every single comment.
I described GunnarQ as stupidly wrong about my relationship with my wife.
Now on your specific statements, please don’t put words into my mouth. I never said that “Paul could tell women to simultaneously not submit, and to submit.” Specifically, I never said Paul told women not to submit. You won’t find that statement anywhere in any of my articles or in any of my comments here.
What I said, rather, is that in Ephesians 5 and elsewhere Paul is not telling (“commanding,” “requiring,” etc.) women to submit to their husbands. Rather, he is instructing them on how to submit to their husbands. If you don’t see the difference, please read my article: “Wives, submit to your husbands.”
Once again, Paul didn’t have to tell wives to submit to their husbands. Once again, feminism wasn’t a thing in 1st century Mediterranean culture. Once again, wives submitting to husbands was simply how things were done in that time and culture. Reducing Paul’s statements on the subject in Ephesians 5 and elsewhere down to Paul commanding wives to submit to their husbands is, once again, projecting 20th and 21st century social issues (feminism, etc.) back into a culture in which those social issues were approximately 2,000 years into the future.
The real force of Paul’s words, I’m saying, is that he was telling wives to submit to their husbands in an entirely different way, and from an entirely different spirit, than the usual way of wives submitting to their husbands in that culture (and in most cultures). He was telling them to do it “as you submit to the Lord.”
And if we pay attention to the actual relationship between Christ and the church that Jesus taught and exemplified in the Gospels, and that Paul taught in his letters, we find that it is very different from the “man gives commands, woman unquestioningly obeys them” model that modern conservative Christian complementarians commonly read into Paul’s words.
Jesus, and Paul, made it very clear that the relationship of the church to Christ was not to be one of law-based, servile, unquestioning obedience. Rather, it was to be one based on love, faith, friendship, and so on—all of which are inner and interpersonal spiritual qualities rather than external obedience-based qualities.
To say that Paul’s message in Ephesians 5 and related passages is that women must submit to their husbands and obey unquestioningly everything their husbands say is to utterly miss the force, meaning, and message of what Paul is saying there. It is to backslide into the old law-based covenant, when we are supposed to be living under the new covenant based on faith, grace, and love.
Paul did not say, “Wives, submit to your husbands.” He said, “Wives, submit to your own husband as to the Lord.”
My whole analysis is based on not misquoting Paul as if he put a period after “husbands,” as modern conservative Christian complementarians do, but on paying attention to Paul’s whole sentence, and its context in the letter to the Ephesians, and its context in the New Testament as a whole, and its context in the Bible as a whole, and its context in the state of humanity as it existed when Paul wrote his letters to instruct a lot of people who were mostly converted pagans having to very rapidly and completely change the way they thought about God, spirit, and life.
Speaking of which, I know I haven’t responded to everyone, but I’ve got to get some work done today, so I’ll have to return to this later.
Your entire argument is hinged on an assumption that women automatically was expected to submit to her husband in the first place. So whether it was a command or an explanation is a moot point. Which really becomes clear when it is stated “As unto the Lord.” How was she expected to submit to the Lord? Willingly? Totally? Absolutely? Obediently?
Your entire case is a non-argument. It’s quibbling over words to muddle the point that a wife is expected to submit to her husband absolutely.
Dear Lee:
Ever read this classic Bertrand Russell article?
https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Russell(1905).pdf
I’d bet money you have. As a fellow Russell fan, I’ll point out that you’re equivocating. You do that a lot.
I read it carefully. Here’s something that stands out:
Paul is not telling wives to submit to their husbands.
Paul never tells wives to submit to their husbands.
You want to hover above the distinction between P~s and ~(Ps) in order to support your theses, which themselves seem quite malleable and full of red herrings and straw-persyns. (No one has argued that modern feminist theory existed in first century Palestine, for example.)
Do keep going, though. Don’t let me stop you.
Regards,
Boxer
I never heard of this Swedenborg guy before…but his story sounds a like like Joseph Smith or Muhammad. He had some ‘revelation’ from Jesus which was seems like he never tested that spirit…and went on to produce false prophet type writings.
I’ve been saying all along…Paul’s perspective is that Christ and the church is THE model for marriage. So by that are you saying that Paul is addressing how the church submits to Christ but there is no requirement for the church to submit to Christ? That’s not what I read…
‘Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.’
“He is sitting in a chair because his views of life are solid, stable, and well-grounded through many years of study, learning, and experience. He is leaning into his wife because he loves her and feels great affection for her. She is standing behind her man, her hands resting on his shoulders, supported by the strength of his character.”
Sigh, you clearly made this up because you’re imputing information that the viewer has no chance of recognizing. I’ll try to help.
There’s no relationship between a sitting posture and intelligence. A ‘thinking man’ posture, holding a book or wearing laboratory clothing (that doesn’t resemble a straitjacket) do have relationships to intelligence. Sitting and leaning back indicate fatigue and weakness because that is the posture typically adopted by fatigued and weak people.
Putting one’s hands on top of someone else is a symbol of dominance, not submission or support. This imagery is even in the Bible, the laying on of hands in OT and NT. In fact, your wife’s body posture suggests she is about to shove you out of her way and then we learn the last woman in your life actually did? What a coincidence.
Pictures are a form of communication, not a form of anything-goes existentialism. You do realize that Rorschach ink blot tests are a useful diagnostic tool? You made up a lie to ‘fix’ what the picture says about you. Similarly, you make up lies to ‘fix’ what Christianity says about you.
You let your wife rebel against you for the same reason you insist on the freedom to rebel against God. If you ever want to control your wife as Christ controls the Church then we can help, but not until you allow Christ that level of control over you.
“my relationship with my
wifeministry’s co-author is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the various beliefs and interpretations being put forward here.”Fixed it for you. Said relationship is obviously relevant. Now then, i have several questions awaiting your attention:
1. Do you realize that Peter agreed with Paul about female submission to men?
2. Can you list all the topics of the New Testament that used to be mandatory but now are optional or even bad ideas? When did God change His mind and who did He tell?
3. Why do you follow Christ if you believe the first two chapters of His book contain obvious, fatal errors? Do you believe Christ really is God?
Hmm.
This sounds close to a spiritual endorsement of Stephanie Coontz’s ideas about “hedonic marriage” being a good thing. It most certainly is not a good thing for the majority of married people, or for the culture around marriage because, as Dalrock has pointed out numerous times on this blog, this system of marriage revolves around romantic love such that it is romantic love which morally justifies both sexual activity and marriage, rather than marriage justifying sex and love. The difference is subtle but critical, and in many ways it turns marriage into a self-actualization project for both spouses (even if done in a joint sense), which, due to the vicissitudes of life, also involves dissolution, because people change, self-actualize and develop in ways that are at times incompatible with remaining married to their spouse. This is very far from any Christian vision of marriage, because it is quite obvious from the Bible and the uninterrupted teaching of the Church for almost all of the past 2000 years that God hates divorce. A system of hedonic marriage, however, *must* have easy divorce rules, precisely because it is self-actualization and shared romantic love that morally justify the marriage to begin with — such that if/when it falls away, due to the spouses “growing apart” or what have you, the dissolution of the marriage is similarly morally justified, and perhaps even morally required. That’s very far from any authentic Christian vision of marriage, viewed historically.
Lee on his site:
Some of us entered marriages that turned out not to have the soul connection that makes a true and lasting marriage.
“Soul connection” reminds me of astrology or palm reading or crystal gazing.
Another way to write that is “she got unhaaaaapy”, so vows and promises and stuff were in the way.
That’s feminism, although it could be conservative feminism.
That “soul connection” nonsense is one of the issues the androsphere exists to deal with. It’s slightly more sophisticated than astrology. Women are so often superstitious, even those with college degrees. It comm
Stuff like that is said when God is taken out of the picture in marriage…and it does sound very pagan. Suddenly marital vows are only contingent on lustful passion & feelings.
Boxer, I for one am not “impressed” with Joseph Smith. He led thousands of people during his life away from Christ to a false-doctrined cult, enslaving them, breaking up their marriages, stealing their property, and personally despoiling their daughters, all so he could have unearned respect, young women he did not marry (as it is understood in the West, e.g., longterm monogamy), and living well without working for it.
We know that his doctrines were false because they dramatically diverged from the Bible, and he gloriously flunked the tests that God gives us through His holy book, the Bible to ascertain the genuineness of a prophet. A genuine prophet in Christianity cannot utter false prophesies, and Joe Smith clearly proclaimed scores, probably hundreds of them.
Oh, and dying ‘in a gunfight with his enemies’? Smith was killed by honest, productive Christians who’d absolutely had it with his stealing, corrupting youths, and pedophilia. He (like Brigham Young) made Hugh Hefner look good by comparison.
@White Guy
Are we talking about Swedenborg vs Smith, or Lee vs Toad?
It may not be so obvious in America to Americans but your Mormon missionaries (sent to the heart of darkness which is England) are a credit to your nation; young men, well-dressed and polite and thus as they go around like Starsky and Hutch in pairs, instantly recognisable. Generous too as they gave me a copy of The Book of Mormon with its sub-heading Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Amazing is it not or rather fortuitous that Jesus visited America but left no Jesus woz ‘ere trace. There is of course the myth that as a boy he had visited England specifically the south west to visit the tin mines with his cousin Joseph of Arimathea. I expect that every country has a similar story.
The Book of Mormon is also a popular Broadway show, but it is not by any means the first time that Broadway have taken Mormonism as a subject for musical theatre. Just over a hundred years ago there was The Girl from Utah a musical by Sidney Jones and Paul Rubens. I have a copy (beautiful cover) of a piano reduction of its waltzes dated 1913 purchased by my Grandmother which surely meant that she saw it then during its run at London’s razed Gaiety Theatre just off The Strand.
I await a Swedenborg musical along with the English translation of his complete theological works.
Lee@ September 19, 4:07 PM: Third-wave feminism was unknown in Paul’s time, but female rebellion was not, having occurred as far back as…well, Genesis 3.
Feminism is certainly wide scale female rebellion which is state (and increasingly church) sponsored.
For me there is always something new to learn at Dalrock, so I had to hit the books so to speak, to learn about Emanuel Swedenborg and the church he inspired. I would say it is at no small variance with the Christianity of the Nicene Creed, but makes it more clear where Lee is coming from.
Lee Woofenden was pastor at Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church for 10 years. The current pastor is Rev. Susannah Currie, and a three paragraph summary of beliefs is provided at this link:
https://www.bridgewaternewchurch.org/about
Lee’s sermons and lectures are contained here for anyone interested in more of the backstory:
My site is devoted to sharing with you the inspiring, comforting, broad-minded, and beautiful Christian philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg.
http://www.egogahan.com/leewoof/index2.htm
Dal, glad I’m not drinking coffee right now or my sinuses would be burning, I can’t believe I didn’t make that link, I’m still rolling here. So there really isn’t anything new under the sun is there! As Vox says, gamma’s gonna gamma.
Lee Woofenden was pastor at Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church for 10 years. The current pastor is Rev. Susannah Currie[!!!!!], and a three paragraph summary of beliefs is provided at this link:
‘Nuff said. We can now all officially stop paying attention to Lee and his apostate “church.”
@squid_hunt
And your whole argument is hinged on the assumption that Paul was dealing with 20th century issues in the 1st century. I know feminism is an expletive in current Red Pill and conservative Christian circles. But it was not even a blip on the horizon when Paul wrote his letters.
Yes, women were automatically expected to submit to their husbands in that culture. Women were considered to be of a lower social rank than men. And in those hierarchical societies, lower social ranks were expected to submit to higher social ranks. It’s really just that simple.
@Boxer
These two statements are not the same:
“Paul told women not to submit to their husbands.”
“Paul did not tell women to submit to their husbands.”
Do you see the difference?
Yet women were still called upon to submit to their husbands in the Scriptures. That indicates the problem is not a modern invention, whatever the outward status of women. It is an inherent problem, traceable back to Eve after The Fall.
No. It’s not. My argument is hinged on the assumption that Paul was instructing a church on conduct. And when he got to the women, he told them to submit. As to the Lord. Feminism was irrelevant to the point. Whether it exists or not. But it’s good to see you concede the argument without even an attempt at refuting. That would be the proper thing to do when you’re just making up doctrine to suit your personal politics.
We are just going to go around in circles arguing what Paul did or did not say. I still haven’t seen this question presented by GunnerQ.
Again…Paul’s thoughts about marriage go back to THE model…Christ and the church.
@earl
Where did I say that there is no requirement for the church to submit to Christ?
I didn’t say that anywhere.
You guys really don’t get it, do you? You seem not even to comprehend the basic words and sentences that I’m writing. You keep attributing to me things that I never said, as if you didn’t even bother to read what I did say. You’re so intent on pigeonholing me into your standard bogyeman (feminism!) that you can’t even read what I’m saying because you have such strong “AAAGH! FEMINISM!” goggles on.
The whole point is that it’s not about the submitting. It’s about in what manner to submit. That is the force of Paul’s statement.
Here is a more literal translation of the Greek, from Young’s Literal Translation:
When it comes to who is the head of whom, Paul is really just describing the situation that existed. The husband is head of the wife. That’s just how things were—and in many marriages today, still are. Christ is the head of the “assembly,” or church. That’s just how things are. There is no “should” in the Greek. Paul is not saying wives should be subject to their husbands. He is saying they are subject to their husbands. It’s a simple statement of fact about the social and legal situation of Paul’s day.
The force of his words is in his comparing the relationship between the husband and the wife to the relationship between Christ and the church. In what way is the church to submit to Christ?
When we read the New Testament about the relationship between Christ and the church, we find that it is not one of strict laws and absolute obedience. As I said in the article, Christ himself said:
How is that anything like the “absolute obedience” you guys are saying wives should show toward their husbands? Christ does not call us servants, but friends. The whole spirit of the relationship as taught by Christ himself, and by Paul, is completely different from the master/servant relationship pushed by conservative Christian pastors as the “proper” relationship between man and wife.
Your whole line of argument completely violates the teachings of Christ and of Paul about the nature of the relationship between Christ and the church.
You’re so focused on the “submission” part that you’ve missed the whole point of Paul’s statements on the subject. Paul preached that we are no longer under the law, but under grace, and that our relationship with Christ is not one of law, but of grace. So our submission to Christ is not one of obedience to law, but of following Christ out of faith, love, and yes, friendship, as Christ himself said, and as Paul says everywhere in his writings.
This doesn’t mean we can willfully disobey Christ’s commandments. It means, rather, that we follow Christ’s commandments not just because we’re required to obey them, but because we love Christ and we have faith in Christ—or as it should be translated, we are faithful to Christ, and we therefore want to and enjoy following Christ and living by his teachings and example.
You are trying to backslide into the old covenant of law, making the relationship between the husband and the wife, and by extension the relationship between Christ and the church, one of strict obedience to law rather than of faith, grace, and love as taught in the New Testament.
Have you missed the whole point of the New Testament? Have you even read it? Because from what I can tell, you’ve utterly failed to understand its message, and have backslid from the covenant of grace to the covenant of law. You not only cannot read what I am saying and understand it properly, you can’t read and understand what the entire New Testament says because you still desire to be slaves to the law, and to live under the Old Covenant.
I would urge you to take off your goggles and read the New Testament with fresh eyes, paying attention to what it is saying in its own words, in the context of its own times, and hear the message of the New Covenant in Christ that it is giving us.
Lee is just babbling. To the extent he says anything at all pertinent, it is an accident. His real goal is to protect Feminism and the ability of creepy men to Get into the houses of weak women burdened down by many sins. We know he’s been married twice, but we don’t know the circumstances. We don’t know how many husbands his so-called wife has had. We also know that he was a false pastor at a false church who was replaced by a false pastrix. Do any women want him around for long?
Has anyone said Paul addressed Feminism? I haven’t seen it. Paul addressed wives and the temptation to usurp and rebel which is typical of them; not only in the 21C, and not only in the 1C, but since Eve decided to eat the Fruit.
It happens to be that we are at a high water mark of the flood of (perhaps one of) man’s permissiveness and woman’s feralness, and so sane Christians will see need to emphasize this passage of God’s Word.
All you dummies, don’t you get it? His words are important don’t you know, and you shouldn’t question the SECRET KING! Because…REASONS! Now flee before his REASONS!
REASONS!
Lee
And your whole argument is hinged on the assumption that Paul was dealing with 20th century issues in the 1st century. I know feminism is an expletive in current Red Pill and conservative Christian circles. But it was not even a blip on the horizon when Paul wrote his letters.
Feminism is merely the latest form of the Female Imperative. Paul knew very well what women could do, because he surely had read Proverbs as part of his education, and that is why the plain text in Ephesians tells wives to obey their husbands. Because by submitting to their husbands, women won’t be an endless source of trouble, and might even become content.
What can we learn from Proverbs about women? Ken, I challenge you to take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Open Proverbs and write down every mention of “woman” or “women”. Critical mentions on the left, positive on the right. So Proverbs 31 goes on the right. Other parts on the left.
See how many quotes you wind up with on the left side vs. the right side. Because Proverbs is blunt.
Proverbs 14:1
A wise woman builds her home, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.
Proverbs 21:9
It’s better to live in a corner on the roof than to share a house with a contentious woman.
Proverbs 21:19
It is better to live in a desert land Than with a contentious and vexing woman.
Proverbs 27:15,16
A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike
Perhaps you have never read these quotes before. I am certain that most preachers have not read them, or read them only once in school. They matter a lot to modern men for reasons I won’t go into, but they clearly show that women now are the same as women then.
A contentious woman is a constant source of negative stimulation to a man, because by contending with him in word and action she turns on his “fight / freeze / flight” response, leading to a cortisol and adrenaline dump into the bloodstream, with no way to resolve that. Modern feminism teaches women to be perpetually aggrieved and contentious, but it’s not new, it’s just an innate tendency that has been magnified hugely thanks to an overabundance of resources.
Women have not changed all that much in the last 2,000 years, or the last 20,000 for that matter.
Women are not men with boobs, no matter how hard various people try to pretend otherwise.
They can imitate men, but not be men.
Proverbs 17:1
Better is a dry morsel and quietness with it Than a house full of feasting with strife.
Lee
How is that anything like the “absolute obedience” you guys are saying wives should show toward their husbands?
Strawman fallacy. Reviewing the comments I cannot find one where a man says anything about absolute obedience. However, equating proper submission with absolute obedience is one of the “tells” of a feminist in my experience.
Alright. I get it, guys. He’s saying LEAVE MY FEMINISM ALONE! Stop picking on it!
I can do that. Even if it is a strawman. (Strawperson?)
Lee, I’m a lost man on my way to hell for my sins. How do I get to heaven from here?
@anonymous reader
I said absolute obedience. If the wife submits as unto the Lord, that would require absolute obedience. There’s no “He’s mean” out for women. Or “He’s emotionally unavailable.” And by the way, this is the same requirement a God puts on men for their masters in the workplace or governors, or pastors. There’s no out in submission due to tyranny. Ready it literally and these are the conclusions you come to. Which is what Lee is really fighting. He doesn’t like what the Bible has to say.
@squid_hunt
Sure. And if taken literally, its description flatly contradicts the first account on several key points, such as the order in which things are created. Don’t try to wriggle out of it. That’s just a fact.
These are excellent questions—ones that biblical literalists of every stripe should seriously ask themselves.
My answer is that the Bible is not about history and science. Rather, it is about God teaching and leading us from death to eternal life. The literal stories are simply vessels for God’s spiritual message of salvation. Focusing on the literal story, and missing the deeper message, is like being given a wooden chest full of gold and jewels and never opening it up but just staring at the chest, so that we never receive the wealth of spiritual riches inside. It is like leaving the pearl of great price buried in the field.
In the Gospels almost all of Jesus’ teaching to the people was given in the form of parables. It would be silly to say that the Parable of the Sower was really about a farmer going out and scattering seed. It is just as silly to say that the two Creation stories in Genesis are really about how God created the physical universe.
Christ speaks to us in the same way God speaks to us, because Christ is God with us. And God had already been speaking to us in that way for thousands of years before Christ came to teach us in person, mostly through parables, so that those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will see and hear God’s deeper message of our new creation, rebirth, and eternal life.
@white guy
We’re all too stupid to understand them. We need him and his band of merry not-feminists to explain it to us. We just need to open our minds, man. We’re all too close minded and bigoted to get it.
squid_hunt
I said absolute obedience. If the wife submits as unto the Lord, that would require absolute obedience.
Well, how did I miss that? Shucks.
Clicked on the link to the Bridgewater Church: that symbol looks suspiciously like a Swastika – fake Nazis.
…whatever I want it to say, obviously.
A parable that was clearly explained in the text. I also stated previously that there was obvious imagery. To claim that the entire Bible is a farce is hilarious. You know who does that? People in the Bible who don’t like what it has to say. But of course, that’s just allegory. What do you think it means, guys?
The fact is that you don’t understand English. There is no timeline in the second chapter of Genesis. ‘And’ does not imply an order in any way. Unless it suits you better for dismissing the Bible, of course.
@Anonymous Reader
Etc.
Yep. Women can be a real pain in the @$$. Women can be jerks, selfish, greedy, evil, and sinners just as men can. In fact, pretty much all of us start out that way, men and women alike. For most of us it takes a lifetime, and a whole lot of hard work, and usually a living relationship with God, not to be a selfish jerk anymore. I’m afraid many, if not most people, men and women alike, never bother to put out the effort.
I know firsthand what it’s like to live with a contentious woman. My first wife became contentious and eventually violated our marriage and divorced me after 20+ years of marriage. So you don’t have to school me about Proverbs on women. I’ve been through the whole thing. I know from personal experience exactly what Solomon is talking about.
I reject feminism precisely because it does not have a balanced view of men and women. It puts women up on a pedestal, as if they can do no wrong, and blames the world’s ills on men and “patriarchy.” And many parts of feminism still cling to the ridiculous notion that there are no differences between men and women other than physical and reproductive ones.
‘Explore a new Christianity for the new Millennium’ is what it says at Bridgewater New Jerusalem Church web-site – so presumably placed on the Net when Lee was its Pastor. We all know what that means – The Bible as reinterpreted through the lens of Marxist Feminism!
To me – reading Lee and his exegesis here is a bit like speaking to someone about a piece of music by say Bach and then being told that the only notes that are to be taken seriously are the C sharps. (Shenkerian analysis does just that sort of thing).
Presumably it is now a capital offence to refer to a Plagal cadence as a Feminine Cadence.
Lee your a expert at women and the bible! DAMN, I bet you can’t go out in public without beating them (that would be women) off with a stick. I bet you sneak out at night for coffee just so you don’t have to listen the crowds chanting, LEE, LEE, LEE. I bet you voted for Trump too didn’t you?
To compare as Lee does for his purposes, a Parable (The Sower) with the emphatic opening of Genesis (In the Beginning) etc is breathtaking.
Oops, let’s try that again:
@squid_hunt
Nice wriggle.
But trying to make everything in Genesis 2 happen simultaneously or in random order, on in whatever order it happened in Genesis 1 just won’t work. Genesis 2 has a simple narrative format in which one event follows another, just as in the rest of the Bible. Claiming that the way Hebrew narrative form works in Genesis 2 is completely different from the way it works everywhere else in the Bible just won’t work. You can’t twist the text of the Bible to make it conform to your ~200 year old dogmas about taking everything in the Bible literally.
Besides, the text flatly contradicts what you are saying, and explicitly says in the second Creation story that humans were created before plants:
While the first creation story explicitly says that plants were created on the third day . . .
. . . and humans on the sixth day:
I don’t think you can seriously argue that a narrative in which the various created items are created one day after another is not sequential. And plants of every kind are clearly and explicitly created on the third day, before humans are created on the sixth day.
But Genesis 2 just as clearly says that God created humans “when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up.”
So I’m sorry, but your “There is no timeline in the second chapter of Genesis” is just a wriggle. It’s a weak attempt to avoid the plain words of the Bible.
Much better! @Dalrock, would you mind deleting the first, wrongly formatted version of my above comment? Thanks.
I thought Lee was a KJV purist but his above quote with the use of the neologism Humankind most certainly isn’t KJV. So much more elegant (and less Feminist) in the KJV.
Now back to work for me.
It won’t work for you, because you wan the Bible to be demonstrably false. I happen to take the position that the Bible is accurate, which is kind of leant to by the entire Bible being based on God’s word being truth.
God put man in the garden to work it. Here’s a bag of seeds. Till the ground. Plant the seeds. Grow food in the garden. It’s not a discrepancy. It’s consistent with the rest of the text. You just want it to be wrong. Although how that dismisses Paul’s teachings, once again, I’m very confused. And you seem to not what to discuss that. It’s the great, meandering allegory of progressivism I’m just too simple to understand with my literal interpretations, I guess.
I didn’t say you said that…I was asking you a question. Hence the question mark.
Even if they try to imitate masculine traits, they tend to imitate the bullying, douchey, jerk versions of men. Not the mostly emotionally self-controlled, logical, and prudent versions.
Lee:
I noted the difference yesterday, when I wrote:
You want to hover above the distinction between P~s and ~(Ps) in order to support your theses.
This is yet another red herring, thrown on the table in order to distract from, the fact that you’re spreading feminism.
The thing is, you’re promoting feminism in such a ridiculous fashion that it actually helps our cause, and hurts the one you pretend to champion. In that regard, I’m not going to interfere with you further. I wish you good luck in your efforts to make the Christian feminists look even more ridiculous than they do already (I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re doing a helluva job).
Regards,
Boxer
Luke babbles:
Joseph Smith was going to be killed by a bunch of cowardly cucks, like you, who snuck into the jailhouse to backshoot an unarmed man while he was sleeping. He was able to take a few of you white trash with him. Everyone knows who Joseph Smith is, 150 years after he snuffed it. No one knew who your people were. That is exactly how it should be.
In short, we won. We’re still winning. My people have lots of problems, but this isn’t one of them:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/white-christians-now-minority-u-s-population-survey-says/
If protestant Christianity survives, I’m convinced it will be converts and sympathizers like Saeed Abeidini, and maybe me too, who do the heavy lifting. Your people just aren’t up to the task.
Regards,
Boxer
Feeriker sez:
Lee is running black propaganda. He is here to generate links and buzz about Dalrock’s blog, and to make Christian feminists look stupid, in the process. In that regard I think we owe him our thanks and good will.
Best,
Boxer
Definitely spends an inordinate amount of words to not answer questions.
@Opus
That line about “God’s own translation of the Bible” in my post is a joke, aimed at the adherents of the “King James Only movement.” The whole line is in quotation marks. My wife didn’t get it either, which is why I added the link.
The KJV is no more divinely inspired than any other translation of the Bible. It’s a pretty good translation. And I grew up steeped in it, so it’s still easier for me to find a passage searching the KJV than any other translation. However, it’s not perfect. It gets some things wrong, while other things in it are just plain outdated in their language—one of my favorites being:
Amazing guy who could stop the sun from rising! 😉
The Hebrew ‘adam does mean “humankind” in today’s English.
Whether or not you like the way the language is changing, it is changing. In the common English spoken today “man” no longer means “human beings” except in archaic phrases. You can blame it on feminism if you want, but that’s not going to change anything. Language changes over time whether particular groups of people like it or not. There are lots of changes taking place in English that I don’t particularly like. But I don’t get to decide how English is going to be spoken.
But more to the point, when God first creates ‘adam in Genesis 1:26–27, it explicitly includes both male and female:
‘adam in Hebrew generally includes both male and female. Using “man” to translate it, especially in today’s English, can actually obscure the meaning of the Hebrew text in English. For example, toward the end of Genesis 2, the text switches to gender-specific terms for man and woman in Genesis 2:23:
Using “man” in the translation all the way through in English obscures the language and the force of the original Hebrew.
Fighting a rearguard battle to keep “man” as a term for humans including male and female isn’t going to get you anywhere. And though you and I might not like some of the changes taking place in the language, using “humankind” as a translation for the Hebrew ‘adam actually does improve the accuracy of the translation, as shown just above.
@squid_hunt
And yet, you’re ignoring the plain, explicit language of the Bible itself in favor of statements that are just plain false based on what the Bible itself says.
There is a timeline in Genesis 2. It follows ordinary Hebrew narrative from in which one event happens after another told in Hebrew’s imperfect (a grammatical term meaning “ongoing”) tense, all strung together with the Hebrew prefix w, meaning “and.”
Pretending that things in Genesis 2 don’t happen sequentially because that makes your literal interpretation of the text demonstrably false doesn’t change the facts of how the Hebrew language works, and how Genesis 2 is written.
You’re burying your head in the sand and avoiding seeing anything that conflicts with your wrong understanding of what the Bible is about. Your literal, materialistic interpretation of the text causes the Bible to flatly contradict itself. But you simply avoid that because you don’t want to admit that you’re wrong in the way you read the Bible. You can’t refute the plain facts I presented about the Bible story in Genesis 1 and 2, so you just avoid it altogether and retreat back to a bunch of generalities.
And it’s all in an attempt to make the Bible into a textbook of science and history, which is an insult against God. God gave us the Word of God to show us the way to salvation, not to tell us how the physical universe was created. In terms of our salvation, what does it really matter how God created the physical universe? Why would God even bother putting that information in the Bible? It has nothing to do with our salvation.
You’re attempting to reduce the Bible down to the level of human scientific and historical literature, as if God has to conform to our rather recent human standards of composition by providing us with accurate information about physical events. But those are things we can figure out for ourselves. God doesn’t need to tell us how the physical world was created.
But God does need to tell us how we can become “new creations,” how we can be born again in the spirit, and other things about spiritual and eternal life that we could never figure out for ourselves.
You are burying your head in the sand and avoiding the plain language of the Bible in order to support a man-made, materialistic view of the Bible.
Are you aware that for the first 1,500 years of Christianity, nearly every Christian theologian saw the Bible as having deeper, spiritual meanings in it? That started to go out of fashion with the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. But it’s only been in the last 200 years or so that a group of conservative and reactionary Protestants began to claim that everything in the Bible is literally true. That is contrary to the whole history of Christian belief. And it reduces God down to a human author of a human-style book.
I see the Bible as the Word of God. And that means it is far greater than any human textbook of science and history. And being the Word of God, it is not concerned with material and temporary things, but with spiritual and eternal things.
@Lee
Alright, hero. Let’s assume I concede. You’re right in your interpretation that the Bible interpretation doesn’t matter.
How does a lost man get to heaven?
Is there such a thing as sin?
Is there a literal hell where people are punished for their sins?
Is Jesus Christ the Son of God?
Is Jesus Christ equal to God?
Did Jesus come to earth in literal flesh?
Did Jesus literally die for the sins of the entire world on the cross?
Did Jesus die without ever violating a single commandment of God?
Is Jesus Christ going to literally return to earth with his saints to rule and reign for 1000 years before judging the earth and turning over reign to his father to rule from heaven on earth?
@earlthomas786
I am in favor of women being women, and not trying to imitate men. And I think that as women establish their right to determine their own lives, and to engage in whatever activities they want to engage in, and take whatever jobs they want to take, the ironic feminist effort for women to be just like men will subside.
I’m not a feminist, despite all the ignorant name-calling of so many of you guys here. But I do think it’s best to let feminism run its course. Women do have some valid complaints, just as men do, about the way things work between men and women. And they’re going to have to work it out of their system.
So many Red Pill men seem to fear that if we men let women out of our control, we’re going to lose control of the world, everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket, and men will be forever doomed to live out their lives under the thumb of women.
Personally, I think that’s based mostly on a lot of insecurity among men. Sure, society is changing. But men are still men, and women are still women, no matter what monkeying around we do with social norms and gender roles. Sooner or later the maleness of men and the femaleness of women will reassert itself, and we’ll find a new balance.
I’ve been through academia, and seen for myself how feminist and Marxist it is. Academia lives in a bubble away from the realities of human life. It spouts ridiculous social and political theories, and unfortunately, it does have a fair amount of influence.
But on the ground, ordinary Joes and Janes don’t accept most of that academic air-castle-building. Men keep right on being men, and women keep right on being women. Go onto any construction site, and you’ll see lots and lots of men, with maybe a woman or two here or there. Go into any J.C. Penney, and you’ll see lots and lots of women moving around among the clothing racks, with maybe a man or two here or there.
Despite all the efforts of the radical end of feminism, men just keep on being men, and women just keep on being women.
I’m not worried that women are going to take over the world. The pendulum swings one way, then the other. But the fact of the matter is that men and women are different, physically, psychologically, and spiritually. No amount of academic ridiculousness is going to change that.
@squid_hunt
By being born again, as Jesus taught. This does not mean responding to an altar call and reciting the Sinner’s Prayer. This means actually being spiritually reborn into a new and different person. And for most of us Christians, that takes a lifetime of walking in the footsteps of Christ, “working out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
Yes, of course. Why else would this world be so messed up?
Yes, there is a hell where people are punished for their sins. Though I don’t know why you use the word “literal.” The Bible never says, “There is a literal hell.”
Yes.
Jesus Christ is God.
Yes. Though once again, “literal” doesn’t add anything to the statement. The Bible says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). It doesn’t say, “The Word literally became flesh.” It says, “The Word became flesh.” And flesh, in this context, means God became a flesh and blood human being living on this earth. That is abundantly clear from the Gospels.
There is no need to keep adding the word “literal” when the Bible does not. The Bible is plain enough in its own language without our adding words to it.
Once again, the Bible doesn’t say “literally,” so I don’t know why you keep adding that word. It says that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3).
Yes: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15, emphasis added).
Sorry but the Bible doesn’t say that this is going to happen literally, or physically. Why do you keep adding “literal” and “literally” to the Bible’s words?
John is very clear in the Book of Revelation that everything he saw and described in that book was seen “in the spirit” and “when heaven was opened” to him. The idea that everything John saw happening spiritually in the spiritual world is going to happen physically in the physical world has no sound basis in the Bible.
If you think everything John saw in the spiritual world is going to happen physically in the physical world, then in due time you’ll be proved just as wrong as everyone else who, for nearly 2,000 years now, has predicted that these things are going to happen physically at such and such a time has been proven wrong.
You’d think that by now, after thousands of years and after being wrong hundreds of times, we’d have gotten some sense into our thick heads about this.
Okay, I’ve got to get back to work now.
@Lee
Because you keep playing word games. There’s a lot of heresies that splice words to make everything sound right when they mean something else entirely. I’m just trying to make sure we’re not talking spiritual level only, because that delves into gnosticism. The Bible also has some pretty strong words to say about people that deny those things are literal. Although you’re right. It doesn’t actually say literal.
<By being born again, as Jesus taught. This does not mean responding to an altar call and reciting the Sinner’s Prayer. This means actually being spiritually reborn into a new and different person. And for most of us Christians, that takes a lifetime of walking in the footsteps of Christ, “working out our salvation with fear and trembling”
You believe in progressive salvation. The Bible doesn’t teach that.
Romans 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
That’s a sinner’s prayer right there. It has nothing to do with making yourself into Jesus. But I’m not going to pretend I’m going to convince you of that.
@Lee
And just for the record, I’m done arguing. That last comment was because I wanted to know where you actually stood. You’re not completely off in left field, other than the progressive salvation thing, which is literal damnable heresy, but not uncommon. You’re definitely around the mean of Christian beliefs, but it really confuses me how you get there if you don’t believe the Bible says what it means and are so readily dismissive of the New Testament teachings.
Lee
I am in favor of women being women, and not trying to imitate men. And I think that as women establish their right to determine their own lives, and to engage in whatever activities they want to engage in, and take whatever jobs they want to take, the ironic feminist effort for women to be just like men will subside.
What year are you commenting from, 1985? Thanks to men like you, women have the right to determine their own lives and the lives of men around them, and to do anything they want to do – and demand that men make it possible for them to do it. For example, the Navy has spent amazing amounts of money to accomodate women’s demands just for one example, and yet women are notoroious for ducking out of sea duty via pregnancy. The list of accomodations to women is nearly endless, and you pretend as though none of it has happened? Seriously?
You’re way out of date. Suggest you spend less time with people over 60 and more time with men under 30 to see what’s actually going on in the world. The K-12 system is very different from what you experienced. Whenever you were in college last century it has little to do with what men age 18 – 22 are going through now.
I’m not a feminist,
Yes, you are. Probably a conservative one, but still a feminist. You can quibble about the details of whether you are a 19th century 1st stage Elizabeth Cady Stanton feminist, or a 2nd stage NOW feminist or a 3rd stage sex-pozzy feminist, but it’s really trivial. Since we swim in a sea of feminism, any man who is not actively pushing back against it is passively accepting it. Your equalism in marriage idea? That’s feminism right there.
Your heroic battle against various strawmen isn’t interesting or new, but it does suggest the flavor of bubble that you live in. There’s a lot you don’t know. I can’t tell if you are willing to learn or not.
Lee,
Can you please address my question from Sept 19, 4:33?
English is not my mother tongue, so it’s very possible I didn’t make sense there – will try re-do it now and elaborate a bit:
In your article about two creation stories in Genesis, that you linked and referred to in your posts here, you claim that the two accouns of creation are to be read ‘spiritually’, as a symbolic depiction of humans’ spiritual and social development, basically saying that the original relationship between man and woman was mature equality, two equal polarities or aspects of one adam. And that this state of things didn’t last and turned into what is in Genesis (2:4 and onwards) put as another creation attempt (re-creation), where woman is secondary and later put in a submissive role, and that situation further lead to fall. You support this claim by referring to the trope “it was very good” (Gen 1:31), that should be, in your interpretation, referring to the first creation of adam in the male-female equal duality, fully matured spiritually.
But, here comes my point: that part “it was very good” obviously seems rather to refer to “everything that he had made” (all the creation of past six days, completed at that point) and between the “it was very good” and the creation of humans there’s a longish part talking about what all the animals etc will eat. On the other hand in all of the previous days there are those “it was good” uttered always after a specific stage of creation.
If you say that the tellers of the stories “were concerned with how we humans become new creations under the influence of God”, why the ultimate point and center of the creation and God’s interest, humans, would not have their own “it was good”, say after Genesis 1:27?
Actually, the way the text is composed may seem as if the humans’ creation (the first one in your interpretation) didn’t turn out as expected, He doesn’t comment on it specifically with “it was good”, but goes to, in Gen 1:28, repeat what He already said in Gen 1:26, and then continues to maybe unnecessary details who will eat what.. As if He would like to, with all the talking, divert attention from the fact how (not ideally) the creation of humans actually ended up, and then proceeds to lump it together with everything into one package that “was very good”..
If Bible is God given or revealed, it’s safe to assume that all the wording and what and how is said (or ommitted) in the Bible is not random, so the lack of “it was good” that would be targeted specifically at the creation of humans probably has some meaning.
What do you think?
Wouldn’t this maybe refute what you say in your article afterwards, since one premise of your thoughts would be ungrounded?
Ofelas, your English is better than most native English speakers I know.
And your logic is sound.
Thanks Scott.
By instructing a wife’s submission to her husband to be as reverent as the church’s submission to the headship of Christ, Paul isn’t teaching anything less than complete submission but in fact offering the paradigmatic end to such a submission. Just because Paul has a larger point than wifely submission in Ephesians 5 doesn’t diminish the requirement for wives to submit, but rather enhances such a command. The rebellious wife doesn’t just sin against her husband when she fails to submit, she distorts the ideal of the perfect marriage (that is Christ and the church). How can you not see these implications?
Welcome to the blinders feminism puts on people…especially Christians. They give into this rebellious ethos they no longer see their faith in Christ anymore.