Violet had some interesting comments on the “Hatin on Wimmin” thread that are really worthy of an entire post, so all in good humor, here goes.
Violet begins with:
“….you have a remarkably poor opinion of women, and a faulty understanding of how society can best function. All because you’ve allowed yourself to fall into by a very male-centred belief system…”
There’s a logical fallacy written into this. If women are really such nimwits as to accidentally “fall into a very male centered belief system,” then surely we should probably not be running the world, right? I mean these words imply women have a lack of critical thinking skills, the inability to make good decisions, and are easily deceived. How ironic, because that is very close to a rather misogynistic caricature of Eve held by some religionists.
If I have accidentally stumbled into a den of wolves and rather naively allowed myself to be deceived into a supporting a very male centered belief system, then I should probably not try to cross the street by myself, let alone attempt world domination.
I proceeded to object and declare, “I exist in a very female centered belief system.”
I did not mean that Christianity is a female centered belief system, I meant that I embrace such a belief system and walk that way in the world. I am keenly aware that being female I enjoy the fruits of Christian values. The virtues embraced by Christianity greatly benefit women. Love, marriage, courtship, charity, even chivalry sometimes. That is why here in the Western world in the year 2015, I am blessed to exist a bit like a fairy princess trilling to the forest creatures all day. That’s really not a joke. Women don’t fare so well in many places around the world and we rarely have, throughout most of human history.
Violet disagreed and implied Christianity is sexist,
A male god in three male persons. A holy book written by men about mainly male characters, with the occasional supporting female role, usually causing the male main character to misbehave. Religious structures of 42,000 denominations with almost exclusively male leaders. Teachings often encouraging women to stay silent and be submissive. This is female-centred in what way?
So, “A male god in three male persons.” That can be a very difficult concept for people to wrap their brains around, so I empathize. I understand it, I totally get it, I feel God in every ounce of my being. Trying to explain it however, gets a bit amusing. I often say, “God is not people! He is a person…..in three parts.” Yes, I know, even when I type those words I am aware of how difficult it is to make people understand. God is a concept that is alien to our brains. He is bigger than our ability to fully perceive Him.
As to maleness, how sad that today in the world we assume that means anti-woman. When I think of men, I think of fathers loving their children, I think of husbands laying down their lives protecting wives, I think of sons lovingly caring for their mothers as they prepare to leave the world. The concept of a male God is not anti-woman at all. The love fathers can have for their daughters is pretty profound and in return fathers can be a daughter’s whole world, our entire universe. This is the opposite of being anti-female. I cannot imagine a more pro-woman person than a father, than our Father.
A holy book written by men about mainly male characters, with the occasional supporting female role, usually causing the male main character to misbehave…
No. That is a caricature, a misconception. The women of the bible are awesome. Some are rather evil in their own right, no supporting role required. Some are real warriors. Some are humble and full of grace. The depth and dimension of the women of the bible, so well-preserved and told to us today, is really rather remarkable. I see aspects of my own self in many of those women, aspects of my own character that many men of today cannot even see clearly enough to portray in a work of fiction. For a book allegedly written by men, wow, those were some insightful men! Men with a rather profound understanding of women, women who were allegedly so insignificant in those days, we were hardly worth studying, let alone observing for long periods of time.
No men wrote the bible, Violet, not really. Scripture was Divinely inspired. I don’t think we could duplicate a work of literature to rival the bible today, even with access to computers, a team of psychologists, and the very best fiction writers, mathematicians, and poets on hand. Men of today can’t even fully understand the character of many women in the bible. They are left attempting to translate such women through their own eyes, using their own male defined perceptions. Some do quite well and come very close, others not so much.
Besides, what were a bunch of misogynistic Bronze Age goat herders doing writing about women anyway? The fact that there are so many women in the bible, so well preserved today and captured in such dimension, is really rather profound.
“Religious structures of 42,000 denominations with almost exclusively male leaders..”
There are a lot of denominations, aren’t there? Such is the nature of human beings. That actually speaks to Divine intervention too, as in Christianity has survived for thousands of years in spite of the best efforts of so many of us Christians to tear it apart. Nearly all of those slightly different styles of worship and tradition are still bound together by one thing however, a belief in Jesus Christ.
Teachings often encouraging women to stay silent and be submissive. This is female-centred in what way?
Bit tongue in cheek here, but women are people, often unquiet people, even Christian women. It is rare that you will ever find this caricature of quiet, obedient, subservient women, acting like doormats. I’m sure there are some cults and some abusive situations, but women in general are rarely silent for long. As to submission, I’ve written volumes and I will probably write volumes more. It goes back to the idea of authority. If one perceives all authority with negative eyes, as an exploitative and abusive thing, then you will not understand submission and you will resist. However, if you have felt the love of the Father, or a father, or even a husband, surrendering all to such love is simply natural and joyous.
Those were really good comments Violet, and I appreciate the opportunity to address them all as best I can.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Nicely done! The caricatures are indeed a dime a dozen when it comes to God, but you really pulled each one apart, right down the line.
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Thanks, truth.
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Maybe just call me “Strange”, or I Dunn somethin else that doesn’t make me squirm, as if I picked this handle so people would refer to ME as “Truth”!
I want to know the Truth, not be it.
And I pray that Violet will come to know the Truth as well…
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LOL relax, you’re a little truth, no capitals there.
You probably already know this, but in the ancient days that what Christ-ians were called, little Christs. The path they followed was called The Way. They were known as Little Truths of The Way.
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I totally love your posts, always make think. My thoughts, no one would read the bible if they made “God”, anything but male, especially during time of the Apostles, not identifiable for the only people who knew how to read, men of course.
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(IB, sorry to post this here, but I wanted to know if you got notifications of the responses I made to you in Vox’ thread earlier today, which he promptly deleted.)
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I got to read the one you posted last night, about four paragraphs, speaking of how we are perceived in the world by others. It was very good and well said.
Nothing today however, sorry.
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Where do I find the gender of the Holy Ghost again?
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Well said IB.
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Keep up the good work! It’s a battle worth having.
…
In his own image he created them. Male and female he created them.
God is one God in three persons, I believe. Don’t know how that works any more than your one person in three parts idea, but I believe the Bible teaches that the three members of the godhead are distinct persons, equal in nature and value and power and essence, and those three persons are One God.
God is spirit and is not male or female. Jesus was and is male, but God is spirit and hath not a body like man.
Woman came from Adam and when two are married they become one flesh. There is some mystery here. Paul didn’t understand it. And neither can we. How is it that the two become one flesh?
Our families are closest to being in God’s image than anything.
In the Godhead you have God the Father who begets God the Son and proceeding from the two of them you have God the Holy Spirit. And when God said, “Let us create man in our image,” He made man and from man he made woman and from man and woman together proceed the children.
That is why feminism is such a huge problem. It throws over the way that families were made to be in God’s image. And from that you have sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. And all of it mars the image of God that we have. He has given us a picture of himself, in mankind, and in the family, and we are marring that image. That’s a problem. We lose our image of God and we lose our image ourselves–made in his image–and we become like brute beasts, without understanding.
It’s important to grasp that God is one God in three persons, perhaps, to understand that authority and submission are good. That submission is not demeaning. Jesus submitted to the will of the Father. He said, “Thy will, not my will,” which indicates that though they are one in essence, Jesus. fully God and fully man, had a will that was opposed, in Gethsemane, to the Father’s will. Jesus brought himself into submission. Not only there, but Jesus submitted to Pilate, a sinful man whom Jesus himself had created, because Pilate’s authority came from above.
So we can look at Jesus and say, “He is equal to the Father, and I am equal to my husband. He chose to submit to the Father and I choose to submit to my husband. He was exalted by the Father and my husband will also exalt me and praise me at the city gates. He even submitted to sinful Pilate, because Pilate’s authority came from above, and I will also submit to my sinful husband and church elders because my their authority comes from above.”
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Thank you for your comment and your encouraging words.
“We lose our image of God and we lose our image ourselves–”
This is very true. And when we lose our image of Him reflected in ourselves, we become brute beasts indeed.
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“I mean these words imply women have a lack of critical thinking skills, the inability to make good decisions, and are easily deceived” – OR, they’ve been the victims of Stockholm Syndrome to the extent that they believe that they possess those disabilities.
“The women of the bible are awesome.” – What was Noah’s wife’s name? Ever notice, as I have, how many women of the Bible don’t even have names? Women of the Bible were considered chattel – possessions – and the symbolism of that is still present today, when a father walks down the aisle with his daughter – his possession – and hands her off, as property, to another male. Oh sure, you can fill the scene with bowers of flowers, put a cute little girl in a lovely dress, walking down the aisle tossing rose petals in the bride’s path, to romanticize the fact that it’s a simple ceremony of property transfer.
“It is rare that you will ever find this caricature of quiet, obedient, subservient women, acting like doormats.” – Why here’s one of those feminist activists now:
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Thanks arch! Thanks for implying I have Stockholm Syndrome. Thanks for comparing the love of Christ to radical Islam. Thanks also for taking a lovely wedding ceremony and trying to transform it into something ugly.
Above I stated that “when we lose our image of Him reflected in ourselves, we become brute beasts.” I forgot to add the part about how we also rise to new heights of arrogance while simultaneously descending to new depths of stupidity.
Also, if you represent the liberation, we’ll have millions of women fleeing right into the welcoming arms of misogyny in no time. Keep up the good work.
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“Thanks arch! Thanks for implying I have Stockholm Syndrome. Thanks for comparing the love of Christ to radical Islam. Thanks also for taking a lovely wedding ceremony and trying to transform it into something ugly.”
It is what it is —
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No, it is not what it is. You do not get to take what is beautiful and attempt to transform it into something ugly so you will feel better about yourself.
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Hey arch
Since God values what is in His book more than you, did the thought cross your mind that He WANTED to keep her name a secret? At least you can not malign the wife of Noah by name, as you do to her husband. Just maybe God is light years ahead of man’s mockeries. Perhaps it is a beautiful name, popular today, which by way of discretion, is rather wise of God.
Remember the grave sight of Moses? Of course not, God kept that to Himself as well, lest others, and maybe even you, mock His burial place. Since you like to call attention to they who have no names, as if they are nobodies, ‘A certain MAN went down from Jerusalem to Jericho…………’ what was his name? I don’t know, not relevant to the truth.
Meanwhile, what was the woman’s name who was graced with the Lord’s appearance at the empty tomb before the apostles? That’s right, Mary Magdalene. Mary, a woman. Important? Relevant?
Perhaps you never heard of the commended women such as Phoebe, Julia, Mary, Priscilla…..then there is always EVE, the mother of ALL living… heard enough?
Your weak charges fall short every time sir, and God’s word is sure, and silences every objection.
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“…did the thought cross your mind that He WANTED to keep her name a secret?” – Why it’s Chubby “Colorstorm” Checker, doing the Scripture Twist! Yeah, CS, that’s the reason!
“Remember the grave sight of Moses?” – No Moses, no gravesite.
“what was the woman’s name who was graced with the Lord’s appearance at the empty tomb before the apostles?” – Do you mean according to the anonymous authors of the Gospels who weren’t there?
As much as I would love to go throughout the Bible and list all of the unnamed woman, I have neither the time nor the inclination, just in order to prove that I know more about your own religion than you do – you and I both know I do, so why bother?
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Archa, you are boring and redundant and prone to just pee on the furniture, so back to spam you go.
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Bad Dog! Bad Dog! Where’s my rolled up newspaper so I can smack you on the behind?
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Sighs times 5 –
Strange is it not, (not to some) how a book thousands of years old, can speak perfectly to those in 2015 about the assaults of unbelievers who ‘preach’ the word of God, while believing NONE of it.
The host here, insanitybytes, has said before how members of the A-team are some of the greatest evangelists. Nice work as you confirm the truth of scripture.
‘Now the spirit speaketh expressly: ….speaking lies in hypocrisy…….’ and yet,
God still offers grace toward all.
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What the critics do Mary Magdalene is not exactly funny, but she was the first to see Jesus after He rose from the dead (Mark 16.9).
It is so subtle we don’t see it right away, but the Bible tells us only a woman understood Jesus was on his way to the cross. When she anointed him with a precious perfume, she demonstrated great wisdom (Matthew 26:6-13), surprisingly greater than that of the men he chose as His apostles.
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Amen.
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“As to maleness, how sad that today in the world we assume that means anti-woman. ”
That wasn’t my point (although I do think that’s the case). I stated that it’s a male-centred religion and nothing you have listed up there tells us anything differently. It’s still a male god, all the main characters are still male (Esther and Ruth? Don’t make me laugh!) and all the laws about women are horrendous. You’re dirty when you’re menstruating, you marry your rapist, you’re cursed with childbirth agony because of Eve …
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It’s a false dichotomy Violet, to believe that male translates into anti-female. We do not live in world where that is true, where to be be pro-male is to be anti-female. That is politics, ideology, and often people’s unresolved issues coloring perceptions.
Those hostilities towards women that you mention are to be found in pockets all over the world, all through history, and are not dependent on religion. I’ll remind you that it was the secular medical establishment that went about promoting hysterectomies and lobotomies for women, thought to be the best way to cure what ails us. We have Chinese foot binding, female genital mutilation, a whole slew of cultural practices and horrors, often promoted and enforced by other women, that are completely unrelated to Christian beliefs. In our modern world we are all about silicone implants and plastic surgery and presenting womanhood as a flat and two dimensional pornographic thing where our value is only related to our sexuality and sexual availability. That is a rather subtle form of hatred towards women, but it’s coming from the secular world, not Christian values.
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