The Gender Gospel has come to play. Again.

I am sitting here this Sunday afternoon with anxiety knotting in my stomach as I await the commencement of this year's Desiring God Conference for Pastors, which happens to be called "God, Manhood, and Ministry." Oh joy.

Why the anxiety? Well, because I anticipate, first of all, an onslaught of implied negative messages about womanhood that all these pastors will gloss over and proceed to regurgitate to their congregations of men, women, and children alike, hurting countless people.

Secondly, I predict will once again be made out to be a "Jezebel" - a disobedient woman whom God is displeased with simply because I believe I am more than an artificial role, and I utterly refuse to assume this position of subordination and thus perpetuate sexism and abuse in the body of Christ. Although I am growing in strength and resolve to trust my God-given instincts and persevere in the face of opposition and condemnation,when my community - all the people I most love and respect in this world - disapprove of my convictions and push their own interpretations with the force of "God's Word" and "Design" behind it, it is very difficult to go against the tide.



In short, I fear that all this conference will be successful in doing is fueling the fires of injustice in the church - in my church (I already know firsthand how these gender doctrines perpetuate domestic abuse in the church) - and that not only angers me, but leaves me anticipating the condemnation from my leaders.

I will try to stay on top of the messages throughout the next couple of days and "figure things out," though that is reportedly a very masculine thing to do. (You see?  There I go again assuming a male role; real women are airheads who should not be given to any kinds of exploration, whether scientific, geological, or theological.)

I will sign off for now with a little tidbit my son posted on Facebook that I think some of these men would appreciate...though not for the same reasons that I do, I bet.

Twisted Patriarchal Message Of The Day, July 22, 2011

As I was contemplating exactly which patriarchal distortion I was going to publish for today (and there are too many to count), I decided that I would go with an oldie, but certainly a goodie. But before I get on with that, I thought I'd give ya a quick re-cap on all the new and exciting things I have either learned, or have had reinforced, about my womanly self in the last couple of days. And before you go turning your gaze on those independent baptists or those wayward Mormons to blame them, I suggest you look right in your very own communities to the evangelical Christians, of which I belong to. Be prepared to be enlightened, as there are many things you will probably learn about yourself and your role on this earth in the next few moments. Fasten your seat belts, ladies (and any tag-along men), and away we go!


1) Women should not have careers and, if they do, they are more prone to cheating and necessarily competing with their husbands.
2) Women do not need post-secondary educations because many Christian men do not find education in a wife a necessity.
3) It is wrong for a woman to not marry.
4) Women who do not want children are deviant.
5) Women who lead either in the home, church, or in the social sphere, are evil, rebellious, and lead men astray like Eve did, creating all the trouble we see in the world today.
6) A woman’s very identity, purpose, and value are tied into her husband and she should sink her own desires, ambitions, and individuality into her husband’s wishes and desires.
7) Women who do not take care of themselves and who are not sexually available to their husbands in the way that the Song of Solomon is so frank about (this means being willing to engage in any sort of sexual activity that the husband desires), are at least partially responsible for their husband’s adulteries.
8) Men are referred to as girly-boys when they are vain, sissies, and cowards with a lack of character (of course, because women are vain, sissies, and cowards with a lack of character).
9) Women need their true desires dictated to them if they disagree with this ideology as they are too infantile to know their own desires and what would make them happy.
10) Little girls should be raised and trained to be homemakers only.
11) Fathers need not push their daughters to take risks, or challenge them to be more courageous, because girls only need to know they are unconditionally loved by men – first by their fathers, and eventually by their husbands.
12) Fathers must give their daughters to a man in marriage, and it is wrong for a woman, adult or not, single or not, to not be under the leadership of a man.
13) God thinks menarche is the most repulsive thing in the world – the only thing disgusting enough to compare our sins to. And finally...

14) Battered women must endure being smacked one night, and then she can get help...from the church.

This one isn’t new, but it is today’s...

"Twisted Patriarchal Message Of The Day" for this 22nd day of July, 2011.

And to which self-purported "leader and protector" of women do we owe today's honorary Distorted Patriarchal Message Of The Day? None other than John,Complementarian,Piper.

“she endures, perhaps, being smacked one night, and then she seeks help ."

Am I the only evangelical Christian who sees this statement as grossly wrong?
I realize there are several ways one might interpret this, and I don’t pretend to know the exact intent behind John Piper’s statement here, but he frames the sentence very curiously.
To start, he uses the word “being” in the sentence “she endures, perhaps, *being* smacked one night, and then she seeks help” (emphasis mine). Now I’ve listened to enough of John Piper’s messages, and read enough of his books to know that each word he uses is carefully weighed, calculated, and is intentionally selected in keeping with the purposed message he wants to communicate. In this case, he employs the present continuous suffix “being,” leaving the exact message dangerously vague...or is he?

“she endures, perhaps, being smacked one night, and then she seeks help. "


Is he saying she endures a smack one night, or is he saying she endures repeated smacks one night? It’s impossible to pin down his intended meaning based on this answer alone.
And let’s say in this case he is strictly referring to one single smack. Does he factor in how hard that smack is? Where the wife gets smacked? Whether or not there are children watching, children in her arms? What if it is an ongoing pattern of repeated isolated instances of her “being smacked one night” – how many times does the wife endure this “being smacked one night” before she can leave the marriage or call the police and have her husband charged?

Are you kidding?!? There isn’t anything the least bit practical about this comment...unless it was intended to be inclusive of all domestic abuse situations - and even then, it is a horrific thing to suggest!
I submit to you that John Piper knows that very well. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a dumb man. And, unfortunately, when read into the context of the message’s entirety, the picture starts to look even grimmer.

In this particular sentence, you find an ill-placed “perhaps” right smack in the middle of the sentence, which, regrettably, has the effect of making his directives for battered women even more ambiguous: “perhaps,” in this context, implies that this particular situation of “being smacked one night” (whatever he means by that) is but one situation out of multiple situations that would fall under the category of “simply hurting her” – in which cases the principle of ‘endure one night and then get help..*from the church’* would apply to each of them.

If we are to objectively consider all the data here, including context and usage of words employed by John Piper, one could easily surmise that he does not believe even a severe beating, or repeated smacks, should be treated any differently than a smack one night (if that is what he meant). It all falls under the“simply hurting her” category, and this highly intelligent man makes no other distinctions at all. I do not believe for one second that it was an oversight.

To give more weight to my understanding of Piper's pseudo-solution, he conveniently fails to address the situations in which there are beatings or repeated physical attacks as isolated issues that ought to be dealt with on their own terms – indeed, he doesn’t acknowledge these occurrences at all. That’s a funny thing to leave out when one is discussing domestic abuse.
Unless, of course, he did not leave it out, but instead intended for it to be included in his “simply hurting her” category, wherein she would “endure it one night and get help”…*from the church* - the same church that has a terrible track-record for protecting women in domestic abuse situations.

And that makes his answer to the question that much more disgusting.

And, also curious, is how he does not regard wife battery as a severe sin on par with the more “bizarre” and more “abusive” sins such as “group sex.” While group sex and "abusive" acts are not to be endured, getting smacked apparently is.
But no surprise – it’s just one more example of the bizarre (at best) priorities of so many evangelical Christians.
But more pointedly, his insertion of the word “simply” in the sentence “he is not requiring her to sin but is *simply* hurting her” (emphasis mine) has major problems all on its own.

Unfortunately for Piper, his wording here reveals a complete lack of respect for abuse as a serious and severe violation against a woman. Either that or he has a complete lack of respect for the women who are abused.
Furthermore, if the words of Jesus are any indication of John Piper’s heart toward women, then it would be reasonable to concern ourselves with his usage of the word “simply” before the two words “hurting her.” This effectively exposes his indifferent attitude towards women – or, at the very least, it exposes his indifference to the nature of the suffering battered women endure.

This is just another example of how a Complementarian undermines his own credibility by his own attitudes that, despite his best efforts to conceal them, inevitably make their way to the surface.

And lastly, I don’t quite understand why it is that instead of acknowledging that leaders like Piper are fallible men, and as such, sometimes get it wrong, evangelicals most often attack the person pointing these things out instead of attacking the problem. I think the Church would have a higher credibility if she were more dedicated to integrity than to self-preservation. When a leader makes public statements he should know that his statements will be publicly scrutinized and debated – and they should be – especially within the church. If he can’t handle it, he should step down. As the old saying goes, “if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.”
I for one am not like him that I would force someone to stay in the kitchen against their will.

And with that, I will leave you now with my only regret...

Forgive me, Lord, but I am having a terrible time here trying not to echo the sentiments of his fan club on YouTube:

"I'd love to see him endure being smacked for a season ."

Maybe just so that he can see what it's like and perhaps be a little more mindful of the women who are listening to his crap. Really.

Is Women's Day Commemorating a Pathology?

It was a bit coincidental coming across this old video this Women's Day. It just got me thinking...was fighting for equal opportunities for women (the right to vote, to equal wages, to equal education, and to equal career opportunities) against God's design for womanhood? I know I've heard of at least one Christian leader, who, upon being asked his opinion of women's right to vote, asserted that women would not be given the right to vote in an ideal world. At the same time, popular pastors such as Mark Driscoll boldy accuse men: “If your wife is working, you are a selfish bastard. How dare you make her shoulder her half of the curse and part of yours as well!”


There does seem to be an evangelical trend toward the disenfranchisement of women in certain realms other than the church and family.

This past Sunday at church we watched Lesson 8 of the Truth Project in which Dr. Tackett explains that we can find, within the institutions of home, the church, and in the believers individual relationship within the Trinity, (The indwelling Holy Spirit sweeps us into the mysterious Trinitarian relationship), the Divine Imprint of God. (The "imprint" is the reflection of the intra-Trinitarian order of relationship.) 
But marriage and church are but two spheres; there are other spheres, such as community, state, etc. And as Dr. Tackett warns us in Lesson 8 of the Truth Project, we must be careful not to "blur the spheres" by applying the unique and particular social laws of one realm to another realm (e.g.taking the social laws of home and church, and applying them to the sphere of labour). And it would appear that this is what John Piper appears to be doing here.


Where John Piper, I think, is going wrong is how he coming to his understanding of the meaning of manhood and womanhood. He believes that true manhood and womanhood can only be discovered by definitive roles in distinction to one another. (e.g. intrinsic to masculinity is leadership, and intrinsic to femininity is submission.)  In his book A Vision of Biblical Complementary Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible, he cites Corinthians 11:3-16 (especially vv. 8-9, 14); Ephesians 5:21-33 (especially vv. 31-32); and 1 Timothy 2:11-14 (especially vv. 13-14), as proof of this ontological subordination of women in the Bible, but he is doing precisely what Dr.Tackett has called, "blurring the spheres."

Each one of these texts Piper invokes are dealing with the specific relationship of a husbands and a wife in marriage (the family), and structure within the church (?). He may be correct in noting that "the foundation of this differentiation [as expressed in the aforementioned passages] is traced back to the way things were in Eden before sin warped our relationships. Differentiated roles were corrupted, not created, by the fall. They were created by God." But what he is neglecting to address here is that back in Eden, Adam and Eve were not merely man and woman, they were husband and wife. Husbands and wives were ordered these ways because the institution of marriage is a parable of Christ and the Church (His bride), and a reflection of the intra-Trinitarian relationship. This applies to but two spheres as far as I can tell. But looking at the structure God has designed for marriage and the church is not proof that it is God's will for us to carry the laws and order from within a marriage and apply them to every other sphere.

The role of submission of the "woman" (note: in the Greek it could mean either 'women' or 'wives')  is based on origin, yes. In 1 Corinthians 11 we are told that a "woman" must have her head covered because woman came from man. Ephesians 5 expounds further on what this "headship" means, qualifying it as "the source" of woman. This is definitely in keeping with the creation of woman in Genesis. Adam, speaking of his new wife, declares: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man." But why - why was woman taken out of man? Jesus tells us quite clearly, in conjunction to the declaration of the first newly-wed husband, Adam, in Genesis: "therefore (because woman was taken out of man)  a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Clearly headship and submission exist for one purpose: oneness. Woman was taken from man with the express purpose of becoming one with man. The two now work together as one agent. But in the larger economy, these particular role distinctions for men and women do not exist. Unless it is also the role of women to become one with all men, this role of submission to a "head" only pertains to the relationship in marriage wherein "the two become one." In fact, Ephesians 5 makes it clear that women are only to submit to their "own husbands."

(In light of this, I'm not quite sure what to make of the seeming transference of female subordination in the realm of marriage into the realm of church - I suppose if, within the already complete reflection of the Trinity  in the sphere of the church, women are still subordinate, one might rightfully wonder what's going on...

THE TRINITY
1.Father 2. Son 3. Holy Spirit

THE FAMILY
1. Husbands 2. Wives 3. Children

THE CHURCH
1. Christ 2. Leaders 3. Flock...and women

If there were consistency, this pattern of female subordination would extend itself to all other spheres too, would it not? So I guess now I am questioning whether or not women ought to be subordinate in the church and I suppose my next task, now that I've discovered there are no loopholes to slip out of the subordination of women in the realm of marriage, is to delve into matters of the church. But that is for a later time.)

The point is, I see no evidence anywhere in the Bible that suggests that men and women in general must adhere to this structure - or even that it would be a healthy thing if they were to. There is no place on earth, nor has there ever been, that you can honestly call a healthy culture in which women are altogether disenfranchised and not permitted to take an active leadership role. And this would be contradicting the Bible, which gives us at least a few examples of godly women in leadership positions who were blessed by God.

What is going on here? I think I am beginning to understand.

 John Piper asserts:

"He (God) designed our differences and they are profound. They are not mere physiological prerequisites for sexual union. They go to the root of our personhood."

And I agree with this. However, he does not leave it there. He adds:

"The tendency today is to stress the equality of men and women by minimizing the unique significance of our maleness or femaleness."

While I do not think we should be trying to minimize the unique significance of our maleness or femaleness, I don't think that taking the opposite extreme - constructing our own artificial "unique significance" through man-made role distinctions, and then in some strange attempt to prove sexual significance by emphasizing those distinctions - is what God had in mind. Nor do I think that the significance of maleness and femaleness can be found in terms of roles. It is my belief that sexual identity cannot be found in "a role." 

Granted, God seems to have designated a particular law or order withing a certain social sphere - I am not arguing with that - but this does not assume that our very identity is grounded within a law or order found in any one particular social sphere. It must be rooted in something deeper than that, otherwise, when a man is under the authority of a female police officer, or a female probation officer, or a female judge, etc., he becomes less a man. No doubt the reason why John Piper is even the least bit uncomfortable in his masculinity when he is taking a back seat to a female bus driver. But this is foolishness.

Where then is our identity found?

As I understand it, manhood/womanhood is built right into us - it is an intrinsic part of who we are as opposed to a role that we play. It is rooted in God, and God alone. (God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27) ).  

As John Piper states himself:

"...Paul Jewett, in his very insightful book, Man as Male and Female, argues persuasively that maleness and femaleness are essential, not peripheral, to our personhood: Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. As the self is always aware of itself as an ‘I,’ so this ‘I’ is always aware of itself as himself or herself. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being. At the human level there is no ‘I and thou’ per se, but only the ‘I’ who is male or female confronting the ‘thou,’ the ‘other,’ who is also male or female.]"

And I couldn't agree more!


When a man is at home looking after the children and a woman is at work, it does not in any way make him less of a man or her less of a woman.
Men, by virtue of being men, reflect something of God's heart in a way that women cannot; likewise, women, by virtue of being women, reflect something of God's heart in a way that men cannot. Our identity is found in the divine image-bearing qualities that are intrinsic to our personhood. And there cannot be a gender-neutral person, only male people and female people.

This belief that manhood and womanhood are grounded in changing, artificial roles, however legitimate they may be in certain contexts, might be the reason some Christian men like Mark Driscoll are so insecure in their own manhood. They feel they have to bolster their sense of masculinity by belittling femininity, and, by extension, homosexuals (because they are not "masculine" enough.) Because they are under the impression that the measure of masculinity is the extent to which one has been divorced from femininity (the more unfeminine you behave, the more masculine you are) instead of in their essence as men made made in God's image, they are very conscious about putting as much distance as possible between masculinity and femininity. Hence, Driscoll's problem with the "chickified" church and his demand for "manly" music. Having to participate in these "feminine" things threaten their security in their masculinity and therefore, their identity. The only problem is, acting less like a woman isn't the equivalent of acting like a man. One can act less like a woman, for example, by acting like a pig.

The unfortunate truth is, this belief is not just unfortunate for these men, but outright dangerous. It can only damage the relationships between men and women. It can easily be misconstrued to mean that women are not the image of God, but the derivative image, existing solely to "help" the man instead of being equal counterparts, helping one another side by side toward a common goal. It can easily perpetuate the already-existing evils that target women with impunity all around the globe.

That said, I appreciate how John Piper is very clear that he would not have his understanding of manhood and womanhood forced on everyone, and I do admire his desire to be consistent.

Be Courageous, President Obama!

Abortion is About God!

We have a lot to learn from Christians in the States. At least there abortion is a voting issue...and they already have at least some laws restricting abortion. We get more of a reaction from most Christians here when the provincial government tries to take the "traditional" Lord's prayer out of the legislature than we get for the fact that unborn babies in Canada can and are being killed in the womb up until the ninth month.

I'm sorry for the rant, but it just infuriates me to no end. Abortion is no less than child sacrifice. In ancient ceremonies where children were being sacrificed, as the child was lowered in the fire they made a tremendous noise with flutes and drums so the cries of the child would not reach the ears of the people. Pro-aborts use the same strategy. They make a lot of noise about "choice," "reproductive rights," and "a woman's right to choose", calling those who want to protect the children "misogynists" and "superstitious" to cloud the real issue at hand, which is THE CHILD who's paying the price. This is precisely why the unborn victim's bill was soooooo threatening. They just can't allow those cries to reach the ears of the people. Meanwhile, women who want to birth their babies are deprived of their choice and there is absolutely NO retribution.
I'm sick of the babies being brutally murdered. I'm sick of their mothers being traumatized and scarred. I'm sick of the dishonesty. I'm sick of the injustice. I'm sick of sites like Adult Christianity promoting the death culture in the so-called name of Christ. More than anything, I'm sick of the silence and apathy in this country. This should be an election issue and we need to be pushing it until it becomes one. We need to never shut up about it no matter how tired or annoyed people get with us. We need to pray like we've never prayed before and ask God to move in the hearts of the doctors, nurses, abortionists, mothers, fathers, and politicians.

This issue IS about God, and though prayer is the most important weapon against the spiritual warfare in high places, it can't be all that we do. After all, we are supposed to be His hands and feet. Can you imagine what would have happened if William Wilberforce prayed but then didn't act to see God answer his prayers? Where's the faith in that?

As the story goes...

There were two farmers who both desperately needed rain to water their fields. They were both praying for the rain, but only one farmer prepared his fields to receive the rain. Which one had more faith?