Quote of the Day (24)

If you’re looking for a scapegoat in the ongoing war of the sexes, don’t look here:

“Weak men drive women insane, and insane women make men weak.”

— John C. Wright

Not wrong, but we’re no closer to a solution.

Feminism has already made tremendous inroads into today’s church. The war of the sexes is not yet waged in every Christian home and place of worship, but if you haven’t experienced it, trust me, it’s coming.

Feminist Inroads

Contempt for men in evangelical circles is so common even atheists have noticed. So-called evangelicals are making their living driving wedges between husbands and wives and redefining their respective roles in home and in Christian ministry. This, we are told, is an improvement; a better understanding of scriptures previously misinterpreted by centuries of patriarchal culture.

Despite the incessant push for change, there are regular complaints in the secular media that all the “gains” in women’s rights over the last forty years have not actually made women any happier. In fact, they’re more miserable than ever.

Still, we can be sure the agitators are not done yet. For the social justice crowd, reconsidering an idea that isn’t working is a non-starter. Reform is unidirectional. Doubling down is their only option.

Circularity and Self-Perpetuation

But as Wright’s quote points out, this is not a “woman” problem: it’s circular and self-perpetuating. It’s a cycle of sin animated by the failures of both sexes. Women push for change and men trip over themselves virtue-signaling their progressive bona fides by competing to capitulate even faster than the man beside them, or to most convincingly articulate the case for an even more feminized Christianity. Finding out which sex is chicken and which is egg is not particularly helpful in addressing the problem. There’s enough mud being lobbed around already.

Here’s a thought: Submission, however we may define it, cannot possibly include hurling one’s honest, considered interpretation of scriptural roles under the oncoming feminist bus in the hope of brokering a temporary peace (and it will be very temporary indeed).

Submission vs. Doctrinal Capitulation

Paul, who both taught Christian submission and practiced it, prefaces his instructions about being “in submission” with the words, “As in all the churches of the saints”. There is one way, Paul says, and ONLY one, that these things are done in the churches. The fact that all Christians (including men) are to be characteristically submissive doesn’t change that a whit.

Again, when Paul speaks of displaying submissiveness through the voluntary wearing of symbols of authority, he concludes with the words, “If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God”. Neither doctrine nor practice are subject to negotiation.

I’ll say it again: Submitting to our fellow believers does not mean doctrinal capitulation. The scripture says what it says.

If Wright is correct (and experience tells me he’s spot on), that “weak men drive women insane”, then whatever the answer to the war of the sexes in Christendom may be, it is surely not greater displays of weakness on the part of Christian men.