A comparison of Christ and the church with a man and his wife.
Readership: All
Author’s Note: In this essay, “Redemption” is used in the sense of restoration, or of adding value to someone that is relatively low status, and not so much in the sense of eternal salvation, although I believe there is a connection.
Reader’s Note: If the reader has the time and interest, it may be revealing to read through this post a second time while questioning how a Woke Feminist might react. The answer is given at the end.
Length: 2,300 words
Reading Time: 12 minutes
TL/DR: See Red Pill Apostle’s synopsis.
Introduction
This post covers a deep Truth that I’ve never seen anywhere else on the Manosphere, so I hope to contribute some relatively new foundational insights to the glory of God in Marriage.
This concept is rather hard to explain in only a few words, so I’ll start off by describing the relationship between God and Man as the primary Archetype for the relationship between Man and Woman. This metaphor is based on the following Scripture, where I assert that the church (ibid.) is comprised of Christian men and husbands (as well as females).
“22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. 24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”
Ephesians 5:22-24 (NKJV)
For those readers who have an issue with the Biblical ideas of ‘submission’, and of ‘husbands being the head of the wife’, I believe that if you’ll follow through this discourse, you’ll discover that it explains many of the common experiences between men and women, including things like the feminine imperative, fitness tests, and true love. As such, my argument does in no way rely on the ‘assumption of the conclusion’ fallacy, and is, in fact, a bedrock Truth.
First, we’ll explore the relationship between Christ and the church.
Man’s Dependency on God for Introspection and Redemption
The life of St. Peter, of whom Jesus said, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18), is a characteristic illustration of how a man comes into the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus first called Peter, saying “Follow Me”, Peter had followed easily, because he was fascinated by the person of Jesus (Matthew 4:18-20). He did not need the Holy Spirit to draw his attention and allegiance to Christ. Afterwards, Peter willingly followed Jesus for three years.
But then came the time when Jesus was put on trial for blasphemy, which was a crime punishable by death under Judaic law (Matthew 26). When Roman soldiers came to arrest Jesus, Peter fought with a sword, but Jesus commanded him to lay down his weapon. Later, Peter came to face a situation in which he would likely be killed by a mob if he merely identified with Jesus. At this point, he feared for his life, and the fascination and natural inspiration he had of the Man Jesus was not sufficient to retain his faith. As a result, he denied Jesus out of fear of mortal death. This decision may have saved his life, but his heart broke, and he forfeited his soul. Consequently, Peter hid himself in fear, until after Christ was crucified.
Judas, who was Peter’s fellow disciple of Christ, betrayed Jesus (possibly in the hope of inciting a revolution), and broke his own heart as well. But unlike Peter, who hid himself, Judas killed himself.
After Jesus’ resurrection, the impartation of the Holy Spirit came upon Peter and the other disciples. Jesus appealed to Peter once again, saying, “Follow Me”. This second invitation tortured Peter’s soul with the guilt of his betrayal, and required him to submit himself to the Lordship of Jesus for his reinstatement into the Kingdom of God. In other words, he had faced his weaknesses, and his inadequacy in meeting his own needs, and then he needed to humble himself.
In retrospect, we see that the first invitation from Jesus had nothing mystical about it, as it was an external following which appealed to the inclinations of the natural man. The second invitation from Jesus required an internal martyrdom of the self (c.f. John 21:18). Between these invitations, Peter had denied Jesus with oaths and curses. He had reached the limits of the natural (vis. feral) man. He had come to the end of himself, forfeited his will, and lost all sense of self-sufficiency. He had nothing left of himself or his own power upon which he could ever rely upon again with confidence. However, it was in this state of destitution that he was in a fit condition to receive an impartation from the risen Lord.
Judas killed himself in the wrong way. Peter killed himself (figuratively speaking) in the right way.
Only when we have come to the end of ourselves, not as we might imagine ourselves to be while in a state of desperation, but in totality, are we are able to receive the Holy Spirit. All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out. Only Christ has that power. Because the natural man is not able to reach beyond its own martyrdom, it requires the invasion of the Holy Spirit.
At the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Love and Grace of God’s Truth pounces on our heart and dominates our spirit, against our will, and contrary to our natural mind. We may try to fight the realization (e.g. by relying on vain rational justifications or emotional defense mechanisms), or run and hide, just as Peter did, but deep within our being, we know that we will inevitably be dominated by the gracious providence of God, and that our self-centered will shall be overruled by His greater will. We are filled with a sense of gratefulness for having received this greater purpose for living, and the honor that it entails.
Now within the next section, we will examine the relationship between a Man and a Woman, i.e. his wife, as an analogous comparison to the relationship between Christ and the church. We’ll also see how a man’s response to her challenges are characteristic of how a man “washes his wife clean” with the Word of Truth. The previous example of St. Peter will be used to construct the model.
Woman’s Dependency on Man for Introspection and Redemption
When a man takes a wife, he is basically saying, “You are my wife, and with your womb I will create a family.”
When a man first woos a woman, he says, in effect, “Follow Me”. (In this analogy, we will assume that the man is one of sufficiently high socio-sexual value.) The woman follows him easily, even naturally, because she is fascinated by the Tingles and the possibility of becoming one who is loved. She does not so much require the enticements of a contrived Game, social justifications, such as a recommendation from her friends or family, or promises of status and security, in order to turn her attention and allegiance to the man. No one needs to teach any woman how to fall in love with a man. Women seek and discover this quite readily.
But then comes a time when the woman loses that natural appeal for the man. Perhaps this happens because the Tingles dried up, or perhaps his own personal shortcomings have come to light. At this time, the woman naturally recoils to the relative security of various defense mechanisms, which have been outlined by previous Manospherians, such as hamstering, bulverizing, stonewalling, gaslighting, etc. She may use any of these weapons to cling to her previous illusions, but the man will make it clear that she must abandon these ‘weapons’ and submit to his authority.
The woman now faces a situation in which her previously cherished notions of Disneyland fantasy are likely to be destroyed if she submits to the man’s authority. At this point, she fears for what may become of her life if her vain hopes are not fulfilled, and she is terrified to face the fact that they may not even be true. The fascination and natural inspiration she initially had of the man is not sufficient to retain her faithfulness to him. As a result, she may reject this particular man, and go off in the hope of finding another man who can fulfill her dreams, or at least, not destroy them. This decision may preserve her false hopes and her egotistical sense of well-being, but in reality, she has faced the fact that life is not as she once believed. If she follows through with her resistance and rebellion, her heart will be broken, and she will forfeit her soul. The soul decimating effects of this choice are clearly manifested in women who choose to burn through one man after another, thereby racking up their N count, and destroying their real opportunities to find the true love they deeply crave.
Feminists, who initially held the same hopes and dreams for their relationships with men, betray the authoritative structure of the God ordained male-female hierarchy (possibly in the hope of inciting and/or perpetuating a cultural or sexual revolution), and unwittingly break their own hearts as well.* But instead of clinging to the hope of finding a ‘perfect’ (or better) man, they instead choose to revile the fundamental nature of men, deny the Truth, and languish in bitterness, thereby creating disorder and chaos within the time tested Traditional structure.
After getting her @ss kicked by the stark realities which she had been unwilling or unable to face in the past, she starts to see her husband from a new perspective — namely that he is a source of vital characteristics which she lacks, e.g. security, stability, steadfastness, strength, structure, and sustenance. She begins to see that life is not about making her dream a reality, but in transforming her reality into the makings of a dream. In other words, she accepts the fact that she has an arena of responsibilities that are uniquely hers, and that she’ll lose more skin in the game if she doesn’t face the music. At this point, the woman is faced with a crucial choice which determines both her spiritual and carnal identity.
The man continues to appeal to the woman, effectively saying, “Follow Me”. This ‘second’ invitation, after the discovery of the Truth, tortures the woman’s soul with the guilt of her betrayal, and requires her to submit herself to the authority of the man for her reinstatement into her position of his beloved wife. In other words, she has faced her weaknesses, and her inadequacy in meeting her own needs, and now must humble herself.
In retrospect, we see that the first invitation from the man had nothing mystical about it, as it was an external following which appealed to the inclinations of the ego and the feral nature. The second invitation from the man requires an internal martyrdom of her self. Between these invitations, the woman goes through a difficult process which requires her to accept the man as her head, or else choose the wandering life of one unloved. She reaches her human limits. She comes to the end of herself, forfeits her will, and loses her sense of independence and self-sufficiency. She has nothing left of herself or her own power upon which she can ever rely upon again with hope. However, it is in this state of utter vulnerability that she is in a fit condition to receive the attention and affirmation of a loving man / husband.
When a faithful, loving husband presents his Frame of mind as a structure in which the wife can discern objective truth, the husband’s (and by extension, God’s) love and grace pounces on her heart and dominates her spirit, against her will, and contrary to her hamstering mind. She may try to fight the realization (e.g. by relying on vain justifications or emotional defense mechanisms, as mentioned earlier), or run and hide, just as Peter did, but deep within her being, she knows that she will inevitably be dominated by the gracious providence of God through her husband, and that her self-centered will shall be overruled by His greater will. She is filled with a sense of gratefulness for having received this greater purpose for living, and the honor that it entails.
Conclusions
Females inclined towards Feminism destroy their own worthiness to receive the heartfelt love of a man, simply in order to preserve their own microcosm of autonomy and power.* Faithful wives and mothers kill their self-centeredness and their desire for independence, and assume their God ordained role of exercising their soft power to increase the quality of life for their husbands and children.
Only when a woman has come to the end of herself, not as she might imagine herself to be while in a state of solipsistic desperation, but in totality, is she able to receive the place of honor as a beloved wife and mother. All her presumptions, projections, imperatives, and resolutions are nothing more than a denial of the power and Lordship of Christ, because she has no power to change the reality of her life into that for which she hopes. Only a faithful loving man who is obedient to Christ can take on that role. But because the feral woman is not able to reach beyond her own solipsism, she requires the invasion of the Christ-like man’s Frame of mind.
A separate post, Women Rely on a Man’s Frame for Redemptive Introspection (2021/6/28), reviews several quotations from around the Manosphere that add credibility to the application.
* Answer to the Reader’s Note: It’s quite revealing to see how the Feminist viewpoint conforms to the archetype of Judas.
ArchAngel
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Soup Sandwich
Lexet Blog
Novaseeker
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Jack
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Σ Frame 
The nature of how Jesus rules over his Church:
Now if the Church is Christ’s Flock and He is their shepherd, and if the Wife is as the body of the Husband, think of how it’s superior to all the Tyrannies, past, present, and future.
Of course, in regards to wrongdoing and falling short, Christ extorts repentance and even threatens to take away the candlestick (shut down the local erring church). (Revelation 1)
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Women who don’t believe don’t also have the hope of the future evaluation where everyone’s work will be evaluated and each will be awarded rank and other rewards according to their merit… If they fulfill their role well.
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That’s part of the problem right there! Biblical GENDER Roles = Bibical SEX Roles, everybody! Remember FRAME! And if she doesn’t agree tell her to go F herself like Jill Biden. (The male frame in the Joe-Jill Biden tandem!) Like I told Kamala Harris!
Also Jack, don’t worry about comparing yourself to anybody in this sphere or this life! What will that get anyone other than problems!?
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Thank you for saying this, professor. I have expressed to our children that gender is indeed a social construct. Sex,on the other hand, is immutable, biological reality. With that biological reality comes all the stuff demonstrated behaviorally and emotionally as a result of our hormonal distinctions and variations. Gender references mostly external things which many people in our current culture have perfected feigning. See the flamboyant man or the butch woman. A Classical education plug follows:
When you read good, old, classic literature (even things as modern as say, Mark Twain which our kids had to read last year), you notice that men and women are referred to collectively as “the male sex” or “the female sex”. No mention of gender. Kids need to read this stuff because it helps to solidify their frames of reference for male and female as concrete. Yeah, you can model it at home and teach it at home and we do, but we all know the power of entertainment and literature in the lives of society. Great books are a wonderful support in that regard.
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Gender is a grammatical construct involving declension in nouns (in some languages). The substitution for “sex” was partly deliberate but the fact that people started using “sex” to refer to coitus didn’t help.
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Yep. Went through all of this with our kids. Words mean things, and are powerful. The left has used this to great effect, while the right (for lack of a better term at present), has not.
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It had a lot to do with the use of the word “sex” for intercourse. People pretty much stopped using it to describe a characteristic of someone since the word is so prominently used to describe the act of intercourse.
This created an opportunity to repurpose the term “gender” more broadly, and so it was. People welcomed it to the widespread degree that they did, long before trans ideology was even a speck on the windscreen, because they wanted a word other than “sex” to refer to someone’s characteristics. Of course it came intentionally pre-loaded with lots of malleability specifically because it was unmoored from biology, but so be it. People adopted it to avoid using the term “sex”.
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I completely agree Novaseeker. You’re right about all of that. My initial rejection of “gender” and teaching to our kids (even the oldest ones) was a reaction to feminist ideology, not transgenderism. The conscious attempt to decouple female reproduction from any attempts to limit women’s expression in all areas of life caught my attention many years ago.
While I fully agree with your analysis, I also believe that any attempt to restore sanity must include acknowledgement that this widely accepted, originally benign change has morphed into something sinister and has subverted our understanding of the created order. And so…those of us hoping to effect a change (no matter how gradual), have to begin by doing exactly what the other side did: realizing the power of language and using it effectively.
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I agree, but it will be very hard to achieve with that word, because all kinds of people really hate using the word “sex”. They just hate it. Not for ideological reasons. It’s just not considered a polite word.
I would wager that if you went back to 1980 you would find almost all conservative Christians enthusiastically adopting the word “gender” so that they could avoid using the word “sex”, which made them uncomfortable because it was mostly used to refer to intercourse in the general parlance. I think that is generally people’s reaction to the word even today, so I don’t think this particular battle can be won at this stage — gender is the word for now.
I fully agree with your reasoning and that people on the right need to be very careful about adopting new language terms … but I think we also need to know what words have already become established for reasons that are unrelated to ideology and which have non-ideological resonance for people, and therefore are battles that are already “lost” in the sense of it being almost impossible to dislodge … and I think “Gender” is one of those words at this point. I think it’s good to make sure one’s kids understand what happened with the words and terms, I agree, but I don’t think that we will win on getting any significant number of people to use the word “sex” in the way “gender” is used any time soon, and mostly not because of ideology, either way.
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I actually agree with you, and I care more that our generation and those following understanding meanings and why they are important more than I care about being practical application police. Here’s the thing (maybe I should have shared this up front).
I know millenial Christians, who work as missionaries, who have been to seminaries, or are on the payroll of major para-church organizations, who don’t get the gender/sex distinction and why it is important. Have never even really heard it. And they are supposedly educated in orthodox principles of the faith!
To clarify: this is not angling for us to go back to widespead use of the word “sex” in lieu of “gender” in every day conversation. I would certainly welcome that, but it’s not a goal. But when you have people who should know better, but don’t, it is not a small matter to me that we use less politically correct, and more clarifying language when Christians -or more conservative people- are having these conversation with one another.
It’s kind of like the whole “biological males” thing. Nope. Hate it. To use the term “biological males” is to insinuate that there are “non-biological males”. The more correct term is “men pretending to be women”.
And again, for the sake of public, general communication, then sure. Use the accepted term for communication sake, but don’t assume that all Christians and conservative people are aware of the greater implications of the linguistic changes we have undergone. They need to be educated.
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We should have stuck with the Latin coitus.
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I left a relevant comment regarding use of the word “gender” at The Joyful Patriarchy Wife: Displaying God’s Creation in Our Femininity (2021/3/27):
Back in the day, my strict parents wouldn’t have even wanted me saying the word “sex” regarding a person’s classification. But now that taboo is greatly diminished, my parents generation is dead, and I intentionally use the word “sex” and not “gender” when referring to people.
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The Duggars use “gender.”
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Novaseeker, that is because Christianity became weak and corrupt. Christians should have no problems discussing sex, intercourse, coitus, or any other word we use for it. The joy of sex is the natural state between man and wife, and it is the first command that God gave Adam after he was cast out of Eden. Be fruitful and multiply. It’s the sterility of leftist thought sneaking into the culture, and Christianity drinking from that tainted well. The heretical Puritan strain runs deep in American Christianity, and it needs to be pulled out by the root. Corrupted by the anti-natalism of leftism, they have embraced extended celibacy, the fear of discussing sex, and inverted the place of women above men. All of which lead to sterile sexual intercourse that does not bring man and woman together to create and nurture children.
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The Puritans had a much better view on sex than our culture does. There is quite a bit of written evidence that they did their best to apply God’s teaching about sex within marriage. From Puritan letters and poetry, they appear to have been quite enthusiastic about the horizontal tango when within the sanctified biblical confines of marriage. Whereas, in our current church culture, there are too many women who have had engrained within them that sex itself is sinful or the opposite that they should sow their wild oats and expect God’s forgiveness. We end up with frigid wives in the first case or alpha widows in second, neither of which leads to a healthy marital view on coitus (for you cameron.)
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RPA, just as long as it doesnt lead to coitus interruptus.
Just being a wiseguy.
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lol, had to look up Puritan. I’ve heard it tossed around before and it’s name gives clues…but wasn’t sure if it was an official denomination or their core beliefs. I’m not entirely sure “weak” is the word I’d use here. Corrupt, sure. But it takes a great deal of strength to adhere to puritan beliefs in a world as immoral as this, no? Also, which beliefs of Puritans were heretical? Not doubting you, but I’m asking in earnest.
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Puritans were a movement within the Church of England. The idea was that the Protestant reformers hadn’t gone far enough in purging what they saw as the leven of Rome.
Which of their beliefs were heretical is a function of your denomination and your definition of heretical.
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The anti-copulation doctrines were some of the first satanic seed to enter the New Testament church. The surrounding society’s morals didn’t derive from the very immoral Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, but from the Gnostics, Stoics, and various Ascetics. They felt that the physical world and the body and thus coitus and the other passions of this world were inherently evil, not created for our enjoyment by a loving God of order. Folks like Augustine even falsely taught that abstinence within marriage was a virtue, and that married sex was an evil that was only contraindicated when following God’s hymeneal command to procreate.
Don’t blame Puritans for the Gnostic heresy of the celibacy celebrating church of Rome.
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The writings of Augustine or any other doctor of the Church are not Catholic doctrine. The Catholic doctrine (described clearly by the Coucil of Trent) is that celibacy in devotion to the Lord is a higher state than marriage. And that marriage including sex is good and Holy. This is the doctrine of St Paul not gnosticism.
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I wasn’t trying to counter the Apostle Paul and 1 Corinthians 7:2-5, in fact, that is the doctrine I try to share with others. And I’m not wrong about the Catholic church teaching that married sex is still “dirty” and unfitting for their priests and such, and that it is only to be used to make babies, never just for enjoyment. They may speak out of both sides of their mouth, and say both sides of things with their forked tongue, but I’ve heard those same concepts from plenty of Catholics, and they were taught them in their Catholic schools and churches. They also claim that they don’t worship Mary, but just pray to her and revere and venerate her more often than God. LOL Don’t pay so much attention to what they claim they officially believe, watch what they do. And Woke-Pope Francis is changing everything as he goes along, anyway. LOL They’ll teach you that you’ll go blind if you touch your “dirty” peter. Seriously! Despite whatever their “official” doctrine is, the Catholic church is a bastion of sexual dysfunction and pederasty. Keep a tight hold of your boys if you ever go visit the Vatican.
I’m just saying that when you’re looking for where the great whoring of all our daughter churches (that were spawned off of the Mother of Harlots) started, usually, “all roads lead to Rome”. If someone stops at the Puritans, they’ve stopped far short of the mouth of the cave of all harlotries. Go down that red robed rabbit hole and her steps lead down all the way to the pit of hell and to second death. She’s drunk from the blood of the saints she’s killed down through the ages.
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The Church teaches that the sex act between husband and wife is licit when open to babies -Gods design. Yes the sex act is not to be used JUST for enjoyment – that’s treating your wife like a prostitute. That’s why we now have the lunacy of Protestant/Biblist men on the web who think it’s ok to @$$ f_ck their wives in mimicry of f_ggots. Yeah I had a friend who was a Baptist pastor who defended this. A sh_tshow – literally.
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How does a biblist know how often Catholics pray to Mary vs God. They don’t. We have prayed the Lord’s Prayer with the children every night for nearly 15 years. It begins with “Our Father”
The mass is an offering of Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to God the Father. It is not offered to Mary.
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The heresy goes back to Augustine with his Manichean sympathies:
https://www.thebodyissacred.org/origin-st-augustine-sexuality-sin-sex-pleasure/
Augustine felt so guilty for his former dissipate lifestyle that he went full anti-sex. He was so familiar with disease that he even consider the healthy as diseased.
Go to the link to see for yourself.
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I am honored to be called a “Biblist”. Thank you for that.
I think the Rosary is the most popular (vain repetition) prayer of the church of Rome.
It looks like it contains about 10 “Hail Marys” to every “Our Father”, and it looks like it ends where all the chains of bondage join together with “Lastly, Pray the Hail Holy Queen.”
The site where I found the above diagram says:
Catholicism is apostasy established by human tradition, worshiping the “Queen of Heaven”, presided over by a woke guy, elected by his pederasty prone peers, who then claims to speak as God Himself. It is Blasphemy!
See also Jeremiah 44.
Pope Francis said,
Jesus Christ, God in the flesh said,
See also Revelation 17.
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@cameron232
Indeed. God designed the anus for exit. Not for entry unlike the vagina which actually is tougher and oozes forth secretions that reduces the friction of the mechanical motion.
There is a reason guts fall out and leakage necessitates wearing diapers among those who do sodomy. Regardless of so called heterosexuality or not.
I even read that one man destroyed his wife’s lower gut by his sodomy resulting in her wearing diapers. Absolutely disgusting imo.
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Very good stuff, thank you. I’d never thought before of how specifically a woman comes to the ‘end of herself’ in the manner of John 3:3 (hope I’ve got that right). I’m going to be thinking about redemptive introspection in the coming days!
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rontomlinson2,
Yes, it is the same thing as the “born again” experience described in John 3. I grew up in a Baptist church, so I used to have the idea that the “born again” experience is a conscious act of the will. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to believe that it is not. It has more to do with the breaking of the will (similar to breaking a horse). This “breaking” aspect of the “born again” experience is not something that can be entered into willingly. For most people, it is unexpected, uncontrollable, and it is strongly resisted. However, it does help if one willingly avoids indulging in sin and idols, which postpone the “breaking”.
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Totally lost on this. Read it three times. Lost. So men now got cucked before the Medieval era. Its not year 1021 or whatever…..its before that?
Just lost
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It may help to ditch any notions of game or our modern understanding of the SMP and come at the post from the standpoint of God’s intended marital hierarchy as it pertains to responsibility, blessing and peace. The comparison being made, using Peter’s story, is that the church universal rebels against God and only when broken and inevitably failing in human weakness, does it submit to the authority of Christ as head. Submitting to Christ’s headship leads to a life of peace for the soul, the blessings associated with a life of peace (don’t mistake this as only material blessing) and ultimately the saving grace of Christ.
Marital headship is God’s model for the family that mirrors that of Christ and the church, albeit without the perfect headship of Christ. As such, the wife, much like Peter in the example, needs to come to her end as the strong, independent woman that tries to usurp the husband’s headship before she will take her role as the helpmate. When she does get to the point of submission to her husband’s headship, she will start to see the real blessing of peace in her life. God did not make women to be able to bear the responsibility of headship, He made women to fall in line and support a man’s headship. The marital relationship, with the fullness of intimately knowing another person emotionally, intellectually and physically, is richer and experiences the blessings of peace when it aligns with God’s design.
Whether or not you think this is right is up to you to ponder. I can tell you from experience that marriage to a rebellious woman who is trying to rule over you is hell on earth. Conversely, when a wife embraces her role as the submissive helpmate, even with all the past hurts and imperfections of two humans, it’s pretty good and there is certainly more peace and rest in the home for us both.
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Thank you. That is a bit better explanation, and I see Jack liked your reply.
So what is so revolutionary about this? I have seen this being discussed in various postings on the “real man” Christian ‘sphere for almost a decade. I don’t see more women submitting…and even if they did……from the postings and comments over the decade, she still is “unsuitable” for marriage because she had more than one sex partner, has a tattoo, made a bad choice or choices before becoming a christian……or learned in her journey that she was “wrong” and repented. 99% of women today are not wife material anyway right? So why this post explaining this “model” when just about zero can’t ever be redeemed, or reclaimed (well, she can but has to sit in church the rest of her life ‘paying’ for her past, repenting, and no ‘real man of god’ should ever attempt to marry her).
Everything now is a red flag to the younger ‘christian’ man. I mean everything. No wonder they are staying home, doing other stuff or just walking away and shrugging their shoulders.
For older men (over 35) just burn, because if you marry an older “fit” or “hot” woman trying to stick the landing, you’re a beta-supplicating-cuck…
Who wins here? Who gets to be “fruitful and multiply”?
Ah yes….the twenty or so men in this sphere. The rest are doomed to burn, never to be reclaimed, and IF they just followed this “model” when they were eight or nine MAYBE they can have a good marriage…or go to Russia where evidently every woman is now a “devout” christian…whoops, I mean Orthodox or east Asia because buddhism is kinda-sorta like the faith…..
Thanks again for the explanation
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lastmod, You are welcome. I’m glad what I wrote made sense.
Your are right on the presentations of a “model” for how to find a women and make marriage work. There is not going to be a single one. There are divine principles that apply to every marriage, but my wife’s submission to me will probably look very different than that of other wives to their husbands.
Think of all the traits/characteristics/outward signals that a woman has as her risk profile. Both younger and older men looking to marry need to be aware of each individual woman’s profile. More so, the man needs to be aware of the profile in light of the legal environment men face today. To see a few red flags and write off a girl as a potential wife might be wise or foolish without further examination and getting to know additional information about her.
For example, look up Brittni De La Mora’s story. She is the porn star that is now married to a pastor. She checks all the outward risk red flags that would send most of us running. Except, from what I have read, she appears to have been truly broken and repentant about her past. My guess is that her heart changed and because of this she was willing to change. Who knows if that brokenness and heart change will lead her to fight feminist cultural tendencies, but it’s a decent example of a woman with n= infinity who appears to be a new person, even with the guilt/shame of her past.
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Well put! Proper vetting is a skill of utmost importance today, and was in yesteryear too. The only problem, how do you do it? There is no ‘one-size’ fits all situations. The Manosphere, Christian and secular alike, do a fairly good job of cataloguing the all the various red flags out there in the world of women, but a comprehensive list, I haven’t seen one. I believe Dalrock, and maybe Jack here in an earlier post might have given it a go; however in my mind, it is still a difficult proposition to vet, and there is no way to vet with 100% confidence that you’ve for CERTAIN have got it right for YEARS to come.
Looking back on my own experience with women back-in-the-day with my Blue Pill conditioning, there’s no way could I have gotten it right. My ‘little head’ did too much of the thinking for me for starters. I mentioned in an earlier post that there were two other women in play at the time I met my future wife, I would have picked either one them for a wife because of the ATTRACTION I had for them. My future wife was attractive too, but the other two women had a head start over her, pun intended! Mercifully, God guided me, and even then, had I been ‘stubborn about it’ and insisted on vetting women ‘my way,’ I’d have got it all wrong by picking girl #1 or #2, not girl #3 who I eventually married!
Not sure what can be done about this vetting ‘problem’ we men have (women too, but that’s a subject for different post).
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Boomer – As men, we do have a principle for vetting a potential spouse. Look at Matthew 19 and the story of the rich young ruler. While none of us would be able to do this like Jesus did, we can still pray for guidance, have faith in God and look like crazy for the idolatry. This is the Christian man version of the sh!t test(s), only with much higher stakes.
Look at what Jesus does to the guy. He starts nice and easy with commandments any churchian man of the time would know and would have outwardly followed. The young guy passes with flying colors, but that is not enough. What Jesus does is get to the idol. That thing the ruler loves more than God, his money.
The script that gives a young man the best chance at matching up with a girl that actually wants him is picking at the idols. She passes all the appearance tests: goes to church and knows the bible, attractive, personable, seems nurturing and kind, says she thinks about sex frequently (more than just when she ovulates) and looks forward to it with him, respectfully obeys her father. These are some of the base level commandments for qualifying to be wife material for a man.
Then we get to the idols, and what those are will be different for every girl. Whatever those dreams are in her mind for what marriage looks like to her (solipsism), take them away as a condition of marriage. Big wedding where she’s princess … nope, you want a small affair with family, minister and homemade food in a backyard ceremony. Double bonus if she helps prepare the food. Thinks you’re her meal ticket to being rich … you’ll provide but regular middle class life, and she’ll need to contribute. Wants the big career and education … you want a stay at home mom that makes the budget stretch. Loves the attention from face-twit-insta-book …. we won’t do social media because of the damage it causes.
Is the future husband more important to her than the “stuff”? If the answer is no, then there’s no reason to marry. It comes down to the question of if she wants a lifetime with the man or her own vision of marriage more. It’s the first test of headship and submission and it’s pass/fail.
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Thanks for the synopsis, Red Pill Apostle. I too, like lastmod, sometimes have difficulty pinpointing what Jack is trying to elucidate in his lengthy posts.
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The main problem though is everyone thinking women are using this model; but they’re really not. This is really really subtle.
Jack describes this model
God
Man
Wife
Children
Children submit to wife/mother. Wife submits to Man. Man submits to God.
Most Christian women, and nearly all clergy and Protestant family ministries, use this model
God
Husband Wife
Children
Children submit to wife/mother. Wife submits to God. Husband submits to God. Husband and wife submit to each other. Wife submits to husband if and only if she gets clearance from God through “her Holy Spirit”. (Her feelings, really.) Wife filters everything Husband wants, needs, desires, is, and does through “her Holy Spirit”. (“Is this in line with God’s will?” Does my Holy Spirit lead me that this is OK?”) If “yes”, submission to her husband is approved. If “no”, she is not required to submit to her husband.
Under this model, Husband and Wife are co-equal partners. Neither is above or below the other.
The husband is also not called “man”. He’s “husband”. In her eyes, his sole function is to serve her interests as protector and provider, and as “priest, prophet and king”. It never occurs to her that he has other functions. It never occurs to her that God has higher, loftier things for him. To her, the husband is HER priest, HER prophet, and HER king — Those functions were created, and he occupies them, solely for her benefit. His sole functions are to make money and turn it all over to his wife; to take a bullet for her; and to pray for her and lead her. In this model, Husband has literally no other functions or purposes. The marriage, the relationship, become all about her, and what she wants, needs, desires, is, and does. In doing so, submission to God falls away; and he submits to his wife.
This is wrong, of course, but today’s Christians use it because it gives lip service to submission without actually requiring true submission. It lets her “top from the bottom”. It lets her run the show without actually looking like she’s running the show. And it lets women feel better about “submission” because it is the one thing every woman hates – to lay it all down in the marriage before a man – a man she picked. Most women don’t ever truly submit to a man.
In heaven, men and women aren’t given in marriage to each other. But down here, in the fallen world, she submits to him, and he submits to God. If she has questions about God’s will for her, her marriage, or her children, she’s to go to her husband and have HIM seek the Lord about it. If she has questions about what God’s word says, she’s to go to her husband and have HIM seek the Lord about it. If she isn’t getting what she wants/needs in her marriage, she’s to go to her husband and have HIM seek the Lord about it.
God calls him. He follows. Or not, in which case he does it himself until he is at his wit’s end.
He invites her. She follows. Or not, in which case she does it herself (or with a series of other men in psuedo-submission through sex), until she’s at her wit’s end. (Gee, I wonder where I’ve seen that before?)
Most marriages don’t run this way. They just don’t. They LOOK like they do, the participants SAY they do, but they don’t.
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An entity with two heads is a monstrosity.
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Lived it … monstrosity is an inadequate word.
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RPApostle:
I lived it too. Living in it was absolute hell.
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Deti – I hate that we appear to have had similar experiences in marriage. It is comforting that it’s not just me though.
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Another thing:
Wives are to submit to husbands in all things. Just as husbands are to submit to God in all things.
All things means ALL THINGS. All means ALL. It means every single thing, situation, circumstance, feeling, emotion, action, reaction, course of action, vision, function, and purpose.
This is why women’s husband selection in ages past had to have approval from Dad or the family patriarch. Because she would have to submit to that man, even if his decisions were a product of poor judgment, factually wrong, harmful, unsound, damaging, immoral, perverted, illegal, or criminal. She had to submit to him even if he was doing immoral things and even if he wanted her to do immoral things.
A long while ago Vox Day got into a discussion at Alpha Game about this: “If a husband tells his wife to have an abortion, is she required to do it?” His answer was yes. I reluctantly agreed. She has to submit to her husband, even if what he decides directly contravenes God’s law and commandments. The flaw in the decisionmaking occurred long before the abortion directive. They happened when she picked an unsuitable, immoral man who did not fear God.. Now that she’s picked him, she must walk out the consequences of that decision – which includes submitting to evil.
She can divorce that man, yes. But she will not be free to remarry as long as he lives. If he repents and turns from his wickedness and is willing to take her back, she’s required to return to him.
That’s a really, really hard saying. But that’s God’s word.
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I respectfully (and I mean the respect part sincerely) disagree deti. Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue but not the only virtue. Absolute obedience is owed to God alone.
And yes I am aware of the potential for women to use this as a loophole to avoid legit authority. “I’m not doing that because it would cause me to commit the sin of not loving myself”
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I respectfully (and I mean the respect part sincerely) disagree deti. Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue but not the only virtue. Absolute obedience is owed to God alone.
In that situation and if I’m to accept your explanation as the correct one, the wife’s only recourse is to divorce her husband and remove herself from his authority. Same rules apply, though – no remarriage as long as he lives; and if he repents and wants her back, she has to return to him.
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Yes sir – I agree.
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cameron – The possibility for circular reasoning with your statement is high. As a wife your authority is God, and God tells you to submit to your husband in all things. The wife doesn’t submit to her husband = not following God’s directive. The wife does submit to a husband’s directive but that instruction is sinful = not following God’s directive. I think the difference here comes with the covering of headship. This is supported by 1 Peter 3:6 where Sarah obeyed Abraham, even to the point of going to be the pharaoh’s wife (adultery), and it was counted as righteousness to her, but not so much for Abraham. He, as the one authority, got the blame for the misuse of his God given authority.
It’s hard teaching that requires much prayer and wisdom. Sharkly’s life mission on reinstating the patriarchy takes on a much more serious tone (keep up the humor though Sharkly, it’s well appreciated) when you consider the authority of headship and the role a loving father has in choosing which man will take the even greater responsibility of marital headship (authority over her body sexually in addition to the father’s authority) over his daughter.
Deti’s take on a wife separating to remove herself from the harm of a sinful husband, seems to be the best recourse at avoiding sin in what would be a very difficult situation.
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I think the difference here comes with the covering of headship. This is supported by 1 Peter 3:6 where Sarah obeyed Abraham, even to the point of going to be the pharaoh’s wife (adultery), and it was counted as righteousness to her, but not so much for Abraham.
The other rationale or “out” offered for a woman in this situation is the Pauline exception in which believers are not yoked to unbelievers: Something like this (Paraphrasing): If a woman is married to an unbelieving husband and he’s content to remain with her, then she must stay with him. But if he’s not content to be with her or leaves her, then she’s not bound to him. But if he repents and wants her back, she must go back to him.
This doesn’t really apply, though, because in the “evil husband commands her to sin” example, he’s not leaving or abandoning her. He’s content to stay with her. So that doesn’t really give the wife an “out”.
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Cameron:
Another problem we run into besides circular reasoning is this: Who decides that the husband is evil, sinful or immoral, and therefore divorce is her only option?
This sets the wife up as the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not immoral or evil. This simply allows Wife to proclaim whatever she does not like about her husband, or what he does, as “immoral and evil” and therefore she may divorce him.
–He’s a stupid spendthrift, or makes major wasteful purchases without discussing with his wife: For example, he bought an $85,000 Corvette and jeopardized the family’s financial wellbeing. “This is evil! He’s acting immorally! Divorce!” No. It’s profoundly stupid. But it’s not evil or immoral. She picked a stupid guy. That’s on her.
–Caught up in sin, using porn? “Evil! Immoral! Divorce!” yes, it’s evil and immoral. But divorce is not the answer – the answer is to get him to examine what he’s doing and get him help.
–Quit his job, not working? “Evil! Immoral! Divorce!” Possibly evil or immoral and definitely stupid. But she picked a shiftless layabout. She doesn’t get to divorce him. She gets to help him through it.
–Doesn’t go to church? “Evil! Immoral! Divorce!” No. She picked an unbeliever. That’s on her. As long as he’s content to stay with her, she is required to stay with him.
–Drinks too much, using illegal drugs? “Evil! Immoral! Divorce!” It might be evil and immoral, but she promised to stay with him “in sickness and in health”. He got sick. He has a problem. It’s his wife’s duty to stay with him and help him through it.
And so on and on. That’s the problem – who decides what is sufficiently evil and immoral such that Wife’s only valid recourse is divorce and permanent separation? it’s subject to abuse. I’ve seen wives do every single one of these things.
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Deti,
I absolutely recognize the potential for abuse by women attempting to get out of headship.
My answer is basically a wife shouldn’t commit a mortal sin if her husband tells her to. That means more or less not breaking the commandments. My reference to “not loving herself” above is a reference to the type of goofy, psuedosins that a disobedient woman would make up to get out of being under hubby’s authority.
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i LOVE this website! All of you are the best commenters I’ve ever read!
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What color is your nose?
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lololol, back off Sharkly!
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Deti,
I thought your comment was really good, so I made a post of it:
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” even if his decisions were a product of poor judgment, factually wrong, harmful, unsound, damaging, immoral, perverted, illegal, or criminal”
So will she be held to account at Judgement for her husbands actions? “Hey Jesus, I was just submitting to my husband, like Paul said”
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So will she be held to account at Judgement for her husbands actions? “Hey Jesus, I was just submitting to my husband, like Paul said”
No, she’ll be held to account at judgment for her own actions – which include selecting an immoral, evil man and in doing so, disobeying God.
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Wow. No hope for anyone.
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So which is it? Do people change or not? Yesterday we said people change in marriage.
So choosing what seems to be, by all measurable appearances, a godly man is to bear the double guilt of committing murder if he commands it?
I don’t have an answer but I am so very glad that even when my husband was not a believer, he was a still a very good man.
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People absolutely change sometimes for the worse. Women and men.
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when my husband was not a believer, he was a still a very good man.
No, he wasn’t “good”. He conformed his conduct to the requirements of the law and followed court orders. He did what cultural and societal mandates required of him. That did not make him “good”. It just means he observed and followed legal, financial, contractual, cultural, and societal requirements imposed on him.
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Fair enough, deti. Whatever. You may even be right.
But he never asked nor expected me to abandon or violate the tenets of my faith.
And nothing in the culture WE grew up in demanded that he become to me what he is to me. That’s a well known fact. So you can tone that down about 10 notches.
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Fair enough, E. I don’t know him like you do.
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You don’t. And I don’t know your Mrs. the way you do, which is why I never wrap any of my responses to you in the stuff you have revealed previously about her.
Please do me the same courtesy.
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You have to understand what “good” means here. Elspeth is saying that Sam was “good” according to the feminine Tinglometer.
Remember, Harley McBadboy and Chadwick Edcad are also “good” according to the Tinglometer.
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I did not interpret what she said that way. She seemed to be expressing gratitude that even though she married a non believer man he had old fashioned common decency and didn’t use his authority to make her sin.
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Yes, Cameron. You understood me. Thank you.
When I said “good man” I did not at all mean “Christian man who followed all the moral rules in Scripture and was super duper nice”.
I meant a decent person, as measured by your comment, and actually, as would be expressed in a couple of other objectively measurable ways by normal people.
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Awesome essay. Love the comparison and theme of “follow me.” In every relationship where I asked the woman to be my girlfriend, it had that dynamic. Conversely, the only relationships that didn’t work out where with women who didn’t necessarily fit this model. This was back before I picked up the Bible or was a “practicing” Christian. I still had Christian traditionalism in me, but I’m thinking that’s why a lot of pursuits with modern women didn’t work. The dynamic has been turned upside down. Nowadays…there does seem to be this undercurrent of worshiping women. And there’s a difference between admiring them and straight up making your world revolved around them. Like when a lot of Red Pill Content creators talk about being a “High-Value Man.” It’s usually about getting the most money, resources, and status…and essentially they encourage men to get those things…to get the “hottest woman”…which makes women the prize. So even if women aren’t saying “follow me,” it’s what a lot of men are doing. Thus, I say. “If it’s true that women rule the world, it’s because men have come to love women more than they love God.”
And even if the system changes, with more men waking up to what’s going on and defiantly refusing to make women or sex the prize or priority…without Bible principles guiding their lives…what will they focus on? Themselves? For what? Self-pleasure? How long will that last? I know there are examples of men doing this throughout history…but on a massive scale? anyways, sorry. Just thinking out loud. Awesome essay!!!!
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Rock stated “And even if the system changes, with more men waking up to what’s going on and defiantly refusing to make women or sex the prize or priority…without Bible principles guiding their lives…what will they focus on? Themselves? For what? Self-pleasure? How long will that last?”
This is an excellent point and something I pondered while a christian and even now in the secular world. It’s no better there in these matters in that life as well for most men.
Well, red-pill and their Jesus (Rollo) will tell you to focus on yourself an become the prize. Very easy to do evidently. Porn is huge not because of “only fans” but for the fact there is really no one to meet. The must haves and must do’s in and out of the faith to GET the attention from women is so varried, vast, and a full time job. Who has time for that when you are trying to grow a career, maybe trying to improve your social IQ (which you cannot really change too much after you are 25), trade school, working out, dealing with day-to-day stuff……crisis in your family, unemployment (or underemployment) and a billion other things.
Yes, I know Paul did this…….some saints over the centuries, plenty of nameless forgotten faithful men too probably pulled this off too…..but for the most part. The secular man today in the lower 80% just has to go to porn, get an escort, exotic travel to Thailand or some similar place……..
It gets easier for men in this situation as they get older….sure, not a dead drive, nor impotent….but a declining drive. Some have a “been there, done that” attitude, or “it’s just not worth the stress, the strain, the b*tching, the princess attitudes for a few seconds of supposed bliss”
Throw in divorce, cheating, mental illness and the fistfulls of pills most women are on now……..and even decent looking guys are not “good enough” for most women.
My dad (RIP) would say to me as a boy when I asked “what do you want for christmas dad?”
“No more arguing” would be his reply.
Older guys who are not married, didn’t father children probably look to this reply as at something that helps them “cope”
Wish I had the answer, cause I really don’t. I don’t use or look at porn (did as a younger man). I don’t get escorts, and I don’t go to Thailand to have sex with 11 year old girls. Frankly too, when someone touches me, tap on the shoulder kind of thing……….it’s almost PAINFUL. I think its because there is such a lack of touch or intimacy, this has become the norm, and I have had this for over a decade now. I think many men develop this too, kind of a reaction to help deaden the drive for that
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I don’t have answers Jason. I think about it because I have 6 sons and the odds of them all finding a wife aren’t good.
I guess I hope we have a close family and that they have each other to love for life. Maybe find meaning in being an uncle. Yes I realize it’s no substitute for a woman. I try to tell them they’re a vital part of something bigger than themselves -a large family. Will this work? IDK.
If your brother had been normal and hadn’t died would it have made a difference? I don’t know.
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“I don’t use porn”
You re doing well then – the overwhelming majority of men probably including Christian men do.
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Eve, the first representative of all womankind, was first tempted by our Adversary, the Devil, to be more ambitious to usurp her husband who was an image of the Last Adam and to “become like god” herself. Society also currently teaches women to “find the goddess within”, or to be their own goddess.
So, if a woman is actually supposed to hate her own life, die to herself, and pick up her cross and follow Christ by following the image of Christ that she has been joined to by God, in everything, as unto the Lord. Then our modern “churches” really are no safe place for women (or anyone) to be, since they are such an evil influence towards elevating women, increasing their self-esteem, teaching them to manipulate their own husbands by condoning her denying him marital relations, honor, and help, unless her whims are obeyed by her husband. Churches teach women that instead of adorning themselves with shamefacedness, like the Bible recommends for women professing godliness, (which words the churches are too ashamed to preach) they, like the serpent, beguile women into believing they already are the likeness of a hermaphrodite god who can be imaged as not only a Father or Son, but also by mothers and daughters. Churches falsely teach women that they are the likeness of God Himself, and therefore should not pray with their heads covered. In short our unfaithful churches are most likely the strongest force in our society promoting women’s overinflated self-esteem and assigning women the worth-ship to be served by their husbands. Churches openly direct husbands to hearken unto the voice of the woman (Adam’s original sin) and to become a servant of hers, thereby inverting God’s created order.
If you don’t believe churches assign their greatest worth-ship to women, listen to any Mother’s Day sermon to see who gets more genuine words of praise, mothers or God our Father and Christ His Son.
How can women abandon themselves in marriage, and repent of their blemishes, if their false religion is teaching them they are all unrecognized paragon’s of human virtue who don’t need a husband’s correction, but instead need to be correcting their husbands?
Jack, you new doctrine flies in the face of most all of current year churchianity. You’re basically saying that a woman first needs to die to herself and humble herself to fully serve under her husband and to fully accept his lordship over her and to become content in her marriage. If feminist discontentment isn’t stoked in our churches how will the hirelings continue to get poontang from unsatisfied wives? Are they supposed to work there solely for money? Hirelings will lose their jobs if they teach all the Bible or doctrines like yours that are from the Bible, so they certainly can’t work at a church on behalf of a God whose holy words have been deemed misogynistic, divisive, and a stumbling block contrary to the church growth industry’s precedented popular practices. Jack, this post upsets the long established churchian status quo. What’s gotten into you?
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Man…your post was depressing (because it seems to be true)…but deeply enriching at the same time, if that makes sense. No lie, I recently debated with a female Atheist who claimed she had heard from “Christians” to back up her ideals about divorce. I told her that when you only rely on hearsay, you open yourself up to being manipulated and misled. She was like, “Oh, so I should rely on you?”
That’s when I told her she should rely on the Scriptures, the source. Once upon a time I used to feel sorry for those who were misled, but the book of Jeremiah taught me that people allow themselves to be misled by the wickedness of their own heart. Meaning, if one pastor is preaching that the hook-up culture is wrong but a 2nd pastor is saying there’s nothing wrong with getting laid outside of marriage, you shouldn’t be ashamed of that…a person will follow the teaching of the 2nd pastor because it’s what the individual’s heart wants.
But on the topic of Eve…whenever I think of her role in the history of women, I’ve found encouraging words from Pastor John MacArthur’s study Bible speaking about 1st Timothy 2:15. He says:
“Even though a woman bears the stigma of being the initial instrument who led the race into sin, it is women through childbearing who may be preserved or freed from that stigma by raising a generation of godly children. Just as a woman may have led the race into sin, they also have the privilege of leading many out of sin.”
I say these words to female Christians who get discouraged when they think of Eve.
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@Sharkly on 2021-05-22 at 12:19 am
Inre “churches” and their inversion/perversion of Scripture regarding women’s behavior, they’re not even seriously trying to hide it anymore. To the extent that anyone pushes back and attempts to inject sanity and biblical reality back into the mix, arrogant, self-absorbed “leaders” immediately go on the defensive and counter-attack, outright rejecting Scripture and its plain meaning. If they haven’t enthusiastically absorbed the christofeminist narrative for their own self-aggrandizement (i.e., the approval of women through ear tickling and the accretion of power and influence for themselves, the polar opposite of denying oneself and taking up one’s cross and following Jesus), they wear it out of fear of women’s rebelliousness, a clear indication of who their real master is and their complete lack of belief or faith in the redemptive power of Christ.
As you point out, this inversion of God’s Truth has turned nearly all Western churches today into tools of Satan.
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So on the topic of the post. My wife, who accepts husband headship, has told me that being wife and mother – you lose your identity to some extent. Or your sense of self. I can’t remember exact words. This wasnt said with bitterness or resentment -just very matter of fact. It was implied if not outright said that is worth it.
My reaction was: well we lose ours to, do you think I want to spend every day at a job I hate?
But it occurs to me maybe she’s (as a traditional wife) describing going through what Jack is attempting to describe.
Part of it anyway. A traditional mom has children all over her all day for many years. I can see how they lose a sense of self being “mom” all the time.
Again described without bitterness. She wants even more babies.
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@Rock asked: And even if the system changes … what will they [men] focus on?
Answer: The same thing that men who cannot attract a woman to wife have had to focus on since the beginning. And there have been many such men throughout history. Perhaps they are the majority (numbers-wise) and married men are the minority (numbers-wise) throughout history.
If you are king, too many unmarried men in your kingdom could lead to them uniting to overthrow you. So, wars. The go-to method of population control (at least of unmarried men) since the beginning.
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Unless you’re David…sending a man to die on the front line so he could get inside his wife. A man after “gods own heart” evidently.
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A man after “gods own heart” evidently.
Yes, David was. After that sin, God broke him. Utterly destroyed him. And then accepted him back. But man, did he ever pay for it – the child resulting from his sin with Bathsheba died. God said “Uriah is dead. You broke her, you bought her. Bathsheba’s your wife now.” Absalom, another of his sons from that union, rebelled against his own father, provoked war, and was killed. All this eventually led to the separation of Judah from Israel. And then to the Babylonian captivity.
Look at the price it exacted. All of Israel paid dearly for that.
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Not only that – if God would not take David back after that kind of sin, what hope could there possibly be for anyone else? What hope could anyone have of salvation or redemption?
Why would anyone believe, trust, or obey a god like that?
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If that story about David does not cause you to pause and seriously think about the provision of God’s grace and how He chooses to bestow it, nothing will. Remember that David is the paternal line of Christ.
Of course there are still earthly consequences for sin. In this story, even in those consequences we see a picture of who God is and David’s understanding of this. God said the baby that was the product of adultery would die as a consequence. But while the baby was alive for a short while, David fasted and prayed for his child’s life. He knew God’s mercy along with God’s wrath over sin. This is also an instance of God using man’s brokenness for his purposes. Bathsheba was also Solomon’s mother and we have wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes because of him.
If you want to go back a few generations to the siege of Jericho time it’s gets even better. Rahab the harlot, who helped the Israelite spies, is the mother of Boaz. Boaz is the hubby to Ruth (of the book of Ruth fame). She was a Moabite. The Moabites are interesting because they are the descendants resulting from the incest between Lot and his daughters. If I remember correctly, Moabite, loosely translates in modern English to “who’s your daddy?” So you have the harlot’s kid who marries the incest descendant and they are David’s great grandparents. David is the youngest in the line of brothers, a mere shepherd boy, who becomes a murderous and adulterous king whose kingdom is literally torn apart at one point because of the family problems sexual sin caused.
And yet, with all this brokenness, God chose this thoroughly messed up lineage to be the line Christ comes from. It’s why David’s story should cause us to reconsider what many of us were taught about God’s grace and His plans.
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Rahab the harlot, who helped the Israelite spies, is the mother of Boaz.
Rahab displayed faith in telling the Israelite spies: “I’ve heard about you guys and your tribe, about what you’ve done out there and all the cities you’ve conquered. I know God’s hand is on you and helping you. I know you guys are coming, and this place is toast. So um, help a girl out, and remember me when you guys destroy this place, K?”
God rewarded that faith, too.
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“If your brother had been normal and hadn’t died would it have made a difference? I don’t know”
That is a question that just can never be answered. Christians have told me over the years he was born that way (Downs Syndrome) because of “sin” in the world, or God was “proving” his love by giving my parents a child that pretty much bankrupted them for most of their lives. Some have said “because god loved you so much, he gave you a brother in this world to make you humble, gentle, meek……….etc so you could be that great husband and father someday!”
It doesn’t matter really. All the above answers are wrong. If a believer perhaps would have just said frankly, without invoking “god” and just said “hey, I don’t know why”
Something christians DON’T know how to say on most matters.
Doesn’t matter, they’re all dead. Parents, sibling…..all my faith in the world won’t change that fact.
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OK.
I don’t know why. I know only that God has His reasons for things being the way they are, and making people the way He made them, and I don’t know what they all are. It isn’t for me to question them – only to accept them and do what I can to live with them.
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What had stood out to me previously is when you said your brother loved you – seemed like an important part of the story.
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He had the mentality of a three year old child. He didn’t “know jesus” either through communion, reciting prayers in front of an icon, going to the fourth confession on the third sunday of the tenth feast of stephen on the nineteeth day of advent during the fourth year either.
So I guess as a believer, he is in that place of gnashing teeth and maggots. From no fault of his own….and he was made in that image by a god who “loved” him……….
Of course he loved me, all he ever knew were the three people keeping him alive his whole life literally. Yeah, he loved me. As did my parents.
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I forgot your family was Polish so Catholic I guess. “Believer” is defined differently to Catholics. I thought to mention this to deti when he referred to 1 Cor. and separation from “unbelieving” spouse.
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Oh my gosh man. That’s rough. You’re right though. A lot of times we really just don’t know why…but still, we continue to trust and have faith that God’s will is being done. Reminds me of Job’s situation, when most of his family were killed, his livestock stricken and he was covered with boils.
Job had “friends” come over and lay out a series of damn-good convincing arguments about why all that turmoil and hardship had afflicted Job…and they were all wrong. Seriously, when you read the Book of Job, it’s heartbreaking because, their reasoning sounds so right and logical. But the truth was far from it. That’s gotta be super frustrating.
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None of that happened. No one knows who wrote Job. Christians still “debate” how old the book is, who wrote it…… and some even say Moses heard it when he was with the nomadic “peoples” in the desert when he fled Egypt.
Yes, God gave Job everything ten-fold for his faithfulness………. even brought his children back to life….. It’s just a story to tell us, “Don’t you ever question anything!”
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Nah…I don’t believe that. I believe the Book of Job is one of the best at explaining how you should continue to have faith in the face of overwhelming suffering. God himself said (if you believe the Book of Job as inspired scripture…which I do) that Job was a man who was blameless and upright. I interpret this to believe that God knew Job could handle such a crucible. Hope this isn’t too far off from the original post, but these are the six main points.
There are matters going on in heaven with God that believers know nothing about, yet it affects our lives.
Even the best effort at explaining the issue can be useless without the scriptures.
God’s People do suffer. Bad things happen all the time to good people, thus, one cannot judge a person’s spirituality by his painful circumstances, or his success.
Even though God seems far away, perseverance in faith is a most noble virtue since God is good and one can safely leave his life in His hands.
The believer in the midst of suffering should not abandon God, but draw near to Him so out of fellowship, comfort can come.
Suffering may be intense, but it will ultimately end for the righteous and God will bless abundantly.
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There was interesting take on the Job story by Jung in his book ‘Answer to Job’, apart from other observations also linking the story to Jesus, suggesting that God had to repent for going really overboard on Job, breaking His own commandments while trying to prove something to Satan (!?), etc, by incarnating as human and going through all the suffering, in order to basically restore any credibility in the relationship with humankind..
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Sex: Male / Female – what your chromosomes say you are.
Gender: Man / Woman – how you wish to present yourself to the world.
That distinction needs to be emphasized in every place it can be.
There are two types of sex chromosomes (ignoring the mutations): XX and XY. What word shall we use when referring to those with XX? What word shall we use when referring to those with XY?
There are multiple ways that a given individual can present themselves to the world (regardless of the construction of their sex chromosomes). What word shall we use when referring to how a given individual presents themself to the world?
Words give us a means of having fluid, quick(er) conversations. Otherwise we have to stop and define a term every time we use it. A quote I saw somewhere: Without a set of words with commonly-accepted definitions, communication is impossible.
Get rid of the word “Sex”? We are still left with that group who possess XX and that group who possess XY. Conversation will still be facilitated if we have one word to refer to the XX group and a different word to refer to the XY group. What words will those be? Who will decide? Why get rid of “male” and “female” when they work just fine at doing the job required?
Get ride of the words “man” and “woman” for describing how one wishes to present themself to the world? Fine. Conversation will still be facilitated if we have one word to refer to the XX group and a different word to refer to the XY group. What words will those be? Who will decide? Why get rid of “man” and “woman” when they work just fine at doing the job required?
I get it that some wish to have more descriptive words to refer to their unique way of presenting themselves to the world. I don’t begrudge them making up whatever word(s) they wish to use. I do begrudge them doing this if their sole intent is to confuse the language (Tower of Babel) and make communication impossible (e.g., men can have babies). So – create all the new words that you want to create. But leave the words alone that have been in use for a long time. Find a new word. Don’t change the definition of words that are already in use.
Oh, wait. How does this play out when the intent is to destroy a particular social order rather than to facilitate communication? Destroying the social order by confusing the language has been a tactic employed enough times that you can Google on the concept and find significant discussions about it.
————–
The Six Most Common Karyotypes (from the Internet)
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Get rid of the word “Sex”? We are still left with that group who possess XX and that group who possess XY. Conversation will still be facilitated if we have one word to refer to the XX group and a different word to refer to the XY group. What words will those be? Who will decide? Why get rid of “male” and “female” when they work just fine at doing the job required?
Get ride of the words “man” and “woman” for describing how one wishes to present themself to the world? Fine. Conversation will still be facilitated if we have one word to refer to the XX group and a different word to refer to the XY group. What words will those be? Who will decide? Why get rid of “man” and “woman” when they work just fine at doing the job required?
And this is exactly what the gender movement wants.
It’s how you get “some women have penises”. How? Because “woman” is “gender” and “gender”, as you say there, is seen as “how one wishes to present themself to the world”. So if a penis-haver wishes to present themself to the world as a woman, that person is a woman, because woman is her chosen “gender”. And so we arrive at “some women have penises”.
This was the entire point of splitting the concepts. What you have written here plays into that 100%. Well done.
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I have a headache now…..
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“It’s how you get “some women have penises”. How? Because “woman” is “gender” and “gender”, as you say there, is seen as “how one wishes to present themself to the world”. So if a penis-haver wishes to present themself to the world as a woman, that person is a woman, because woman is her chosen “gender”. And so we arrive at “some women have penises”.”
Forget the DSM – 5. This, is how you identify mental disorders.
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@Novaseeker: blogs are notorious for creating misunderstanding because of the need for brevity in what is typed.
Read again what I wrote. My point was that, no matter how many words you wish to have for describing how a person presents themselves to the world, all of those words could be grouped into ONLY 2 categories – those who are XX and those who are XY. So the words being used to apply to the XX group can never be considered to be associated with the XY group. Therefore, I – an XY – wish to present myself as a woman. So I dress and behave as women in my society do (the social construct part, mostly created by Madison Avenue). But I am XY – therefore I can never BE a woman (XX), I can only present myself as one. One can very easily say, “I am a woman and I have a penis.” Saying so does not make it true. One says, “I am a woman and I have a penis”, and I respond, “Tell me that you are a woman and your sex chromosomes are what??”
That is where this conversation falls down, and is why I appreciate folks such as Elspeth and others who join in the fight. An XY can PRESENT themselves as a woman. But they can never BE a woman – because the word woman is attached, by common consent, to that group who are XX. It matters not how much surgery one has. The bottom-line distinction is what your chromosomes say. And that cannot be altered by surgery. So don’t get upset about stupid claims like, “I am a man and I just had a baby.” Force the conversation over to where reality lives: “You say you are a man, but what are your sex chromosomes?” I guarantee that if every stupid claim about gender is met with simple questions like that (“You say such and such, but all I want to know is, what are your sex chromosomes?”), then a lot of this nonsense will stop. As I said before, I don’t care how folks choose to present themselves to society, nor do I care what they wish to call themselves. All I care about is what their sex chromosomes are.
However, the folks who talk like this are not trying to facilitate conversation. There are trying to confuse conversation as a step toward their goal of destroying society. Asking not for whom the bell tolls, but asking what are their sex chromosomes will make their task of confusing the conversation more difficult.
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@Novaseeker said:
That quote seems to be the seat of our misunderstanding. To expand on what I quoted there, this is the point I was making (perhaps not clearly):
If a penis-haver wishes to present himself to the world as a woman, I say go for it. But the penis-haver will only ever be PRESENTING HIMSELF as a woman. He will never BE a woman. I don’t care if you wish to present yourself as a woman for the whole of your life. Just don’t tell me that you ARE a woman. Your XY sex chromosomes say otherwise. That is the point of the conversation that we all need to step up to. “I think you look silly, presenting yourself as a woman, but it’s your life and your choice. Just don’t tell me that you ARE a woman. Tell me what your sex chromosomes are.” That is all I care to know.
If our children hear us talking in this way, it will help them understand what is going on. That is, they will learn the distinction between “presenting yourself as something” and actually “being that something”.
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“It just means he observed and followed legal, financial, contractual, cultural, and societal requirements imposed on him”
the use of word in this “imposed” is interesting, and the use of it here is ironic. Jesus said “no one was good” but if he didn’t follow these imposed requirements, would he be considered “a bad boy” and thus marriage material? I guess he would then be considered a red-pilled guy.
Everything is backwards here. A billion “No’s!” and sanctimonious tones in the faith, and yet nothing….a total zero of what Jesus set as an example. I mean, he TRIED to teach the Pharaisees, but most of his teachings were aimed at those who “never knew” and the “masses” and those who would watch and listen. He even said a Roman legion commander had more faith than all of Israel, and this man wasn’t even a believer, or a Jew, or “kept the sabbath”
This is where it gets really strange for me……I don’t ever recall Jesus telling the masses “okay, if you want to follow me, make sure this model, that model…..this word means this or that”
He said to trust, believe, testify of the kingdom of heaven. He did all for the father, everything was to please the father. Not women. Not your future wife, nor how to finds this, or lead her, or rebuke her.
He spoke more of hell than heaven, yet his message of believing, speaking the truth. Confident in the face of sin, but such loving towards the lost, or stray, and to the people who didn’t know any better….or any other way.
If god and jesus knew we would all be cucked by chivalry, knew about feminism, and the beta pastors…..the corruption of the churches, the horrible things done by them since it was founded…….what of these people? The masses who followed? Are they held to account? Should they have known better (most could not even read until moving into the modern era)?
This is just another christian rabbit hole……endless debate, questions, and going back to “if we were just unchivalrous back in 1285, we would not have these problems today”
I don’t know about you…but I have read some history. Most men lived short, dangerous, strife laden lives back then that were usually brutal and short. Something no man here would be able to endure…and we call these men “chivalrous” and they ruined the faith.
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“Yes, David was. After that sin, God broke him. Utterly destroyed him. And then accepted him back. But man, did he ever pay for it – the child resulting from his sin with Bathsheba died. God said “Uriah is dead. You broke her, you bought her. Bathsheba’s your wife now.” Absalom, another of his sons from that union, rebelled against his own father, provoked war, and was killed. All this eventually led to the separation of Judah from Israel. And then to the Babylonian captivity”
No it didn’t he stayed king, still is revered by Jews and Christians alike as a hero. How many times did I hear in Bible study “How are you being like David? Standing up! Being a man!”
Yes, a verse says he was “really sorry”
I’ve read the bible several times.
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Not only that – if God would not take David back after that kind of sin, what hope could there possibly be for anyone else? What hope could anyone have of salvation or redemption?
Why would anyone believe, trust, or obey a god like that?
Answer your own question, because you honestly believe that he doesn’t. So, god now takes back people…except women with a high N count? Again, I am sensing more an more you all just don’t like women.
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It’s why David’s story should cause us to reconsider what many of us were taught about God’s grace and His plans
buy God chose David. 99% of us throughout history………not a swat about sending us to die in wars, starving, murdered, whatever….burning……David, Daniel, Paul were EXCEPTIONAL to begin with. Made that way.
most of us are not throughout the scope of history…hence why I can’t buy this anymore. I’ll stop commenting on this thread. I do thank you RPA for your reply on this post of helping me understand the basics of Jack was saying, that has been said 10,000X before on forums like this
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I like where some talk of some church or community that is safe!No wonder bibical preaching is hated even in so-called redpill lands!There is no church or community safe in this world!!Thats why its time to legalize ”evil evil” drugs&rename officialy ”satanic,perverted” porn EROCTICA only to coddle those who live in disneyland&don’t beleave in bibicalMANOWAR living!!This is a hard saying yes!?Most churchs&entertainment is to enforce bluepill delusional thinking(Hence why people think the matrix is redpill when it was just another delusion for mainstream audiences wanting to play act real-life!Thats right!True redpill preaching time has begun!)!For some reason most men have been dropping out of ALL churches in the ”holy”east&west over the last 300 years!Why?Is it not to burn away the chaff who think their christian&are not, but on the way to hell!?Think I don’t know about all those good russian men commiting suicide or the great russian orthodox women catfishing overseas men?I thought the so-called east was ”good”?I also don’t have to mention about all the in thailand its ”okay to cut off a mans penis if your a woman whose says he cheated” do I?Think I stick up for lies!?I’m true redpill!!I spit on lies&liars!!!!I’m the main man who brings up all the ”hard” truth of life!
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The Book of Job deals with this. Why so many bad things when God is supposed to be good? Its answer is that God has the big picture, and Job decides to trust that at the end. But the answer isn’t an easy “because X” — God doesn’t provide that answer. What He says is, “I have the big picture and this is how it has to be”, essentially.
Of course this makes no sense — which is why many people find Job unsatisfying. But it is God’s answer to the obvious question, regardless of how unsatisfying that answer is. Basically it comes down to trusting God and that God allows all kinds of nasty things in His creation for a good reason that we will only understand once we have the big picture from A to Z that He has. Again, unsatisfying, and it makes no sense to us.
Christianity in general, though, makes no “sense”. We believe that an eternally existing God incarnated himself through a virgin birth in a stable in Palestine 2000 years ago. That’s hard to believe. We believe that he wasn’t an avatar (like Krishna) or a vision or something like that, but somehow was and is fully human and fully God, and that his full humanity is now eternal. None of that makes a lick of sense. We have thrown words around it in the creed and theology to try to rationalize it, but it makes no sense. We believe that somehow Jesus was resurrected from the dead, which simply never happens. It makes no sense. We have “witness testimony” that wouldn’t hold up in any court of law as being reliable, and we go with that … which makes no sense. We wouldn’t do that with any other kind of “proof”, so why do it here?
And that’s just the beginning, and the basics, not the more complicated things that Christians believe. Christianity makes no sense, because religion in general “makes no sense”. (That isn’t to say that there aren’t “explanations” which can help people to come to terms with things … there are, but in order for these to help one has to accept certain premises that can’t be proven, and which contradict “making sense”.)
Why believe in it then? Because religion addresses something else inside of us. Not “making sense”. Something else that is definitely there, and is beyond reason, but which is a deep human need. You don’t get there by trying to “make sense of things”. You get there by experiencing God. Religion is built around that — the people who founded the great religions, who set them up (the apostles in the case of Christianity) all had that experience, and so they tried to set things up for others to have the same experience — to share with them the experience which they had with Jesus. The religion and its scriptures and its creeds and its liturgies all came later, and were built on this basis.
Why bother with any of that, then? Why not just go off on your own and experience God? You could try doing that, of course, but the problem with that is that it’s hard. It’s easy to get confused. There are other entities in the world that this part of us addresses, and they want to distract us. So generally people have found it more useful to follow a religion’s practices, its scriptures, its creeds, its liturgies, its prescriptions for how to live life so that they can maximize the likelihood that they can have real experiences of God like the people who organized the religion did in the first place, rather than just spinning their wheels alone in the dark, needlessly trying to reinvent wheels that were long ago plumbed and figured out.
Is there corruption? Of course. Because there’s humans and humans are corrupt. It’s a downer, but it is what it is, and the person in the mirror is a part of the problem as well in everyone’s case.
But the truth is that none of it “makes sense”. You can rationalize things, and people do this all the time as “mental short cuts”, and these are more useful for some people than for others, but at the end of the day it’s not about addressing the part of us that needs things to “make sense”, but another faculty in us that perceives and interacts intuitively on the spiritual level with the noetic/spiritual organ in us.
None of that helps “explain” things that are hard to accept, from the perspective of “not making sense”. But really, none of this “makes sense” in that vein. You’ll get much further if you stop trying to make sense of things and focus instead on cultivating the experience of God and finding a path that you can do that in rather than finding things that “make sense”.
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Novaseeker (or others, if this resonates) – I would really like to hear more about this. I think this gets at the core of the things I struggle with when it comes to God. The idea of “Stop trying to make sense of things”, but rather, “Focus on the experience of God”, sounds so wishy-washy and new-agey to me. And yet I think I’m beginning to understand the gist of your comment here, particularly why you state:
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Hey Caterpillar —
It’s essentially about focusing on the personal connection with God, rather than the intellectual understanding piece, in terms of where your primary focus is (obviously both play some role). God is an eternal person and he wants a relationship with you. It’s through that relationship that you come to get to know him and gradually understand him better, after which the intellectual pieces can start to make more sense.
The part of you that does that is your spiritual organ — your “noetic interface”, the part of you that interfaces with spirit, and therefore with God. That organ tends to be very underused today, because we live in a very empirically-oriented culture with an almost exclusively empiricist epistemic framework that almost everyone lives by because it’s the general cultural framework. And that encourages us to overuse our discursive reason and, when we need a break from that, to veer into emotion as an outlet. Neither of those is the spiritual organ, however. The spiritual organ is kind of like the eyes and the mind that interface with the spiritual reality that can’t be seen but exists — it’s how we perceive that unseen yet present reality, sort of like our sensory apparatus that applies to the unseen world. It’s normally rusty in contemporaries, but it can be dusted off and used. But the problem is: how do you do that?
That’s where the religion comes in, and different flavors of Christianity have different emphases in how they approach this, but a spiritual focus on the relationship with God is key. That can come through prayer, it can come through prayerful scripture reading, it can come through worship with others, it can come through contemplative practice, but trying to figure any of that out alone is really dicey, because when you do that you lack guidance. So that’s where the church comes in to help with things that have worked for many people in the past in terms of using their noetic interface to develop a relationship with God.
It can sound “new agey” because many people today are used to looking at religion issues with their discursive brains, primarily. Religions themselves are to blame for this, in part, because they often describe themselves as belief systems (propositional truth approach) with arguments and apologetics and all kinds of things to appeal to discursive reason, since they know that most people today are operating in discursive reason mode, so it’s a way to reach people. And so people tend to come or go based on the extent to which they are convinced by these truth propositions, and contemporary people, formed as they are by a materialist/empiricist epistemic framework, are often not sufficiently convinced by them. But there isn’t anything “new agey” about a focus on the relationship with God — it’s basically the core of all religion, and especially Christianity because Jesus Christ is the eternal God-man, and he’s primarily how we interface with God as Christians — man-to-God-Man, if you will. It’s about as un-abstract as you can get, since we worship a God who is also a tangible human person, and therefore a person who can be known in his divinized humanity in a way that the “completely transcendent” Gods of other religions can’t. And knowing him is the key to Christianity, really. Knowing him, rather than knowing propositional truths about him or agreeing with a set of propositional truths about him. Not that these things are wrong — they aren’t. But they arose in the first place because the people who were formulating those understandings in the first few centuries of Christian history knew God through Jesus Christ personally, and were making those formulations based on their knowledge of him.
In any case, truly “new agey” people don’t follow a religion and tend to try to do it themselves by patchworking bits and pieces of spiritual practice from different spiritual traditions and religions. It’s pretty hard to do, because pasting these practices together into a personalized collage, where the components are all dislodged from their own setting and placed together apart from the tradition that created them … that use of the practices isn’t “tested” by people earlier in time who found approaches and methods that “worked” in terms of cultivating a relationship with God in the context of the specific tradition in which that practice arose. But the key in checking out the approaches of different churches is figuring out where, if anywhere, you can get to know God better personally, through your spiritual/noetic organ, and not, at least in the first place, which one has truth propositions that resonate with you.
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Caterpillar, if i might add…while trying to avoid sounding too preachy…Speaking on behalf of myself, when I read the entire Bible from cover to cover and believe it…things actually made a whole lot of sense. Why bad things happen? What’s going to happen? Why people are the way they are, and the choices we face, and why good people suffer…going directly to the source helps alleviate all the frustration of “why?”
Before I picked up the Bible, I was told many things. A lot of contradicting things, hearsay from other humans who may not have read the entire Bible themselves. This left me deeply frustrated and began to build a resentment in my heart for religion and God. For instance, when I was a teen, I was literally told, “our sole purpose on earth is to serve God.”
That’s not true. Words matter. It’s not our “sole” (only) purpose. It may be the main purpose, but we have many other purposes as well (like being fruitful and becoming many) and reading the Bible taught me that life is a gift, God wants us to enjoy it. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon writes that examples of these gifts to enjoy comes from the fruit of our labor and the fulfillment from serving God.
I’d recommend the English Standard Version, John MacArthur’s study Bible is a good one to start with. If you embody the pursuit of truth, praying for guidance and an earnest heart to receive the truth, I believe God will bless you with it.
Also, when you read the Bible, it cuts down on pointless arguments with other Christians who argue their interpretation of the Bible. That’s why I don’t get offended when someone says I’m wrong and going to hell for misinterpreting something. Romans 14 and the whole book of Ephesians strengthens the heart against such quarreling.
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@caterpillar345: the New Testament says that the natural man (spiritually dead man) cannot perceive the things of God. The New Testament says that God is the one who brings us to spiritual life. The New Testament says that no man can say that “Jesus is Lord” without the help of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3).
If those scriptures are true, our ability to know the things of God and make him Lord of our life is entirely dependent upon the actions of God and the Holy Spirit in our lives. This is not a pitch for Calvinism, but it is the point at which Calvinism starts to build its argument.
Paul talks about folks eating meat offered to idols. Some thought it was a sin to do that. Others thought it was not. Paul’s basic message was, if you think it is a sin, and you eat it anyway, you are displaying a willingness to disobey God. On the other hand, if you don’t think it is a sin, and you eat it, you are not displaying a willingness to disobey God. Act on the faith you have. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. And, as the eating meat offered to idols example sets out, we have two different sets of behavior that contradict each other (eat / don’t eat), but Paul and God accept both. It is not the behaviors that are important to God and to Paul. It is the faith. Don’t behave in a way that demonstrates that you are willing to disobey God.
The Bible is full of stuff like that. It is not a one-size-fits-all world, and God does not hold everybody accountable to the same standard. As we are all members of the body of Christ, the nose is not going to be held to the same standard as the feet or the ears. God’s expectations for each are different and unique.
What sense does it make for me, as the nose part of the body of Christ, to throw brickbats at those who are the ears part of the body of Christ for not behaving how I behave? Why should ears behave the same as the nose? God will hold the ears accountable for how well they performed the job he gave them, not for how well they performed the job he gave me, the nose.
That is part of the story. But probably the most important part. You do you. You do what God has called you to be, created you for. That is all you will be asked to give account for at the Judgement Seat. Fretting about what God actually thought of King David and his adultery ain’t gonna get you anything but heartburn and heartache.
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So sin isn’t sin? Evil may be viewed as evil by one Christian and not another? I once believed that “God indeed was so holy… He cannot be in the presence of sin…. Blood had to be shed to atone for this…. He even “gave” clothing to Adam and Eve (animal skins). Jesus was the perfect lamb. His blood was shed for the atonement for the sins of humanity”.
I don’t believe this anymore. I saw sin rewarded by god first hand. My own sins I was reminded of daily in a community that supposedly “loved me” while others did mot have to be reminded.
Just my take in the end. God doesn’t weep over our lives. The creator of the universe doesn’t care about my life because he knew I would not accept him. Anyway… but created me to have “fellowship” with him.
Not buying it anymore and I was a fool’s fool to think otherwise. In my twelve years of service in The Salvation Army all it did was make me angrier and more upset with zero comfort. “Christianity is suffering.”
No one here, even me, has not suffered one tenth of what people in the time of Jesus went through.
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It’s possible to have both divine sovereignty and free will:
http://www.tektonics.org/tulip/bubba9.php
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Cameron. I am half polish. Dad was from Krakow. My father grew up catholic but never understood any of it. He always said the polish people are catholic because the church became their steward of the history, language, art and culture. There wasn’t even a Poland for over 500 years. Most polish people today have no idea about Jesus…its just a cultural trapping.
My mother was Anglican. My parents married in an Episcopalian church. I was christened and raised culturally Anglican. Mostly as a trapping of my Brit heritage. I know when to stand. Sit. Kneel. Make the sign of the cross and when to recite aloud from the common book of prayer
It meant nothing to me. I fell into the salvation army. Learned about Jesus….service, service, service….useless Bible study after Bible study and found myself worse off in the end and more confused. All talk. Big words. I was being held back….and fully learned in the end. Jesus blesses and speaks to few and really hates others
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left this at Spawny’s and will leave it here … some of you might like this book:
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Ever since the john rambo commenter back around ’11/’12 men in the manosphere have been told ”there be great women all over the place in the east”!All it was was a lie!Why so many problems in japan?And men here in the manosphere still don’t believe women can be saved,especialy here at jacks!YOU&your churchian doctrine of ”only men must/are called to suffer in this life”!
Red pill my glock feild knife!!
So many still delusional mark drioscolls&doug wilsons but dressed up in ”in communion” wear!
You’ll be the first to go along with the makeup for men by a-hole rod once the in communion churchs say its kosher!
Telling us ”your only saved if your in communion” with the pope you hate?Thats being ”in communion”
I& the alpha-MGTOW will be the last in line to fall!!!As we open-fire with our fully automatic glock pistols!!
Your the ones who started luthers up as your in communion churchs went along with divorce that you blame on luther!?
P.S.What is this dos’nt make sense talk?You still believe its dirty/non-polite(To the beta-cucks you think are delusional bluepill fools?) to say sex&your redpill?I’m not being realistic to chump soceity!?I’m not the bluepillers who think their redpillers thats you & your job!
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Had a chance to actually discuss with the man the concept of a “good man” as I was thinking of it in my comment a couple of days ago. Short version:
From a Christian perspective, using Christan morality and metrics, of course the “he was a very good man” standard falls woefully short. However, and this is undeniably true of him and always has been (even as an unbeliever), whatever his understanding of right and wrong entailed, he never violated it.
For example, he wouldn’t claim to be an honest man and then steal from his friend. He would never claim to be a guy’s friend and sleep with his girlfriend. He wouldn’t do anything that he knew would shame his parents (there was no real admonitions or religious expectations surrounding sex for men in his family). No criminal behavior, hence no criminal record, none of that stuff. He always worked, and always supported his family. In the context of the communities we were raised in, none of this was a given.
If he said he would do a thing, he did it. When I asked a question and he thought the answer would upset me more than create peace (pre-marriage I mean), he simply refused to answer. When he did, it was the truth. He didn’t lie to me.
So on the one hand, Deti is right. On the other, he was operating using a standard of measurement that was the ideal, where I was using a standard of measurement that was based mainly on what Cameron noted; not asking one’s wife to do something that was in clear violation of the tenets of her faith.
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