Dan Popp
Anyone miss "patriarchy" yet?
By Dan Popp
Merv Griffin: What's happened to our country? What's wrong with our children? Why are our families falling apart? What's missing?
Lucille Ball: Papa's missing. Things are falling apart because Papa's gone. If Papa were here, he would fix it.
It was only a few decades ago when sociologists told us that women civilize men through marriage. A young, testosterone-poisoned male was a threat to society, only wanting to fight and drink and fornicate. Then some damsel would catch his eye and inform him that he could have her, on the condition that he straighten up and fly right.
This has fallen out of favor because the feminist position has changed. Progressive "truth" is always temporary truth, you see, no matter how vociferously voiced. It would be un-politically-correct today to say that marriage is important to civilization, or that women and men are actually different sexes. But I think most of us find some truth in the outmoded observation. Women do civilize men through marriage – at least sometimes.
But it is also true that men civilize women through (old-fashioned) marriage, and the proof is on our TV screens right now: Women costumed as genitalia, demanding the "right" to murder their own offspring
Whatever the problems with "patriarchy," it never killed 60 million innocents in one war.
Men are fallen creatures. And our flesh remains a problem even after our spirits are regenerated through faith in Christ. But women are fallen creatures, too. We've seen throughout history the damage caused by unrestrained, undisciplined males; now we're shocked by the barbaric behavior of large numbers of unrestrained, undisciplined females.
The gentle sex, as they used to be called.
What we see is that women outside the civilizing boundaries of marriage, unprotected by the headship of a godly husband, are capable of their own kind of barbarity.
Here's a scene that may help us understand our situation:
These women justified their wicked behavior. But they admitted that, if they'd been doing this without their husbands' consent, they would have been guilty of something. Even in their broken condition they realized that a husband is supposed to be a guard to his wife, protecting her from spiritual attack. Every man in this group had failed in his duty as head of the household. Western women today – including, sadly, many Christian women – are worse than these die-hard idolaters, refusing to acknowledge the need for any man to provide a spiritual covering for them. (Read 1 Corinthians 11:1-16.)
Maybe the fish-without-a-bicycle analogy is just as stupid as it sounds.
The goddess-worshiping women of Jeremiah's day knew more than their postmodern sisters. They at least understood that the civilizing effects of marriage go both ways.
© Dan Popp
February 6, 2017
Merv Griffin: What's happened to our country? What's wrong with our children? Why are our families falling apart? What's missing?
Lucille Ball: Papa's missing. Things are falling apart because Papa's gone. If Papa were here, he would fix it.
It was only a few decades ago when sociologists told us that women civilize men through marriage. A young, testosterone-poisoned male was a threat to society, only wanting to fight and drink and fornicate. Then some damsel would catch his eye and inform him that he could have her, on the condition that he straighten up and fly right.
This has fallen out of favor because the feminist position has changed. Progressive "truth" is always temporary truth, you see, no matter how vociferously voiced. It would be un-politically-correct today to say that marriage is important to civilization, or that women and men are actually different sexes. But I think most of us find some truth in the outmoded observation. Women do civilize men through marriage – at least sometimes.
But it is also true that men civilize women through (old-fashioned) marriage, and the proof is on our TV screens right now: Women costumed as genitalia, demanding the "right" to murder their own offspring
Whatever the problems with "patriarchy," it never killed 60 million innocents in one war.
Men are fallen creatures. And our flesh remains a problem even after our spirits are regenerated through faith in Christ. But women are fallen creatures, too. We've seen throughout history the damage caused by unrestrained, undisciplined males; now we're shocked by the barbaric behavior of large numbers of unrestrained, undisciplined females.
The gentle sex, as they used to be called.
What we see is that women outside the civilizing boundaries of marriage, unprotected by the headship of a godly husband, are capable of their own kind of barbarity.
Here's a scene that may help us understand our situation:
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Then all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by, as a large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt, responded to Jeremiah, saying, "As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you! But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine."
"And," said the women, "when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?" (Jeremiah 44:15-19, NAS95)
These women justified their wicked behavior. But they admitted that, if they'd been doing this without their husbands' consent, they would have been guilty of something. Even in their broken condition they realized that a husband is supposed to be a guard to his wife, protecting her from spiritual attack. Every man in this group had failed in his duty as head of the household. Western women today – including, sadly, many Christian women – are worse than these die-hard idolaters, refusing to acknowledge the need for any man to provide a spiritual covering for them. (Read 1 Corinthians 11:1-16.)
Maybe the fish-without-a-bicycle analogy is just as stupid as it sounds.
The goddess-worshiping women of Jeremiah's day knew more than their postmodern sisters. They at least understood that the civilizing effects of marriage go both ways.
© Dan Popp
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