Womanhood

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The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

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Amanda Nunes beats the excrement out of Ronda Rousey...

A couple days ago, I posted the headline "Amanda Nunes beats the shit out of Ronda Rousey...". The headline introduced a post in which I unequivocally condemned the 48-second rout of Ronda Rousey by Amanda Nunes in their Las Vegas mixed martial arts fight last week. And being the son of a prophet, I wrote "Undoubtedly you were more offended by the headline of this post than the pic accompanying it, and that's the point."

The accompanying pic was obscene, but no one objected to it. Beyond the pic though, no one thought to say what's wrong with women beating the shit out of each other. Instead, Godly men had a hissy-fit over the use of the word "shit."

The gnat was strained, the camel escaped.

Since no one else bothered to say it, let me do the dirty work...


Amanda Nunes beats the shit out of Ronda Rousey...

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...


Not Ashamed—the book behind the conference...

CNF_banner.jpgYou saw the announcement of our Shepherds Conference here on Baylyblog last week. What we didn't tell you is that this conference is closely connected with the next book we're working on here at Warhorn Media with the working title, In the Closet: How Shame Stopped the Church from Loving Homosexuals. We're particularly excited by the book's cornerstone chapter titled "The Sin of Effeminacy."

Joseph and I spent a great deal of time talking through the content of this chapter. I learned a lot. After finishing the chapter I told Mary Lee that, if I'd known as a young man what I learned that week about the sin of effeminacy, I would have spent my life opposing...


Socrates and Ischomachus on the beauty of womanhood...

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...


The good father: it's a boy...

Until recently, fathers and mothers learned their child's sex at birth when the doctor or midwife announced "it's a boy" or "it's a girl!" Some still choose to protect this romance by telling their ultrasound technician and doctor they don't want to find out beforehand. I like that.

Sex is a calling from God and savoring the revelation until the moment of birth seems to protect its weight and glory. But finally, there it is and it is heavy. How heavy you won’t know fully until your child hits puberty, but from the moment of birth your duties as a father flow in the direction of your precious child’s sex. You want your little one to confess the sex God made him. If he’s a little man, you must teach him manhood. And womanhood if she’s a little woman.

What God decreed at the moment of conception is now visible to you and your wife and both of you must carry it forward. This tiny infant has male or female hormones which soon will begin to develop a man's shoulders or a woman's breasts. God assigned your child this calling and the calling can’t be removed by artificial hormones, surgical mutilation, or anyone's preference for this or that gender identity.

Sex is not a choice, but a command. And this command has been given...


WarhornMedia.com...

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...

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The anti-Reparative therapy bandwagon: perverse to the core...

For those confused about the bandwagon the Louisville Southern Baptists and the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors have climbed aboard, the news tells us each day that these men have picked a winner. Everyone is busy passing laws preventing fathers and mothers from getting any help teaching their sons to be masculine and their daughters to be feminine. This is the heart of the issue. To instruct and counsel children to embrace who God made them, sexually, and to forsake any desires they may suffer under to commit the sins of effeminacy or butchness is being criminalized around the country.

Meanwhile, Al Mohler,1 Heath Lambert,2 Denny Burke, and the professional association of "certified Biblical" counselors have all announced they are also opposed to parents getting this help for their children.

It's such fine synchronicity when the world and the church both realize at precisely the same moment precisely the same sexual reforms that are needed. It makes the work of deconstruction so much easier.

Along with California, Oregon, New Jersey, Cincinnati, and the District of Columbia, New York has criminalized this therapy.

And now New York is taking it a step further by putting financial teeth behind these laws. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo just took executive actions directing the state's Department of Financial Services to...


An updated reading list on sexuality...

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...


Gospel Coalition joins the gay celibate movement (7); the heart of the issue...

For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. (1 Corinthians 11:7)

Evangelicals have no doctrine of sex. We have Biblical commands we are scrupulous to obey and Greek words we are scrupulous to defend the meaning of, but we have no theology of sex.

Actually, though, it's worse than that: we are opposed to any theology of sex.

Yes, some of us still believe the husband should be the head of his wife. Some of us also still want the father to be the head of the home and the guy preaching Sunday morning to be an actual guy. Some of us, also, still think our church's elders should be guys.

Other than those few things, though, we believe in little more than body parts. Probably women should still be the sex that gestates and men should provide food for gestating women. Also, in most Christian homes, it's likely still good for the mother not to have to put her kids in daycare—especially while she's nursing.

Beyond men having servant leader, tie-breaking authority in private Christian places and Christians having certain scruples concerning the proper use of body parts, though, we have no theology of sex. This is the reason Evangelicals have no problem with the "gay Christian" lobby as long as these "gay Christians" living with one another in "spiritual friendships" promise not to have sex with each other. If they go off the reservation and say they're going to go ahead and have sex with each other, after all, we finally find our principles and tell them it's sin. But without the improper use of body parts, there is no sin. Identity is one thing. Body parts are something else. Body parts are serious business. They're visible. They don't lie and they have to be obeyed...


Try to see it my way, only time will tell if I am right...

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


Hormone problems equal opportunity employer...

Typically, if a wife stops drinking her husband's Kool-Aid, her husband tells his friends that his wife is having a hormone problem. Recently I was explaining this to a man whose wife has stopped drinking his Kool-Aid. She's always been a godly woman; she believes in submission; she's very feminine and sweet; but she's reached a point in time where she's decided to be a helpmate to her husband by speaking to him of his insensitivity and bullheadedness, which is to say his frequent failure to live with his wife in an understanding way.

You see, men? His wife is having a hormone problem. It's the hormones.

Now we find out apparently men have them too. This headline from today's Washington Post...


PCA's Cooperative Ministries Committee Report...

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...


Christian woman testifies to God's Order of Creation...

Note the witness of this Christian woman who, following her FB post saying a woman ought not to be POTUS, is interviewed by CNN and doesn't back down (much), but goes on to appeal to Scripture and God's design of sexuality. Sorry, but there's no way for me to turn off Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton immediately following.

Sort of funny that she apparently said VP would be fine. It reminds me of people who want women to be pastors, but then say "not the senior pastor, though!"


Coming to your church tomorrow: how will you love her...

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.


Tom Brady: church and the football field...

Arguably, Tom Brady has been the best quarterback in the NFL for years now. Recently he had this to say about the distinction between church and the football field:

We’re not choirboys, I know that. You bring us up to a certain level of intensity to the game, your job is to go out there and physically, emotionally, mentally dominate the game. You don’t do that at church on Sunday. You’ve got to go to the football field for that.


When you gonna wake up, and strengthen the things that remain...

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...


Nicknames and woman...

Here's a good article on nicknames, pointing out that their decline is tied to the more general decline of male groups and camaraderie. This has come about under the tyranny of what Chesterton calls the universal vigilance of woman. Other than the Bible, Chesterton is the only essential reading...


on the sexes. That is, the two sexes.


On women's moral agency: Are women human?

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...


Aimee Semple McPherson: conflicted celebrity evangelist...

Itinerant evangelists have proclaimed the good news in crusades and tent revivals, in fields and stadiums, in tabernacles and classrooms. Over the last 150 years, Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899), Billy Sunday (1862-1935), Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944) and Billy Graham (1918-present) have been household names in their eras. Each used different methods and had vastly different personalities, and was able to tap into deep undercurrents of American piety. My intent in this post is not to compare these four, but to consider a recent (1993) and major biography (400+ pages), Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister by Edith Blumhofer .

For much of the 1920s and 1930s, Aimee was front-page news. She was a relentless evangelist, a missionary to China, a megachurch pastor, the founder of a denomination, and a leader in helping to provide for the physical needs of those who fell on hard times during the Great Depression.

Yet her life was full of contradictions. Adored by thousands …