Patriarchy

Yesterday, I asked Mary Lee if she'd read the piece about President Trump's advisor, Steve Bannon, I'd linked to at the end of the hillbilly post?

The stream of hatred the press passes off as news about Bannon makes him out to be President Trump's Rasputin. Rosie O'Donnell agrees, so this morning she announced she wants to play the man on SNL. The man Bannon, you understand.

Mary Lee said she hadn't read the Bannon profile. If you haven't read it either, you simply must.

Some teasers. After introducing Bannon as a man who is "embracing... a fringe cast of ultra-conservative figures," the piece goes on to define Bannon's fringe ultra-conservatism...

Over the years, I've often repeated a truism I'd heard as a younger man concerning the sins typical of men during our youth, middle, and old age: we begin with sex, then move on to money; but we end with pride. The past few years this has come home to me with great intensity as I've watched men I respect suffer because of their pride. They have lost others’ respect for them. Their church or religious organization has imploded. Their leadership has become grossly attenuated. Their families have privately suffered severe conflict.

I’ve talked with my wife and closest pastor friends about this quite a few times the past couple of months and we have come to wonder whether we have not gotten things wrong with respect to what God hates? We think He hates rebellion and antinomianism—which He does, of course. His Word tells us that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.

But then this...

With our Clearnote Fellowship Conference a few hours away, I won't have much time the next few days to engage with this issue, but I've had some nagging thoughts as I've read the debates going on among church officers in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges.

Any stand Christians take in opposition to the enforcement of Obergefell v. Hodges across the nation must be in light of God's Creation Order in its entirety. If we single out sodomy as the place we draw the line of civil disobedience concerning sexuality, we must ask ourselves why there? Is it really because sodomy has taken our culture to a whole new level of rebellion against God? Yes, but also no...

John Blake wrote a piece titled "Lord of the Flies Comes to Baltimore" in which he laments the absence of older men in his native city, Baltimore:

...I talked to a 27-year-old black man named Juan Grant. He knew Gray, whose death in police custody lit the fuse in Baltimore. Grant stood no more than a foot from me, but as he talked, he yelled at me in frustration, spittle coming from his mouth. He said Gray's death had convinced him and his friends to stop "ripping and running" the streets. They wanted boys to respect them as men. But they didn't know how to get that respect because their fathers had never been around. He described their dilemma with a bitter laugh: "It's men learning on the job trying to teach young men how to be men."

Blake quotes Robert Boyd, pastor of Beacon of Truth Church and Ministries in West Baltimore:

Now we as men are fearful when we walk through a group of boys. When we were boys, when we walked through a group of men, we felt secure. Something is wrong.

Blake summarizes Baltimore's shame...

NOTE: Likely I should add that I don't really believe the statement quoted below is characteristic of paedocommunionists while I am certain it is characteristic of Redeemerites. I should have done a better job on the title of the piece.

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A federal vision, paedocommunion, PCA pastor writes that in 1Corinthians 11:2-16: "Paul speaks to the men and women in the church about issues of headship. In certain defined relationships, men are the heads of women (e.g., in marriage and in the church). The woman is the glory of the man, having been created from the man and for the man. This is an order of authority that arises from the creation itself. Since Christ came to redeem the creation and set it back on God’s intended track, the order established in creation matters. The whole issue before us about head-coverings has to do with observing that order."

"Men are the heads of women" only "in certain defined relationships," and that headship is because the Creation Order "matters" and Christ came to set that order "back on God's intended track." The Creation Order was established in the state of perfection in the Garden of Eden, prior to the Fall, but it now has application only "in certain defined relationships." In other words, there is no connection between sex and authority anywhere but "in marriage and in the church." This is the teaching of both Federal Vision paedocommunionists and Tim Keller Redeemerites.

When we deny that sex and authority have any connection outside the home and the Church, we are limiting God's Order of Creation to the private spheres where the doctrinal commitments of Christians may remain hidden from the sight of unbelievers. Thus we change our Lord's command...

Presbyterian Church in America pastor Rich Bledsoe, one of Dr. Leithart's Theopolis Institute men, posted a piece on sexuality I take as typical of the posture of PCA and Oatmeal Stout Federal Vision pastors toward today's sexual anarchy:

PARAGRAPH ONE:

I would like to beat a very old drum here, one that I beat a lot, but only because it has proven so illuminating to me. Back to Barfield’s “original to final participation”. Along with everything else, masculinity in its original natural form is dying.

Masculinity in its "original natural form" was created in the Garden of Eden by God. It started dying immediately after the Fall of Adam when, speaking to God, Adam blamed his sin on "the woman You gave me." Masculinity's original natural form was created to bear responsibility—not claim victimhood—and so masculinity started dying with the Fall.

Yet masculinity has also been being reborn since the Fall, generation after generation as men are born again. As Scripture says, "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation," so throughout history the power of the Holy Spirit has been conforming men to the image of Christ. Certainly He is "masculinity in its original natural form."

Sadly, Rich doesn't say a word about the Holy Spirit's work renewing masculinity among men of God. He only says masculinity is dying...

Dominic Aquila used to be on the side of the angels in the battles for the Biblical commitments of the PCA. Sadly, the past few years he has given up the fight and turned his Aquila Report over to a young woman who is working on a book opposing father-rule. Her name is Rachel Miller and she's quite typical of the sort of woman who claims to speak for women as she opposes God's Creation Order of patriarchy (lit. "father-rule"). Mrs. Miller explains her world-view:

I believe patriarchy to be emotionally abusive because it creates an antagonistic relationship between husbands and wives, men and women.

"Patriarchy [is] emotionally abusive?" Does she mean the rule of God the Father over all His creation—that Father-Rule? Does she oppose the rule of Adam, our federal head? The rule of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Think of the hubris of a woman who...

Those who believe and honor God’s gift and order of sexuality confess both the history recorded in Genesis and the New Testament texts that explain the meaning of Genesis. Here then is Scripture's revelation concerning God's gift of sexuality:

First, God created Adam and Eve “in His Own Image,” thereby revealing their essential equality.

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27).

Second, God created Eve... 

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).

The genesis for this post comes from many directions, some cultural, some from the church, and some personal (and thanks to Tim and Terri for helping with some examples).

Many times I have been in elders meetings where the topic of a failed or failing marriage has come up and, almost invariably, the man is the villain and the wife is the suffering saint. The frequency of this scenario makes you want to ask whether women are just more holy than men? Could any of the failures be the wife's fault? Even a little bit? Granted, as the head of the home, the man is responsible for the state of his marriage and the discipline and instruction of his children, but fault is something different. Although the man is responsible to deal with the sin in his home, he's not the only sinner.

In bringing up this topic, I am not trying to redress an imbalance by launching a backlash. That would be wrong and silly. Rather, I’d like to challenge the pastors and elders and teachers amongst us really to examine what we believe about the moral agency of women. If problems in the home are always the man’s fault, we don't really believe women are human. Part of being human is moral agency—making real choices that are right, wrong, or somewhere in between—and then being held responsible for those choices. God cursed Eve...