First of all, let me say I hope your book AGAINST FEMINISM is a terrific success.
Of course, like a sex mad salmon fighting his way past Grizzley Bears and up waterfalls, the current is not in your favor.
While I enjoyed A brief history of Feminism and found it thought-provoking, some of the thoughts it provoked were unsettling. Is Christianity the most patriarchal and bigoted religion in the world? Yes, stability requires that people know their place in society and that we don't rock the boat; but the Western world is on a oarless raft about to hit the rapids.
Two thoughts: (1) "Sometimes a rabbinic prayer is quoted in which thanks is given for not having been born a woman, yet we read in Luke 18 of a Pharisee who gave thanks to God that he was not like other men. " I don't know if you added this as a joke; but clearly it has nothing to do with sexuality.
(2) The "war" between men and women is recorded in the book of Genesis and history tells of a tribe of Amazons who dominated Turkey and the Steppes centuries ago. C.G. Jung writes of the anima and the animus and how all of us have male and female traits. It is a battle taking place within all of us and not even praying to Mary the mother of God will stop the turmoil. It is simply a fact of life. Like getting cancer.
The struggle for power is the basis of human psychology. The United Methodist Church ordains female pastors and the Catholic church (searching in vain for young men not addicted to Porn Hub) has recruited nuns to take up the duties of their self-flagellating brothers.
Ironically, those who have been fighting for women's rights since the early sixties have now been erased by the perverts who believe women are just men without dicks.
About my book against feminism being a terrific success, there is not much likelihood of that! I did not expect any success when I wrote it. That is just as well, since if the book ever were to become well known, I would be a deeply hated man by the bitter and angry feminists (both male and female).
That the current is not in my favor is no concern of mine. I am not trying to change the world or save America, but only stating what I believe to be so according to the truth of Scripture. That is my obligation, and if only some Christians who claim to believe in the Bible take a second look at the world around them and understand that the world is wrong in this area, then my insignificant labors will be amply repaid.
You ask “Is Christianity the most patriarchal and bigoted religion in the world?” Some people would say it is. I believe they are in error. I believe our modern secular culture is corrupt, perverted and wrong.
You say immediately afterward that “stability requires that people know their place in society and that we don't rock the boat; but the Western world is on a oarless raft about to hit the rapids.” If we are in an oarless raft and about to hit the rapids (and I agree with you there), does that not say anything to you? Is it not at least remotely possible that the dominant belief in a material universe without divine providence has not made society more rational, but less so?
And, we do need to know our place in society, but just what is that place? For men and women it is the same – our place is under God, before whom we will have to stand after the resurrection from the dead in a day of judgment. There, men and women will be judged by the same basic standards and given the same rewards and the same punishments.
What if the universe did not come about by accident, but was created by God? And what if human beings are not merely accidents, little conglomerations of chemicals with no immortal souls? What if the God who created us also has rules we ought to follow for our flourishing and our benefit, and that the despising of God and the rejection of his rules has born the fruits that we can see all around us, with much worse to come?
And what if the thoroughly modern men and women who believe that true fulfilment is found in the unbridled satisfaction of all of their desires and ambitions are all of them totally deceived?
I did not understand your failure to grasp my comparison of the two prayers. The rabbinic prayer expressing thankfulness for not having been made a woman has been used as an example of how women were looked down on and despised before Christ supposedly came to elevate them to new dignity. So, in my short history I not only gave many examples from the Bible and from classical antiquity to show that women were valued as persons before the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. I also gave an example of a prayer showing that spiritual elitism was not limited to females, but could also be applied to men as well.
It is not a question of sexuality, it is a question of unjustified feelings of superiority over others, which men can have against women, or against other men of different races, political persuasions, or religious beliefs. And women, too, can harbor false feelings of superiority against men whom some women can and do despise as being inferior and inherently bad.
There is no war whatever between men and women recorded in the book of Genesis. Women and men did have different roles, but I argue that that was the natural result of innate differences between men and women, and not because of any warfare being waged against women.
As to Amazons, Greek mythology has many interesting stories. We do not read in Tacitus, Plutarch or Polybius of women marching long distances or going into battle with men, swinging heavy swords and battle axes for hours on end.
Concerning Jung, I have no interest in his concept of animus and anima. Men can be sympathetic, compassionate and caring, and women can be strong and brave – I see those as human qualities, not as masculine or feminine ones. True, in the old days men and women exercised the same virtues in different ways and different settings, but they are at bottom the same virtues.
As to Jung, as far as I can tell his concepts of masculinity and femininity were based on social and biological considerations only. That we might have been designed as male and female by God seems to have been outside his field of study.
As to the battle between male and female traits taking place in all of us, I think that has no basis in reality and was merely a Jungian hallucination. The real battle is between truth and falsehood, sin and righteousness, virtue and vice. And is this really a fact of life, like getting cancer? It is a fact of life that we have capacities for good and for evil, but that division has nothing to do with gender, as men can be good or evil, and women can be good or evil, and both share in the same sins and virtues.
“The struggle for power is the basis of human psychology.” Is it? I don’t think so. People say, think, do, feel and believe many things that have nothing to do with a struggle for power. That was one of Nietzsche’s ideas, and he was a certified lunatic, with many emotional and psychological problems long before his final crack-up. That reflects a very dismal and restrictive view of life.
The United Methodist Church ordains female pastors? The official Methodist bureaucracy is apostate, it is a corrupt and worldly church that has nothing to do with the doctrines and teachings of John Wesley. As to the Catholic Church, there may be some nice individual Catholics, but I believe (along with many others) that the most distinctive features of Roman Catholicism emerged centuries, or a thousand years or more after Christ, and the gigantic Roman power structure is loaded with useless medieval baggage that has zero scriptural basis (including the doctrine of transubstantiation and the doctrines of the Mass).
Finally, it is not in the least ironic that the feminists who since the early sixties have been laboring to obliterate gender distinctions have been replaced by people who want to pursue those ideas to the farthest extremes. They labored so hard to say that women were no different from men, that they should act like men and dress like men and that was their true happiness, and now they find that the destruction of gender barriers was maybe not such a good idea after all.
It all comes down to the basic question: What is the meaning of life? Is it to do whatever we feel like, to follow our own appetites and ambitions with no regard to the God who made us and to whom we must answer in the end? Or does the true meaning of life include limits, laws, rules and obligations which God has ordained for our benefit and for our flourishing?
Hey Joe, thanks for writing. I do not always express myself clearly - so let me clarify a couple of things I might have said. Those two scripture verses you quoted don't belong together in any way. The first verse (one I don't remember) makes it clear that the writer feels men are superior to women. The second verse is critical of hypocrites who pray in public. I don't see a connection.
As regards my comments regarding the eternal struggle between men and women having begun in the Garden of Eden..... If I am not mistaken, Eve talked Adam into sinning and the church has condemned women in general ever since.
I am convinced the universe did not come about by accident and that it is currently and constantly being created by God.
In the first prayer the man felt superior to women. This was not from the Bible. It was taken from some of the rabbinic writings. I find one article saying it comes from the Talmud. Not having read the Talmud I do not know if it is being misquoted or not, but it has been used to show that before Christ came women were commonly taken to be non-entities, until Christ liberated them. Of course, the liberation of Christ was for men and women, and was spiritual, not political.
In the second verse the hypocrite felt superior to other people who were less righteous than he was. You are right, the purpose of the biblical message is to condemn self-righteousness, but in both cases, we have someone who imagines himself to be superior. And I wanted to make the obvious point that if some men may feel superior to women, they may also feel superior to other men as well - all of which self-glorification is vanity and sin relative to the infinity of God.
About the war between men and women being recorded in Genesis, I thought you meant the whole book showed an ongoing war between men and women, and did not think specifically of the fall of Adam and Eve. So perhaps I read that too quickly. Eve did persuade man to eat the forbidden fruit, but in I Timothy chapter 2 we read that Eve was deceived, but Adam was not deceived. This is generally interpreted to mean that Eve was deceived by Satan, but that Adam was not. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he did it anyway, possibly because his love for Eve was greater than his love for God (this is not spelled out). Thus, Adam cannot blame his sin on Eve, and God punished them both.
There was a sub-genre of medieval literature I think describing women as the source of all our woes, but this led to responses showing many positive attributes of women, not least in the Virgin Mary but also in biblical injunctions to honor our parents (both of them), husbands to love their wives, the wise woman at the end of Proverbs, the female personification of Wisdom in Proverbs chapter 1, and Paul's teaching in I Corinthians chapter 11 that "Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God."
In other words, if it weren't for women, we wouldn't be here (same for men). And, above all we read in Genesis chapter 1 that God created us male and female, and to despise the other gender is to despise what God has made.
And, in its ideal state, God's plan for men and women in marriage to support and leave each other and bring new life into the world, and raise it up, is a wonderful plan, at its best the source of many blessings and happiness.
I don't know if "the church" has condemned women ever since. Maybe the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics have some church doctrines on that, it is not a part of the Protestant tradition (though of course individual writers may say this or that).
I am glad you do not believe in a purposeless, strictly material universe. There is a God and he did create things, and currently sustains them. The New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ was the creator of the universe (Colossians 1:16-17), and that he sustains it by his word (Hebrews 1:3), meaning that all things cohere as they do because of the will of God.
This may lead to pantheism, but as I suppose you know Christianity and Judaism place a great distinction between God and his creation.
And God has not done all of this to no purpose. And it is his will that in all of the trials and tests of the world we might find true rest in his presence alone, apart from all earthly considerations.
A good word from Christ is "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh (asks) receiveth (receives); and he that seeketh (seeks) findeth (finds); and to him that knocketh (knocks) it shall be opened.
First of all, let me say I hope your book AGAINST FEMINISM is a terrific success.
Of course, like a sex mad salmon fighting his way past Grizzley Bears and up waterfalls, the current is not in your favor.
While I enjoyed A brief history of Feminism and found it thought-provoking, some of the thoughts it provoked were unsettling. Is Christianity the most patriarchal and bigoted religion in the world? Yes, stability requires that people know their place in society and that we don't rock the boat; but the Western world is on a oarless raft about to hit the rapids.
Two thoughts: (1) "Sometimes a rabbinic prayer is quoted in which thanks is given for not having been born a woman, yet we read in Luke 18 of a Pharisee who gave thanks to God that he was not like other men. " I don't know if you added this as a joke; but clearly it has nothing to do with sexuality.
(2) The "war" between men and women is recorded in the book of Genesis and history tells of a tribe of Amazons who dominated Turkey and the Steppes centuries ago. C.G. Jung writes of the anima and the animus and how all of us have male and female traits. It is a battle taking place within all of us and not even praying to Mary the mother of God will stop the turmoil. It is simply a fact of life. Like getting cancer.
The struggle for power is the basis of human psychology. The United Methodist Church ordains female pastors and the Catholic church (searching in vain for young men not addicted to Porn Hub) has recruited nuns to take up the duties of their self-flagellating brothers.
Ironically, those who have been fighting for women's rights since the early sixties have now been erased by the perverts who believe women are just men without dicks.
Thanks for your interesting comments!
About my book against feminism being a terrific success, there is not much likelihood of that! I did not expect any success when I wrote it. That is just as well, since if the book ever were to become well known, I would be a deeply hated man by the bitter and angry feminists (both male and female).
That the current is not in my favor is no concern of mine. I am not trying to change the world or save America, but only stating what I believe to be so according to the truth of Scripture. That is my obligation, and if only some Christians who claim to believe in the Bible take a second look at the world around them and understand that the world is wrong in this area, then my insignificant labors will be amply repaid.
You ask “Is Christianity the most patriarchal and bigoted religion in the world?” Some people would say it is. I believe they are in error. I believe our modern secular culture is corrupt, perverted and wrong.
You say immediately afterward that “stability requires that people know their place in society and that we don't rock the boat; but the Western world is on a oarless raft about to hit the rapids.” If we are in an oarless raft and about to hit the rapids (and I agree with you there), does that not say anything to you? Is it not at least remotely possible that the dominant belief in a material universe without divine providence has not made society more rational, but less so?
And, we do need to know our place in society, but just what is that place? For men and women it is the same – our place is under God, before whom we will have to stand after the resurrection from the dead in a day of judgment. There, men and women will be judged by the same basic standards and given the same rewards and the same punishments.
What if the universe did not come about by accident, but was created by God? And what if human beings are not merely accidents, little conglomerations of chemicals with no immortal souls? What if the God who created us also has rules we ought to follow for our flourishing and our benefit, and that the despising of God and the rejection of his rules has born the fruits that we can see all around us, with much worse to come?
And what if the thoroughly modern men and women who believe that true fulfilment is found in the unbridled satisfaction of all of their desires and ambitions are all of them totally deceived?
I did not understand your failure to grasp my comparison of the two prayers. The rabbinic prayer expressing thankfulness for not having been made a woman has been used as an example of how women were looked down on and despised before Christ supposedly came to elevate them to new dignity. So, in my short history I not only gave many examples from the Bible and from classical antiquity to show that women were valued as persons before the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. I also gave an example of a prayer showing that spiritual elitism was not limited to females, but could also be applied to men as well.
It is not a question of sexuality, it is a question of unjustified feelings of superiority over others, which men can have against women, or against other men of different races, political persuasions, or religious beliefs. And women, too, can harbor false feelings of superiority against men whom some women can and do despise as being inferior and inherently bad.
There is no war whatever between men and women recorded in the book of Genesis. Women and men did have different roles, but I argue that that was the natural result of innate differences between men and women, and not because of any warfare being waged against women.
As to Amazons, Greek mythology has many interesting stories. We do not read in Tacitus, Plutarch or Polybius of women marching long distances or going into battle with men, swinging heavy swords and battle axes for hours on end.
Concerning Jung, I have no interest in his concept of animus and anima. Men can be sympathetic, compassionate and caring, and women can be strong and brave – I see those as human qualities, not as masculine or feminine ones. True, in the old days men and women exercised the same virtues in different ways and different settings, but they are at bottom the same virtues.
As to Jung, as far as I can tell his concepts of masculinity and femininity were based on social and biological considerations only. That we might have been designed as male and female by God seems to have been outside his field of study.
As to the battle between male and female traits taking place in all of us, I think that has no basis in reality and was merely a Jungian hallucination. The real battle is between truth and falsehood, sin and righteousness, virtue and vice. And is this really a fact of life, like getting cancer? It is a fact of life that we have capacities for good and for evil, but that division has nothing to do with gender, as men can be good or evil, and women can be good or evil, and both share in the same sins and virtues.
“The struggle for power is the basis of human psychology.” Is it? I don’t think so. People say, think, do, feel and believe many things that have nothing to do with a struggle for power. That was one of Nietzsche’s ideas, and he was a certified lunatic, with many emotional and psychological problems long before his final crack-up. That reflects a very dismal and restrictive view of life.
The United Methodist Church ordains female pastors? The official Methodist bureaucracy is apostate, it is a corrupt and worldly church that has nothing to do with the doctrines and teachings of John Wesley. As to the Catholic Church, there may be some nice individual Catholics, but I believe (along with many others) that the most distinctive features of Roman Catholicism emerged centuries, or a thousand years or more after Christ, and the gigantic Roman power structure is loaded with useless medieval baggage that has zero scriptural basis (including the doctrine of transubstantiation and the doctrines of the Mass).
Finally, it is not in the least ironic that the feminists who since the early sixties have been laboring to obliterate gender distinctions have been replaced by people who want to pursue those ideas to the farthest extremes. They labored so hard to say that women were no different from men, that they should act like men and dress like men and that was their true happiness, and now they find that the destruction of gender barriers was maybe not such a good idea after all.
It all comes down to the basic question: What is the meaning of life? Is it to do whatever we feel like, to follow our own appetites and ambitions with no regard to the God who made us and to whom we must answer in the end? Or does the true meaning of life include limits, laws, rules and obligations which God has ordained for our benefit and for our flourishing?
Hey Joe, thanks for writing. I do not always express myself clearly - so let me clarify a couple of things I might have said. Those two scripture verses you quoted don't belong together in any way. The first verse (one I don't remember) makes it clear that the writer feels men are superior to women. The second verse is critical of hypocrites who pray in public. I don't see a connection.
As regards my comments regarding the eternal struggle between men and women having begun in the Garden of Eden..... If I am not mistaken, Eve talked Adam into sinning and the church has condemned women in general ever since.
I am convinced the universe did not come about by accident and that it is currently and constantly being created by God.
In the first prayer the man felt superior to women. This was not from the Bible. It was taken from some of the rabbinic writings. I find one article saying it comes from the Talmud. Not having read the Talmud I do not know if it is being misquoted or not, but it has been used to show that before Christ came women were commonly taken to be non-entities, until Christ liberated them. Of course, the liberation of Christ was for men and women, and was spiritual, not political.
In the second verse the hypocrite felt superior to other people who were less righteous than he was. You are right, the purpose of the biblical message is to condemn self-righteousness, but in both cases, we have someone who imagines himself to be superior. And I wanted to make the obvious point that if some men may feel superior to women, they may also feel superior to other men as well - all of which self-glorification is vanity and sin relative to the infinity of God.
About the war between men and women being recorded in Genesis, I thought you meant the whole book showed an ongoing war between men and women, and did not think specifically of the fall of Adam and Eve. So perhaps I read that too quickly. Eve did persuade man to eat the forbidden fruit, but in I Timothy chapter 2 we read that Eve was deceived, but Adam was not deceived. This is generally interpreted to mean that Eve was deceived by Satan, but that Adam was not. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he did it anyway, possibly because his love for Eve was greater than his love for God (this is not spelled out). Thus, Adam cannot blame his sin on Eve, and God punished them both.
There was a sub-genre of medieval literature I think describing women as the source of all our woes, but this led to responses showing many positive attributes of women, not least in the Virgin Mary but also in biblical injunctions to honor our parents (both of them), husbands to love their wives, the wise woman at the end of Proverbs, the female personification of Wisdom in Proverbs chapter 1, and Paul's teaching in I Corinthians chapter 11 that "Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God."
In other words, if it weren't for women, we wouldn't be here (same for men). And, above all we read in Genesis chapter 1 that God created us male and female, and to despise the other gender is to despise what God has made.
And, in its ideal state, God's plan for men and women in marriage to support and leave each other and bring new life into the world, and raise it up, is a wonderful plan, at its best the source of many blessings and happiness.
I don't know if "the church" has condemned women ever since. Maybe the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics have some church doctrines on that, it is not a part of the Protestant tradition (though of course individual writers may say this or that).
I am glad you do not believe in a purposeless, strictly material universe. There is a God and he did create things, and currently sustains them. The New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ was the creator of the universe (Colossians 1:16-17), and that he sustains it by his word (Hebrews 1:3), meaning that all things cohere as they do because of the will of God.
This may lead to pantheism, but as I suppose you know Christianity and Judaism place a great distinction between God and his creation.
And God has not done all of this to no purpose. And it is his will that in all of the trials and tests of the world we might find true rest in his presence alone, apart from all earthly considerations.
A good word from Christ is "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh (asks) receiveth (receives); and he that seeketh (seeks) findeth (finds); and to him that knocketh (knocks) it shall be opened.