The Real Misogynists Are Far Left Men

One of my working theories is that many men on the political far Left who proclaim the loudest that they respect womyn and are "male feminists" actually hate women. I think the reason for this is that modern feminism is basically man hating. That sounds kind of Rush Limbaugh-esque but it also happens to be true. Contemporary feminism seems mostly concerned less with women having equal opportunities as men and more with the absolute degrading of men. What this leads to is a weird self-loathing from liberal men who are forced to despise and hide their own maleness to appear properly "woke". What it doesn't do is eliminate their maleness, as much as they might try to make it appear that way. What it simply does is force it below the surface where it boils up from time to time when there is an "acceptable" female target. You saw this a lot with Sarah Palin who so incensed liberals that there were lots of sexually violent insults hurled at her. Playboy Magazine ran an article by Guy Cimbalo, since deleted, listing conservative women that the author would like to rape. Even leftist luminary J.K. Rowling went on a Twitter rampage about the way liberal men attack women that are "safe targets" because of their politics. Here is the money tweet, number 3 of 14:

I’m sick of ‘liberal’ men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating words 3/14

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 9, 2017

The "mask slipping" is a perfect way to describe it. It is very sad and disturbing but not surprising. These "men" hate women because of what they perceive women have done to them in the name of feminism.

Enter ambulance chaser and pro-rape lawyer Robert Ranco of the Carlson Law Firm in Texas that specializes in "personal injury" (i.e. ambulance chasers), medical malpractice, divorce, etc. In other words a pretty garden variety sleazy law firm. Mr. Ranco is obviously a top-notch lawyer and you can reach him by calling 512-346-5688. Mr. Ranco is a graduate of the prestigious University of Maine School of Law and is an undergraduate music major from Dartmouth. Maine is ranked the 139th best law school by U.S. News and World Report which places it in high class company like the University of Akron, the Universities of both North and South Dakota and the University of the Pacific. In fact since they only gave out numerical rankings from 1-148, Mr. Ranco graduated from a law school ranked in the bottom 7%. It is hard to imagine how he ended up an ambulance chaser instead a Supreme Court Justice with credentials like that. Maybe he just cares too much about people who get rear-ended in Texas to bother with a trifle like the Constitution. What is really funny is how his bio describes him:

If you missed it here is the critical sentence:

The quick witted, Ivy League educated lawyer with an easy going attitude and an appreciate for the arts...

Apparently an Ivy League education (an undergrad music degree from Dartmouth) doesn't mean much as they don't teach grammar these days.

Anyway, Mr. Ranco fired off the following tweet, followed very quickly by making his account private and then deleting it entirely but not quickly enough. You can't undo what you say on the internet, something you would think an "Ivy League educated lawyer" would have known.

Strange how he just protected his account. pic.twitter.com/Mw6WWjninz

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) September 9, 2017

Quick witted and easy going indeed! Nothing says quick witted like posting a pro-rape tweet about a Cabinet Secretary and nothing says easy going like sort of wishing someone you don't even know would get raped because she holds the primitive and patriarchal notion that college men should have some basic legal protections when accused of a felony. I guess they didn't cover that sort of stuff in the rarefied air of the University of Maine School of Law. They must have been too busy talking about coaching plaintiffs to show maximum discomfort and emotional distress on the stand.

When someone tells you how liberals respect women and how conservatives hate women, just remember that when the "mask slips" you see an awful lot of liberal men demonstrating a misogyny that puts Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump to shame.

I don't advocate rape but I am pretty much OK with it

From The "Why Don't Men Go To Church?" Files

I wasn't going to comment on this but Doug Wilson did and I think his piece is worth reading. Doug was following up on a piece from Tim Bayly that I read a few days ago and it had to do with an offertory "performance" at Redeemer Church, home of famous pastor, author and speaker Tim Keller. I am not sure I can describe it so I am just going to embed the video even though it makes me a little nauseous. Keep in mind that Tim Keller is considered to be conservative.

Life Together from Redeemer Video on Vimeo.

OK, I am just a knuckle-dragging chump from Indiana so what do I know about art and stuff. I mean this is Manhattan, man! That was like classy and artistic and cultured and all that! If I were a sophisticated city slicker I might give that performance two snaps up!

Back when it was OK to mock that which deserves to be mocked

I do know this. If I was sitting in a gathering of the church and three dudes started flitting around the stage, holding hands and pawing each other, I would not put any money in the offering plate. I would also not sit silently by. You would last see me walking out the back doors. I would assume any normal guy would do the same, unless their conditioning that tells them to sit down and shut up overrode their revulsion. I am not a fan of ballet or whatever form of dance this is. I am especially not a fan of three guys swishing around the stage together, doing lifts and such. I guess it would have been more tolerable if it was a guy and a girl dancing together but even still, what exactly is supposed to be the point here if not cultural virtue signaling? Yeah we believe in the Bible but look, we are still cultured! I don't know if these three fellas are homosexuals or not but if I looked at and/or touched another woman the way these guys are fondling and gazing at each other, my wife would feed me to our pigs, one piece at a time. You can guess which parts she would start with.

No surprise, Doug Wilson had something to say about this and it starts with the title of his post, in true vintage DW fashion, Gayer Than the Kiwi Queen of the Fire Island Fruit Festival. He goes on (in pink instead of my traditional green).....

What is the problem with this? Summed up, it is that this performance is gayer than the kiwi queen at the Fire Island Fruit Festival. This performance is gayer than an HR memo at Google headquarters. How gay was it? It was gayer than an NPR tote bag full of rainbows. It was gayer than a unicorn parade through the Castro District. It was gayer than a lavender sparkly pen.

He has a real flair for this. I can only hope to be that eloquent someday. It can be easy to get caught up in Doug's, um, vivid wordplay and miss the meat of what he is saying. Please don't because what he is saying is important. This is important because it gets to the heart of a couple of issues, like the feminizing of Christianity and the way that our modern "worship" tends to drive men away. This is going to sound incredibly chauvinistic, even by my standards but I don't care.

The church will only ever be as strong as the men who lead it.

Don't misread that. The Church is the Body of Christ. It was ordained by God, chosen by God, called by God, redeemed by His Son's blood, and will be sustained and triumphant by the will of God. If the very gates of Hell will not prevail against the church then you can be sure that three fellas prancing around a stage will not defeat the church. What I meant by my statement above is that the local, visible expression of the church where God has decreed that the church equips and encourages us for the work of ministry is only as vibrant and effective in that task as the men who lead it. You can have all of the money in the world, great programs, a kickin' "worship" band, every advantage but if you are led by weak men, the church will be weak. That is not to denigrate or diminish the role of women in the church, but simply to recognize what the Bible has made clear. God has placed the privilege and the burden of leadership in the home and the church in the hands of men.

Doug continues, emphasis mine....

It is no sin to watch this video clip and not know what the particular problem is. Human self-deception can occupy the heart like a rabbit warren under a large meadow. The particular problems can be hard to identify and trace. But the general problem is screamingly obvious. If you can look at this clip and not know that there is a grievous problem somewhere, then the self-deception involved is truly profound.

It is troubling that so many would watch this video and not know something is terribly wrong here. Whether because we are conditioned to never, ever judge or because we just are so Scripturally illiterate that we can't recognize when something is wrong, if you can watch that performance and realize that it is being done under the authority of elders in the church and not see that it is a gross imposition on the created order, then something is broken in your discernment. More and these are the critical passages:

I referred above to the problem of confusion. Scripture obviously refers to blatant sexual sin as abominable, and the term abomination is sometimes lost on us because we think of it as merely some strong form of Bible-ese. But the Bible also talks about this kind of sinning, and the antecedent rationalizations, as inchoate confusion. “Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion” (Lev. 18:23). “And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them” (Lev. 20:12).

In our case, the confusion depends on the fact that, in the Christian world, we have limited the sin to actual genital contact. Stay away from that, and you can be as much of a swish as you want. But this is not what Scripture teaches. Adultery does not begin in the bed; it begins in the heart (Matt. 5:28). Homosex begins, not in the bathhouse, but rather in the kind of cosmos a man imagines himself to live in—provided it is not the cosmos created by the living God. Underneath the passive homosexual act is the sin of wanting to be soft, and underneath that desire to be malakoi (1 Cor. 6:9) is the sin of pride and arrogance.

That is so very important. If adultery is at the core a heart issue, then it makes sense that homosexuality is as well. Homosexual behavior is not sinful just for the act, although the act itself is an abomination. It is also sinful because it tells God the Creator that you reject what He has ordained. Whether it is men lusting after other men or women after other women, or if it is a man that feels compelled to dress like a woman because he is mentally ill or even worse if he is driven to mutilate his own flesh, or an adult who is sexually aroused by a small child or an animal, all of it stems from the same rebellion against God. God has made you a man and called you to either marry one woman in a lifelong covenant relationship or to remain single, but instead that man shakes his fist at God and declares: No, I will not! I will have sex with women who are not my wife. I will suppress the natural desire of a man for a woman and debase myself in lust for another man. I will declare God made a mistake in giving me male genitalia and chromosomes and start to act like and dress like a woman. Instead of seeing that small child as someone to protect and nurture, I will instead see that child as someone to sate my foul lusts with.

That sort of talk probably constitutes "hate speech" in much of the Western world. Heck you can probably get arrested in some European countries if the cops catch you with this post on your screen. Equating "transgenderism" and homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia is simply not permitted but regardless it is all part of the same sexual rebellion against God's created order. The only permissible and blessed sexual unions are monogamous, permanent, heterosexual marriage or celibacy. That is it. "Living together", divorce and remarriage, adultery, homosexuality of any kind, bestiality, pedophilia. All are merely different points on a single spectrum of sexual sin.

The problem in that video is not just three guys swishing around together on stage. Instead it is a symptom of a much broader problem, even in "conservative" churches. It puts a sexually confused message on display for the entertainment of the church with the blessing of elders who should know better. This isn't some Episcopalian church, this is supposed to be a "conservative", Reformed, orthodox church. I am seeing a lot of troubling signs coming from "conservative" groups like The Gospel Coalition, 9 Marks and the Southern Baptist Convention, subtle slides toward political correctness and compromise to try to appease the world. The Gospel Coalition's Twitter page has for some time now featured a banner promoting an upcoming conference next April, the MLK50 conference recognizing the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

A conference celebrating a known adulterer with clearly a clearly unorthodox theology who also espoused borderline communist beliefs? From a group that styles itself the "Gospel" Coalition in celebration of a man who didn't seem to know what the Gospel was? So much for the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation this year, dead white theologians namesakes don't tickle the ears of the world. Let's focus on a conference celebrating a heterodox philanderer because he is a larger than life cultural figure and maybe, just maybe, the world will like us better if we put on a show. As a nation we should certainly remember with sadness the slaying of Martin Luther King, Kr. but as the church our focus should be on the Gospel. In 2014 TGC even ran a piece about Martin Luther King, Jr titled: 9 Things You Should Know About Martin Luther King, Jr. and point number 6 recognizes that he held heterodox (and heretical although they didn't use that word) beliefs:

6. King held unorthodox views on theology, which he expressed during his time at Crozer Theological Seminary. In a paper he wrote for a systematic theology class he cast skeptical aspersions on the doctrines of divine Sonship, the Virgin Birth (”. . . the evidence for the tenability of this doctrine is too shallow to convince any objective thinker”), and the Resurrection (”. . . the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting”). In the conclusion of another paper he writes, 

"Others doctrines such as a supernatural plan of salvation, the Trinity, the substitutionary theory of the atonement, and the second coming of Christ are all quite prominent in fundamentalist thinking. Such are the views of the fundamentalist and they reveal that he is opposed to theological adaptation to social and cultural change. He sees a progressive scientific age as a retrogressive spiritual age. Amid change all around he is willing to preserve certain ancient ideas even though they are contrary to science."

So here is a man that apparently rejected or at least was highly skeptical about such minor issues as the Resurrection and the divinity of Christ and yet the "Gospel" Coalition is going to honor him with a conference next year? So I guess for TGC virtue signaling > orthodoxy. Hey, next year is also the 40th anniversary of the slaying of homosexual pedophile Harvey Milk, why not a conference for him? They could have twice divorced gay "bishop" Eugene Robinson as the keynote speaker!

One more from Doug, again emphasis mine.

Incidentally, I am aware that some will say that I obviously don’t understand art, or ballet, or culture, or something important to blue state urbanites. That’s as may be, but I understand men who still have their spiritual gonads. And if you can look at that clip and fail to understand why the church is so deeply unattractive to real men, then there is very little hope for you. And speaking of art, if you can look at that clip and fail to understand why real men are so repulsed by the artistic “community,” then there is even less hope.

I am not interested in running into the woods to build fires and beat drums or MMA party pseudo-machismo but I am even less interested in androgynous religious observations. Why would any self-respecting, Scripturally literate man be willing sit and watch three men cavorting with each other on stage? The answer is that they don't. They just stop coming. The same is true with wailing "Jesus is my girlfriend" contemporary "Christian" music or sappy sermons or even Christian teachers on the radio with their shows started with frilly acoustic guitar playing. Real men don't eat spiritual quiche, they want spiritual red meat. They don't want to sit around passively listening to warbling, crappy music. They certainly don't have any interest in the sort of "art" on display in that video. A man doesn't have to look like Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson to be manly, Doug Wilson isn't someone who you will see in an Ironman competition anytime soon, but a man has to at least know he is a man and not be ashamed of that.

The church has been playing defense for too long and the relentless infiltration will never stop as long as there is a single orthodox believer alive. It is time to be on the offensive, not to be offensive necessarily, but to take the fight to the Enemy. For decades the church in the U.S. has been doing whatever it can to drive men out. For every gathering like Together for the Gospel with thousands of men gathered under the authority of the Word of God, there are hundreds or thousands of slow drips of compromise like was on display at Redeemer. We need to reclaim the priority of masculinity in the church and that starts with redeeming the false image of Jesus as a sissy. We have confused the meekness of Christ with weakness. As I have written before, Jesus was meek because He chose to be at that time. His was infinite strength held in check by sheer willpower, not a lack of strength. The fact is that He could have but chose not to crush those scourging Him and nailing Him to a cross likely fleshy pop cans with a thought and He did that to redeem us, not because He was helpless, but because He loved us. That is not weakness, that is the epitome of strength. Jesus came as a man and not a simpering weakling. He rebuked and chastised without apology, He tolerated no nonsense, He drove those blaspheming the temple out with a whip made of cords, He commanded the seas and the winds, He faced down without fear the most powerful men around in the Jewish Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate. He spoke the truth without nuance and made no apology for it. When He comes again He will come in His full power and righteous fury:

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. (Revelation 19:11-15)

I don't know if Christ will return on a literal white horse but I do know with 100% confidence that He won't come back sashaying on a stage to flute music. It is a testament to the power of deception that the Enemy has managed to replace the Jesus of the Bible with the peace sign flashing, fair trade soy milk drinking, ballet dancing "Jesus" of modern religious culture.

We need to get back to worshipping THAT guy, the one who comes in fury and righteousness and wrath, not the peacenik hippie Jesus of modern church culture. How is a man supposed to worship as King a guy that he could beat up? We need to get back to Jesus who commands every man to repent and that all mankind will bow the knee to and confess as Lord instead of a false Jesus that gets sand kicked in His face at the beach.

If you want to see the church healthy, vibrant and powerful, you don't need better "worship" music or more relevant sermons or a better program for kids or more "inclusive" attitudes. You need to get the men back, the real men. If you do that the church will thrive. If you don't it will wither. There are no other options.

Feminism: A Corrupt Seed That Yields A Rotten Crop

Picture from AgFax.com

In my prior post, It Is Not About Getting Rid Of Gender, It Is About Getting Rid Of Men, I argued that the "transgender" and "gender fluidity" movements are mostly about ridding our culture of any actual masculine expression. I also made the statement that I think women are, by and large, not terribly happy today in spite of "feminist progress" and by implication that they would be more happy if the men in their lives acted more like men. In fact it often seems to me that things that are supposed to make women happier, like having more women with careers outside of the home and going to college, are actually conspiring to make women less happy and satisfied. As an example of this I quoted the disproportionate female-male ratio at most colleges in an article, Unequal Gender Ratios at Colleges Are Driving Hookup Culture, but the broader issue of that post was that the shrinking male population at university is actually benefitting the men enormously, at least from a standpoint of sexual promiscuity.

Women at disproportionately female schools talk openly about their frustrations. “Everyone’s self-esteem takes a hit,” a young woman at 75%-female Sarah Lawrence College told me. One reason: Sarah Lawrence men have little interest in exclusive relationships. “Why would they? It’s like they have their own free harem,” she grumbled. “One of my friends was dumped by a guy after they’d been hooking up for less than a week. When he broke up with her, the guy actually used the word ‘market’—like the ‘market’ for him was just too good.” 

A male Sarah Lawrence student offered a similar assessment of life there—though he wasn’t bemoaning the school’s hookup culture but celebrating it. The young man told me he had had sex with more than 20 of his female classmates. “There isn’t really a culture of monogamy or even dating here,” he offered. “Sometimes it feels like you can have anyone you want.”

It turns out that men and women still like to be with each other and when men are scarce, women end up having to or at least feeling like they have to, compromise what they want (monogamous, steady relationships) for what men seem to want (casual sex) in order to have any relationship with men at all. Certainly plenty of academic "experts" will tell you that casual sex with no commitment is healthier than old fuddy-duddy notions of monogamy and relationship but I don't believe that to be true for a second. Having once been an unregenerate college guy, albeit one with a steady girlfriend that I got engaged to halfway through my first year of school, I can say with some confidence that being in a culture where you are having sex with so many different girls that you number your partners in the dozens would be fantastic. Marriage traditionally acted as a civilizing influence on young men, especially young men who are outside of the faith, but now most men can get sex on demand with no corresponding commitment. If you want to see an unclothed woman, you don't have to buy a girlie magazine with a brown paper cover over it from the drug store, you can just click a few buttons and see whatever kind of woman you want doing anything you can imagine and quite a few things you can't even begin to imagine.

I have been working over a post literally for years now that I need to finish one of these days that argues we are living in the Golden Era of Male Irresponsibility. Ironically it is feminism that has made this happen. Very powerful and educated men are doing more than fine in our culture. Lazy, ne'er-do-well young men who want to live at home, play video games and watch porn are doing just fine in their pursuit. The vast majority of men who just want to be a good father and husband and productive member of society are the ones who are struggling.

The struggles of most men is mirrored by the struggles of far too many women. Women from affluent homes are also doing great it would seem. But the majority of women in America seem far from doing just fine. They are pulled in a million directions, told that they don't need a man to be happy but at the same time constantly bombarded with marketing tell them that they need this or that to appeal to men. Women have been told that they shouldn't allow men to objectify them but the culture has led to a situation where teen girls are sending nude photos of themselves to boys that often aren't even steady boyfriends. My experience of decades in the professional work environment was that of a lot of women, I would say the majority of them, were equal parts resigned to "having to work" and longing to spend more time with their kids. Having a picture of your six month old daughter on your desk and texting the daycare is no substitute for being there for her. That may sound judgmental and cruel, and maybe it is, but it is also true. Each successive generation of Western women seems less equipped for caring for their own children but in spite of efforts by some feminists to shame the maternal instinct out of women, it is still there but women today are ill-equipped to respond to that instinct.

A perfect example of this came up this week with the cinematic release of the Fifty Shades of Grey bondage-porn sequel Fifty Shades Darker. In the spirit of full disclosure I have not read any of the books or watched the film but I have run across enough in terms of plot summaries to get the gist of the movie. The series is wildly popular. The first book, Fifty Shades of Grey, apparently sold more than 125 million copies. According to Barnes & Noble (I didn't check at Amazon where I almost exclusively shop for books because I don't want to see what else looking at Fifty Shades would cause Amazon to recommend for me), the hard copy retails for $12.95 and the e-book for $7.99 so taking the average price of the two and multiplying that times 125,000,000 copies means roughly $1.3 billion in sales. That is a pretty big number for a book. The first film adaptation made over $166,000,000 at the box office in America and more than half a billion worldwide according to IMDB. It sounds like estimates are that the sequel will earn almost $50 million during the opening weekend alone.

As you would expect just from the general hype, the book buyers are 80% women. What I found interesting when I looked at the buying profile from Bowker was what kind of women were buying it. The cultural narrative is that it is bought by bored and sexually frustrated soccer moms but that is not what Bowker found in 2012:

Compared to the typical adult fiction consumer, buyers of the Fifty Shades books are more likely to be women, live in the Northeast, and have a significantly higher household income.

Interesting indeed! I think a lot of midwestern soccer mom types tend to consume the "Amish romance novel" genre but why would substantially more affluent, presumably more educated and more "enlightened" women in the Northeast (i.e. Boston to New York to Washington, D.C., our power corridor and where you are most likely to find powerful, "successful" career women) buy a book about a disordered and male dominated sexual relationship?

Why in the world would women in our supposedly enlightened world with decades of feminist indoctrination in the schools and our pop culture, want to spend upwards of a billion and a half dollars to read/watch about what ought to be the nightmare of feminists, a wealthy older White man who apparently uses his wealth and power and *GASP* dare I say privilege to seduce a virginal, younger woman and dominate her? Everything about this storyline seems to run precisely counter to what women are supposed to truly crave. Wouldn't a better story line that would appeal to women like this be something like a professional woman, like a high power lawyer, who has a mutually respectful but open relationship with a guy who is an artist of some sort and works at Whole Foods to make ends meet but who mostly depends on his much smarter, more worldly and far more successful female life partner to pay the bills while he keeps their condo clean, feeds the cats and cleans the litter box and makes cruelty free, fair trade vegan meals and rubs her feet when she gets home?

Curiouser and curiouser.

My theory is probably not surprising. Men and women are men and women and you can market and indoctrinate the crap out of them but that doesn't change their basic nature. The Bible is again proven to be accurate in describing the human condition when it comes to gender (ex. Genesis 3:16 ). When these modern, feminism-saturated, independent, strong women get a few minutes to themselves, one hundred million or so of them read about or watched a movie about a man who sexually dominates a woman. Tens of millions more read various romance novels, including the wildly popular Amish romance genre and the Amish idea of gender is about as counter-cultural as you can get. It is almost like women really are actually craving a strong man who will lead in their relationship instead of some flaccid, milquetoast Nancy-boy that has to ask his life partner to open the pickle jar for him.

Feminism is an agenda driven ideology that really has morphed into a matriarchal religion, a religious worldview that has been mostly destructive to women, to men and to children and families. The ideas that it claims to put forth, like equality of opportunity, have long since come to fruition and what we see now are mostly policies and positions that can only be properly described as anti-male, anti-children and anti-family. The future is not female but to ensure a better future for females we must collectively reject the lies of feminism for the sake of our wives, sisters, mothers and daughters.

Apologies to our sisters

In my wanderings around the blogosphere, I have run into a number of men offering many a mea culpa for what they perceive as the mistreatment of women in the church for millennia. The general crux is that women have been repressed by men, not allowed to fully use their talents, not been able to have a voice, etc. etc. and that because of this general misogyny, we need to apologize to our sisters.

Do I think Christian men should apologize for the treatment of women?

Absolutely.

As men we need to apologize for failing in our responsibility to lovingly lead in our families and in the local assembly as we have been commanded to do.

We need to apologize for letting our own apathy and laziness lead to our wives taking on responsibilities at church and at home above and beyond what should be asked of them because they are willing and we are lazy. They have been forced to step into the breach where men have failed to lead and been placed in those situations because of our disobedience.

We need to apologize to our sons for the poor example they have observed of their mothers or other mothers bringing children to church by themselves while the dad stayed home. We need to apologize to our daughters for telling them one thing about womanhood in the Scriptures and then showing them something different in our actions.

We should apologize for letting our sisters buy into the world’s view that women must act like men, have every role of a man, be indistinguishable from men to be equal by not demonstrating godly male headship in the home and the Body of Christ. We are equal in God’s sight, and there are plenty of women who are very capable of doing many things that are prohibited in Scripture. It is not a judgment on women regarding their abilities to perform certain functions, it is a calling. There was nothing inherently “wrong” or “inferior” with the other 11 tribes of Israel, they just weren’t called by God to officiate in the tabernacle.

We need to apologize for parroting back the world’s view of the relationship of men and women, apologizing for the Word of God and embracing out of embarrassment and fear the perverse view of the relationship between the genders that stands in opposition to what was designed and revealed by God in His Word.

My wife is stronger than any of these women who insist on a false view of equality by taking for themselves what God has prohibited because her strength is a Biblical strength, a quiet and gentle and meek strength that does not demand "Look at me!". That desire for what is forbidden seems like a familiar theme, perhaps one involving a fruit that was desirable even though it was forbidden. When you read the Word, what sort of qualities are desirable for women? Let’s look at the admonition of Peter:

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear-- but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. (1Pe 3:1-6)

We see the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. How deeply we have failed in not conveying this to our wives! That we should apologize for, that we should be ashamed of.

But, we should not apologize for the Word of God. We should not apologize that God made us different and called us to different service, not inferior and superior but different. We should not apologize for the Word of God and portray it as an antiquated record of a less enlightened time. We owe our sisters many apologies, but all of them for following the Bible less than we should have, not more than we should.

More on “Bishop” Robinson and the Coronation

This whole fiasco just keeps getting better and better. There is an article in the New York Times that deals with Obama’s choice of Mr. Robinson to give the invocation at some sort of gala event at the Lincoln Memorial.

The event Bishop Robinson will participate in is on the first day of formal inaugural festivities in Washington. It will feature a lineup that includes the musicians Beyoncé, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.

The pay cable network HBO will broadcast the event and provide a free signal so that nonsubscribers can also watch, said Linda Douglass, the chief spokeswoman for the inaugural committee.

Wow, Beyonce, Bono and “Bishop” Gene Robinson! How can I face my grandchildren some day and tell them I missed this event? It is even going to be free on HBO!

Bishop Robinson said he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.”

“I am very clear,” he said, “that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.”

Bishop Robinson said he might address the prayer to “the God of our many understandings,” language that he said he learned from the 12-step program he attended for his alcohol addiction.

Bishop Robinson said that his partner of more than 20 years, Mark Andrew, would accept the Obama team’s invitation to join him in attending several inaugural events. The two had a civil union ceremony last summer in a New Hampshire church.

Oh dear, what could be more horrifying than a Christian minister giving a prayer that is “specifically and aggressively Christian”. Oh the humanity! I can only guess what President Lincoln would think of a homosexual “minister” giving a vague, ecumenical prayer at a memorial dedicated to his memory. I assume that he would reject the attempt to link the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement with the radical homosexual agenda for normalization of deviancy.

I guess he can call himself whatever wants, and dress up in fancy, colorful outfits and such. His use of the title “Bishop” is no more meaningful than Joseph Ratzinger declaring himself the Vicar of Christ, or vicarious representative for Christ on earth, or an 18 year old mormon missionary carrying the title of “elder”.

What I have wondered in the past is what would motivate someone who clearly doesn’t believe in even the basics of Christianity to go into a professional ministry? I think what it really stems from is both a desire to cover his own unrepentant sin by cloaking himself in religious trappings and also a desire for attention. The NY Times article says that there is no correlation between the kerfuffle among the homosexual lobby over Rick Warren’s selection to give the invocation and Mr. Robinson being invited to give the post-inaugural prayer at the Lincoln Memorial. Riiiiggghhtt. Mr. Robinson got to play the aggrieved victim card when Warren was chosen and look concerned and wounded on TV. Now he gets to play the pious peacemaker and sophisticate for the media. I think he is the kind of person who might douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire to get attention.

(Dr. Mohler also addresses the NYT article)

Wimpy girlie men

Is it any wonder that men, even many Christian men, find so many churches distasteful?

**CAUTION**

**OVERT CHAUVINISM AHEAD**

**CAUTION**

Certainly a Christian will be blessed by and seek out opportunity to join in fellowship and teaching of the Word. However, merely walking into a building that says: “Church” on it is no guarantee that will happen. This is not a call for church to be more "relevant" but to be more faithful. When you go into many a church, what you are treated to is a feel-good message about a wimpy God who just wants you to love Him. What is not presented is an accurate picture of the mighty God of the Bible or His Son who exemplifies not being a push over, the kid getting sand kicked in his face at the beach by the bully Pharisees, but rather exemplifies what men should aspire to: humility, conviction, strength, sacrifice. Jesus was not a macho braggart but He also was not someone who lacked a spine. He was God and showed and continues to show mercy to those who deserve wrath, and patience until that day when He is revealed to all people for who He is.

I am certainly not the first person to raise this issue, much ink has been spilled and furious typing has taken place on blogs that have already captured the generally effeminate atmosphere of many churches, even evangelical churches. This isn’t reserved for Episcopalian or United Methodist churches where women and even open homosexuals are ordained. Show me a moderately conservative Baptist church without strong male leadership from elders, and I will show you a church where faithful women have taken over most of the de facto rule of the church. That is not an indictment of most women, although there are some that chafe under submitting to male leadership. They are simply filling in the gap where the men should stand. It is the men of the church who stand accused, both for not leading today and for failing to set expectations for leadership to younger generations of men. Having male leadership in the church isn’t fulfilled with a male in the pulpit for a 20 minute sappy sermon.

Young men growing up in the last decade in average evangelical churches were raised in situations where Sunday school, song worship, activities, leadership all were held by women. The men they did hear from were probably were only pastors and the watered down message they preached displayed a simpering god that begged people to like him enough to worship him, instead of the Almighty God, the Creator and Judge who made all things and will set things aright when He sends His Son to gather His sheep and judge the nations. There is not much to admire for young men in the hippie Jesus of postmodern America. The Jesus portrayed in many a pulpit is not someone I would want my boys to emulate, much less worship.

Biblical manhood, real Biblical manhood not beating drums in the woods, is desperately needed in church today. John MacArthur on Grace To You Wednesday morning spoke of the admirable qualities of men from a Biblical perspective, and what you saw lots of was strength, fortitude, courage, character. Notably absent was anything about being sensitive. Being loving and sensitive are certainly traits men should exhibit, but not at the expense or in place of decidedly male traits. What Dr. MacArthur also pointed out is that being masculine in the Biblical sense does not mean false bravado or faux aggressive chest thumping. The men I know who I admire are not those who are the great athletes but the men who care for their family, who have a sense of duty towards their family that reflects their love towards them.

I clearly have failed for the most part in this role as a father, both in demonstrating to my sons how to love their wives as Christ loves the church and also by failing to show by example the type of men my daughters should seek out for their husbands. That is something that I have repented of and am seeking to rectify in my life and in my sacred calling as head of my household. Children are a blessing from the Lord and they deserve to be blessed by their father as well. The greatest blessings a child can receive from their father is to see him loving his wife and to see him worshipping his God.