Tag: feminism

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)

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 3

Do men bear responsibility? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What happens when you divorce the public and the private, the sacred and the secular? What happens when femininity and masculinity are no longer seen as complementing one another but are seen as competition? What happens when the individual becomes more important than the household?

There’s not much to say on this one tonight except when two groups start to form a divide, generally, they make it get deeper and deeper. Men who were seen in a negative light, well, they became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They started living that way and before too long, you had saloons. You had men spending extra money on alcohol. You saw that since the women were taking charge of the household, the men were starting to abdicate responsibility.

It’s a sad reality that we all will usually choose the path of least resistance and the path that requires the least work. Today, a woman will have sex with a man thinking that he will then marry her. In reality, he’ll usually see that and say “Okay. I guess I don’t need to go any further.” Why should he? He’s got what he wants and he doesn’t have to enter any further risk, such as getting married and losing half of his money and having to pay alimony for the rest of his life.

And the women in all of this? Well, they developed a sort of take-charge attitude in this. Many reform movements were beginning because women were of the mindset that things would be better if they were in charge. This is the beginning of feminism today and sadly, it is the beginning. As I said at the start, if you keep pushing people down a divide, that divide will grow worse and worse.

So then, you have the idea that we need to have reform. Where does that lead? Today, you can have a hashtag that says to Kill All Men.

Sometimes you need to go back to where you lost your way and find out what happened. One step Pearcey takes is to look at how Jesus treated women. Jesus would be with women in public and speaking to them. Jesus would include women in His teaching and have them listen to His teaching. Jesus even traveled with women and had women who were supporting Him.

Jesus had a tender heart towards women.

So far in all of this post today, we have discussed what happened between men and women. I have stated that men and women drove further apart. Instead of being allies and working together, they were becoming enemies and working against one another. However, marriages don’t normally have just a husband and a wife. They also have children. Some of those children are also the future men.

What happens to the young boys when the Dad is not only away from the son because of work, but away from the son because he is out drinking with his buddies?

That will wait until tomorrow.

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

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War on Masculinity Part 1

What do I think of Nancy Pearcey’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let’s take a break and review a good book. This is a book that I highly encourage all of you to buy immediately. You can buy it here and support what I am doing at the same time as well.

The scene is at a bar. College students frequent this bar for hanging out and socializing. In comes a 28 year-old man who tosses in a smoke grenade for confusion and then comes in and starts shooting.

In response are men who start pushing others under a table, especially the women, and shield them with their bodies. They break windows so people can escape and repeatedly go in and out of the bar leading people to safety.

From here, Pearcey talks about how the APA in 2018 said traditional masculinity is harmful, but then asks a question.

Who here showed traditional masculinity?

Hint: It’s not the shooter.

Real masculinity has been shown in history when the Titanic goes down and men watch as women and children are escorted off. A famous story has one man putting on his tuxedo so he can die as a gentleman. These men knew they were dying. They knew the women would go on. They accepted it.

This is not the problem.

Pearcey says that when we make a blanket statement though on masculinity being a problem, the solution is really for men to be emasculated. Not necessarily physically, shudder the thought, but at least psychologically and emotionally. She contends that masculinity is not toxic. Sometimes, strength is needed to protect the innocent. Masculinity as it was made is good.

When you denigrate manhood, many men remain boys. One aspect of this is a fear of commitment. Not a problem for many of them. It’s especially easy for them to get casual sex for instance, without having to commit. The very women complaining about men are the ones enabling the traits that they don’t want.

It’s not any better at church. David Murrow wrote a book called Why Men Hate Going To Church which is well worth reading. Jesus is often portrayed as a weakling. No. I am not saying Jesus should be some macho type, but we should be able to see Jesus as a man we want to be like. That could mean we need to change our idea of masculinity, but we definitely need Jesus to be a man.

But doesn’t the Bible tell wives to submit? Here’s something interesting. She cites Bradley Wilcox who says the most violent husbands in America are nominal Protestants who attend church rarely if ever. They have enough Bible verses they can use to justify themselves in their eyes without a worldview behind it.

By contrast, who are seen as the most loving and faithful husbands? Conservative evangelicals.

Why is it that churchgoing, theologically conservative family men test out as the most loving husbands and fathers of any major group in America? The key factor, sociologists discovered, is that these men have a strong commitment to the family as the foundational institution in society. They believe marriage is not primarily about individual fulfillment but about forming a stable, loving home to raise a family.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 38). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

These men know they are to cherish their wives. These men know they are to build a family. These men know this woman is going to be the mother of their children. Evangelical conservative wives have the highest satisfaction in their marriages and it’s not about gender roles and who does the workload. It’s about getting valued for your contribution.

Now some skeptical men might be saying “Yeah, but these are religious prudes.” Well, consider this:

Women who are highly religious also report greater sexual satisfaction than other women. This surprising fact turned up as far back as 1977 in a survey by Redbook magazine, and it has been repeatedly replicated. One study found that “for both the wives and husbands, feeling that God was part of their marriage was positively associated with sexual satisfaction.” Another study concluded, “When it comes to relationship quality in heterosexual relationships, highly religious couples enjoy higher-quality relationships and more sexual satisfaction, compared to less/mixed religious couples and secular couples.” The National Health and Social Life Survey, the most detailed analysis of sexual behavior in America, found that people in intact marriages who worshiped weekly “were most likely to report feeling wanted and needed during intercourse” (94.9 percent).

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 40-41). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Another important aspect is a conservative Christian approach changes men:

For example, anthropologist Elizabeth Brusco conducted a study of evangelicalism or Pentecostalism (she used the terms interchangeably) in Colombia. As a feminist trained in Marxist thought, Brusco expected to find that Christianity would be “a powerful tool of patriarchy.” Instead, she discovered that when a man converts to evangelical Protestantism, he stops drinking, smoking, gambling, and sleeping around. He begins to direct his money to his family. As a result, the household income goes up and the family’s standard of living increases. The children are better educated, they develop better life skills, and the entire family experiences upward mobility. Brusco concludes that conversion to biblical Christianity has the effect of “re-attaching males to the family . . . thereby dramatically improving the quality of life within the confines of the family.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 44). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

While many feminists see the biblical attitude as a problem, it’s quite the opposite:

Surprisingly, Martin argues that biblical Christianity has done far more than Western feminism to improve the lives of poor women around the globe. In her words, gender equality has been rigorously preached by Western development agencies and mainline church organizations. Yet, it is not Western feminism, even in its Christian variant, which has transformed for the better the lives of millions of poor women in developing societies. They have been “empowered” by a “regressive,” “fundamentalist” Christian movement whose theological rawness and lack of intellectual sophistication causes problems and embarrassment to enlightened Western observers. Martin concludes that “if there is a ‘women’s movement’ among the poor of the developing world, Pentecostalism has a good claim to the title.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 45). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Some might also think that these could be Puritanical attitudes, but as Pearcey shows, the Puritans get a bad rap. They were not living in the constant fear someone might be enjoying themselves. If anything, most men would love to hear things like this from the pulpit:

Another minister, William Perkins, wrote that sexual relations between a married couple should be “an holy kind of rejoicing and solacing themselves.” He insisted that sex is as “spiritual” as preaching: “Yea, deeds of matrimony are pure and spiritual . . . and whatsoever is done within the laws of God, though it be wrought by the body . . . yet are they sanctified.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 78-79). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The Puritans also preached against domestic violence. They had no patience for a husband who abused his wife.

In 1641 the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the first law anywhere in the world against domestic violence: “Every married woman shall be free from bodily correction or stripes by her husband.”42 The law was soon amended to include wives beating their husbands, as well as “unnatural severity” against children and servants. One Massachusetts man was even brought to court and fined when neighbors complained that he told his wife she was “but his Servant.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 79). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This all sounds good.

But how did we get from here to an age where you can have a hashtag with Kill All Men tweeted around?

We’ll take a further look at that next time.

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

 

Men, Women, and Praise

How does praise affect you? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m going to take a brief break to talk about a meme that has gone around the internet a number of times. Every time I see it, the reaction is always the same. There’s questions about who it came from, but the approach is to supposedly put men into what they think is a woman’s world and see how they like it.

The irony is that every man I have seen speak about this, and I count myself in agreement with them, says we would love this. We would indeed thrive to get a compliment like these. Even sadder is that very few men can think of a recent time they got a compliment like this. I can’t. (And no, your Mom giving you the compliment doesn’t count.)

The way men are, we generally thrive on praise. We soak it up. One of the worst things a wife can do if her husband does something good for her is to criticize. If your husband loads the dishwasher and he put in everything differently than how you did it, make sure to give multiple words of praise before even uttering one word of criticism. Criticize him first and you can be sure he will likely never do that again for you.

As I thought about this further, it seems we have entered a sad state of affairs when you can’t praise a woman for her beauty at all. If you’re a Christian woman who is thinking that praising a woman for her beauty is shallow, I challenge you to do this. Go look through your Bible at many of the women that are mentioned. See how often they are described as beautiful. It’s a quite important trait to have according to Scripture.

I watch when parents come to my workplace and they have little girls with them and one of the first words that someone uses to describe the girl is “beautiful.” It’s just the most natural statement to make. Could it be because this is getting to something that femininity brings to the world? Perhaps women bring beauty into the world?

I like to watch old shows sometimes, but especially gameshows. I have been a gameshow junkie for as long as I can remember watching television. It is quite common when a female contestant comes on a show, she is complimented on her beauty. This is especially so when you go to the old black and white gameshows like What’s My Line, To Tell The Truth, and I’ve Got A Secret. (Note I am talking about the originals) Not only were they praised, but generally, when the women walked by the panel on these shows, the men would stand up to honor them.

But now, now we live in a generation where if you speak a kind word to a woman and tell her she’s beautiful, you are shallow, a predator, and can get a sexual harassment suit thrown at you. The problem is if women are beautiful, we are being told to deny reality. Being beautiful is a good thing. To be sure, it’s not the only thing, but it is a good thing, and while not every other trait a woman has is immediately apparent, beauty is.

Who loses at this? Guys who really honor women for one. It’s really hard to approach many women for guys today if you think you’re going to get hit with a sexual harassment charge and be pasted all over the internet. (Also along these lines, the women who complain about this often have OnlyFans accounts.)

The good girls also lose out. They miss out on the guys who don’t want to risk approaching a woman lest they suffer the consequences. Many of them also don’t celebrate their true femininity because they have been taught that real women should be praised for things other than beauty. While no one is denying that they should be praised for other things, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be praised for beauty.

So it looks like the good guys don’t win because of this. Women who are bad women will go after any guy they want that they don’t deem good enough for them and open themselves entirely for any guy that they do want. Bad guys who don’t really care about their reputation and will happily use women will keep doing what they do.

Feminism doesn’t help women. It hurts them.

And by the way, please do praise the men in your life. Seriously. Give a man a compliment like the one above (And this works in person) and you will give him a smile the rest of the day.

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

How Feminism Has Been Bad For Women.

Is Modern feminism a good thing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“Modern feminism has done more to harm women than the so-called patriarchy could ever dream of doing.”

This is what I put on my wall on Facebook Saturday night. Someone did post wanting to know more and it was late and I figured, “There’s a lot here. Why not write a post on it on Monday?” So having said that, let’s go through and see how I think this has been a bad thing.

Now what sparked this was the videos about women in gym talking about guys watching them while there. In some cases, a guy is treating a woman like a piece of meat when all he’s doing is just glancing her way from time to time. In one such video, we found out that one of the girls talked about how traumatizing it was and yet had an OnlyFans account. This is just one example and I will expound on it.

Let’s also be clear. What I mean by modern feminism is an attitude that is often anti-male or thinks that men and women are absolutely equal in everything, save perhaps biological differences. I am not saying anything about women having the right to vote or have a career outside the house or being able to have higher education.

First way is that modern feminism has helped women suffer under the transgender movement.

If you want to try to eliminate all differences between men and women, one idea that can easily come about is that men and women are practically interchangeable. Then what happens is that men undergo an operation, claim to be a woman, and then compete in women’s sports and lo and behold, they win. This is because generally, men are stronger and more capable than women in these areas due to how their bodies develop vs. how a woman’s body develops.

“Well that’s not true! I know a woman who is far better than most men in these areas!”

That’s why this is a general statement. It’s not saying all men are better than all women at XYZ. Generalities do allow for exceptions, but the fact that they are the exceptions demonstrates the point.

Not only are men winning women’s competitions, now they are even winning beauty pageants and other such titles. This is pushing women out of the rightful positions they should have here. I am also not saying that modern feminists intended for this to happen, but many of our actions do result in unintended consequences.

Let’s also be clear at something. When we say men and women are different, it does not follow from this that one is superior to the other. All that is said is that they are different. I like what Peter Kreeft has said about this. Men are superior at being men. Women are superior at being women. Unfortunately, the transgender movement now has it that men are going to be superior at being women also.

The second way is telling a woman that a career is most important.

Once again, this is not saying that a woman cannot have a career or should not pursue a career, but it is saying that women cannot put career first and still expect the rest of their lives to work out normally. Many women have even sadly been shamed because they didn’t do anything with themselves but be a stay-at-home Mom. A housewife is treated as a lower position. It’s also seen as servile. Staying home and cleaning and fixing meals and making sure your husband has a meal?

If you are a stay-at-home Mom because that is what you wanted to do, God bless you. You have not chosen a lesser path. What job could be greater in the world than raising the next generation of human beings and preparing them to be contributing members to society?

Now, women are told to put off marriage and children. Go and get a career and then you can think about those things later. Unfortunately, biology disagrees. The older a woman gets, the harder it will be for her to conceive. A man does not have this problem. A man can be a senior citizen and still father a child.

Because of this, women will often go out and work on their career and then realize their chances of being a mother are greatly lessened. Not only that, if they do not date to marry at this time, they will find that many of the good men they are wanting are gone. Who got them? Those women that chose that “lesser position” of being a housewife and stay-at-home Mom.

Now this gets us into the sexual marketplace. One of the biggest mistakes of feminism has been championing abortion. One of the biggest distinctions between men and women is that women can give birth. Abortion treats this fact as a hindrance and a problem to be dealt with. Let’s ask a simple question about this. Who benefits?

Well, feminists tell us also that men only want one thing and that’s sex. Last I checked, in abortion, man gets what he wants then, the sex. Not only that, he has no consequences. He doesn’t have to be involved in the life of a child. He doesn’t have to pay child support. He gets to have his fun, and then the woman removes the consequences for him. Guess what the man gets then overall? Sex without responsibility. He doesn’t have to owe anything to the woman or promise to be there. This only helps enable the negative attitude that women have toward men.

The increase in something like no-fault divorce also doesn’t help women for the most part. Now men who would normally marry and make a commitment do not do so because they can get with a woman, then she leaves him when he is the innocent part, and he ends up paying alimony and child support for the rest of his life and she takes half of his stuff. (This did not happen with me lest anyone thinks I am writing this out of personal vengeance.)

So what happens? They move in together instead and don’t get married and what happens? The man can leave at any time. A woman will often go for this thinking it’s a stepping stone to marriage. The man can go in easily thinking “Sex without commitment. Sounds good to me.” Again, I am not saying this is how it happens every time, but it is something that is expected. Once again also, the man is the real beneficiary.

Also, if a woman is willingly doing porn, she is doing what she has complained about men doing to her, objectifying her. Let’s go back to OnlyFans. What is a woman doing with this? Sure, she’s making money, but what she is saying to any complete stranger is “If you pay this bunch a month, you can see me naked.” How is the woman treating her self-worth? She’s worth whatever the charge is. In the past, if a man wanted to see a naked woman, he either had to go down to the magazine stand or video store which was public and people could see what he was doing, or else he had to do the work of winning a woman’s heart and making a lifelong commitment to her. Women have now made it easy.

Now let’s look at the situation of women at the gym. Newsflash everyone! Men notice beautiful women! A book I remember going through explaining the way men are to women said that picture a group of men watching the final moments of the Super Bowl or the World Series or something of that sort and then a woman comes in and starts taking her shirt off.

The men will lose complete interest in the game.

In my area, there was a challenge given to women and these were recorded on video. You never saw the woman aside from perhaps non-sexual body parts, at least normally from our culture’s perspective. The challenge was these women had just got out of the shower and had only a towel around them and they would go to their men who were either husbands or boyfriends and were playing video games. They would then do something like toss the towel at the man who would for the overwhelming most part stop whatever game they were playing and go for the girl immediately.

Not only this, but generally, men notice anything in the world normally, not as a whole first, but as several individual parts. This implies to women also, which is why men can easily notice what they see sexually desirable in women. I am not saying this is a good thing necessarily. I am saying it is just a reality.

So if a beautiful woman goes to a gym and is wearing something that really clings to her body or is wearing something exposing her midriff or anything that makes her attractive, men will notice. In the book “Through a Man’s Eyes” by Shaunti Feldhahn and Craig Gross, Feldhahn writes about talking to a couple at a church about a movie called Cold Mountain. She asks the wife how they handled the sex scene in that together. The wife asks “Was there a sex scene?” The man just looks up briefly and says “Yep.”

Men notice this.

The problem is feminism now punishes men for being men. In the video in question, which I am not finding on its own, but here is Candace Owens talking about it. (I would have gone with Joey Swoll, but there is language involved there.) This man is made into a villain when he simply looked over a couple of times, and then came over, offered help, and then left the woman alone.

First off, if a man notices a woman at the gym, that is not wrong. I am not talking about the man who stares and gawks at a woman with his tongue sticking out or something like that. Yes. A guy can be creepy in his attraction to a woman. However, suppose he is attracted to her. Is it necessarily creepy if he goes over and starts to talk to her and eventually asks her out? (One wonders if the woman would complain if the man looked like a Brad Pitt type to her.)

Second, a man could watch a woman for any number of reasons. Could she use some help? What if someone who is creepy does come up to her? Many men just like to be aware of their surroundings. That includes the women in the area.

What women do here is punishing men for being men and wishing they would think more like women. No. They will not. That desire that you think is creepy can also be what will drive them to be the best for you and care for you. Many men overall really want to protect and cherish women.

Yesterday, I saw a video from Just Pearly Things about how men only want one thing and they don’t expect much in return. No. The video is not about what you expect. Men ultimately want respect and will do anything to help out the women in their lives. Yes. There are exceptions, but we’re not talking about those. Any time I have been somewhere and seen a woman in need, I have wanted to do what I can to help her.

However, because of these videos coming out, what are men less likely to do? Ask out women. After all, you can get a sexual harassment lawsuit headed your way. If a woman has a phone at the gym, a man will stay away. He might stay away period just to avoid getting in any trouble.

By the way, that means also good guys will stay away. Those good guys that women ask about where they are? They’re the ones that don’t want to be ruined for the crime of being attracted to women. This isn’t just me saying this. I see plenty of women saying the same as well.

Women can often complain about what they call the patriarchy, but they are doing the worst damage to themselves. They don’t need the patriarchy to ruin women. They have met the enemy and it is them.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: Eve In Exile

What do I think of Rebekah Merkle’s book published by Canon Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I saw a quote from this book, and I do not recall which one it was, and I immediately went to Amazon to see if I could order it. Turns out, I had already ordered it. So off I went to find it in my Kindle library and enjoy it.

The main point of this book is how feminism has destroyed femininity. The #1 area that this is talked about in is in the area of being a wife and how being a mother is seen as a sort of letdown in life. Yeah. You could go off and have a career and make a lot of money and build up a name and do something good for the world, or you could become a mother. It’s as if being a mother is a lesser position. After all, all you’re doing is bringing a new human being into the world that could spend eternity in the presence of God.

The sad part is some people will then think that Merkle is automatically against women working at all and wants all women to be in the kitchen making their husbands sandwiches while pregnant. Not at all. Merkle never forbids a woman getting a job or an education or anything like that, but she does say to make sure your family comes first.

She also gives a history of feminism and who the major players have been in it. They weren’t Christians for sure. At the start, there were a lot of noble intentions, but it has gone more and more downhill so much so that feminism is often anti-feminine. However, there is a mistake conservatives can make.

Our mistake is we can look back on the past and think the 50’s were a paradise and have an Ozzie and Harriet type of family. Part of the problem was women were too complacent as technology was more and more doing everything for us and there was that desire to go out into the world and do more. We could say women wanted to be a lot more like men.

Merkle regularly makes it clear in the book that she is writing to Christian women and assumes her audience is female, which is fine, but men should read this too to understand feminism better. As she says in the end, most all of our negative major events have been led by women. Abortion? Women. Redefining marriage? Women. Transgenderism? Women. Now guess who’s being replaced in sports? Yep. Women.

If there is one more thing I would like to see in this book, it would have been more on how if women are to be wives and mothers and display the beauty of God in their lives, how should they relate to their husbands? Perhaps Merkle will write another book someday focusing on this on how the feminist movement has damaged marriage as well and how women are the worse off for it.

Either way, this book is a good book every woman should read and it couldn’t hurt the man to read it. Want to have a good book for a women’s Bible study at your church? Go with this one.

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

Eve’s Punishment

What did Eve get? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So Eve has taken of the fruit and ate and so has Adam. The serpent receives the first sentence, but we’re not going to look at that except for one part relevant to the woman. We are told that her seed will crush the seed of the serpent. Now some look at this and say that this is a proto-evangelium of the virgin birth (Which I do affirm). After all, women don’t have seed. Right?

Not so fast. Hagar is said to have seed in Genesis 16:10. Rebekkah is said to have seed in 24:60. The term refers to offspring in Genesis many times, although it can certainly refer to seed as in plant life. Now while I do affirm the virgin birth, this passage could be evidence of it, but the term seed of woman, does not necessitate it. Not only that, if we take the serpent to be the devil, do we really want to say that the devil has seed like that?

However, let’s look at the punishment now of the woman. The first punishment she gets is that her pain in childbirth will not just be increased, but it will be multiplied. I leave it to the readers to debate the nature of pain before the fall. For my view of the garden, this isn’t a problem. I fully accept the universe was not created perfect for God knew we would fall.

However, some think that this refers not just to physical pain in giving birth, but also to the pain of having to raise a child. How many times do you hear parents talk about how exhausting it is to raise children? If you are a parent, you’ve probably said it yourself. Would we have this problem if we lived in a sin-free world? You would not have to discipline children or teach them to be good. You would not have to protect them from evil people who wish them harm.

Children are also something that is usually most precious to a woman. Generally, if you ever want to see a woman get angry, go after her children. Mama bear will come out normally and it will not be a pretty sight. Of course, I know not all mothers are like this, but many are.

Today, the feminist movement really embodies the second part. The husband will rule over the wife. In the fall, Eve took the lead and gave to her husband. Now in reply, she will be the one who submits to him. It as if saying “You failed at leadership. Now he will lead.”

Now I do believe headship was already there, but this is just a way of saying that the desire will be frustrated. Today, feminists many times want to rule over and control men. Submission is thought to be a dirty word and the way it is used by too many Christian men today, rightfully so. Hint guys: If you have to use the word submission, odds are you’re probably not leading your family right anyway.

Eve has it rough, but as we shall see, Adam has a greater sentence. After all, he should have stood up to the serpent and yet he did nothing. He sat by silently. What does he get? We’ll see that next time.

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

Book Plunge: Sex Matters

What do I think of Mona Charen’s book published by The Crown Forum? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Feminism has failed women.

This is not to say that everything it has done has been a catastrophe. What it means is that the movement has done more harm than good. While it hailed itself as pro-woman, it has actually been anti-woman. The damage has been because it had an idea of what they would like women to be, but ignored what women really are, and the same for men as well.

The movement assumed that for many women, the dream is to be a career woman. It assumed that women should experience sex the same way that men do. It assumed that women must be able to have abortions in order to be on equal footing with men.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for the majority of women. Women tend to really want to feel security. Marriage is one of the great ways that women can have that security. Not only that, that also has a positive effect on the man as the marriage covenant usually domesticates a man.

It started with some good goals for women, but then it went on to other ones. Many of the earliest feminists would be appalled at what feminism is today. The first one to really change the way the movement was seen was Betty Friedan with the Feminine Mystique. Much of what she said was rooted in Communism as well.

From there, more and more feminists wanted to push the envelope further. Marriage was seen as a bondage for women. Women should pursue sex outside of marriage. Motherhood should not be a major goal for women. Abortion should be a right for women.

Unfortunately, all of this denies what women are. Women have a natural longing for the most part to be mothers. Many women would be willing to sacrifice a career to raise their children directly. Sex outside of marriage does not do women good but rather allows them to be used.

This is built on the idea that femininity is something artificial that can be bent to be whatever we want, but if women have a nature and we are fighting against that, then we are doing harm to women. The same is also done to men. We live in an age where we hear about toxic masculinity and complaining about the patriarchy, automatically assuming that masculinity is a bad thing and a man is a villain if he leads.

This has also led to women severing their bonds. In abortion, a woman severs the natural bond she has to be a mother to her children. Abortion is actually the most anti-feminine behavior I can think of. First off, many of the babies aborted are themselves women. Second, a woman is doing the exact opposite of the motherly instinct and learning to kill her own children for the sake of something else. It could be money or career or just wanting to have free sex. Either way, a woman does herself great harm as she has to find a way to justify abortion.

A woman also has to shut herself down during sex which can lead to the hook-up culture. Women are too easily used and many women have taught themselves to not feel anything during sex lest they form a connection that get severed. Many women will also say yes to sex when they don’t really want to because of fear of losing the guy or of being seen as a prude by society.

We’re also told men need to stop pressuring women to have sex. This is true, but at the same time, in reality, men also have far more testosterone in their bodies and think about sex a whole lot more than women. We are also far more aggressive. Andrew Sullivan is even cited with an example of how he was getting testosterone for something and at the start, he almost got into a fight with his neighbor because of it.

Do men need to control their strong desire for sex? Yes. Will you change male nature though? No. The more you do that, you will find yourself fighting against reality.

Let’s consider some ways we are doing that. Charen cites someone who complains about a tool that is used by women to help them see if a date rape drug has been put in a drink. A woman complains saying she doesn’t want to live in a world where she has to fear that her date has done something like that.

That’s a fine goal, but the reality is we do live in that world. We do live in a world where some men are scum and you might not know if that guy you just met in a bar is one of them or not. I remember hearing actress Bates say about the Weinstein situation that in her day, when a man invited you up to his hotel room, you knew what it was about.

Men, however, also can be natural protectors. If a man has a wife, for the most part, he will want to protect her and provide for her. I remember even when I worked at a movie theater as a young adult. We worked at a mall and often got out of work after midnight. I would always walk my female co-workers to their cars and told them the same thing. “If someone comes after us, you run. Don’t look back. Don’t worry about me. Just run.” After all, I’m a Christian. I knew where I was going. My goal was to keep the women safe.

This has also changed college culture. Date rape is on the rise and more and more control is being exerted. Many a woman can seduce a man or at least have sex where the man thinks it’s consensual and then months later he’s slapped with rape and abuse charges. The problem is usually when a couple is having sex there aren’t a lot of witnesses around.

And what about after that? The family is in crisis. It was long beforehand, but it has only gotten worse because of feminism and “sexual liberation.” We have let government take the role of parents and it just doesn’t work. The main loss is the loss of fathers. Children are best raised by their biological mothers and fathers in a committed relationship.

The breakdown of the family is a disaster for men and women both, but especially for the children afterward. We are fighting against reality by doing this. We need to go back and examine feminism and see what is really good for women, and not for men, and not just what we would like to see.

This is an excellent book that we definitely need to read and the data is far more than I can show in just a blog review. I would that more people would read a book like this. Our society is on a downhill track and we really need to change it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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Deeper Waters Podcast 9/21/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Many families will not put their dysfunction out there for the world to see. If you post on Facebook, very rarely will you see something like, “Wife and I got into an awful fight over how to do the laundry and we ended up yelling at each other for an hour.”

The LGBT community might look happy on the outside. We just want to get along. This is a group all about love and tolerance. Right? Maybe not. Maybe there’s a lot of chaos going on in this family as well. What if they can’t all just get along?

My guest this Saturday has done a lot of looking into this community. Things are not as they seem. The feminist movement already doesn’t like what’s happening with transgenderism which puts a lot of tension between the L and the T. The B movement isn’t going so well with that either since that assumes that there are only two genders.

Okay. So the LGBT community isn’t getting along with itself. What does that have to do with us? For one thing, if this is accurate, this can show us the path we could be going on. What if we Christians are right and this is a war against reality? What if the tensions underlie a much deeper issue? What if issues of sexuality have to do with more than just whoever you sleep with?

To discuss this, I’m bringing on someone who has researched this movement and has the knowledge about what’s going on. He came highly recommended by Dr. J of the Ruth Institute. He’s a writer for the Christian Post and his name is Brandon Showalter.

So who is he?

Brandon Showalter is a 2007 graduate of Bridgewater College of Virginia. He earned a BA (cum laude) in International Studies and Spanish and was a fellow the Flory Honors program, studying abroad at the University of Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain in 2005. He is also a fellow of the John Jay Institute for Faith, Society, and Law.

Since 2016 he has been a journalist with The Christian Post covering a wide range of topics. His reporting has been cited in the US State Department’s 2017 International Religious Freedom report and in the 2018 book “Braving the Future: Christian Faith in a World of Limitless Tech.” Earlier this year, the Evangelical Press Association awarded him and one of his colleagues first place for best Article series. In late October 2017 he traveled to Germany to report on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Tomorrow then, that’s what we’ll be talking about. We are working on updating the shows and getting them to you. I hope to be fully caught up before too long.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Mama Bear Apologetics

What do I think of Hillary Morgan Ferrer’s book published by Harvest House? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Move over, Captain Marvel. True feminism has a new force to represent it and that’s Mama Bear Apologetics. Not all in this movement are Mamas, but all of them are women on a mission. They are women out to protect the younger generation from the forces that seek to destroy their faith.

The book is an introduction to apologetics as it were for mothers and is written in a style easy to understand without dense terminology. It is for women and it is by women. This doesn’t mean fathers and other men won’t get something out of the book, but it is quite likely to speak to mothers more.

Every chapter deals with a different topic so each chapter can be read on its own if one desires. They follow the same pattern ending with ways to pray and then with icebreakers on how to talk to your children about the topics included. This also includes ways for mothers to talk to other mothers.

The book deals with a lot of isms mainly. Relativism, pluralism, emotionalism, Marxism, feminism, etc. It has a synopsis of each of the views it deals with and then spends a little bit of time talking about ways that we can agree with those views, but then it goes into the bigger problems that they get wrong. This will help mothers in conversing since they don’t always have to be in attack mode and can instead find common ground and go from there.

Feminism was a topic I found particularly interesting, especially since it came from women. It’s one thing for men to critique feminism, but it’s another for women themselves to be doing that work. The critique is greatly appreciated.

Some might be surprised that Marxism is included. After all, why should we be going political? It’s because Marxism is about a lot more than politics. It’s a worldview that encompasses also one’s response to the family today and who is going to be in control and has led to the deaths of millions.

If there is a concern I have about this book, it’s that I wish there were more topics covered. I understand that it was intentional how it was done, but there aren’t topics covering the existence of God, the reliability of Scripture, or the resurrection of Jesus. I would prefer that there be at least one chapter on each of these and then go from there to critiquing the other worldviews while the foundation is already in place.

Still, this is a great opener in equipping mothers to be defenders of what their children believe and to enable them to know how to dialogue not just with their own children on these topics, but with other mothers as well. Apologetics no longer belongs to just the men and it never should have been that way to begin with. Mothers need to get this book and in the words of the authors “Roar like a mother.”

In Christ,
Nick Peters