Feminism and the LGBT movement both ardently reject gender and sexuality as a God-given distinction. Instead they embrace secular humanism and individualistic self-actualization as the ultimate guides to life. Modern American Christians have a choice to make: do we accept the continually evolving sensibilities of the culture around us on these fundamental issues, or do we take God at His Word and thereby risk being slapped with epithets like bigot, sexist, misogynist, and homophobe?
Marriage and parenting are sacred to Christians.
Or at least they should be. But let’s not kid ourselves. Confusing how things should be with how they actually and consistently are is naive and unproductive.
Last summer the Supreme Court of the United States of America took it upon itself to attempt a radical redefinition of traditional marriage in the name of “LGBT rights.” Or perhaps more accurately, the traditional definition of marriage was officially trampled on and discarded in a 5-4 decision favoring the perverse vision of men like President Barack Obama. He more loudly than anyone championed this wicked folly and then celebrated it by lighting up the White House in the rainbow colors now associated with the LGBT movement.
With some scandalous and disingenuous exceptions, Christians all over America have opposed “gay marriage” as an outrageous and abominable sacrilege. Yet critics have pointed to rampant infidelity, divorce, and serial monogamy throughout modern American society – even among professing American Christians – and subsequently decried opponents of “marriage equality” as narrow-minded hypocrites who haven’t gotten the memo that heterosexuals have already trampled on traditional marriage more than homosexuals ever could.
For two high-profile examples from last year, consider Kim Davis – the Kentucky clerk who had been married four times and yet refused to grant marriage licenses to homosexual couples – and Josh Duggar – eldest son of the famous conservative Christian family from TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, caught cheating on his wife when Ashley Madison accounts were leaked to the public by hackers.
It might surprise you to hear me say it, but critics of Christians are not all wrong when they point to a double-standard on the part of those opposing homosexuality as ungodly on the one hand, yet excusing other ways of rejecting God’s plan for marriage and sexuality in their own life.
Sincerity doesn’t mean perfection, but it does require some commitment to consistency.
If we really believe that God ordained marriage as being one man and one woman for life – faithful to one another, raising and training children together in love and truth and godliness – we Christians would be the worst sort of hypocrites to care only about “gay marriage.”
We tragically lost sight of God’s plan for the family.
Christians, if they have studied and believed God’s Word in any measure, have to be in favor of husbands and wives sincerely loving God by devotedly loving one another in the way God has prescribed.
Therefore, supposing we are devoted to obeying and honoring what God says concerning marriage and family life, we have to be opposed to not just “gay marriage,” but divorce and infidelity also. Why is that, you may ask? Because these things are also antithetical to the Creator’s plan for the family, and we spit in the Almighty’s face when we self-righteously pontificate about everyone else’s sins even as we flaunt and excuse our own.
One major, fundamental way in which we’ve rejected God’s plan for the family in America is by allowing feminism to creep into our hearts and minds, radically transforming how we perceive everything from gender identity to the roles of men and women in family and society.
It would not be overstating things to point out that feminism – by its rejection of Christian beliefs on individuality, marriage, and family – actually paved the way for a dramatic increase in broken homes, children being born out of wedlock, infidelity, divorce, and the relentless LGBT campaign to completely abolish not only traditional marriages and families, but to abolish the concept of gender entirely.
Feminism, after all, hates that the Christian God is referred to with the male pronoun. Feminism hates God’s plan for the family and writes it off as antiquated patriarchy. Feminism decries “traditional marriage” as oppressive and denigrating towards women. Feminism all but comes right out and says that women are inherently morally superior to men because men have sought to rule over women for innumerable ages, and women have for too long shouldered disproportionately the burden of maintaining marriages and child-rearing at the expense of realizing their greater potential.
But wait. What are feminists talking about when they make such complaints? Marital responsibility isn’t a one-way street according to the Bible, so it shouldn’t be according to Christians either.
“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.”
Contrary to what feminists might suppose or claim about Christianity being sexist or denigrating wives and mothers and sisters and daughters, nowhere does God’s Word tell us women are to be used up and abused and trampled on. Rather the clear and consistent message is that they are to be loved and cherished and honored. Yes, the Bible tells us women are the weaker vessel. Yet even common sense should tell us that, and it’s ridiculous to argue the point or be offended by it.
Reading verses like 1 Peter 3:7 we cannot come away supposing the responsibility for a godly marriage and family falls exclusively on women as wives and mothers, nor even disproportionately on them. In fact, the Bible flat out tells us that men who are harsh and cruel and overbearing with their wives, as feminists insist all men will be when they are given authority, may even find that God will tune them out when they call on Him, even as they ignore their wives’ pleas for consideration and kindness. The Bible literally says that men who are cruel and oppressive toward their wives will not have their prayers heard by God above.
That American marriages would ever crumble because men became disillusioned at their wives not satisfactorily cleaning their house, raising their children, or being sexy in the bedroom is antithetical to the Bible. Such a way of looking at family sees a man caring only about his own self-gratification and pleasure, and employing his wife as a mere housemaid, nanny, and prostitute rather than esteemed companion, friend, and partner in life.
By contrast, consider the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus:
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”
Do you see that? The Bible says men should have a self-sacrificing love for their wives such that they would humbly die for them if necessary.
But that assessment is so easily made and accepted – that men should love rather than use and abuse their wives. Its barely worth mentioning. One risks nothing in the stating of it in our society as one may in, for instance, Islamic nations where women are treated as cattle and publicly tortured and beaten and murdered for the most evil and idiotic of reasons. It really goes without saying in our country that men shouldn’t mistreat women. An American will agree with you unreservedly that men can sometimes be cruel and terrible, and that they should be taken behind the woodshed for it when they are.
Rather than content ourselves with bandwagons full of such low-hanging fruit, however, let’s consider the hard truths that aren’t warmly received in our culture. Let’s examine the truths which are all the more needful for us to know and believe for the same reason they are not warmly received.
Rather than take our marching orders from feminism and beat men over the heads once again with generalized accusations and warnings against being idiots and jerks, let’s talk about where feminism itself and the women who embrace it are wrong.
Feminism is wrong to reject men as the heads of their own households.
What we often overlook – what is arguably a much wider-spread epidemic in American families than women and children being trampled on by self-absorbed husbands and fathers – is that men are often disrespected and dismissed as if their role as husbands and fathers were optional, inconvenient, and a nuisance.
This in turn, whether we are prepared to admit it or not, contributes directly to men abandoning their families – whether they physically run away or become only mentally and emotionally vacant.
“It is better to live in a corner of the housetop
than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.”
And that’s just what men do. They check out. They go live in a corner of the housetop, or they run away when confronted with quarrelsome women.
True to form, feminism then points to men abandoning their wives and children as further proof that the disrespect they initiated toward men was warranted all along, conveniently ignoring the important detail that it was in large part the disrespect which led in the first place to the those men growing frustrated, despairing, and checking out.
Would you demand proof that American men are often disrespected? Just watch one episode of any television sit-com from the past few decades. Or listen to a circle of average women talk about their husbands or boyfriends for even 5-10 minutes.
American men are constantly portrayed as big, hairy, idiotic babies who prove themselves to be either shallow and inept fools when they are passive and self-absorbed, or else presumptuous jerks when they assert responsibility for the people and circumstances around them.
The laughs are almost exclusively had at the expense of men, whereas it is offensive and outrageous sexism for a man to mock a woman because of her womanhood. The caricatures of maleness come in an endless variety in America, but they are uniformly skewed in favor of denigrating men and putting women above them as smarter, more sophisticated, and generally superior in both motives and judgment.
This is feminism’s comeuppance for all those generations of fathers and grandfathers who supposedly enslaved and repressed our mothers and grandmothers. Now it is the woman’s turn to rule. In order to realize true equality, men must be brought low and humbled – or, more accurately, humiliated – so that women can ascend to their rightful place. There are no two ways about it: feminism seeks vengeance against and subjugation of men for the perceived sins of their fathers.
As a consequence of the trend in American pop culture toward putting men down and raising women up, women have come to be regarded as the primary custodians of marriage and the family. Only women are competent and sensitive enough to care deeply about such matters and oversee them effectively.
‘Hey, kids! Want a stupid idea for how to deal with a problem you’re having? Go ask dad – he’s a moron. If you need a good idea, however, you’re going to need to ask your mom. She’s smart.’
Men are mocked and resented whether they are passive or active, seen as occasionally useful for opening pickle jars and watching the kiddos for mom when she has errands to run or wants to hang out with her friends.
But watch what happens to an American man who steps out of line. See him quickly cut back down to size by the feminists in his life when he starts to assert himself or feel competent and capable. See him mocked and jeered by women, especially if he openly contradicts or, God forbid, tries to lead them.
Yet what do the Scriptures say?
“However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”
“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”
Feminism portrays men and women as competitors instead of compatriots.
Read aloud to a feminist where the Bible says wives should respect and submit to their husbands – I dare you.
Feminism has told women that men are too selfish and brutish to be trusted with authority, especially over women, therefore women must be the ones to rule. Women must rule, and not only over themselves, but also over men.
What I find interesting is how closely this tendency in feminism to try to put women in charge resembles the prophetic judgment God gave to Adam and Eve in Eden after they brought sin into the world.
“Then [God] said to the woman,
“I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
and in pain you will give birth.
And you will desire to control your husband,
but he will rule over you.”
Rather than repenting of this inclination, feminism urges women to embrace the desire to wear the pants in their households. In the process, though they wouldn’t like hearing it or admitting to it, they are thereby fulfilling God’s words to Eve, the first woman.
In American families this leads to many men and women having an adversarial relationship, seeing one another as competitors trying to gain the upper hand or avoid losing face in a never-ending struggle for dominance.
This is why even a simple question of which restaurant to eat at can quickly devolve into a big argument. And guess again if you think the argument is really about where to eat. The bigger question is who is (or isn’t) in charge, who respects (or doesn’t respect) who, and who defers (or doesn’t defer) to who.
Feminism’s open hostility toward and contempt for men has driven a wedge between husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, by teaching women from girlhood on up that they must wean themselves from men because:
“Anything you can do, I can do better.”
As comical as the scene from Annie Get Your Gun is, it illustrates perfectly the combative results of pitting women and men against one another instead of encouraging them to compliment each other.
For a real life and high profile example of this, just look at the two candidates put forward by the Democratic Party in this 2016 presidential election – Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Ask young supporters of the Former Secretary of State what accomplishments qualify Hillary to be President and watch them draw a blank.
Yes, I realize every political candidate running for office must reiterate in a thousand ways during debates and speeches and ad campaigns how ‘Anything these other candidates can do, I can do better.’
But you and I both know that Hillary’s primary qualification is that she can do the job of President better than anyone else because she is a woman, and it is now the woman’s turn to rule.
Consider the word of the Lord to the prophet Isaiah:
“My people—infants are their oppressors,
and women rule over them.
O my people, your guides mislead you
and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.”
God does not speak highly of women ruling over a people, but rather associates that circumstance with a culture being misled by false guides. Could there be a better way to describe Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in particular?
Sadly, despite her complete lack of charm and authenticity, despite her track record of gross incompetence and corruption and dishonesty and intimidating women raped and assaulted by her husband, many Americans would vote for Hillary Clinton for no better reason than that it would give America its first female President, thereby fulfilling the decades-long dream of feminists to prove that women can and will do anything men can do, only women will do these things better.
Feminism urged women to vie with men in the workplace.
As ill-suited as she is for the role given how she bungled being Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton as President of the United States would certainly be a landmark in American history. Her election would be the cherry on top the hot fudge sundae of over 50 years of women vying for men’s jobs.
According to the Pew Research Center, 70% of American households saw only the father employed back in 1960 – when modern feminism really started gaining traction. At this same time only 25% of American households had a dual income arrangement.
By 2012 the numbers had almost completely flipped. Now 60% of American households were sending both father and mother into the workplace and in only 31% of households was the father sole breadwinner.
American wives and mothers began to leave their homes for the workplace in greater numbers around the same time feminism championed the legalization and de-stigmatization of birth control and abortion. And make no mistake. With Supreme Court victories in 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut and 1973’s Roe v. Wade, it is no coincidence that the rapid rise in dual income households from 1960 to the present began to happen right as women began also restraining their motherhood through infanticide and contraceptives.
It was not only that a woman’s ability to prevent or terminate pregnancy facilitated her entrance into the workforce in greater numbers, though that is no doubt true.
A revolutionary shift in attitudes about sexuality, gender, and the family was directly responsible for women abandoning their posts as wives and mothers in the home. More than anything else, it was this shift in the hearts and minds of women that led to both their restraint of motherhood and their pursuit of careers to gain greater independence from their husbands.
And so, captivated by feminism’s siren song of autonomy and self-actualization, droves of American women stepped away from being wives and mothers and entered the workforce to vie with men.
Feminism and the LGBT movement – the godless tree and its perverted fruit.
There’s a reason feminism and the LGBT movement both ardently reject gender and sexuality as a God-given distinction. And that reason is that the feminist movement gave birth to children who saw their mothers embracing secular humanism and individuality. You might say these children were trained up in the way they should not go, and when they grew old they did not depart from it. In other words, the LGBT movement is the ideological offspring of feminism.
Think about it. Generations of Americans have been indoctrinated in the theory of evolution by the public education system. The old phrase ‘monkey see, monkey do’ is an apt summary of the way in which children who are raised to believe they are descended from apes through natural processes will adopt the morality of animals. After all, why not?
In the animal kingdom, dominance is decided by whoever is stronger or more cunning or more aggressive.
What’s that? You don’t want to be dominated? Just puff your chest out and make yourself loud and flashy. That’ll scare off would-be predators.
What’s that? You want to be the one in charge, the one dominating others? Employ the same tactics, but with a bit more biting and clawing. That’ll cow your rivals into submission.
Just watch a troop of monkeys for any amount of time. Whatever a monkey wants they will have, if they can take it by force or subtle maneuvering.
Animals are apparently unconcerned with the will of a divine Judge who will someday call them to account for their deeds and misdeeds. Animals exercise only that restraint which is absolutely necessary for their physical survival in this world, with no apparent concern for God’s inevitable judgment or life after death. And it is this sort of animalistic, “Progressive,” secular thinking which American children have been indoctrinated by for decades now.
Consider how many generations of American children have been raised in homes governed and regulated by feminism.
The children grew up seeing their parents vie for dominance like a couple of monkeys. They saw their mothers enter the workforce just as their fathers did, amid claims that only artificial and unfair social constructs differentiated one parent from the other.
Many American children grew up watching their parents divorce and change spouses, in some cases multiple times. All the while the decision-making paradigm has been clear: man is just another animal, yet is also the measure of all things; you should do whatever makes you happy, even if that means breaking your vows and abandoning your post. Above all else, “be true to yourself.” After all, why not? You’re just a monkey!
In light of this, it’s no wonder the feminist tree planted 50 years ago bore the LGBT fruit of our day.
What else could children raised in an environment of open hostility toward masculinity conclude, especially if their fathers abandoned their families and were not there to provide an example to counter the criticisms leveled? The daughters were trained to resent and distrust men as unreliable and irresponsible.
Why would it surprise us to see them embrace the companionship of women instead? Why would it surprise us when the sons learned to throw off their masculinity or attraction toward women from a certainty that women would despise their maleness as something repulsive and malignant?
Seen honestly, feminism and the LGBT movement have both rejected wholesale God’s plan for humanity, decrying as unfair and oppressive the notion that men and women have any personal responsibility before God whatsoever. Both social reformation campaigns have focused on gender and sexuality as the fields on which they seek to do battle with Christianity, and yet the implications for rejecting what God’s Word says about gender and sexuality do not end with those aspects of our person-hood related to gender and sexuality; they extend to every other area of our life as well.
Christ is either Lord of everything and everyone, or else he is Lord of nothing and no one.
Let’s return to honoring women as women and men as men.
What sort of folly would it be if I were to despair that I cannot breastfeed my two-month old son like my wife can? Or that I did not get pregnant and give birth to him?
My wife Lauren can and has done those things. By God’s glorious design, she is built and suited for doing those and many other wonderful things. And yet, though I admire and am awestruck by the way God designed women, my wife in particular, I have the utmost respect rather than jealousy for what my wife can do that I cannot.
Just so, it would be folly for my wife to despair that she does not have the same combination of strengths and abilities I do, or does not have some of my strengths and abilities in equal measure to me. Just as her strengths don’t diminish me, my strengths don’t diminish her.
What does diminish both men and women, however, is when we dismiss the inherent, God-given femininity of women with contempt as making them less a person, or as if they are insufficient in their personhood if we recognize that their gifts and talents are not the same as those which men possess. Just so, it diminishes both men and women when we heap scorn and contempt on men for being men.
In order to counteract the lie of feminism, we have to recognize that it does not honor women to insist they become just like men in order to be valued.
Men and women should have different, albeit equally important, roles in family and society.
Consider again the words of the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth:
“For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”
God established marriage as one man and one woman for life, and we Christians cannot allow ourselves to be led astray any longer into rebellion by either feminism or the LGBT movement. We see now what rotten fruit the tree of godlessness has borne. We see how the minds of children raised by feminism have become twisted and distorted to reject gender or sexuality as anything but a means of self-indulgence and personal gratification. But true, authentic, healthy, Biblical marriage requires we as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers do our separate and distinct parts to honor God.
Deadbeat dads should be anathema to the Christian – whether they physically abandon their families or only check out mentally and emotionally. Our role as husbands and fathers is more than bringing home a paycheck and opening pickle jars. Fathers, we must devote ourselves to training our sons and daughters, not putting those tasks off on our wives or baby-mamas while we check out.
Just so, that means women being mothers to our children in our homes is crucial. And no, I’m not just talking about sandwiches that need making.
We Christians must value women being devoted wives and mothers, tending to the family and home according to the gifts God has given them. And equally so, though in a different manner, we must value men being devoted husbands and fathers.
The roles of the father and mother in home are both imperative, but neither identical nor interchangeable. The raising and nurturing and training of children absolutely necessitates both the father and the mother, and children who grow up with one or both of their parents absent – either physically or mentally or emotionally – are being spiritually deprived and malnourished.
What Paul wrote to the church at Corinth was powerful, and remains as true and relevant today as it was two millenia ago when he wrote it. By the Creator’s design, men have certain inherent qualities which make them best suited to fulfilling certain roles while women have certain inherent qualities which make them best suited to fulfilling others. The Bible tells us this true in the home. Why wouldn’t it be true also in society and the workplace?
That we would deny these self-evident truths because the wool has been pulled over our eyes is to our shame. It’s time to put off being preoccupied with “political correctness” instead of making the most of our individual gifts. It’s time to put off feminism and the LGBT movement once and for all, and begin again honoring God by embracing rather than rejecting His design for both men and women. It’s time to recall what it means to be biblically correct when it comes to gender.