Men should lead? Responding to Wbmoore (Part 3)

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Women’s rights? Yes! Radical feminism? No!

Long ago, well-meaning American founders wrote on the “separation of church and state.” They never meant that classrooms should disallow prayer. They never foresaw that decrees would be passed that forbid the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools. Similarly, what we say today can be used against future generations. We have to choose our words carefully.

On some anti-feminist/ Biblical womanhood/ manosphere blogs, people say they are opposed to women’s rights. That bothers me. Humans were made in the image of God with certain rights. For example, God is against murder, as murderers violate someone’s right to live the life God gave him or her. Humans have rights, women are humans, ergo, women have rights.

Do you agree with this sentence?: “A man should be able to rape and murder a women with no consequences whatsoever, as long as her husband/ father agrees that the murderer may do it.” If you agree, you can say you disagree with women’s rights. If not, you probably believe that women should have rights. And if you believe women should have rights, do not claim women’s rights are wrong. The word “rights” have a meaning. So use it.

The anti-feminist crowd, of course, misuse the term”women’s rights” because radical feminists misuse it. Radical feminists, for example, may claim that a pregnant woman has the right to murder her unborn child, as it is part of her body. No. The unborn baby is a human with a right to live. As the bumper sticker say, I support a woman’s right to be born. Another idea that find favor with radical feminists and other liberals is that divorce should be easy. Is the right to break promises, to get out of commitments and leave the other party to a contract (the spouse) without what you promised him, a part of any country’s bill of rights? Not as far as I know.

I am no radical feminist, but not because I oppose women’s rights. Women’s rights activism are good and right anywhere that women actually are denied rights. In the modern Western world, women are not legally denied any rights, AFAIK. People who fight for abortion, who hate men and are anti-marriage make society worse for the sake of their claims, which are not rights. But the anti-feminist crowd, with the best intentions possible, is paving the way for a terrible society too.

The building block of society is stable families, the sort where marriage is a beneficial situation for both men and women. Be critical of liberals who do not believe in marriage and family stability. Be critical too, of the nice, marriage-valuing, wishing-women-all-the-best, guy who say he does not believe in women’s rights. Because the words of people like him, the laws or local ordinances they write, will be twisted by not-so-well-intended despots in future. The pendulum may now be on the women’s side in divorce courts at least, but it will swing back. And because men are naturally the ones with the power, it could swing back a lot further to that side. It could swing to the point where society reverts to barbarism because women are seen as having no rights or value.

The helpers God intended women to be

Biblical gender roles is a hotly debated topic.Some people regard the Bible as misogynic because of it. Others completely deny that the Bible teaches different roles for the genders at all. Objectively, what is the Biblical base for gender roles and how should it be viewed? The first and foundational verse on the topic is this:

Gen 2:18 – And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.

 

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians he, according to some at least, testifies how this should color gender roles:

 

1 Corinthians 11:9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man :11 Nevertheless, neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in the Lord :12 For as the woman is of the man, so is the man also by the woman; but all things are of God.

 

Gen 2:18 and 1 Cor. 11: 9 are often quoted by complimentarians and deserve attention. If God made women to be a help meet, what should women be and do? If God did not make man to be a help meet, what should men not do? We can answer that by looking at the word translated as helper. The word translated as help is ezer. What kind of help is implied in that word? Well, the word ezer is used 21 times in the old testament.

 

->Twice, it refers to women.

 

->18 Times, it refers to God

 

-> Once, it says a weak nation cannot be a helper.

 

When God is a ezer(helper), He is a rescuer, He is help you cannot do without. God is not a helper as the office cleaner is a helper to the office staff, but a helper as a lifeguard is a helper to a drowning man. When a weak nation cannot help, it does not mean that they are incapable of carrying your water or chopping your wood. It means that they are not of much use politically, they cannot rescue anyone.

 

Right after the word ezer, the Hebrew use kenegdo, That means opposite or on eye level with. The women is not an inferior or superrior, but on his height. 

Now, for you to think and pray over:

 

1. Does Genesis 2:18 mean that women as a gender, were created by God to be rescuers to men as a gender, or that wifes were created to be rescuers of their own husbands? Do a women have to rescue only her husband, or most men she meet?

 

 2. 1 Cor. 11:9, 11 and 12 uses words that could be translated as “man” and “woman,” or as “husband” and “wife.” Why do translaters choose to use “man” and “woman” in English?

 3. Would it be correct to read female inferiority into the role of rescuer/ helper? And into being made for another?

 4. In practical terms, what could a woman do to be a rescuer as God intended?

5. Gender roles work both ways. In practical terms,what should a man not do, if he was not made to be a rescuer of his wife?

Please leave comments on how you, or your Bible study group, Biblically answers any of these questions.

On Biblical womanhood, by a single female who love the Lord

Sites like “Ladies against feminism” (LAF) promote what they see, rightly or wrongly, as “Biblical womanhood.” They tell women to be good mothers and wifes, and discuss, among other things, how a Christian woman could raise children in a non-Christian culture. That is good.

And they focus strongly on how God made the sexes differently and called them to different roles. I largely agree. He made us women, on average, quite different from the average man. But if you list God’s orders to all believers in one list, and His orders to only male or female believers in another, the first list would be a lot longer than the second.

Biblical womanhood sites don’t talk about the Great Commission, about witnessing or what Christian love to those outside your family looks like. They rarely mention a prayer life, the fruit of the spirit or the armor of the believer. They seem to make an idol of Biblical womanhood, at the expense of God and His kingdom that should be sought first.*

LAF even have writers that are “stay at home daughters“- unmarried women who do not have a salaried job, but stay at their parents’ home, do housekeeping, and want their parents to help to look for husbands for them. God may possibly have called those few daughters to it. After all, He ordered a prophet to lay on his side for more than a year (Eze 4:4), and another to marry a prostitute. (Hosea 1:2)

But for the average young single, LAF seems to get her priorities backwards: 1 Corinthians 7 teaches it is better to stay single, as the married has to focus on pleasing a partner, but the single could focus on God. The stay at home daughters seemingly think that the single female should live to prepare for the things married mothers do.

In short, Biblical Womanhood sites delivers, in my opinion, great messages to married women, as long as those readers remember that to follow the Lord, your focus needs to be a lot wider than “Biblical womanhood” topics. Their message to single women is less useful. Singleness is not a time to get ready for the higher purpose of marriage. Singleness is, Biblically, the opportunity to follow God’s higher purpose with less diversions than the married woman or man.

God does not tell single women to waste their singleness on baking muffins in home-sewn aprons, while thinking of how to look feminine. Seek first the kingdom, not the kitchen.

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* Why would I say that sites on this topic idolize it, and not that a Sunday school teaching site, or a charity’s web page, idolizes teaching or charity? Because Sunday school sites don’t give the impression that focusing on Sunday School alone will make the teacher everything God wants him/ her to be. 

Vox Day is wrong about women: Part 2

 Vox:

 B) Irrationally uses things that does not qualify as evidence for evidence:

Vox claim #3) :  Romance novels and romance TV are nothing more or less than female porn. Most women will furiously deny it, but their very vehemence underlines the reality.

So, if someone deny something strongly, the truth of it is underlined? Vox vehemently deny that women’s votes are good for society. Does that underline the reality of women’s votes being good for society? He vehemently denies the rationality of Sam Harris. Does that make Harris rational?

 Vox claim #4) Do you know the story of Snow White? Then surely you remember how the seven dwarves took her in when she was homeless, provided her with food and shelter, and cared so much about her that they shed tears for her and built her a spectacular crystal pedestal.

And of course, you will recall that she ran off with Prince Charming at the very first opportunity.

…we can draw two important conclusions from the fairy tale. One, behaving like a dwarf won’t get you the girl.

 What, according to him, was the behavior of the dwarfs, behavior that won’t get the girl? It was providing for her and treated her as important (“Pedestalize” is the word he always use for that.) Snow White, he claims, did not really care about provision or a pedestal, but ran off despite it. (Leave aside, for a moment, that Snow White is fictitious.)

 Think for a moment: Who could provide better food and housing and clothes, the prince or the dwarfs?

Which is the better pedestal: A glass coffin? OR The title princess, a royal wedding, and the opportunity to order servants around in a palace, rather than cook and clean for dwarfs?

 If Snow White is a metaphor for female behavior, she is not evidence at all that a pedestal and provision is not what women want. (Is his inability to notice this perhaps due to his being the son of a very rich man, and wanting to rationalize that his personality, not his dad’s money, attracted females to him?)

His second conclusion is not even in the story. It is something he prefers to ascribe to the prince’s behavior: The prince don’t stick around, Vox claims, to ask the girl twice.

Conclusion:

 On topics related to women, Vox cannot apply his observations rationally.

 (To be continued)

To marry or not to marry: For men.

 Marriage advocates tell us that married people are happier and healthier and wealthier. But they tend to forget that marriage is also the lead cause of divorce, and divorce make people less happy and less wealthy.

On the other hand, a growing number of marriage opponents tell men: Do not marry. Do not have children. Fool around, pick up women, use and dump them. Because in the Western world, divorce laws mean that women can and will walk out on you any time, leaving you without wife and kids and taking along most of your money. These tend to forget that many marriages are actually beneficial.

Statistically, which advice is most sound? Is it more beneficial for men to stay single, or to take the marriage gamble, which may leave you better off if you stay married, and worse if you divorce? By lack of better data, we will assume that the popular statistical myth is true: That half of American marriages end in divorce.*

Does getting married (having no idea if your marriage will work out or not) increase your chance of wealth?

Married men earn approximately 11 percent more per hour than men who have never been married, even after controlling for work experience, education, age and other factors. Economists also find that divorced or separated men make about 9 percent more than never-married men.

The person who marries is, on average (considering a 50% chance of divorce), likely to make 10% per hour more, compared to the one who never marry.

For people on the verge of retirement
* Married couples had accumulated $410,000

* Never married accumulated $167,000

* Divorced acccumulated $154,000

Since there are 2 people in a marriage, the $410,000 has to be divided by two for this calculation.

Married:Divorced:Never-Married have accumulated wealth 205:154:167 to each other.

The person who marries is, on average (considering a 50% chance of divorce), likely to retire with about $179 000** compared to the $167,000 of the one who never marry.

Another study of about 9,000 people found that divorce reduces a person’s wealth by about three-quarters (77 percent) compared to that of a single person, while being married almost doubles comparative wealth (93 percent.)

By that metric, the average divorcee has $23 for every $100 that the single, and $193 that the average married person has. (The same study also claims the average divorced man has about 2,5 times as much money as the average divorced woman, so he actually has $38,33 for every $100 that the single person has.)

The person who marries is, on average (considering a 50% chance of divorce), likely to have about  $115 dollar for every $100 of the one who never marry.

All in all, the person who marries is, on average, likely to end up with more than the one who never marry.

Does getting married (having no idea if your marriage will work out or not) increase or decrease the chance of happiness?

* 40 percent of the married said they are very happy with their life in general, compared to just 22 % of those who were single or who were cohabitating. The separated (15 percent very happy) and the divorced (18 percent very happy) were the least happy.

On the other end of the happiness scale, just 7 percent of married Americans say they are “not too happy” with life in general, compared to 13 percent of singles, and 18 percent of the divorced.

Married: Divorced: Never-Married have “very happy levels at rates 40:18:22 to each other. Married: Divorced: Never-Married have unhappiness levels at rates 7:18:13 to each other.

The average person who marry increase his chance of being very happy from 23% to 29%; and the average marrying person marginally decreases his/ her unhappiness chance from 13% to 12,5%.

Does getting married (having no idea if your marriage will work out or not) increase the risk that you will be so unhappy as to commit suicide?

Married men are only half as likely as bachelors and one-third as likely as divorced guys to take their own lives. Married: Divorced: Never-Married have divorce chances 1:3:2 to each other.

It averages out- the man with no idea if his marriage will end in divorce or not has roundabout the same chance of suicide as the one who stay single.

Does getting married (having no idea if your marriage will work out or not) increase your life expectancy?

The percentages living to age sixty five are 88 percent of married men versus 69 percent of widowed men, 65 percent of divorced men and 63 percent of never-married men.

The man who marries, wether he divorce or not, still has a higher life expectancy.

Conclusion:

For the average man, marriage is a worthy gamble, although not remarkably superior. But don’t be average. You can greatly increase your odds, and make your gamble a lot safer, by things like choosing your partner well, your ages at the time of marriage, your religious commitment, your education level and choosing a woman who’se parents stayed married, and by knowing the possible legal pitfalls and taking steps to avoid them. And if a man does not merit a women who fulfills several of the requirements (under “greatly increase your odds” and “choosing your partner well”), and he himself fulfills few of them? In that case, the doomsayers may be right, and it may be better for him to stay single.

———————————–

*This 50% is based on the amount of weddings in a year, and divorces that same year, and does not take into account the amount of already married people. The chances that a particular marriage will end in divorce is actually impossible to calculate.

 **A 50% chance of being in the $205,000 group, and a 50% chance of being in the $154,000 group, average out on that. All further calculations in this piece also average out between the married and divorced.

Vox Day is wrong about women (Part 1)

Blogger Vox Day, on his blog, tries to tell men what women are like and how to approach relationships. Leaving aside for a moment my theory that his view on women may be selection bias, let us examine the evidence: Is Vox objective, and likely to refer to accurate data, when discussing women? How correct is he on the topic? He:

A) Claims evidentially wrong things about male/ female relationships:

Vox claims #1) If you want to keep a relationship going, act like an alpha male. (Implied in most of his posts on game.)

Now, while it is a truism that some women fall, short term, for alphas, an alpha male statistically has a smaller chance of staying married. For every married alpha (40,9% of them are married) there are 0.54 divorced alphas. For every married man who had only 1-2 sexual partners* (78% of them are married) there are 0,037 divorced ones.

Acting like an alpha is great for the pick up artist, not for keeping a woman. An alpha’s marriage is, in fact, 14 times as likely to end in divorce. Vox is probably giving sound advice for the pick up artist on how to get short term relationships (one night stands), but atrocious advice to the married man.

Vox claims #2… it is a very risky and probably foolish endeavor for men to marry women over the age of 25.

Actually, partners over 25 are more statistically likely to give you a stable, lasting marriage. It is the younger partners that are most likely to sink a marriage. It is a very risky and probably foolish endeavor to marry if you or your partner is under 25, even more so if both of you are.
Vox evidentially does not always know what he talks about when giving advice on this topic.
(To be continued.)

 ———–

Note:

*This statistical source uses alpha in the same sense as Vox does, but not beta. Vox arranges men in at least 7 groups, of whom betas have more success with women than anyone except alphas and sigmas. This source use beta as the opposite of alpha.)

Amen! Preach it, sister?

An enthusiastic Christian women, not long ago, lived submitting to and serving God. She taught and saw fruit on her work. She strived to keep God at the centre of what she does. She was happy, and felt her life was meaningful.

 

And then she stumbled upon some conservative Christian websites. She read on them how there is no spiritual equality between men and women. How women should not teach. (Of course, she knew the “women should not teach” verses, but she understood them differently.) How the shortage of men in most churches is because of the “feminization of the church.” How women should get married and have babies, that is what God wants them to be doing for society. Even, on some, that women should live with their daddies until they get married, as all females should be under the authority of a male.

 

She tried to reason with them, tell them, for example, that the Bible does not teach women should be married, nor that marriage is better and more Godly for women. (1 Cor 7:32-34, etc.) She got ignored, because the men reading it would simply not accept a woman teaching them. Whenever she gave any view on Christianity, she got ignored for that reason.

 

She believed them. And she got unsatisfied with her station in life: Why, if God so much wanted her to be married and have kids, instead of teaching Bible clubs and apologetics, did he not provide her with a Christian husband? She used to thank God for providing what she needs, now she started questioning Him: If a Christian woman needs a Christian man over her, then God clearly did not provide for her needs.

 

She started questioning her work for God. Her apologetics must be against the will of God, for she is trying to teach people- and most of those who care about the topic are men- about the rational believability of Christianity. She started questioning her own Christianity: “If she can be so completely mistaken about what God wanted her to do with her life, if most of the things she thought she heard from God was against his will, does she know Him at all?” One day on one blog, a commenter even told her this: “If no Christian man ever wanted to marry you, are you sure you are a Christian?”

 

That day, God told her to get off sites like that. Whatever other good things she may learn there, they are harming her. Some weeks of confusion later, she cried out to God: “Please, God, this thing about what I should be- please teach me. I don’t even know how to follow you any more, if I ever did. I’ll start by looking up everything you say about women in the Bible. I’ll cross-reference to a concordance and the Greek or Hebrew meanings* given in there. Show me the truth, and don’t let me be misled.”

 

 She then found Loren Cunningham, founder of the large mission organization YWAM (YWAM’s fruit speaks for itself) teaches how the Bible have been misunderstood and mis-translated on the topic of women in the church. Here, you will find links to his “releasing women” .mp3′s, and here and here  you will find more about his book, “Why not women?”

 

As Loren himself say:

The real issue for me is: Can the women be what they were called to be from their mother’s womb? In God. In Christ.

 

Loren’s view seems to resonate with several thoughtful, intelligent people, the sort most likely to think of apologetics. One reader reacts:

My experience has been that the “equality” camp (of which this book is a member) expresses their arguments and evidence by digging deeply into the original languages of Scripture (exegesis). They look at words usage, sentence structure, and contextual understanding of the Scripture passage as a whole which the “troublesome” verses are found in. Their main conclusion is that the English interpretations of Scripture have failed to express the true meaning the Greek or Hebrew speaking writers of Scripture intended…

On the other hand, the “submission” or “headship” camp books I have read and sermons I have heard, focus their arguments and conclusions on the English versions of Scripture, and on anecdotal evidence.

 

If you are thinking about about women’s role in the church, please test this, and see if it measures up to Scripture. After all, the Kingdom work of at least half of all Christians is at stake.

 

 

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Note

* Most of the Bible were originally written in Hebrew or Greek. To understand the Bible better, it is always better to see the original than translations, which may lose some meaning when translated.

Is sin attractive?

Recently on the blog Vox Popoli, the claim was made that women find sleeping around an attractive quality in a man. Cause and effect probably rather works the other way round:

Sleeping around most likely do not lead to popularity with the ladies. (If it did, being a regular visitor to prostitutes -and women knowing it- would also make a man more popular.) On the other hand, popularity with the ladies certainly often leads to sleeping around.

In discussing that point (the blog owner calls himself a Christian) , I claimed:

Christian women find sin unattractive.

The blog owner, Vox, disagreed and told me Christian women do find sin, including the sleeping around of men, attractive.

Thinking further, I realised that we both have some part of the truth:

The redeemed, Christ-living-in-me part of a Christian woman find sin unattractive.

The old-(wo)man part of a Christian woman find sin attractive or unattractive, depending on (among others) wether the sin fits in with her own desires. She may, for example, find the suggestion of sin flattering if a married man shows interest in her, but hate it and feel insecure, later when married, if her husband shows interested in other women.

In the latter part, Christian women are no different from other humans. Humans are, on the one hand programmed to find sins repulsive and goodness attractive. We know in our hearts that lying, cheating, greed, selfishness and cowardice are wrong and ugly, and automatically gravitate towards those people who are honest, unselfish, giving or courageous. We get angry about newspaper reports on crime, because sin often repels us. Even thiefs hate stealing – when someone steals from them. And murderous gangs evidentially hate at least some murder, as can be seen when one of their gang members are murdered.

The Christian view is that God programs that idea- the repulsiveness of some behavior- into people. We are firstly made in His image, and that includes our moral compass.

But, even though people are above all programmed to find sins repulsive and goodness attractive, we still find some sins attractive sometimes. Because, secondly, we have a sinful nature.

Is sin attractive or unattractive? Both, it seems. If sin was only the one or the other, this world would have looked a lot different.

Single Christian women, ignore bad spiritual advice

A divorced female friend once gave me some MP3′s to listen to. The theme is about “releasing single Christian women for marriage.”In the first message, the speaker tells how he see, in his ministry, many Godly young women who would like to be married, but cannot find Godly young men. And how God told him he should help them.

So far, so good.

Then this speaker realised that many of these women sit with “labels on their souls.” Past generations of their family were perhaps unfaithful, or unbelieving or whatever, and now people- including God-loving young men – treat them that way. Because these people sense the label of “unfaithful” or “unbelieving” placed on her by a prior generation’s acts.

Now me and that preacher start to part ways.

He continues with a story of a woman who already confessed the sin that one of her grandfathers was a traitor, but now re-confessed it in the sense of the label of traitor on her soul. He tells how people suddenly started trusting the woman. What he does not tell, is that she found a husband after that. Then he gives the advice that unmarried women should look at their family histories, and see if there is anything they should confess and ask God to free them from.

He is wrong. If he knew a roundabout equal number of single godly men and single godly women, he may have had a point, and certain qualities, or even labels, in those women and men may have kept them single. But previously non-existent Christian men won’t suddenly materialize when women are taught to reconfess sins of their ancestors, that they already confessed before but not in terms of labels. In fact, this concentrating on their genealogies sounds a lot like the endless genealogies Paul warns against in 1 Timothy 1:4.

Is God so weak that he cannot give His blessings to His child, if his child had the wrong ((great-)grand)parents? I see the need to confess your own sin for God to renew you, but confessing and re-confessing the sins of your grandparents? And what if your parents or their parents did things you don’t know about? Will you never get free?

Miss Single, you do not need to focus more on spiritual gimmicks. Rather focus on firstly, your Maker (Mat 6:23), and then on giving out the love inside you- if not to a man, then to whoever God sends over your path. Don’t allow anyone – not even well-meaning church people- to take your focus from God towards gimmicks.

Church, don’t exploit the emotions (and money, on courses and books on being “set free”) of single women with gimmicks. There is a simple reason why church women do not find church men: There are too few church men to go around. Period. And what should the church do about that? They should change. The gospel, properly preached and applied, is the good news for both sexes, a challenge to obey for men, women, and children. If the churches have too few men, somehow the gospel is preached in a way that soothes female ears more than male ears, or that do not challenge men’s talents enough. What the church should do, is to ask God what they are doing wrong, why they are not producing more godly men.