First?

Bronze!

If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer….

BTW (OT) – TWW twitter feed appears down..

Owen Strachan: Bruce Jenner is transitioning because of male inferiority

In Desperately Seeking Womanhood: Bruce Jenner & Masculine Inferiority, Owen Strachan puts forth the theory that Bruce Jenner is seeking to become a woman because feminists have driven him to it.

When all you have is a Masculine Superiority hammer…

…Instead of a church filled with passive men, who quickly rush their families to the car when the service ends, imagine a church full of men charging ahead to promote the ministry of the Word.

“EINS VOLK! EINS KIRCHE! EINS PAS-TOR!
EINS VOLK! EINS KIRCHE! EINS PAS-TOR!
EINS VOLK! EINS KIRCHE! EINS PAS-TOR!”

Complementarianism is crucial to discipleship, the gospel, and all sorts of other things.

Translation: MALE SUPREMACY *IS* THE GOSPEL.
Same old, same old…

And the reason Chastity Bono became Chaz Bono would be????

Patti wrote:

“Manhood has been demeaned as an institution for decades now. Men are seen as inferior to women, less mature than women, ignoble, stupid, less relationally skilled, and less evolved.”
Strachan’s article is not helping his cause.

TWW needs a “LIKE” button.

@ Bridget:

Where does he get this from? Where is the proof that this is what is happening? I think this is a red herring argument that is only perpetuated by those who support complementarian and patriarchal supporters. I believe that men like OS are the ones convincing Christian men that they are inferior, not the culture at large.

It does happen, but with two important caveats: 1) Christians do it too, a lot of times worse than the general culture; and 2) the stereotypes of women in general culture are just as insulting. So basically, gender stereotypes in culture just suck, and the church goes with the flow and repackages them as gospel. Ergo, Strachan and company are as guilty of perpetuating this as anyone else.

And BTW I wasn’t making up that thing about waffle brains either…

Mitch wrote:

Gee am I the only one who thought maybe Owen was going to confess he wanted to make that transition himself? Honestly as I was reading that’s kinda the first thing that came to mind.

🙂 It is a little creepy that they are even paying such close attention to what Jenner is doing. I’ve barely given a cursory glance at the news articles on him.

In my opinion, men are more likely to wish they were women if they are held to unreasonable, stringent gender expectations of authority and leadership. A man who isn’t a natural leader, who doesn’t feel the need to define his manhood in terms of authority over others, will feel shamed by this false standard and made to believe he doesn’t (and can’t) measure up.

That said, unhappiness with one’s gender role is not at all the same thing as being transgender, and being transgender isn’t caused by social expectations. But if it were, it would be more likely to be caused by male-headship expectations than by feminism.

Hester wrote:

And BTW I wasn’t making up that thing about waffle brains either…

Hey, I resemble that remark. Waffles are my favorite breakfast food! 😮

Mitch wrote:

Gee am I the only one who thought maybe Owen was going to confess he wanted to make that transition himself? Honestly as I was reading that’s kinda the first thing that came to mind.

I won’t imply that any of what I’m about to say applies to Owen in the context of this discussion. However, take note whenever any of these guys who head up “deliverance ministries” for people “struggling with same-sex attraction” talk about themselves. They’ll claim to be 110% straight, never ever ever even so much as lusted after a man, but then they’ll say things like “sometimes you get these temptations, but you just have to resist them…” in a way that makes you wonder how they seem so familiar with the topic, and why did they switch to distancing language all of a sudden..?

BeenThereDoneThat wrote:

Then devote yourself to helping them be the best they can be as they further the kingdom.”

Not to mention ‘they’ are furthering the kingdom. You, single woman, are only helping. If that isn’t ‘lording over’ others, then I don’t know what is. It is sickening that they don’t even see it. 🙁

@ Kristen Rosser:
that was to you Kristen

@ Patti:

LOL! And that’s the honest-to-goodness truth!!

So who is going to tell Jenner that this decision is not really his idea but only something forced on him by women? They could maybe say something like ‘This is not the real you, Bruce. The real you is a man right on, so quit with this foolishness right now.’ Would anybody call a transgender foul for that one?

Gram3 wrote:

There is something deeply wrong, here. They are willing to change all categories of systematics to accommodate and prop up their Gender Gospel.

For me, “revolting” is not too strong of a word to describe what they do with these scriptures.

Hester wrote:

Strachan’s fellow complementarians/ supporters of traditional gender roles/advocates of profound hardwired sex differences, who go around telling us all through their words and actions that men are sex-obsessed and emotionally stunted, with brains like waffles and no impulse control…

So I’ll believe Strachan is truly concerned about insulting men, when he starts getting bothered by all the insulting teachings his friends propagate about men.

I was mentioning something fairly close to this just today or yesterday at Julie Anne’s blog, to a guy who was claiming that attacks against fatherhood only come from secular left wingers.

I told him that may be true sometimes, but I also told him that conservative Christians who are staunchly gender complementarian also create a lot of problems for fatherhood, manhood, etc.

Owen Strachan has referred to stay- at- home fathers as “man fails,” which sounds pretty insulting.

Mark Driscoll shames and blames men who cannot, or who do not, marry. He further assumes most of the single men are deliberately staying single, all so they can sit around in boxer shorts all day playing on their Play Stations.

Some gender comps equate “real” manhood to being married, being a father, having a full time job, to watching football, to being a MMA fan, to being very aggressive, etc.

What of men who don’t fit those stereotypes, who are single, or childless, or who are more sensitive, than they are “tough guys”? Gender comps shame them or exclude them, is what.

So gender complementarians also have some pretty negative views of men as well.

From the post: but he relinquished his headship when he allowed Satan to tempt his wife

What now? Adam had control of Satan and ‘allowed’ Satan to tempt Eve? This makes Adam more powerful than Satan. Where is that in the story?

Using that reasoning, however, God must have relinquished his Ultimate Headship when He ‘allowed’ Satan to tempt Eve. So, God and Adam ganged up on Eve and set her up for failure? Somehow I missed that in the text also.

This scenario almost makes one feel sorry for the serpent who would have been the patsy in that whole scheme.

Kristen Rosser wrote:

In my opinion, men are more likely to wish they were women if they are held to unreasonable, stringent gender expectations of authority and leadership. A man who isn’t a natural leader, who doesn’t feel the need to define his manhood in terms of authority over others, will feel shamed by this false standard and made to believe he doesn’t (and can’t) measure up.

That said, unhappiness with one’s gender role is not at all the same thing as being transgender, and being transgender isn’t caused by social expectations. But if it were, it would be more likely to be caused by male-headship expectations than by feminism.

This was exactly what I was going to say. *thumbs up*

@ Nancy:
OK, you had me laughing out loud at that. Male Headship (which is not the same thing as what the Bible says about kephale) is their god, and that god must defended even if it requires re-writing the Bible to say what they think God should have said but did not.

But, hey, if Owen (not John) can make up a narrative, then so can you!

BeenThereDoneThat wrote:

OP quote:
“So if you are single, I would encourage you to find a ministry that you love with leaders that you can work under and help. Then devote yourself to helping them be the best they can be as they further the kingdom.”

BTDT said,
Oh no she didn’t. So now it’s not just wives in submission to husbands, but ALL women in submission to men.

Yes, I’ve mentioned on previous threads that even if one grants gender comps their interpretation of Scripture, that the Scripture only asks married women to submit to their own husbands.

The Bible does not say all women, including the widows, divorced, and never married, are to submit to any and all men every where (outside of a general comment about “everyone should submit to everyone else” in Ephesians).

Even Mark Driscoll (who is a gender comp) gave a sermon once I saw online where he made this distinction (so he was at least being more accurate or truthful about things in this regard), but some other gender comps want to make ALL women, regardless of their marital status, submissive to ALL men – and the Bible doesn’t teach that at all.

Nor does the Bible teach that it is in woman’s inherent nature, or God’s design, to want to nurture and so on. Comps are reading a bunch of stuff into the text that is not there.

Also, this thing about the single women needing to find a man, or an organization, to help?

All singles, both male and female, when not overlooked by churches, are often used as what some authors have referred to in their books on singles as “the workhorses” of the church.

This is really nothing new, they are only dressing it up in gender comp terminology or justifications, that’s the only new spin to it..

When churches aren’t neglecting singles, when they do pay singles any attention, it is to lecture them that they are expected to clean up the church kitchenette, baby sit married couple’s babies for free, etc.

In this article, they are saying this is what God “designed” single women for, but the Bible doesn’t say that anywhere.

Gender comps are really stretching some of Apostle Paul’s teachings about singleness to mean a lot of things Paul never taught or meant.

Nancy, Great observation!!!!

Josh wrote:

the Calvinista crowd has even less of a clue about people who are transgender than they do about people who are LGB

I’d say they are totally clueless about people in general, and especially about those who are not interested in or who have no time. for their silly power games.

Victorious wrote:

It’s hard to believe this nonsense is coming from one who should know better.

You know, I used to think that they didn’t know better. But then I learned that they actually do know better, but they don’t care. Because this system works very well for them because it appeals to the fears and anxieties that some people feel. It certainly is not about the authority of the Bible. Nor is it about being faithful to God’s commands. It is about being faithful to a small group of men and a small number of women who offer cover for their denial of misogyny. They throw out thought-stopping appeals. That should be the first ginormous clue that they do not have very strong arguments from the text.

Hey, he got one thing right.

“The church must never teach that men are inferior to women, or vice versa.”

I’d like a little more vice versa, but, yeah.

@ formerly anonymous:
The 9Marks Journal has an article about how essential gender roles are to discipleship. The entire journal is devoted to showing how crucial gender roles are to being authentically Christian. They cannot conceive of the goal of discipleship being, as you point out, about pursuing Christ-likeness. If this is not a picture of “speaking perverse things and drawing disciples after themselves” I don’t know what is.

formerly anonymous wrote:

…In general, complementarian is crucial to Christian discipleship because it gives discipleship a goal.
I realize this isn’t the main point of this post, but I think this is the oddest statement among the quotes.
I thought Christlikeness was the goal of discipleship. I had no idea discipleship had no goal outside of complementarianism. ???

There are so many illogical statements in the article it’s hard to know where to begin.

Patti wrote:

Strachan’s article is not helping his cause.

This made me snort. In a womanly submissive fashion of course.

Strachan said,

Manhood has been demeaned as an institution for decades now. Men are seen as inferior to women, less mature than women, ignoble, stupid, less relationally skilled, and less evolved. In such a context, it begins to make sense for men to want to be women. The church cannot affirm this behavior based on unbiblical thinking–not by a country mile.

Was there an uptick in centuries past of people born biologically female who underwent a sex change? Because Christian men going back centuries have said far worse things about women, such as,

Woman is a temple built over a sewer.–Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225)

Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God. –Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354-430)

But I don’t think all those put downs of women resulted in a lot of women putting on fake mustaches.

For further reference:
“THE ORIGINS OF SEXISM IN THE CHURCH”
http://juniaproject.com/origins-sexism-church/

Why would men want to be women in the church (ie, evangelical and Baptist), when men lord authority over women, and hold any and all positions of control and power? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the women to become men?

Gram3 wrote:

It is about being faithful to a small group of men and a small number of women who offer cover for their denial of misogyny

So true. I’d like to share a dream I had some 35 yrs. ago when I was a new Christian and started hearing these types of teachings. It’s a bit long, but I think it’s worthwhile. I shared it with Dee a few years back and she thought she might use it someday, but since it fits in with this topic, I think I’ll share it.

I dreamed I was looking up at a very large domed ceiling; one like I imagine might be in a basilica in Rome. The domed ceiling was completely covered with white lattice work. Inside each of the lattice “squares” was a white dove. Hundreds of white doves sitting quietly, each in their square; none flying about. I immediately was filled with sorrow because I thought they were fettered there (as some birds are to their perch to keep them from flying away) since they were so docile and complacent. I began to cry as I said aloud (in my dream) “Oh, they’re not free! They can’t fly.” And I heard a voice say to me, “Yes, they are free – they just don’t know it.” You see, they weren’t fettered, but they thought they were so they made no effort to fly, but sat complacently in their place. End of dream.

The Lord showed me the doves represented the plight of Christian women and the successful efforts by Christians to keep them from ministering in the church and seeing them as subservient in the home. Hence, their passivity, complacency and inactivity. They didn’t know they were free.

Now that women have learned to study for themselves, they are convinced they are free from this type of misogynism that’s passed off as scriptural.

formerly anonymous wrote:

“…In general, complementarian is crucial to Christian discipleship because it gives discipleship a goal.”

FA said:
…I thought Christlikeness was the goal of discipleship. I had no idea discipleship had no goal outside of complementarianism. ???

I had wondered about that quote as well. It doesn’t make sense.

Gender complementarians are applying gender stuff all over the place, even in places it does not fit or is not necessary.

I asked a few days ago at Julie Anne’s blog about how do gender complementarians deal with androgynous people, people who are just naturally androgynous, not that they are intentionally trying to be (because some are, but it seems to me that most androgynous folks are not intentionally trying to be ambiguous).

Just this last week, there was an interview with actress Julie Sweeney, who played the character “Pat” on SNL.

The recurring gag with “Pat” on SNL is that other characters in the skits would get nervous because they didn’t know how to treat Pat, or whether to call Pat a “Sir” or “Madam.”

In one skit, when Pat went to the hair salon, the stylist didn’t know whether to charge Pat $8 for a man’s haircut, or $10 for a woman’s haircut. The stylist kept trying to trick Pat into giving away his/her gender, but it failed each time.

Sweeney said she and SNL used to get irate letters from viewers who thought it was sinful or wrong to have a character on who was not clearly male or female.

I wonder if Owen Strachan was one of those letter writers? 🙂

Seriously, though, what do gender comps do with people who don’t outwardly fit a male or female aesthetic?

I would think it might be offensive for a gender comp to approach an androgynous person and tell them to dress more the part.

His breathless conclusion is that the original sin really is about not staying within our gender roles instead of not staying within our creaturely roles as obedient children of God. The original sin is the Woman disrespecting the Man’s authority rather than disrespecting God’s authority. I need a thesaurus to describe that arrogance.

There is something deeply wrong, here. They are willing to change all categories of systematics to accommodate and prop up their Gender Gospel.

This is so good. You have hit that tiny little nail right on its pointy head. Either you are right, and the complementarian blame shifters are zooming in on the wrong thing, or mom (all women as represented by Eve) really IS to blame for everything ever… Hmmm… I thought the verse said, ” through one MAN sin entered the world…”

Lisa wrote:

His breathless conclusion is that the original sin really is about not staying within our gender roles instead of not staying within our creaturely roles as obedient children of God. The original sin is the Woman disrespecting the Man’s authority rather than disrespecting God’s authority. I need a thesaurus to describe that arrogance.

This also does weird things to my head. God said “don’t eat of this tree.” How did “don’t eat of this tree” get to be about gender rolls? I think it’s pretty straightforward just as it is. :/

Gram3 wrote:

His fame and fortune is due to what he accomplished in a man’s world if that has any meaning at all.

It seems to be lost on the gender comp crowd.

@ Gram3:

I watched the entire interview with Diane Sawyer. The question that drove me was why would Bruce decide to make this change at age 65? It made no sense to me. I can’t say I came away with a concrete answer to my question, but I did come away with empathy for those who are in the predicament that Bruce found himself. The entire interview was much different than what I expected. Bruce was articulate and very concerned about those he loves. He was very straightforward yet kept boundaries.

It was hilarious to see the reaction of Diane Sawyer when he said he was Republican and a Christian. She was stunned and questioned how he would be accepted in those realms.

Daisy wrote:

All singles, both male and female, when not overlooked by churches, are often used as what some authors have referred to in their books on singles as “the workhorses” of the church.

and

Daisy wrote:

When churches aren’t neglecting singles, when they do pay singles any attention, it is to lecture them that they are expected to clean up the church kitchenette, baby sit married couple’s babies for free, etc.

How very SGM-ish.

Victorious wrote:

Now that women have learned to study for themselves, they are convinced they are free from this type of misogynism that’s passed off as scriptural.

Yes, and I think we need to encourage men and women to study the clobber verses for themselves. But the first step is to decondition the reflexive response to “feminism” which has become an all-purpose thought-stopper. Danvers is a statement which reduces to “Everything that you think is wrong is due to Feminism which can only arise due to rebellion against God. You don’t want to rebel against God, so do this and live.”

Gram3 wrote:

But the first step is to decondition the reflexive response to “feminism” which has become an all-purpose thought-stopper

This is so true in a lot of evangelical quarters. Just part of the package. So how is this response to be deconditioned?

roebuck wrote:

Gram3 wrote:
But the first step is to decondition the reflexive response to “feminism” which has become an all-purpose thought-stopper
This is so true in a lot of evangelical quarters. Just part of the package. So how is this response to be deconditioned?

Well, I don’t know of a sure-fire way. Maybe just asking them to trace out the connection, as they see it, between feminism and EverythingThatIsWrong. I guarantee that most people have just not thought about it because it sounds right to them. I didn’t think much about it either when it did not affect me or people I care about. But when I saw what “Complementarianism” was really about, up close, then I started studying and asking hard questions.

The other thing is to get conservatives to actually read the text and get them to be willing to question the received interpretation. Show them that they are not protecting the text but rather violating it when they allow and enable others who misuse, misquote, and proof-text what God has actually said.

The ones who are really interested in the truth will be willing to investigate. The ones who are really committed to the authority of God and the authority of the Bible will be willing to diligently study the text using standard conservative rules of interpretation. The weirdest part of the Danvers Statement, IMO, is its commentary on the innovative and designer hermeneutic that the “feminists” supposedly use and which is supposedly necessary if one rejects the Complementarian interpretation. The fact is that the Complementarians are the ones with the innovative and designer hermeneutic, starting with George Knight III.

@ Gram3:
Gram3, I am not familiar with George Knight lll, can you steer me to something I can read on that? Thanks

@ Mitch:
The worst offenders that I have hung around are the complementation women. But their men rarely hear them because it is done behind their backs. The next in line are the women who have been abused by men. The most respectful to men? Evangelical feminists.

elastigirl wrote:

perhaps it’s just seeing and being around females who are self-confident, assertive, capable, educated, articulate, who don’t hide the light of their intelligence under a bushel.

I am a male, and grew up in a family with a mother and sisters who were all of the above. Also brothers (my father died when I was 6). I never felt male-ness to be a negative thing, but certainly neither a dominant thing. Just a thing. In my family, people just did what they were good at, with the loving support of the whole crew.

Is my experience really that odd? I hope not.

@ Dr. Fundystan:

Maybe we should take a break from Strachan. He is a puppet who self-publishes intellectually vacuous and poorly written trash to make a paycheck – The Inquirer for calvinistas if you will.

Please, Dr., tell us how you really. Don’t hold back now. 😉

Do you think the calvinista Big Dogs take Strachan or Burke or others seriously?

Except isn’t Strachan the head of CBMW now?

formerly anonymous wrote:

“…In general, complementarian is crucial to Christian discipleship because it gives discipleship a goal.”
I realize this isn’t the main point of this post, but I think this is the oddest statement among the quotes.
I thought Christlikeness was the goal of discipleship. I had no idea discipleship had no goal outside of complementarianism. ???

It’s not just odd. It’s blasphemy, heresy and idolatry. The poor comps at 9Marks just can’t help themselves.

I can’t take credit for the pithy quote on breathless Strachan. My block quote glitched, so I give credit for the insight to @Gram3! @ formerly anonymous:

Male Superiority is such a crappy god to worship.

Gram3 wrote:

There is something deeply wrong, here. They are willing to change all categories of systematics to accommodate and prop up their Gender Gospel.

Nothing new here. They’ve been doing that since slavery.

@ Hester:
There’s a Christian marriage guru, last name of Gungor I believe, who proposes the same thing.

Only he uses filing cabinets rather than waffles for men’s brains, and ball of yarn for women, rather than spaghetti. I heard him explain all this on TV once.

If any of that is true, then I can at times think like a stereotypical woman, and think of 20 topics at once (the yarn or spaghetti way), but when angry or upset, my brain works more in the “filing cabinet” or “waffle” mode (how men supposedly all process information).

I have a sibling who gets verbally abusive, and she is the “yarn” or “spaghetti” type.

She will start out yelling at me over topic X, but then quickly drag up also topic Z (that happened 13 years ago), then toss in topic T, a bit of W, go back to X a moment, then mention she hates my ears, on to topic U (that happened three weeks ago) – and I cannot keep up with her and quickly lose the plot of her complaints.

I’d prefer to be yelled at one topic at a time, in Waffle-like mode.

These gender role distinctions people make up are not always true for everyone in either gender. My mind is “waffle like” at times, but according to your book and Gungor, my mind should always be like spaghetti (or like yarn).

Kari wrote:

Boom! (I actually said, “Boom!” out loud when I read this.) Love this.

Thank you 🙂

I accidentally left the word “should” out of my comment, it should have been:
“Gender comps hold codependency (a consequence of sin) up as a virtue that all women should aspire to, when they should be freeing women from it.”

105 comments in 7 hours. Wow.

Hester wrote:

Except isn’t Strachan the head of CBMW now?

You mean the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?

@ Bridget:

“It was hilarious to see the reaction of Diane Sawyer when he said he was Republican and a Christian.”
+++++++++++

yes, one of their own… at least in labels and categories. something along the lines of betrayal & panick is a’buzz in the likes of OS & co.

@ Dr. Fundystan:

Unfortunately, many of these have no concept of the difference between sex and gender.

Is it that they don’t know, or that they’ve made a conscious choice to reject the idea that they’re different things? I’m not sure I can always tell.

Though actually, you don’t really even have to touch gender to blow up comp theology. All you have to do is find one intersex person whose sex can’t be determined and all their rules implode on themselves.

Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:

George Rekers???? I had no idea. What editor let that through, and how do they expect to pass the credibility test?

I don’t know the particulars, and I actually came across Rekers in a totally different context which is not germane. I was just as shocked as you when I read RBMW and saw his name in the TOC.

I believe he was the go-to on all things non-heterosexual at the time. Moral panics can generate some strange alliances, and sometimes people ignore big red flags because they need to ignore them.

elastigirl wrote:

The church must preach on Jesus Christ becoming a man and see his incarnation as an endorsement of humanity and his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood.

Do you have any idea what Owen BHLH means by “his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood?” I cannot make any sense out of these words, but I frequently get caught up in his fuschia prose and lose the point.

Gram3 wrote:

So, see, it is possible to be both totally equal and totally not equal at the same time.

Yes. This is one of the reasons I began suspecting as a kid that something didn’t add up about how gender role stuff was being taught to me by my family and Southern Baptist churches I went to.

It also reminds me of other things Christians teach us single ladies (if you want to marry):

-be sexy (men like sexy), but don’t be sexy (it causes men to stumble)!;
-be independent (men like that), but don’t be independent (men don’t like that)!;
-be needy (men like that), but do not be needy (men don’t like that)!

Baptists and evangelicals are fond of expecting people to have both sets of conflicting qualities (of whatever quality / qualities is under discussion) at the same time.
With such a mindset, I don’t know how they expect anyone to accomplish anything successfully.

Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:

Do you think the calvinista Big Dogs take Strachan or Burke or others seriously? It doesn’t take a bachelor’s degree to deconstruct the foolishness (although it doesn’t hurt, either). They know. It is all wallpaper and rhetoric. Taking the propaganda seriously is like taking a Coke ad seriously.

I don’t think they take him seriously at all, because I think they know exactly what they are doing. It would be interesting to plot the tenure of the various heads of CBMW, but they have had a lot of heads, but I understand why that might be because it is difficult to maintain a scholarly straight face while pumping out what you rightly characterize as propaganda. The problem is that he and others are perfectly willing to look like intellectual anomalies in order to serve the System, and too many men and women who honestly desire to do what pleases God are taken in by the System. These well-meaning men and women trust these leaders and believe in the false gender gospel. Sincere people believe in the false hope of family harmony and pleasing God that the gender gospel promises. This has nothing to do with God or with Christ or the Gospel, and people are being distracted from what is real and enticed by what is false. But that lesson of the Fall is lost on the CBMW Crew.

Mark wrote:

Making a scapegoat of feminists seems rather superstitious to me.

More like “evil.”

@ Gram3:

“The church must preach on Jesus Christ becoming a man and see his incarnation as an endorsement of humanity and his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood.

Do you have any idea what Owen BHLH means by “his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood?”
++++++++++++++++++++++

Noooo (with an ironic chuckle). haven’t a clue. speculating, perhaps it’s just what comes out when his button is pressed (a jargon jumble of cross-centered-ness, gender roles based on the book of Genesis, obsessions over the words godly, manhood, womanhood). i dunno.

(although i was amused at the irony in his choice of words, “The church must preach on Jesus Christ becoming a man”….)

Bridget wrote:

@ Gram3:

I watched the entire interview with Diane Sawyer. The question that drove me was why would Bruce decide to make this change at age 65? It made no sense to me.

Maybe because he IS 65. I am 62 and very aware that I have much less time ahead of me than behind me. In the last few years I (1) bought a second home on an island as I wanted to do for decades and (2) married the love of my life who had been asking me to do so for several years. As you gets older, you take a look at your dreams and ask yourself, “If not now, when?” And you realize that the answer might be never if you don’t act because time may run out.

@ Gram3:
Thank you, Gram3, for talking this through. I didn’t really see it, because I’ve been sitting under this kind of stuff for more than a decade. My critical thinking muscle is flabby, but it’s getting better with practice, and seeing practical examples like this one.

I don’t suppose it occurred to these people that Jenner is choosing to transition because he actually *is* trans?

This also makes me wonder if Strachan is secretly addicted to Keeping Up with ghe Kardashians + all the “Real Housewives” shows… 😉

elastigirl wrote:

(jonath leeman, the bit about women finding “a ministry that you love with leaders that you can work under and help. Then devote yourself to helping them be the best they can be as they further the kingdom”)

That bit was too much for me too. I commented on it above somewhere. I have to give it a 🙄

@ numo:

LOL

@ Rebekah:

I totally related to your post! I’m glad you commented. 🙂

@ refugee:
Happy to help people untangle the mess they make of what God has actually said and how they do it. I understand the part about being in it for so long that you don’t realize what is happening. Been there and earned the big trophy for that. It is essential for us to be Bereans and test what people are saying God has said. That is not the same thing as questioning God or what he has said. Another thing to do is to break down their arguments and ask if it makes sense. For example, there is a list of 10 things that supposedly prove Male Authority and a static hierarchy ordained by God. The thing is, not one of the points proves anything about Male Authority. But Complementarians multiply by zero and get something somehow.

The other thing is to simply compare their narrative points with the details we are actually given. Then, when you break it down, it is a little easier to see that what they claim is a fact may actually be an inference and sometimes pure fantasy. Ortlund is particularly good at this, IMO.

They employ circular arguments a lot, too, and I find that simply amazing because it is such an elementary error in reasoning. Last but certainly not least, no human being has the right to edit God’s word in order to protect their own interests. And especially while they are trumpeting their fidelity to the text while claiming others have abandoned the authority of the Bible.

@ refugee:
Oops, I mis-typed. I meant “the genesis of complementarianism” just now.

Gram3 wrote:

elastigirl wrote:
The church must preach on Jesus Christ becoming a man and see his incarnation as an endorsement of humanity and his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood.
Do you have any idea what Owen BHLH means by “his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood?” I cannot make any sense out of these words, but I frequently get caught up in his fuschia prose and lose the point.

I think what he’s getting at is the same thing he means by gender roles being “crucial” to the gospel: he reads Ephesians 5:21-33 in terms of marriage being a picture or illustration to the world of Christ’s relationship with the church. So “godly manhood and womanhood” in marriage begins with the cross, because our marriages are supposed to show everyone the diety stooping down to help the worshiper, and the worshiper submitting to the diety. Never mind that to anyone not of that mindset, the idea of husband illustrating diety/wife illustrating worshiper is disgusting. And never mind that the text actually has it the other way: that married Christians are supposed to look at the particular image Paul was presenting (the one in power and authority laying it down, coming down to the level of the powerless one, and raising her up to be glorious beside him) and make that the picture their marriages should imitate.

numo wrote:

I don’t suppose it occurred to these people that Jenner is choosing to transition because he actually *is* trans?
This also makes me wonder if Strachan is secretly addicted to Keeping Up with ghe Kardashians + all the “Real Housewives” shows…

sooo what you are saying is that God makes mistakes and puts women in the wrong body and vice versa? and that being brainwashed and conditioned into something for whatever reason doesn’t exist?

@ Daisy:

I get where you’re coming from. I’m totally the same way. Always had a really hard time fitting in with the other girls when I was part of a complementarian church because they were always SO feminine and sweet and nice and amazing at cooking and cleaning and wearing cardigans and cute dresses and taking care of babies in the nursery, and I was none of that. Not that I’m against ANY of that. I’m totally not, I think it’s great, and I’m actively trying to get better at cooking/cleaning/taking care of babies (because ultimately they are survival skills that everyone should know, not just women). But they were the definition of the ideal women, and I think it was hard for me to feel like I had to fit a mold.

NotARealPerson wrote:

sooo what you are saying is that God makes mistakes and puts women in the wrong body and vice versa?

I don’t know about God making mistakes. But clearly many men and women come into this world with physical and mental abnormalities. Do we deny a downs syndrome child with heart defects health care because “God doesn’t make mistakes?” Do we deny humans born with mixed gender organs in their body care and support because “God doesn’t make mistakes?” You tell us, “Does God make mistakes?”

NotARealPerson wrote:

numo wrote:

I don’t suppose it occurred to these people that Jenner is choosing to transition because he actually *is* trans?
This also makes me wonder if Strachan is secretly addicted to Keeping Up with ghe Kardashians + all the “Real Housewives” shows…

sooo what you are saying is that God makes mistakes and puts women in the wrong body and vice versa? and that being brainwashed and conditioned into something for whatever reason doesn’t exist?

Have you not noticed that things can go awry during fetal development? A friend’s child was born with a cleft palate; a friend of my youth was born with a hole in her heart. Fortunately, both were corrected by surgery. Would you describe this as God making a mistake with these children?

I am by no means equating being transgender with a heart or other defect since I don’t see being transgender as defective but I do believe that there is either something genetic going on or something occurring in utero to produce the belief that one’s body doesn’t match one’s true gender.

Who do you think was brainwashing Bruce Jenner? Do you think you could be brainwashed into thinking you were the opposite sex? I couldn’t be. My sense of being female is an inextricable part of my identity as I suspect it is Bruce Jenner’s. And that is interesting to me because I don’t see discrete gender differences other than the obvious.

@ KR Wordgazer:
I think that is exactly what he meant. I wonder how he would explain to the men and women of the OT how to be “Biblical” before the Cross? It sounds like more Bibley talk that doesn’t mean anything but is designed to appeal to the emotions of the readers/listeners rather than their minds. It is also, IMO, a subtle form of spiritual blackmail because if someone denies Complementarian doctrine, then they are accused of abandoning the Gospel. Which is, of course, beyond ridiculous.

NotARealPerson wrote:

sooo what you are saying is that God makes mistakes and puts women in the wrong body and vice versa? and that being brainwashed and conditioned into something for whatever reason doesn’t exist?

God does not make mistakes. No one has said here that God makes mistakes. No one has said that God has put women into the wrong body. I don’t know what you are talking about when you talk about brainwashing and conditioning.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…these guys need to get jobs out here in the real world. You know, where your boss is a woman, and her boss is a gay man and his boss is a woman (and yes, that’s my hierarchy and I work in technology at an evil too big to fail financial institution). Because that’s the real world in most places. Which, I will confess, is not the real world at the male-only seminaries many of these men are coming out of. (And the colleges they graduated from are little better.)

It would do Owen Strachan and Jonathan Leeman good in so many ways if they had to go out and get a job working swing shifts down at the local convenience store. Or getting not quite enough to make ends meet at a Walmart or Target. I believe a month of that and they’d be thoroughly shaken out of so.many.preconceptions. I’m thinking that should be a pastoral requirement–get a job out where the working stiffs are for a semester so that you can really understand what your people are going through. Maybe if they had to be down on the level where people really live they wouldn’t spend their time poking around in stuff like transgender and concentrate on justice and mercy.

Why is it that when some men try SO hard to come off as ‘macho’ before their peers, their resulting hyperbole is almost always counter-productive ?

@ Gram3:
I didn’t say anything about God, nor was i implying anything about God.

Josh wrote:

It’s the whole John Piper “when men ask women for directions, women must reply submissively so the poor delicate men don’t feel their headship challenged (bless their little hearts)” thing all over again, isn’t it?

Oh that explains why Piper is still lost!

This article is a fairly good summation of Owen Strachan:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/05/23/is-owen-strachans-bro-formed-theology-heretical/

Personally I am willing to cut Owen Strachan some slack, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he is Bruce Ware”s son-in-law, lives in Louisville or is closely intertwined with SBTS, TGC and the 9Marx crowd. Rather it is the fact that the young man is only 32 years old and has basically spent his short life in academia. I believe as he matures his views will change.

http://cbmw.org/women/news-notes/owen-strachan-appointed-president-of-cbmw/

@ Daisy:

“Man fails.” Oh bat puckey. There is one and only one reason why my husband is not the stay-at-home parent in our marriage: because when we started having kids, he made a hell of a lot more money than I did and had much better benefits.

“Man fails.”

Because God is a 1950s salaryman or an 1890s sodbuster or [insert historical fantasy here]. Pshyeah right.

After much contemplation, I have arrived at a theory that explains Bruce Jenner’s decision to become a woman: He, like Piper, was spooked by muscular women, so he decided “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

@ Todd Wilhelm:

No slack from me. When my daughter was in a serious relationship with a CLC’er (SGM) and he parroted all of this nonsense and I found myself at one point yelling into the phone, “you are 23 years old, be a MAN and think for yourself!

You know I cant really judge a person’s inner most thoughts or motivations but from the very cheap seats out past the church tailgate parties people like me often look in. I think these men are afraid, I really do. They seem to get all out of sorts if the world does not follow their preordained design. I am very glad God is not like that. I think Women and Men are equal before God, if a woman is good at being a pastor, be a pastor, if a man is good at staying home and taking care of the kids or what ever, that is fine. Life is way to hard to get all worked up over such nonsense.

Hester wrote:

and all their rules implode on themselves.

Exactly.

I do worry that Mr Jenner is partially motivated by the hands of time, thinking (maybe subconsciously) that he is going to transform into a fit, young California girl, instead of a fit, elderly California granny. And I wish him the best, but I hate to see his personal situation used to get ratings on TV. And I also hate to see his situation used to extoll the normalcy of gender roles, as if his personal issues are the logical and inevitable outcome of the evils of egalitarianism.

I re read Owen Strachan’s blog post and perused the critique from Wartburg Watch. I don’t see the connection between transgenderism and the Genesis account of the creation. It is a little deeper issue than a theological issue. We have always had transgendered people whether or not they went through a sex change. I don’t understand it, but there is so much in God’s universe I can’t comprehend.

On the complementarian issue: complementarianism is a traditional view. Years ago a baptist pastor’s wife was ashamed that she had to work outside the home. She was also a gifted teacher and her husband wanted her to teach Sunday school. She refused because of traditional understanding of Scripture regarding women teaching men.

Now although complementarian is a traditional cultural view, there are exceptions in Scripture that years ago were pointed out to me by a DTS professor. He gave the example of Deborah, the judge, and he said that role of women in ministry should never be degraded.

Complementarianism is a traditional view, but in its case, could it be more cultural than actually biblical is my question? If it is biblical, should we go back to the point where women can’t own property or vote, is my question? If it is totally biblical the promoters of it should lay out their whole program and take it to its conclusion of back to the good old days.

Mark wrote:

If it is biblical, should we go back to the point where women can’t own property or vote, is my question? If it is totally biblical the promoters of it should lay out their whole program and take it to its conclusion of back to the good old days.

You ask some very good questions. They could lay out their case plainly and simply, but then it would be obvious that what they are saying is purely cultural and not Biblical. When they do lay out their case in detail and draw the logical inferences from their system, it becomes apparent that the system is entirely ad hoc. For example, when Wayne Grudem came out with his rank-ordered list of things a woman cannot ever do down to the things a woman can always do, it was widely mocked. And it was disappeared by everyone who had posted it.

That is also, IMO, why they always start with poisoning the well by either 1)an appeal to fear in the form of feminism has led to cultural chaos and decay or 2)subtle spiritual blackmail by declaring that the other view is only driven by a desire to rebel against God.

Let me go out on a limb here:

I know that feminism of any kind has a pretty bad name among US evangelicals. And I know that – like any movement, including $(INSERT_CHRISTIAN_GROUP_HERE) – feminism has its share of nutters. But if you take feminism the way that you yourself would want to be taken, it boils down to this:

1) Feminism says women are equal in worth and rights to men.
2) Feminism wants women to be able to have as much self-determination (in other words, as much say concerning their own life) as men.
3) From 1) and 2) follows, that women do NOT need a man to tell them how to live their lives, what to do and how to do it – they are perfectly capable and within their rights to decide that for themselves.

Those are the basic tenets of feminism. If you are, at this point in time, NOT a feminist as outlined above, you are either:

A) stupid
B) delusional (“easily deceived”) 😉
C) evil (see ISIS, Taleban, certain Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, Dominionism, …)

Of course I’m a feminist. I’m also a man, and I enjoy being a man (even if some dudes would not take me for a real man, because I detest SUVs, football of almost any kind, spectator sports and a lot of dudely hobbies).

Being a man is, first and foremost, being human. And then, of course, a few other things. And yes, testosterone makes us sometimes do stupid things – it’s not exactly known as an intelligence-enhancing hormone. But the stupid things can be fun.

PS: I’ve only included option B) as a courtesy for those who are easily offended. 🙂

Gram3 wrote:

I don’t think they take him seriously at all, because I think they know exactly what they are doing.

Precisely.

lydia wrote:

My view is that Burk was rewarded for his CBMW loyalty and work by being promoted to Dean of Boyce. Owen is expecting something,too. It seems they tend to put a young guy there to carry the water so to speak.

Yep. Totally. Mohler doesn’t care about academic integrity, credentials, or being honest with the text; he surrounds himself with people who will promote his agenda. That is why you end up with un- or under- qualified people in those positions.

“Satan promised Eve that she would be like God.”

Whereas only men can be like God.

“Satan himself targeted Eve and encouraged her to own a role that was not hers.”

It is not within a wife’s role to make a suggestion to her husband (e.g. that he should eat some fruit).

“The very root of the death of the human race, then, was a Satanic disruption of God’s plan for men and women.”

Nothing short of heresy. I’m gobsmacked by this.

Laura wrote:

Doesn’t this mean that complementarians have a point? They are just affirming what Scripture says.

A lot of things can be backed up with proof-texts, and that is why we have cults. This gender cult is just one instance of a much larger problem that the church has always had.

The problem that the Comps have with 1 Timothy is that they need it to be universal rather than pastoral advice and instruction due to a particular problem at Ephesus. To make it universal, however, they must make Paul’s reference to Creation mean that the temporal order of creation is significant when determining who is in authority over whom. On its face, when disregarding the facts on the ground at Ephesus at the time, it *appears* that is what Paul is saying. However, when I looked in the creation narrative for the place where God assigned significance to the temporal ordering of creation, I could not find it. It isn’t there, and in fact God explicitly made the Man and the Woman equal and jointly commissioned them. So either Paul is ignorant of what Genesis says or he is making up some new doctrine. Or this universal reading of the text is incorrect.

So then, the other alternative is Paul was correcting something pastorally in the church at Ephesus. And we find that the literary context of 1 Timothy is false teaching and the consequences of false teaching. And we find the cult of Ephesian Artemis which was a huge deal (see Acts where Paul confronted this cult.) The myth of Ephesian Artemis is that she was born first and she acted as the midwife for her mother for the birth of her brother who was born second. Artemis was the wise one while her brother was deceived. Women were considered superior to men in the Ephesian Artemis cult. Paul was correcting bad Ephesian Artemis teaching that had crept into the church at Ephesus. The weird parts of 1 Timothy make much more sense, and we can use a consistent grammatical-historical methodology without making Paul seem like an ignorant misogynist who doesn’t know the texts of Genesis and who doesn’t know how to reason using classical Greek logic. I think that both of these are highly unlikely, given his education as a rabbi under Gamaliel.

I think if you read 1 Timothy without the prior assumption of male authority and with the alternative theory that he was correcting bad teaching by women who thought they should rule over men, then the text can be read and makes sense without resorting to hypothesizing some significance to the temporal order of creation. If there was a rule about that, then God certainly broke it many times.

Check out the Ephesian Artemis myth and the culture of Ephesus when Paul wrote this to Timothy. The Comps refuse to do this, even though this is an essential part of the grammatical-historical hermeneutic. Check out the theme of the letter which is the literary context for chapter 2. That is also an essential part of the grammatical-historical hermeneutic that the Comps throw overboard. They employ special pleading where verses 11-12 supposedly mean “what they plainly say” while verse 15 does not mean what it plainly says. Their view cannot stand on its own two feet using their own rules. So they fudge their own rules. It is ad hoc turtles all the way down.

Bridget wrote:

Then devote yourself to helping them be the best they can be as they further the kingdom.”
Not to mention ‘they’ are furthering the kingdom. You, single woman, are only helping. If that isn’t ‘lording over’ others, then I don’t know what is. It is sickening that they don’t even see it.

Agreed. Dreadful advice for women. My heart aches for this young woman who wants to do oversees missions and is instead being told: try and get married instead so you can serve a man, and if not, find some other men who are furthering the kingdom whom you can serve. Seriously, this is making women nothing but servile slaves to men. It’s simply appalling.

Not to mention unbiblical. Didn’t God say he would pour out his Spirit on all, male and female, and anoint us to use our gifts for his Kingdom? Yet here we have men (and women parroting them) saying that only men can use their gifts. Women simply serve and support men.

Daisy wrote:

Many women do not seek to control a man but will allow themselves to be controlled by one in exchange for protection and provision; they expect a husband to play a god-like role in their life. That is what God was warning about… and some men are too happy to exploit that, so they abuse and use women.

Your interpretation seems wise to me. It’s not clear that that’s what God was warning, but the next phrase ‘and he will rule over her’ does imply it. Of course, this verse is aabout the consequence of the Fall and the curse. It is a curse for a woman’s husband to rule over her. Yet the Comps have made it God’s so-called design. A twisted anti-Gospel.

From the 9Marks article:

“My wife, on the other hand, wants to help the women she spends time with know what it means to be a supporter, a helper, a facilitator, a counselor, a fan, occasionally a rebuker, and so on.”

She wants to help other women become a fan. A fan, presumably of their husbands…A FAN?!
A devoted, blind, adoring fan who only ‘occasionally’ can rebuke? But 99% of the time she’s supporting, helping, facilitating him. Give me strength.

As others have said on this thread, the men quoted in this post are showing the height of arrogance. They really do think they’re gods!

May God have mercy on them.

Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:

Do you think the calvinista Big Dogs take Strachan or Burke or others seriously? It doesn’t take a bachelor’s degree to deconstruct the foolishness (although it doesn’t hurt, either). They know. It is all wallpaper and rhetoric. Taking the propaganda seriously is like taking a Coke ad seriously.

Nowhere do I see any evidence that the other Calvinista Big Dogs don’t share these views. Surely, if they did not agree, they would speak out so as not to be be tarred with the Complementarian brush that Strachan is splashing around.

May wrote:

Nowhere do I see any evidence that the other Calvinista Big Dogs don’t share these views. Surely, if they did not agree, they would speak out so as not to be be tarred with the Complementarian brush that Strachan is splashing around.

This is my thought. I’ve even heard leaders suggest that one go to the CBMW site to read it to have an understanding of what their church believes!

Todd Wilhelm wrote:

…the young man is only 32 years old and has basically spent his short life in academia. I believe as he matures his views will change.

If he was 23 I might agree, but 32 is more than old enough to know better. (Source: Am a thirty-something academic.)

Also, any academia worthy of the name will require you to have a more than passing familiarity with a subject before writing about it. You know– academic research. I don’t see any evidence that Strachan has so much as read a Wikipedia article on trans* people.

Bridget wrote:

I’ve even heard leaders suggest that one go to the CBMW site to read it to have an understanding of what their church believes!

I highly recommend going to the CBMW site to read what they are really teaching to young pastors and young men and women. A good strong and shocking dose might be helpful to wake some people up and stir them to action. And especially the people who are interested in protecting the authority of the Bible and the integrity of the Gospel message. I cannot understand why so many conservative evangelicals just sit on their hands while God’s word is being distorted and a false gospel is being preached. It makes no sense.

Gram3 wrote:

While it is something I cannot prove, I don’t think Paul was a liar, an idiot, or a misogynist. At least after the Damascus Road encounter with Christ.

Me either. One thing might be that some don’t take into consideration is that Paul was not above snark and used plays on words/concepts when communicating to his audience. Examples off the top of my head would be Galatians where he says he wishes the agitators would go all the way and emasculate themselves (over the issue of circumcision). A play on words in an amusing way would be 1 Corin 11 over the issue of headcoverings/Kephale. And another would be 1 Tim over being ‘saved in childbearing” which Paul is using as a definite event of assurance (THE childbearing) compared to the fertility cult in Ephesus. It is a play on words and culture specific.

And because these tend to be culture specific they are butchered beyond belief for this day and time. 1 Corin 11 has been used for just about everything –historically– including ESS.

Even the great theologian John McArthur (snark) has used 1 Corin 11 to “prove” long hair for men is a sin as if there are not obvious problems with that. (Nevermind Paul and his Nazarite vow in Acts).

If they refuse to take the 1st Century culture context into consideration when teaching others then I suggest they always greet their brothers with a Holy Kiss. :o)

Eric wrote:

Also, any academia worthy of the name will require you to have a more than passing familiarity with a subject before writing about it.

Southern is about indoctrination. It is not academic.

@ Gram3:

I’ve heard of the Ephesus theory before in relation to that passage (and I will look into it more), but my initial thoughts are, isn’t that expecting a bit much from future readers? I mean, why not explain it more clearly? Paul has clearly called out false doctrines in other letters, why make no mention of it in that one? Unless he didn’t view his letters as scripture and as something that would be passed on to later generations as the word of God.

How would anyone be able to read 1 Timothy without a seminary degree/internet and come to the conclusion that Paul was speaking only to one particular erroneous idea in one particular area at one particular time? And he doesn’t even bother to specify what that particular erroneous idea is. And he makes such a blanket statement. Even if the Ephesus theory is correct and Paul was trying to correct their ideas, why does he come back with a response that goes towards a different extreme? Because in verse 13 and 14, he clearly states that Adam was not deceived, Eve was deceived, and Adam was formed first and then Eve. He establishes that order. If you’re saying that he doesn’t truly believe that and he’s only saying that to counter the Ephesian Artemis cult, why would he fight a bad idea with another bad/wrong idea? Unless he did actually believe it?

In response to Dr. Fundystan and Nancy, I think it’s logical to come to the conclusion that maybe Paul was wrong or was a product of his culture and could not possibly understand what it means for a woman to be equal to a man (despite his one verse on how we are no longer male or female but one in Christ Jesus). In that case, though, what in the Bible is a command from God and what counts as a command from men who were shaped by their culture and their times and most likely got a lot of things wrong in their ignorance? How can we know what God is like if we have to look at Him through the eyes of those whose perceptions are shaped by their culture? How do we know whether anything in the OT actually happened or if it was all just written by an ancient culture who believed that God was on their side just like every other ancient culture out there believed that their God was on their side? And was telling them to invade and follow all these rules and whatnot?

Lydia wrote:

There has to be some group innate insecurity to go as far as they do.

I really don’t have a good explanation for it. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that having a subordinate is better than having a strong and equal partner who cleaves to you from love and devotion rather because she has been ordered to by God. Gramp3 said that it sounds like they want a doll rather than a real wife and how does that enhance their masculinity? Well, that’s not exactly how he put it…

@ Gram3:
Yes, it even makes the last verse of 1Tim.2 about women saved by childbearing make sense, because a reference to women was added for “clarity.” Paul went back and forth correcting the creation order narrative in order to equalize the sexes. Verse 15 is the cap saying that nevertheless both Adam and Eve would be saved the same way (through the childbearing) even though they sinned differently. I think the first verse of chapter three is a tie-in to the equalizing because the original says “if ANYONE wants to be a bishop….”

@ Patti:
That’s a good observation. “Women” is inserted when it actually says “she” which changes it from the singular to the plural. I think they probably did that to make it more consistent with the “they” who will be saved through the childbearing. But it still changes the actual text which says “she” and “they” which could refer back to either women in general who are teaching the false doctrine of female supremacy or to the woman and her man who was grabbing the teaching mantle without learning the truth first.

It is also interesting that Paul says she/they must continue in self-control. This, I believe, refers to the teaching authority that the woman assumed on her own authority. Paul is saying she/they must continue in self-control. It also may be just a general reference to the disorderly men he mentioned earlier as well as the bolshy woman (got that word from Ken and I have adopted it!)

The ESV translates this verse pretty tightly, just as the KJV. But then the ESV-only crowd goes right on ahead and interprets it to mean that women will be saved by keeping to their assigned roles, which obviously not what it plainly says. Why are they abandoning the authority of Scripture and using innovative interpretive techniques? Danvers says we shouldn’t do that!

@ Gram3:
I should have said that the woman and the man, not the woman and her man. And it was the woman who was seizing the teaching place without first learning, not the man.

@ May:

I talked about this issue with a male friend of mine, and his thought was that what if women and men don’t have different values but different roles? I see that as a semantics question, but he proposed that maybe God had a certain ideal role for men and women, such that men would be gentle and humble leaders and women would be supportive and loving helpers, and both would be equal in value and equally loved by God, but serving different functions. He thought that this being God’s design, in a perfect world it would be a perfect system and there would never be any abuse (but obviously our world isn’t perfect so he acknowledged that it is being abused, and said this was a problem of men lacking maturity [btw he didn’t mean that in a mean way, I think more just as a comment on improvements that could be made]). Men and women would have mutual love and respect for each other within these types of defined roles. He related that to marriage but also to people who are not married, so he kind of expanded that idea and unconsciously insinuated that women as a whole should submit to the leadership of men as a whole (as opposed to women submitting to their husbands only) and that this was a beautiful design (that would mirror Christ and the Church).

I understand where he’s coming from. My question is not about that or even to refute that (although personally I do not want to believe that my role is less than a man’s role or that I can’t lead or teach in the church. And I don’t WANT to submit to a man’s authority). My question is, WHAT IF that really was God’s design? I know as modern women that kind of idea grates on us, but could that sense of irritation and indignation also be a product of OUR times and the way WE see the world? As Christians, we should understand culture, but culture should not necessarily define us. In the New Testament, the idea of servanthood and lowering oneself to serve and better others, and even Jesus’ own words when He said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28).

Servanthood and lowering oneself as Jesus did, not wanting to take the place of leadership or at the head of table, humbling yourself and taking the lowest position, these are all values that should be prized in Christian thought. As a woman, this idea of submission really irritates me. But as a Christian, since it mirrors the attitudes and values of Christ so much, should I be giving it more consideration?

4 Things Now Considered Manly (Were Created for Ladies Only)
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-manly-products-that-were-originally-meant-women/

A couple of items from their list:

#4. The Ford Mustang
#3. Old Spice
———
I think a lot of things Christian gender complementarians believe are inherently male/female, or designed by God to be male/female, are actually socially conditioned – maybe not all, but quite a bit. They read their cultural biases and assumptions about gender into the Bible.

Lydia wrote:

For example, Piper has been the most influential guru I have ever seen spanning almost 2 generations of young men from college campuses to church youth groups.

Totally agree…I was actually thinking of this when I penned this piece. But like I suggest its also lazy. The people following John Piper in the end are deeply insecure and being lazy. Its easy to adopt someone else’s theology instead of thinking and building your own. That’s why people who follow John Piper are posed for a major fall.

After all as we know…did John Piper die at Calvary for all the sins of mankind? 😛

https://wonderingeagle.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/the-little-red-book-of-john-piper/

@ NotARealPerson:
This was not true in the church we recently left.

I remember seeing some of the “man-training” going on in the background. Little boys encouraged not to cry over scraped knees, or scolded for crying, and praised for being stoic, for one example.

Children trained to be “joyful in all circumstances” returns to haunt me as I type this, even though I was responding to a comment about men being devalued in a church. I am haunted by the clear memory of another mother crouched before a weeping toddler, saying over and over in a stern, no-nonsense voice, “You *will* be cheerful. You *will* be cheerful…”

refugee wrote:

Children trained to be “joyful in all circumstances” returns to haunt me as I type this, even though I was responding to a comment about men being devalued in a church. I am haunted by the clear memory of another mother crouched before a weeping toddler, saying over and over in a stern, no-nonsense voice, “You *will* be cheerful. You *will* be cheerful…”

“Hell hath no torment worse than Constant Forced Cheerfulness.”
— G.K.Chesterton, “Three Tools of Death” (Father Brown Mystery)

Eagle wrote:

What you are seeing is a personality cult. I have seen this blind following first hand. I’ve known people who treat John Piper as if HE is God. You know how it is…HE is divine and not to be questioned.

Cult Of Personality
By Living Colour

Look in my eyes, what do you see?
The cult of personality!
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I’m the cult of personality!
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights, a Nobel Prize
Then a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You don’t have to follow me
Only you can set me free

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your T.V.
I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you still you love me

I tell you one and one makes three
I’m the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights a Nobel Prize
A leader speaks, that leader dies
You don’t have to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You gave me power in your own god’s name
I’m every person you need to be
Oh, I’m the cult of personality!

@ Todd Wilhelm:
Really, only 32 years old?

That certainly alters my perspective of him. You’re right, I now see him as explainably inexperienced and immature, too young and without the practical experience necessary to be holding such a responsible position.

(Instead of thinking of him as a half-senile elder lost in the grandiosity of his own rhetoric…)

refugee wrote:

(Instead of thinking of him as a half-senile elder lost in the grandiosity of his own rhetoric…)

He is a “young” elder lost in the grandiosity of his own (or passed down) rhetoric.

@ Mark:

One angle that may show that complementarianism is more cultural than biblical is to observe how arguments for keeping women in second class status position, out of teaching positions, etc, has changed over the centuries.

In centuries past, people who felt women should be treated as un-equals would argue on the basis that women were stupid, or too emotional, or what have you.

In the past few decades, those types of teachings won’t quite fly anymore, so now, gender complementarians have to come up with new arguments – ones that are softer and not quite as overtly sexist to contemporary listeners.

You can still find some of promoting these views who are overtly sexist, but the more mainstream groups, like CBMW, try to soften their views to be more palatable.

Complementarians don’t really argue so much that women are more easily deceived than men any more, so much as they create newer, more PC-sounding points, about how God has designed women to be “Z” and men to be “X,” and so on, because framing it that way sounds a tad less sexist.

Anyway, that men who are against women leading or being equals keep re-framing their arguments to sound less obnoxious to modern audiences, than the historical arguments of centuries past, may be one tip-off their view is not built on the Bible but on cultural views of women.

How many (Christian) men in today’s culture are going to agree with comments like this:

Woman is a temple built over a sewer.
–Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225)

People opposed to women being in teaching or leadership positions can no longer sell sexism these days using those sorts of assumptions or talking points.

Laura wrote:

The whole justification here for women not being allowed to exercise authority over men is BECAUSE Adam was formed first (so he’s primary in the creative order) [etc]…This was written by Paul.  Doesn’t this mean that complementarians have a point? They are just affirming what Scripture says.

Other Christians have other ways of looking at such passages. I’ve seen several web pages explaining this stuff. I’ll see if I can find at least one.

Five Myths About Adam and Authority: What Really Happened in the Garden?
http://juniaproject.com/5-myths-adam-authority-eden/

I saw a much longer paper addressing some of the questions you asked, but I can’t find it at the moment.

@ Eric:
Sorry, Eric, I hope you didn’t find my comment insulting, earlier, when I responded to the same comment you just responded to.

Perhaps I ought to have clarified that I found his actual age (32) explicable, for a sheltered person. It’s not just living in academia, but living in a specific slice of academia, where you have no opportunity to see how the real world operates.

I had a smidgeon of that realization, when I returned to college to have coffee with a friend who stayed in academia, while I went out into the wider world. I could still speak the same academic language as my friend, but I could see limitations in my friend’s viewpoint, blind spots that come from constraints of experience.

I hope I’m making sense. I’m feeling particularly inarticulate this week, after a very stressful previous week.

@ May:

Gender complementarians do get caught up in the fact that Jesus was incarnated in a man’s body, but, they conveniently forget that Jesus is part of the Trinity, and that he was there when Father and Spirit created people, people were created by and through him, and the text back then says,

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Then, of course, this similar point is reiterated in the New Testament (Galatians 3:28):

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I know some of the more extreme comps try to downplay this, and say that woman is derived from man and therefore (supposedly) not fully in God’s image, but the Bible differs with them on that.

@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Very cool that you cited lyrics by Living Colour!

May wrote:

Nowhere do I see any evidence that the other Calvinista Big Dogs don’t share these views. Surely, if they did not agree, they would speak out so as not to be be tarred with the Complementarian brush that Strachan is splashing around.

It isn’t that they don’t agree; it is that they are fully well aware that Strachan comes across as an idiot. They don’t care. He is carrying their water, and getting paid well to do so. It is rhetoric designed to stir-up the uncritical fans, not persuade any thinking person. The closest comparison I could share would be US television host Glenn Beck – he isn’t sharing facts or thoughtful ideas, only feeding a subset of people what they want to hear.

Daisy wrote:

4 Things Now Considered Manly (Were Created for Ladies Only)

On a somewhat related note, did you know that Brute aftershave was originally a mouthwash? I know, right.

Gram3 wrote:

It makes no sense to me whatsoever that having a subordinate is better than having a strong and equal partner who cleaves to you from love and devotion rather because she has been ordered to by God

I agree with that, but with all my reading the last 3, 4 years about abuse – domestic violence and lately verbal abuse – some people do not want relationships of mutuality.

Some want a partner to control. Abusers are interested in domination and control, not a partnership of equals. (This can be true in regards to marriages, friendships, family relationships, etc.)

Some of the authors spend chapters explaining just why abusers seek control vs. mutuality, but it would take a long time for me to summarize it (and still, I find some of it hard to comprehend).

But these books explain, some people do not want love, they want power and control over another person.

@ Kathleen Margaret Schwab:

“..he talks as if the world will come crashing down if women don’t stay in their proper sphere – and for men who are stuck in the denial of the mature feminine, the world will come crashing down if they can’t keep it at bay. It amounts to an internal pyschological crisis that they are projecting out into the world.”
++++++++++++++++++

i think the inevitable destination for CBMW & co. is ever increasing panick & desperation. I do believe mutuality will continue to gain ever more traction in society/societies everywhere (some faster than others). For good reason.

i think it is clear that mutuality is what is life-giving to societies & relationships and individuals. I think it is clear that this, as opposed to a hierarchy (even if it is called ‘not-a-hierarcy’) encourages strong character.

Mutuality naturally encourages women and men to face fears, insecurities, all manner of ego issues and deal with them. There are no gender roles to hide behind, or languish in. It is no longer ‘godly’ to remain in a state that is the result of being unchallenged by interacting with the other sex.

We champion each other. We defer to each other. We don’t hold anyone back, we don’t hold ourselves back. Mutuality puts value on everyone, encourages everyone to be all they can be, to be the best they can be, to rise to their potential…. and to not have to ask for or wait for permission to be granted. For all to be full participants in their own lives. For their own sake and the sake of others. And for God’s sake (‘for crying out loud’)!

@ Laura:

Gender complementarianism doesn’t have room for women like me who do not fit their rules, as I mentioned above.

I’m not interested in living life how they say I should be living it, i.e., wearing pink dresses and being a “helper.”

I don’t even see where in the Bible where it prescribes that these are the only or most important things every woman should be doing most of the time, and to please God – gender comps just assume these things are so.

mirele wrote:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…these guys need to get jobs out here in the real world. You know, where your boss is a woman, and her boss is a gay man and his boss is a woman (and yes, that’s my hierarchy and I work in technology at an evil too big to fail financial institution). Because that’s the real world in most places. Which, I will confess, is not the real world at the male-only seminaries many of these men are coming out of. (And the colleges they graduated from are little better.)
It would do Owen Strachan and Jonathan Leeman good in so many ways if they had to go out and get a job working swing shifts down at the local convenience store. Or getting not quite enough to make ends meet at a Walmart or Target. I believe a month of that and they’d be thoroughly shaken out of so.many.preconceptions. I’m thinking that should be a pastoral requirement–get a job out where the working stiffs are for a semester so that you can really understand what your people are going through. Maybe if they had to be down on the level where people really live they wouldn’t spend their time poking around in stuff like transgender and concentrate on justice and mercy.

here here! *applause!!!*

refugee wrote:

having studied psychology myself, in the days before i voluntarily entered bondage (complementarianism and evangelical churchianity), it was pretty disorienting to sit there and be taught that everything i’d learned was a lie promoted by those holding a humanistic worldview.

i wish i’d had enough confidence back then, to stand up and walk out, instead of absorbing it all, and having to deprogram myself now.)

This sounds very, very similar to things I’ve been going through the last few years.

A few of your details are a little different from mine, but that sounds a lot like parts of my life story.

@ Laura:
Well, what if it *was* God’s design?

Death was not a part of God’s original design–it was a result of the fall.
Agriculture and weeds and tilling the ground were not a part of God’s original design–they were results of the fall.
Meat-eating was not a part of God’s original design–it wasn’t even a *concept* until after the flood!

I’m not going back to an off-the-grid, vegetarian, foraging lifestyle, where I pretend I’ll live forever—so why would I go back to a complementarian relationship? No thanks, I’ll wait till God restores us all, with a new Heaven, new Earth, and new bodies.

And hopefully, fully functioning warp drive. 😉

Gram3 wrote:

I cannot understand why so many conservative evangelicals just sit on their hands while God’s word is being distorted and a false gospel is being preached. It makes no sense.

This is happening in my neck of the woods too. I think people just don’t really want to know to be honest. If I tell them my concerns, they think I’m an isolated maverick, getting het up over nothing much. Even highly educated elders I used to respect seem to turn a blind eye to this stuff. It’s depressing.

numo wrote:

@ Gram3:
I know that, and really appreviate your reply to the poster who lobbed that one at me.

It is impossible to have a meaningful discussion if someone misrepresents has been said. Of course, that may be the point of the misrepresentation.

elastigirl wrote:

We champion each other. We defer to each other. We don’t hold anyone back, we don’t hold ourselves back. Mutuality puts value on everyone, encourages everyone to be all they can be, to be the best they can be, to rise to their potential…. and to not have to ask for or wait for permission to be granted. For all to be full participants in their own lives. For their own sake and the sake of others. And for God’s sake (‘for crying out loud’)!

I love this! For God’s sake, indeed, for we are all becoming what he has created us to be without the artificial restrictions and with the freedom to minister to one another outside of cultural boxes that are completely of human origin.

@ Gram3:

Maybe the name “notarealperson” is a clue that the comment was a drive by.

Laura wrote:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28).

Look at the second word in the third sentence. ‘whoever’. Who is the whoever? Whoever would be first/great among you. Was he talking to people living in a culture in which the possibility of being great among people was for men or for women or for both. Answer: men. He was talking to men. Men who aspired to ‘great…first among you’ had to become slaves to the group, that is slaves to the group described as ‘among you’-that you and that group. Was he telling women to do that? Not in this reference. Why not? 1. Women had no chance of being first or great ‘among you’ so why would they aspire to that? 2. Women already were little more than servants or slaves, they did not have to ‘become’ that, it was what they were already. 3. The culture already thought that women needed to be like servants/ slaves, so why would Jesus introduce that as if it were a new teaching of his?

This particular statement from Jesus is not addressed to women but to men.

Gram3 wrote:

We are all commanded to be conformed to Christ’s image, and if we are all trying to imitate Christ, this other garbage would not be an issue.

This sums up every issue on TWW.

dee wrote:

I laughed! Tim Fall has created a new hash tag #whippersnappers. I plan on using it.

Feel free to use it with impunity and alacrity!

Bridget wrote:

@ XianJaneway:

I can’t for the life of me figure out why they want all of us to keep living under the curse.

Because they’re personally benefiting from it in some way?

“BETTER TO RULE IN HELL THAN SERVE IN HEAVEN!”
— John Milton, Paradise Lost

refugee wrote:

Children trained to be “joyful in all circumstances” returns to haunt me as I type this, even though I was responding to a comment about men being devalued in a church. I am haunted by the clear memory of another mother crouched before a weeping toddler, saying over and over in a stern, no-nonsense voice, “You *will* be cheerful. You *will* be cheerful…”

Oh, yes. “Dry it up!” “Put a smile on it!” Of course, the adults were expected to conduct themselves the same way. I think it’s just more obvious with children because there are so many more “teachable moments.”

Laura wrote:

he proposed that maybe God had a certain ideal role for men and women, such that men would be gentle and humble leaders and women would be supportive and loving helpers, and both would be equal in value and equally loved by God, but serving different functions.

The problem with that is the “maybe” which is not a basis at all for one class of people claiming the right to rule over another class of people. If your male friend is a Complementarian, then I assume he is also a conservative evangelical. If he is a conservative evangelical, then his view of what God designed should be informed by the text which God has provided rather than speculation about what an imaginary would might have been. Your friend should be prepared to show where God revealed that this was “God’s good and beautifuul design” as they like to say.

It is a semantic problem to the extent that they redefine perfectly good words like “complementary” to mean “hierarchy.” It is a semantic problem when they redefine “functional” as being “irreversible” or “static” and a function which is only assigned on account of the sex of the individual. The fact is that they are not talking about functions at all but being. Female beings have the function of Followers. Male beings have the function of leaders. Always. Because Order of Creation.

Maybe you can help your male friend to think more clearly about God’s revelation and less about the System talking points. Your friend sounds exactly like many people I know.

@ Gram3:
in this case, i believe it is…

Okay Deb and Dee, When are you coming out with your big story!!!????

@ Uppity Bimbo:
You have one of the best names I’ve ever heard at TWW. XD

XianJaneway wrote:

And hopefully, fully functioning warp drive.

Or a way to fold space rather than trying outrace Einstein through it.

Muff Potter wrote:

Or a way to fold space rather than trying outrace Einstein through it.

You need the Spice for that…

@ elastigirl:

About the children’s clothing thing, I don’t think that sparkles are ‘less than’ an explorer T shirt. It used to be viewed that way. When I first went into practice I was careful to dress in practical stuff-not dowdy but modest and rather plain and nondescript as was befitting under a white coat in those days. This made people think you were serious, as opposed to being frivolous. But that was when doctors were supposed to be men, and parts of our culture were telling women that they too could be men.

But during my most recent illness among the docs I had there was a female surgeon and a female radiation oncologist both of whom dressed very grown up girly and the surgeon ran around in high heels. The allergy specialist for one of the grandkids is almost too ‘girly’ for my taste, but all of this is perfectly acceptable because people no longer think that women quit being feminine just because they put on a white coat. (Except the comp people–I should have said that normal people no longer think that.) Anyhow I think that now is much better than back when, and we dress the girl grandkids in girly for church and casual girl for school, and grab what you have for sports and play. Because girly is not less than, and how good that is.

Corbin wrote:

@ Uppity Bimbo:
You have one of the best names I’ve ever heard at TWW. XD

“Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist” also gets my vote. 🙂

@ elastigirl:

Speaking of all that:
Amazon makes toy department gender neutral: ‘Boy’ and ‘girl’ search filter removed from online market
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3072252/Amazon-makes-toy-department-gender-neutral-Boy-girl-search-filter-removed.html

When I was a little girl, most of the toys I preferred playing with (Lego, Bat Man themed stuff, etc) was in the boys’ department at the store.

The girl aisle was usually chock full of pink plastic stuff and Barbies, stuff I wasn’t interested in.

Anyway, about this headline:
“Amazon makes toy department gender neutral: ‘Boy’ and ‘girl’ search filter removed from online market”

I am expecting Owen Strachan and maybe other conservative Christians, like Focus on the Family James Dobson types, to write a strongly worded blog post about that, complaining about it.

@ Nancy:

The people quoted in the link I gave are blaming political correctness and feminism, but the page itself says,
“Amazon has not commented on the decision to remove the boys’ and girls’ buttons.”

So, I’m not exactly sure why Amazon has made this move, but I am expecting CBMW to probably write a post condemning it, or to at least mention it in passing in whatever upcoming blog posts they make.

Daisy wrote:

“Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist” also gets my vote.

Ditto

dee wrote:

-education on a particular form of deviance (all will be labeled graphic and trigger warnings given)

I feel sick already.

@ Daisy:

“Amazon makes toy department gender neutral”
++++++++++++++

even though it’s only motivated by potential sales, i say “GOOD!”. if OS and co. do a write-up on it, i’m gonna grrrrr a “GAHHHHH” heard ’round the world.

Thank you Dee (and Deb), for your bravery and standing up in the face of bullies!! I am also pleased that you get the appropriate data as well as the victim’s permission before releasing your report. We are all backing you up.

Former CLC’er wrote:

“Do you want the ground to open up and swallow you for complaining?”

I wonder how many kids raised this way end up needing therapy. I don’t know if you or refugee ever saw this outcome, but I’ve known a few adults who were raised this way who experience a blunted affect. They had been so conditioned to not express feelings and emotions that they had to actually learn to connect with their emotions again.
It stands to reason that a child taught to never complain is going to be very easy to abuse in some way.

@ elastigirl:
Maybe that’s true in your corner of the world, but i live in a rural area in the East, and there is nowhere near the variety of merch that can be found in larger cities and their suburbs. Plus, you’re on the Other Coast, and i think there is a *very* different approach to many things out there, clothing beingmone of them.

No doubt that’s true of the pricier department stores back here, but i can’t imagine most young moms being able to afford those things.

As is, while not a big fan of glitter for myself, i know little kids love it and see no harm in it so long as there are other choices available. Ten years sgo, trying to find anything but strong pastels for little girls’ play clothes was a nightmare in these parts. If your kid wanted red or blue (not pastels, but intense shades), forget it!

I run into the same kinds of problems when shopping for clothes for myself, though of course, the specifics of color, cut, pattern are different for adults.

@ elastigirl:
I could totally go for some sparkles on my hat.

Tina wrote:

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Jesus first, others second, and you last spells J-O-Y”?

Oh, yes. And, like all the other bobbleheads in our child training classes, I lapped it up. If I could turn back time . . .

Tina wrote:

Related to this: Have you ever heard the phrase, “Jesus first, others second, and you last spells J-O-Y”? An abuser telling someone to “put Jesus first, others second and yourself last” can be dangerous. Because how do you define “putting Jesus first”, “putting others second”, and “putting yourself last”?

I lived that out for over 20 years (my mother believed that was the way Christians are to live life and pushed me to be like that as well), and it spells the opposite of joy, and it tends to make you an attractive target for bullies, manipulators, abusers, and selfish takers.

dee wrote:

Laura wrote:
But as a Christian, since it mirrors the attitudes and values of Christ so much, should I be giving it more consideration?
Do you think that men should also do this since it mirrors the attitudes and values of Christ so much? Another question: if the Father is the role model for me, and Christ the one for women, then why didn’t Jesus come as a woman? Wouldn’t that have made more sense?

Role model is Jesus in a christlike sense, but Mary would likely be the Gender model as a wife and mother, they must have a woman to be their example. No other NT lady could have set a more impossible bar to jump over … and that is how they like it.

@ Jamie Carter:

Mary would likely be the Gender model as a wife and mother, they must have a woman to be their example. No other NT lady could have set a more impossible bar to jump over

…but if they held up Mary as an example for Christians, then they would sound Catholic, so I expect that’s why that doesn’t happen.

Just wondering if women are accountable for using their gifts or hiding them under a barrel. Anyone know? Doesn’t the parable of talents speak to this issue?

Gram3 wrote:

The thing is, not one of the points proves anything about Male Authority. But Complementarians multiply by zero and get something somehow.

Cut em’ some slack. There is nothing wrong whatsoever in multiplying a quantity by zero, in fact there are times when you want zero to turn up, just so long as it doesn’t turn up in a denominator. Problem is, as you’ve pointed out up thread, Grudem and the boyz seem to believe that by special pleading and tweaking the rules, they can divide by zero anyhow, whenever it suits em’.

@ Muff Potter:

i can tell this is a very clever comment. (….i don’t get it)

@ Josh:
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. That was me, posting from my other computer whose browser had not yet saved the form information with my updated name. 😮

@ Victorious:
Well, given that it’s men who are smothering women’s gifts under barrels, I’m inclined to say that the point may be moot.

@ Muff Potter:
Mixed metaphors are fantastic! (and I’m glad it’s finally warmed up! I can’t stand the weather when it’s so cold it could freeze the water off a duck’s brick outhouse!)

@ elastigirl:
I love gardening! Or I should say, I love planting things and watching them grow, though I hate pulling weeds and getting too dirty. But if this makes me even moreso “not a real man” in the eyes of Strachen et. al., I couldn’t care less (actually, it’s more of a plus!). 😛

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:

and before i know it I’ve mixed so many metaphors together i’m surprised my super id isn’t mixedmetaphorigal.

know anything about how to landscape with ‘hybrid tea roses’? i guess they’re the roses bushes that are very upright and v-shaped, without a lot of foliage around the base. They’re not all that attractive all by themselves (aside from the spectacular roses, of course).

@ dee:

you’re a champ.

@ elastigirl:
Totally agree on sparkles and world exploring being compatible! Seems like sparkles might be a good thing for all explorers, really.

Loved your description of sandcrabs and your daughter’s exuberance, too.

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:

Well, you have me thoroughly confused about shi h Josh you are now

Muff Potter wrote:

In math we say that division by zero is undefined, you can’t do it, because it ends up violating the perfect consistency that math has across all of her landscape.
I only used it as a loose metaphor to show that Grudem and the crew (as pointed out upthread by Gram3 as well) cannot even follow their own rules of hermeneutics and exegesis, and then expect all Christendom to overlook their inconsistencies.

The results shown in the Pew report linked just below the header are intriguing in light of this discussion. It seems from my limited perspective that the people who are no longer overlooking the inconsistencies of complementarianism, among other things, are ending up in the “nones” category versus churches that are known for being egalitarian (e.g. mainlines).

From the results shown so far, it may not be possible to know how many people are moving from complementarian to egalitarian churches within evangelicalism (the church with the woman pastor that Dee mentioned sounds like it would be included in the same category as the Calvinistas’ churches as far as the Pew study would be concerned.

Thus, I wonder how many of the people who are no longer overlooking the issue would still be counted within the ranks of “Christendom,” speaking in terms of measurable church attendance? (and yes, I know Christendom goes beyond that metric, but I’m speaking in terms of the study here.)

@ elastigirl:
I had to read that a couple times to figure out that it wasn’t a play on supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (and apparently that word is in the spell checker!).

Sorry, I rather enjoy gardening and landscaping, but that doesn’t mean I’m anywhere near good at it! But the rhubarb is doing much better this year… Mmm, now I’m hungry.

@ Bridget:
I’m sorry, I’m not doing a good job at this. That’s what I get for using the most common abbreviated form of a not terribly uncommon name as an online handle! Well, um, I’m not sure how to best approach this – and my apologies if this doesn’t clear it up – but I’m the one who … well, let’s get this straight: I’m not. 😮

numo wrote:

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
Josh, in England, gardening is a national obsession, for men and women alike. Gardeners’ Question Time is one of thr biggest hits the BBC made, though I’m not sure if it’s on anymore. The highlight was for audience members to have *their* question chosen for discussion by the panel of gardening experts.

This is totally true. I’ve been to an outdoor recording of GQT at a local horticultural college.
elastigirl wrote:

know

Over here in lovely Blighty I frequently underplant roses with a good perennial geranium which fills in the bleakness nicely.
P.S. This tablet, which speaks Numo, wanted badly to replace ‘underplants’ with ‘underpants’. Marvellous.

Victorious wrote:

Just wondering if women are accountable for using their gifts or hiding them under a barrel. Anyone know? Doesn’t the parable of talents speak to this issue?

Accountability was what was drilled into my head by my mother. To whom much is given of him is much required. That can be encouraging in small doses, but it can get a bit heavy if taken to extremes. In my opinion it is good to play it any way you have to in order to get the job done.

refugee wrote:

Sorry, Eric, I hope you didn’t find my comment insulting…

Not at all. And, in fairness, I did my undergrad in Bible college but my M.M. at a very secular university. So I’d tend to point the finger for his insularity not so much at academia as the Evangelical echo chamber effect.

josh wrote:

even though i find myself pretty conservative theologically, i just can’t agree with these people. i have yet to hear someone give me a good reason beyond, “it’s in the bible”.

Provding something really is in the bible, that’s all the reason you need.

“With these limited passages, Strachan *proves* that the Bible says that women are now engaged in a battle to dominate men. Satan made sure of it because Satan apparently hates gender roles…”

So to paraphrase, Strachan speaks for the devil. Rightio.

Ken wrote:

Provding something really is in the bible, that’s all the reason you need.

It’s all the reason I need because I’m a conservative evangelical. And proving Complementarianism is in the Bible (in the prescriptive sense) is exactly what I’ve been asking Complementarians to do. So far no luck with the magical hierarchy verses.

People have no authority to speak for God and tell people they are commanded to do what God never commanded them to do and be what God did not command them to be. No one can presume to tell people what God designed them to be when God did not say a word about gender roles and all the rules that come with the System.

dee wrote:

As for the wool and cotton thing-I heard this explanation for this one. If one combines wool and cotton in a garment and it is washed, there would be uneven shrinkage that could render the garment unwearable.
Some claim this is God telling business people to play fair and don’t cheat people.

That’s an intriguing explanation, and upon seeing it, it makes sense. These are precisely the sorts of things that people who insist on a literal “scripture-only” interpretive method tend to ignore. Even people who claim to consider the historical context while failing to actually do so can fall victim to this trap.

Gram3 wrote:

As Christians, we should not be defined by culture or by what grates on us or what we don’t like or by what we do like. As Christians we are called to imitate Christ. What if the idea of mutuality grates on the women who disagree with the egalitarian system? I think it does. What if the idea of deferring to a man grates on the egalitarian women? Do they get to re-write God’s word so that it does not grate on them or irritate them or call them to do something they don’t want to do? What if there are selfish individuals who want to claim a right which they don’t have, and what if they want to claim that right Because God Said So. They are a product of their egalitarian culture,

Changed somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it does make a point even if it doesn’t quite work 100%. It’s necessary to be honest with what I already believe and what I want the bible to say first before trying to actually deal with what it does say in order to avoid only seeing what I want to see and missing what I would prefer wasn’t there.

This pre-empting what might actually be in the text itself is a problem for all views and on many other subjects as well. I think the egalitarian view is very much a result of the influence of modern culture.

More to the point of the thread, the soft left of evangelicalism imo seems very susceptable to modern cultural fads in the area of gender, with a gradual acceptance of ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’ or vice versa type arguments. This kind of statement is surely the hallmark of a society that has turned its back on God and ceased, in any meaningful sense of the word, to be able to think.

It strikes me that strict egalitarianism (and I know you don’t personally espouse this) leaves no foundation to resist the gender confusion of the surrounding modern western culture. The church will let the world squeeze it into its own mould.

dee wrote:

I want them to tell me what a man can do that a woman cannot

I’d also like to know what a woman can do that a man can’t (apart from give birth). I mean, we’ve got different roles, right? Yet it seems it’s women that are barred from things, not men.

Daisy wrote:

4 Things Now Considered Manly (Were Created for Ladies Only)

The first generation Chevrolet Corvette (early 1950’s) was marketed to women as a two seater for running about town doing errands. The cars came only with an automatic transmission. Take a look at the ads in old Road & Track magazines. They didn’t sell too many.

Ken wrote:

More to the point of the thread, the soft left of evangelicalism imo seems very susceptable to modern cultural fads in the area of gender, with a gradual acceptance of ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’ or vice versa type arguments. This kind of statement is surely the hallmark of a society that has turned its back on God and ceased, in any meaningful sense of the word, to be able to think.

If we want to operate from the basis of fact, there is some helpful information here:
http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.aspx
Particularly,

Transgender persons have been documented in many indigenous, Western, and Eastern cultures and societies from antiquity until the present day. However, the meaning of gender nonconformity may vary from culture to culture.

This idea that it’s a fad that women are feeling trapped in men’s bodies is most simply proven false with the injection of an example or two from the 1800’s of people who were assigned female at birth who, when they grew up, started binding their chests, dressing as men, and living life and working as men… in the 1800’s! Believe what you want, but if you’re honest, you have to admit that someone doesn’t just do something like that for kicks!

Ken wrote:

the soft left of evangelicalism imo seems very susceptable to modern cultural fads in the area of gender, with a gradual acceptance of ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’ or vice versa type arguments.

What do you think about people with ambiguous genitalia? What is their role? The fact is that there are people who don’t fit into all kinds of neat categories, including the gender ones. I have not experienced the subjective feeling of being the opposite gender. That does not make it unreal. And it does not make acceptance of that reality a result of rebellion against either God or his word.

I wish you would not use language like “soft evangelical left” because it doesn’t convey meaning very well, and it looks to me like loaded language. What do you do with people like me who are textual and grammatical-historical rigorists? I hardly fit the description of what I imagine you mean by “soft evangelical left.”

Ken wrote:

What if the idea of deferring to a man grates on the egalitarian women? Do they get to re-write God’s word so that it does not grate on them or irritate them or call them to do something they don’t want to do?

Just one more thing before I go to the garden superstore and spend more than I should.

The idea of being deferential does not grate on me at all. Being deferential is being humble like Christ. What grates on me is people who demand deference because they say that God demands deference to them because they are males and I am female (or they are the spiritual authority and the pewpeon is not.) Those people are not being Christ-like at all and are being presumptuous and arrogant. What grates on me is when people cloak their selfishness using God’s word. What grates on me is people who take advantage of other people’s goodwill and good intentions to keep those people enslaved to the bondage of a human system. What grates on me are so-called scholars of and defenders of God’s word who will not engage in any discussion of the actual texts but who resort to name-calling and false accusations. Those are some things which grate on me and which I think most likely grate on Jesus as well. The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians all grated on Jesus, yet they all had their powerful interests to protect. Just like today.

Haitch wrote:

So to paraphrase, Strachan speaks for the devil. Rightio.

Lol! If anything the evil one hates women because it was promised Messiah would come through the woman.

Joe2 wrote:

For example, a kleptomaniac has a recurrent urge to steal, typically without regard for need or profit. Should a kleptomaniac be given a pass because we may find out at a future date there is a receptor issue or chemical imbalance?

Actually, they do get help if they have been identified as such, as do alcoholics and drug addicts. Treatment is better than incarceration. Unfortunately, identification usually only comes after many incarceration stints.

Ken wrote:

I think the egalitarian view is very much a result of the influence of modern culture.

One has to go back to God’s intention for his creation which would have been mutual purpose, mutual respect, etc.

Sin did bring us the sin of seeking power over others. Last I counted Jesus speaks of 58 “one another’s” which are mutual. There is not a pink and blue list.

When you speak of “modern culture” can you elaborate?. Do we want to go back 100 years? 1000? What period of culture was best?

@ Gram3:

What do you think about people with ambiguous genitalia? What is their role? The fact is that there are people who don’t fit into all kinds of neat categories, including the gender ones.

And these people aren’t as rare as everyone likes to think, either. When you add up all the different kinds of physical sex ambiguities – which doesn’t even include transgenderism and the whole question of where that comes from what and what it is – the highest possible rate you can get is about 1 in 100 births. Several of the lower ones I’ve seen end up in about the same range as Down syndrome (1 in 691). Entire public awareness/anti-abortion/etc. campaigns are run about Down syndrome. But sex ambiguities are still too scary to talk about, even though they might in fact be the more common of the two conditions. (Obviously not saying we should stop addressing Down syndrome.)

http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency

dee wrote:

Charles Stanley was into multi level marketing. In fact, multilevel marketing appears to be centered in the *righty* churches Do I need to list the pastors of Calvinist church who live in huge homes and push tithing?

Jonathan Merritt and his mega church pastor dad had the same thing going on. think of how lucrative it is for the pastor who recruits the congregation.

Is this person perhaps experiencing anatomical shock trauma due to a recent accident or injury?

Yes.

@ Sopwith:

Then the answer is no. Have you listened to any of his story?

Ken wrote:

Changed somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it does make a point even if it doesn’t quite work 100%. It’s necessary to be honest with what I already believe and what I want the bible to say first before trying to actually deal with what it does say in order to avoid only seeing what I want to see and missing what I would prefer wasn’t there.

Gender complementarians are quite guilty of this, but charge egalitarians with this all the time.

They claim to be reading the plain sense of Scripture while all the while reading personal biases against women, and American cultural notions that men should be in charge, into the biblical text.

Gender Complementarians don’t want to see the passages that speak to women being equal to men. They come to the text already assuming there is or should be or that God supposedly designed a male hierarchy.

By the way, I’m a right winger. I’m not on the left. So it’s not true that everyone who disagrees with gender comp is a left winger or has been brainwashed by left wing, secular feminists.

@ Bridget:

(just this blog post and the wiki article)

This unique case, is person who is 65 years of age.

@ Sopwith:

Yes. I don’t understand the drive to make the change at that age, but I’m not him. He clearly has more drive than most people as seen by his athletic accomplishments. I do understand that this isn’t something that just came on suddenly. He has been experiencing gender questions since age five.

Gram3 wrote:

What do you think about people with ambiguous genitalia? What is their role?

I think I asked somewhere up thread what gender complementarians do with androgynous people, and I don’t mean people who intentionally try to be androgynous but who just are.

I would think that unintentionally androgynous people throw a wrench into gender complementarian plans.

I read in a book a couple years back about celibacy where the authors discussed a culture (I can’t remember where, maybe around Europe?) of how some women there, for whatever reason, never marry and never have sex.

In that culture, men have more rights and benefits than women.

For the women who forgo marriage and sex, they are considered (in a way) to be “honorary” men. They get all the benefits and rights of men. They are treated like men, with equal respect to men, all the same legal rights, etc.

If memory serves me, I think these women (there is a special name for them in that culture, I can’t remember what) may wear trousers in public to signify to the other people in the village that they are in this role. (I think most women in that culture wear skirts.)

It’s not a sexual thing. These women know they are women, and the villagers know they are women. They are not trying to fool anyone. But them wearing pants in a “skirts-for-women” culture is just meant to signify to others that they are to be treated like men, that they did not marry.

@ Muff Potter:

A gender complementarian showed up at Julie Anne’s blog a few days ago where he (or she?) seemed to assume that only men go to war and die in battles.

So I gave her examples of women who have served in the military, such as.

-A Female World War II Pilot Aged 92 [Joy Lofthouse] Just Flew A Spitfire And Had A Lovely Time (story on Buzzfeed)

-Trailblazing female Air Force pilot makes history as first woman to fly new F-35 fighter jet (on Daily Mail’s site)
-UAE’s first female fighter pilot [Maj. Mariam Al Mansouri] led airstrike against ISIS -CNN

-Ex-fighter pilot [Heather Penney] recalls her 9/11 suicide mission -Seattle Times

-ISIS fighters terrified of being killed by female troops -New York Post

-Meet the Badass Female ‘Poacher Hunter’ [U.S. Army Vet, Kinessa Johnson] Turning Africa’s Scummy Predators Into Prey

-Blue Angels pilot [Katie Higgins] breaks sound, gender barriers – CBS News

From the Bible:

Jael./ But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him [enemy of Israel] while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died. (Judges 4:21)

Deborah – see Judges 4. She was a military leader as well as judge over Israel

Ken wrote:

I think the egalitarian view is very much a result of the influence of modern culture.

Another thing I wanted to mention. I used to be gender complementarian, up until around my mid 30s. My mother was gender comp. I was encouraged to be gender comp from the time I was a kid.

But it wasn’t secular culture or secular feminism that got me to doubting gender comp.

Initially, it was gender comp itself that got me to doubting gender comp. That, plus re-reading the Bible itself.

So much of gender comp is hypocritical, inconsistent, conflicting, and doesn’t match up with all the examples in the Bible of women who God did put in positions of power and over men.

Gender comp also fails in application, another thing I noticed early on.

Gender comp cannot be applied consistently among all Christians, as in gender comps themselves cannot fully agree on when and where and how women may serve in a church, if at all.

Jesus was the opposite of gender comp in how he dealt with women, as recorded in the Gospels.

It was gender comp that ultimately and first caused me to doubt gender comp, not modern culture or secular feminists.

Dee, if you’ve decided to go ahead & run the story, can we be tweeting a “heads up”, & tell people to watch the blog? I’d like to start some buzz ahead of time, esp w/ online friends in that church world. If not, that’s totally okay. You’re the Admiral here. 😉

Joe2 wrote:

Should a kleptomaniac be given a pass because we may find out at a future date there is a receptor issue or chemical imbalance?

There is a good book by a Christian doctor who addresses this sort of issue. The book is

Why Do Christians Shoot Their Wounded?: Helping (Not Hurting) Those with Emotional Difficulties Paperback –by Dwight L. Carlson

He draws a healthy balance between holding people responsible for their behavior and being compassionate about whatever they struggle with.

Joe2 wrote:

For example, a kleptomaniac has a recurrent urge to steal, typically without regard for need or profit. Should a kleptomaniac be given a pass because we may find out at a future date there is a receptor issue or chemical imbalance?

You do know what a false dichotomy is right? When a klepto steals from me, he or she has violated the principle of ‘live and let live’ and has compromised my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Jenner’s desire to live out his days as a woman does no such thing.

Daisy wrote:

May wrote:

Yet it seems it’s women that are barred from things, not men.

Well, in gender complementarian churches, men are barred from nursery duty and baking things in the church kitchenette and cleaning up the kitchenette. That stuff is usually left up to the women.

Yes, this is the reality – but what if a man wanted to do one of these things? Would he be barred?
For example in my church some men have joined the crèche rota. I applaud them. For years only women did it.

But there is nothing men CAN’T do if they really wanted to, if you see what I mean, while there are lots of things women are told they cannot do.

Sopwith wrote:

Bridget wrote:
@ Sopwith:
Inaccurate, uneducated, and shows that Owen did no research whatsoever about Bruce Jenner
  __
Owen Strachan
@ostrachan
 
“Being a real man is about quiet grace-driven godliness, unlike so much of the macho, goofy, hyper-testosterone cultural stuff.”
Twitter, 1:18 PM – 5 May 2015
He would know, huh?

—

It doesn’t speak much to his knowledge or wisdom when all he does is blame “culture” for whatever it is he wants to draw attention to.

@ dee:

He is almost 56 and is like he is 30 again. Their was an immediate difference the day after surgery, where as the symptoms had been slowly increasing for about 10 years before he had the tumor removed at 47. His doctor told him that this type of tumor is quite common but people don’t know they have it. It was his GP that thought to run some type of blood test after he described his symptoms which most docs give a little blue pill for. I feel sorry for all the wives whose husbands make it their fault. A viral man doesn’t care that much what shape their wife is in :-).

Sopwith wrote:

@ostrachan 
“Being a real man is about quiet grace-driven godliness, unlike so much of the macho, goofy, hyper-testosterone cultural stuff.”
Twitter, 1:18 PM – 5 May 2015

-He would know, huh?

That is another example of when gender comps are inconsistent about their beliefs.

Owen himself in the past has held up a macho view of manhood by denigrating what he feels is feminine behavior, such as men who are stay at home fathers.

Strachan once wrote a blog post blasting a Sesame Street kid show skit where a male character puppet held a doll.

Strachan seemed to feel that showing a male nurturing a baby (stereotypical feminine behavior) on TV would cause boys to become soft or girly and to care about babies, and we can’t have that, it’s not masculine enough.

Other gender comps, such as Mark Driscoll, have absolutely promoted a manly-man, testosterone-driven version of Christianity and manhood.

I would like for Strachan to repeat this to Driscoll’s or Heath Mooneyham’s* face and see how well this goes over:

“Being a real man is about quiet grace-driven godliness, unlike so much of the macho, goofy, hyper-testosterone cultural stuff.”
——-
*There is another preacher who is very similar to Mark Driscoll. His last name is Heath Mooneyham.

Pastor [Heath Mooneyham] of ‘America’s manliest church’ which once gave away assault rifles to members steps down after being busted for DWI
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2766734/Pastor-America-s-manliest-church-gave-away-assault-rifles-members-steps-busted-DWI.html

__

Dee,

As you are well aware, Owen Strachan makes no bones about where he stands: 

“When pastors and churches open their arms in an inclusive and welcoming stance, they have cracked open the doors to the gates of hell…”

—

@ Gram3:
Intersex conditions can be totally invisible, but still real – it is about much more than “ambiguous genitalia,” per the medical community.

Please see http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex and http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions for starters. They list fourteen different medical diagnoses (distinct conditions), plus other anomalies (anatomical).

@ dee:

“As for the wool and cotton thing-I heard this explanation for this one. If one combines wool and cotton in a garment and it is washed, there would be uneven shrinkage that could render the garment unwearable.”
+++++++++++++++++++

Ha! It’s like God as Hints from Heloise: “To get ride of a red wine stain on a white tablecloth, pour boiling water from a height of 36″ directly onto the stain.”

who knows really the intent behind those fabric instructions, but I just LOVE the practical, and am so sick of mining non-existent meaning out of things in the bible, like it’s a cup of tea leaves. Lots has deep meaning in many places, but some of it…. it’s just tea in a cup. you drink it. end of story.

dee wrote:

If my son had been in a church just a few years ago, most likely he would have been labeled as lazy or a psych case. His sleepiness would have been labeled as not warranted. And everybody would have been wrong.

I so hear this, because I have had my own very painful struggles with similar things – sleepiness, too, though I am not narcoleptic. And yes, I was labeled as “lazy” by both church people and some employers, when in reality, I simply could not stay awake due to the viruses I was fighting + their long, long aftereffects.

@ Daisy:
iirc, it is Albania…

Sopwith wrote:

__

Dee,

As you are well aware, Owen Strachan makes no bones about where he stands:

“When pastors and churches open their arms in an inclusive and welcoming stance, they have cracked open the doors to the gates of hell…”

—

Did he actually say this??

@ Bridget:

Well, TWW is named in the court order (http://www.scribd.com/doc/265151674/Jones-McMahon-Lawyer-Letter-5-12-15)–not as being in any kind of legal trouble of course, just that they are included in a long list of entities that have been identified by Tony’s attorney. Didn’t mean to imply any action was being taken against TWW.

@ lemonaidfizz:

That document is from TJ’s attorney. It is not a court order.

__

“Gender Dysphoria?”

“The first thing to know about your penis is, that despite the way it may see, it is not your penis. Ultimately, God created you and it is his penis. You are simply borrowing it for a while…” – Former Mars Hill Pastor, Mark Driscoll

hmmm…

Is Owen Strachan saying God wants it back?

🙂

—

@ Bridget:

Who posted the letter – Tony, his lawyers? What is the point of posting it to the internet which seems to be what the the lawyers are claiming the court is ordering to stop???

dee wrote:

As for the wool and cotton thing-I heard this explanation for this one. If one combines wool and cotton in a garment and it is washed, there would be uneven shrinkage that could render the garment unwearable.

Some claim this is God telling business people to play fair and don’t cheat people.

Ah, then from my interpretation God was an anti-capitalist (this is not as long a bow to draw as that of the complimentarians). Trickle down? My left foot. It’s trickle up. (sorry if this comment ventures into the political)

@ elastigirl:
seems more like a “purity” issue to me, from back in that era, since so many other commands in Leviticus and Deuteronomy directly address issues of who and what is pure vs. impure.

As to the reasoning behind it, I am sure it made sense at the time, but today? It seems almost incomprehensible.

@ numo:

Yes. Wondered if that is the case.

Tony Jones is unbelievable. He really does seem like a monster. Why is he doing this to his family? There is no reason I can think of accept to “win” something. In the end, I think he will find he has lost everything that is important.

Daisy wrote:

Owen Strachan would probably call men who WANT to bake muffins in the church kitchenette “Man Fails.”

Unless he’s a “chef” at a 5+Star eatery and earning big bucks for his “work.” 🙁

@ Gram3:
how did he change the text that he quoted?

@ Daisy:
I saw this explained with an excess of precision in a blog post a while back that I have never been able to locate again.

But indeed, if the premises and propositions of an argument are completely different, even if the conclusion is the same, it’s not the same argument. Saying “women can’t preach because they’re inferior to men” is drastically different from saying “women can’t preach because [e.g. the heresy of ESS].” Yet, I have had no success talking to comps with this line of reasoning.

Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness wrote:

Yet, I have had no success talking to comps with this line of reasoning.

That’s because they do not reason the way most of us have been taught to reason. Their reasoning system is designed to yield a particular result, so the rules get changed a necessary.

numo wrote:

@ Gram3:
well, it’s perfectly fine to do that so long as it’s clear that it isn’t what you said, but him turning it around.

Yep. I think it was clever, and Ken is funny. It’s something I might do. 😉

Does TWW support gay marriage?

numo wrote:

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
Considering how likely it is that trans* people might not make it to adulthood (rates of suicide among trans* kids are extremely high), plus the sad fact that many are harmed by others (or, to be more direct, murdered), it is hardly a “fad.”
Ken, with all due respect, please take some time to learn what this is actually about, instead of leaving these (unintentionally, I think) unkind, dismissive comments about people whose lives are far more fraught and complicated than most any of us could ever imagine. *Nobody* is trans* because they think it’s “for kicks” – they are more than likely going to get kicked in the teeth repeatedly, both figuratively and, for many, literally, throughout life.

I want to add to this plea Ken. I have a transgender MtoF friend who has been through surgical gender re-assignment. Her story of everything she did, everything she tried – macho sports, tons of muscle building exercise, marrying a woman, blokiness of all kinds – to make herself feel that she was really male, as her body was, is both impressive & so sad. No matter how hard she tried, this deep deep knowledge that she was female in a male body, she’d had since a child, would not go away. And she wanted it to.She lost her family over transitioning, & because she transitioned whilst working for a public service was doorstepped (harassed) by a very unpleasant newspaper, that only stopped when her employers stepped in to hide their entrance from the view of photographers. No-one, no-one goes through that lightly. Oh, & I never even mentioned all the suicide attempts prior to that….I actually feel quite upset by your comment earlier Ken, this is my friend, my highly intelligent friend, & I love her.

dee wrote:

@ Bridget:
I planned to mention this is a post this evening. The court has ordered Julie and tony to approach all blogs which have talked posted about them or allowed their comments and to ask if the posts and comments be removed.
We are under no obligation to do so. They have been asked to try. 1st Amendment and all that stuff….Nothing to worry about at this juncture.

I am so appalled by this I don’t know where to start. I read the letter on facebook at SCCL. Can they enforce this in any way? They seem to infer there has been a court order behind these requests.
He might as well duct tape her mouth. He obviously wants to. Such a sore sore loser when he couldn’t convince the world she was crazy. Thinking of you Julie.

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:

I would assume that if God were opposed to all women in all time periods of all cultures preaching or leading that the rationale behind that prohibition would be static.

But gender comp type of people change the rationale behind prohibiting women every so many decades or centuries.

This should clue them in that their views might be more indebted to cultural considerations than to the Bible. 🙂

I am going to have to google “Pulchritudinousness.” OK, I just looked that up. You’re basically saying you’re Dr. Sexy? 😆

“Pulchritudinousness” reminds me of the word “Pontchartrain” in “Lake Pontchartrain.”

Gram3 wrote:

I really do not understand why they are so persuasive.

What I should have said is I don’t understand why they are so persuasive with the people they persuade. Obviously, there are others like me who are absolutely stunned that everyone cannot see how ridiculous the whole thing is, starting with the premise for the book, which is kids asking their parents what it means to be a man or a woman. Our clueless kids are still wondering that, even though they are adults, because they never thought to ask and we never thought to lecture them on the matter.

The real reason for the book is that they were in a panic because respected *conservative* scholars were leaving the Complementarian faith, and the “liberal” label was not sticking so well. Panic does not help the reasoning process. Neither does haste, so they have been issuing periodic patches to try to keep it going. And so we are treated to articles from CBMW and their fellows.

numo wrote:

@ Daisy:
iirc, it is Albania…

I just looked it up again, and yes, it’s Albania.

The source I am looking at says they are called “Sworn Virgins.” I thought there was some other name they went by, but I guess not (or is it burrneshas?).

The source says this practice got started in the 15th century. If the patriarch of the family died, a women could be a lifelong virgin, which allowed her to care for her family.

They were given the same rights as men. In some cases, one or two of them were placed in positions of leadership over men.

Here’s a page about it.
The Mountains Where Women Live as Men
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201403/burrnesha-albanian-women-living-as-men

It began hundreds of years ago, deep in the Albanian Alps—an unusual tradition where women, with limited options in life, took the oath of the burrnesha.

A pledge to live as a man. To dress like a man, to work like a man, to assume the burdens and the liberties of a man. But these freedoms came with a price: The burrneshas also made a pledge of lifelong celibacy.

numo wrote:

And what an enormous waste of time, money and resources it is; along with possibly being indefensible re. free speech plus attempting to rewrite history.

I don’t think this is a helpful position for Jones to take. It looks very desperate.

Gram3 wrote:

which is kids asking their parents what it means to be a man or a woman. Our clueless kids are still wondering that, even though they are adults, because they never thought to ask and we never thought to lecture them on the matter.

I don’t mean to be a comment hog (I am commenting a lot on this thread, I am sorry if this annoys anyone). But sometimes someone will make a comment that triggers another memory or thought.

What I find funny about this. My mother was very traditional and raised me to be as well, so I was a gender complementarian for many years.

Anyhow, even with gender complementarians pushing women and girls to be very girly-girl, to like stereotypical girly pursuits, such as knitting or crying at sad Rom Coms, and encourage them to model themselves after their feminine mothers.

Aside from the fact that I was a tom boy who preferred playing with Bat Man toys over Barbies.

I tried to be a lot like my mother. In some ways, I think I am like her.

But a year or two before my mother died (I was helping my dad care for her, she was sick), after I got into a bad fight with my father, and he left the house to go on errands, I asked Mom why my Dad and I fought so.

My mother said it was because I was exactly like my father.

The same scenario happened the following year, and I asked her why Dad and I did not get along. I told her, “And don’t you tell me it’s because I’m exactly like he is. I am not!”

My mother smiled at me and said, “The reason you two have problems getting along is because… you are… exactly like your father.
If your father ever wanted to know what he would have been like had he been born a woman, all he has to do is look at you. You have the same personalities and everything.”

I didn’t accept that at the time. But now, I see it.

That is funny. Gender comps think girls should pattern themselves after their mothers or other feminine role models, but I (a woman) ended up taking after my father a lot more. And my father is not a girly girl at all. 😆

@ Daisy:
The definition of “feminine” is someone who does not make Piper or Grudem or the others uncomfortable in their masculinity. Since they define “masculinity” as being the one in charge and feeling like the one in charge, any woman who makes them feel the least bit like they are not the most important person in the room is unfeminine.

The definition of “masculine” is being like everyone else who needs a woman to be their kind of fake feminine.

How is a woman to blame if a man feels insecure in his masculinity? If a man is weak and insecure, it means that I must be weaker to bolster his security? Why doesn’t he work on strengthening his own character so that he doesn’t feel so insecure? Why is femininity defined in terms of how a man or group of men feels subjectively? There is something really wacky about their kind of reasoning.

Bridget wrote:

@ Bridget:

Who posted the letter – Tony, his lawyers? What is the point of posting it to the internet which seems to be what the the lawyers are claiming the court is ordering to stop???

Initmidation tactic?

Gram3 wrote:

@ Daisy:
The definition of “feminine” is someone who does not make Piper or Grudem or the others uncomfortable in their masculinity.

Sounds like Piper, Grudem, et al are perpetually “uncomfortable in their masculinity”. I think we have a Professional Weaker Brethren situation here.

Since they define “masculinity” as being the one in charge and feeling like the one in charge…

Funny… That’s the same definition of “masculinity” as this one well-known slacker-turned-pulp-villain from Austria. You know, the guy with the funny little mustache?

@ Daisy:
I think we’re agreeing with each other pretty strongly on this point. I don’t have anything more to add (other than that I so wish I could dig up that old blog post… I swear I saw it linked to from here, though I could be wrong).

As to my name, you need to know that it started over at SFL as a way of poking fun of all these fundamentalists who give each other honorary doctorates from their church basement Bible colleges (it’s rare to find a real, earned PhD among them). So if I remember correctly, that’s where Dr. Fundystan came from, and at some point I decided I wanted a “doctorate,” too. Given the context, and given what I actually look like, I thought my choice of “degree” was both ironic and mildly amusing (technically, it just implies that I study attractiveness… it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m claiming to be attractive myself, if we want to get super pedantic about it). But anyway, that’s how that came to be. 😮

Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

Flutterhands was going on about how Masculine Musculature on a woman could/would unnaturally arouse a man.

Seriously? That would be an interesting thread to read.

Gram3 wrote:

There is something really wacky about their kind of reasoning.

There is also something really wacky about…..(long list of things)… with these people. The scary part is the apparent number of people who either do not see it or do not care. I am going with the idea of do not care pending further evidence.

Victorious wrote:

Comment away, Daisy! I’m not only enjoying your memories about circumstances that you can now say, “now I see it.” I’m relating as well to being a tom-boy who grew up playing in the woods and building forts. Never fit in with the girly-girl things.

Thank you. Your childhood and mine sound pretty much alike. I was more into bike riding, Bat Man, and climbing trees than playing with dolls.

I do see now how I’m pretty similar to my father. I guess gender complementarians would be disappointed I’m not taking after my mother as much, though I did try to be like her growing up.

Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

Yes, there was a post about it here at TWW when that first hit the big time. Flutterhands was going on about how Masculine Musculature on a woman

HUG, you need to write a biography about Piper and title it something like,

Flutterhands of the Flowery Prose:
The Life and Times of A Man In Perpetual Fear of Muscular Women and Women Who Give Driving Directions to Lost Men

Followed by an update at some point in the future:

Flutterhands:
I Believe Women May Use the Bathroom Without Asking Men For Permission But May Not Use Their Karate Skills To Protect Their Boyfriends

Gram3 wrote:

Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

Flutterhands was going on about how Masculine Musculature on a woman could/would unnaturally arouse a man.

Seriously? That would be an interesting thread to read.

Part of me wants to sarcastically say “Enjoy!” but instead, I’ll leave no further comment but this link:

http://thewartburgwatch.com/2012/10/12/john-piper-on-election-sin-and-the-painful-lives-of-muscular-women/

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
OK, I started reading that thread. It turns out I missed that in RBMW. That must be due to the ever-increasing doses I received of Piperism over a number of years. Kind of like allergy shots. For some people he’s like crack, but for me it’s more like ragweed.

@ Josh:

This may sound like an unusual question, and for those who John Piper: does John Piper have a “little big man” syndrome? When I travel I appreciate directions from a woman. She is my complement on a trip because most women have a much better sense of direction than I do. I will drive and drive past a destination more than a couple times when a woman traveling with me would say “there” or ask.

This may sound stereotypical but when I have looked at John Piper, he looks like he could be a “little big man.”

@ refugee:
And yet, you have nearly perfected the art of keeping a serene countenance, and meeting every situation with a smile.

(I remember in my psychology training, watching a film of a session with a woman who was talking about how angry she was, how furious something had made her. And all the while, she was smiling. Her affect did not match the emotion she was expressing. On the other hand, you have the people who are told that they’re not allowed to get angry or frustrated — I still deal with this, actually, I get rebuked when I express anger or frustration but there’s not much I can do about it at the present time. The anger is still there, and sometimes it bursts forth like a volcano because one never learns how to express it in a safe way. Or else the anger gets turned inward and becomes depression.)

__

Is TWW signaling a ‘transitioning’ to a pro-gay mariage position?

—

Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:

SFL or the church basement?

The operating room where you perform the rectalcranialectomies, of course! 😀

@ Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:
Don’t know. He has his detractors, even among conservative Christians. Some may not be verbal, but I know this for a fact. There are many who are concerned about his Pope like pronouncements and his guru like status from his followers, but to each their own. When a pastor becomes this much idolized, my feeling is “beware.” I have friends I haven’t heard from in years who joined his church. They were going there to be close to this holy man. Pastor worship I feel great caution towards. Fanaticism towards a leader is also associated with cults .

Mark wrote:

Pastor worship I feel great caution towards. Fanaticism towards a leader is also associated with cults .

Couldn’t agree more!

@ Sopwith:
Sopwith, Jenner’s “transformation” is beyond my understanding. I have a friend who called me years ago to tell me that her ex husband had gone through a sex change and was now Donna instead of Don. This was the reason for her divorce and I did not know what to say. It was awful for my friend. I had a person who looked like they were in the midst of a sex change serve me at an airport restaurant in of all places Salt Lake City. I was courteous and I tried not to stare. Am I a transphobic person? Perhaps I am? I still try to treat them as human beings. This is the right thing to do.

__

Daisy, 

Hey,

  Isn’t it amazing how quickly the comments section of Wartburg Watch seem to go “Off Topic”(TM) …

…an international resource ‘utilized’ in a less than ‘helpful’ manner?

Nanno, Nanno…

hmmm…

Could b.

(sadface)

ATB

Sopy

—

Sopwith wrote:

__
Does any Wartburg Watch reader find it a bit out of the ordinary that a sixty-five year old male athlete would want to under-go the physical, cosmetic and emotional changes necistated by voluntary sxual re-assignment?
—

I wondered, so I watched the one interview he has done. My comment about that is above. Other than watching the interview and/or speculating, one would need to talk to Bruce Jenner to get further clarification. Through the comment section we can see that most have come to the conclusion that Owen S. doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about and feminism certainly isn’t to blame for Bruce’s choices.

@ Daisy: There is nothing wrong with being a very feminine submissive woman. Some women are like this without being informed this is the ideal. A problem with complementarianism is that complementarians have mandated all women act this way, whether or not this comes natural for them. And the reverse goes for men. I have a friends whose mother was the mechanic. The car would have a breakdown, and she would be fixing the car while her husband did the lookout. Role reversal, I think not. And getting back to Owen Strachen: his blaming of everything he can on feminists is grasping at straws.

@ Sopwith:
The website “Experts Exchange” used to not have a hyphen in its domain name. If that’s not embarrassing enough, the craziest unintentionally perturbing domain name I’ve ever heard of was that of “Mole Station Nursery,” a plant nursery in Australia with a most unfortunate domain.

Mark wrote:

There is nothing wrong with being a very feminine submissive woman. Some women are like this without being informed this is the ideal.

I wanted to add a Post Script to this.
I don’t know how Mark is defining ‘submissive’ here.

I don’t know how much my mother had the “women be submissive” crud shoved down her throat in churches or from literature, but that was a very culturally dominant view in secular culture. And girls today still get the “submit” view from secular culture.

My mother grew up in a family where her father was an alcoholic who would physically and verbally assault her and her mother when he was inebriated.

Being submissive in abusive situations is a coping method children use in abusive homes – it’s better known in some cases as codependency.

There is nothing healthy or safe for girls or women who are prone to being submisssive (codependent, ie, unassertive, poor boundaries).

Read the book The Gift Of Fear of how being too compliant with others (especially men) can make women very vulnerable to being exploited, raped by strangers, attracting abusive men.

I don’t think it’s safe or good for women to be submissive, even if they do it of their own accord or come by it “naturally.”

(It’s usually not natural… girls and women get church and societal messages that they should be submissive and if they aren’t they get penalized).

@ Gram3:

You can get there by reading the Bible backwards. In the text, the Serpent gets the Woman, and then the Man, to disobey God and then God describes the consequences of their actions (“your desire shall be for him, he shall lord it over you,” etc.). If you ignore what came first, or read it backwards, then you can say that God prescribes this relationship.

Reading it as a description of the consequence of sin, BTW, suggests an interpretation of this portion of Genesis in which sin ripples outward from the relationship between spouses to that between siblings, and on and on, until you get to the chapter about Babel, in which sin has infected an entire nation.

elastigirl wrote:

@ Gram3:
“The church must preach on Jesus Christ becoming a man and see his incarnation as an endorsement of humanity and his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood.
Do you have any idea what Owen BHLH means by “his cross as the genesis of godly manhood and womanhood?”
++++++++++++++++++++++
Noooo (with an ironic chuckle). haven’t a clue. speculating, perhaps it’s just what comes out when his button is pressed (a jargon jumble of cross-centered-ness, gender roles based on the book of Genesis, obsessions over the words godly, manhood, womanhood). i dunno.
(although i was amused at the irony in his choice of words, “The church must preach on Jesus Christ becoming a man”….)

Just from reading this bit, I would conclude that somewhere in his bibliography is at least one book explaining that all marriages are at least a little bit miserable and the correct response is not to try to fix the problem, but to suck it up and put on a big ol’ fakey smile instead. AKA “sacrificial love.”

__

Does gender distortion have a genetic, hormonal, physiological, or psychological cause?

hmmm…

Yet, the pages of Bible Scripture clearly and consistently labels any sexual activity outside of marriage, or not between a man and a woman, as sin, that is, rebellion against God’s plan.

What gives?

—

@ Sopwith:
How does the prohibition of sexual intimacy outside of marriage pertain to people who perceive their innate gender to be different from their sex assigned at birth? I don’t understand, so please help me out here…

Also, how are people in a committed, monogamous relationship going to transmit any STIs? How does that relate to the question of marriage equality, let alone the question of the existence of people who are transgender?

@ Jenny Islander: I think so much harks back to American culture about eighty years ago: stayed together and tried to makes things work or stayed together despite some unhappiness or so I heard from my own parents who were pretty traditionalist. Also divorce was once viewed as kind of a taboo. My grandmother divorced, never could remarry and was kind of looked down upon by the rest of her family. Owen Strachan would probably like all this cultural norm back. I would agree with him probably that we have too much divorce, he would blame it on the feminists. Feminists can’t be blamed for everything? I would blame it on shifting values on marriage and family.

From what you read Owen doesn’t appear to offer solutions. His solution is probably for women to be submissive which really can’t be applied to every problem, though complementarians seem to think it is the lions share of the problem.? Just women being submissive and men being in charge isn’t the answer to family break ups, not really. This is just a wooden formula and has little to do with relationships, though it is easy to couch it all in biblical language. Complementarian can be another word for patriarchy and all its abuses which is where I see this is going. Look at views where it is ok to abuse your wife and for a man to order his wife around like a slave?

This isn’t about Bruce Jenner, but it is about Owen Strachen, he will use similar arguments regarding feminists for what he views as disintegration of cultural morality.

@ Sopwith:
You do realize that a HUGE number of AIDS deaths (in Central and Southern Africa especially) are not of gay men, but of straight men and women? And that HIV II is spread primarily within heterosexual populations?

Also that many IV drug users become infected, if they share needles? The scourge of AIDS isn’t particular about biological differences, or aboutsexual ororientaion, any more than Ebola (also transmitted via bllod and other bodily fluids) is.

In all likelihood, the AIDS virus crossed from the animal kingdom into our world, becoming a human contagion.

And just to be really clear, AIDS in central and southern Africa is primarily being transmitted via v*ginal intercourse. there are so many AIDS orphans in those parts of Africa, it is heartbreaking – and has been true since the late 80s-early 90s.

@ Daisy:
That’s not the question that I asked, but for the record, I do not believe that the church should start teaching that anyone ought to have extra-marital relations.

And thank you, Numo, for putting forward the enlightening information in your replies. I am saddened to say that, where someone continues to ask questions borne out of apparent lack of knowledge, without making any attempt to engage with replies to their previous questions, I get the feeling that … well, I’m going to say no more for now (though I bet you could finish that sentence in your mind and end up right where I was going to…).

In any case, I hold out hope that there can be a productive discussion, and I appreciate your work in that direction.

  __

“Take a’ Ride?”

hmmm…

 Worseburg as U Watch comment section …

Bump.

 …believe and practice da bible like da good Lord sayz, and get da stuff’in knocked outa ya wit a pillow-case-oh-oranges, huh?

(grin)

There goes da neighborhood…

is the horse-head next?

hahahahahaha

Sopy

—

@ Daisy,

hey,

You have gutz, lady. thank you for standing up for your cnvictions.

(what our fellow TWW folks don’t understand is that I was trying to stimulate general conversation)

Not draw a spicific conclusion.

(and got bit*hed at for ma trouble…

Figures.

😉

—

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
Josh, i quit, too. Reasoned replies with actual info. and links are ignored. At least both of us (aand others, too) gave it yhe old college try.

@ Sopwith:
Sopy, this really isn’t deserving of a reply, because it is the epitome of a cheap shot. I don’t get you, and I’m not sure i want to, on these topics, anyway.

You are usually very compassionate, which is what makes me sad about your responses on this thread. If you were in the other folks’ shoes, I’m sure you would want people to understand, as well as to hear your story and the stories of others. I know that i would.

Hoping you will try that approach…

@ Sopwith:
Sopwith, I reside in a socially conservative section of country that also is predominantly evangelical. Interesting we are an epicenter HIV infection in U.S.. I believe last time I read we had 1/3 of new cases. We also have highest rates of teenage pregnancy. And we have very high rate of people who frequent gay pornographic sites and the highest percentage of wives who look up “is my husband gay? ” We also have highest percentage of families headed by gay couples. And also one of the highest percentages of divorced couples outside Las Vegas. We are the American South. Fascinating that all of this exists where conservative cultural values are the norm. Why all this focus? Could if be what Owen Strachan was focusing on, which is forbidden fruit? Another very socially conservative country (known for American dominionist inspired rape of lesbians and death for gay men) mainly Evangelical country has one of the highest HIV incidences:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/world/africa/in-uganda-an-aids-success-story-comes-undone.html?_r=1

Social conservative values don’t correlate with not having an HIV problem. Also hypocrisy seems to go hand in hand with being socially conservative? Just asking.

  __

“A Mighty Fortress is our Wartburg?”

hmmm…

Ta tell kind folk itz ok ta sin against God’s word is evil.

Plain n’ simple.

🙁

—

@ Mark:

I am so sorry that the social conservatives in your area have not solved the problem; but it is good to hear that the social liberals have solved it. Wait. That was the take away from what you said was it not???

Mark wrote:

@ Sopwith:

Must be balanced against Matthew 7:1-3 and against 6:37. Jesus consorted with sinners, and all of us fall into that category. I unjustly lost my temper with a friend yesterday. This would be categorized as sin. Also sin is also that which is hidden. So many of the religious groups I have read about are great at condemning both real and imagined sin, but short on seeing the sin in their own lives. Also if you read the Bible literally certain social conventions such as slavery are not really condemned. The apostle Paul asked an escaped slave to go back to his master. Sometime around the early 1800’s, the abolition movement began. This morphed into the women’s suffrage and women’s right movement, and also several other movements that truly reformed western society. Now early abolitionists and subsequent movements were started by devout evangelicals. There are sections of the bible that would negate what abolitionists, suffragettes, and women’s right advocate accomplished if they were applied without considering the whole of Scripture and that ultimate patterned example of Jesus. Now regarding homosexuals and transgendered people : I personally don’t feel I have a right to judge or condemn. I wish them well, and I know of a gay couple who are great patents and good persons.

Right, and if I tell you it is a sin to lose your temper, I am doing right. And if I tell a homosexual that the actions he is performing with his partner are sinful, I am doing right.

__

“The Happiness of the Godly?”

Dee,

hey,

We as Americans need to sink deeper into lives of angush and dispare?

hmmm…

Haven’t we had enough?

The hospitals are kinda filling up…

please ‘Check’ again.

…their delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law they meditates day and night and they will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever they do, they prosper.

hmmm…

you can dress um up…but can they dance?

ATB

Sopy

—

@ Bob M: I lost my temper with my friend over the very polarizing issue of immunization. I mentioned a 50 year study just published in Science magazine that attributes an 80 percent decrease of infectious disease mortality in developing countries to the MMR vaccine. It is theorized that Measles erases immune cell (t cell) memory for up to three years so pathogens they were resistant to went away. I discussed this study with a friend and I really wasn’t listening to her and lost my temper and yelled at her like I was heckling Jenny McCarthy. And my friend had some good nuanced arguments.

I had some adverse reactions when I received the MMR such as the joint pain. So I understand Live vaccines are not without risk, especially in immunosuppressed, and this is what my friend was telling me, This may all seem laughable on a religious blog, but the vaccine issue is very polarizing in communities, believe it or not. I am an allied health professional.

I see some polarization here on this blog. If we really listen to each other we will find our views a whole lot more nuanced than at the face. I made some comments and I was judged as being a social liberal. Not sure what I am honestly, I say yes and no on informing people about their sin because it must all be balanced against what is both in the Word, the patterned life of Jesus, and placing myself in the shoes of others whether or not I agree with them. There is a lot more involved in life than black and white.

Mark wrote:

If we really listen to each other we will find our views a whole lot more nuanced than at the face.

Yep.

I don’t usually post anything from the Bible, but this popped into my head last evening and…

““A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’

“But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’

“Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’

“Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’

“The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’

“‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’

“Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’”

– Luck, ch. 14

Also this…

“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.”

– Matthew ch. 21, at the end of the parable of the prodigal son.

Who do you think could also be put into those lists of outcasts?

@ Nancy:

Don’t forget about Birmingham’s Brother Bryan. He certainly wasn’t a social liberal and he was an important civil rights advocate prior to 1955. If we really look we will see the good done for a whole lot of persons by people, like Brother Bryan, regardless of label.

__

“Who cries for da children?”

hmmm…

Numo, 

hey,

  thirty-seven out of every one thousand pregnancies in the state of New York are unwanted and are currently being aborted.

One of them may have had the cure for AIDS.

We will never know, huh?

(tears)

ATB

Sopy

—

@ Mark:

Mark, I am not sure what I am either except very libertarian. I cannot stand tyranny no matter how it comes packaged. I do know that growing up my mom was the one who threw a baby shower for the unwed pregnant teen when everyone else was avoiding her. Her attitude was ‘what is done is done, now we make the most in helping in any way we can’. I like that attitude the best. It is not one of blowing it off as that is how all humans function. But her situation was punishment enough.

At the same time, not all humans function that way. Not all humans have multiple partners, either, that caused so much devastation for innocents with aids and before the cure, syphilis. There are serious consequences to behaviors. And I don’t see anything wrong with calling that out.

But, at the same time, what is done is done and we have a duty to show compassion and care for people in such circumstances.

The question is how do we practice our faith in that tension? I like how NT Wright puts it. The more we are like Christ, the more “human” we are. The more we are doing evil or wrong, the less “human” we are. It is a different way of looking at it. But the cool thing to me is that it applies to many unbelievers I have met who look more like Christ in their actions/behavior than many Christians I have known. It is as if kindness, compassion and looking out for others is a universal Christlike trait.

dee wrote:

. I hope that you know that I am so glad that you have chosen to comment here.

I am too. It’s important to try to understand one another and hopefully that understanding will result in a genuine agape love.

@ Sopwith:
http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/story.asp?storyID=400

perhaps one of the more than ELEVEN MILLION children orphaned due to AIDS in southern Africa might find that cure…

@ numo:
http://www.avert.org/children-orphaned-hiv-and-aids.htm

@ numo:
Also… http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jul/18/south-africa-aids-orphans-breaking-silence/