The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
–G. K. Chesterton
Commenter seventiesjason wrote:
as for this Chivalry thing Dalrock is stuck on……..I never knew a medieval code that was for warfare somehow in 1324 or whatever ruined marriage in 2019. I still fail to see the connection
There is a famous G. K. Chesterton quote where he warns of the danger of removing laws or customs that we don’t understand the purpose of:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”[1]
In the case of chivalry*, we now know why and when a host of related anti Christian concepts have been adopted as if they were Christianity. Chivalry is the answer to:
- Why Christians instinctively invert the roles of husband and wife.
- Why Christians believe that romantic love is sanctifying, and that women’s sexual desire is both virtuous and points to male virtue.
- Why Christians see no fault divorce and other sins by wives as God’s plan to improve men.
- Why Christian men are extremely uncomfortable with the idea of calling out women’s sins.
- Why Christians believe that men must boldly declare their romantic intentions at the beginning of the “Christian” courtship ritual, and why once married we are told that Christian men must pursue their wives.
We only need Scripture to see that bullets 1-4 are contrary to Christianity, and bullet 5 doesn’t come from Christianity. But without understanding the root of these false teachings it is more difficult to convince our fellow Christians to reject them. This is especially true since these are conservative errors, and what Chesterton is describing in the gate quote above is a core aspect of the conservative thought process.
*Chivalry as commonly used refers to what academics call courtly love. When I use the term chivalry in this post I’m referring to the common usage.
See also: Call me unchivalrous.
By looking at the submission I want, I realize the weight of the submission I owe to the Lord.
By looking at my feeble, disobedient nature, I can empathize with what that demand feels like to a woman.
It’s just so backwards from the common conception, that would portray me as a selfish lout. I mean, yeah, sure, I’m a selfish lout, but only in the way that everyone is.
Jason is either a really good troll or more likely somewhat autistic. He keeps coming here, where he says he never gets anything useful and repeats variants of the same accusations. He also cannot see long term cause and effect, chivalry and the modern systems in this case.
That would also explain why he had such a hard time with women. Though I have a relative who is decently attractive, but who is also on that spectrum and he found a wife. She is not the top quality one Jason may be aiming at, but she seems dedicated to him. (Yeah, that may change, but that is another issue.)
Too many Christians can be like that, though I would agree with Vox Day that more who claim to be atheists are in that position.
BillyS,
Jason is either a really good troll or more likely somewhat autistic.
Consider the possibility of ‘both’.
It is a rare male who exhibits ‘nail girl’ psychology :
He also cannot see long term cause and effect, chivalry
Another female attribute. Hmm….. Perhaps this is the first ever female troll who got a significant number of men to think she is really a male. Normally, a female troll posing as a man is utterly incapable of pulling it off.
Chivalry might have been a military code, but it wasn’t one in 1324. 1324 was only marginally feudal, at that point the nobility was becoming a court society. Military competence was far less important than gaining influence at court.
Just look at the Daily Mail article in yesterday’s post. It’s all about “chivalry” (their term), and not once do they talk about riding horses. Sad! Fake news!
Alternatively, words’ meanings can evolve.
Brothers this picture of Medusa’s spawn will turn your chivalry to stone!
The macro issue brought about by this post (and the Chesterton quote) is the reason “conservatives” cannot point to one thing they have “conserved” in three generations.
The macro issue brought about by this post (and the Chesterton quote) is the reason “conservatives” cannot point to one thing they have “conserved” in three generations.
They conserved abortion rights successfully.
I see this as an American problem, because I have yet to meet anyone in Gt Britain/N Ireland who is Christian – Anglican certainly for everyone in England is default Anglican, but that is quite different. By way of example my sister who will attend Church more than once on Xmas Day claims that it is wrong to eat meat, drink milk or deny global-warming (apparently only the God Emperor and myself are GW sceptics and are therefore Literally Hitler) and I think I can predict some of her other beliefs given her failure to see anything wrong with the fact that her local Bishop is a woman and thus my views would clearly horrify so I stay silent. Her views have nothing to do with the NT. I have a friend who is of the Calvinist persuasion and used to take his children when they were young to a happy-clappy church but so far as I can see with his really disgraceful summary-dismissal of his long-suffering wife and globalist ideology is a true devotee of the least funny Marx (albeit very much of the Champagne variety) and not in the slightest Christian. Your problems are thus the natural consequence of Puritanism – that is to say abandoning an established Church in favour of a do-it-yourself religion.
The trouble is this: the gulf-stream blows everything sooner or late over here.
OT, though perhaps not.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/randi-gunther/marriage-advice_b_5666990.html
Older article, but it is interesting she has the truth that women are not attracted to “caring men” but can’t admit it because it would torpedo her worldview.
EC,
That photo is disgusting. Who things tats like that look good anyway?
Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”[1]
This is a position I have taken before I ever knew of this quote. That is, I will not entertain an argument against a thing unless the critic can articulate all the positives about the thing they oppose. I.e. demonstrating understanding and competence about the position.
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What to do about someone with a perpetual case of the “Deacon blues” (e.g. a guy who never achieves his dream but lives with a broken dream as a broken man living a broken life)? Less important is How do you solve a problem like Maria?
The “fences” that have been destroyed, however, had clear and highly relevant uses. It was “liberals” (lack of a more appropriate characterization eludes me at present), which saw the fences as roadblocks to autonomy and happiness.
“Conservatives” (again, for the sake of expediency) simply fell for the ruse until they had been effectively gaslighted and brainwashed into believing that happiness rather than holiness is the ultimate goal. Voddie Baucham does an excellent job of describing how this tactic work in his recently posted message about how SJW’s accomplish their goals and why Christians would do well to avoid anything to do with so-called social “justice”:
@elspeth: Dr. Rodney Stark is one of the scholars who chronicle the corruption of truth in Christianized Western Civilization, largely to meet the corrupter’s anti-Christian political objectives, that began with a handful of atheistic Enlightenment writers (e.g. Voltaire, Diderot, and Gibbon) echoed by modernists. Here’s an example:
“The identification of the era beginning in about 1600 as the ‘Enlightenment’ is as inappropriate as the identification of the millennium before it as the ‘Dark Ages.’ And both imputations were made by the same people- intellectuals who wished to discredit religion and especially the Roman Catholic Church, and who therefore associated faith with darkness and secular humanism with light…
… One of the first steps in this effort was to designate their own era as the ‘Enlightenment,’ and to claim it was a sudden and complete disjuncture with the past. To this end, the ‘Dark Ages’ were invented. Among the very first ever to do so, Voltaire (1694-1778) described medieval Europe as hopelessly mired in ‘decay and degeneracy.’ This became the universal theme…
…Moreover, it was not enough to blame the ‘Dark Ages’ on Christianity; religion must also be denied any credit for the rise of science. Hence it was necessary to discredit the achievements of the Scholastic era… With the past out of the way, the central aspect of the campaign by the likes of David Hume, Voltaire, and their associates consisted of wrapping themselves in the achievements of science to authenticate their condemnation of religion in general, and Catholicism very specifically…. Never mind that the actual discoveries had been made by ‘serious and often devout Christians.’ What mattered was that, in the words of Peter Gay, ‘science could give the deists and atheists great comfort and supply them with what they wanted- Newton’s physics without Newton’s God.'”
@elspeth: Appreciate the video. The argument was sound imo. Don’t see many black people around here refusing to sacrifice truth for the gibmedats, refusing to sacrifice a right spirituality for this generation’s counterfeit virtue signaling emotional “high.” Dr. Voddie Bauchman simply must be one of them, a man of integrity. God bless him for it.
Something that has been on my mind for a while now can essentially be summarised by the hypothesis that conservative Christian churches have laid the foundations for gay marriage.
To expand on this – the idea that sex needs to be sanctified by romantic love (within marriage) is a pervasive thought in conservative Christian churches today, tracing its roots back to “chivalry” as documented on this blog. It is then not much of a leap to say that romantic love is the sole basis for marriage, and from there it is not much of a leap to claim that marriage is simply a contract between two consenting adults, against which there is no logical argument for gay marriage. Thus “chivalry/courtly love” has not only perverted the Biblical roles within marriage, it has perverted marriage itself.
Contrast this idea of marriage to that laid out in the Book of Common Prayer (1662 version, when the Church of England was an actual Church): https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/form-solemnization-matrimony
“First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.
Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.
Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace”
Baucham makes a great point but does not take it to it’s fullest conclusion (because that’s not his point in this particular video). It’s about the total incompatibility of justice and “social justice.” Justice almost always seeks to right the wrongs on a individual basis and therefore cannot work as a macro concept in the way the SJ crowd conceptualizes it.
The texts that the good doctor uses here to make the case for God demanding justice are the very same ones we use as the basis of the concept of due process five thousand years later. And they are always concerned with weighing the facts in any individual case to figure out what the right thing to do is. Some of those verses strictly forbid looking at the persons circumstance or class or whatever, because right and wrong are immovable objects in time and space.
For example, I think about the bodies of OJ Simpsons victims lying there in a pool of blood and I know that the souls of those victims are crying out from the abyss for justice. Someone, someday is going to have to pay for that. Not just OJ, but everyone who cognitively disengaged from the facts of that case to find an acquittal on a racial basis. (This is true in all jury nullification cases, white or black or whatever).
Likewise, every judge, cop, social worker, whatever who has ever let his desire to have his ego stroked by “saving” a damsel in distress and allowed the particular facts of the case go unresolved and ground a man to dust through the DV/”family” court system will have to answer for the families and lives ruined by their lack of wisdom and disregard for justice.
To expand on this – the idea that sex needs to be sanctified by romantic love (within marriage) is a pervasive thought in conservative Christian churches today, tracing its roots back to “chivalry” as documented on this blog. It is then not much of a leap to say that romantic love is the sole basis for marriage, and from there it is not much of a leap to claim that marriage is simply a contract between two consenting adults, against which there is no logical argument for gay marriage. Thus “chivalry/courtly love” has not only perverted the Biblical roles within marriage, it has perverted marriage itself.
Yes, of course, this has been discussed many times here before.
As you correctly point out, when marriage becomes centered on romantic love, with children/gender roles/monogamy/lifetime all being “opt-in” aspects of marriage rather than inherent ones, eventually you can’t stop gay people from marrying, because gays also do fall in love with each other. This is certainly what happened in the broader secular culture, which clearly views marriage as a state-recognized romantic love relationship. Because religion is downstream from culture (for most people, other than those who actively resist that), most Christians also view marriage this way, de facto, as well. So when the gays came looking to get married, all Christians could do was kind of sputter, aghast, and point at scriptural verses … which they themselves had largely dismantled when it came to straight marriage over much of the past 50 years (the verses about sex roles in marriage, the verses about divorce, etc.). They had very little to stand on, were very easily accused of hypocrisy for overlooking certain biblical strictures while seeking to strictly enforce others, depending on whose ox was being gored by them, and were literally steamrolled fairly quickly because of this — both in the broader culture and in many (not all, yet) churches.
The entire “love wins” secular campaign is another reflection of the same idea — by centering things on romantic love, and getting rid of (or at least radically de-emphasizing) the other historical characteristics of marriage, it became impossible to deny it from gay people unless you were willing to come out and say that despite the many sins of straight relationships that the churches have de facto tolerated in the recent past, gay relationships should still not be permitted even if the two people romantically love each other because “gay relationships are different because gay sex is an abomination to God!” (Protestant version) or “homosexual attraction is fundamentally disordered” (Catholic version) — and if you did that, you were very easily contrasted with the “all you need is love!” mainstream agenda, and quickly and easily marginalized as bigots in the eyes of many … including many fellow Christians. That’s very easy to do when the entire culture, including most Christians, has already centered marriage around romantic love.
What Christians did with marriage in the past 50 years matters a lot, and it certainly contributed to the inability of American Christianity to do much of anything in the culture about the gay marriage movement which was even modestly credible in the eyes of most people.
I find it hilarious that we have not discussed chivalry in the context of war in who knows how long, probably at least since the early 1980’s and then only in musty college classrooms, but now we’re suddenly very interested in clarifying and distinguishing the difference between chivalry and romantic love as a sort of strawman to defend against an embarassing departure from the Bible.
If Chivalry is only in the context of war, why is it brought up as suitable behavior in a romantic relationships? Because that’s the only context I’ve heard it used in for my entire life.
History, rarely, is neatly dated but with rare historical neatness all the following happened circa 1600 A.D. and in the first instance I will mention at precisely 11.59pm on the 31st December 1600 – the founding of the East India Company. A year or three before and from out of nowhere we get fully formed from the Florentine Camerata, Opera – the same cannot be said of the Symphony or the Concerto. In 1603 the Tudors give way to the Stuarts and it is at that time that both Shakespeare and Cervantes were producing their famous works. Personally I find music written before1600 difficult to understand (both technically and as a listener) but that is not the case with music written after that date. As dates go 1600 is very useful.
Many years ago there was a site called Anglobitch
http://www.anglobitch.com/index.htm
Where the author worked out that English-speaking (“Anglosphere”) women were terrible due to something inherent in the English language. He attributed this to chivalry having morphed into feminism.
While he made the connection, I too like Dalrock initially believed that chivalry was corrupted to become feminism. I did not see that chivalry WAS the corruption until recently. This despite the OT and NT demonstrating clearly that there is no chivalry and that humans have two types of relationships: single or married.
That distinction needs to be made plain to Western civilization.
Apropos of the above, something feels off about this Twitter thread, and that’s even before you get to the “We need real chivalry” dog-whistle in the conclusion. Possibly the attitude of contempt for young men evident in the phrase “little tradbros”?
Posting here in the hope that it inspires Dalrock, or in the event that the good brothers here can help me figure out where the issue is.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Looks like the tweet didn’t fully embed. Link to read the whole thing: https://twitter.com/SteveSkojec/status/1099362807047380992