A Controversial Thesis [Part 3]

I said I would. Here it is.

There’s little point in referencing a controversial thesis, let alone siding with its author, if you decline to address significant arguments raised against it. Helen Andrews’ “The Great Feminization”, has generated considerable online debate. Her thesis is essentially “Women Equals Woke”. Our DEI woes on the job, she says, are all due to increasing numbers of women in the workforce.

Now, blaming everything that’s gone wrong on women sounds sexist, nasty and mean, even when it’s a woman doing it. But that’s not really where Andrews was going. Her critics disagree, and we’ll look at some of their objections today.

No King in Israel (34)

Bible students online differ concerning the extent to which Samson was truly heroic or any kind of role model for believers. The four chapters that chronicle his life and death portray him as impulsive, turbulent and temperamental, driven by his whims and easily pushed off course by events around him. Rarely do we see evidence of serious devotion to the Lord, or the fruit of such a relationship in his life, though there’s absolutely no question the Lord used him, and used him in a major way. Like Jehu centuries later, Samson was a wrecking ball when Israel needed one.

The New Testament portrays Samson as a man who in at least one instance exercised remarkable faith. Even then, in typical Samson style, his faith basically amounted to the conviction that God would make an exception to his own rules by special request …

Too Hot to Handle: The Palestinian Question

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Editor’s Note: This post was our first together, presented over a decade ago. I thought it makes an interesting re-read in view of both the things that have changed since, and the things that have not.

Alex Awad is a professing Christian who leads a Bible school in the town of Bethlehem and wrote 2008’s Palestinian Memories: The Story of a Palestinian Mother and her People.

Tom: Mr. Awad believes the Old Testament promises to Israel are strictly conditional on Israel’s faithfulness and obedience and consequently that “Israel as a nation annulled its privilege as God’s chosen nation.”

I Want to Die

I was baptized young.

Not so young that I did not know what I was doing. After all, I believe in believer baptism only … just like the scriptures tell us.

I was around ten, I think. I asked for it to happen. No one pushed me. And at that time, I had a ten-year-old’s faith, and a ten-year-old’s understanding. Nothing wrong with that … it’s just not where I am today.

A Controversial Thesis [Part 2]

Discussions about masculine vs. feminine tendencies in any area of life produce polarized reactions these days. One pole insists there are no meaningful differences between the sexes, an assertion falsified by scripture, and one the Christian cannot accept. The other pole declares itself a diehard member of Team Men or Team Women, breaks out the heavy artillery and goes to war, a strategy unlikely to lead to the perpetuation of our species. Between the poles, the careful Bible student tries to observe and comment about potential spiritual danger zones for each sex in a fair, balanced and reasoned way.

We are not the same, and neither are our temptations and struggles to live out Christ in a fallen world. That’s where I’m going to try to go today: right down the middle. On this subject at least, I think that’s where the Lord would prefer us to be.

A Controversial Thesis [Part 1]

A lengthy illustration will probably serve me best here. If you doze off, I sympathize. I’ll probably still tell the whole thing though.

I have no doubt mentioned several times in this space that I currently work with a bunch of women. To be specific, I work under a bunch of women. My direct supervisor is a woman twenty years younger than I am. Her occasional replacement is a woman five years younger than me. They both report to a woman a few years older, and she reports to another woman roughly the same age. Layers and layers of women in a quasi-traditional hierarchical structure, with me and a couple of other part-time guys on the bottom and an executive male or two way, way up top, whom I almost never see and certainly never interact with.

How do I like that? You didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you anyway: I love it.

Anonymous Asks (380)

“Does a Christian marriage have to be romantic?”

Men and women born much prior to the ‘Summer of Love’ — like, say, those who managed to live through a World War, the Great Depression or any of the plagues and famines of prior centuries — would probably find this question hilarious. Even today, in cultures where the social or financial advantages of being married outweigh any potential negatives, a deficiency of romance in a marriage rarely amounts to a stopper.

However, we live in an era in which a young person’s view of marriage is often wildly unrealistic. Feminist media propaganda shapes the expectations of most young women — and many men.

Quote of the Day (51)

Cognitive dissonance exists because it’s possible for otherwise-intelligent men and women to hold two points of view at the same time that mutually exclude at their core. ‘X’ and ‘Not-X’. That sort of thing.

I ran into this in a conversation with two women at work many years ago about the Liberal Prime Minister they had just helped elect. As I listed government policy after government policy with which I knew they both had serious issues, they nodded in agreement like twin bobbleheads of the sisters from Full House. These were indeed bad policies, and they were driving our country into the ground. We were all on the same page about that.

“So … why?” I finally asked.

No King in Israel (33)

The story of Samson is full of miraculous events. The narrative has a big, mythical quality to it: the robust young hero smiting his enemies in impossible numbers. A child reading it may find himself caught up in the action and missing the subtext. I certainly did. Nevertheless, like so many other Old Testament characters, this “hero” has feet of clay; he cannot seem to get out of his own way. His failures and temptations are all too human.

Never mind. God can use that too. We can take some encouragement from that fact at least.

Too Hot to Handle: The Christian View of Premarital Sex [Part 2]

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

In an article appropriately entitled “Premarital Sex: Is It A Sin Or Not?” Charles Toy of TheChristianLeft.org rather predictably contends it’s … not:

“There is no passage of the Bible that references premarital sex as a sin against God. The association between sin and premarital sex is a new Christian idea. The only possible reference to premarital sex being a sin in the Bible is in the New Testament. This premise although, is generally dismissed by theologians because the Greek word πορνεία, or sexual immorality is commonly incorrectly translated into the English word fornication.”

Tom: In our earlier discussion, we discovered we agree that Mr. Toy is wrong about the association between sin and premarital sex being a “new Christian idea”. It actually goes back to Genesis. So his first point is inaccurate.

Star Trek, Salvation and Sermons

Back in the early 1990s, The Humanist magazine interviewed the famous producer Gene Roddenberry, creator of the TV show Star Trek. The first series had been off the air for years and was long into syndication. Roddenberry was in the process of cranking out its eagerly-awaited sequel, Star Trek: The Next Generation — soon to prove yet another great hit.

The interviewer got the famous producer chatting about the relationship between the show and his own secular humanist beliefs.

Semi-Random Musings (45)

I’m on the fence about the compulsive need of Western Christian minds to harmonize every instance of apparent contradiction in the Bible’s historical accounts. On the one hand, the critics need to be defanged and each upcoming generation of young believers inoculated from the skepticism they breed. On the other, I am personally comfortable with the knowledge that the originals of these manuscripts passed muster with generations that lived much closer to or even during the events these accounts preserve.

If these believers did not find fault or write defenses to similar criticisms in their own day, why would we imagine we are better at spotting errors than they were?

New Songs and Ultimate Mouth-Stoppers

From a literary perspective, I find the resolution of the book of Job perfectly satisfying. Sure, it’s a whole other world culturally, it’s translated from another language, and it’s incredibly ancient, which means the uncertainty of the Hebrew text for this word or that figure of speech is footnoted more often than in other scriptures. That said, it’s a tremendous piece of writing, and God’s four-chapter response to Job’s perplexity and distress is its epic and poetic climax.

From a theological perspective, however, modern Christian readers may walk away from the book’s conclusion feeling something significant about the problem of human suffering still needs addressing.

Anonymous Asks (379)

“What does it mean that everything is meaningless?”

Today’s question comes from the NIV’s rendering of the second verse of Ecclesiastes. The NIV is one of only two English translations out of the most common 35 that has elected to go with the word “meaningless” in this context. People are far more familiar with the King James: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

The vast majority of English translations (21 of 35) follow the KJV.