Category: sexual ethics

Book Plunge: Christian Body — Genesis 9

What does the story of Noah and the vineyard have to tell us about nudity in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost doesn’t say much about the story in Genesis 9 which is understandable. The story involves Noah drinking a vineyard and getting drunk and lying down naked. Ham sees him and tells his brothers who walk in backwards and cover up Noah so they won’t see their father’s nakedness.

I do agree with Frost that this is not talking about moral behavior entirely. Very few of us would think it is an important exhortation in the Bible that if you ever learn your father is sleeping drunk and naked you should walk in backward with your brother and cover him up. Let’s hope that this wasn’t a common problem in ancient Israel, or anywhere else for that matter.

Yet when we read the story and read that when Noah woke up we can be confused. He lays a curse on the descendants of Ham? Why? He saw his Dad naked. Perhaps embarrassing, but didn’t he do what he should have done by telling his brothers and having them take responsibility?

A Western reader might think so, but here I agree with Frost again in that something more than voyeurism is going on here. Gagnon suggests that this is a case of male-on-male incest. Not only is this incest, it is incest involving one’s own father. You can read his article covering this and other issues for free here.

Thus, the story is stressing that this is where the problems with the Canaanites began. With Moses being the author, he would have known about these people and he is stating this is their history. It goes all the way back to their ancestor Ham.

So that’s a wrap then. Right?

Not yet.

I have stated that there is a difference between the private and public sphere of life. Noah wasn’t just asleep and naked. He had done so in a way that was disgraceful to him and to see his nakedness would be to take advantage of him. It would be to bring shame upon any who did so. Hence, Shem and Japheth properly honor their father. They don’t just walk in and throw a blanket on him. They come in backwards so they can make sure that they don’t even see their father naked.

Were they just prudes who didn’t appreciate the beauty of the human body? No. They were sons who honored their father and knew his nakedness was not meant to be put on display for them.

Frost says that there is no “Thus sayteh the Lord here”, but I wonder what such a “Thus sayeth the Lord” could even be about. I do agree with him that nudity is not the main point of the passage. It is about the history of the Canaanites starting with their ancestor Ham and how this started right after the flood.

Next time we look at this book, we will discuss Exodus 20:26 and how a priest was to approach God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body Genesis 2-3

What does the Bible say about nudity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So some chaos broke out on Facebook Friday when an apologist friend of mine came out in favor of Christian Naturism. Some of you might be thinking “Love of nature. What could be wrong about that?” Nope. This is a Christian embrace of nudity. One book he mentioned as having an impact was this one. Being concerned about this decision, I decided to look into it.

So the book starts with a look at the account of what happened in the Fall of Man. The author, Aaron Frost starts off saying we all have social conditioning we are unaware of. Of this, who would disagree? He also says we must consult Bible historians and scholars to see what is going on in the text. Again, agreement.

He talks about how he served in different cultures as a missionary and they had different standards about clothing. Yes, but we care about what was ancient Israel’s standard about clothing? How did they see it?

Frost looking at it says that modesty is not in consideration in the account and shame is never mentioned. The problem is this is a Western way of reading the text. It is the idea of “The text doesn’t mention shame, therefore there is nothing shameful.”

On this, we have the firm data. For the ancient Israelites, nudity was shameful. As Pilch and Malina state about Israelite women:

Public nudity inevitably meant “shame” for them, for their chastity was compromised: their physical body was no longer exclusively the property of their husbands.

Pilch, John J.. Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 10) (p. 119). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

In Israel, clothing was a signifier of social status. Consider how Tamar tears her robe after her half-brother Amnon rapes her. Why? Because that was a robe for virgins to wear. How did the Israelites know which women in the battle against the Midianites hadn’t slept with a man? Their clothing.

This didn’t just apply to women. As Pilch and Malina again say:

The Hebrew Scriptures relentlessly censure nudity, which was hardly the case in Greece (Thucydides I.vi.4–6). Although God presumably made Adam and Eve naked, they became aware of it with the shame of being discovered as sinners (Gen 2:25). God’s first act of mercy to them was to cover them with garments of skin (Gen 3:21). Thus nudity became inextricably linked with sin and “shame”.

Pilch, John J.. Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition (Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 10) (p. 118). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Nudity was unacceptable in the presence of God. Priests had to have special clothing to make sure no hint of nudity was there. This is not because the human body is ugly or horrible. It’s because of how one is positioned in the society. You approached a king wearing your best. You did the same with God.

Getting back to Frost, he asks if it was improper for Adam and Eve to see each other naked in the garden? Absolutely not. In the privacy of their own homes, it’s also not improper for husbands and wives to see each other naked. Part of the Edenic state is that there was no shame.

Frost does say that there are no thorns or predators or harsh temperatures in the Garden. Maybe not in the Garden, but what about the rest of the world? Am I to think if man had never fell that when they got to the Sahara it would be a pleasant experience, or if they went to the North Pole they could go sunbathing and skinny dipping? The text only deals with one area and if we want to talk about not taking assumptions with us, we should not assume the whole world was like the garden.

After this, Frost writes about how Eve took of the fruit and gave it to her husband to eat. He says for the first time they felt bold defiance against their creator. After that, they experience a horror they never had before. They experience feelings of guilt, shame, and fear.

Excuse me? Where is that in the text?

On p. 24 of Pilch and Malina’s book cited above, they say that our idea of feelings and emotional states of biblical characters is anachronistic. Conscience was not an inner voice saying “You’ve been a bad boy.” It was instead the voice of others condemning them. Consider David for an example. When did he know he had sinned with Bathsheba? When Nathan said those words to him of “You the man!”

Thus, all that Frost says here is anachronistic. It is being read into the text.

He then says they stitched fig leaves together to cover their reproductive organs. Well, the text doesn’t say that they covered those, but that is a fair assumption to grant and it is one that intertestamental writers shared. Consider Jubilees 3.

  1. And when she had first covered her shame with figleaves, she gave thereof to Adam and he eat, and his eyes were opened, and he saw that he was naked.
  2. And he took figleaves and sewed (them) together, and made an apron for himself, and ,covered his shame.

Now some of my fellow Protestants could say “But that’s not Scripture!” to which I say, “Irrelevant.” The point of the writing is to show how Jews saw it. The reproductive organs were to be reserved for husband and wife and not for the public. It would be treating what is sacred as it was common.

Frost tells us that modern readers think they know very well why they hid. It is an assumption that is brought, but it is not stated in the text. Unfortunately, Frost doesn’t tell us forthrightly what this assumption is. It’s like he assumes the assumption. Weird, isn’t it?

At the start, I don’t think it was from one another. For one thing, hiding doesn’t make sense. What would happen? “Eve! You turn around and count to ten and I’ll hide and then I’ll count to ten while you hide.”

That being said, something married men and men who even cohabitate with a woman know well often is many women even in marriage cover their bodies. Many men don’t understand why their wife can come out of the shower and have a towel wrapped tight around them. Many of those men have no such insecurities around their wives.

So who were they hiding from?

Ask any parent who has small children. If the parent comes into the house and the vase is broken and a baseball is next to it, the children are hiding. God comes walking through. The children hide. Foolish to think you can hide from God? Yes, but all of us are foolish before God many times thinking we can’t trust Him, worrying about matters, etc.

Frost’s contention for why they did this? Satan told them to! Satan told them their nakedness was shameful! Where is that in the text? NOWHERE! Satan tempts Eve to eat the fruit and after that he is completely silent. The idea that Satan did this helps Frost with his interpretation, but it’s not rooted in the text.

Besides, if Satan did this, then one would think one of the first things God would do is correct their misconception. He never does. If anything, He enables their decision by putting together clothing for them.

Something we have to consider is the text only has two human beings in the garden. We don’t know what would have happened had children been born in the garden. Would Adam and Eve wear clothing then so that their children wouldn’t see what was meant for husband and wife alone? The text doesn’t say. Do we think Adam and Eve would be having sex together while a young Cain and Abel watched on? Hard to picture even in an Edenic society.

Frost says God gives them garments but says nothing about modesty to them. As if that needs to be explicitly stated in the text! He also never states how they are to grow food and tend gardens in a world of thorns and thistles. He never tells Eve how to raise children when she will give birth with increased pain. (I am leaving aside questions of the age of the Earth and other such matters like pain before the Fall.) A Western society thinks this needs to be spelled out. An Eastern one understands it’s a waste of time and writing to point out what everyone already knew.

Frost says the couple would need more protection than they did in the garden because the sun was hot, the nights were cold, and thorns were there and animals could have venom.

So was the sun not hot before?

Were nights not cold before?

Were there zero thorns in the world before?

Were there zero poisonous animals before?

These are all assumptions Frost brings to the text.

Frost goes on to say in approaching our issues today that:

The plain, unaltered body has been reduced to smut and outlawed from ever being honored appropriately. The human body, as it stands naturally, is now strictly reserved only for pornography and kept that way by Christian influence in government as if that must be how God wanted things to be.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 38). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Well, no.

For one thing, no one is saying nudity in itself is sinful. The Lord even in ancient Israel knew in some cases, it was a necessity, such as, oh, I don’t know, having children? People would also still have to bathe and wash their clothes. Both could involve nudity. Nudity itself isn’t the problem.

The problem is the context nudity is in.

If you go to the doctor and he says take off your clothes and you’re nude, we understand that is fine. If you go down to main street and take off your clothes and sit on a park bench, that isn’t fine. The context is what matters. If you are in the privacy of your own home and want to go nude, go ahead. In public, no.

And what is pornography? It is pictures of evil sexual sin which is made just to arouse people. Pornography demeans the human body by treating what is sacred and making it common. It also blurs the line between the public and the private spheres. That which is meant for privacy becomes public. (Never mind also that many caught in the industry are victims of sex trafficking.)

He then asks shouldn’t we speak against this perversion that the body is something shameful? Shouldn’t we speak out that the body shouldn’t be covered up? Shouldn’t we speak out against the natural body being inappropriate.

Again, all of this confuses the public and the private sphere. For an Israelite, to be naked in public was shameful. This is the case going on when God regularly says that He will expose the nakedness of His enemies or when David’s men go to speak to a foreign king and get their pants split and their beards shaved and are told to stay where they are until their beards grow back.

None of this says the body in itself is shameful, but it does say the nudity of the body is meant for the private sphere of life and not the public sphere, much like sexuality is. Sex in the Bible is a good and beautiful thing. A man having sex with his wife in the privacy of their home is good. A man having sex with his wife in the middle of a shopping mall is not.

Frost tells us that the Bible tells us temptation is caused by lust and that is the choice of the living dissatisfied with God’s way.

Again, no. As the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says:

This group denotes desire, especially for food or sex. This desire is morally neutral at first, but philosophy, holding aloof from the sensory world, regards it as reprehensible, and in Stoicism epithymía is one of the four chief passions. Epicurus distinguishes between natural and illicit desires, subdividing the former into the purely natural and those that are necessary to happiness.

Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 339–340.

The word means desire. It can be right or wrong. 1 Tim. 3:1 speaks positively of it saying if a man desires to be an overseer, he desires a good thing. James is talking about sinful desires we do have inside of us. It is not just lust in the sense of looking at a member of the opposite sex.

Frost says the Scriptures never say clothing prevents lust or that nakedness offends God. For one thing, I don’t know anyone making this claim. If clothing prevented lust in every way, then teenage boys would not be struggling with lust when they see a cute girl at school. She’s wearing clothes after all.

Second, once again, it is a Western mindset to think this has to be spelled out.

Third, to some degree, they do. The less a woman wears, the more a guy is prone to go crazy over her.

Frost is taking a Western mindset to the text and demanding it spell out everything. We might as well say “The text never tells us to diet and exercise regularly, so we shouldn’t do that.” “The text never tells us to wash our hands before meals, so we shouldn’t do that.” Picture how that last one would go.

“God created dirt and dirt is good and God said a man working hard and laboring is good. Man is meant to work. Why should a man remove that good dirt that God created on this Earth before he eats a meal?”

Frost tells us the solution to porn is not to cover the body but to show an example of good and godly people who are not overpowered by the sight of God’s creation and appreciate one another with dignity, honor, and respect.

First off, good luck with that.

Second, if you become so desensitized to God’s creation that you are no longer aroused by the nakedness of a member of the opposite sex, then I think you have a bigger problem. We were designed to want the bodies of the opposite sex and when we do, our bodies are also functioning properly.

Third, the real solution is to change the way we view sex and sexuality and realize that what is meant for privacy should not be public. We need to have a higher view of sex.

He finally ends saying that the fig leaves were the first decision Adam made with a corrupted mind. Unfortunately for Frost, God nowhere condemns this description and even furthers it by making clothes Himself for the couple. Also, it is worth pointing out that Frost said we should consult scholars and historians of the Bible, but I count nowhere in this section where he has done so. He has argued entirely from his perspective alone.

Next time we look at this book, we will discuss Genesis 9.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Is Love Love?

What is love? (Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me, no more.) Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“Love is love!” is often what people in support of the LGBTQ+ groups say. It sounds simple. How could you respond to something like that? Love is not love? I saw someone actually say at an event in the comments recently “Love isn’t love!” Well, that’s wrong, but does that mean the other side is right?

A lot of Christians hear a saying like this and think that they can’t really argue against that. Who is opposed to love after all? Isn’t love good? Isn’t God love.

Let’s replace it with another saying.

Cats are cats.

Now would anyone want to dare say that cats aren’t cats? What else could they be? However, what if I said cats are cats, therefore, this:

Is the same as this:

Are there similarities? Yes. Are there relations? Yes. Despite that, when I go to bed at night, there’s only one I want jumping up on the bed with me. Meanwhile, if you go to the zoo expecting to see the bottom one and you see the top instead, you’ll be thinking the zoo isn’t bringing in all these interesting species.

Both of these are cats, yes, but both are not the same kind of cat. We have to break down what that means. My Shiro, for instance, is a Turkish Angora largely. My parents have a cat that is a Himalayan. As someone who loves cats, every day I ask my Echo device what the cat breed of the day is. Somedays, I do get something like a lion. Most days I get a breed of housecat.

You could fill in the gap with several items. Dogs are dogs. Books are books. TV shows are TV shows. Movies are movies. Sports are sports.

The Greeks had four different words for love.  Many of these we celebrate in our society. I don’t know anyone who is opposed to friendship. We can say there are some people you shouldn’t be friends with, but we are not opposed to friendship in general.

Agape love is usually seen as God love and while there are people who don’t believe in God, many would not oppose the idea of something like loving your neighbor as yourself. They could say that if a Christian thinks God loves them, they’re wrong, but good for them. Family love is more familial love. This is the kind of courtesy you have for a complete stranger just because they’re a fellow human being.

Now we get to the last one, erotic love. Very few people are probably anti-sex altogether. That includes we who are Christians. It’s one of the reasons we get married as well after all. Christians have books and resources too on how to have a good married sex life.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean everyone celebrates every kind of sexual activity. Let’s start with an obvious one. Children. The overwhelming majority of people says children should not be involved in sexual relationships. Pederasty is still largely condemned, though if society keeps going the way it is going, that won’t last much longer.

How about another one? Rape. You can love women and you can love sex, but if you force yourself on a woman against her will, then that is wrong. Yes. I know rape is about power, but it is also an act of sex as well and one we condemn.

Most sex is celebrated today. I am not saying I celebrate it, but let’s face it. On a sitcom or drama, the question often thought is “Will they or won’t they?” It used to be “Will they get married?” but nowadays it’s “Will they have sex?” It’s usually celebrated when they do. I am not agreeing with it. I am just saying the reality is real.

Yet despite that, do we really think we should live in a culture where we celebrate and encourage ALL sexual activity even if it is consensual? Do we want to celebrate couples forming one-night stands and not forming long-term relationships? Do we want to oppose men and women forming lifelong covenants called marriage?

After all, something that sets sex apart from every other activity out there is it alone can produce new life. That means with it comes responsibilities and risks as well. Seeing as life is a good (Although sadly, many think life in the womb is not a good but a problem to be dealt with), we encourage relationships that are capable of bringing that new life into the world and raising it. Thus, we encourage marriage as a form of stability for raising new life.

This is the love as a society that we should be promoting the most. No other relationship can do this. Some might say some incestual relationships could, but those blur the family lines and also are prone to more genetic harm to the child. That is why societies promote married love. It is not because the people feel good about themselves. It is not because they have their identities affirmed. It is because that alone produces children and society depends on its members having children.

Note in all of this I have not said same-sex sexual relationships are immoral. (though I think they are) I have said simply that they are not the same as married opposite-sex relationships. This is also why the idea of redefining marriage is so problematic. It has been compared to the bans against interracial marriage in the past, but the problem here is that race has no affect on the sexual behavior. Men of all races are still men and women of all races are still women. The races are interchangeable in the relationship. It is not the same with the person’s sex.

By the way, along those lines, if one can say they are the wrong sex and identify as another, what could stop someone from identifying as a different race? I am fully white, but what if I said I was born into the wrong race and I feel like a black man? If anything, race is much more on a spectrum than sex is.

So is love, love? Yes, but it needs to be broken down and not treated as a cliche. Cliches tend to stop thinking and our society needs more of it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Nope. No Indoctrination Going On Here!

What is being talked about with history? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was going to continue looking at the Muslim book, but I want to comment on a mailout that I got yesterday from Tom Woods. It’s actually going to take place right here in my own New Orleans. I saw a list of some of the topics he said were going to be spoken on and so I went and looked them up. Yep. They’re there.

You know how we’re constantly told that there’s no campaign going on to indoctrinate your kids?

They’re lying.

You can see the program here.

Doing a Ctrl+F, the word “Queer” shows up fifty-one times and LGBTQ shows up twenty-five times. There’s even a talk Woods pointed out on how to support “Pregnant-capable” students in abortion-ban states. That leaves me wondering what that has to do with American history. Check it out women. Now you are known as “Pregnant-capable” people. How’s that war against the patriarchy going?

Now I’m not saying all of the talks are like that. There could be some that are just fine to go to. I am saying that when you look at the bulk of these, they are more ideologically driven than anything else.

Remember, it was just within the past thirty years that we were told that all that was wanted was tolerance. Many of us at the time knew that was a lie. How can we tell it was? Because as soon as the party crying tolerance got into power, they treated anyone who disagreed with them with anything but tolerance. Cries of “Please just let us be!” became “Bake the cake or be ruined, bigot!”

If we want to talk about where our country really went off the rails, if I could point to one major event that started everything, I would point to the sexual revolution. Nothing has led to the breakdown of the family unit more than this disastrous event. Sadly, we in the church have not responded well as we are often just as informed on sexual matters. If anything, divorce and living together before marriage are too common in the church. (Keep in mind, I say this as someone who is divorced. In many cases, if you want to meet someone who hates divorce, find someone who was wrongfully divorced.)

Nowadays, your kids are not being taught history. They are being taught history and politics. They are not being taught science, but science and politics. I remember when I was in school learning about environmentalism in the fifth grade. (I also remember learning about fears of a coming ice age.)

The solution is also the same every time. More government. By the way, this is also something that goes along with redefining marriage. Since the State made up an artificial idea of marriage, they are the ones that have to defend it and force it on everyone else. Change the idea of marriage for one and you change it for all. All of this gives the state more power and more control.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll talk to some people here on campus and see if we might attend this event just to see what it’s like. It could be an interesting experiment, though before too long, we could be branded as heretics for not supporting the new orthodoxy.

Kind of like what cults do.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

No Woman Should Be A Feminist

Are men the greatest threat to women? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Before diving into another book, let’s talk some about feminism. Women often complain about how men mistreat them and are the greatest evil to them. Then you see protests going on, one a friend told me about recently, where women decided the best way to protest it was to go topless.

Yep. That’ll stick it to the men alright.

Women in this movement also tend to be very much pro-abortion, which is quite odd. If there’s something that sets women apart from men, it’s that they can give good birth. They have the ability within their bodies to bring new life into the world. These women think that this is a negative and must be stopped and what’s more important is to have a career, the thing that men have.

It’s almost like when you get down to eat, women think the ideal is to be like men. Go and have working jobs and careers and have sex without consequences. Avoid having to go through that horrible period called giving birth where you bring a new human life into the world.

Now a lot of women aren’t like this. They are actually pro-life, but they have been hurt in other ways by feminism. They have imbibed mindsets that counter-productive to what they want.

These women want good men who will take care of them and provide for them and help them to raise families. They want to be wives and mothers. Unfortunately, they have bought into the feminist idea too often that men are the enemy.

Let’s consider this mindset that was going around not too long ago with saying that women would rather meet a bear in the woods than to meet a man. What was the point of this? It was so many women saying that they thought in general men were so dangerous that they would rather meet a bear in the woods as they’d have a better experience with it.

Okay. So let’s suppose a good woman shares this thought. Now there are two kinds of men in this thought experiment out there.

The first are the bad men she’s talking about who don’t really care about women and have no problem using a woman for sex. They will see this and say “Don’t care. If I want to have you, I will do what I can to get you and then toss you aside.” Then there are the good men who do care, but they will see this and say “If that’s how she sees me, I don’t want to get close to her.”

The good woman then is not attracting the good guys to her by sharing this. She’s enabling the bad guys actually. They won’t be deterred a bit by what she shares. If anyone will be, it is the good guys. Bad guys don’t care about being bad. Good guys don’t want to damage their reputation of being good.

You also have cases of women going to the gym in skin-tight outfits barely leaving anything to imagination and then are shocked when men notice them. Not only this, they record themselves working out and then make negative comments about the guys they accuse of leering at them. One case of a woman complaining about this involved a man who told the people at the gym, truthfully, that he was blind.

By the way, these women also often have an OnlyFans account.

Nowadays, feminism is even getting worse. Now you have men winning beauty pageants for women and this is considered a victory. You have men dominating in women’s sports and this is also accepted. In trying to say there is no difference between men and women, women have created a world that said “Okay” and acted accordingly. It doesn’t help that this same world also decided to redefine marriage and treat men and women as if they were interchangeable entirely.

So in order to stop the patriarchy, now we have cases of men beating women at women’s sports and beating women at women’s beauty pageants.

That’ll stick it to the patriarchy alright!

Women also aren’t helping themselves out when it comes to pre-marital sex. If a guy doesn’t have to make the effort to get you, odds are, he won’t. If you don’t make a man work to get you, then you are setting a low worth on yourself. Make a man rise to the occasion and if he really wants to be with you, he will do just that.

When I showed up on the first date for my ex-wife, I had plenty of money in my wallet, I had flowers, I had tickets to the aquarium, and I had downloaded her favorite music to my phone to play for her. Men who care about women love to impress women and if you go on and give in to them immediately, that will stop right there. It’s one reason married couples need to always be pursuing one another and chasing one another. Dating should continue into marriage.

Feminism may have meant to hurt women, but it hasn’t. It has done the opposite. By painting men as the opposition, it has stopped the natural way the two sexes are to work together. Of course, more could be said on how men should treat women, but that would be a whole other blog post.

For now, just remember if you are a woman, you should celebrate it and embrace womanhood. If you want to stay single, that’s your choice also, but remember that involves being celibate as well. If you want to be married and have a career, that’s fine too, but I wouldn’t recommend sacrificing children so you can get a career. Children are a gift. They will give you far better memories and influence than a career most likely will.

The worst enemy of women today is not from without. As in most other cases, it is from within, the way empires fall. Feminism is the greatest enemy a woman has.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

The Control of Language

Do words matter? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was looking at a group I’m in on Facebook Wednesday night and saw someone share a before and after picture of Ellen Page, who is now calling herself Elliot Page such that if you do a web search for her name, the first thing you can get is Elliot Page. Already, if some are reading this, they would accuse me of misgendering and insist that I say “He” about her.

One comment left on the picture was about how sad she looked after X number of years living as a man.

I jumped in and said she has lived zero years as a man. She has lived instead as a mutilated woman.

This kind of thing might seem minor to some people, but it is huge. “Why do you say ‘he’? Why not just say ‘she’? What’s the big deal. It’s just a pronoun.”

Pronouns are gateway drugs.

What it is really saying is “I have the power to define myself in contradiction to reality and not only do I want to contradict reality, I want you to join me in contradicting it.” I can freely say that Ellen believes herself to be a male. I can freely say she has mutilated her body to look like a male. I can freely say that she identifies as a he now. However, I can say those things because they are either what she believes about herself, the first and the last option, or something objectively true, the second one. I cannot affirm that her beliefs reflect reality and thus, I cannot affirm them.

It is the same thing I see when I hear someone talk about someone who is a biological male. There is only a male. As soon as we say biological male, we are saying on some level that we think women who mutilate their bodies become men. Male needs no explanation. You either are or you aren’t.

I also do not speak of a same-sex marriage. If marriage is a union of a man and a woman, and it is, there can be no such thing as a same-sex marriage. You might as well talk about a square circle. If you say the term, you have already given up half the game. How can you say that it’s not really a marriage when by your words you have already said it is.

What do I say instead? Redefining marriage. The impetus is on the other side to show why the classical definition of marriage is wrong and why it should be changed. They must also show why it is changed to what they want and not what they don’t want. Marriage has to mean something. If it can mean anything, then it is nothing so there’s no big deal in having it.

Some of you might have noticed I don’t even use the term homosexual. I use the term same-sex attracted. Is it clunkier? Absolutely, but I fear part of the danger is we make who someone sleeps with part of their identity and if that is your identity, how can you expect to deny it? I prefer a term that describes the attraction without saying the person has to have this in their identity.

Every step of language is one we must defend. One might think that this is so small, but what started just a few decades ago as “Just let us live in peace and don’t bother us” has now become Pride parades going on with sexual acts being done where children can see them. We have children taking puberty blockers and mutilating their bodies. We have books in public school rooms graphically displaying sexual acts that are often dangerous and also exploitive and abusive.

We were taught tolerance for so long that most people didn’t see that it was a sham (Though some of us did) and as soon as the reins of power switched, tolerance went out the window.

Also, some might think this is unloving. I disagree. What is unloving is to affirm someone in a deadly delusion that can destroy them. Loving someone does not mean denying reality.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 9

What happens when the church absorbs secularism? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We are going to conclude this tonight as the last two chapters are about men and marriage and the church and patriarchy.

For the former chapter, Pearcey says it takes a man to save a marriage, and in many ways, I think this is true, but not all. I know many men like myself who we did not want our wives to leave at all. We fought tooth and nail to save our marriage.

If someone wants to leave, you can’t stop them.

Yet still, there is no doubt men need to be pulling their weight in marriage. Of course, women do, but this is written considering the men. We need to make sure we are treating our wives honorably and in a way pleasing to Christ.

That gets us to the last chapter.

Can we get some matters clear?

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS IT ACCEPTABLE FOR A HUSBAND TO ABUSE HIS WIFE!

Let’s add a corollary to that.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD A WOMAN STAY WITH A MAN THAT IS AN ACTIVE DANGER TO HER AND/OR HER CHILDREN!

The first one seems obvious, but there’s a real danger in that several churches tell women they cannot leave an abusive relationship. They have to respect the man as the leader of the household. If he’s not being the man he should be, who’s fault is that?

Why it’s the woman, of course. She is just obviously not being pretty enough or taking care of the house enough or being submissive enough or not having enough sex with him. If she will change her behavior, he will change his.

Baloney.

One strong reason men who abuse keep abusing is that they know that they can get away with it. A woman in this position is not respecting male headship. She is enabling true toxic masculinity.

This is not some new modern idea. This goes back to Augustine.

In the fourth century, the great church father Augustine said that if a husband is committing serious sin, such as fornication or adultery or physical abuse, his wife should not submit to him. She should regard God himself, not her husband, as her head: If her husband fornicates, she offers her chastity to God. For Christ speaks inwardly in her heart, and consoles his daughter with words like this: “Are you distressed about your husband’s wrongful behavior, what he has done to you? . . . In so far as he behaves badly, don’t regard him as your head, but me.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 257-258). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

If you are in danger, get out. If your children are in danger, get out. If your church tells you you have to stay, leave that church.

Headship means the man is actually striving to act like Christ. A man who is an abuser is not a man. He’s a temper-tantrum boy in the body of a man.

Pearcey closes the book describing the Titanic and when it sank, the men went down with the ship so the women and children could flee. One man put on a tuxedo so he could die as a gentleman. Now, a group of men regularly gather around a statue commemorating the event and say the following:

“To their dignity, grace, and style, but most of all, tonight we toast their courage. . . . To those brave men.” “Hear! Hear!” “To the stewards, the men who stoked the boilers, the crew who shared that bravery as much as any man in a tuxedo. . . . To those brave men.” “Hear! Hear!” “To the young and old, the rich and the poor, the ignorant and the learned, all who gave their lives nobly to save women and children. To those brave men.” “Hear! Hear!” Finally, one man closes the commemoration saying, “Chivalry, gallantry, bravery, and grace—in these times those ideals seem to have all but disappeared. But by our remembrance they are born again. And in our lives, they can live again.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 269-270). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

May they live again in men today!

Hear! Hear!

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 8

How can fathers work and be Dads both? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Going forward, Pearcey reminds us what the past was like.

In the colonial period, men were integral as actively engaged fathers and leaders of virtue. The family worked together daily in a family industry. . . . During the Industrial Age, this dynamic changed. Women became responsible for “civilizing” men (which led to the destructive mindset that excused and perhaps expected crude behavior from men). . . . The family dynamic became disjointed.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 211). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Nowadays, a lot of men sacrifice time with their family for their work. Why? They’re the breadwinner. They have to provide. They want their children to be able to go to any college they want and give as much as they can.

Problem is, a lot of these children want their Dads more than that.

Fortunately, some businesses are realizing this.

After her article went viral, Anne-Marie Slaughter gave a TED talk saying, If you work for me and you have a family issue, I expect you to attend to it. . . . I am confident, and my confidence has always been borne out, that the work will get done, and done better. Workers who have a reason to get home to care for their children or their family members are more focused, more efficient, more results-focused.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 213-214). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Imagine that. Workers who get to spend time with their families and work out issues can actually work better. Could it be that if a job leaves a man thinking he’s being taken away from his family, that he will resent it? Could it be if he resents it, he won’t be as productive?

Not only that, if you can learn how to manage a family, you will usually be better on your job. In a hilarious statement she says,

Research has “determined that parents tend to excel at skills such as negotiating, compromising, multitasking, and patience. If you can resolve conflict with a three-year-old, you can almost certainly manage a group of adults.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 214). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

And research again shows that more families want more time together instead of more money together.

When Peggy Orenstein interviewed couples on their work-family balance for her bestselling book Flux, she found that the most satisfied couples were those who limited their work commitments: “The husbands had flexible jobs, worked regular hours [no overtime], or were self-employed.” Orenstein found that men who adopted these strategies often received fewer promotions and took a salary hit—the Daddy Penalty. But they said the payoff was worth it, namely, “a closer relationship to their children.” When asked, 70 percent of fathers say they would prefer more time with their family, even if that meant earning less. In a separate study, the same number of wives—70 percent—say they would prefer more time with their husband over a higher paycheck. A man who is slaving away at work for the sake of his family may be surprised to learn that his family would prefer his time and presence instead of fancier cars, nicer vacations, and designer clothes.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 215). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This is shown more and more throughout the chapter. Shorter work weeks even lead to more productive workers. Men. It might be better for your family if you can work part-time. Fortunately, one good thing Covid did is show many of us that is possible. I know many people who supplement their income doing work on YouTube so they can be with their family. I have a gamer on YouTube I watch frequently who talks often about spending time with his children and playing the games he got to play with his parents.

The guy is doing it right.

I have often said this about ministry. When I was married, I made it a priority to have my wife with me as much as possible, even when many speakers didn’t share that mindset. For me, family was more important. As Pearcey says:

One of my students attends a church where the senior pastor repeatedly tells his congregation, “I refuse to have a ‘successful’ ministry and a broken family.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 223). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Several people can do a job. Only one person can be a husband to your wife and a father to your children.

Choose which is more important.

Well, this all sounds noble, but still, men can imbibe a secular mindset. What then?

Next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War on Masculinity Part 7

Are men dumb? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Across the board, are men dumb? No. Some are brilliant. Some are dumb. The same applies to women. (And if you think otherwise for either one, that says a lot about you.) Unfortunately, in our society, men are usually seen as the dumb ones.

I really enjoyed watching Home Improvement with my family. I still enjoy it today, but I have to agree that it’s clear who is the brains in the family. Tim is an idiot who screws up consistently and he needs his wife to make sure that he handles things properly.

Usually in a show, the woman is the voice of reason. The guy is the one who is just thinking about sex, watching sports, and drinking beer. Men have a really bad reputation in our society.

Suzanne Venker, author of The War on Men, writes, In the span of just a few decades, America has demoted men from respected providers and protectors of the family to superfluous buffoons. Today’s sitcoms and commercials routinely paint a portrait of the idiot husband whose wife is smarter and more capable than he.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 191). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Churches aren’t safe either. As Pearcey says:

Even churches sometimes send negative messages to fathers. One of my graduate students, Grace, leads the women’s ministry at a large Baptist church. She told me, “On Mother’s Day, we honor mothers, passing out roses. But we spend Father’s Day scolding men and telling them to ‘do better.’”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 191). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Pastors. Hear me on this. If you spend Mother’s Day praising the mothers and Father’s Day scolding the fathers, you are contributing to the problem. Either praise both or scold both or tell both how they’re wonderful and how they both need to improve. I recommend the last one. Point out to them how essential their role is in society and then tell them how they can be even better at it without assuming that they’re miserable failures.

You all know I’m thoroughly conservative, but when I saw this quote in Pearcey from Obama, I had to say “When he’s right, he’s right.” I would honestly at least want to stand up and cheer if I heard this.

In the words of former president Barack Obama, “We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child—it’s the courage to raise one.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 192). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Could that be political pandering? Sure. All politicians do it to some degree. It’s also right.

Something I have heard black conservative commentators say about LeBron James is that he needs to stop being a race hustler. The man has been faithful to his wife and raised his children. That should be his main message he has out there. Fatherlessness is a huge problem in the black community.

Pearcey also says fathers have often been reduced to just pals. The problem is kids have plenty of friends they can be pals with. None of those friends can be a father.

There’s no doubt that shared recreation fosters positive father-child bonds. Some of my students say they cherish memories of their father coming home from work and throwing a ball with them in the backyard. Nevertheless, the idea that the father was primarily a playmate or buddy was new in the nineteenth century, and it entailed a steep loss in status. It contributed to the idea that fathers were not essential to family life.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 196). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I liked times my Dad and I played games together. I remember playing Jaws and Golf and Dr. Mario for instance. When I come to see my folks, we inevitably break out a round of Trivial Pursuit. I liked hearing my Dad tell stories about when he was in college and when we see superhero movies like Batman movies, he can tell me about what those heroes were like when he was growing up and I can tell them what they are like now.

Also, I have come to see many shows thanks to my Dad and inevitably, I know them better than he does. My Dad grew up watching Adam West in Batman. Today, I know the series better than he does. He watched Cheers when it came on. Again, I know the series better. Finally, definitely Smallville, and yes, I know that series better than the Smallville magazine writers did. Before I moved to New Orleans, we were watching The Flash together.

But I could do that with any of my friends too. The most important gift given was affirmation and being a Dad growing up. No one else could do that. Fathers. Plenty of children can be friends to your kids. Only one can be a Dad to them.

I also encourage fathers of girls to do this. When Valentine’s Day comes around, don’t just get something for your wife. Get something for your daughter too. Treat her like a princess. Why? Because you want it that when she starts dating, she won’t settle for a man who doesn’t treat her as good as her Daddy does.

By the way Dads, help out your wife at home too. Pearcey says there are benefits.

And if that’s not enough of a motivator, Sandberg and Grant report that couples who share housework and childcare also have more sex. As they put it, “women and men who ‘work hard’ also ‘play hard.’” Apparently, this last finding sparked considerable interest, because several other researchers have studied the same phenomenon: “Men who do more housework and child care have better sex lives and happier marriages than others” (John Gottman, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail). “Men said the happier their wives were in the division of housework, the happier the men were with their sex lives” (Newsweek). “Couples enjoyed more frequent and satisfying sex for both partners when men made a fair contribution to housework” (Science Daily). “Men’s performance of child care is generally associated with more satisfaction with the division of child care, more satisfying sexual relationships, and higher quality relationships” (Gender and Society). “Couples report having more and higher quality sex when they are satisfied with their relationships. . . . Relationship quality and stability are generally highest when couples divide up the household labor in a way they see as equitable or fair” (Council on Contemporary Families).

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 204-205). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Also ladies, this is a deep need for your man and meeting that will motivate him more and more.

But how do you do all this with a work schedule?

That’s for next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 6

Does Christianity need muscles? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Pearcey continues writing as to how when male behavior changed, Christianity began to be seen as less masculine. There was an attempt made to make Christianity more muscular. One way to do this is with sports, so you have institutions rise up like the YMCA. Interesting fact she shares is that the inventor of basketball was actually a Presbyterian minister who set up two baskets for that had been used for gathering peaches.

Such an idea is not unheard of. Paul used analogies of athletes in his writings. Not only that, but he used soldiers as an example even including the armor of God in the book of Ephesians. Thus, using “manly” interests to give examples of how Christians were to live is not unheard of.

Why bring up the military? Think about hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers” or “Stand up, Stand up for Jesus.” We are told to fight for the faith and we are told to be good soldiers. Examples like this are appealing to men.

Many men take pride in their work and see it as a defining feature of their lives, but how often do preachers talk about work?

The biblical teaching on work and vocation should be a key part of the Christian message. Yet it rarely is. One survey found that 92 percent of churchgoing men have never heard a sermon on the subject of work. Christian essayist Dorothy Sayers comments that if Christianity does not speak to our work lives, then it is silent about most of what we do: “How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 181-182). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Nowadays, I find many sermons just seem to be self-help therapy. I’m not saying that’s how it is with my church or every church. I am saying that we rarely seem to have sermons that have meat on them. We often preach at the lowest common denominator and send our church members out into a world above that. We train them on how to use bows and arrows while our enemies have rocket launchers.

I have a professor here who did a dissertation on Billy Sunday, an evangelist of the past who impacted Billy Graham. I was surprised to see how confrontational Sunday was as Pearcey says:

Sunday taunted his audiences, saying if they were hesitant to convert to Christianity, it was because they were “not man enough”: You haven’t manhood enough to get up and walk down the aisle and take me by the hand and say, I give my heart to Christ. . . . Oh you aren’t man enough to be a Christian! It takes manhood to be a Christian, my friends, in this old world! No man can be a man without being a Christian and no man is a man unless he is a Christian. Billy Sunday’s testosterone-laden style appealed to men, and he became the most influential revivalist of his day. Even H. L. Mencken, the acerbic journalist known for his attacks on Christianity, called Sunday a “gifted exhorter” and remarked that he was “constantly struck by the great preponderance of males” coming to the front to be saved at Sunday’s crusades.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 183-184). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Notice the emphasis on manhood.

Unfortunately, looking at our time, it hasn’t seemed to work in the long-term. If anything, men are now the object of ridicule. How so? That will be looked at next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)