"Even as the church must fear Christ Jesus, so must the wives also fear their husbands. And this inward fear must be shewed by an outward meekness and lowliness in her speeches and carriage to her husband. . . . For if there be not fear and reverence in the inferior, there can be no sound nor constant honor yielded to the superior." –John Dod: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, Puritan guidebook first published in 1603 link
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For a number of years now, I have said that the complementarian Achilles' Heel is quite clear to everyone but the most devoted of devotees. The only definable practical mores to arise out of this movement are: no women pastors, no women elders and the man gets the tie breaking vote in a marriage.
Leaders claim that men have *authority*and *leadership* in the church and in the home. When asked to define what that means practically, they cannot. What does authority in the church mean in terms of the pastor and elders? Do they get to decide where the coffee pots go? Do they get to dictate a particular interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and broach no disagreement even though conservative theologians have had disagreements for centuries over certain verses? So which one of those church leaders have the *authority* to say what it means?
The current crop of self assured leaders claim that they need to prepare at least 30 hours for a sermon in order to *correctly* exegete the Scripture and speak authoritatively on it. Why? There are tons of theological books that have been written through the centuries that, in essence, tell us what the passages mean. Having sat through a gazillion sermons by astute Bible teachers, I have found that there is nothing new under the sun, no matter what these guys say. We are left, instead, to argue bylaws, covenants/contracts, church discipline and whether to allow the use of the NIV Bible now that the thoroughly *gospel* ESV has been released. (Does anyone know how much the translators earn each time one of the ESV Bibles are sold?)
Here are two example to demonstrate the difficult nature of this so called authority.
Example 1:
As you know, I am an evolutionary creationist (TE). Let's assume the new pastor of my church decides that Young Earth Creationism only will be taught in the church. The elders agree. I ask him to reconsider this position but he is *in authority* and gives me some whacky Ken Ham answer like "Were you there?" I decide to leave the church and join another church in which the pastor allows for all views of creationism in the church.
So, who was *in authority* in reality? It appears that I was. I evaluated the churches and chose one that I could tolerate. Let me assure you if that new pastor decided to become a Calvinista, I would once again search for a church. And I would pull my money and my volunteer time. It sure seems like I am the one who holds the authority to behave autonomously.
Example 2:
This is a true story. Years ago, when I lived in Dallas, my pastor, Pete Briscoe, asked me to head up the fund raising committee for a new building. The church had a crisis. It was a tiny church when it started and was in a really small building. One day, the fire chief came into the building and stopped allowing more people to come in because we were violating the fire code and this was with multiple services.
I hate fund raising with all of my being. I never want people to think I am talking to them so that my cause will financially gain from our relationship. I am not saying fund raising is wrong. I have chosen to take a different path in my life. That is one reason why we do not take ads on this blog. This is not about The Deebs. It is about all of you.
So, I told Pete that I wouldn't do it and the reason why I wouldn't do it. He is a gracious man and did not apply any pressure whatsoever. So, did I sin against God by not *obeying* authority? And, if I did not, then what authority did Pete have over me?
Questions to Ask Your Church Leaders (and then let TWW know the answer):
Authority over what? Some of the time church authority is used to hurt people who make a stand for something important like child sex abuse. Then the so called authorities at 9 Marks UCC Dubai get to discipline a guy who says that selling CJ Mahaney books is against his conscience. So, ask your leaders to answer this question.
Define what you mean by authority and leadership and give examples of what that means in actual practice.
We have written all sorts of posts showing that many of the complementarians disagree with one another on what it means in practice. Not only are they unable to define it, but they are dangerous and ignorant as they attempt to assert their authority in certain situations.Their support of the following two examples clearly show that their understanding is superficial and can be harmful.
1. CBMW's Soap Bubble Lady
In March 2016, CBMW posted Soap Bubbles Submission. I have highlighted a few words.
Sanford and I had many conflicts, but one kept occurring. The conflict was over how I rinsed the dishes that I had washed. When I washed dishes, as always, I was in a hurry. Because of that, I did not always rinse every dish perfectly. For all of our married life, he would sometimes say, “You did not get all the soap bubbles off the dish.” My pre-salvation self would reply, “If you don’t like how I am washing the dishes, you can do it yourself!” My post-salvation self still, at times, did not like to be told what to do. So, the inevitable showdown came.
I was washing dishes and rinsing a glass I had just washed. Sanford walked through the kitchen and was behind me. He noticed that I was about to place the clean glass in the dish drain and he said, “You did not get all the soap bubbles off!” Now to my credit, it was not dripping with soap! But he must have seen something. Well, in my heart I thought, “If you don’t like how I am washing the dishes…” Quickly, though, I thought, “He is telling me to rinse it again and I need to be submissive.” Neither one of us was saying a word but Sanford stopped to see what I was going to do. The water was running and I knew I needed to rinse it again. I did not want to do it but I knew the Lord wanted me to. Meanwhile, as I contemplated what to do, my arm was stuck in an uncomfortable, outstretched position. So, I began in my mind to talk to my arm, ‘Come on, you can do this! Rinse it again.” It took so long for my arm to begin to move back toward the running water, that the muscles began to ache. Finally, I talked my arm into moving towards the water and carefully rinsing the glass again.
After I rinsed it again and put the glass in the dish drain, I began to wash the next dish. Sanford said in astonishment, “You did it!” I replied, “Yes, you told me to.” And he countered with, “But you did it!” That moment was a turning point in my walk with the Lord. The Lord was testing me and teaching me to be faithful even in the very least of things. Submission was beginning to be my joy.
God, in His kindness, had prepared me to love thinking about His sovereign control over my life; and when I learned about His sovereign plan for me in my role as a wife, He gave me grace to obey Him.
Here are the things that jumped out at me.
- First, the assumption from the beginning was that this was all her fault for refusing to submit.
- This "soap opera" had been going on all of their married life.
- There was no attempt to evaluate if something else was at play.
- There were many conflicts in this marriage.
- It was obvious in the example that the soap was not even apparent on the plate even though "he must have seen something." Did he?
- He was standing in back of her to watch what she was doing.These were dishes, not brain surgery yet he was observing and directing.
- She was often in a hurry. My guess is she has many responsibilities and he will not bend to do this "woman's task."
- She believed that this was a test from the Lord about her problem, never once considering that it might not be her problem.
If I were her friend, I would be concerned about her well being. Here is what I would try to discuss with her.
- Why did you bring up this long term problem? Could it be that your frustration is not the problem, merely the warning sign of a far deeper problem? Could it be that your frustration stems from the possibility that your husband is not acting normally? Do you think that most husbands stand behind their wives, commanding them to rinse off some soap that is not even plainly observable?
- Have you ever considered the possibility that your husband is controlling or has a psychological condition such as OCD? Has he ever become so angry that you were afraid? Does he often remind you that it is your duty to submit and to do what he tells you? Does your church?
- Have you considered that now you have *obeyed* him in the soap opera, he will ratchet up his expectations of you? Do you find there are many areas in which he is not satisfied with your performance?
- If your friend is not ready to hear you, gracefully bow out and say that you will be there for her when, and if, she needs you. Do not be surprised when she returns to talk with you. Be aware that this is a situation that is potentially volatile. Watch for signs of abuse. Also, beware of the expectations that this man could have on his children as well. They could well need intervention.
Agree or disagree?
2. John Piper's Dangerous and Naive Views on Submission
In the last year, I have become more and more concerned about Piper's tweets. I am not sure he thinks through how his words might sound to others. One thing is apparent as I read the replies. The folks out there don't believe he understands the pain of others. Here is one such tweet. One day, we shall do a post showing a bunch of tweets like this.
Last month, Piper wrote Six Things Submission Is Not. Piper first wrote about this 20 years ago.
What is submission not, according to 1 Peter 3:1–6? When I preached on this passage probably twenty years ago, women in my church found this question really helpful because we bring to the text presuppositions from our experience.
His position has not changed in spite of a number of discussions on other blogs about the concerning nature of his advice. What gives me pause is that women in his church found this advice helpful. Perhaps they are trained not to carefully consider the situation.
4. Submission is not putting the will of the husband before the will of Christ.
Submission is not putting the will of the husband before the will of Christ. Christ is her Lord now, and for the Lord’s sake, she will submit to the husband, but he is not her Lord. Therefore, wherever she must choose between the two, she chooses Jesus. If her husband says, “Let’s get involved in a scam,” or “Let’s have group sex,” her choice is clear. I go with Jesus on this. She would say it not with a haughty or arrogant attitude, but rather with a winsome, submissive, longing one. He will be able to discern in her a longing that he not do that so that she could enjoy him as her leader. Do you feel that? “I will not follow your lead on this, and I am not following you with a demeanor that tells you I want to follow your leadership but cannot in this moment, in this way.”
Let's take a look at two husbands.
Husband #1
He is not a Christian and also does not have a set of values that would cause him to try to live a decent lifestyle. Any man who proposes scamming people is leading his family into criminal behavior that will have long term consequences for all them. Group sex is an activity that is hazardous, leading to STDs and exposure to dangerous people who could cause harm to the family. Does Piper mean she should just say "Sugar Bear, I love you to pieces. I don't want to share you with anyone else. Let's go cuddle? "
Does Piper actually think this guy understands what he means by *leadership* in the family? Good night! Even the comp crowd can't agree with one another on this matter. This woman should ditch the ridiculous advice to be *winsome* (!) and tell him to go jump in a lake. Then she should pack her bags, grab the kids and get the heck out of there before he does any harm to her or their children with his high risk behavior. She needs to immediately consult an attorney and a counselor.
Husband #2
He is a Christian man who, until recently, was living a decent life and was in synch with his family in the values department. Suddenly, there is a change in behavior and he suggests group sex or getting involved in criminal activity. Folks, when something like this happens, this man needs the help of professionals right away. He could be experiencing a mental breakdown or he could have cancer in the front lobe of his brain which is causing a serious personality change. This has nothing to do with *winsomely* suggesting they go get an ice cream instead of having group sex. This involves getting a professional medical evaluation immediately and I do not mean making an appointment with the assistant pastor.
Women need to take charge in these situations.
There is nothing in the Bible that says a woman should not assume leadership. To pretend she should try to be submissive in such scenarios is naive and potentially dangerous. It is concerning to me that people believe that Piper or CBMW are offering sound advice.
When some ridiculous, ill thought out view of male leadership in the home causes Christian pastors to suggest naive or dangerous responses like are exhibited in these two articles, then something is terribly wrong in their theology.
Not only that, but it seems to me that we are being told to blame the women for everything from a guy OCDing over soap bubbles to women who do not sweetly tell their husbands that they really don't want to do group sex.
Women should take charge of these situations and get the help that they need. Any man who suggests anything less is either gullible or easily deceived.
First?
Yes…but if Sanford really loved her and sacrificed himself for her, he would buy her a dishwasher.
Sheesh!
Did I really read that hogwash? That is what the new reimaged CBMW is churning out? Might I suggest they both get a life?
Speaking of “submission”, I have a rather unique and frustrating visual issues for most of my life and especially in the church it has really ticked people off I mean really ticked them off. If I read a map wrong transposed a word, messed up on a phone number, called a person the wrong name, did not answer quick enough, turn to the right bible page fast enough…… ad nauseam. When I would tried to explain why I have sinned by not being efficient enough or fast enough it was not intentional or I was not trying to get attention, not trying to be manipulative, not trying to cause a fight, not trying to get attention, not wanting people to feel sorry for me, not trying to make an excuse for not being in top form, not trying to buck authority, not trying to make a seen not trying to ….. you get the point.
It was awful enough when I was a kid and a teacher would smack me in the back of the head or I would get the crap kicked out of me for being stupid and so on. But when God is attached to some type of disability or weakness it just compounds the guilt and frustration. I came to the conclusion being human was utterly sinful and I was basically spitting in the face of Jesus when I messed something up. I bring this up because many times quirks and mannerisms and disabilities are seen as sinful or rebellion even in kids for some of these yahoos that think they are God’s gift.
I got to the point that I questioned every single mistake. Now don’t get me wrong I do struggle with sin and I loath it in my life and often spend hours begging God not to kill me, another gift from the faith which I am trying to give back and getting better at putting it in perspective. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is with dyslexia and the other learning visual issues, it is like drowning, something else that happened a few times to me as a kid so I know the feeling. But I think what is so tragic and damaging is the micromanagement these doctrines force on relationships and people. It literally took me decades to get past the idea that God literally hates my guts from eternity past and is chomping at the bit to cast me into perdition. I actually still struggle with it.
Some of this hypersensitive responses are on me and I take responsibility for it but the constant questioning of every motive etc. I see that in the lives of people who have their human dignity squandered or violated by authoritarian types. I really appreciate the dialog on these issues. I am posting this under a pseudonym for my privacy but thanks again for allowing me to share this.
Lydia wrote:
If you buy..”love bleeds”then dish pan hands would just be a given.
@ Lydia:
They’ve probably been told that buying a dishwasher is “self-reliant”.
The Bible is chock full of stories about women who didn’t submit. Rebekah supported Jacob instead of Esau. Tamar had to trick Judah into doing what was right. Abigail wisely disobeyed her husband and placated David instead. The proverbs 31 woman doesn’t seem to consult her husband at all. The Bible is also full of female leadership and preaching – Deborah, Huldah, Junia, etc.. Yet Piper and the like will deny this large cloud of witness all because of a few verses about submission taken out of context. It’s poor scholarship, not to mention manipulative.
My question is what is the real motive behind it all. Are these men just insecure? Are they hoarding power? Are they keeping their congregations focused on gender roles so no one looks too closely at the rest of their theology?
““Let’s get involved in a scam,” or “Let’s have group sex,” her choice is clear. I go with Jesus on this. She would say it not with a haughty or arrogant attitude, but rather with a winsome, submissive, longing one.”
I will never be able to imagine “honey..let’s not go to group this week”.. with a straight face again.
I think that a sexual issue may be inconveniently surfacing here.
Just as in my opinion, Bill Gothard lived his life vicariously through his ministry. This includes my belief that portions of Gothardism were expressions of personal sexual fantasies, obsessions revolutions and inabilities.
@ KMD:
Faster than my pug Petunia running for a treat.
nathan priddis wrote:
This made me laugh.
nathan priddis wrote:
I have to admit that I thought the same thing.
@ Stan:
Yes. And Sanford would have to “oversee” loading the dishes, anyway.
@ Kemi:
They desperately need a caste system so they can be somebody important.
@ nathan priddis:
A lot of Pipers tweets have had a creepy sexual vibe.
@ Kemi:
You’ve never failed at a relationship, just the woman failed at being submissive. You are a man and you are entitled to this. Any Christian woman you want could be submissive to you. Meet a woman at this church, and we’ll teach her how to be submissive.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/pursue-complementarity-not-compatibility
Also, that article is an example of the “look at much we don’t believe in this thing that literally everyone else believes in”-ism of the YRR I mentioned in my comment on the last post.
Hey folks, John Piper ain’t got nothing on this Biblical Gender Roles guy. His recent blog article on “7 Steps to Dealing with a Lazy Wife” is the epitome of absurd. This fella is beyond parody. Read and get a good, hooting, howling laugh!
http://biblicalgenderroles.com/
Kemi wrote:
I actually stood watching this nonsense played out over two decades. More and more the teaching contained something referring to gender roles. (Every sermon was preached to the men. They were made to feel guilty if they did not think and act the way the “elders” determined “gospel” (TM) leading. The women were condemned if they were not under the thumb of her husband. Pity the poor singles. They were nothing until marriage.) All of this nonsense while a watching world continues dying in sin because of a warped salvation message insisting complementarianism must be evident in church and home in order to really be “saved.” How does complementarianism get elevated to essentials?
Galatians 5:1 reads: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” When do
Alas the moniker (Done) Just Watching.
“In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity.”
The day my husband tells me to rinse soap that cannot be seen is the day he starts eating off paper plates and drinking from solo cups. With the emphasis on “solo.”
Dear incognito,
Your story moved me, and I just wanted the chance to tell you that the way you were treated as a child has nothing to do with the Jesus I know, the Jesus who scooped children up in his arms to tell people to be more like them, the Jesus who absolutely adores you.
I hope you have more peace, soon. And I commend you for your bravery.
Quote from Piper from the above blog post:
“He will be able to discern in her a longing that he not do that so that she could enjoy him as her leader. Do you feel that?”
Uhm, nope. I can’t feel that. I simply don’t feel you or your position mr. piper.
You are really intent on wanting women to enjoy their husband’s leadership.
You’ve said it elsewhere. You have even instructed abused women to tell their husbands that, “It would be sweet to me if I could enjoy your leadership,” rather than to allow abused women to be indignant at their husband’s bad behavior towards them.
In fact, Piper, the more snippets I read from your corrupted point of view, the more I’m convinced that YOU ENJOY your self-serving doctrine of male domination. And that you are trying real hard to convince women that they must enjoy it and be sweet about it.
I wish that you could get it in your head that you have neither the understanding nor the authority to be able to define sweet for women or tell them what they are supposed to enjoy in order to please God.
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/02/men-defining-sweet-for-women.html
Through a glass darkly wrote:
Nope. Just wait until I rinse the cast iron skillets, the rolling pin, and the butcher knives.
For dessert, I’ll top the ice cream and peach cobbler with a good squirt of dish soap!
SOAP BUBBLES SUBMISION!
Is CBMW out of their minds! Who in their right mind would think this is normal? This article sounds more like it is about an NPD husband and a brainwashed wife who finally gave in after years of living with a nut case.
And CBMW is serious . . .
And this is the author of “Soap Bubbles Submission”
http://www.nouthetic.org/about-ins/our-faculty/8-about-ins/19-martha-peace
Piper in the above blog post telling wives how to tie themselves into knots in order to make sure the man’s position of leadership is not compromised:
“I will not follow your lead on this, and I am not following you with a demeanor that tells you I want to follow your leadership but cannot in this moment, in this way.”
I’ve heard him elsewhere tell a woman how to give directions to a man in such a way as to make sure the masculinity of the man and the femininity of the woman are not, in any way, compromised. I never imagined masculinity and femininity were so gosh darn fragile.
Yet this is the gender gospel that Piper props up as an integral part of our very salvation. It’s sickening.
Oh wow. I wasted way too much time over there. It’s absurd, weird, nauseating, nonsensical, crazy, fascinating, tragic, hilarious, scary. There are really people who think this way…!
Darlene wrote:
dee wrote in the article above:
“Here are the things that jumped out at me…”
The first thing that jumped off the page for me was Captain Queeg in:
The Caine Mutiny
CBMW’s soap bubble lady has a hubby who is every bit as mentally unbalanced as Herman Wouk’s Queeg character. To me it just goes to show how utterly divorced from real life reality CBMW is.
Dee also wrote:
“She believed that this was a test from the Lord about her problem, never once considering that it might not be her problem…”
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, their god has way more in common with the gods of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Canaanites. The God of Abraham isn’t anything like them.
Guys…here is a parody post that I did in response to C.J. Mahaney preaching at T4G. I write about Charlie Chaplain and how me mocked Hitler in the Great Dictator. I take the final speech at the end and satire C.J. Let me know what you think! 🙂
https://wonderingeagle.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/c-j-mahaney-preaching-at-t4g-my-response-based-off-charlie-chaplains-mocking-of-adolf-hitler-in-the-great-dictator/comment-page-1/#comment-1922
Deebs,
Do you want to stop any complementarians from commenting here? Just change the “Post Comment” button below to one that says “Submit” and then dare them to “submit” their comment to women moderators 🙂
The dish washing story is bat-crazy. If a manager tried that in a restaurant kitchen, he would soon be washing all the dishes himself after the staff walks out rather than taking his cow poop.
Complementarian Women, go get a dish washing job instead of a husband, you’ll be treated better and you’ll get paid for it. (Shakes head at the lunacy of Piper’s Pipsqueaks.)
Through a glass darkly wrote:
Yes. This. 😉
Through a glass darkly wrote:
I simply cannot fathom how Jesus teaching can be twisted into this hyper authoritarian, master/slave, but do it with a smile, deformed theology. It is ludicrous and it is maddening.
Muff Potter wrote:
Perfect! The strawberries.
nathan priddis wrote:
bingo!
@ Bridget:
It IS about bubbles. It is their bubble world thinking.
These examples are just completely imbecilic.
I remember something long ago about Beverly LaHay saying she learned to thank God for her husband’s smelly socks as she picked them up where he left them lying around…
Okay let me play the devil’s advocate on the soap issue only because my mother in law once stayed with some relatives who did not rinse the soap off their dishes and it gave her some stomach issues. So let’s just give this oaf the benefit of the doubt for a minute, IF the wife is not rinsing the soap off the dishes AND IF it is causing him some kind of stomach distress, why can’t they just discuss it? If 2 people care about each other, he would say, hey I’ve had some stomach cramps and I wonder if it’s from soap left on the dishes and she’d say oh sorry about that, and she’d either be careful to rinse them because she cares about him or she’d suggest, you want to do the rinsing? or you want to get a dishwasher? or how do you want to work this out? And they’d work it out. Together. Like 2 normal human beings.
But maybe they do not do that because it ISN’T causing any issues except that he expects every item in his house to sparkle and shine because he’s some kind of OCD control freak. Good grief. Doesn’t life punch us in the gut with enough serious problems without nit-picking over such non-issues?
I hate to tell these authority goons but in most cases they are going to end up depending on their wives to care for them in every way as they age and degenerate and they better hope they haven’t killed every ounce of tenderness she has for them by then.
As for John Piper, he lives in a world of fantasy. Somehow the way he words all this stuff about winsome and enjoying leadership and all that makes me “feel” that he is identifying more with that side of things than the so called masculine side if you get my drift. He just ‘gets into’ the fantasy wifey a bit much.
Bridget wrote:
Bridget, I hear ya! I was thinking that such nonsense makes Christians seem like simpletons. In this case, a Stepford wife. I got to thinking, what if the roles were reversed and hubby was doing the dishes….yeah, I know that isn’t his role, but humor me for a minute. So let’s say hubby is doing the dishes and wifey notices that her man isn’t properly rinsing the soap off the dishes. What should she do? Oh my, what a predicament for a woman who must learn in silence and win him without a word. Now I know what I would do, but me thinks the CBMW crowd would have a different solution. Perhaps she would wait until a later time when hubby is not around and rinse off all the dishes he washed. That way he wouldn’t offend his ego.
*That way SHE wouldn’t offend HIS ego* 🙂
I think he gets off on making posts like this. Yes, that kind. He seems to be obsessed with the topic of sex. I watched him talk about the “glorious” marital union on a YouTube the other day and about gagged knowing his position on husbands’ and wives’ roles in the marriage. No wonder so many women feel like sexual objects. I think I know why so many male YRRers use the word winsome so frequently.
Through a glass darkly wrote:
Yeah, that blog seems like a twisted Christian version of Bizarro world.
I was just reading an unrelated article in the NY Times about the power of touch and this quote jumped out at me –
“We think that humans build relationships precisely for this reason, to distribute problem solving across brains,” said James A. Coan, a a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “We are wired to literally share the processing load, and this is the signal we’re getting when we receive support through touch.”
It struck me how in these comp relationships, problem solving is not being distributed across brains; the load is not being shared. (Is problem solving even being done? Everything is reduced to domination and submission.)
Where is relationship? Where is support? Where is comfort? “Two are better than one… For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion.” I don’t see that happening in these examples.
My husband was telling me about some preacher he listened to in the car yesterday. A woman called in for advice, worried because her husband was spending money irresponsibly and putting them into a bad situation. His advice was that the woman must be submissive to whatever her husband wanted to do, but that she should get him into a relationship of “accountability” with some man of the church.
Now think about the utter ridiculousness of that for a moment. The husband and wife, who are spending their lives and livelihoods together, should not work out this important detail themselves, but they should involve a stranger into the situation to indirectly do… something, I don’t know what exactly?
The wife’s wisdom, knowledge and experience were to be completely wasted, she would be of no help to her husband, just another dependent, and her husband was to depend on some man who does not stand to gain or lose in any way to tell him what to do…
My mind is boggled. How do they expect this to end well for anyone?
@ incognito:
Incognito, I totally get you. I was feeling like I was reading something I would have written by your writing tempo. I’m dyslexic and ADHD. I learned to actually identify with my whoopings at the Baptist School I was raised in and became proud of them like notches on a belt, until I refused the last one when I was 14 and thought the teacher was a perv, graduated back in 1979 but I have long-standing emotional scars from being punished for things I just couldn’t help. I still can’t talk in public right. I’ve always wondered if my public speaking panic started when my first year there my 2nd grade teacher asked me to stand and give the prayer for the day. I didn’t remember anyone ever asking me to pray in public before. I was petrified so all I could say was “thank you Lord for this day Amen” and I sat down. My teacher said in front of the whole class “I really think you could have done a better job than that, Patti.” I was so horribly disappointed because I thought the Christian school would have been kinder than the public kindergarten and 1st grade. Anyway, because I experienced all that, it should be no wonder why I went into a state of panic over my daughter seriously dating the CLS guy. Everything he told me about being raised in CLC school sounded like my school. Only he at the time still had enormous respect for it including Mahaney and Harris. And that really scared me.
Darlene wrote:
Is this site a parody or for real?
(Done) Just Watching wrote:
Amen! I wish Piper and the neo-cons would realize that the message of Christianity has nothing to do with gender roles. If it did, then Jesus would have discussed gender roles and would have sent Mary back to the kitchen, would never have talked with the woman at the well but instead would have told her to learn at home from her husband, and of course would have used Peter instead of Mary Magdalene to be the first to tell of the resurrection.
By the way, I don’t get Piper’s tweet about necklines. Probably something about them being too low (or not low enough?). I guess my female brain isn’t advanced enought to understand him.
siteseer wrote:
Just as the Deebs did a parody post about church membership and church covenants, they need to do one about gender roles. Maybe we can all contribute our snark-filled pointers on how to be real “Biblical” men and women.
siteseer wrote:
Sad, isn’t it?
Off subject, but at 1230 Eastern time there is a “must hear” radio program.
Pam Palmer, Tiffany Stanley (Washingtonian writer) and Mark Mitchell will be on the Kojo Nnamdi radio show today at 1230 Eastern Time.
https://thouarttheman.org/2016/03/31/kojo-nnamdi-radio-program-discuss-covenant-life-church-sexual-abuse-scandal/
Darlene wrote:
Pardon my French, but are you f@#%ing kidding me? What the heck is up with these prissy mama’s boys thinking their behavior is “manly”? It really is sad that it has become so hard to discern between sincerity and parody in the “conservative” religious and political realms.
Ladies, I have to apologize for the knuckleheads of my gender…we are not all like that.
Honestly, I would like to slap silly “bubble boy” and “Mr. Woe is me, my wife is lazy”…..my own experience (both first hand and through observation) is that wives tend to carry much more of the load, because us dudes can be really clueless! I love the line in ” My Big,Fat Greek Wedding regarding the man being the head, but the woman is the neck….pretty sure that is usually the case……and yes, I am man enough to admit it.
We (guys) don’t generally admit it, but at least some of us do see it and appreciate it….
Really, dishes not rinsed enough?
There is a British word that sums this up nicely & that word is b*ll*cks. It all just looks like an excuse for men to become lazy, nit-picking judgemental tyrants. Why can’t he do the sodding dishes?
On an entirely other note, to all my dog loving friends here, I had to say goodbye to my beautiful Darcey on Tuesday. She was really sinking & it was the last moment I felt like I could give her the gentlest sweetest death she deserved. She went in my arms hearing words of love. We were together from the day she was born & loved each other ridiculously. I only wish every child in the world was loved & looked after like she was – if anyone had touched a hair on her head, let alone thought to abuse her in any sexual way- I would have found a way to prevent them ever doing that again. Ever. Why aren’t churches looking after kids in that way?
(Done) Just Watching wrote:
As for motive, I doubt that it’s to hide their theology – TRs tend to be quite proud of it (I was). I think for many, it’s a belated rear-guard action against the liberation of women, a last-stand by absolute traditionalists who think men are losing their rightful place.
As for why it gets elevated to an essential… well, it’s just like C. S. Lewis said. The problem with “Christianity And (fill in the blank)” is that (fill in the blank) eventually takes over the entire project. And no doubt for some, that was always what they wanted in the first place…
Patriciamc wrote:
Amen! I wish Piper and the neo-cons would realize that the message of Christianity has nothing to do with gender roles. If it did, then Jesus would have discussed gender roles…
That’s why you’ll find that most complementarian arguments camp out in the Old Testament and certain portions of Paul’s letters wrenched out of context. Jesus’ actions, and the implications of them, are a major blind spot to their way of thinking…
“It took so long for my arm to begin to move back toward the running water, that the muscles began to ache.”
This reminds me of another post that discusses Piper’s approach to playing Scrabble with his wife, where he literally thinks it’s a marriage issue. You’ll find it here:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2015/10/23/john-piper-explains-gods-will-in-scrabble-and-child-molestation-and-we-pick-up-the-pieces/
Through his convoluted theology he deliberately loses the game because that’s what his wife needs. But imagine that once his wife, in all likeliness, finds out about his looney tactic and in order to be the submissive wife that he wants her to be she then duplicates his approach… will both of their arms be indefinitely locked in a permanent standoff over the Scrabble board?
To The Deebs: You guys are an absolute inspiration to me and I’m eternally grateful for your website.
P.S.
And yes, on many issues, my wife wears the pants in our home and I love her all the more.
@ siteseer:
And the wife is to act as a mommy for the one act of getting him accountability! There is no basic common sense with these people.
Mike wrote:
The same “manly men” who refuse to stand up for molested children.
Beakerj wrote:
Hugs & prayers from here. Losing a pet is truly heartbreaking.
incognito wrote:Sbk
You have no idea how much this infuriates me. How different it could have been for you to be assured of your innate great value because you are human, created in His image, first and foremost. They were the ones spitting in God’s face!
The story CBMW posted doesn’t jibe with what a lot of celebrity Calvinists teach about what leading their wives is about: servant leadership. I’ve heard a lot of pastors in this tribe teach that being the head of the household means taking the lead in chores, not nitpicking how your wife does the dishes. And many of them might balk at Sanford’s actions.
I say that to lead to this point: if not even CBMW represents true complementarianism, then what is it? And if even conservative Calvinists can’t agree on what it looks like, then how is it something that’s clearly taught from Scripture?
This. Is. Hell. This is the hell Jesus was referring to.
What a complete lack of freedom, human connection, play. “They gave up natural relations for unnatural ones…” may take on a whole new meaning here. This is not natural, it’s fear driven, over calculating, how can anyone breathe?
It is also as if this woman thinks Jesus was TOO standing behind her, right there, on her husband’s side. They’re enmeshed together in this type of practical theology. Jesus more than likely would have said something along the lines of “Hey! I see some bubbles left!” And then proceed to wipe some playfully on her face, and then a ten minute game of chasing and laughing bubble fight would have ensued.
The strenuous and tedious dialogue that she transcribes around her frozen arm made me think that Sanford might be scary, like she is paralyzed as she contemplates his likely harsh (maybe) physically abusive response, if she doesn’t comply.
@ Rose:
Yes. She managed to paint her husband as either an abuser or sick. Not what she intended, I know. But in her world the “husband” and “Jesus” lines are blurred.
Oh & P.S. My other dog Linus won’t manage being an only dog, he’s never spent significant time alone. Last week I saw an ad looking for a new home for a 9yr old female (terrier, early middle age) of the same breed, who needs a new home, & looks not like Darcey but like her sister Pippin who is Linus’s Mum (who lives in America). So I have rung to meet this dog on Saturday in case the dog-without-a-home fits the-home-in-need-of-a-dog. Rumour is she likes snuggling other dogs, which for Linus would be a dream come true. Please pray dog friends, seems a ridiculous thing to ask for prayer for, but a good fit would be a wonderful thing for a small sad boy dog 🙁
That soap bubble article is so terrible 🙁
This sounds exactly like what my wife describes as the interactions between herself and her ex-husband. And I believe it. Time and time again in our marriage (though now with far less frequency) my wife has been surprised that I don’t get upset over her not doing something “just so”. I initially had to tell her “you are a mature adult and I trust the way you chose to do things, even if they aren’t the way I’d do them”.
Which is not to say we don’t identify areas each other could improve or do things better. But if she did something that I’d commented on, I wouldn’t say “you did it!”. I’d say “Thanks for taking my view into consideration!”
1. Hold on… These people wrote a whole article about….. rinsing dishes?
2. Serious question – is group sex really an issue that comes up often in Christian marriages? (it seems like such a bizarre topic to need to be specified that I feel like I wandered into the twilight zone…)
Is the soap bubbles woman so ridiculously submissive that she would actually submit to group sex or a bank robbery? If Sanford told her to do something bad, would her arms freeze for a few minutes before she caved? Eeeessshhhhhh.
nathan priddis wrote:
I despise the word “winsome” at times. It just reminds me of someone speaking through a tight, insincere smile, and it makes me cringe inside.
Todd Wilhelm wrote:
Did anybody listen to the show? Can somebody provide a review?
I’ve gone to the website of the radio but it seems to have finished already, and they don’t seem to provide a recorded version of the show to download.
Nancy2 wrote:
To use as weapons? 😀
Martos wrote:
Many apologies. I’m in the UK and listening right now to the radio, and didn’t take in account the time difference… D’oh! 🙂 It’s not even 9 am yet over there… I also found a link on the website to a site where you can listen to previous shows, so I guess this one will be available soon after today’s show is finished: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443519/the-kojo-nnamdi-show
Complementarianism = bad. Period. There’s nothing redeeming in it. The soap bubble story (if true) is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.
I think the new swing to fundamentalism is based on fear. Our world scares them. Christianity is no longer the dominant voice in society, we’ve made great strides in human rights – in particular women’s rights. These men are threatened by the fact that women can be engineers (both the train and designing type) or pilots or soldiers or cops or welders or heavy equipment operators, carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, astronauts and on and on.
Science has pulled back the curtain on a universe that is more wondrous and amazing (and not a little bit more dangerous) than we thought.
Christianity should see this as a challenge to engage the world. In some ways Paul’s world was like ours. The United States may not be military empire but it certainly is a cultural force in this world. Christians have unprecedented freedom to preach and engage through all venues.
The Neo-Cal “complementarians” betray the “great commission” by placing their own iron curtain on their congregations through control and subjugation. They have more in common with North Korea than the liberal democracy that so many have fought for (and in some places continue to fight for). The bronze age isn’t coming back – nor should it.
Martos wrote:
The radio show has not yet aired. It airs in about 3 hours. 1230 Eastern time. I hope to record it and will probably post it on my blog tomorrow.
I grew up with a “perfectionist” mom. Nothing I did ever pleased her. From doing the dishes to how I washed my hair. It had to be so perfect. I am not like that at all. Early on in my marriage, my husband questioned me on how he thought I hadn’t cleaned the bathroom, which I had. I responded that if he thought he could clean it better, then do it. He has cleaned our home now for almost 31 years. I just can’t tolerate someone telling me how to do something their way. It’s a good thing that he decided early on to be the one who cleans the house as I have had very bad health over the years. We share the cooking and laundry. Of course, the other day he washed light colored clothes with purple sheets that had never been washed before. I had to get things out of the dryer quickly that I didn’t want dried together. We will celebrate 31 yrs of marriage in April. I still don’t like it when he tells me how to do certain things. But we work it out. When you grow up as I did, it changes how you feel about things.
“He was standing in back of her to watch what she was doing.”
And had been doing this their entire married life! How annoying. She was busy and he had nothing better to do.
(That said, it would probably bother me too. Which is why I have a dishwasher. Maybe he should have bought her a dishwasher!)
As I have said before, there is not much better free entertainment to be found than a Tweet by Pastor Emeritus Piper when he has forgotten to take his meds. A close second is a gem from Pat Robertson.
Lucky for us he doesn’t believe in retirement, he should keep us entertained for years to come.
Lydia wrote:
Or is it?
perhaps this was one of those passive aggressive moves to call in other men around this guy and tell him to tone it down a bit.
Hey, I can dream once in a while, can’t I?
“She would say it not with a haughty or arrogant attitude, but rather with a winsome, submissive, longing one”
Also, if you tell someone you won’t have group sex with a ‘longing’ attitude, he might get the wrong idea!!!
srs wrote:
Part of me thinks this has to do with the fact that Piper just loooooves Driscoll’s theology. And I think the part he loves is the part where the wife is supposed to be a wild and crazy nymphomaniac in the bedroom, never forbidding any sex act and never forbidding massive amounts of sex in order to keep the husband from straying. Between husband and wife, whatever the demands of the husband are, they are kosher and the wife should comply with the utmost enthusiasm. The line here, would be bringing in a third party. And the ultimate ‘sin’ in this dynamic is, of course, group sex.
Tina wrote:
Winsome makes me think of Princess Di, up through the eyelashes looks and a childish giggle. Probably while flipping her long blonde hair.
It sounds as if their definition of winsome is passive-aggressive manipulation.
And their definition of marriage is power struggle.
The article on how to discipline your lazy wife is unbelievable. Maybe the author could give us some pointers on practical ways to discipline your lazy wife. Sounds as if the whole thing could easily devolve into CDD.
It grieves me to think that this level of institutionally sponsored dysfunction is what some people equate with Christianity.
GSD wrote:
Oh he has a whole article on how to discipline your wife. He does at least say he is against physical punishment (Christian Domestic Discipline), but other than that he has these pointers:
Cook for yourself & the kids, throw away any leftovers so the wife has to cook for herself if she wants to eat.
Take away her access to money/credit cards, etc.
Stop spending time with her.
Do your own laundry, but leave her to do her own. (I’m trying to figure out how this is bad – in my home everyone has done their own laundry from the time they were tall enough to reach into the washer to load it up.)
Take away her cell phone.
Change the password on the router so she can’t access the internet.
Cancel cable TV.
There may be more – this is what I can remember from reading the article last night, when I was thinking “This is supposed to be Christian????” SMH
srs wrote:
Obviously, the usefulness of this example is that Piper didn’t choose things that were likely to be real issues. That way, he only theoretically condones non-submission. Other things are subject to the will of the elders, of course, who will decide if she sinned against her (loving, laying down his life for her) husband (who dragged her up before the elders for not submitting or is personally shaming her for her misbehavior). His words aren’t meant to be comfort or help to REAL women. Just theoretical ones.
Todd Wilhelm wrote:
Thanks! That is a great idea. Things like this need to be archived. You never know when it may be necessary.
We all think we are free to choose which church to attend. (At least a few hundred in my city, and needless to say, very few issues if any they all agree on.) Yet, some are willing to elect a political theocrat determined to dictate which proper Christian values are to be imposed upon all, believers and non-believers. Folks who follow those type of “leaders” are unknowingly abrogating their own autonomy.
@ Todd Wilhelm:
ROFL……oh man. I needed that!
Reading this makes me feel ill. I see so much ridiculousness and smallness exposed for what it is. Years of trying to rinse the bubbles… Waiting for my husband to lead. I see that the hierarchy setup is doomed to fail, to create entitled men who feel the need to micromanage instead of humbly help. And @Darlene that crazy site hits too close to home. Yikes! I’ve faithfully followed you WW ladies for a year plus. This is my first time joining in. Thank you so much for what you do!
This post comes just after I made a few posts at my blog about gender complementarianism.
(I put my blog’s main home page URL in the website space of this comment box i.d. section, so I assume when I post this, my “Daisy” screen name of this post will be a link, clickable, which will take you to the blog’s home page.)
Probably my favorite post I made on the subject is this one:
Even Warm and Fuzzy, True, Correctly-Implemented Gender Complementarianism is Harmful to Women, and It’s Still Sexism – Yes All Comps (Refuting “Not All Comps”)
https://missdaisyflower.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/even-warm-and-fuzzy-true-correctly-implemented-gender-complementarianism-is-harmful-to-women-and-its-still-sexism-yes-all-comps-refuting-not-all-comps/
My other favorite post on my blog about the subject is-
“Christian Gender Complementarianism is Christian-Endorsed Codependency for Women (And That’s Not A Good Thing)”
srs wrote:
Evidently it is the norm in Piper world. What I find bizarre is he is very concerned about the wife’s propet response but says nothing-nada about the state of the husbands soul.
This is Pipers religion. If you have ever read the rules in Calvin’s Geneva, it follows that vein.
Piper had his son, Abraham, excommunicated. He played music in bars and drank.
@ George:
That site is bananas!!! They say: “But on the other hand, one of the greatest struggles for many women is the struggle against the sin of laziness.”
BS. I have know many a lazy man. Let’s stop being ridiculous.
Off-topic:
If you want to enter the conversation on today’s radio show about the sexual abuse scandal at CLC/SGM/SGC Please do. Tiffany Stanley of the Washingtonian Magazine, Mark Mitchell, Executive Pastor of CLC (my former church) and myself as the mother of an SGM sexual abuse victim will be interviewed. You can listen live from WAMU’s webpage or FM 88.5 in D.C. area. The Kojo Nnamdi Show. 12:30 p.m. today.
Below is contact info:
1-800-433-8850 • kojo@wamu.org
Or you can go to their contact page and send an email from that page:
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/contact
Mara wrote:
You know, you might be right. She gets to throw him under the bus as an OTT tyrant in a nice passive aggressive way that makes her look very holy as the submissive wife who endures this treatment.
You think tiny Owen, Bruce Ware son in law, took this into consideration before the article was published. :o) Martha might be more clever than they dreamed. Sanford comes off as a petty tyrant.
There are a few things I wanted to say about the original post. I might break my thoughts up over a few posts rather than cram them all in one big post. 🙂
Regarding Dee’s most salient observation that other than “women cannot be preachers, a husband gets a tie breaking vote in a marriage,” other than that, complementarians can’t agree on much of anything.
I notice that some complementarians who post to this blog never deal with that problem. The comps who have posted here before really like the general idea of male domination over women, but they can’t quite delineate what it looks like for everyone, which they really ought to be able to do, since they insist there are “biblical gender roles” applicable to all.
Sometimes, some of them will say, “Hey, wait a minute, I am a complementarian, but I don’t agree with John Piper’s teachings on complementarianism.”
If you insist on some kind of male hierarchy over women, that each gender should live by, I would think it would behoove you to explain what that entails, and explain why your views on the matter conflict with John Piper’s, and why should anyone buy your version of comp over Piper’s.
Maybe your version of comp is in error and Piper’s is correct.
Other than Wayne Grudem (his long list of what women can and cannot do, “83 Biblical Rules for Gospel Women”), I don’t really see complementarians take a stab at it.
Complementarians enjoy this nebulous, vague idea of female subordination but some (or many?) don’t want to really put out there what exactly it consists of.
I think some complementarians have this vague fear that if the church strips away all notions female subordination, that the church will fall apart, or all the women will turn into Democrat- voting, abortion-supporting, liberal atheists or New Agers.
(Ironically, I’ve read articles with interviews with women who say they got fed up with the sexism (i.e., complementarianism) in Christianity and left the faith for what they believe to be more women-affirming religions.)
Anyway, that the complementarians can’t really come up with a comprehensive list of what women can and cannot do, and that some of them disagree with each other over what women can and can’t do (some of them are fine, for instance, with women teaching mixed gender Sunday School classes while others are not), I think demonstrates that their position is not true. It’s certainly not biblical.
Also, there are examples in the Bible (the text they claim to support) of women doing the very things comps don’t think women should do, or that they resent women doing (teaching men, leading men into war, defeating men in battle, staying single (not marrying), etc.
Every so often, a complementarian will state in a blog post or radio program that they are against women doingactivity “X,” though most of them, outside of Grudem, don’t try to come up with a comprehensive list of rules.
For instance, Tony Miano is opposed to women being open-air, street preachers. He thinks the Bible is opposed to women teaching or preaching the Gospel to the unsaved on street corners.
I have a hunch other complementarians would disagree with Miano and not take issue with women spreading the Gospel on the streets.
John Piper is pretty much against women being police officers – a view which even other complementarians disagreed with him on.
So, most complementarians don’t codify their gender views, but when they trickle out their gender rules one at a time, it’s met with resistance by other complementarians.
Some Islamic nations have Sharia law, with Sharia police, who walk around harassing women for wearing jeans in public, or for not covering their hair, or whatever.
Some complementarian Christians in the United States seem to want a Christianized Sharia for Women. They can’t always agree on what their Complementarian Sharia should look like. All they know is they want one, but they can’t agree with each other on what it should be, precisely.
Ya know, the funny thing is women never sit around saying “we should have less rights, we shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions, we should not be allowed to do this or that or pursue careers or education”. The ones who say those things are men. And, then women think they have to go along with it.
SarahW wrote:
I went to the biblical roles site–wished, after visiting, that it was a parody site. The concept of a husband punishing a wife is beyond me–if I had a married daughter and her husband used that kind of terminology my heart would break.
I have entered a phase of my life where if something looks like Jesus–perhaps it is worth examining (there are some great actors out there that one must be aware of). If it does not look like Jesus, it simply is not. Not worth the time or energy to confront and seek change–simply leave and take as many with you as you can.
What happened to “There is no fear in love”. What part of the gospel do these people not understand? Sadness…
I have said this before, but taking the car keys away from an aged parent is a difficult, but often necessary act–to protect both them and society at large. Please, someone who loves John Piper, take the keys to his social media away from him. Mostly, for society’s sake, but at some point even his most ardent fanboys are going to think he has ‘creeped’ too far.
Under Example 1, where Dee brought up the concept of church shopping, leaving one church that is too restrictive on gender for another that is less restrictive:
I think this is tied into, somewhat, a point brought up on in this post, a similar point which I’ve brought up on this blog a long time ago:
Control: The Reason The Gospel Coalition and CBMW Cannot Actually Condemn Spousal Abuse
http://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/2016/01/control-reason-gospel-coalition-and.html
-which is: If a Christian woman refuses to submit to her husband, and as comps define submitting (most of them seem to define it to mean that ‘the husband is the boss, the wife his slave, who must obey’), what do complementarians advise husbands to do then?
Outside of physically assaulting the wife, verbally berating her, applying guilt, taking away financial means (ripping up the wife’s credit card), isolating the wife from friends and family, there’s not much a husband can do.
And any of those pressure-like behaviors I just outlined are all abusive and-or spiritually abusive and cannot be condoned by appealing to the Bible.
It looks to me as though the biblical text is laying down mutual submission both in and out of marriage, where believers are not to lord authority over other believers (Ephesians 5.21, Matthew 20:25,26, 1 Corinthians 7:4, and other passages).
Furthermore, the biblical text appears to me to communicate that submission is a mindset suggested each follower should consider on his or her own; it’s not a posture or act that one believer can browbeat, guilt trip, or pressure another person into taking.
If biblical submission is forced upon another (the voluntary aspect is removed), it’s no longer biblical submission.
I usually see complementarians (usually men) pressuring, shaming, arguing, or guilt tripping women into thinking they have to submit to men. whether on blogs, or in their books or in sermons.
Complementarian men (and sometimes their Stockholm syndrome complementarian women sisters) cannot just leave the submitting stuff up to each woman and allow the Holy Spirit and/or her own conscience be a guide.
I think, among other things, pressuring, cajoling, or coercing women, as complementarians often do, into accepting a one-way submission could be considered a form of spiritual abuse. I don’t know if it’s really the complementarians place to dictate that women “must” submit to men, or wives to husbands.
Re: 1. CBMW’s Soap Bubble Lady and Dee’s suggestions below it. Dee is spot on.
In my reading on codependency, domestic abuse, and other subjects (there’s a lot of overlap in these topics), I remember seeing similar examples.
I have this one book by a secular therapist who talked about a married woman patient of hers who came to her saying she was deeply depressed and had been depressed for over a year and couldn’t shake it.
The therapist asked her to discuss her home life, her childhood, etc. I don’t know what the religious beliefs of the wife and husband in this example are – not that it really matters.
As it turned out, the wife said her husband had been verbally haranguing her and nit picking her for years over how she carries out housework.
He was very particular in how he wanted his laundry folded and didn’t like how the wife folded his shirts.
The husband complained that the wife occasionally slopped a bit of water on their kitchen floors when watering their house plants.
The wife in this case (and she represents a lot of women, because a lot of women do this), blamed herself.
She sat there, sighing and sad, telling the therapist she must be a terrible, clutzy, horrible, stupid, selfish wife because she couldn’t please her husband the way he wanted.
The therapist asked her to consider things like:
Maybe your husband is the problem, not you. Maybe he’s too picky. Why can’t he fold his laundry himself since he doesn’t like how you do it?
The picture I walked away with after having read all these similar case studies is that many women tend to blame themselves for relationship problems.
A lot of men (even Christian ones) will feed into that womanly tendency, or not to correct it, because it gets them off the hook, and it works to their advantage.
Secular culture conditions women to take blame for things in a relationship that aren’t their fault, and to put their needs on the back burner.
I see Christian complementarianism doing these same, exact negative things to women as secular culture does, but telling Christian women these negative things are God’s design for culture, marriage, and women.
What’s really sad is that a lot of Christian women, who are complementarian, accept all this. They become complicit in their own mistreatment and are told it’s God’s will for them to boot.
@ Daisy:
The absolute worst thing to happen to the comp movement was social media. Before that, most non patriarchal churches kept the details vague but made money off conferences and books. It was more like a spin off profit center. It was marketed as marriage biblical self help. There were always sexual undertones in the teachings. I think that was a big part of the draw.
With social media, people started discussing it more in detail and had new access to other scholarship at their fingertips. Sometimes it only takes a few to question something and others will feel more comfortable.
CBNW types are attempting to fight this off but they only look more bizarre and like petty men who need a woman to make them feel important. They have token women contributors they pay to write and speak.
__
“Some Christian Wives Are Defrauding Their Husbands?”
hmmm…
It is amazing how many Christian wives are defrauding their husbands in the bedroom; –forget the wacky stuff. These husbands are forced to do without. (some for years), they have give their wives no now reason to discontinue (that I can descern) after having a certain amount of children.
huh?
These husbands love their wives and continue on in their marriages, being faithful, taking their part in caring for their children, and helping with weekly chores.
What?
And it has nothing to do about religious leaders making it a sweatbox in the home for these women.
Go figure.
(sadface)
“Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church?”
Surprise!
Many of them do…
ATB 🙂
Sopy
—
@ Cousin of Eutychus:
I called for a Twitter intervention a year ago. :o) Piper was supposed to be off on his Global Apostle taking John Calvin to darkest Africa retirement missions tour. He flew to Geneva to make a video about it! But no, he moved to Nashville instead and got hooked on Twitter.
But now I agree with Todd. We get to see the real brain at work— off stage. I hope he keeps it up.
Daisy wrote:
They are doing it in Germany and Belgium. They cannot even hire women tram drivers in Belgium in certain places because they are harassed so badly
Dee’s other point:
“Women need to take charge in these situations.
There is nothing in the Bible that says a woman should not assume leadership.”
Absolutely. In one of the books I have, a married woman was complaining to the therapist how her husband plays golf every Saturday and jogs three times a week.
She was angry that her husband was getting his needs met, while she was not (she was always taking care of the kids and housework).
The therapist asked her to discuss all this more. The wife mentioned she had been wanting to join a gym and work out a few times a week.
The therapist asked her, ‘And what do you think is stopping you from doing that?’
The wife was stopping herself. She assumed it would be selfish of her to take time out of the week each week, away from the kids and husband and household, to go work out.
The therapist told her that is not so, it wouldn’t make you selfish. The therapist told her to shoot for her goal: go work out every week.
The wife was like, okay, but how do I break this to my husband? How do I ask him for permission to go to a gym?
The therapist (who I’d imagine probably wanted to bang her head against her desk by this time) said she told the lady to TELL her husband in no uncertain terms:
“Honey, I’m joining a gym next week. You’ll have to watch the kids at those times I’m gone, or we can work out a babysitting schedule that works for both of us.”
The point being, if you are in a marriage, your husband is not your father, and you are not a child. You don’t have to ask him for permission to do things. You have needs and rights, too.
You can take that example and apply it to so many other situations.
But you have many complementarians who would want to guilt trip or convince women in those situations that they should continue playing the martyr, sacrifice their needs and rights, to always put the husband and kids (or whomever) first.
Goodness knows I was raised that way, and I catered to my ex fiance constantly, and all he did was take advantage of me. As a result, I ended up resentful, exhausted, and I broke up with him.
I see the same dynamics at work in marriages on a show on cable called “My 600 Pound Life.”
Once the married women on that show start losing weight, they begin noticing imbalances in their marriages, how their husbands sit around like bumps on logs, refusing to help the wife with household chores, etc.
The wives I’ve seen on that show either divorce the guys, or say they are strongly considering divorce.
You can tell women it’s biblical and godly for them to play the self-sacrificing doormat, but the reality of living that lifestyle out usually ends up with the woman tired of it and dumping the guy.
Lydia wrote:
This is one aspect of complementarianism I cannot grasp.
If complementarians were teaching, living out, or understanding husbandly headship correctly (as how the Bible actually presents it), they would be taking on the roles/duties they typically ascribe to wives.
So, that would mean that the husband in the soap bubble story would either shut up about his wife’s scrubbing (he’d not complain to her about it), or he’d buy her a dish washer, or he’d rinse the glasses himself.
If the husband were practicing actual manly man leadership – headship, he’d actually do the servant leader thing and clean the dishes himself, or buy a dishwasher, rather than stand there as a critic and badger his wife into drying the dishes a certain way.
By the way, the husband in that soap bubble story: that is exactly the kind of thing my father would do, and did do, to myself and my mother for years and years.
Daisy wrote:
I actually think that most parts of secular culture are better than
complementarianfemale suborinationist christian culture in this respect.Lydia wrote:
Yes, a gender caste system is a good way of putting it!
I was just saying above that what they want is like a Christian-ized Sharia Law.
Another thing about the dish washing, soap bubble story that just crossed my mind.
The Bible describes an incident where Jesus visited Mary and Martha.
Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, listening to his teaching, while Martha went about housewife chores of dinner preparation.
She complained to Jesus about Mary not helping make dinner and Jesus said,
It looks like Jesus was not so insistent on women being stuck doing home-making chores.
This doesn’t equally square away with how a lot of complementarians teach about marriage, household work, etc.
CBMW and Sanford may want to read this and ponder it:
Couples Who Share Chores May Have Better Sex, And Sex More Often
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/share-chores-better-sex-couples_us_5638eefbe4b00a4d2e0c0594?ir=Women§ion=women&utm_hp_ref=women
Pam Palmer wrote:
Stayed up late enough to listen to it. Great show! Kojo Nnamdi knows his stuff, and it was awesome to hear from you, Pam. I wish there’d been more time for you to speak.
For anyone interested in making comments:
https://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2016-03-31/scandal-roils-a-suburban-church-behemoth
@ Stan:
Kelly Ladd Bishop wrote a rebuttal to that Owen Strachan penned work, for any who may be interested:
Pursue Jesus, Not Complementarity: A Response to Owen Strachan and TGC
http://blog.kellyladdbishop.com/archives/151
@ Darlene:
I’ve seen so much conflicting information about the guy behind that ‘biblical gender roles’ blog. Some say he’s a Poe (satire that rings like the real thing), some say he’s an atheist pretending to be a Christian and is into M.R.A. stuff (men’s rights). I don’t know if he’s for real or not.
rob wrote:
There are some women who believe this, and I can’t begin to inderstand their mentality.
Mara wrote:
I brought this up in one of my blog posts, but this thinking can also become ingrained in women, too.
When I was a kid and teen and was bullied a lot and came home from school obviously upset and angry about being bullied all day, my mother (who believed in traditional gender roles, which includes it is wrong for girls and women to be assertive and show anger), would cut me off by saying, “Be sweet, Daisy! Now be sweet!”
That was her way of telling me I should not be feeling anger or not expressing it, not even when other people treated me horribly.
You have guys like Piper and other complementarians brainwashing Christian women into thinking that being an ever-loving cream puff, who allows people to walk all over them, is God’s intention for girls and women.
My mother believed in all that and pressured me to accept it as well, which I did for years. I can’t live that way anymore. Too many people exploited me when I was that sweet little doormat.
I just clicked on and saw the post. I would have sworn this was my story—-except for the fact that when I was washing dishes and did NOT submit to his demand, my ex-husband came from behind me and hit me across the back so hard he knocked the wind out of me and I collapsed on the floor. Actually I first thought your reference to “soap bubbles submission” was a clever line you thought up, Dee, that is until I clicked on the CBMW site. Trump needs these guys onboard for him in his campaign. They have the perfect lines—soap bubbles submission, my, oh, my!
Daisy wrote:
Unfortunatley, he seems to say all the “right” things, so he could be real. He’s proof that if you follow the logic of complementarianism, it can be taken to some crazy extremes.
@ Ruth Tucker:
Oh Ruth, I am so sorry he did that to you. When I first read the post yesterday, I thought it sounded just like a satire recently posted on FB page Biblical Christian Egalitarians. I did not get it at first because it was too close to reality. And after being reminded by you just now much this is NOT funny, I am so sorry.
I haven’t been able to read all the comments so far, but has anyone started a list of the various kinds of submission a godly wife must be prepared for? I once asked a seminary colleague to give me an example of his headship in real life. He said that he and his wife and kids had been traveling. The wife and kids wanted to stop for lunch at Taco Bell. He, in his God-ordained headship, canceled out their wishes. So here we go with the list:
1. Soap bubbles submission
2. Taco Bell submission
Beakerj wrote:
It’s not ridiculous at all. I’m so sorry for your loss. My elderly kitty, who was the sweetest of the sweet, passed away right before Thanksgiving. She suddenly started having violent seizures a few minutes apart, and the vet said she had a brain tumor. I’m grateful I had the option of having her put to sleep and not suffer. Our pets are a part of the family, so I’m praying for you and for Linus.
Bridget wrote:
CBMW’s need to pontificate to married couples about a middle class housewife properly rinsing sudsy glasses to her husband’s satisfaction sort of reminds me of this:
On Being a Woman After God’s Own Heart
Biblical womanhood, or cultural womanhood?
http://www.cbeinternational.org/resources/article/mutuality/being-woman-after-gods-own-heart
by Jenny Rae Armstrong
Snippet:
Home-made raspberry ice, properly -sudsy- rinsed glasses Vs. facing starvation or being shot at. Hmm.
Gender complementarianism sure seems applicable only, or mainly, to very narrow groups of women who are living under certain economic, political, or physical conditions.
Related to this article, and to John Piper…
I just got a copy of Ruth Tucker’s book Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife.
I’ve only read a few chapters, and skipped around a bit, but it’s all about what the Deebs are talking about. And John Piper is included in the book, as a friend and as one that the author has publicly debated. She also has lamented Piper’s tweets, as if he’s out of touch with his audience.
Highly recommended book by a noted seminary professor and an author of textbooks that Piper himself has used. Don’t let her detractors pass her off as a lightweight.
Ruth Tucker wrote:
Most certainly control of the TV remote. The Most Holy High Husband should show his God-given authority by lovingly making a servent-leader decision about what programs the family should watch. Probably something on ESPN. I’m pretty sure if you read the Bible while standing on your head and looking at it sideways, you’d see that Scripture is clear on this.
Piper’s post is bizarre on numerous levels, including, strangely, the fact that the idea that the husband is simply sinning is nowhere to be found. So a guy wants his wife to join him in criminal activity or group sex, but the worst Piper can say about it is that the wife should act in a way that he shouldn’t do it so that the wife “could enjoy him as her leader.”
Huh? I can tell you that if I proposed either of those activities to my wife I’d probably get decked, and I’d absolutely deserve it. There would be no enjoying of me as a leader, whatever that means.
Seriously, though, any guy who seriously wants to do those kinds of things needs some professional intervention, including possibly of the law enforcement variety. That Piper and his crowd don’t recognize this is not just creepy but also scary.
Jack wrote:
I just wanted to read this again, Jack.
Hey, I want to read again.
“Complementarianism = bad. Period. There’s nothing redeeming in it. The soap bubble story (if true) is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”
And again, thank you.
“Complementarianism = bad. Period. There’s nothing redeeming in it. The soap bubble story (if true) is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”
@ Ted:
Now this is cosmic. There was no reference to Ruth Tucker or her book when I starting writing this comment (I used “Cntrl_F” to find out) but she was writing a comment a few minutes ahead of me.
Welcome, Ruth! I’m a fan.
Daisy wrote:
I am so sorry Daisy. You were most certainly justified in your anger. The Bible does indeed call for righteous anger, and your anger was a great example.
Mara wrote:
That raises another to me, related point. Gender complementarians think that these roles are in-born, or designed by God, for the genders.
Unless they are arguing that these roles have been distorted via the Fall (which I don’t recall seeing them argue before), why do they feel the need to keep doing things like instructing women how to delicately give directions to a lost man, so as not to wound his masculine ego?
If God designed women already to be the gentler, touchy-feelier, weaker, gender, they’re already programmed biologically to tip-toe around men’s feelings anyhow.
Women shouldn’t need a John Piper telling them how to behave like women in the first place if complementarianism is true.
(Which is annoying anyhow. I don’t like it when Christian men tell Christian women how to behave like women: I am one. I live as one. I have been female since birth. I think I grasp being a woman more than you ever will, John Piper.
A lot of complementarian men “man-splain” How To Be or Act Like A Woman to women quite often, though.)
Has anyone seen complementarian women instructing men how to Act Like Men? I don’t seem to remember seeing any such articles. They might exist.
@ Daisy:
This reminds me of advice my aunt’s and Mother gave my cousin after a few months of marriage. She was getting up at 5 am to fix his favorite hot breakfast. She worked, too, but went in later. She was tired of doing it but did not know how to stop. He was very comp, btw.
They told her to never start something like that ever again and to start dividing chores….now..in a very casual way. And to leave him a note on where to find the cereal. :o)
Very biblical The older women instructing the younger. :o)
Daisy wrote:
One exception: I have seen some complementarians argue that ‘the woman will desire her husband’ clause in Genesis supposedly means all women every where will desire to rule men (or only a husband).
Other than that, I don’t remember complementarians arguing that the Fall caused distortions in gender roles.
When transgenderism becomes debated, complementarians argue that gender roles / proper gender behavior is programmed by God in people from birth.
If gender stuff is already programmed into people (boys will act like boys, girls will automatically act like girls and choose girl things), why do we need Franklin Graham telling Target that boys need blue signs saying “Boy” on a toy aisle for boys, and pink signs for girls for the girl aisle?
@GSD You wrote, “And their definition of marriage is power struggle.” This is so spot on I nearly fell out of my chair. Comps talk about “usurping” women and “passive” men as the greatest threat to biblical marriage. It truly makes it sound like we get married only to fight for top-dog status, which is false. Sin exists beneath these things (domination and passivity), which aren’t gender-specific but mankind-specific.
Overbearing husbands and wives destroy trust and rob their spouse of the autonomy inherent in imago Dei. Passive husbands and wives can place too much responsibility on their spouses.
The answer isn’t a magical understanding of gender roles and behaviors but instead a full understanding of who we are in Christ. We live out our faith as partners by grace and a striving to be more like Him who created us. When we take out rules and live by grace and faith, we see marriage transformed into partnership.
@ Bill M:
Yes, women are supposed to be complicit in their own mistreatment under gender complementarianism, and they’re supposed to enjoy it, too.
I think it was the Southern Baptist Danvers statement(?) that asked wives to “graciously” submit to their husbands. You can’t just submit, you have to be gracious about it and like it, too.
I read in that book about domestic abuse by Bancroft how a lot of men who abuse their wives rub the salt in the wound. When the wife starts showing signs of abuse (crying a lot, fearful, depressed, etc), these men blame the wives for their reactions to being abused. It’s insidious.
My sister (who is verbally abusive) does the same thing with me. She abuses me, and if I cried (or lately, stand up to her and tell her to stop it), she would tell me to feel sorry for her, that she only lashes out because her life is so terrible, so I kind of deserve the verbal beatings.
There is something very cruel about mistreating people but telling them they should enjoy it or just put up with it, even after they object to it or admit to being hurt by it.
@ John:
You know what is also creepy and scary? The number of people who hang on Pipers every word. Just look at the number of Twitter followers he has. He packs the house when he goes to speak…anywhere.
@ sigh:
John McArthur used the illustration of marriage as war.
@ siteseer:
Your post reminds me of…
Source:
http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/absurd-legalism-gender-roles-submission-piper
If you check out the comments on that page, there was a post by someone who said they knew a complementarian married couple who did a lot of this beating around the bush nonsense.
If the wife did not want to cook, she could not (she felt) directly ask her husband to take her out to dinner.
So she would leave a can of creamed corn on the counter as a hint to him. (He hated creamed corn and didn’t want it for dinner). The canned corn on the counter was his signal from the wife to take her out to a restaurant.
As to your other point. I was just reading in a Christian magazine about a week ago about a married couple where the husband out-lived the wife.
The wife had done all the cooking in the marriage. The husband was left clueless about meal times after his wife passed. The only thing he learned to cook was Chex Mix party snack mix in the oven.
That is what happens if you divvy chores up too tightly by gender: one spouse dies, and the other may have no idea about car car, finances, cooking, laundry, or whatever.
@ Darlene:
I think Mierle’s (sorry if I am spelling her screen name wrong) suggestion is a good one here, that she mentions from time to time:
John Piper should take a secular job somewhere, preferably with a woman boss, or at least women co-workers.
One of my issues with complementarianism, or with how guys like Piper operate is that they are all about ideology, not real world scenarios.
Piper can certainly pontificate about the real world all day long, but he’s not living in it (take, for example, his ridiculous, impractical advice to the young, single woman who wrote him asking if it would be acceptable, gender role wise, for her to work as a police officer).
Piper (and Driscoll and these other guys) generally sit around on a big, cushy office chair, in their academic or churchy ivory towers, writing blog posts all day to other people who already agree with them.
They don’t get out and actually live and work with other people, including other people who don’t share their religious or gender views.
If Piper had to actually rub elbows with non-complementarian women, it may cause him to reevaluate some of his positions. I don’t think he realizes how out of touch and wacko he sounds to the rest of the world.
(Driscoll might know how he’s coming across to others, but he’s so NPDish and egocentric, he doesn’t care. )
siteseer wrote:
I guess, to them, it doesn’t matter. Their gender ideology trumps real people, real lives, real problems.
This came to the fore when Tim Challies dismissed Ruth Tucker’s book about domestic violence, where she details how complementarian headship views caused, or contributed, to her abuse at the hands of her husband.
Challies basically dismissed her book in his review and told others not to read it because she wrote about it from a place of personal experience.
I wrote a blog post on my ‘MissDaisy’ blog about that:
“Doctrines, Theological Views, and Biblical Hermeneutics Have Real-Life Consequences – Personal Experience Vs. Sola Scriptura”
I don’t think Challies, Piper, and these other guys care that doctrine can and does have real-life consequences. They seem to think their teachings exist in the abstract, or in a vacuum.
If a complementarian woman writes a blog post on how awesome complementarianism has been for her life or marriage, Challies, Piper, et. al., would all likely report on it in glowing terms and advise women every where to read it.
I have seen content by complementarians marketing comp to women on the grounds that it will improve their lives. That is basing a doctrine on personal experience.
Complementarians are dandy with people using personal experience to sell complementarianism but not to point out its hazards.
Mike wrote:
Watch the heartwarming laundry ad that has everyone talking about gender inequality
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ariel-laundry-ad-share-the-load-163942249.html
There is a link below the video on the page to an English-language subtitled version.
@ Beakerj:
I’m very sorry to hear of Darcey’s passing. 🙁
Eeyore wrote:
Some complementarian recently tried to distort Jesus into a complementarian. That is mind boggling to me, because Jesus was the opposite of complementarian.
Response to Kevin DeYoung’s “Our Pro-Woman, Complementarian Jesus.”
(part 1. There is a link to part 2 at the end of part 1)
http://www.cbeinternational.org/resources/article/arise/response-kevin-deyoung%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cour-pro-woman-complementarian-jesus%E2%80%9D?page=show
Mail Robot wrote:
Exactly. But this is a point that most of them do not want to answer or grapple with.
They know they want female subordination but don’t care to explicitly lay out how it works, and they disagree with each other about when, where, or if to limit women.
They will be quick to object to a teaching or outlandish quote by another complementarian if they find it embarrassing to their position. That is when you start hearing things from them such as “Not all complementarians…”
I think there might be a legitimate time and place to play the “not all X’s do thus and so” game, but I find it very disingenuous when being employed by comps in regards to complementarianism.
Beakerj wrote:
Please don’t feel bad about asking for this prayer request. I’ve already prayed about it and will do so again. I hope you can find a suitable doggie companion.
Cousin of Eutychus wrote:
A very large chunk, it would appear.
Jeff S wrote:
Now that you mention it, that part of her story where she says her husband keeps saying, “You did it” made it sound as though he was treating her like a toddler.
I grew up like this – my father was like her husband. My dad would criticize or make snarky remarks if you didn’t do some chore the way he thought it should be done.
After so much of that, you just stop doing whatever it is the person is nit picking about. If you’re going to complain about how I clean dishes, I will stop doing them, so you can take that chore over. Enjoy doing the dirty dishes all the time by yourself!
Lydia wrote:
That’s just gross and sad. I prefer to love and enjoy my spouse as the person God created and gave to me. If Johnny Mac chooses to power monger in his marriage then i feel sorry for both him and his wife. It’s quite childish.
Jack wrote:
I find it jarring how some complementarian churches or denominations won’t allow women to preach from a pulpit, but they are fine with sending women overseas to spread the Gospel as missionaries.
I tuned in a few minutes late to radio interview on CLC/Sgm. The host was very well prepared with knowledge and pointed questions.
I was driving, so I was unable to take notes, but the one thing that stood out to me was Mark Mullery (do I have that right?) tried to put the sexual abuse incidents, and the church’s lack of reporting, in the far past. The host then asked about the arrest of Larry Caffery last week, making the excuse a clear folly.
This reminds me of the response Anybwile Thabiti posts on his Twitter account in regards to why he still supports CJ. It was soooo long ago. Move along, nothing to see here.
Todd Wilhelm wrote:
That’s what the Michael Jackson eating popcorn animated GIF is for:
https://media.giphy.com/media/qR6UR8K1Ia2BO/giphy.gif
🙂
Daisy wrote:
This is exactly what I mean by defining.
These men have set themselves up-on-high as the great definers of our existence.
They have defined what it means to be a woman. She must be sweet.
They have also defined women on how they are allowed to feel. They must feel sweet. They must enjoy a man’s leadership, etc.
These men make no room for women to be people. They have to be caricatures of their idea of what is feminine. These men are doing all this defining and leaving no room for women to be living, breathing human beings.
And they do not have this authority to define away women’s humanity into a plastic caricature of what is ideal to them. They do not have this authority. But they prance around like little dictators and take that authority away from God, the creator of women, and make it their own.
John Piper is a thief, plain and simple. He has stolen God’s authority in this. He has no right to define women and how they are supposed to feel and think. Yet he does so, self-righteously.
Lydia wrote:
I wish all complementarian men had to be zapped into the body of a biological woman and live as women for a year or more.
Like in the Quantum Leap TV show:
Scott Bakula as a woman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGFrPfKLknw
siteseer wrote:
They don’t care as long as it ends well for themselves.
Daisy wrote:
Possibly because at that point the uppity wimmen gone and out of the Manly Men’s hair. Like counting trees in Siberia — far, far, away where they can’t rock the boat at home.
Plus the chance (if you pick the country right) they’ll be Martyred in the field — problem solved. (Didn’t Driscoll actually come out and say that once except regarding singles?)
Lydia wrote:
And in War you destroy the Enemy.
No James Thurber humor here.
Patriciamc wrote:
In an Age of Extremes like today, it is literally impossible to do Satire or Parody.
Because as crazy as you can imagine for Satire/Parody, there will be True Believers out there twice as Crazy, twice as X-Treme, and DEAD SERIOUS.
Lydia wrote:
“THE VOICE OF A GOD, NOT OF A MAN!
THE VOICE OF A GOD, NOT OF A MAN!”
— Acts 12:22
Mara wrote:
Reminds me of Warren Jeff who asked the young girls and women, “are you keeping sweet or do you need to be punishsed?”
“http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-polygamist-cults-last-stand-the-rise-and-fall-of-warren-jeffs-20160209?page=6
Mara wrote:
How does that differ from the FANTASY of “what a woman is like” in PORNOGRAPHY?
Mara wrote:
Indeed. And when they do start to consider them people, they assign them the status of children or servant. (I don’t know if he was serious or not, but someone on the comments of that dumb ‘lazy wife’ article quoted a verse about servants in reference to authority over wives! [Yes, some people are lazy. Talk to them like a grown, human adult about it. Any of these other methods are going to lead to craziness. Sidenote: a lot of those people seem to be on ‘second’ marriages. Maybe this way of living doesn’t actually work?])
Anyways, my point was that you are absolutely correct. Women are PEOPLE. People have FEELINGS. Those feelings are not always nice, sweet, charming and they are usually probably almost always NOT a desire for someone to dictate every aspect of your life! Maybe if Piper et al ever tried to think about how THEY would feel if they had to ‘submit’ to every stupid little thing their wives wanted they might, MIGHT have some empathy.
But then again maybe not. As some of these folks can’t seem to muster up empathy for abused children, who even murderers and rapists in prison seem to care about!!!
And if the MOST important thing to anyone is how much ‘authority’ they have over you? Run. Run fast.
“Sanford and I had many conflicts, but one kept occurring. The conflict was over how I rinsed the dishes that I had washed. When I washed dishes, as always, I was in a hurry. Because of that, I did not always rinse every dish perfectly.”
Doesn’t sound at at all like a spiritual problem, though to her it was and I hope it did her some good to work through it…it sound like an, “I’ve got to invest in a dishwasher because through my own admission I’m in a hurry and don’t rinse every dish…”
I think it less submission and more personal responsibility…as is, if you are going to wash the dishes, do it right the first time. Wonder why she didn’t ask her husband to help…and seriously, get a dishwasher. LOL
Lydia wrote:
John Piper would probably agree to all that. It’s troubling how sometimes extreme Islam has things in common with complementarian Christianity.
Gus wrote:
Yes, I think portions of secular culture recognize that there are double standards for women. It may have started out that the feminists were the first ones to notice it and speak up against it.
Complementarians want to keep women in boxes and bound up in the double standards, though.
Perhaps Feminism is not the Enemy
http://newlife.id.au/equality-and-gender-issues/perhaps-feminism-not-enemy/
Dee said:”
”
I thought there something was off with Piper when he co-opted the term “hedonism” for the Christian walk in “Desiring God”. Now I’m convinced, there is something off. The book came highly recommended and I was puzzled why it didn’t resonate with me. Know I take it as a good sign that I did not “get it”.
@ Ruth Tucker:
I’m so very sorry you were treated that way by your ex husband. I was also upset and angered by Tim Challies’ review of your book.
@ Patriciamc:
I haven’t spent a lot of time at that guy’s blog, but I have seen other people (who have been there more than I have) say that even if the blog writer is a fake, there seem to be a lot of genuine Christian gender complementarians participating in his comment box on his posts, who agree with his views.
If only Zipporah hadn’t been a sinful woman and when Moses was apparently given over to evil and pagan ways, refusing to circumcise his son, and the Lord coming to kill him. If only she’d given him a winsome smile and a look that said “Oh honey, I just can’t go along with your ways here, but I shall not take charge and circumcise our boy myself, then call you a ‘husband of blood’. Why that would be haughty and unsubmissive and John Piper wouldn’t approve; so carry on in your ways while I look ever so winsomely and longingly in your direction.”
Then, one can presume, the Lord would’ve killed Moses dead.
Bridget wrote:
Exactly right. This stuff is wacky…..
Ruth Tucker wrote:
I bet John Piper and Mark Driscoll would be a gold mine for those types of examples.
There’s also a flip side to it: what these guys say women CAN do.
In an older post on this blog, Deb and Dee cited an example of John Piper telling women they can use the bathroom without asking a man’s permission first, or something like that.
The examples of complementarians saying what women CAN do are about as bad as their rules about what women should not do, IMO, because it’s so condescending.
Praise be to Piper for graciously deigning to permit women to turn down their husband’s requests for multiple partner sex. That is so kind of him.
Regarding the area of sexuality, almost all male complementarians think that a wife owes the husband sex whenever and however he wants it. Driscoll in particular seems pretty bad about that stuff.
There was some other complementarian blogged about here (I can’t remember who it was) who was advising married men that if their wives did not wash the dishes, to tattle about her to the church elders and get her into trouble over it.
@ sigh:
“The answer isn’t a magical understanding of gender roles and behaviors but instead a full understanding of who we are in Christ. We live out our faith as partners by grace and a striving to be more like Him who created us.”
+++++++++++++++
hmmmm… can’t say I even really know what those words mean anymore. heard them a zillion times, drilled into me like a repetitive noise that’s been going on for so long it goes unnoticed.
do you know what they mean?
it’s much easier for me to look at a number of non-religious friends’ happy marriages and to observe that they are simply kind to each other. see how easy that was? and it was free! didn’t require an expensive multi-day trip to Louisville.
@ Patriciamc:
I’m sorry for the passing of your pet kitty. 🙁
Lea wrote:
Didn’t you know, it’s always the woman who sins? ( at least with theses wing nuts) From my observation, laziness doesn’t discriminate along gender lines.
Daisy wrote:
Yes, Islam and complementarian Christianity share in a severe bias against women. Mormonism does as well. Why can’t women see this? It’s a mystery to me.
Either this marriage has much more serious issues if they are having a conflict over this, or their relationship is so shallow that they have to contrive a conflict.
“Winsome” woman???? Yeah, ok sure thing there Piper! Maybe I have been single to long. Well wait no not even when I was married did I ever think about being a winsome submissive woman. I will say that those expectations were never placed on me I respected my husband because it was mutual and there was no struggle to be in charge. This was with an unbelieving husband.
In an earlier comment someone mentioned allowing women to go to the mission field…. One reason…it’s cheaper. Send out a single woman, let her raise her own support, and it doesn’t cost much. Send a man, he’s usually married, has kids…costs more. Anyway, missions is not much of a “glory” ministry. Glory ministries are back home where the publicity and dollars are.
It is easy to be a religious male complimentatian. There is absolutely no knowledge, training, education, or experience required. Just decide what YOU think women’s role is and make your pronouncement. No biological, psychological, sociological, evidence needed. In fact, if the scientific evidence about women contradicts your opinion, just dismiss it as unbliblical, ungospel, feminist, of the devil, rebellious, wordly, deception.
I have as much regard for these know-it-all male complementarians as I do any other guy sitting around in his lazy-boy picking lint out of his belly button.
Daisy wrote:
Can you even imagine how petty and ridiculous someone would have to be to go to the church elders about who does the dishes???
And how petty and ridiculous said elders would have to be to take this as more than nonsense?
This whole thing is nuts.
Ok, so at first the story about the soap bubbles was funny because it sounds just like the fundamentalist anecdotes that pass as some kind of spiritual formation in fundamentalist circles. But it stopped being funny pretty quickly. The Deebs hit the nail on the head with this one, but I will just emphasize the Stockholmish nature of the piece. They way the article describes mister naggy-pants making an observation (notice that obedience is expected despite the lack of imperative communication – classic tactic) and then watching for compliance describes an extremely creepy and control oriented person. I am kind of surprised that His Holiness was portrayed in a such a negative light, but I’m guessing the author has no experience with sociopaths, NPD, etc.
Beakerj wrote:
Not ridiculous at all Beaks. Mrs. Muff & me have two small dogs that we rescued from a world that doesn’t care and has hearts of stone. All heaven smiles when common folk lift their eyes to the Almighty and plead the cause of critters.
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
I am glad somebody said this.
Through a glass darkly wrote:
Oh, wow, I finally found that article. Stunning. Basically, your wife is a child, locked in a curvy body. How is CDD not a logical outcome of this thinking?
The funny thing is, last night my wife, who had had a challenging day, asked if we could get takeout. Made me think, what would a complentarian do? WWCD?
Sorry if I’m over posting today…a few of these topics sure hit my hot button.
The reasoning of most male complementarians is really based on nothing more than old wives tales, urban legends, and old traditions, about how women should be or what their role should be. They have no evidence, no science, no facts to back up what they claim. (In fact, I suspect most of them would be loath to consult the scientific literature.) They have just decided how women are to be, and they think that makes it fact. It is nothing more than empty headed, factless, opinionating.
PS. It reminds me of those reconstructionist who think that slavery is not all that bad…but of course, they never picture themselves being the slave. How many men would ever choose to be treated as an empty-headed, child-like person with no rights, no desires, no dreams, but just an automon existing to fulfill someone else’s desires? Not a single one! Yet, they deem that an appropriate role for women.
Never ceases to amaze me how many men want a wifebot and how many women are willing to become one. What will happen in such an arrangement is the woman will kill her personhood and the man will slowly, spiritually die.
I also agree with other posts that have pointed out the very disturbing, perhaps sexual perverse undertones common in Piper’s tweets.
Lea wrote:
I can imagine it, since the person Daisy refers to is Doug Wilson. 🙂
http://www.credenda.org/archive/issues/9-1husbandry.php
He did later retract this article by saying he intended the elders be called in “about pathological situations” and not just “ordinary life.”
elastigirl wrote:
I apologize for what sounds like multiple bad experiences. As a non-complementarian Christian this is how *i* approach my marriage through *my own* personal reading of scripture, certainly not from conferences (i haven’t attended any). So yes, *i* know what these words mean in *my* marriage. You do you.
Bridget wrote:
Sanford sounds like a sadist. Of course when she submitted to his tyranny there was a turning point, perhaps his sadism was temporarily sated. But the problem is the sort of abuser who’d hover behind a spouse looking for imperfections in the dish washing won’t stop with soap bubbles; sooner or later it’ll be a few pounds she needs to lose, different clothes she needs to wear, a different hairstyle, another sexual favor, laundry that needs to be folded differently, a faster reaction when he snaps his finger while sitting in the recliner and holds his hand out to receive the beer. It won’t end.
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
Based on the recent research out of Canada that indicates a shockingly high number of church leaders may be truly conscienceless NPDs, one has to wonder if this sort of evil is becoming normative in some circles, such that it isn’t even noticed.
marquis wrote:
In the last 3, 4 years I’ve seen Christian women on forums and blogs say they are on their second marriage, and their second husband is a Non-Christian (usually an atheist).
These women say their Non-Christian husband treats them better than their first (Christian) husband. (Some even say their Non-Christian husband acts more like a husband the Bible describes than their Christian husband did.)
Some of these women say their Christian husband was a complementarian, and when they carried over their ‘submissive- to- the- husband’ behaviors in their second marriages, their Non-Christian husbands told them to knock it off, they didn’t like it, and found it strange.
I think there’s a lesson for women in there somewhere – or a warning?
Law Prof wrote:
Maybe Sapphira should have smiled winsomly, batted her eyelashes, snd said that she was just obeying her head. I’m sure God would have let her off – not!
Daisy wrote:
Thanks! She was an angel in fluffy form. I just hope she’s not asking God to move from his throne so she can sit there. She was known for sweetly asking people to move.
Daisy wrote:
Sad to say, many non-Christians give women more respect than Christians do.
rob wrote:
I’ve also noticed a lot of these mega church guys only plant churches in affluent areas of the United States. They want big tithers who can keep them in the lifestyles to which they’ve become accustomed.
[Mega Church Preacher] Steven Furtick Forced To Cancel Book-Signing Event After Getting Lost In His Mansion
http://babylonbee.com/news/steven-furtick-forced-cancel-book-signing-getting-lost-mansion/
rob wrote:
Yep. The male complementarians get to define all the rules and definitions.
Women are prohibited or discouraged from criticizing any of it from the out-set due to things like comps limiting leadership/teaching roles to men only, some of them uphold ideas like all women are easily deceived (so you cannot trust women’s criticisms of comp), or, if a woman disagrees with comp, it must be her wanting to usurp authority over men (suspect her motives).
The entire system is rigged by men for men, and women (or maybe men who disagree with it) have no way of arguing against it.
I saw a male ex-complementarian explain in a paper he wrote that comp came in quite handy (when he was a comp), because comp left it up to him to define disrespect anyway he saw fit when he was dating women.
He constantly played the “you’re not giving me due respect as a man” card when his girlfriend didn’t do what he wanted.
I found the page:
Source:
http://www.cbeinternational.org/resources/article/mutuality/love-and-respect?page=show
@ Remnant:
Thanks for that bit.
Yes, typical deflection tactic is: evil done to another does not matter if it happened (fill in blank) year/months ago.
GSD wrote:
If you were in a marriage like the one I mentioned here-
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2016/03/30/john-piper-and-the-cbmw-soap-opera-lady-demonstrate-why-complementarians-can-be-naive-and-dangerous/comment-page-1/#comment-245989
-your wife would put a can of cream corn on your kitchen counter if she wanted you to order take out.
Comp doctrines promotes a perverse form of daddy/husband-wife/daughter relationship. It is creepy.
Has nothing to do with an Ezer. The intended relationship. Far from it. It should be an alliance. Not a pecking order. At least a daughter gets to grow up and leave. The wife must “play that daughter girlish role” .. even in her 80’s.
@ Daisy:
Think of A young boy watching his dad do this and his mom respond in submission. It is like a tutorial on how to raise a narcissist.
Patriciamc wrote:
She sounds like she was very sweet. You know if God is a cat person, if he gets up to go grab a snack and come back to his throne, and the kitty is sitting there, he won’t move her. He’ll take a different seat. That’s how cat people are. 🙂
I think hearing so much complementarian theology is one reason I decided to stay single. I knew I could never get married at CLC for sure.
siteseer wrote:
In would say that site is BEYOND parody. But I really have no idea. And the fella (if it is actually a fella) doesn’t reveal his identity. No surprise there.
Victorious wrote:
Yep!
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/02/keep-sweet-conspiracy.html
This looks like a satire news site, but if this were real-I wonder how American gender complementarians would handle this:
Saudi Government Torn Over Whether to Let Caitlyn Jenner Drive
http://www.themideastbeast.com/saudi-government-torn-over-whether-to-let-caitlyn-jenner-drive/
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Exactly!
But rather than deal with this sin, they sanctify it and claim the Bible teaches it.
Lea wrote:
This is so true.
These men walk all over the Words of Jesus in order to obey some perversion of Paul’s teachings.
The Words of Jesus being:
~Love your neighbor as yourself, and
~Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Remnant wrote:
“City of Brotherly Love to Officially Apologize to Late Jackie Robinson for 1947 Racism”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/city-brotherly-love-officially-apologize-late-jackie-robinson/story?id=38063222
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
More or less, yeah. Driscoll’s views on singleness and how it’s presented in the Bible are extremely off base.
He thinks only single adults are called to be martyred for the Gospel. God does not call married people with kids to make such sacrifices.
Lydia wrote:
Just how many quarts of strawberries were in the Officers’ Pantry?
Patriciamc wrote:
Remember Jesus had this way of doing the unexpected, knocking “but that’s the way it is” completely off the pedestal.
From the original post:
“The water was running and I knew I needed to rinse it again. I did not want to do it but I knew the Lord wanted me to. Meanwhile, as I contemplated what to do, my arm was stuck in an uncomfortable, outstretched position. So, I began in my mind to talk to my arm, ‘Come on, you can do this! Rinse it again.” It took so long for my arm to begin to move back toward the running water, that the muscles began to ache. Finally, I talked my arm into moving towards the water and carefully rinsing the glass again.
After I rinsed it again and put the glass in the dish drain, I began to wash the next dish. Sanford said in astonishment, “You did it!” I replied, “Yes, you told me to.” And he countered with, “But you did it!” That moment was a turning point in my walk with the Lord. The Lord was testing me and teaching me to be faithful even in the very least of things. Submission was beginning to be my joy.”
Is just me, or does this read like a sex scene in a cheap “bodice ripper” novel. This goes back to the comments about the sexual undertones of Piper’s stream of consciousness postings.
Wow! 9-year-old [Girl] completes a 24-hour course designed for Navy SEALs
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-moms/news/9-year-old-completes-24-hour-navy-seal-obstacle-course-w201027
Daisy wrote:
They get to stay home and Focus on their Families.
Besides, handing out tracts while going into the stewpot in Darkest Africa gets them out of the picture permanently. Like tribal elders culling the competition by getting surplus younger men to go on raids and get killed.
Does the name “Uriah the Hittite” ring a bell?
Victorious wrote:
Now THAT sounds like something you’d hear in a BDSM session….
I can relate. My dad was the perfectionist one whom I could never please. My mom was kind of controlling, but in a different way, and she was also really loving and affirming, which made up for it. My dad was just a jerk. To this day I cannot tolerate perfectionistic micromanaging control freaks who are never satisfied and always hyper critical. Harley:
Daisy wrote:
Now that’s BAD.
I can think of only two examples in my experience, and neither were that far gone:
* A guy in local Furry Fandom called “Cheeseburger” because he never learned to cook (or even prepare meals in any way) so he lived on fast food for every meal.
* A “Real Manly Man” co-worker from some 35 years ago whose refrigerator was completely filled with “inch-thick steaks and beer” and nothing else. That was apparently all he lived on. Everyone else at the shop considered him a jerk.
Beakerj wrote:
Beaker: I am so sorry for the loss of your dog. As a happy and proud dog owner, I know exactly how you feel. My husband and I love our Missy Pup with such affection and tenderness. Our pets can really tug at our heart strings.
Daisy wrote:
First World Problems.
In the words of the Prophet Alfred Yankovic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svdMInNxZFM
Daisy
-your wife would put a can of cream corn on your kitchen counter if she wanted you to order take out.
Actually, Daisy, she walked over to me at about 4:45, and said, “Could we get takeout tonight?” I said that sounded good, because it did. We have a local Thai restaurant with an excellent Curry. And we are also adults who know how to communicate with each other. But I was thinking about some of the goofiness we’ve been talking about and pondering whether I should accuse her of laziness and start the disciplinary process.It’s scary that anybody thinks like this.
Mara wrote:
One of the visitors of your site (who you quoted in the blog post) really hit the nail on the head with this observation:
I’ve picked up on this too.
Complementarians condition women to be naive, passive, helpless (look to men for protection), and to be unassertive, but then they seem repulsed when or if such women get taken advantage of, or they blame women for being taken advantage of.
They get you coming and going in their gender theology. It is, as you said in your blog post, a “no win” situation.
They set women up to be treated poorly (and teach them that being weak is a godly virtue), and then act disgusted when women get treated poorly (or act weak).
They teach women to be helpless, passive, submissive, little lambs but then detest the qualities of helplessness, passivity, and submissiveness in women.
If you’re a woman and try to stand up for yourself and are out-spoken, they then say you are being bossy, unfeminine, or whatever negative thing.
nmgirl wrote:
Both your examples bring to mind a little Momento from classic Doctor Demento:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ol4oWChjzk
GSD wrote:
You can see how it would subvert normal relating into a convoluted aggressive / passive-aggressive mess.
BeenThereDoneThat wrote:
Give him a little time to deal with ‘ordinary life’ and seems like it would turn ‘pathological.’
Lea wrote:
Well, after all…when women say ‘NO’ – they REALLY mean ‘YES’!!!
Beakerj wrote:
Aw…Dear God, please find Linus a friendly, cuddly playmate.
srs wrote:
Me thinks if hubby wants group sex, he might have been going down a very, bad path for quite awhile. It isn’t as if one day a guy wakes up and says: “Hey, I think I’ll talk to my wife today about having group sex!”
Law Prof wrote:
In my limited encounters with cultures of female subjugation, a few men proclaimed it, but I was amazed to see women were commonly the enforcers.
And now that All in the Family episode comes to mind: The Bunkers and the Swingers. Hilarious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbrr14PB0QE
SarahW wrote:
Well, Doug Wilson has a reason a husband should call in the elders: If wifey didn’t do the dishes! You can’t make this stuff up!
“Not Where She Should Be” by Doug Wilson
http://www.reformedsingles.com/not-where-she-should-be-douglas-wilson
Lydia wrote:
As long as there’s somebody of lower caste that you can walk all over, you’re Somebody. You’re not the one on the bottom. Like that trailer-trash Ku Kluxer interviewed in the Fifties:
“If I ain’t better than a n*gg*r, who do I got to be better than?”
Bill M wrote:
Again, as long as they enforced it, they could keep some other woman lower than themselves. They could be the Queen Bee over all the others.
Like the dynamic of Douggie ESQUIRE’s wifey regarding Lourdes:
First Wife always outranks a mere Handmaid.
srs wrote:
I think we’re getting a look-see into the sexual fantasies of these Christian Leaders.
Like “I SEE Things” Driscoll and his Visions(TM).
Harley wrote:
Did you develop the reaction of “If you never attempt anything, you can’t catch hell for not doing it Perfect”?
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Is that cousin to,
“Eagles may soar, but Weasels never get sucked into jet engines” ?
This is going to be long and rambling; I’m not sure if I can express what I’ve been thinking. Over the past couple days, I’ve been putting elements of what I’ve read here at TWW together about Comp and the results don’t look good. First element:
sigh wrote:
Problem is that Power Struggle is a zero-sum game — in order to be On Top, I have to crush YOU down to the Bottom. Hold the Whip or Feel the Whip, NOTHING in-between. Do it to them or they’ll do it to you.
As Screwtape put it to Wormwood, “Bring me back Food or be Food yourself.”
Second element:
Daisy wrote:
Stay Sweet(TM)….
Third element:
Mara wrote:
Stay Sweet(TM)…
Put the above elements together and what results is a society stright out of Screwtape Letters. A couple days ago I was thinking about this whole Christianese Comp thing and came up with three results of this combination of Power Struggle and Stay Sweet and NONE of them are good:
1) EFFECT ON THE SWEET(TM) WOMAN
In such a situation, a woman can exert power only indirectly, through a man (her hubby), controlling him through Manipulation tricks and Deception. This strikes me as training women to be Manipulators and Sociopaths — Sweet Smiling Sociopaths, pulling the strings and watching the puppets dance.
2) EFFECT ON THE REAL MANLY MAN
And the P-whipped hubby will burn with hatred and resentment. After all, he’s in the position of the Unpardonable Sin in a Real Manly Man’s world: He’s wrapped around the little finger of a mere WOMAN. How can this be? “ME MAN! RAWR!”
And if the knowledge of this ever got out, all the other Real Manly Men would turn on him like chickens pecking a defective to death in the barnyard. So he has to keep it Secret.
Since he can’t raise a finger against She Who Must Be Obeyed (in Secret), he’s going to take it out on anything without a penis or Y chromosome. He’s going to become more viciously Male Supremacist, more Hypermasculine, more Manly Man keeping wimmen more and more down. Same dynamic as serial killer Edward Kemper, who stalked and killed coed after coed as stand-ins for his own viciously-abusive Mommy Dear against whom he could not raise a finger. (It was only after he finally murdered Mommy Dear that Kemper’s killing spree was spent and he effectively let himself be captured.)
3) EFFECT ON THE OTHER MALES WATCHING ALL THIS
Though Manly Man tries to keep the above Secret, it still comes out — indirectly. A Thing Of Which We Cannot Speak. And other, lesser males (like singles) see what’s going on, see the Sweet Smiling Sociopath keeping control over her Manly Man with Deceit and Manipulation (Staying Sweet…) and act accordingly for their own self-protection. Either stay away from women completely or become even more Male Supremacist.
After being on deck for a dynamic like that, how can there NOT be a wedge of Deep Deep Distrust of women? Not just a strange Fey Folk which men associate with at their own risk, but genuine Controlling MONSTERS inside that Sweet exterior?
Who would want to be hitched to a MONSTER like that? How do you protect yourself? You’d better make sure YOU’re the one in control, with your boot on her neck so she can’t do to you what Women do to Men. More control-freak, more hypermasculine, more violent and oppressive.
A society of Sweet Sociopath Manipulators, Manipulated Men lashing out at anything female for Revenge, and a Deep Deep Wedge of Distrust driven between third-party women and third-party men. All in a zero-sum Game of Thrones/Power Struggle.
Screwtape & Wormwood would feel right at home.
How rare it is to see a good and happy marriage. I don’t see how teaching Christian Talibanism contributes to healthy happy marriages.
I was in my last Qtr of college and teaching when we married. We got 2 irons among the wedding presents and I rightly assumed that meant his and hers.
I like the expression to not be unequally yoked. Have you ever seen a team of horses where one is out of control and dragging the other? Well shouldn’t be. What a beautiful site when they can walk together.
I remember being speechless when one of the ladies in a prayer group said she could hardly wait for her husband to get a day off so he could go with her and pick out a new bra for her. If I had told my husband “honey I can hardly wait for you to have a day off so you can pick out a bra for me” he would have thought I’d lost my marbles.
My father in law was a hot headed non Christian. I dropped something once and said d***. He then said that my mother in law once swore and he slapped her across the face and she never swore again. Well I observed that she rarely talked to him either. I told him that if his son ever slapped me it would be his last day married to me which silenced him for awhile.
I’m not sure how preaching the gospel applied to the minister who had the bed put on top the church and was in it with his wife and preaching his main message of sex every day.
The church needs to be alert to abusive husbands and fathers (in or out of the church).
And honestly as a woman I find the militant feminists that were around for awhile scary (you know the ones wanting to castrate all the males)
And on the subject of 2nd, 3rd, or whatever marriages … I have told many “in love” young single mothers “Are you sure he’s interested in you or in your children?” because the problem of sex abuse is epidemic.
Bill M wrote:
Hey, what is harsher than the pecking order in a prison?
I note that Mrs. Bubbly Soap was a pediatric nurse before she discovered the higher calling of double rinsing the dishes. It makes me sad to think she gave up a useful and needed calling in order to cater to a jerk and that she wants us to do the same.
Daisy wrote:
You got that right!
Darlene wrote:
What a load of freaking hog wash! If the elders came to my house to butt in my business, I’m afraid I’d have to tell them where to go and what to do with their church discipline!
@ Daisy:
Nice to briefly say hello to you, Daisy.
In my own case, the point of dispute with my better half was, believe it or not, spreading the butter to the edge of the toast. Even my mother in law took my side on that one! But what could be seen as the height of being petty can reveal an underlying attitude problem, and that is what counts.
There is that little phrase so let wives also be subject in everything to their (own) husbands. You cannot ignore the in everything without the danger of spreading rebellion into the marriage. And we all know what rebellion is. If you can’t manage the smallest of things, it won’t be possible to do the really important things.
You see, in a marriage you win some and you lose some. For her, she gains a breadwinner. Frankly, he gains responsibilities, so it is not unreasonable for him to want to have domestic harmony in how things are done.
But then you and I have perhaps overdone discussing gender roles!
Ruth Tucker wrote:
Ruth, I’ve got one to add: Going into financial debt submission. That would be taken directly out of a Elizabeth Elliot’s playbook.
Ted wrote:
Can that debate between Ruth Tucker and John Piper be read or found on-line? That Piper even agreed to have a debate with a woman is astonishing to me.
Lydia wrote:
And David Bayly (Bayly Blog) portrayed courtship and marriage as a battle until his bride surrenders.
http://spiritualsoundingboard.com/2014/02/27/david-baylys-ideas-on-courtship-and-marriage-as-a-battle-until-his-bride-surrenders/
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
DITTO HUG!!!
Daisy wrote:
Daisy, that was Doug Wilson in his article: Not Where She Should Be. He got a lot of flack for that one. 😉
http://www.reformedsingles.com/not-where-she-should-be-douglas-wilson
@ Bill M:
Given the circumstances women can be every bit as caste system as these men. We are more familiar with the manipulation tactcs because that is all they had historically… and that sort of thing gets passed down, too.
I have witnessed many a critical female micro manager in workplaces.
We really short change our kids by not teaching them to be decent Humans first. The focus on gender exclusion very early in development is not healthy, in my view.
@ Ken:
I perhaps missed the beginning of this but I really don’t think God is obsessed with making sure wives are ocd. I think, where there is love, spouses (both of them!!!) make an effort to make the other happy. But if you are super nit picky about something you should do it yourself.
Did anyone see sleeping with the enemy? I’m sure the elders would have supported that guy in his obsessive expectations. Think about it.
Also the sleeping with the enemy lady was in ‘rebellion’ learning to swim when her husband forbid it!!
Do these people have any idea how dangerous these things are with an evil man?
Ken wrote:
Wait. Let me get this straight. You don’t butter your own toast?
Is this a cultural things?
klickvic wrote:
This, folks, is compism in a nutshell.
Ken wrote:
Which is precisely why no female should ever let herself get into the position where she cannot support herself and her children without having to make do with whatever kind of worthless spouse she can drag up out of sheer economic desperation.
And which is also why the comps push stay home moms: got a full time servant at home and got a model and example to brainwash the next generation into the learned helplessness they want and they have somebody about whom it can be said (as a classmate of mine in med school said about his wife) ‘what is she going to do about it?’
To HUG and Catholic Gate Crasher – Yes, living with a “perfectionist” parent is difficult. I always felt that as long as I did things pretty good, then that was ok. But evidently it wasn’t. I was telling my mom yesterday about something my hubby had done with the laundry, washing a new dark purple item with other things. She replied that my dad never does the laundry and never has. I answered that is because you never let us. She had no reply to that. None of us were allowed to touch the laundry because we weren’t capable of doing it to her specifications. My mom would have been the man behind soap bubbles telling her to rinse it again. Like I always tell my husband there are 2 ways to do things. Your way and mine. If they both end up with the same conclusion, then that should be enough (except for fading purple sheets on my clothes). (lol)
Mara wrote:
Must be. Now, making sandwiches…I remember not liking that my mother didn’t spread things (pb, condiments) over the whole piece of bread. But the answer to that is to make it yourself. Problem solved!
@ Darlene:
Concerning the debate with John Piper, a summary can be found here: http://www.wheaton.edu/~/media/Files/Centers-and-Institutes/CACE/discernment/FamilyValues.pdf
Not only did I debate him in 1995, but I also gave the entire evening message at his church, Bethlehem Baptist, on Nov. 15, 1987, less than a month after I had escaped the violence of my ex-husband, though I didn’t breathe a word about that to him. It was a missions conference, and my message related to great missionaries of the past. John Piper, I firmly believe, was quite different back then.
@ Ken:
Ken would have us back to 1st Century chattle status…not even on par with male endentured slaves.
okrapod wrote:
Exactly.
Ken wrote:
Are you referring to your underlying attitude problem?
I heard John Piper speak at 3 consecutive chapel services at the Christian college I attended. This was about 10 years ago. It is my impression, from hearing him speak these three days, that he is mentally unbalanced in some way. I’m not qualified either professionally or from what I saw of him to diagnose but there is something really *off* about the way he thinks, speaks, and writes. And I think it goes much deeper than just his theological beliefs.
I do my best to encourage people who like his stuff to seek out others with similar perspectives but a healthier mental and spiritual outlook. I also encourage those who don’t like his stuff to ignore him and hope that whatever is going on in his mind can be addressed by his family, friends, and church.
Ken wrote:
What I’m hearing (by reading between the lines) is that you seem to think since he supports his wife financially, he is entitled to enforce the household harmony. In other words, you view your wife as an employee of sorts.
Whether you choose flowery words like many comps do, the word “responsibilities”, for example, equates to entitlement and a good measure of power to make sure she lives up to her job description.
@ Bridget:
I really think Ken is doing a bit of trolling. Maybe he’s a serious complementarian or whatever but I think in this case he took the most contrarian view and sat back to watch the fireworks.
However, I love selective biblical literalism. Christians will take literally the misogynist quotes from the bible and string them together without any context while cheerfully indulging in the surf and turf at Red Lobster. The gospels are relegated to second string status while the Old Testament is held up as being the point of the exercise.
If Ken is really that controlling to his wife (with mom-in-laws support no less) then then I completely agree that there are underlying attitude problems – but it isn’t with the wife.
This further reinforces that the complementarian view is – at it’s core – an evil doctrine that flies in the face of hard won freedoms. It’s a doctrine of abuse, used to justify domestic subjugation. Look at the verbiage, the obsession with sexual matters. “Attitude problems” becomes an understatement with the damage that is continually being exposed.
Enjoy the fireworks, Ken
Peace out.
Piper’s advice on submission doesn’t address the husband how tells his wife, “Who asked for your opinion?”
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Oh yes; absolutely. Of course, if Driscoll really DID “see things” and was a halfway decent person, he would KEEP THAT SHITE TO HIMSELF. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks…
Deebs….I understand about the lack of advertising.
My ” localized” blog was offered ads by a businessman who reads my site, and I turned him down.
I told him, at some point, I would write a blog that would make him or many of his customers mad.
Sure, it would be nice to have a little ” change” but I live a very frugal life as it is now, and don’t want to have to worry about any commericial backlash….
Lydia wrote:
This is the ultimate hypocrisy. The pseudo manly big and tall come into the light with feet of clay when it comes to what matters. The moment of truth. Reality. No longer cosplay.
For inspiration and to stay on track, we keep a selection of bios and biopics of folks who lived their faith in reality: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Scarlet and the Black Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, Corrie ten Boom and her whole family (Casper ten Boom), Gladys Aylward, Eric Liddell, George Müller, Peter Marshall, Watchman Nee, etc. Like in Hebrews 11, their testimony is not an act. They sacrificed not only their pride or egos, but their lives. They did not hold court nor sit on contrived thrones. There are many stalwart throughout history who have lived the faith in reality.
Victorious wrote:
The Golden Rule, i.e. Whoever Hath The Gold Makes The Rules?
Wesley wrote:
I’ve had the same thoughts. Totally unrelated to his theology or views – it’s his presentation. Sad, and I hope it can be addressed, but it also isn’t a pass for his dangerous and harmful ideas.
Ruth Tucker wrote:
It’s probable that Entropy set in over the years, a “Hardening of the Attitudes”.
Time goes on, Entropy has more time to work, guy becomes more Set in His Ways and Convinced I AM RIGHT! And as age really sets in, the Bucket List of Making a Splash and Being Important looms larger and larger — “I HAVE TO LEAVE MY LEGACY! NO MATTER WHO ELSE GETS HURT!”
Mara wrote:
But to the Jerk with the Junk between his legs, that’s not a Bug but a Feature.
okrapod wrote:
And no matter how much of a Jerk he is, “SHE CAN’T LEAVE ME!”
Again… Feature, not Bug.
@ Jack:
It may be that Ken is a serious closeted abuser who likes to skate as close to admitting it as possible on this blog. Or it may be that Ken is just bored and does not have enough work to keep him busy and out of trouble. Or it could be that Ken has life too easy with not enough weeds in his field to even comprehend what the world of weed pullers is really like. It could even be that he is one of those from his claimed ethnicity who enjoys trying to make other people look foolish-sort of trying to play out some stereotype or other. But Ken is a light weight because he does not seem to have a comprehensive and definable methodology for coming to some workable conclusions about this issue which he keeps bringing up. Yes but is not a plan, and I don’t understand and I am not convinced however obliquely and cleverly stated is not an argument and once more around the block with this idea in the absence of anything new to say is tedious and worthless. Repetition is good for state capitals and multiplication tables and books of the bible memorization but not for argumentation.
Or more likely he is just distractible and wants to stir things up for entertainment value.
Any way you look at it though Ken does not have to be anybody else’s responsibility except his own. A good shrug and a response of ‘whatever’ is sufficient for dealing with some things.
Mara wrote:
“That’s Women’s Work”?
Lea wrote:
I notice on Wikipedia that that movie has been remade almost a dozen times abroad; except for one remake from Lebanon, all the remakes have come from India.
I wonder if that is significant?
Darlene wrote:
In the words of Blue Oyster Cult: DOMINANCE and SUBMISSION.
Animal Dominance Display, boots on faces all the way down.
“A crown based on lies;
YOU WIN OR YOU DIE —
Game of Thrones…”
— filk lyrics to the opening theme from Game of Thrones
Darlene wrote:
So the Jerk with the Kirk bloviates once more.
Look up the word “Logohrrea” sometime.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
I lived as the super sweet Christian woman for years, and I was engaged for several years to a guy.
As a part of being sweet, you (the woman) are not only taught by complementarianism and Christian parents who are into complementarianism to be indirect (it’s not “feminine,” supposedly, for a woman to be assertive and direct), you are taught that your feelings and needs do not matter.
You are taught to repress anger and your own needs and to only cater to what your boyfriend / husband wants.
My ex fiance’ made out like a bandit under this situation (he financially exploited me, for one thing, and he never tried to get my needs met).
I (the woman) was the one that was harmed in that situation, not the man.
@ BC:
There have been studies the last few years that among conservative religious groups (including Mormons and Jews, and I’ve seen similar in regards to Christians), the single females outnumber single males.
This means if a woman is, say, a Christian single who wants marriage, she may have no choice but to be “unequally yoked” and marry a Non-Christian.
In light of all the reports I’ve seen on this blog and other sites of married Christian men who are exposed as being pedos or wife abusers, and the anecdotal stories I’ve seen of Christian women whose second husband is an atheist who they say treat them better than Christian Husband #1, I am more than fine with being open to marrying a Non-Christian guy.
I’m more interested in being treated right than in what the guy’s religious views are. I’m not sure a guy saying he’s a Christian amounts to a hill of beans if he thinks it’s okay to fondle kids or abuse a wife anyway.
klickvic wrote:
Yep. In my case, though, I no longer drink the Kool-Aid. 🙂
Complementarianism asks women to voluntarily participate in their own debasement and journey to second class status.
I’ve seen some complementarianism content try to sell complementarianism to women as though it’s beneficial to women.
I saw one odd comp post a couple of years ago selling black as being white and white as black, when the lady author did things like try to convince her lady readers that being pinned in under comp rules for women was actually more liberating for women.
The reasoning was like: “Hey, we may be putting you in a small, grassy area that is fenced in, but you’ll be so much safer inside this fence of complementarianism then if we leave the gate open so you can run around. All that freedom is an illusion.”
That is double-speaking, trying to dress up mutton as lamb, or however the expression goes.
I haven’t read the entire comment thread yet, but way earlier rob said:
“Ya know, the funny thing is women never sit around saying “we should have less rights, we shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions, we should not be allowed to do this or that or pursue careers or education”. The ones who say those things are men. And, then women think they have to go along with it.”
Actually, I know of one exception to this. Some years ago, at least one of the Ladies Against Feminism was arguing that women should never have been given the right to vote. Doing to completely disenfranchised the “household”, always represented by the husband/father. Then later when it came out that she had voted for her own husband who was running for local political office, even more people started questioning her about this, and she simply went dark.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Unfortunately, many men think that way. But in all fairness, if, in the interest of equal pay for equal work, if she were to be paid for her work on an hourly basis, I think her salary would be a hefty one. It would also give her the same “weight” in decision making and equal “responsibility” to enforce harmony as she determines the proper way to do so.
Ken wrote:
I’m not sure why your post here was directed at me.
Part 1. Hunh?
You think husbands should be allowed to micro manage their wives, treat them like children? That’s what that sounds like.
Re: “You see, in a marriage you win some and you lose some.”
That sounds like you are talking down to me. It sounds kind of condescending. I was in a long term, serious relationship for several years with a man, so I know about marriage, thank you very much.
Comp asks women to permanently “lose all” not “lose some”. The man is given the upper hand in the marriage, and this is said to be God’s will.
Part 2.
Your wife can get a job and be the bread winner, or you both can work and financially manage the house. There’s nothing saying the wife has to be a SAHM and the guy a Ward Cleaver who has a 9 to 5.
My ex relied on me financially to a degree. He used me. I paid his truck payments, his groceries, his apartment rent and some other expenses from time to time.
And I was taught, under the gender complementarianism (that YOU advocate), to just sit there and allow my ex to exploit me:
because my needs did not matter, my bank account did not matter.
Oh goodness, for me to assert myself and tell the ext, “no more money from me, you never pay me back” and stand up for my BOUNDARIES would be… how would you put it? Selfish.
Yeah. That’s how my gender comp parents also portrayed my standing up for myself.
Not only did my ex rip off my money, he did not even attempt to meet my emotional needs: the entire relationship was about him, him, him, him.
Your second point actually is an argument against comp.
Complementarianism is bad for men, one reason of several, because it puts un-Biblical, unreasonable demands on a husband.
Comp basically conveys that the husband is a ‘Jesus-(authoritarian, boss) figure’ to the wife, which the Bible does not teach.
Women should not be looking to a spouse as a Jesus, Savior, boss figure, but to Jesus himself for her sense of purpose and identity and salvation.
This is for you, written by me, at my blog:
Even Warm and Fuzzy, True, Correctly-Implemented Gender Complementarianism is Harmful to Women, and It’s Still Sexism – Yes All Comps (Refuting “Not All Comps”)
https://missdaisyflower.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/even-warm-and-fuzzy-true-correctly-implemented-gender-complementarianism-is-harmful-to-women-and-its-still-sexism-yes-all-comps-refuting-not-all-comps/
Lydia wrote:
I worked for one.
I spent more time having to fight off daily to weekly harassment by this one mean woman boss, and explaining my job to her (she was incompetent) than doing my actual job (the thing they hired me to do).
This woman boss was very micro managing. She had to know to the last dotted letter “i” and crossed “t” what I did all day, how I did it. I had to write long reports on every move I made, etc. (She also did some of this to other workers there).
Secular feminists don’t like to admit there is female- on- female discrimination or harassment on jobs, by the way, even though it happens.
In the million books and blogs I read about work place abuse, they all cited studies that said the number one abuse group is woman- on- woman, not man- on- woman or woman- on- man.
Secular feminist sites I visit think that the “woman on woman” catty or abuse culture on jobs is made up by sexist men to make women look bad.
If you try to tell them you are a woman (like me) who has in fact experienced more harassment off other women workers than off male ones, they don’t like to admit it happens. But it does.
Ken wrote:
Oh Ken. I’m just going to shake my head, advise you to pray for wisdom, and leave it at that.
@ rob:
“I have as much regard for these know-it-all male complementarians as I do any other guy sitting around in his lazy-boy picking lint out of his belly button.”
+++++++++++++++
you’re funny. appreciated your comment as a whole, especially this part.
Darlene wrote:
There is something seriously wrong with the Baylys. They make the lunatic fringe look sane. I don’t go to their blog because the feeling of evil is too strong.
Lea wrote:
In the case of my ex (who financially ripped me off) when I would go stay with him at his apartment, I would end up dusting, vacuuming, and mopping while I was there, because my standard of cleanliness was higher than his.
He would sometimes actually ask me to put the broom down and sit with him on the sofa to watch TV to relax.
I told him I had a hard time kicking back and relaxing if the apartment felt cruddy to me. He was pretty gross about his kitchen floor.
He had a nasty habit of brushing all food crumbs from the counter on to the floor, until there was a solid line of debris. It was so gross. I was always cleaning it up.
Tim wrote:
Deep down, he probably doesn’t see anything wrong with it. To him, it might be like a parent telling a child not to sass.
okrapod wrote:
Yes, this is how I was raised. My Mom role modeled that sort of life for me (my dad too to a lesser extent), and I was taught that was the way to go.
It’s very dangerous to women. I never married. Even if you do, your husband could divorce you or die in a car wreck.
Hey everybody. I just wanted to share this article. This group has all the earmarks of spiritual abuse. They’re not too far from me, but I’ve never heard of them.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/april-web-only/wayne-jolley-dies-as-dozens-leave-gathering.html?start=1
@ sigh:
I know my comment didn’t come off right. In my mind i was addressing anyone/everyone. brain is tired. sorry if it came off as a challenge directed at you. not what I intended.
@ Harley:
My dad is/ was a critical, perfectionist guy.
I could only stand hearing so many times that how I washed dishes or did yard work or whatever was not to his liking, so I threw in the towel and stopped doing whatever he was criticizing.
Then he complained about me no longer doing dishes or yard work.
When I was in my teens and early 20s, I liked to go out in the yard and pull weeds or help plant flowers. When he got on me about that (he didn’t like how I did it), I started to stay in my bedroom all the time, so I didn’t have to be criticized on that stuff anymore.
Then I would over-hear him griping to my mother and other family that, “Daisy never leaves her room. She should go out in the yard more, and get out more…”
You cannot win with a perfectionist, critical person. They will get you no matter what you do.
Lydia wrote:
Seeing that comment, it dawns on me that I was not even in second place to my ex fiance’ in our relationship.
I was like in 3rd or 4th or 5th place. And I allowed it and put up with it for years having been raised by gender comp parents.
My ex put his mother first, himself second, the rest of his family 3rd (his uncles, etc), his job next, and I maybe kind of came in 4th or 5th on his list of priorities and interests.
Gender comp is so devious and deviant. It teaches women that being used and exploited by people (especially by husbands and boyfriends) is God’s intent for them, and to fight back against it in any way is a form of selfishness.
On top of all that garbage, my ex was not being a loving, giving “servant leader” comps yak about: the guy was having a love affair with my bank account.
And I’m being told by Flag Ken above that the trade-off for me giving up my rights, boundaries, dignity, etc is that the man will take care of me financially? It is to laugh. I ended up paying my ex sweetie’s truck, apartment rent, food, etc.
In most relationships I have known personally, other than my dad with my mom and one uncle-aunt set, all other women I have known have been the “breadwinner” and the man was the sponge. I have several Aunts who work full time while their sweetie sits around in his boxers chugging beer all day watching football.
My sister has a long line of these male clowns in her life. She works, paying all the bills, while the guy sits around watching TV all day.
And, by the way, several news reports I’ve seen over the last three, four years about why more and more women are not marrying has to do with financial issues.
The women are getting college degrees in larger numbers than men, and they gain steady employment. There are no financially solvent men for these women to marry (according to the news articles I’ve been seeing).
Anyway, to anyone reading this, if you have a sister or a daughter, to teach her to go along with this gender comp stuff is to raise her to be highly vulnerable to attracting users and abusers and/or to staying in relationships that are harmful to her much longer than she should.
@ Bill M:
“In my limited encounters with cultures of female subjugation, a few men proclaimed it, but I was amazed to see women were commonly the enforcers.”
++++++++++++++++++
the short-circuit path to power.
@ Victorious:
My impression is that Flag Ken equates a woman having her own needs and asking to get them met to being selfishness
(which he’s communicated on previous threads, but then backtracked a bit when I called him out on that. He waffles on if it’s selfish or not for a person to practice boundaries).
He apparently operates under an assumption that all people think too highly of themselves but doesn’t realize there are people (like me) who felt like trash since childhood.
I got all sorts of negative messages from the time I was a kid an older from both parents.
My mother a was loving person but never the less communicated to me that women (and I was made clear this included me as well) don’t matter as much as men do, a woman’s needs and feelings do not matter, etc.
My dad also conveyed some of those messages to me when I was a kid and still does now that I’m an adult.
I picked up on all these messages that I was shameful, flawed, I don’t matter, my needs don’t matter, and I was diagnosed with clinical depression as a kid. I was also suicidal. I had zero sense of self-love.
I think what Ken assumes is having a ‘bad attitude’ or ‘attitude problem’ is actually the woman in question having healthy self-interest and boundaries, standing up for herself, and refusing to be treated like trash anymore.
Jack wrote:
I agreed with everything else in your post. About this part I’m quoting, I’d also add certain verses in Pauline letters. Complementarians love to quote them some Paul, about ‘wives submitting’ and ‘forbidding a woman to teach,’ etc.
They ignore the rest of the Bible in favor of that stuff, including the stuff that contradicts their position.
Victorious wrote:
Some of the books by counselors I’ve read do warn women about this possibility.
The women who have been raised to think they must rely on a man for financial support, or the women who might be tempted to be a gold digger.
Some of the relationships used as examples in these books consisted of therapists describing how the men felt like they “owned” the wife (or girlfriend) because they financed everything.
One rich guy in one case study became more and more controlling. The girlfriend in question realized how dangerous and suffocating it was getting, so she broke up with him.
He felt because he was treating her to a luxury cruise and buying her nice designer clothes that she was at his beck and call and had to do what he wanted when he wanted. He actually barked at her in one heated exchanged the he owned her, or she had to do what he wanted, because he was “paying” for her.
And she was not a literal prostitute – they had a run of the mill dating relationship, but because he had lots of money and treated her to fancy things, he felt he had the right to boss her around.
Well, I must come clean whilst today is today. The clue to the correct interpretation of my post is found in the date, Friday April 1st.
On reading the soapy dishes spiel, I had to check whether or not I was correct in thinking this was an old April Fool. It turns out it isn’t, but the idea stuck… and provided inspiration to reply to the piece in the same spirit.
The difficult bit is not to make it obvious by being too outrageous, nor to actually stir anyone up to real anger (I’m not addressing what anyone may or may not have actually experienced). A reasonable amount of authenticity is required.
Hence:
i) The post about not spreading the butter being like spreading rebellion in a marriage. Plus the OTT hint this is like witchcraft.
ii) The wife gains a breadwinner
iii) Daisy and I in the past have overdone (burnt) discussing gender roles (rolls). ‘Gender rolls’ would have given it away, so it had to be more ‘nuanced’.
Finally, in a marriage you win some and you lose some WINSOME – the word massively overused by CBWM and complained about upstream. Bit surprised no-one spotted that one!
And if anyone wants to know if there is any truth in buttering the toast, yes there is. Nevertheless, if I insisted on my right to have it buttered to the edge, I would be told to ‘go and boil yer head’, amongst other things.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Maybe Flag Ken should try this:
This Gadget Can Turn A Stick Of Butter Into A Warm Spray
http://www.foodbeast.com/news/bien-spray/
elastigirl wrote:
I agree. I think it’s a way to play up to those in power, to get power by agreeing with those who have the power.
@ Wesley:
You were wise beyond your years 10 years ago!!;
Jack wrote:
I am stealing that phrase. :o)
Either the soap bubbles incident is completely fabricated in order to “illustrate a lesson”, as fundies have been known to do, or it is time for this woman to RUN!
If it is fabricated, it’s utterly ridiculous as an illustration, because who in their right mind would treat their wife like a – not very intelligent – 7-year-old?
If it’s a true anecdote from this woman’s life, it’s utterly disturbing that she not only puts up with such behaviour but is starting to accept it. It’s also very disturbing that someone at CBMW would actually accept theb text for publication on their website: do these guys have no awareness of what this must sound like to anyone outside their ever shrinking bubble?
CBMW really are in the business of female subordination, there to make sure that any insecure man can have his personal slave.
It would be much more entertaining to make fun of them if you didn’t have to think of all the poor women who have been trained and brainwashed to put up with all that ****, er, rubbish.
Daisy wrote:
It may be an unspoken attitude among comp men, but it’s there for sure. When we used to do sexual assault training in high schools, and asked the class if sexual assault was permissible under any circumstances, the answer was always an emphatic “NO!” Then we mentioned the dinner, the movies, etc. that he paid for and then the mood in the room changed dramatically. Didn’t she “owe” him something for those things? Wouldn’t it be only fair?? Doesn’t he deserve something for his generosity? It was truly an eye-opener. The boys really had been conditioned (apparently) to think they were entitled to sex for paying for her dinner and social activities of the evening.
Ken wrote:
I’m so glad that my husband was man enough to be able to butter his own toast.
One of the seminars on abuse put on by the state for state social workers that I attended went into how the abuse very often increases if the victim is more vulnerable e.g. wife is pregnant. The abuser does things to keep the victim isolated and vulnerable such as separation from friends, family. Relocating to further isolate the victim/s. I saw over and over in other lives how true this is.
When I was pregnant with my second child and having terrible morning sickness my husband even went outside to butter his toast because the smell was awlful to me. He changed diapers of the oldest and even took the toilet apart when she flushed her little tennis shoes down and plugged up the tra la la.
You can see why I loved that man so very much and when he was dying of cancer I was with him the whole way.
Lydia wrote:
Not just Islam. Not just Belgium and Germany. Here’s Israel, with buses segregated by sex because the ultra-Orthodox men can’t possibly sit by a woman:
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.666140
And here’s a story from January about an elderly American-Israeli woman who was ordered to switch seats on an El Al flight because an ultra-Orthodox man refused to sit next to her. She’s suing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/world/middleeast/woman-81-to-sue-israeli-airline-over-seat-switch.html?_r=0
Gus wrote:
This woman is a Nouthetic Counselor and I have heard of her before from patriarchal websites as a writer. I do think Mara was onto something. Surely Martha is not so dense as to not see how she was positioning her husband in other people’s minds as a controlling tyrant. And that he sees himself more as her father overseeing the 7 year old wash dishes….than a husband.
The emphasis on roles in marriage reflects the inability of the comps to come to grips with a major change in American demographics:
“In 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 124.6 million Americans 16 years and older were single, or 50.2 percent of the population, compared with 37.4 percent of the population in 1976.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0614/Singles-nation-Why-so-many-Americans-are-unmarried
In short, Piper, CBMW and the comps are talking to a dwindling class of people. And when they make their gospel all about the relationships between husbands and wives, it’s no wonder that those of us who are not married scratch our heads, look at our Bibles and wonder where “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2) comes in.
So far they’ve managed to keep it somewhat under wraps, but the reality is that if you pressed these people hard enough, they’d say that any man is superior to any woman, because the Fall. You’d never think that Jesus had died for our sins.
Ken wrote:
Whose underlying attitude? Are you asserting that the arguments you repeatedly started over buttered toast weren’t actually petty and that they served the greater good of revealing your wife’s attitude problem?
Obviously this buttered toast issue came up repeatedly. Were you cooking the eggs and bacon and your wife was assigned the toast during these altercations? Or was she cooking the whole meal?
I’m just having a hard time imagining Jesus giving Martha ‘the look’ and sending her back to the kitchen because she didn’t butter the toast just so.
Did you ever consider an alternative solution to this butter toast impasse?
For example, “Honey, I know I’m picky about my toast, so I’ll do the toast from now on while you’re finishing up breakfast.”
Win – Win.
Unless toast buttering is beneath a man’s dignity?
That kind of thought ever cross your mind? Or did you spend that thought-time ruminating over the glaring example of your wife’s disobedience, rebellion, and problem attitudes as evidenced by the un-buttered toast edges staring you in the eye, morning after morning?
If that your life verse? I ask, because when a singular verse appears to be so very important to someone and that singular verse IS ALL ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE, INSTEAD OF YOURSELF – then that is just spiritually ‘off’ to me.
Here’s the little phrase I try to keep in mind to guide my relationships – “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”
That includes spouses.
“Want to have domestic harmony in how things are done”?
There is only ONE way to interpret that.
Do things Ken’s way, or there will be no domestic harmony…
@ mirele:
I’ve been noticing that for a long while, too. A lot of complementarians either don’t notice or care that stats show that more and more American adults are not marrying at all, or not until much older than before (if they do marry).
Most all of their propaganda discusses marriage and parenting. They don’t say much about singles, divorced, widowed, the child free, childless or anyone else who is not married by age 25 with children at home.
There is>b? a sub-set of complementarians who do notice these new demographic trends, but, all they do is whine and yell about it.
They shame singles for being single and scream at adult singles to run out and marry immediately.
Al Mohler has, a time or two, published flawed marriage studies to his blog of how singles usually (and supposedly) die younger than married people, how marriage usually makes people happier than being single, etc.
Part 2: Getting Married Makes You Happier? Again, No
http://belladepaulo.com/2015/07/part-2-getting-married-makes-you-happier-again-no/
Mohler is trying to scare singles into marrying, which I don’t understand, because Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7 of the Bible that ‘it is better to remain unmarried.’
The whole thing presumes that all singles who are single hate marriage and are intentionally avoiding it, which I find frustrating. I had wanted to get married but never came across a suitable person.
Since they’ve become aware of the societal shift, the Mohlers (and guys like him) have been pressuring teens to marry young.
I was just at the CBMW site the other day, and I used their “singles” search category for stuff on their site, and it turned up a measley three articles about singleness! Only three.
They probably have 564,788 number of articles on marriage. But only 3 on singleness.
Anyway, one of their singles editorials was by a complementarian single advising married couples not to talk poorly about marriage in front of singles.
His (or her? can’t recall gender of author) position was that if married Christians talked about how great marriage is in front of singles, maybe more singles would run out and marry right away.
In the mean time, if you are single and are past the age of 30, these marriage-obsessed complementarians do not care about you at all.
BL wrote:
That’s it right there. The whole talk of rebellion and wives submit in all things is so, well, so un-Christ-like. So worldly. So, reading the Bible through the lenses of Evangelical Male Entitlement Mentality. It’s worshipping male privilege and not worshipping Christ. Can people like this change? I don’t know. It’s just like the rich person trying to get through the eye of the needle.
BL wrote:
Since I believe that Paul must be read through the lenses of Christ’s teachings, when Paul talks about submission in marriage, he’s giving an example of how to live out Christ’s teachings of do unto one another and love your neighbor. That’s why he starts off with mutual submission, which Ken has stated he doesn’t believe in.
patriciamc wrote:
Do unto others cuts through a boatload of various issues.
Slavery: Want to be one? If not, don’t have one.
State Religious Rule: Want to live under laws based primarily on the religious beliefs of Hari Krishnas, or radical Islam, etc.? If not, don’t push laws based primarily on your religious beliefs.
Authoritarian: Want to live under an authoritarian? If not, don’t try to make someone else live under one.
Micromanaging: Want someone demanding you answer for every minute, every action? If not, don’t demand it from others.
The list can go on and on.
Simplifies a lot for me.
Daisy wrote:
I’d say more like trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Oink, oink!
Exactly! Though you referencing British reminds me that this is unlikely ever a concern for my British friends’ marriages. Rinsing thoroughly is quite American. @ Beakerj:
mirele wrote:
What they neglect to see is that all of the consequences of the fall are adverse and negative. And all have been overcome since they were prophesied; i.e. man no longer eats only the plants of the ground; is no longer obligated to work in the field by the sweat of his brow (i.e. manual labor); we no longer allow thorns and thistles to take over the ground, etc. The only negative consequence that has been elevated to a good, positive, necessary one is the rule of the man over the woman. Talk about taking a verse out of context….!
BL wrote:
@ Daisy:
RE: CBMW articles about singleness…I don’t know if it was that site or another related one, but there was an article somewhere about how to have ‘hospitality’ as a single person. Instead of advising people to, you know, invite people over(!), they mostly advised them to offer free babysitting. What??? How does that help?
Lea wrote:
Because the only reason for Singles to exist is as a free labor pool for all the Marrieds sitting at the grown-ups’ table Focusing on their Families.
BL wrote:
I agree!
Victorious wrote:
But if you’re a MAN, you personally benefit from that one, so it’s a Positive.
“WOMAN, SUBMIT! I HAVE A PENIS!”
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
It was maddening! It was basically like, yep. You’re single, you obviously can’t invite people over. You just have to go do stuff for other people. Deeply weird.
Lydia wrote:
And since this permanent “7 year old” wifey is also supposed to put out for Hubby whenever and however HE gets those Urges in his Areas…
Does anybody else get a Pedo-Incest vibe when you put those two together without Doublethink or Drugs?
Daisy wrote:
50 Shades of Grey is the Fantasy.
THAT is the Reality.
Victorious wrote:
That might be that “selective literalism” someone above was talking about 🙂
BL wrote:
Doing things Ken’s way ……. I don’t see a lot of difference there between a man marrying a woman and a man adopting a dog from the animal shelter. Same rules apply: I own you, therefore. You must obey me!
Daisy wrote:
“Men of Sin” will ALWAYS find and cite some Cosmic-level Authority (Bible, Koran, Marx, Freud, Darwin, Nature, etc) to justify What *I* Wanna.
Lea wrote:
I’m glad your dad was there for you.
I was close to my mother. She was the warm and fuzzy one, but she at the same time, stifled me by role modeling traditional gender role behavior to me, which held me back. My dad is/was the more critical one.
My sister is like my father on steroids. She is ten times more critical, negative, and insulting. I think she sort of got the wrong idea from my dad.
My dad sends me conflicting messages. He has always told me to ‘go after my goals’ but he shamed my siblings and me a lot when we were kids, was very critical, etc.
It’s not consistent to teach your daughter to go after her life goals, if, you are, at the same time, (as he did, and sometimes still does), chipping away at her self esteem too.
You have to have self esteem, a willingness to fail – not be afraid to fail/ make mistakes, have good boundaries, to be able to meet goals in life. And I was never taught that by either parent (I got the opposite messages).
Daisy wrote:
Yes, that’s what it is. Thanks, Daisy!
Lea wrote:
Oh yes, I saw the same, or a similar article, months ago. I forget where it was, but it was on a Christian site.
The article started out pretty well. The author was saying how the church ignores adult singles, and she was unhappy about that.
The author then devoted the rest of her article telling adult singles to be of service to the church by becoming free babysitters to harried, exhausted, married adults like herself who would sure like a “date night” out with their spouses, if only they had a free baby-sitter to watch the kids. My mouth fell open.
Mara wrote:
With a big side helping of “IF EVERBODY’S DOING IT, IT CAN’T BE WRONG!”
Daisy wrote:
Because the only reason that Singles exist is as a free labor pool for the Convenience of the Marrieds.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
I was walking around outside my Ohio home, & saw “Keep Sweet” carved into the cement side walk. I almost threw up on the spot.
Ken wrote:
First husband [Safraz Ahmed] convicted of keeping his wife in domestic slavery by beating and threatening to kill her and forcing her to do chores for 19 hours a day is jailed for two years
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3519267/First-husband-convicted-keeping-wife-domestic-slavery-beating-threatening-kill-forcing-chores-19-hours-day-jailed-two-years.html
Lea wrote:
These ideas are dangerous even with men that aren’t evil.
Ken wrote:
If this is what you’re debating with your “better half”, and you haven’t repented of such vile controlling, ungodly demands, then she certainly is the better half, and you are a sick, twisted pig.
HUG, your description (at 12:35 a.m.) of the dynamic played out in this kind of sexist environment reminds me of the Christian cult in which I was once a member. The leader/pastor had a teaching on the Spirit of Eve, which basically came down to FEAR, FEAR, and MORE FEAR. The women were told to watch out for the Spirit of Eve that lurked within her, always trying to maneuver and manipulate men to get what they want. The men were told to WATCH OUT for the Spirit of Eve that was out to maneuver and manipulate them into helpless, female-controlled men. After my husband and I left that crazy environment, we heard it got worse – Stepford Wives Crazy Worse. The unmarried women (who were given the derogatory label of “sister-women) were instructed that if they wanted *attention* from the men (brothers) – they would have to approach that particular male and say: “Could I have some attention?” – because – *get this* – females usually wanted WRONG ATTENTION from males. At that point it was up to the male if he would give the female attention. If he thought she was seeking wrong attention, he would walk away and ignore her! The only way people got married from that cult was if they left.
In case anyone disbelieves my description above, I tell you the truth, it is NOT an exaggeration.
rob wrote:
Here’s a woman who doesn’t vote:
http://stevenandersonfamily.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-i-dont-vote.html
As a citizen of the US, I have a right to vote. However, I do not exercise this right, because I believe that based on the Bible, it is wrong for women to vote.
Now, I am not trying to convince any other ladies of my beliefs. I simply wanted to share some Bible verses of why I believe what I believe, because I have been asked about it repeatedly.
1Timothy 2:12 – But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
[…]
Voting is not in my area of responsibility, because as a woman, I am commanded to follow God and my husband. There should be one vote per household, and it should be the husband who casts it. [emphasis added] Men are responsible for running the affairs outside the home, women are responsible for those inside the home.
The one-way chain of command in the Bible is:
God
Husband
Wife
Children
No, of course she’s not trying to convince women not to vote. She’s just clobbering them with the Bible.
Annnnd… “one vote per household”? Golly Ned, when was that the way the US worked? Somebody please remind me.
Ken wrote:
Ken, I will leave up your entire post above, because all of it weaved together is very much what is wrong with Complementarianism. But, I’d like to focus on a few particular statements that you made above:
“There is that little phrase so let wives also be subject in everything to their (own) husbands. You cannot ignore everything without the danger of spreading rebellion into the marriage. And we all know what rebellion is. If you can’t manage the smallest of things, it won’t be possible to do the really important of things.”
^That mindset is a recipe for disaster – your interpretation of the text notwithstanding. Such a mindset demands that a woman deny her personhood, even that she functions as an individual human being apart from her husband. You, Ken, are setting up a scenario where hubby can place whatever expectations he wants on his wife, and she MUST comply else she is in rebellion. Where would one draw the line in such a case? No where, because there are no areas in the wife’s life in which the husband cannot and make/demand requirements and expect complete and total submission. No discussion, no two adults working things out together in dialogue. Nope. Hubby demands – Wife submits. Such a scenario makes the wife no more than an adult child as my following examples show.
Husband tells wife how to dress – she must comply.
Husband tell wife how to eat, what to eat, and when – she must submit.
Husband tells wife what t.v. shows she can watch and how long she can watch t.v. – ditto above. Husband tells wife what books she can and cannot read, she must submit.
Husband tells wife she is not permitted to be on the computer or use the car until the house is clean according to his standards. Wifey must submit.
Husband tells wife if and when she can visit her parents. She must comply.
Husband tells wife when she must wake up in the morning and when she must go to bed.
Husband tells wife to hand over her cell phone, car keys, check book (if she has one), and computer until he deems she has earned the right to use these things again. Wifey must submit, or heaven forbid – REBELLION will ensue.
The possibilities are endless for hubby to control his wife. And don’t tell me some cockamamie story about true Complementarian men would never demand or expect such things. I know otherwise. Such a claim to true Complementarians is just a No True Scotsman fallacy. The truth is: your Complementarian construct is fraught with abuse from its foundation to its very core.
Ken wrote:
This cracks me up Ken, it’s straight out of my Grandparents era. How do you handle the woman of Proverbs 31 who ran her own business, had her own slaves etc? Her husband called her blessed.
And to address the British thing: we also rinse dishes. And the buttering toast to the edge for our husbands? Hahahahahahahhahahahahhahhaahhaahhahaaaahahhahahahahahahhahahahahhahhaa. If he’s that nit-picky & selfish don’t pass me a knife at the breakfast table. Alternatively Ken, f the only way your wife can get heard is to passively-aggressively irritate you by mis-buttering the toast please become someone who she feels will listen to her concerns & care about her feelings so she doesn’t have to resort to her buttered-toast voice.
Ruth Tucker wrote:
Ruth, how – if I may ask – do you think Piper was different back then? It may be, if I understand correctly in reading between the lines, that Piper wasn’t a hard-core Comp man like he is today. After all, the Danver’s Statement on gender roles was just hot off the press. Now, years later, Complementarianism has risen to an Essential belief within Neo-Calvinism.
Not ridiculous at all! We dog lovers totally get it. 🙂
Beakerj wrote:
Gus, I agree with everything you stated in your comments at 1:24 p.m. except saying that the Comps have an “ever shrinking bubble.” The Complementarian Camp is enlarging within Neo-Calvinism, which has also increased in numbers. These folks are taking over Evangelicalism and will not be going away very soon. Remember, their purpose is to expose the evils of Feminism – and to prove that just about every evil in our current society is connected to Evil Feminism.
BL wrote:
LoL! You’ve got right. Just how manly of a man is it that is offended when his toast is buttered properly anyway?
*when his toast ISN’T buttered properly
patriciamc wrote:
Hhm. Sounds a little bit like Stockholm Syndrome.
BL wrote:
Exactly! I thought something along these lines when I read his comment. But you state it perfectly.
Darlene wrote:
Just as previous MenaGAWD KNEW their God-given Purpose was to expose the evils of Homosexuality and PROVE that EVERY evil in society is caused by Homosexuality.
Or Evolution.
Or Communism.
Or Taking Prayer Out of Schools.
Or Beverage Alcohol.
Or the Democrats.
Or Reefer.
Or Dungeons & Dragons.
Or Rock Music.
Or Cabbage Patch Dolls.
Or My Little Pony…
Friend wrote:
In the very early days of the Constitution, when who could vote was determined at the State level — usually only Free (White) Men of Property.
Very interesting;
The Neglected History of Women in the Early Church
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-17/neglected-history-of-women-in-early-church.html
(Note the women mentioned in that article did much more than butter toast)
Darlene wrote:
I believe ya, Darlene.
There is a LOT of Crazy out there.
And as much as you can exaggerate, there’s a True Believer out there who’s gone even farther out.
XianJaneway wrote:
CARVED into the cement sidewalk? Not just spray-painted or chalked on top?
Did it appear to be a professional job, or someone just writing with their finger in wet cement?
BL wrote:
Then I learned that Ken’s life verse was a verse directed toward women.
It’s as though he’s rejected the Chief Cornerstone in building his doctrine and replaced it with some other verse that is better suited to for his self-serving agenda.
I’m thinking Ken needs a better life verse.
Daisy wrote:
Yet another reason for Christianese Singles to get married by any means necessary. (With the spouse being only a Necessary Piece of Equipment.) Not only can they now sit at the grown-ups’ table, but now the Singles HAVE to serve THEM!
The same dynamic as abusive hazing — “Now I’ve Got Mine!” combined with “Pull up the ladder, I’m Aboard!” combined with “Why should THEY have it easy when *I* Didn’t?”
@ Mara:
Once more I’m glad I don’t use my real name (Ken) on these blog comments.
Law Prof wrote:
I get the impression that Ken sees his wife as his “lesser half”.
Ruth Tucker wrote:
3. Buttered toast submission
Way up in the comments someone mentioned non-christians having a better marriage. Why is that? Because they treat each other like human beings, with mutual respect, consideration, acceptance, love. Most folks prefer a relationship based on shared interests, values, respect, companionship, rather than a servant/master, slave/owner relationship.
The dominant/submissive model sucks the joy out of marriage. I sincerely doubt that was the intent when the author wrote “It is good”.
It truly, truly saddens me to see this movement gaining traction.
Darlene wrote:
Just ask any rapist.
siteseer wrote:
The pecking order in an American High School?
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
We’d be floored since we’re so used to Headless Unicorn Guy that it doesn’t sound strange. : )
Darlene wrote:
I think of Pat Robertson saying that feminism causes witchcraft, lesbianism, and Communism. I once snarkingly remarked that he forgot high gas prices and hemorrhoids.
Darlene wrote:
I think it’s growing, but at the same time, I think it’s crumbling since people, and blogs like these, are starting to add two and two together and seeing the flaws of the neo-Cal movement. So, the wave is growing, but it will also crash soon.
Friend wrote:
Oh my freaking goodness!!! What lunacy! Where is Jesus in this? If someone asked this woman that, she’d probably give them a blank look and then quote Paul because we all know that Paul is part of the Holy Quad (Father, that other guy, Paul, and Calvin).
So, apparently some Hindu temples are for men only. I hope this doesn’t give our neo-cal brethren any ideas.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35941073
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Bingo! You win the internet, Headless!
@ Daisy:
“The Neglected History of Women in the Early Church
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-17/neglected-history-of-women-in-early-church.html
(Note the women mentioned in that article did much more than butter toast)”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
looks very interesting. I hope to read it.
so, I imagine Christianity Today is all of a sudden considered a liberal rag by patriarchal powerbrokers and wannabees, which they simply “cannot recommend”.
Friend wrote:
I believe her husband is Steve Anderson who is a very controversial pastor who has said he hates Obama and would pray for Obama to die and go to hell. He pastors Faithful Word Baptist Church. You can read a analysis of him and his beliefs here if you’re interested:
http://brucegerencser.net/2015/04/understanding-steven-anderson-pastor-faithful-word-baptist-church-tempe-arizona/
My comment above about the analysis of pastor Steve Anderson is written by, Bruce Gerencser, who left the ministry after 25 yrs. and is now an atheist.
okrapod wrote:
I totally agree. This is why the Duggers are so dangerous, the second you encourage women to forego education you make them slaves.
Also, I feel sorry for Ken and comps of that ilk. They will never know the surpassing love of a relationship of equals. It’s not easy but oh so worth it. Anything less is a cheap imitation.
“…I believe that based on the Bible, it is wrong for women to vote.”
“Now, I am not trying to convince any other ladies of my beliefs.”
Sure, she’s not. If she believes this to be a sin against God (which is what she’s really saying), of course she’ll try to persuade other Christians likewise. Her doctrine is clear, and she needs to be willing to own it.
rob wrote:
On a kind of related note (this is something I mentioned here before on another thread), I read a page by a marriage counselor who counsels Christian married couples and atheist ones.
He said the atheists are the most competent in his experience (at working on their marriage problems) because they will actually perform the homework assignments he gives them, whereas, he said, the Christian couples would not do squat.
The Christian couples would tell him they would just pray about their marital problems and the Lord would magically remove them (with no effort of any kind on their part).
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Ah yes, the state level. Silly me. And nowadays control is supposed to become more and more local, until one person makes all of the laws governing another.
Victorious wrote:
Bruce Gerenscer writes valuable and uncomfortable truths about patriarchal Christianity and oppressive churches. I respect his experience and his outspokenness against abuse.
BL wrote:
Just for the record the woman I’ve lived with for forty years has never buttered the toast for me. I’m no cook but I can do toast, good grief.
Nancy2 wrote:
LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!! You can’t make this stuff up.
You must be a Complementarian IF:
You command your wife to butter your toast to perfection.
You command your wife to rinse all of the soap off the dishes.
You command your wife to speak winsomely, and longingly if you want group sex.
Nancy2 wrote:
Rebellious arm submission
I’m now wondering if we haven’t been “had” by Ken and that wasn’t an April Fool’s prank. I’ve never agreed with his views on women or the emphasis he likes to place on such things, but I’ve never noticing him saying anything quite as absurd as the buttered toast comment. Guessing we’ve been punked.
Law Prof wrote:
I hope it was.
BL wrote:
Oh my….if that is the case, I wasted a lot of words on Ken up thread! Ok Ken, come out, come out, wherever you are!
__
“Piper Pipes, People Listen?”
hmmm…
John Piper: “The subject index of Piper’s blueprint for Christian Hedonism: ‘Desiring God’ (pub. 1987), contains over twenty references to happiness, but only one to obedience…” – http://www.newcalvinist.com/
huh?
John Piper’s concept of the Christian hedonist is doctrinally suspected of being flawed?
What?
You can learn more about John Piper in a book called: ‘The New Calvinists’ (2014); [not written by Piper], published by The Wakeman Trust and Belmont House Publishing. The book is available from amazon.com, or belmonthousebooks.com/
In this book, New Calvinism presents a new ‘gospel’ that changes the terms of salvation.[1]
Krunch!
How are we …not suprised?
(sadface)
Sopy
__
ref: [1] http://www.newcalvinist.com/
—
Ken wrote:
Ken, snorting, you win the interwebs for today with that April Fool’s gem, AND you got us all before lunchtime. Congrats, you were GOOOOD. Need to un-ROFL myself, big time. Well done.
patriciamc wrote:
I’ll have to update my fridge magnet now !
So sorry to read your post ,what an awful church ! They need to take responsibility for their bad attitude it’s their sin not yours .God loves us all unconditionally it’s not a sin if you are different and God loves you so much he could never hate you. He would never punish us because Jesus did it all .I pray that you find peace and calm in the arms of our wonderful God . @ incognito:
@ Ken:
Note that Ken addressed that egregious comment to Daisy and referenced their prior discussions and then ended with a cop out about let’s not discuss this further. Ken has to know from previous conversations how much personal problem with comp that Daisy has previously had. How could he not? If that was April’s Fool then to do that to Daisy specifically was lower than the dirt on the ground.
Just my opinion. Daisy has struggled valiantly with issues, and Ken may be just another bully. Sorry I left that out of my original analysis of what Ken may have been up to.
Whenever I hear one of the patriarchal pastors saying “do everything he tells you except if it causes you to sin” I realize that man is a fool. From what I have read and experienced, the controlling “Christian” man is not (usually) going to ask Little Wifey to have group sex or steal. Usually it is trying to CONTROL her every move, idea, action, etc. It’s the hundreds of little things that can make her crazy. I have been corrected for how I clean the cat litter. No kidding. These type of men have a sense of ownership over their wives that is really a psychological game of always being the boss and getting their way. It’s not about committing crimes. Its an attitude of superiority which is the opposite of Christ, who was a servant. Piper does NOT get it at all. Sanford’s wife will NEVER be happy if she is monitored like a child. It do think that WOMEN also play into this scenario until they have had enough, like I did, and get out.
abigail wrote:
Something we all know here.
Something young, awestruck fanboys have no understanding of. They lack years and wisdom. Yet they are the new leaders of this broken ‘gospel’.
okrapod wrote:
Which could be him playfully yanking her chain on April Fool’s Day.
If it is and April Fool’s jab, it was strangely direct and pretty much tasteless.
As a counselor and talking to an egalitarian, I mentioned to them that in the marriage and family books over 20 years ago define complementarianism the way she was defining Christian egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is a philosophy developed out of 16-17th century secular oriented France and suspect that not many of the actual good ministers are not paying attention to this argument because this word. I totally get what is being promoted in Christian egalitarianism now but was getting hung up on this one word. Really believe the Christian complementarian by what I am hearing is actually a traditionalist and not actually a complementarian at all. In the definition of a complementarian they regard equality but assert that each person has different strengths to where they can complement the others. In the old school definition Egalitarianism does not assert anything of the kind and suggest detached boundaries even. These ministers are actually neo traditionalists.
Glenn wrote:
I’m a bit fuzzy on the history of this. But chances are there is someone here who can explain this better.
The term “complimentary” has been hijacked by CBMW to make their damaging doctrine more palatable to people in order to sell their doctrine. Their tactics are dishonest and misleading.
@ Mara:
Mara:
These young “pastors” have little to no life experience. They have no clue what they are talking about–but it does not stop them.
Mara wrote:
I think Ken can be very insensitive and tastelessness is part and parcel of the crowd he runs with, I’ve taken him to task in the past about it, but he also has a side where he tries to engage others and understand things outside his own bubble. If that wasn’t an April Fool’s prank, then Ken has bared an ugly side totally out of what character I think I’ve discerned here.
mot wrote:
That’s why they do idiotic selfish things, it’s because they have no experience and don’t know what they don’t know. More experience, provided one is really gaining experience by facing the consequences of their stupidity, not surrounding one’s self with sounding boards and sycophants, tends to make people less sure of themselves and more circumspect.
This is why the Bible states that why young men are told to submit to those older than them, why newer believers are not supposed to be leaders, why in any event leaders are to be the least and last, lowly servants of others, never being allowed to rule over anyone, but lead purely and entirely by example. That’s the only leadership allowed in the New Testament, and not surprisingly, it’s the only leadership that works.
???
Ken said this:
Ken wrote:
And I had no idea what he meant – had they actually met or discussed offline or something as it didn’t make sense in the context of this post? Confused now…
okrapod wrote:
If that was Ken’s purpose, then yes it was lower than dirt.
Ken,
I have seen your comments at another site. You and the blog owner had opinions about the commenters at TWW. If you had something to say about or to people who comment here, I would have expected you to say it here and not at another blog, but I guess that was to much to expect from you.
Mara wrote:
Tim Fall’s blogs highlighted Proverbs 26:18-19 yesterday.
Like a maniac shooting
flaming arrows of death
is one who deceives their neighbor
and says, “I was only joking!”
In Ken’s case I think it may be applicable.
@ mirele:
Well, at least an Arab Muslim can be “elected” to the Knesset. :o)
Law Prof wrote:
Indeed, in my sixties I can now begin to grasp what I don’t know.
Mara wrote:
It is used to sweeten/obfuscate the actual teaching/belief, which is full-on patriarchy.
Haitch wrote:
No. He and I don’t correspond off this blog. We do not have each other’s e-mail addresses or anything like that.
Ken’s post to me came out of the blue.
You’ll see above when I replied to him I was like, “huh??” – because I didn’t know what to make of it.
He later did another post saying the whole thing was an April Fool’s prank.
I don’t know how I feel about that.
Gender complementarianism (along with some other things in my life) created some painful issues that plagued me over my life, some of which I’m dealing with even now.
So, I’m not so sure I find it an amusing topic to prank people on per se. I do like to have a sense of humor about things, but I don’t know how I feel about this.
Daisy wrote:
One exception: I did leave some posts to Ken at Nate Sparks’ blog about a month ago. I replied to some posts he left there. But he and I don’t routinely talk off this blog is all I was trying to get across.
@ Darlene:
One big difference re Piper then and now, I think, is that he was very much into mission work back then. I rarely hear him talk about that today—–though actually I don’t follow his ministry. But I do often hear him of him speaking out or blogging on his demand for wives to submit.
Daisy wrote:
Whoa, I’m really sorry Daisy, I misunderstood and didn’t read it as a personal prank on you per se, but on the group. And I didn’t see Ken’s explanatory post? Sorry if it was triggering. I have been reading this post and comments that Darlene I think pointed out elsewhere: http://new.exchristian.net/2012/05/losing-faith-gaining-facts-my-story-of.html I would like to see Ken repudiate this mindset of control and lack of love.
Oh it was an April Fools? Thank goodness.
Haitch wrote:
Or at least admit something that would distance himself from the core of this teaching that leads down this slippery slope. You know that part that says a wife is to submit (defined as OBEY by comps/patris) in everything.
@ Beakerj:
We are still unclear on this.
@ Mara:
And I was feeling so hopeful that Toastgate was just a jape…
Daisy wrote:
Here’s my thought about this type of quasi-prank, which also applies to possible trolls and Poes (such as Biblical Gender Roles). Imagine that an unknown group calling itself the White Sheets schedules a rally in a town. Bigots hear about the rally and show up to cheer them on. Absolutely no good would come of this, regardless of the identity and motives of the organizers, who conceal their identities and leave others to guess their motives. Counter-protestors might feel compelled to show up, but what could they achieve when the event is a trick? The bigoted supporters get a forum without an authentic challenge. Only the organizers feel total pleasure, enjoying a nice private laugh because they “aren’t really bigots.”
Cruelty comes in many sizes, from petty to genodical. Regardless of Ken’s identity and motives and words elsewhere, he has shown callousness here this week.
It’s a waste of goodwill for us to assume the best of people who write vaguely harmful things and then protest that we misunderstood.
Most of us, I’m sure, would rather see less trickery and more evidence of the better angels of our nature.
elastigirl wrote:
That kind of reminds me (and maybe this was your intent!) of the Tim Challies review of Ruth Tucker’s book about domestic abuse and male headship teachings.
Her book had the audacity to demonstrate that there are or can be negative consequences to gender complementarianism, so Challies concluded by telling readers of his review he could not recommend her book.
@ Friend:
It’s so sad to see women buy into patriarchal, complementarian beliefs – they are voluntarily participating in their own marginalization.
My mother conditioned me to be this way when I was growing up. I was taught that me giving up my needs, rights, and allowing others to walk all over me, was a godly way to live, and it was expected of Christian women.
The Bible (in the New Testament) tells all believers to be subjected to their (secular) rulers and laws.
The Bible does not limit those teachings to males only.
That means if a secular culture permits women to vote, or run for office, that would be okay for her (a Christian lady) to do so.
The woman you quoted says she believes the Bible says it is wrong for women to vote, and she seems to be citing this as her proof:
Voting is not the same thing as teaching, so I have no idea how she is correlating these two, or why she is conflating them.
Further, you would think as a comp woman, she would feel fine voting for a man running for office who represents what she believes in.
For example, I would assume she is pro-life- so, she could vote for a man who is pro-life. She could just as easily construe her vote as being godly, what god wants, if she votes for a guy who stands for values that closely (or are) based on the Bible.
She also said:
She’s actually ignoring the examples of women in the Bible, especially the New Testament, who worked outside the home. Some women were apostles and teachers. Some owned businesses.
Some women (IIRC), followed Jesus on the road. Jesus gently corrected the one sister who felt it was woman’s duty to be a housewife and cook dinner – she was upset that her sister was sitting at Jesus’ feet, learning theology from Jesus.
She said:
The Bible doesn’t teach a “chain of command” but rather teaches…
And
I think she’s guilty of a lot of eisegesis. She is really reading the Bible through a filter that assumes male privilege and authoritarianism.
he probably thinks she is taking the Bible at face value, however, and the mere idea of even considering reading the text in a different (yet equally conservative way), she would likely consider to be a ‘sell-out’ to secular feminism or to liberalism.
What this woman is advocating sounds similar to me to some Islamic rules against women. In some Islamic nations, women aren’t permitted to drive, and I’d assume they probably aren’t allow to vote, either. (The whole concept of limiting women based on their gender only, from certain activities, is there.)
Anyway, I don’t see anything in the Bible that indicates God is against women participating in politics, whether voting or running for office or getting into political debates.
Daisy wrote:
He definitely doesn’t want them to read it. It might open people’s eyes to the fraud that hierarchy teaching truly is. And he can’t have that.
It seems to me that conservative vs liberal is the wrong issue. A better issue is true vs not true, and let the chips fall where they may.
Daisy wrote:
Where did Ken say this?
Darlene wrote:
Whether Flag Ken was joking or not – there are actually men who feel that way out there, and it’s no laughing matter for the women who have to put up with these types of men.
Around the same time Flag Ken made that buttered toast post, I posted a comment up above with a link to a news story about a man who abuses his wife if she doesn’t clean the house X number hours per day (“he forces her to do chores for 19 hours a day”) and whatever else.
You can see that link in this post of mine:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2016/03/30/john-piper-and-the-cbmw-soap-opera-lady-demonstrate-why-complementarians-can-be-naive-and-dangerous/#comment-246196
There are actually men out there, whether they are religious or not (but some are religious, including complementarians, and they used their warped understanding of the Bible to defend male dominance of women) who would feel within their rights to order a wife to butter his toast a certain way, or to browbeat her about it.
To Ken, that is a joke, I guess, but there are women who are in fact trapped in those types of suffocating, loveless marriages that chip away at their self worth. These husbands do not cherish their wives.
I think some of us here were discussing the Doug Wilson post where he told a husband to tattle on his wife to the church elders for refusing to wash some dishes by hand.
I don’t know if Flag Ken finds that stuff funny or not, but to the woman who have to live under that “drip- drip- drip” of sexism, regular criticism, and perfectionism, it can erode their self esteem and cause them to slip into deep depression.
There are many examples of that very thing in the book “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” by Patricia Evans, and in other books.
Like the example above I gave from yet another book I have:
A wife came to see the counselor because she was depressed. Come to find out she was depressed (the therapist discovered) because her husband constantly criticized, in great detail, how she folded laundry, etc.
I grew up with a father who was like this: very negative, critical, and demanding, and he felt men are superior to women. He would nit pick how I watered the lawn, cleaned dirty dishes by hand, etc. How I cleaned dishes or did whatever was never good enough for my dad.
And this constant nit picking, criticizing, and that it is based in part that you are female, it does negatively affect your self esteem and so on.
The ‘Verbally Abusive Relationship’ book has several examples in it based on real life marriages where the husband nit picked the wife and verbally abused her over trivial nonsense.
One example in the book was a husband who pitched a fit and screamed at his wife for suggesting something like if he was concerned that their house guests would not have enough coffee cake to eat that Sunday morning, he could consider picking up an extra cake on his usual Sunday trip to the grocery.
The husband flew into a rage over her suggestion about this and screamed at her.
Another abusive husband totally chewed his wife out for mentioning the weather man said it was going to get cooler out.
He was yelling at his wife (he was quite angry): “It’s supposed to get COLDER, not ‘cooler’. You said “cooler.” It’s not ‘cooler,’ it’s colder.”
Another husband got angry and pitched a fit when the wife asked him where the $500 or whatever amount in their budget went (she was doing financial chores that day), because he was wanting more money to finish a deck that day, but she didn’t know if they had the necessary funds.
Yet another husband mocked his wife mercilessly for how she painted their home’s guest bathroom.
Another guy ripped his wife’s ego to bits and left her feeling deflated when he made a big ‘to-do’ over her printing up labels on a file folder system she worked all weekend on.
Rather than give her praise for the huge folder system itself (in other words, the husband was intentionally degrading her efforts to make her feel bad).
There are women who are derided and diminished -and over trivial matters- on a regular basis by their husbands, brothers, or fathers, and it can hurt the woman. In those situations, it’s not funny at all.
patriciamc wrote:
By Flag Ken (Ha ha I was just kidding post):
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2016/03/30/john-piper-and-the-cbmw-soap-opera-lady-demonstrate-why-complementarians-can-be-naive-and-dangerous/comment-page-1/#comment-246160
Friend wrote:
It also doesn’t help in my particular situation that I come from a family where my dad thought it very funny to mock and make fun of family around the dinner table until one of us looked ashamed of ourselves or his comments made us cry.
My father would sometimes tease my mother so badly, she’d plead with him to stop, but he would keep right on, until Mom was in tears.
By the time I got to my late teens, I realized that what he was doing was a form of emotional or verbal abuse, and it was bullying, and it was wrong.
Sometimes, my father would pull that stuff on me, the barbed digs with a smile on his face, and as a tiny kid, I would start to cry.
Mom would be all, “Oh honey, he really loves you, he didn’t mean X.”
As I got older, I started standing up to him and telling him to knock off the jokey put downs, that I did NOT find them funny. I also started standing up for my Mom, when he started in on her, and she was on the verge of crying.
Now that I’m older, I realize that yeah, he really meant ‘X,’ otherwise, he would not have even said it in a supposed Joking manner. He didn’t care if saying X, even from a motive of “I’m just joking” got me offended, upset, or sad.
My dad has always gotten a sadistic kick or enjoyment out of making my mother (who has been deceased for a few years now), or my siblings, or myself, the object of his jokey put-downs.
Sometimes his humor is NOT cruel like that, with no victims, and in such cases, that was fine (he would have a great sense of humor if he would not use it as a weapon against family), but there were times when he aimed his hurtful “humor” at my Mom or my siblings or me.
I don’t think my sister (who is a huge verbal abuser, ten times worse then our father) wants to recognize this about our family. I think she is in denial.
I’ve tried talking to her before about this kind of parenting we got, but she just starts yelling at me to “stop blaming Mom and Dad.” It’s as though she doesn’t want to admit they did stuff like this (it was mostly our dad).
But there are people who feel it’s acceptable to tease and joke against other people, even if it makes the other person feel bad or run out of the room in tears. I come from a family where some of that went on.
okrapod wrote:
I kind of see what you’re saying, but as someone who is a conservative (though I’m more moderate now), I know how they think.
A lot of Christian conservatives view any deviation from the accepted conservative interpretation of the text (such as gender complementarianism, which believes in male headship over women) as being “liberal,” and (their further reasoning goes), any and all things liberal must be untrustworthy, heretical, plays fast and loose with the Scripture, is not taking the Scripture seriously and literally, and so on.
Daisy wrote:
Hmmmm
Daisy wrote:
That’s never acceptable. Even if someone is extraordinarily sensitive, why provoke them? “I was just joking” is a stock phrase that bullies use to deflect responsibility back onto the target. If a comment was truly meant as a joke, the joker should take on that responsibility: “I was trying to be funny, and I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings.”
Ken sounds a lot like Lori Alexander’s husband, also Ken. She has a horrible blog where she expresses her narrow-minded, pretentious opinions. She claims that God commands her, as an older woman, to “teach” younger women. She is very black and white in her views and shames anyone who disagrees with her. In one one of her blogs, she told a former stay at home mom with multiple children (9?) not to go to work even though her husband had become disabled. She said to trust that God will somehow provide.
Of course, when she was young her kids went to school, she worked and had a housekeeper. Now she says she has learned to be a submissive wife and her husband has the right to discipline her. You would have to read it to believe it!! Her husband Ken often comes to her aid by spouting all kinds of patriarchal nonsense.
@ Ann:
I’ve heard of her before. Isn’t it great to know we’re in a free country, and we’re adults who can live our lives the way we think is best, and we don’t have to live how Lori Alexander and her husband say?
I feel really good about completely disregarding any of her views on how she thinks I ought to be living my life. 🙂
You said:
I’m not sure what her age is. I’m in my 40s. I don’t know if she’s older or younger than me, but I’m old enough to know what I want for my own life.
Daisy wrote:
She’s discussed quite a bit over at Freejinger. I cringe because she’s given a lot of people a bad impression of Christianity.
Bridget wrote:
Bridget wrote:
Very interesting.
@ Patriciamc:
” I cringe because she’s given a lot of people a bad impression of Christianity.”
+++++++++++++
I’ve rescinded all membership. I think Jesus may have, too. I’ll come up with my own word or symbol to refer to my religion if ever asked. God/Jesus/Holy Spirit are the bee’s knees; the commercial/political monstrosity of the organization, I’ve long had more than enough.
Ann wrote:
Oh man….I’ve read that blog and she is a female version of the Biblical Gender Roles blog guy. Her views are harmful to women, especially women who already feel lousy about themselves or have a controlling, abusive husband. I’ve tried to interact with her, but a number of the comments where I opposed what she was saying didn’t even get approved. Sometime she does post comments from women who disagree, and then good ole Hubby Ken tries his hand at dealing with the uppity woman. LoL! Lori and her husband recommend The Pearl’s methods of disciplining children, which, plain and simple can only be defined as child abuse. They also recommend Debbie Pearl’s books on wifely submission, which are another recipe for disastrous, abusive marriages.
elastigirl wrote:
I look forward to hearing your choice, I may just need to duplicate that.
Darlene wrote:
I see why you would interpret my statement in terms of numbers. What I actually wanted to say, albeit not very successfully, was that their world is getting smaller, there are more and more rules, less and less freedom, …
– Stay-at-home dads? Worse than unbelievers (Driscoll)
– Women at home? Subject to their husband’s (or father’s) approval, down to ridiculous things like how they rinse the dishes. (We must be thankful that Piper has at least clarified that they don’t have to ask permission to use the bathroom).
– women in church? Well, we have a list of 87 different things that people can do in a church, graded according to their suitability for women (Grudem)
It seems, that the early 21st century will one day be remembered as the dark age of fundamentalisms.
Darlene wrote:
They could probably tell that arguing with you would make the great patriarch look pretty bad. I’m sure they pick and choose the comments that he can argue against, that help the patriarch shine as a glowing example of biblical brilliance.
@ Patriciamc:
Missed the ‘april fools’ bit.
The problem is this ‘like stuff to go to the edges’ bit read true to me, because I’m a little ocd like this and because it is true: “And if anyone wants to know if there is any truth in buttering the toast, yes there is.”
Glad Ken is not terrible to his wife (I guess). But the problem still stands that that is where these idiots take this ‘complementarian’ nonsense. IF you take it seriously, it will lead to abuse. It will lead to a woman who is hurt. Inevitably.
Because they (the ‘leaders’ of this movement) never focus on the love, they always focus on the authority. They just assume that men will not treat their wives terribly, they will not ACTUALLY follow the logic, and if they do treat them terribly it is the woman’s fault for not submitting properly. NO good can come from this.
elastigirl wrote:
I have gone to a very liberal church as a result. Far more liberal than I am personally, politically.
That Lori Alexander person sounds like she’s in a cult. It’s pretty crazy.
Law Prof wrote:
This is a good post to reply to. It is beyond my comprehension that anyone could take such an absurd and over the top post at face value, at least without checking first in view of the date. To echo my younger daughter, seeeeeriously!
What man has his toast buttered for him? The whole scenario is ridiculous, as was most of the rest of the post. Mara was incredulous, and rightly so. Haitch at least saw it for what it was.
You have criticized me for potentially upsetting Daisy. I did consider that a possibility, and to repeat (which ought not to be necessary) I didn’t leave the outlandish post all that long without coming clean on it explaining I did not want to actually stir anyone up to real anger (I’m not addressing what anyone may or may not have actually experienced). I’ve never had cause to think Daisy doesn’t have a sense of humour, but in any event she wasn’t the subject.
Far from being about Daisy, I couldn’t believe the hang-up displayed in the soapy dishes scenario, and to some extent Piper as well. There is a reductio ad absurdum here that merits comment, so I joined in. I was lampooning this kind of complementarianism, or at least the legalism this can potentially engender. So April first is as good a day as any to lighten up a bit.
I would never mock someone genuinely wanting to do the will of God, even if I didn’t see eye to eye with them on what that entails.
Should it not be of concern that most of the vitriol this post lead to and which I did not expect was after I had said it wasn’t serious? It wasn’t terribly discerning to say the least of it, was it?
Gus wrote:
The ever-increasing list of Thou Shalt Nots, and where all that is not Forbidden is Absolutely Compulsory.
Daisy wrote:
My younger brother.
Sixteen years without letup.
“Staying Sweet” and oh-so-POLITE the entire time.
“WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM? CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE?????”
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Well said, HUG.
Ken wrote:
I have learned many things from writing a blog. One of those is that sometimes people do not get humor which I have thought was *obvious.* I have been called on it on many occasions. About three years into blogging, I started putting a little smiley face next to some comments that I thought could be misinterpreted.
As for absurd and over the top comments, you apparently have not been reading the stuff I read on Christian websites. Spanking wives, eating a godly Levitical diet, Druids invading the church, KJVO treatises, etc. Unfortunately, absurd and Christian seem to intersect quite frequently.
The reason I do not share my phone number has more to do with the weird phone calls I get. For example, one poor lad believes that demons (who somehow look like aliens) have disguised themselves and are now in our churches having babies with good Christian women and producing half breed demons to take down the church. Yes-this was a true phone call to which I didn’t respond.
So, cut each other a break- just say-I meant it as a joke. Sorry about that.
Ken wrote:
You’ve offered here more ambiguity and a hierarchy of people you consider bright enough to have caught onto your joke. You have not apologized for actually upsetting people who have the goodwill to take you seriously every day of the year. You are painting yourself as something of a victim here, and I think “vitriol” overstates the reaction.
All of these behaviors are common when people use the Internet to provoke and then to hide. I consider you bright enough to know what you’re doing, but emotional intent is hard to discern on the Internet. Am I joking? Check the calendar. (But perhaps that is a non sequitur.)
Here are some handy symbols that you might consider using in future. They can of course add clarity, but I’m sure they can also be used ambiguously when the perceived need arises. 🙂 😉 🙁
Bridget wrote:
I said here I am bothered by the nature of discernment blog comments in general, that I hope this site is not becoming like Team Pyro where dissenting opinions are not really wanted, and that imo the administrators should at least mull over well-meaning criticism.
I also felt I simply couldn’t let one of HUG’s Hitlerian posts go by unopposed, so I did comment on that here. I don’t understand the moderation policy here in this regard.
As a response to (and probably in reaction to) Dee’s long post to me, I’ve fleshed this out a bit elsewhere. Mainly in response to Guggenheim’s pieces, where I tried to be objective and fair and see what is good, not just what is bad. Critiqued and defended. It’s no secret. And I’m not alone in this.
I probably have been letting off steam.
I wondered if I was being a tad harsh on commenters, and this was partly the reason for coming back on April first. To say something well OTT and see if anyone would believe the best rather than assume the worst. May be I shouldn’t have, but don’t forget I was lampooning an aspect of complementarianism, not any abuse anyone may claim to have had.
Although I’ve enjoyed the interaction with differing viewpoints and partly want to continue, I probably ought to do what I said I would and retire early.
Dee – I would have no problem saying I meant it as a joke. Sorry about that. The truth is I had no intention of actually stirring things up (but maybe I should have known better by now), and made this clear early on. Is it too much though to want the description of me as a bully and Law Profs characterization including the words vile controlling, ungodly … you are a sick, twisted pig to be withdrawn?
I am sorry if anyone got riled up over this unnecessarily in the cross-fire, but I think some really do need to rethink how they responded, the assumptions they made, the stereotyping, and whether a double-standard is operating.
dee wrote:
“Coast to Coast… West of the Rockies, You’re On The Air!”
(Actually that one sounds like the “Alien Hybrid Conspiracy” with a Christian coat of paint. Just as Late Great Planet Earth was “Inevitable Global Thermonuclear War” with a Christian coat of paint to sell that Fire Insurance.)
(And it goes back further than that — ever heard of “Incubi” and “Succubi”?)
Daisy wrote:
Even if it’s not hidden abuse per se, you’re going to run into guys with a Dark or Sick sense of humor.
@ Ken:
The problem, Ken, is that you have hauled out of some bag a number of maneuvers that can do real injury to some people under certain circumstances.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/passive-aggressive-diaries/201011/10-things-passive-aggressive-people-say
I am not accusing you of being passive aggressive. I am trying to inform you that when you do stuff like passive aggressive people do, then you can expect those of us who have dealt with those kinds of things in the past to react.
For myself, after we took one of the grandkids out of public school and then some stuff surfaced that nobody was telling before we took her out, it turned out that she had been persistently bullied by people who kept mentioning her eyes or her hair as being different, and indeed they are different since she is Asian. And they kept ‘teasing’ about her size, and indeed she is small as is common for females from where she comes from. In other words they kept throwing in her face things to which she was sensitive. But hey, they were just teasing! And can’t she take a joke? And maybe it was all a misunderstanding on everybody else’s part except those doing the teasing. Those last three sentences are straight out of the p-a playbook.
Hogwash to that.
Ken wrote:
Ken said:
You seem incredulous that any of your fellow complementarians would cause women grief over how they rinse their dishes (or butter toast), but they do in fact do these sorts of things (and worse).
Criticizing a woman over how she washes a dish is just one possible negative ramification of complementarianism.
And this is how some Christians believe true, godly, biblical complementarianism should operate. This is not, in their view, complementarianism incorrectly implemented.
This view of complementarianism is not an aberation to such complementarians.
They would cite the same exact Bible verses and rationales to support condemning their wife over how she rinses dishes, that you do to say women should not be preachers, or that a man is a “head” to his wife, and so on.
The comps that promote this sort of thing- “the man gets to order how his wife rinses a sudsy cup” – would likely take strong issue with you for suggesting they are practicing or believing in complementariaism incorrectly.
Ken said:
Ken, you should not be surprised at the reaction your toast post got, because as I outlined in 3 to 4 posts above, commenting on my own experience with complementarianism and other women’s experience with it (or the same secular views that think men are in charge of their wives), there are in fact men out there who do treat women as in the “buttered toast” example you gave.
The original post – with the soapy dishes – has an example of a Christian woman who felt judged by her husband over how much soap is on her dishes.
She felt judged and then convicted to double rinse them due to (she says) her complementarian beliefs.
She didn’t feel that way because of egalitarianism or mutualist beliefs of the Bible- please let that sink in. This ridiculousness came about due to complementarianism.
That only complementarianism can give birth to this type of insanity should be a clue that there is something amiss with complementarianism itself, not just certain expressions of complementarianism.
Your “jokey” example is not “jokey” but quite real to women with authoritarian, critical, and verbally abusive husbands, some in complementarian marriages, some who are in secular / abusive marriages.
I wrote several posts with examples above, this is just one:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2016/03/30/john-piper-and-the-cbmw-soap-opera-lady-demonstrate-why-complementarians-can-be-naive-and-dangerous/comment-page-1/#comment-245955
Complementarianism can and does lead to ridiculous things like men feeling validated in chewing out their wives for not buttering toast to the edge to exploding in rage and beating them for other reasons (the ultimate reason is they are entitled and controlling, however).
You said:
I still find it odd you chose to highlight my name in your post. It felt like some kind of special call out to me, since it was addressed to me.
Women have been hurt by complementarianism and the similar sexist attitudes in comp that are found in secular culture.
To women who live with verbally or physically abusive men (who will nit pick at them over trivial things, like how they wash a cup – my dad was one such guy), it’s not a laughing matter.
This subjugation of women stuff is nothing to take lightly. Let me give an example.
When the hospitals quit paying the radiologists and we were forced to set up billing offices we of course ran into some problems. To address some of that I sent the office personnel to a class in assertiveness training which was being offered locally. They brought back this story. A pastor’s wife was attending the class and she said that her husband expected her to fetch and tote out of the kitchen whatever he wanted. He apparently would not go to the kitchen to get anything. When he was sitting in the living room and his coffee cup ran empty, for example, he would rattle the cup in the saucer without a word until she got up and got him another cup of coffee. We were all aghast at that, but such as that is out there.
The rinse the dishes scenario is quite believable.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
My dad really likes rubbing salt into the wound.
Not only did I get a message from him (and my mom) while I was growing up (and it continued into my adulthood) that my feelings don’t matter (other people’s feelings matter, mine do not), but if I have ever mentioned being hurt or angered by someone hurting my feelings, my dad and my sister react negatively to that.
For example, I tried going to my dad’s church a few years ago, not long after my mother died.
I was in a pretty emotionally vulnerable place at that time, which a Church Lady knew about. CL (Church Lady) seemed nice enough, so I thought I could confide in CL. That was a mistake on my part!
I told CL my personal business. She later bit my head off during a Sunday School class over a mundane matter (I hadn’t done anything wrong).
Church Lady also tended to downplay the grief I felt over my mother’s death and my upset over my sister’s verbal abuse (my sister was even more abusive to me in the years after our mother’s death than she normally was), by comparing my pain with homeless people in our city – the homeless people had ‘real’ pain, you see, mine was nothing.
Why, I should feel down right blessed, gleeful, and fortunate that all I had to deal with was depression, anxiety, a dead mom, a verbally abusive sister, etc.!
So I stopped going to that church. I was not going to subject myself to getting my feelings stomped on more by some lady who I had trusted previously.
My dad later found out (from me) that these incidents with the ‘Church Lady’ were the main incidents that caused to me to quit his church. I haven’t been back to his church in years.
Instead of saying, “Honey, I am so terribly sorry that the Church Lady was mean to you, especially in a time of vulnerability,” my dad scoffed over it and giggled and thought it weak or stupid that I allowed my hurt feelings and/or that lady’s behavior to dictate if I went to that church or not.
My take away is that my dad expects me to keep interacting in an environment where people don’t respect me and feel fine hurting my feelings.
That was several years ago, btw, when I was still operating under my mother’s parenting that it’s okay for me to avoid jerks, but ‘nice girls’ should never, ever directly speak to a jerk and tell them, “Hey you were a jerk. You hurt my feelings.”
I did at least have a smidgen of self esteem at that time to not force myself to be around a lady who stomped on my feelings. I am not going to regularly attend a church where my feelings are disregarded and I am treated disrespectfully.
Anyway, my point is, in my family, if I tell my dad (or sister) that someone was mean or rude to me, rather than console me or empathize with me (which I would think would be the normal response), they instead shame me or make fun of me for admitting to being hurt or offended by someone’e behavior.
I guess I’m supposed to just be peachy keen fine with people mocking me, being rude to me.
This goes back to childhood though – my family thinks that my feelings do not count or matter. Everyone else’s feelings matter, but not mine, for some reason I’ve never been able to figure out.
@ okrapod:
Well thank you for that. Until reading your link, I didn’t really know what people meant by passive-aggressive.
My motives for posting above may have been mixed, though I haven’t overly analysed them. I appreciate even a lite complementarian view is not always popular, but some replies from some commenters over the months leave a lot to be desired. I don’t think I was consciously trying to hit back for when people have been over-personal in their comments on this (which some have). I certainly have been tempted on occasion. Doesn’t seem right though.
I am actually sick to death of the whole subject, and really do want to give it a rest, and need to put my money where my mouth is. Posting here has been too much a substitute for English-language or indeed any Christian ‘fellowship’. I’ve also noticed I have started to change, and the (my) humour has started to go compared with a couple of years ago. The attempted revival of it didn’t exactly go down a bundle!
In the end people believe what they want to believe. The antidote to this is wrestling with other viewpoints, but in my case I think there is a time to leave it alone, or else risk become argumentative for the sake of it, which is ultimately pointless.
I have not taken the time to read any of the comments here, but will offer up my opinion in the Name of Jesus.
This soap opera testimony is sick, sick, and make my stomach churn with sickness, because this is what I live with day in and day out. And I am tired of this cr#p. (ed.)
dee wrote:
And Christians claim they are upset that more Christian women are not marrying. If that were real, no Christian woman would want to marry, certainly not to any guy who she met at a church.
There is a demographic problem marriage pushing Christians don’t like to grapple with: there are more single Christian women than there are men.
Yet Christians still beat Christian women over the head with the “do not be unequally yoked” legalistic stick, they’d rather women stay unhappily single than marry a decent Non-Christian guy with whom they could share a good life.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
He may be that kind of person, I don’t know (I hope not), but part of the reason I responded to his posts was that I was thinking, what if there is a woman in an abusive relationship who comes along and reads this thread?
I was posting some of my information not only to educate Flag Ken, but for the benefit of women who are in fact in these marriages where their husbands do nit pick them to tears over how they fold laundry.
I want them to know they’re not alone, and it’s not good or normal for a husband to treat them that way.
I think Flag Ken thinks that sudsy glass cleaning stories are so absurd that Deb and Dee (by citing such examples, never mind they got it straight off American Complementarian site CBMW) are making it all up to make complementarianism look bad.
As I’ve told Flag Ken several times over, there are indeed complementarian men who seriously berate their wives over how they clean dishes, and things like that.
It does happen, and this is “true” complementarianism at work – it is not comp misrepresented by John Piper, or misrepresented by Deb and Dee.
Maybe not all comps pick on their wives for how they fold clean laundry or rinse bubbly dishes, but some of them do, and these nit pickers base it on complementarianism.
okrapod wrote:
Yep, there are in fact Christian men who adhere to traditional views on gender (complementarians) who do indeed treat their wives (and other women) in this manner.
But Flag Ken wants to believe these guys don’t exist, or that “real” complementarianism can or would never give rise to it. But surprise!, it can and does.
@ Daisy:
Daisy, I had and have not any desire to say anything hurtful. The whole thing wasn’t about your or anyone else’s actual experience, as I’ve already said. I was actually agreeing with a criticism of complementarianism.
I wish you well; but I’m not going round in circles with this only to make it worse, there is no communication going on, which has happened a lot in the past, and it’s not doing either of us any good. I’m dropping the subject. Moving on. It’s not edifying any of us, and I want to leave it now.
Sorry Daisy, but I had no intention of it getting side-tracked into this kind of argument, and didn’t think it would. A mis-judgement on my part.
Daisy wrote:
I think the problem is that men who would NOT do this, are not going to do it, regardless of whatever the preacher says. They filter it through a ‘decent person’ filter, and get rid of the nonsense. But non-decent people think ‘see, all this controlling is perfectly ok and in fact it is OF GOD. And if my wife doesn’t let me have my way in every little thing she deserves what she gets from me.’
Which is why this teaching is bad. At BEST, the results are neutral (ie, good guys are still good guys). At worst, you have enabled a terrible person to be even more terrible. And there are some people who get caught up in the middle, women and men, and make a bit of a mess of things.
Bad teaching = Bad Fruit.
FWIW, I took Ken’s post seriously. It was not far enough over the edge to be obviously satire.
Ken wrote:
I hope that your take-home from this isn’t, “Gosh, people on the internet are stupid and can’t take a joke.” There is no way to convey tone on the internet.
Secondly, the book, “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” which is widely recommended by professionals working with people with a verbally/emotionally abusive spouse, lists several strategies typically used by emotionally abusive people. Two of them are: 1) to say something mean and then say it was just a joke and 2) to then accuse the recipient of being oversensitive and not “getting” one’s sense of humor.
To be explicit, I am not stating that you are emotionally abusive. I am saying that what you thought we would all know was a joke is actually not uncommon behavior in abusive relationships. Secondly, you actually did duplicate strategies used by abusers of saying something offensive then saying it was a joke, then being aghast that people didn’t get it was a joke. ( I am assuming that this was done because you didn’t know that it could be taken as real-life behavior not because you are an abuser.) I hope that the take-home would be that you’ll be aghast instead that people actually have the kinds of experiences you thought were so exaggerated as to be humor, and that you’ll take into account in the future. Thank you on behalf of the many survivors of various kinds of abuse who read this blog.
okrapod wrote:
Yes, it is.
Another example I know is a wife who was repeatedly corrected on how the hand-towels in the bathroom hung. They had to be folded horizontally equal AND they had to be vertically equal as well.
With young children who went to the bathroom by themselves and washed up themselves, you can imagine what this was like for her.
Oh, and the cans in the kitchen cupboard had to be arranged *alphabetically*. I have no problem with anyone who chooses to do this themselves, but to demand that a spouse do so is beyond the pale.
These kind of spousal demands do exist, and while they may initially sound unbelievably hilarious – the stress and the fear they engender in the ‘submissive’ wife is not funny at all.
Patty in Massachusetts wrote:
I certainly understand. This was my point exactly.
Ken wrote:
My pastor often says “Even on my best days my motives are mixed.”
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
There is only one positive thing about getting up in the middle of the night to get someone at the airport and it is this show! It makes me laugh.
Daisy wrote:
In what parallel universe?
Lea wrote:
Imagine the tragedy of a guy who actually wants to LOVE his wife as a partner, but Patriarchal society demands he keep crushing her down.
Hmmmm.. no wonder Josh Duggar signed up for Ashley Madison; remember the “Heathen Harlot Jezebel” he was looking for sounded a lot like a normal “girl next door” to the rest of us.
Daisy wrote:
As out-there and over-the-top as you can imagine, there WILL be some True Believer out there twice as out-there, twice as over-the-top, and DEAD SERIOUS.
Ken wrote:
First of all, your comment has not been withdrawn. However, I have my reasons for keeping some comments on the site beyond being overwhelmed with the care of my sick family members. I feel it is important for some people to see how their comments are viewed by others. You have been allowed to post here. You have been allowed to post some really, really long comments. You have received relatively little pushback from me.
Secondly, I get the passive aggressive nature of some of your comments and you know it is there. The “discernment blog” c*^p” is one example of this. I do nothing that others in your world do not do.
I speak about abuse. I laugh at soap bubble complementarianism. I look at church memberships, etc. I do not suggest that my view is any better than anyone else’ point of view. I am merely giving my thoughts.
It is only those who wish to denigrate what we have to say who call us discernment bloggers. That was started by the boys in The Gospel™ Coalition crowd. The real issue for them is that some women have something to say that resonates with both men and women. And, if you think I am a discernment blogger, well good for you and good on me. Maybe, just maybe we are being heard because it is about time people started listening to us pew sitters and tithe dispensers.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Darn straight.
dee wrote:
Rich Buhler used to talk about “full moon days” on talk radio like this:
“Talk form the Heart, you’re on the air!”
WEIRD. CALL.
Finish with the Weird call and…
“Talk form the Heart, you’re on the air!”
WEIRD. CALL.
“Talk form the Heart, you’re on the air!”
WEIRD. CALL.
“Talk form the Heart, you’re on the air!”
WEIRD. CALL.
One Weird Call after another, for the whole show. Never mind “planet”, I wondered what GALAXY some of these were calling from!
Since it’s relevant here, a quick comment on Doug Wilson’s infamous post “Not Where She Should Be,” in which he instructs husbands on how to handle a wife who does not promptly do the dishes. When the post was widely ridiculed, Wilson backtracked and said that wasn’t really what he’d meant. He’d been referring to much more serious situations–like the wife running up a $75K credit-card bill. But of course the post wasn’t about that. It was about dishes. If he’d intended the dishes example as satire, it was epically inept satire.
Ken wrote:
Hey Ken, here’s what I said, the complete quote: “If this is what you’re debating with your ‘better half’, and you haven’t repented of such vile controlling, ungodly demands, then she certainly is the better half, and you are a sick, twisted pig.”
So, I have some questions:
1). As you were apparently April Fool pranking us, why would you be thin-skinned about one saying if you really took such a position, it would be the ungodly, sick, twisted behavior of a male chauvinist pig? Isn’t that the point of an April Fool’s prank such as yours, to take an over-the-top position and pretend it’s your own? What you said was intentionally absurd and awful, I was merely pointing out that fact.
2). Why did you selectively quote me? Knowing that some people would only read your excerpt of my quote and wrongfully think ill of me, why not include the whole quote? That doesn’t seem honest, can’t fathom why you’d think it right to do so.
3). Considering what you know of people here and the sensitivity to certain issues, why would you pull that outrageous prank on Daisy? Doesn’t that seem extremely insensitive?
4). Finally, when you are the one who started this thing and prodded one whom you ought to know to be (rightly) sensitive to such issues, rather than just being a man and taking it when people take you to task for a mean joke or for saying “if” you weren’t joking, then you are an ungodly pig (which would be true), you make it all about the people who took you to task, demanding that their comments be expurgated, as if somehow you’re the victim. Why would anyone who calls themselves an adult and not a small, self-centered puerile child do such a thing?
I retract nothing I said, meant every word of it, still mean it.
Ken wrote:
Not a misjudgment, a wrong thing that you did. A sin, Ken.
@ Patty in Massachusetts:
TWW was involved in that little dustup with Wilson and the dishes. Right after we posted our response, he decided to remove his.
Ours: http://thewartburgwatch.com/2013/04/05/doug-wilson-on-doing-the-dishes-and-discernment-blogs/
Ours on the retraction: http://thewartburgwatch.com/2013/04/16/doug-wilson-retracts-his-dirty-dishes-post/
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
But doesn’t it make you howl?! There was a Steven Spielberg made for TV 6 episodes of people being taken by aliens. It was about 10 years ago. I cannot remember the name. I bet you can.
Do you remember that the Coast to Coast anchor played a starring role in it? I was quite amused by the whole thing.
Daisy wrote:
I am so sorry about this.
I am well known as a the prankster in my family. But there is one person that I learned early on who did not like pranks. So, for that individual, I avoided pranks and let them in on it when i was playing the prank with someone else. To this day, my whole family goes out of their way to get me funny cards for my birthday, etc. including the sensitive one who now understands that my humor is a way for me to express love.
We have all been wounded and part of the issue for someone like me who blogs is to know when to move in for the kill and when to back off. I still get it wrong a whole bunch!
dee wrote:
One thing that seems remarkable is how often those who vigorously advocate for complimentarianism also advocate for total depravity. One is left to wonder why they’d think themselves capable of leading anyone, much less a wife, being as depraved as they must be. Additionally, they staunchly stand on the total depravity of humankind, yet almost invariably, when called to task for the depraved things they say, find a whole host of reasons why they really didn’t mean it, why you just misunderstood them, why it’s not a sign of their sin, just their sloppy writing (Wilson’s strategy to evade blame for the dishes comment), why they were just having a little fun with you, why they really didn’t intend to stir things up at all, why it really doesn’t surprise them and they should’ve known better than to try their sophisticated wit and banter on a forum run by low grade watchbloggers, why they’re the ones who are the real victims, other people’s hurtful comments directed at them should be removed.
Why is it that those most likely to contend for total depravity seem incapable of owning it when applied to their own actions? I can count two times in my life that I’ve received an apology from a person who makes total depravity a central point of his theology–trust me, there’s been a lot more to forgive than that.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
I’m not for sure what you meant here, but there being more single women than men in conservative religious circles is an epidemic – among Jews and Mormons as well as Christians.
What Two Religions Tell Us About the Modern Dating Crisis
http://time.com/dateonomics/
Patty in Massachusetts wrote:
Wilson always does this. He is constantly claiming he was misunderstood on some point or another. (I think this blog did a post about that a couple of months ago.)
Ken wrote:
Nope – there are men who really do verbally or physically abuse their wives, even over matters like sudsy dishes or buttered toast. It really happens to real flesh and blood women.
BL wrote:
This is similar to a marriage depicted in the movie “Sleeping With the Enemy”
About Sleeping With the Enemy:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102945/
dee wrote:
Sorry, I messed up that post to Dee above. I meant to thank TWW for holding DW’s feet to the fire. He is as cluelessly narcissistic as Donald Trump.
@ dee:
Thank you. I am usually able to differentiate between teasing meant with affection and teasing that is mean-spirited.
My dad is hard for me to explain. There are times when his humor is okay and doesn’t hurt, but other times where he would nit-pick and tease to the point that it does hurt or can be offensive.
My father used to do this to my mother a lot and sometimes my siblings and myself.
When he did it to my mother, she’d seriously (not jokingly) beg him to lay off and stop, her eyes would tear up, and he would continue with the “teasing.”
(As I got older, and it got to that point, I would stand up to him and tell him to leave her alone, that it was not funny anymore).
The teasing from him went from affectionate to it could have an under-current of mean-spiritedness to it.
Sometimes my dad would not even try to pretend he was being ‘ha-ha funny’ and just come home from work in a bad mood and just criticize Mom (or myself) non-stop. Just pick you apart.
My dad was also bad about mocking. He’d mock your clothing, your make-up, how you wore your hair, your taste in music, what TV shows you watched, on and on, every facet of your person, your hobbies, etc. It was non-stop negativity with him.
He sometimes gets frustrated with me now (or as I was growing up) that I was not more of a “go getter” who blazed through life.
My dad does not put two and two together: if you shame, mock, and relentlessly tease your daughter every day, you are shattering her self confidence. You can’t expect her to be this supremely self confident success in life if you picked her apart the whole time.
Ken wrote:
Confession – sorry I didn’t, at least not until Law Prof gave a clue. I kind of thought you’d lost the plot until that point and I had a big mental ‘wot the’ ? Believe it or not April Fool’s passed me right by until I opened a prank email (sent to me on the 1st) on the 2nd April. After twigging, I do have to say I found your exaggerated hyperbole pretty funny, and I hadn’t thought it directed at an individual. However…I don’t come from a background of abuse – much – at least not like what has been described here, and that’s something I’m trying to get my head around. My grandmother was very intelligent and had a cutting tongue and the barbs constantly hurt. Not much was done in wit though. Daisy thanks for sharing how this was applied to you – I think it just might have done my head in. As for inheriting my grandmother’s cutting tongue – I determined that I would not perpetuate it – its the end of the line with me. It’s something I have to guard against constantly. I’ve also purchased a Lundy Bancroft book and Patricia Evans’ book “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” to read. When I first starting reading TWW there was a woman who shared that her husband doled out an exact amount of sheets of toilet paper that she and her daughters could use every day. It doesn’t seem real, but it is. These people exist.
dee wrote:
And I have good days, and bad days, but hopefully getting better every day.
Ken, I have a story for you. I grew up in what was probably a patriarchal home, though being a minister my dad wasn’t home much. We also moved frequently. A young memory I have is my mother crying when it was decided that we were to move again, and my dad with an unyielding, hard face saying that it was the will of God (I have an opinion about that now but I won’t put it here). Fast forward a lot of time and dad is nearly blind and has lost a lot of independence. The ‘shoe is on the other foot’ so to speak. A lot has changed. Dad has now softened, laughs at himself, there is a lot of joking in our family. So he relayed to me in humour the other day his latest treatment at the hands of his 2 year old granddaughter. They were doing something together, when she grabbed him and said sternly “now granddad, I want you to look at me” while she gave him a directive. It was all for my dad to look serious when he was cracking up on the inside (we suspect there’s a bit of modelling of my mum and sister’s method of talking to my dad now). I think James Dobson would have kittens at that story, as would John Piper. haaa I think the story is testament to how people can change, forgive, adapt, and also – have fun. I’ll sign off with that.
Daisy, I’m so sorry you went through that.
dee wrote:
Right you are! I just heard an old show of Art Bell come on the radio the other night while in the car. Now that is some CRAZY stuff. It makes one wonder if some of those callers on that show have forgotten to take their meds.
Patty in Massachusetts wrote:
“If he’d intended the dishes example as satire, it was epically inept satire.”
Doug Wilson never meant it as satire. He is very good at double-speak and forked tongue especially when he gets criticism. Make no mistake about it. He meant what he originally said. Rebellious wife who doesn’t do the dishes should have to face the elders. Oh, and hubby needs to get a handle on his rebellious wife. This is Wilson’s view of marriage and it all about the order of hierarchy. And Ken wonders why we took his post seriously. First, there was no hint at it being a joke. The fact that no one here understood it to be a joke is rather telling. Secondly, such NUT CRAZY views are held by many Complementarians – per John Piper – accept being slapped by hubby for a night, Mark Driscoll – hubby should read wifey’s emails and service all of her husband’s kinky sexual desires, and Lori and Ken Alexander – women working outside the home is evil – to the Duggars and Doug Phillips and Bill Gothard – where CRAZY defies the word crazy – to IFB pastor Stephen Anderson denouncing women who say ‘Amen’ in church, to….Need I give more examples. All this to say there’s some SERIOUS CRAZY out their in EvangelicalLand!
Daisy wrote:
Here’s the straightening the towels scene in Sleeping with the Enemy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n-fNm6ImbA
Ken wrote:
It looks like it has been another busy day so I’ll pile on. When someone inserts “but” after an “I am sorry” it negates the apology. Also the “I’m sorry” missed because it was not an expression of what was done wrong but was an accusation that others were wrong, they got “riled up”. After the initial backlash to the April 1 comment I would expect more care.
A sincere “I’m sorry” should be left to stand alone. When the “but” is included it exposes the “I’m sorry” as insincere to be used simply as leverage for the following critical statement or self justification.
okrapod wrote:
Interesting timing on this, a group I’m associated with just went through a thoroughly frustrating experience with someone I had referred to as passive/aggressive.
The list was so on point that I just emailed it around to a few of the “survivors” from the meeting. I don’t think I have ever engaged in a full scale shouting match till then. I thought the NPD that I dealt with over a year ago drove me to distraction but the recent passive/aggressive behavior by one person in a conflict sent a room full of people into confusion and anger while the perpetrator acted the victim.
I’m finding there are a lot of manipulating personality disorders out there and I am amazed that they can make even a room full of people seem crazy. In that sense some of the stories I’ve read here, from HUG in particular, have certainly helped me understand the dynamics a lot better.
Through a glass darkly wrote:
Hmmm. Personally, I’d throw the glasses at him. All of them, including the dish drainer they were sitting in.
But then, I am a wee bit easy to rile………
Friend wrote:
Agreed.
Seems like Ken tossed in a grenade & was surprised at the explosion. Just shows how polarizing complementarianism is. Any doctrine that subjugates another should be. I remember a commenter endorsing a form of slavery on this forum once. This is the result of reading the Bible literally with no context.
Yes, there are men who watch their wives with a passion, a venomous passion in commenting on EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING that the wife does or involved with as a part of ministering to her. The response I ALWAYS hear here is, “I am just trying to help you be a better person.” Do the words “domestic prison planet” resonate with anyone here?
Soap on the sides of dishes, that is if there actually was one sud, seriously. In my home, the softener salt makes our water appear sudsy at times and if the husband doesn’t have anything better to do other than follow her around trying to make her a better person, perhaps he should examine thyself and get all of the rot and filth out of his own person before commenting on an event that in the grand story of life, has no relevance.
Perhaps the man in the story went through a Lead Like Jesus course which fosters more tyranny over the wife rather than freedom in Christ Jesus.
Was criticized for the way in which I make coffee, similar to the man’s sin listed above, choose now to make my own instant coffee, enjoying the flavor much more than the syrupy criticism. Husband has to do the work of making his own coffee now, and cleaning up his own coffee pot. He had a good thing going there, but chose his own wicked path to follow.
Darlene wrote:
Exactly! If they remade this movie they would have the elders keep getting called in because of Julia Roberts ‘sin’.
@ Jack:
I think he knew what would happen. The “Who, me?” reaction on his part… it’s hardly the 1st time it’s been tried on.
Just my .02-worth.
Law Prof wrote:
Even if I had been advocating the kind of control-freakery I was actually condemning, it is never right to call someone a sick, twisted pig. Not in my book. All the more so as by the time you said this, it was clear I was not being serious. You’re never going to change anyone’s mind this way, it’s counterproductive. And I’m not that thin-skinned.
There was nothing sinister in selectively quoting you, trying to keep it brief. Anyone can check the full reference if they think I’m maligning you.
I did wonder about the wisdom of addressing Daisy (to say it yet again). Daisy’s response was to talk of herself and her experience, not about me and the toast. Two different subjects. If I had left the comment all weekend with the potential for misunderstanding, your criticism would have more traction. I didn’t do this; all Daisy has subsequently said about the post is she is not sure what to make of it. She has at no time said it was hurtful, and I’ve made abundantly clear that was not the intention.
I did not want the comments expunged, what I meant by with asking for you to ‘withdraw’ your comment was simply to acknowledge it was an out or order response. By all means criticize the joke for being inept, but you are hardly in a position to call me out for being insensitive. And I have got tired of the ‘you must treat your wife like a pet dog’ comment.
Law Prof, have you never done something and later regretted it? I do half regret the post in the sense it has generated more heat than light. The other half of me doesn’t regret if good comes from it in that if complementarianism or outright patriarchy is as bad as many here claim, the kind of response made to me is never going to persuade them to reconsider and change their views. Needs rethinking.
You don’t believe a husband should micro-manage his wife and dominate her life, and nor do I. Absolutely not. So what are we arguing about?!!
@ Patty in Massachusetts:
Thank you for the empathy. I do appreciate it. It’s something most of the rest of my family lacks. I am thankful you’ve shown me kindness. 🙂
My father is a smart guy, he really is.
But he’s slow on the uptake on how and why I lack self confidence and have a hard time taking risks in life, even after I’ve tried explaining to him it is due in part to his constant put-downs of me as I was growing up.
I didn’t have one of those dads who told me, “I’m proud of you!,” “I believe in you,” or “It’s okay you made a mistake, just try again,” and so on. His negative parenting and my timidity / lack of self esteem does not compute to him. He doesn’t see the cause and effect.
dee wrote:
Indeed, as has Gram3 and Daisy and others … Yes, there has largely been one of me and several others on the equality issue, and this has meant an inordinate amount of posting on my part that I probably should have curtailed last September. I have in the main responded rather than kept bringing the subject up regarding what Gram3 and I used to call Our Discussion.
You have forgotten Dee but the first post I ever did on this you actually liked. No great gulf. I don’t think my views have substantially changed although challenged often enough, except perhaps I don’t see submission as mutual.
I don’t really care if this is discernment blog or not, I’ve not given it any thought. I don’t see why it matters. It’s not any intended insult on my part.
I really think, and it’s only little old me and an opinion, you need to consider how consistently the rules are applied, and the effect comments can have due to their tone and content on those who really do need to change their minds and lives and actions (or lack of them). You proably think I have some blind and insensitive spots, but I think you do as well.
Even in this little foray here I seem to be coming across as little other than antagonistic, which in real life I’m not, and don’t want to be.
Daisy wrote:
My dad could also be real clueless along those lines.
Here’s a nice alternative to the Christian complementarian theology that guilts and shames the wife over things like sudsy dishes, or the Doug Wilson post that says a husband should be a rat fink on his wife who doesn’t wash dishes:
Jesus Doesn’t Care About the State of Your Sink
http://accidentaldevotional.com/2016/04/01/jesus-doesnt-care-about-the-state-of-your-sink/
A few snippets:
Darlene wrote:
Thank you for the link. I remember there was a scene in the movie where the wife (played by Julia Roberts) had to stack the canned food in a certain way, with all the labels facing out, or her husband would verbally or physically abuse her.
Darlene wrote:
I tune it in late at night when I need a Weirdness Fix.
Unfortunately, these days it’s become All Conspiracy, All The Time. I’m finding my Weirdness Fix more and more on YouTube, with those dramatic readings of similar encounters gleaned from Reddit.
Daisy wrote:
Wife-beaters looking for any chance to justify their wife-beating.
Especially if they get Cosmic-level justification — “GOD SAITH!”
Jack wrote:
I’m sorry if this is beating a dead horse, as I have sort of mentioned this a bit above, but one reason Flag Ken’s jokey post did not work for me as humor is that I know from previous threads on the subject of complementarianism that Flag Ken feels that examples such as the one Dee cites here (about the soapy bubble wife) are not accurate representation of complementarianism.
Flag Ken still believe in male rule over women, that women, due to their gender only (no other considerations), should be barred from teaching or preaching, etc. He thinks that his brand of complementarianism is true, biblical, and godly.
Ken either feels that the John Piper, or “fussing at a wife about bubble covered glasses” type of complementarianism is false (it’s contrived to make complementarianism look bad), or it’s only an example of comp carried out incorrectly.
What I could not get Flag Ken to grasp is that the complementarians who harass their wives over sudsy dishes are in fact genuine comps, practicing what they feel is an equally valid, godly, Bible-based form of comp as to his form of comp.
The comps who pick on their wives for not rinsing a sudsy glass to their satisfaction use the same exact Bible verses to defend their position as Flag Ken would use to defend his idea that male headship and no- women- as- preachers is biblical, true, right, and is genuine complementarism.
I posit that the example in the Original Post (the bubble dirty glass wife example) is in fact one form of “true” complementarianism.
It’s not an outlier or aberration, nor is it an example of complementarianism implemented incorrectly.
Flag Ken feels he can joke about the dirty glass with bubbles on it example because to him it is absurd, but it’s not “real” complementarianism. But it is in fact one express of “real” complementarianism.
Daisy wrote:
A Post Script about this:
One of the saddest things about complementarianism is that comps get women to participate in their own victimization.
In the soapy dishes story in the Original Post, the wife has internalized the message of comp, so she was the one, in her own mind, telling herself that her not being willing to rinse the dish a second time for her husband’s preference, was an example of her not being a godly wife and not submitting.
She felt guilty and ashamed as a result and rinsed the glass off.
Complementarianism convinces women to police themselves on some of this stuff, so the women beat themselves; it’s not always necessary for the men (the preachers or husbands) to scold, harass, or threaten the women. They get the women to do it to themselves.
This is in part how I was raised in this stuff. My mother, who was a believer of traditional gender roles, had me trained since I was a kid to think that me standing up for myself and permitting others to be mean or rude to me was what God wanted of me.
As a result, I often bit my tongue and did not fight back when people were abusive or rude to me. So many people, from the time I was a kid, into adulthood (on jobs and so on), took advantage of me.
My mother’s parenting (which was based in part on gender comp attitudes) had me willingly participate in my own mistreatment. That is one very insidious thing about complementarianism.
You can sometimes see Christians who believe in complementarianism (or other types of authoritarian views), chastise Christians over having healthy boundaries, when they post memes on Facebook or where ever, telling Christians things like, “you don’t have rights, it’s selfish for you to insist you have rights!,” etc.
They really advocate this teaching that being a “godly” Christian means being a total doormat for Jesus. It’s very sad and a perversion of biblical interpretation.
Daisy wrote:
Correction to my line above:
‘had me trained since I was a kid to think that me standing up for myself was wrong.’
I left out the “was wrong” part.
(In other words, my mom did not think it was Christian or lady-like for a woman or girl to practice self-defense or to be assertive, not even when being bullied.)
Karen wrote:
I was reading in another book how people who are codependent are often the targets of “brutal honesty.”
The bully will say something very cruel (even if it’s true), and when the recipient cries or protests, the bully will say things like, “I was just being truthful with you.”
My sister is kind of like this. She thinks it’s okay to say very cruel things to me because she thinks it’s “adult” to blurt out anything she wants.
She’s just “telling me the truth.” I know if I pulled that same strategy on her, she would hit the roof.
There was a case study in that book where a woman patient told the doctor who wrote the book that when she told her husband she had breast cancer and had to get her breasts removed (to save her life) the husband made some kind of comment to her how he’d not find her attractive anymore.
The wife, understandably, got upset and/or cried, and the husband retorted with something like, “I was just telling you the truth.”
As the author noted by that point in her book: “Kindness too is a moral virtue.”
You don’t always have to tell a person the total, unvarnished truth, if it will devastate them.
Lea wrote:
That is an excellent point, and sadly, pretty true.
Doug Wilson, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, or some one like that, would be filmed lecturing the Julia Roberts character that it’s her duty to rinse the glass again, or to stack the cans a certain way, if that’s how her master (the husband) wants it.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
It’s really quite odd in my dad’s case, because he’s very intelligent.
My dad has several college degrees. He has a lot of common sense. He’s knowledgeable about financial matters, home repair, real estate, a whole bunch of practical life skills.
But concerning emotions and relationships, he’s about as dumb as a box of rocks. (No, he does not have autism or aspergers or anything like that. He just does not grasp emotional stuff very well.)
I love my dad, but he doesn’t understand touchie-feelie things and is not comfortable with them. I don’t know if it’s because of the generation he grew up in (men were taught they were supposed to be stoic), or what it is.
I started realizing more clearly these family dynamics a few years ago and tried to share it with my sister (thinking it might help her in some way), and she got very angry.
I think she’s in denial about it. She began screaming at me, ‘not to blame mom and dad.’
I wasn’t blaming them per se, just noting I now understand why all three of us (myself and the two siblings) turned out to be messed up or make poor life choices.
My dad has often said to me he doesn’t comprehend how and why my two siblings keep ending up dating or marrying morally questionable people or folks who don’t have much going for them.
It’s not a mystery to me why they do it. But he and my siblings don’t want to hear the truth.
Ken wrote:
I am not sure you got my point. i am showing you how this blog is different than just about any blog run by the men of TGC, 9Marks and others. We do allow for lengthy arguments even ones that we do not necessarily agree with or appreciate.Ken wrote:
Of course I do. But, I will tell you this. i agonize a lot over the commenting policy here. I am assuming that you do not write a blog that gets lots of comments. This was something I did not expect. It has caused me not end of second guessing myself throughout the years. For you, it is an irritation. For me, it is a constant questioning.
I do know that i have liked some of your comments. Others, not so much. And still others, I have had a sense of uneasiness. I am glad to know that you are a nice guy in person. So are most people. It is far harder to convey one’s thoughts and feelings in writing. And yes, some people come over as more arrogant, etc in writing comments.
Ken wrote:
This is a part of your comment that rubs me the wrong way. Since you have been reading this blog for awhile, I assumed you understood the negativity associated with this terminology. Perhaps you are just a bit clueless when it comes to the insults that are thrown at bloggers.
You also say you don’t see why it matters. Well, here is a lesson in sensitivity. It does matter to me and such a statement appears to say that you don’t give a hoot so why should I.
What I would suggest is that you Google discernment blogs and read from some of the people that you have no problem with. Then you might get it.
Finally, I usually get suspicious when a reader becomes the topic of conversation rather than the topic at hand. You seem to engender that sort of response from folks. Maybe everyone is just stupid, silly or whatever. But, then again, you have become the topic of this conversation. To be frank, this is not about you. It is about the foolishness of John Piper and CBMW.
Patty in Massachusetts wrote:
Good point.
I have been reading Ken’s comments here for a while and have had quite a bit of interaction with him. I thought he was finally being more honest in his original comment on this thread. perhaps that is because it was not as OTT as he might have thought given many of us are well aware of the ridiculousness in teaching that comes out of the comp world. Frankly, I thought he was finally being honest about how his marriage operated and toast was one example due to the soap bubble illustration from CBMW— that was also serious.
Jack wrote:
This was another “Ken”ism. He would equate employment with slavery in order to apply the “slaves obey your masters” verses to—contractual employment! As if employees today are medieval serfs.
Please understand many of us are well aware of what Ken has communicated here to prop up pecking order caste system thinking and apply it to Christianity with proof texts.
Daisy wrote:
I think part of the problem with even having conversations about this stuff is that reasonable people often think these ‘complementarian’ (I loath that word, fyi) bits of advice are meant to apply to really serious issues – there are wives (or husbands although this is never applied to them!) who are legitimately lazy, they might leave the house a mess and do nothing. Of course, the comp advice doesn’t help a bit with that kind of person but that’s neither here nor there right now. The point is, reasonable people tend to apply this stuff to reasonable scenarios.
People otoh who have had any experience with abuse will see how it can and is applied in a sleeping with the enemy type situation. And the guys at churches advising women to go back and submit more? They are either reasonable people who literally cannot father that bad scenario, or they think the wife is always at fault no matter what the problem and is somehow capable of fixing it. She isn’t. All she can do is get away.
[SIDENOTE: all these people who think a divorce can’t be had for these things because the husband ‘might’ be repentant? Why do they never considering the possibility of the spouses getting remarried if he does? I never see that. They can get divorced and remarried if they want. It’s not like divorce makes that impossible. Something about the way they talk about it, like she has to stay with him just in case he repents is deeply weird.]
Anyways, as I said earlier, this comp doctrine is only ever, in a best case scenario, neutral. Other than that, it is harmful. Bad tree. Bad fruit. Burn it down 🙂
@ Bill M:
He lost me earlier when he chided people for “not believing the best” after commenting here for so long on this very topic. I don’t do “believe the best” anymore. Every charlatan mega church pastor on the planet has used this one over and over. As in “you are in sin for not believing the best about me right away no matter what I say or do”.
Lea wrote:
That describes my sister’s ex long time boyfriend. They lived together for years and years.
My sister held full time jobs, paid all their bills, and the BF would not do anything around the house (he was mostly unemployed during the duration of their relationship. He did have one or two part time jobs while they were an item.)
My sister would be at work all day, come home to find out that the BF had not done a single blessed thing around the house.
He would not clean dirty dishes, empty the washer of clean dishes, no dusting, wouldn’t clean the shower, toilet, sink, wouldn’t fold clean laundry and put it away.
He did mow the lawn once in a while, and she’d have to nag him into taking out the trash.
My sister got stuck with 99% of the housework 99% of the time in their relationship, on top of holding down a full time job.
Lydia wrote:
“If you question what I say or do
YOU REBEL AGAINST THE FATHER, TOO!”
— Steve Taylor, “I MANIPULATE”
Lydia wrote:
I’ve heard of pointy-haired bosses who act like it.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Believe the best is also known as ” trust positive intentions”. If that does not sufficiently guilt or shut you down is usually followed by “you are unforgiving” or you live in the past.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Which is why God eventually invented lawyers with 1-800 numbers. :o)
Lydia wrote:
Lydia, it’s cr#p (ed.) like this that makes me curse God for not being born an NPD, a Sociopath, a Manipulator, AND an Abuser.
“BE A USER!
BE AN ABUSER!
BE A WINNER,
NOT A LOSER!”
Because NPDs, Sociopaths, Manipulators, and Abusers always WIN.
ALWAYS.
Ken wrote:
Yes it is. Totally, 100% right. If you think that hovering over your wife, micromanaging her buttering of the bread is the actions of one who is not a “sick, twisted, pig”, then Ken, you are a sick, twisted pig. Flat out. Sorry to inform you, but Ken, if you’re not about to fall on your face in repentance, then I have no more words for you.
Ken wrote:
Of course I have, every single day since I've come to know the Lord, I've regretted things I've said and done. But if I were to throw full-blooded crap at someone like Daisy, then call it a joke, I dare say I'd more than "half regret" it. Ken, my personal opinion is you need to grow a spine, which the vast majority of complementarian men do not possess, and own your cr#p (ed.). You still can't quite bring yourself to fully own it and really say "I'm so sorry." Perhaps just not part of your being, probably not, I don't know. But I guess at this point I'm done with you, at least until you can grow up to at least the level of my 13 year old boy.
@ Law Prof:
Oof. I’m not in any way involved in moderation here, but i can’t think of any decent forum or comments section that permits personal insults and name-calling. That’s off-list stuff for sure.
I hope this ends here, for everyone’s sake.
@ dee:
I think that this has been an informative thread. Even if Ken’s “joke” was the catalyst, some very interesting comments have been made highlighting this very Christian trend of “pathological patriarchy”. Much of the abuse covered by this blog comes from the same root.
Ken wrote:
I’ve not seen you acknowledge my point that there are in fact some men of gender comp leanings who do verbally abuse and/or emotionally abuse their wives over trivial issues such as how they butter the toast. I know. I grew up with a father who was like this. It does happen – under gender comp views.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
I have had to deal with them a lot. Took me a long time to fully understand there is no reasoning with them. They are playing a game and I naively had no idea so by trying to reason, I was playing their hand! It never occurred to me that boldly lying and deception was a game.
That is why I will take a consistent bombastic jerk any day of the week. At least you know what you are dealing with. With a NPD sociopath, it is all deception, confusion with the charming veneer. It is creepy. Run. There is no reason to even try with them. They mimic the Angel of Light. They will suck you dry. Many of them are ambitious pastors. Wearing Jesus lipstick buys them a lot of cred for a long time.
I look forward to not dealing with it in eternity.
@ Daisy:
Daisy, Ken
NO LAST WORD. STOP. NOW.
@ Lydia:
Yep. There is a maneuver that people do rather much, and it is usually I think a game, but we all get sucked in some times. It is called ‘I don’t understand’ and ‘maybe you can explain it to me one more time’ and such like that. It only works if the patsy in that game believes that the person actually does not understand, wants to understand, and is even capable of understanding. At the same time the patsy must think that he/she has both the ability and the responsibility to explain something in a way that the culprit will understand. The hook is that sometimes people are not doing it as a game but in fact do want to understand; so what hard hearted person would turn their back on such an opportunity to explain, and explain, and explain. At that point the player is in control of the patsy which seems to be the point of the game.
GuyBehindtheCurtain wrote:
And we return to our regularly-scheduled program, Wartburg Watch.
Lydia wrote:
Which also explain’s Trump’s appeal vis-a-vis Her Inevitableness.
Lydia wrote:
Same here. I want to be as far away from them and their ‘heaven’ as possible.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
I have a theory. Both Trump and Bernie have a populist feel to them compared to past candidates as much as that offends some people. Bernie has always been honest about who and what he is. While I totally disagree with his policies as a libertarian, I respect the guy a lot. Trump seems to be Establishment who despises the Establishment. :o) but, given the ciecumatances People will take bombastic jerk over long time deception. @ okrapod:
Oh am very familiar. ;o(
@ okrapod:
Am very familiar with that one:o(
Since the topic of political figures is addressed here, there is a mindset amongst conservative evangelicals that shocked me recently. My spouse point blank spoke the words, “Women should not have been allowed to vote in the first place because most of them vote liberal. It has changed the demographics of voting and that is how the Clintons and Obama got into office. If women weren’t allowed to vote, then our country would be in a better state of affairs.”
It may be possible this ideology is a part of the conservative churches “Lead Like Jesus” program.
Lydia wrote:
In real life, I think it is about as opposite as humanly possible.
Despite my manifest imperfections, I have a loved, and I think reasonably contented wife, which is probably about as much as you can expect in this fallen world. A best friend, and so loyal. We’ve had our moments, but I am so grateful.
Ken
I said let’s stop this. Your last two comments will not be approved.
This is NOT about who’s right. It’s just time for this discussion to end.
“Winsome”… that always makes me laugh. After I cringe.
Lydia wrote:
I heard something similar on LA’s Radical FM station KPFK during the Clinton Era. They were interviewing a card-carrying Radical type who said he thought a LOT more highly of Reagan than Clinton. “With Reagan, you knew who and what you were dealing with. Reagan would state right out ‘Here’s what I’m going to do, and here’s why I’m doing it.’ And he’d be consistent about it; you could honestly oppose him.”
Karen wrote:
I read that almost word-for-word on a Christian blog (whose name I can’t remember) some 15 years ago. It was blogged by two guys (whose names I also can’t remember) who were also into Young Earth Creationism Uber Alles.
notastepfordsheep wrote:
“Stay Sweet(TM)…”
Daisy wrote:
Take it from a guy who’s known “Intelligence 18, Wisdom 3” from the inside:
Just because you’re intelligent and educated doesn’t mean you can’t be clueless. Especially in areas that don’t involve IQ (like relationships) or that your education didn’t cover.
Daisy wrote:
In local fandom, this is called “The Mooch-and-Sucker Show”, and is a major reason for the Sucker in the mix eventually accepting Ayn Rand as their Personal LORD and Savior.
dee wrote:
Doing a little research, the only one that resembles your description was a 10-episode 2002 miniseries called “Taken”. Alien abductions centering around alien “implants” in humans, straight out of current Grey Alien Conspiracy Theory mythology.
I vaguely remember a TV ad for it with a short clip of a B-17 formation over Europe being buzzed by Foo Fighters. Does that ring a bell?
I believe that the severe dysfunction we see among Calvinistas re: the issue of “submission” is inextricably intertwined with their rejection of modern psychological research and mental healthcare.
As you point out, Dee, in the “group sex” example, both of the two obvious options for what is going on presuppose severe underlying issues that necessitate quality evaluation by educated and licensed professionals.
For many Calvinistas, however, looking to psychologists/psychiatrists is not an option. “Sin” is the only thing to blame. As such, in a situation like the dishwashing incident, there is no attempt to dig deeper, and instead they ignorantly go for the low-hanging fruit of “It must be sin.”
These folks have so little insight, it is alarming. Psychologically, it appears as though they operate on the level of a pre-adolescent. I say that not as an insult, but rather with sadness and dismay. I wish that Soap Bubbly Lady, and others like her, would be open and receptive to quality therapy conducted by professional, licensed therapists (as opposed to “certified” nouthetic counselors).
Mr.H wrote:
Pre-adolescent who wants to climb to Absolute Power by Divine Right.
I think of King Joffrey from Game of Thrones. And his many RL inspirations.
>(Does anyone know how much the translators earn each time one of the ESV Bibles are sold?)
I would assume/hope it’s $0 because they were all paid up front.