Some thoughts drawn from and related to my sermon yesterday:
It seems to me that one of the most pernicious byproducts of feminism today is to despise what women actually are, to despise real femaleness. But I don’t think it’s a problem unique to today, but something built into the curse on sin itself.
“And I will put enmity between you [Satan] and the woman…”
And Satan has hated women ever since. One proof of this is modern feminism, that teaches a woman to despise being a woman and to try instead to be an inferior man.
ISIS was in the news today for shelling an elementary school killing nine girls. It was an all-girls school. They did this because they are opposed to women learning anything, and this is because women learning and being able to have ideas of their own is contrary to the understanding of societal stability and peace that lies at the heart of Islam. Islam is a religion all about hierarchy, all about knowing one’s place. One major Islamic terrorist group, “Boko Haram,” is so fundamentally opposed to the education of women that this is what their name means- “Western-style education is haram, forbidden.”
Such a thing as a terrorist group bombing schoolgirls or kidnapping and forcing them into marriages is deeply shocking to us, of course. And it should be. But it shows just how much progress has been made by the Christian worldview. For this view of women was absolutely universal in the ancient world before Christ’s coming. Women were not permitted to worship different gods than their husbands in the Greco-Roman world. Aristotle did not believe that women were capable of rational thought. Plato’s view, that they might be capable of some amount of rational thought, was considered radical. Hindus view even the highest-caste woman as a lower form of life than the lowest-caste man. Buddhists believed that being a woman was punishment for past sins. Even today the life of a woman in most places in the world is beset with injustice and oppression.
This is not an accident. Continue reading ““And He Shall Rule Over You””
Men are physically stronger and more aggressive than women, and that is never not going to matter.
Feminists have often wanted to promote better treatment for women, and rightly so. Abusive treatment toward women has not been exactly rare. It has been normalized in most cultures. Christianity teaches the absolute equal dignity and worth of women, and in all societies where Christianity became influential, treatment of women improved. But this better treatment has to come from an internal, sincerely believed ideology that changes the behavior of men, because of my first point. Only if men believe that women are deserving of better treatment will women actually be treated better. It is civilization and the rule of law that protects women from the evil treatment of men, and civilization and the rule of law is supported by men. Specifically, men with guns.
The Bolshevik Revolution was all about creating a just and perfect society in Russia. When they tried to implement this society, contrary to the reality of God’s law and without the benefit of Christ’s redemption, they inevitably failed. When they failed, rather than admit their error and change course, they blamed scapegoats, doubled down, and tried even harder to impose their vision on reality. Result- tens of millions dead.
But this, true to form, has not caused the utopians to rethink their ways. They have doubled down, found scapegoats to blame for their failures, and continue to press on.
