Womanhood

The story topped the Google news page this morning. Last night in Sin City, Ronda Rousey was kicked, bashed, and smashed into submission 48 seconds into her mixed martial arts match with Amanda Nunes. No one went to jail for abusing a woman. The cops didn't stop the abuse. A ref stopped it and awarded the perp the match. 

This is the state of the union of man and woman in these United States today. We're a majority Christian nation and we get our jollies watching what's pictured here. Think about it. Undoubtedly you were more offended by the headline of this post than the pic accompanying it, and that's the point.

It is impossible for these perverted women to make so much money doing what they do...

Older women ...encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. (Titus 2:3-5)

A brother in Christ passed this text on to me. It's from Project Gutenberg so it's public domain (meaning copyright-free).

There are many of us who come to the end of the dialogue and are able to say "that's my dear wife!"

Will you be able to say as much when you're my age?

In our wicked culture with the church seemingly determined to hide her light, being blessed with a wife who loves doing the home work and loves her husband doing the away-from-home work is a miracle. But this miracle begins with a lover of a husband who sees the good of this and argues and fights for it, maybe with his wife, but certainly with his friends, neighbors, and relatives—starting with his in-laws. In these fights, it is a great help to have...

About a month ago Clearnote Fellowship quietly launched a new ministry called Warhorn Media. It’s our attempt to pull together a bunch of stuff we’ve been doing over the past several years all under one roof—specifically, our forays into publishing, music, and now podcasting (if you like classic lit like Pride & Prejudice, etc., The Bookening might be for you #DOUGWILSON).

Much of the written content at WarhornMedia.com is a spinoff of our little magazine, The Warhorn, which we know many Baylyblog readers have enjoyed and looked forward to. While we readily admit there’s been more looking forward than there’s been enjoying, if you haven't been getting it, you've been missing out. Get a free subscription here.

Although The Warhorn Mag is still alive and well, our efforts for the time being have been focused on pulling together our online presence…which we have done. Very well. In fact, we've become rather well-known among male TV lovers between the ages of 25 and 34.

You see...

Here's a reading list of thirteen books on the meaning and purpose of the two sexes created by God—man and woman. It's been slightly reworked since it was last published.

1. Scripture, starting with these texts
2. Henrik Ibsen: A Doll's House
3. Paul King Jewett: Man as Male and Female
4. Stephen B. Clark: Man and Woman in Christ
5. Walter Neuer: Man and Woman in Christian Perspective
6. Steven Ozment: When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe
7. G. K. Chesterton: What's Wrong With the World or The Thing
8. Doug Wilson: Reforming Marriage
9. Bill Mouser: The Story of Sex in Scripture
10. Elisabeth Elliot: Let Me Be a Woman
11. George Eliot: Middlemarch
12. Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
13. Grudem, Knight, Piper, Poythress, etc.: Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Now then, here are thirteen explanations of why I've included each of these books and how each is helpful...

After decades of counselling husbands and wives, this short video provided more of a catharsis than "What About Bob." Almost.

The 43rd PCA General Assembly begins next week in Chattanooga, TN. At last year's GA the Cooperative Ministries Committee identified five key issues for the Presbyterian Church in America. As I understand it, they sent each issue to a subcommittee for examination and a full report will be made to this year's GA (scheduled for 2:15, next Wednesday). With that in mind, I'm bringing back to the surface the five posts on the key issues I wrote shortly after last year's GA. Think my thoughts will be reflected in the official report? 

Here are the five items the CMC identified with links to my posts...

The souls who call themselves "transgendered" are ho-hum on campuses today. Here's an excerpt from an IDS (Indiana Daily Student) article about a young women at Indiana University who grew up in a Christian home in a nearby town and is trying to delete her womanhood: 

Though Whaley identifies as a man, his parents, legal ID and the U.S. Army still use female pronouns in reference to him. Luckily for him, his girlfriend Haylee Mclain and his best friend Chelsey Eads see him as the person he is striving to become.

“I grew up in a Christian family, so it’s a little bit difficult for me,” Whaley said. “First coming out as a lesbian then coming out as transgender, it’s a little hard, and it’s getting harder now that I’m getting older.”

...When Ash decided to come out to his parents, they were less than accepting.

Either she's right, or she's wrong. Choose you this day whom you will serve.

This was forwarded to me by a man in our congregation whose wife passed it on to him. It's hard to imagine a more accurate statement of the call of Christ. You may argue with some of the particulars, and certainly truly Christian marriage and family life does not flow from the sort of spiritual facades and manipulation evidently at work in this woman's former home and marriage. Nevertheless, look carefully at all the particulars and it becomes clear that, overall, what this woman hates is Christianity. She hates God the Father Almighty. And no, hate is not too strong a word.

Over the past five years I've noticed women taking an increasingly prominent role in exercising authority over men within the church. They don't hesitate to excoriate church officers publicly, often in forums governed by male church officers. And if anyone objects, weak men are vitriolic in their response: "You're a misogynist! This isn't the church—it's the internet! Do you think women should be silent on the web? What kind of an insecure power-trip are you on!?"

Well, speaking only for myself, no, I don't think women should be silent on the internet. And not to fear, they're not silent on the internet. At all. But I've been around the rat-hole of defining everything but corporate Lord's Day worship as "not the church" so that sex (gender) doesn't matter long enough to know that this article is the whirlwind we are reaping after decades of sowing the wind. And the sad thing is, we are now left with articles like this by women like this, many of whom were, in fact, homeschooling mothers committed to fruitfulness, and it's hard to figure out how to oppose it without simply proving the apostate's point. Which is to say, it's hard to figure out how a male church officer can oppose it without being called a misogynist.

You see the dilemma? Years ago I thought I was very smart, so I moved that the board of Presbyterians Pro-Life hire my friend...

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).

The genesis for this post comes from many directions, some cultural, some from the church, and some personal (and thanks to Tim and Terri for helping with some examples).

Many times I have been in elders meetings where the topic of a failed or failing marriage has come up and, almost invariably, the man is the villain and the wife is the suffering saint. The frequency of this scenario makes you want to ask whether women are just more holy than men? Could any of the failures be the wife's fault? Even a little bit? Granted, as the head of the home, the man is responsible for the state of his marriage and the discipline and instruction of his children, but fault is something different. Although the man is responsible to deal with the sin in his home, he's not the only sinner.

In bringing up this topic, I am not trying to redress an imbalance by launching a backlash. That would be wrong and silly. Rather, I’d like to challenge the pastors and elders and teachers amongst us really to examine what we believe about the moral agency of women. If problems in the home are always the man’s fault, we don't really believe women are human. Part of being human is moral agency—making real choices that are right, wrong, or somewhere in between—and then being held responsible for those choices. God cursed Eve...