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blogging, culture, faith, gender, humor, insanitybytes22, male and female, marriage, opinion
Night Wind wrote a good post called, GENDER NEUTRALITY AT HOME AND ABROAD and some of those themes fit in well with my latest ponderings about the state of the world we find ourselves in.
Genesis 1:26- 27 says in part, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness……So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
I honestly believe that God made us in His likeness, like two parts of Himself. To make us ‘whole’ or to make us Holy, you really need that complimentary nature of men and women working together in harmony. This is certainly true when it comes to reproduction, but it is much more complex than that. Children need two parents, they need to see different perceptions of the world, and they need to learn how to embrace and love the somewhat contrasting parts of their own selves.
We need marriage to help us grow healthy children, but we need marriage to help grow us, too. It is not so easy to set ourselves aside a wee bit and engage in a lifetime of sacrificial love with someone who perceives the world a bit differently then you do. Laugh if you like, it was rather funny, but I once lamented to the Lord, ”Look, I am simply not a saint!” And the Lord whispered back, but I am in the saint making business. That is what marriage helps to do, to produce saints. That is what so many aspects of our lives are all about, producing saints. We are not the victims of bad luck or the hapless casualties of oppression, or the guy that got the short end of the stick.
Up until that point I really had no idea that God is indeed, in the saint making business. I use the word ”saints” in this context meaning the recipients of His sanctifying work, the bits of clay He molds into something one might want to dine at a wedding feast with. We are not on this Earth only to pursue our own passions, our own desires. There is a much larger game at play here.
We really need to work with the Lord and heal our own male/female issues. Honor your mother and father is a profound commandment with far reaching implications. It has to do with the whole fabric of our society but it also has to do with an individual’s health and well being, too. Take the time to do that work…….and then you’ll probably have to do it again at some point, have a refresher, because people can get on our last nerve and wreck havoc on our renewing minds.
Those attitudes and thoughts that blame the opposite gender are bondage, they keep us trapped. The world won’t be right until we smash the patriarchy is as dumb as, women need to change so I can feel better about myself. Nothing is going to change! One cannot solve an internal problem with an external solution like that. You will carry your broken self with you wherever you go.
Or you can set those burdens down, place your self in the Lord’s hands, and let Him heal you.
I really believe that all these gender wars are not an accident. Night Wind mentioned the government, the Clinton administration and their war on gender. Anytime the Gov declares war on an entire group of people it’s good to duck and hide, because they are about to make things a whole lot worse be it the war on drugs or the war on poverty. Here we are in 2021 with a raging opioid epidemic, perched on the edge of economic collapse, trying to figure out which of the 23 genders we belong too. But that is not even what I mean, I mean there is a spiritual war going on and we forfeit our power when we blame other people.
Feminism robs women of our power, hating on women robs men of their power, Critical Race Theory robs minorities of their power, as does boomer blaming, parent blaming, child blaming, and losing sight of the significance of “Honor your father and your mother, ‘so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
2 Timothy says, For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
God wants us powerful.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
AMEN!!!!!
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Amen, me too! 🙂
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I firmly believe that lifelong marriage and family are the crucible in which we learn to be better people.
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yes, indeed! There are lots of ways to honor our parents, to work together as men and women, and to give glory to God outside of marriage, too.
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We need marriage to help us grow healthy children, but we need marriage to help grow us, too. It is not so easy to set ourselves aside a wee bit and engage in a lifetime of sacrificial love with someone who perceives the world a bit differently then you do.
I’ve always said that a boy doesn’t become a man until he marries and has to care for someone other than himself.
Sometimes it takes kids to complete the process.
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Absolutely, Randy! I think we are all spiritual mothers and fathers to someone however, no biological children necessarily required. But the concept of marriage, the role of children, family, is how God draws us a picture of what life with Him is supposed to be like.
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Well said, IB! Yes, God wants powerful people, not nihilistic, confused, and coddled, which is pretty much what’s happening now. It’s funny how the radical postmodern left thinks this is an improvement, seeing that our young people are more depressed than ever. Of course, to point out the truth is just part of the oppressive patriarchy. 😛
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LOL! Laughing, because it is not uncommon for some of us to request the patriarchy show up and help us get the groceries out of the car.
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Thank you for the link! I was thinking further on this and should mention that I do believe that there are a lot of teen/twenty something’s who vaguely want a traditional family and relationship, but they have no idea what it would be like or how to get there. It’s like you said in your earlier post, “they have no point of reference.” They’ve really never known of time when strong, traditional families were normative; and the Boomers and Xers have been atrocious parenting role models overall.
When I was a youth, when you’d want to know a young lady better, we’d always ask what her father did for a living. Today, there’s no point in asking since many—if not most—don’t have any idea who their fathers were. I remember years ago having two successive LTR’s and the two women had a combined total of NINE different men who were acting as fathers at one time or another. “Do you mean my bio-dad or my step-dad?” That’s the kind of answer you’d get. What was once a common question is something today that you don’t want to know the answer to.
Remember too that we’re not talking about a generational shift like between our generation and Ancient Rome; these kinds of changes happened within the span of 20-30 years.
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So true! I stopped watching TV a long time go, but even back then all the families were fractured and if the dad was even around he was a total buffoon. The whole theme of sitcoms was often ”dad’s an idiot.” I at least had the Adams Family to idealize which is a bit funny if you think about it, but the love between Gomez and Morticia is so legendary it exists in memes to this day.
I think we have to remember there has been a cultural war going on against families, too. All teens are mortified by the existence of their parents at some point, but I remember the social shaming, the clear message that there was something wrong with having married parents, totally uncool, and surely an indication of being raised in some sort of dysfunction.
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It’s been awhile since I last read it, but Robert Bly had a book in the 90s called ‘The Sibling Society’ and IIRC he had a chapter or two on the negative portrayals of families on TV (I’d given up on commercial TV by then too). I think he said something about how ‘all teens are mortified by their parents at some point’ was being subtly exploited by the cultural elites: the general idea being that one’s teenage years is the peak of their development and that ‘parents’ (by proxy the older generations) were fools and bigots who should just be laughed at.
Bly’s overall thesis was that the Media/Advertising moguls wanted to create a youth-oriented culture because they’d be more susceptible to the shylocks in consumerism, but also more easily influenced by surrogate authority figures who come across as ‘smarter’ (i.e. more ‘woke’) than their parents. And we’ve reached a point where people like David Hogg and Greta Thunberg—who just finished potty-training about a decade ago—are considered experts on social policy who should be taken seriously. Our culture is literally so warped that a bartender could lose his license for selling David Hogg a pint of beer; but CNN has no problem putting him on a panel of experts to debate the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution! This why I really fear for our culture: I think sometimes that we’re so far gone that it’s going to end with some foreign power taking over and (literally) beating some sense into our heads.
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As I read this post, over and over the words took on life and jumped to exclamation. I recognize the Holy Spirit at work.
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Thanks, Jon. 🙂
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Blame is healthy and appropriate in many contexts. Have a drunk driver barrel into your parked vehicle and total it? Wouldn’t blame be a useful concept then?
Feminism is also a healthy and good thing. It does not rob women of their power. Do like to vote? It wasn’t conservative, anti-feminist women who were Suffragettes and paid a steep price to get women the right to vote. Presumably, you do vote in elections and exercise this right of yours. Wasn’t always a right that women had, and if anti-feminists such as yourself had their way, women would have stayed the equivalent of children/chattel. Suffragettes were thought of badly then, to be troublemakers and/or mentally ill.
Do you prefer to be chattel? Do you want to be able to drive? Do you wish to be under a male guardianship system where if your husband dies, then a son or a nephew will be given control of your life and whether or not you have permission to work, leave the house, travel, etc. You have rights in your life that you likely take for granted that were gained because of feminists.
Ever needed to stay at a battered women’s shelter? Ever known a women who did? Feminists created that. Consciousness-raising. Speaking out about the violence and abuse in their lives from the men in their lives. Now there are domestic violence laws in place. The system has a long way to go, but it’s better than it was 40-50 years ago. Thank the feminists for that. Same with Violence Against Women Act. That money funds the shelters which help women and children, year after year. Thank the feminists for that.
Ever been subjected to porn plastered on the walls of your workplace? Ever been sexually harassed by your boss? Ever had a boss or coworker who found it acceptable to pat you on the rear? Hostile workplace, sexual harassment. Thank feminists for fighting for such to be identified, defined, and standards and laws to be put into place to combat such.
Radical feminists are against porn, prostitution, and trafficking. So should Christians. Yet, according to you, feminists are disempowering women and are a problem/threat to women. Some feminists used to go and protest outside of porn shops, to discourage patrons and to call attention to the fact that pornography is violence against women and should be eradicated.
You write a blog and exercise your right to free speech. Thank feminists for that. Male oppression is all around us. To recognize and identify reality is not disempowering for women. When men beat, rape, harass, stalk, intimidate, and abuse women, those women are indeed victims of men. It is not disempowering to state those facts. It is not disempowering to articulate reality.
Your blog reeks of ‘pick me’ ism. Lots of women with internalized misogyny exhibit such. You wish to be approved of by men. You wish to justify your self-oppression. You disregard, dismiss, mischaracterize, and villainize feminism and feminists. You defend the status quo. It’s really appalling and sad.
Do you get your husband’s permission to be doing this? To be blogging? Or are you more than chattel? If you enjoy being more than chattel, and regarded more than a child, than thank feminists and feminism for that.
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I’m mildly curious why my own ”lived experiences” carry no weight in your eyes? For example, I don’t believe I suffer from ”internalized misogyny,” nor do I feel a need to “justify my alleged self oppression.”
In fact, it’s somewhat demeaning to be treated like a child, to be told how I am supposed to think and feel about my own lived experiences, and then spoken down to as if I were a borderline idiot. Talk about being chattel! You then attempt to shame me as if I am just quite, ”pathetic and sad.”
When you are finished abusing me for my bad thought, I will have developed a nasty eating disorder and a propensity for hoarding magazines. Now mentally unable to form healthy relationships with men, I’ll be left living in a basement apartment with 27 cats and 3 boxes of white wine in the fridge.
Thank a feminist? All feminism has ever given me is their scathing contempt and incredible disrespect.
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@anonymous
When people label themselves as supporters of some identity group, I think they miss something very important
Being a Christian means trying to be on God’s side. God doesn’t want us to love some identity group. That is just an excuse for loving our self. God wants us to love Him and each other. That requires humility. To love people as they are requires us to accept others as they are. To love God as He is requires us to admit how trivial we are, that He deserves all the glory. To love our neighbor requires us to accept our neighbors flaws, to admit that sometimes we must put another person’s put needs ahead of our own.
Our pride gets in the way. We don’t want to admit the greatness of God. We don’t want to admit that anyone’s needs should be put ahead of our own.
Pride makes every man, woman and child his own worst enemy. When we are too proud, we can only love our self. Then we don’t care to see ourselves as others see us — as God sees us. When we are too proud, that is a sort of insanity. In our pride, we want to believe too much that just isn’t true. Feeling good about our self becomes more important than knowing the truth.
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Yes, I was offended by your blog’s contempt for and derision of feminists and that flavored my comment and its tone. I should have took a moment there before writing anything. Sorry for that.
I don’t want to abuse you. I don’t want you to develop an eating disorder. I don’t want you to be damaged.
For some odd reason, radical feminism is seen as the big bad wolf by Christian conservative women. I’m Christian and I also support radical feminism.
Your right to vote was gained by feminists (Suffragettes). Isn’t that something you value?
Women were seen by the law as chattel. Women were basically children in the eyes of the law and the political system.
Feminists have fought for and won many things that conservative Christian women such as yourself benefit from, whether you know about it and wish to acknowledge it or not.
Battered women’s shelters were created by radical feminists. That DV is talked about and addressed in the ways it is nowadays is thanks to radical feminists.
I wish Christian women would read about the radical feminism school of thought and see they align in many ways. You malign me in assuming I wish you ill or that I see you as a child or chattel. I was not saying such.
Please reconsider your contempt and derision for feminism and feminists. Perhaps you were taught that feminism was the big bad ‘f’ word. Perhaps it stems from ignorance of the benefits and options you have today.
But seriously, look up the definition of feminism. Is that a bad thing to want to be equal? Are women not adult humans? Or do you prefer women be relegated to a child status or chattel status in comparison to men? Feminism may not be what you otherwise assume it to be.
Again, I regret my tone of my first comment. I’m sorry for hurting your feelings (assuming I did, I don’t know).
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You did not hurt my feelings, but you have made a lot of assumptions. I grew up within atheism and feminism, I don’t need to “read about the radical feminism school of thought,” because I have already lived it and walked it out. I spent many years working for domestic violence/sexual assault center. Some of my best friends are rad/fems, or they were before the trans agenda came in an kicked them out. Some of them left because they just couldn’t deal with the concept of pedophilia as just another lifestyle choice.
Many Christian women have no idea what the are supporting, what lurks behind the ideology or how many women (and men) have been absolutely destroyed by it. They falsely believe it has something to do with being fair towards women and protecting our civil rights. The poor and the working class have been hit the hardest by tenets of feminism. A good chunk of black communities are now dealing with horrendous fatherlessness, poverty, addiction, and crime. Gender wars, the destruction of the family, the decline in community churches has all contributed to welfare dependence, single parenthood, poverty, and high abortion rates. For many of the poor feminism simply means you have the right to cut your income in half, cut yourself off from the faith community, and abort any potential offspring. It is an incredibly destructive ideology.
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And I should clarify that I’m not entirely supportive of all the radical feminist beliefs, just some things.
Christianity and serving the Lord and being who God wants me to be is of supreme importance. Hopefully that is also true for you. Hopefully such is true for all reading this blog.
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