Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Church Hostility To Men Is Why

I've addressed this problem before, but I'd like to discuss it again. Men don't go to church. And there is good reason for men not to go to church. And it has everything to do with how pastors treat women versus how they treat men.

First of all, I'd like to start out by asking anyone how your pastor talks about Father's Day. I remember years ago as a young teenager listening to my pastor talk on Father's Day about how men are not stepping up and being good fathers. Fathers were absent. Mothers stuck around and raised the children while fathers left. Divorce rates were over 50%. It's the dad's fault for not "manning up."

The truth of this is far more complex than a simple case of fathers not fulfilling their moral responsibilities to their children. But to blame the mother of anything was considered heresy. To this day, although the veil appears to be breaking, many in the church still hold up women on a pedestal in some fashion or another.

The Promise Keepers rally was one such example. While it was primarily focused on getting men right with God, which is not a bad thing, it also basically told men that they need to stick with their wives no matter what. The problem was that there was no rally for women who taught them that they need to submit to their husbands, unless their husband is asking them to do something that directly violates God's law.

Ask any pastor if the man is the head of the household and you will probably get an affirmative response. However, if you ask him (or her) to elaborate on this, you may get different answers. For example, you may get the unchristian response that the wife is the neck. Or that the wife is the crown.

You may also get conditions on the husband's headship. A wife can only submit to her husband if her husband is behaving in a Godly manner. This is prominent in many Christian organizations like Focus on the Family where moral headship is only valid if the husband is not a sinner. They may not outright say it, but that is clearly what they mean.

On top of all this, if you ask a pastor if it is right for a wife to, say, read a romance novel, you'd get an answer in the affirmative. What they fail to recognize is that women have a different set of vices than men. As Louis CK puts it regarding women, "you're just a visitor on the island of Lust. I'm a prisoner." I believe that many Christian organizations recognize lust as a huge problem in our society today and I would certainly agree with them. However, because men are more prone to lust than women (although women not wanting to be outdone by men are certainly catching up), this means that men are bad.

But for women, their chief vice is envy, not lust. It is a perversion of a different pattern of thinking, much like how lust is really just a perversion of men acting on their own patterns of thinking. Why do women shop more, why do they use make-up more, why do they dress themselves in uncomfortable yet very revealing clothing? It is because they can't have another woman having the things they want.

Because of the prevailing attitude that men are bad, women are good within churches and Christian organizations, they have effectively taken away leadership from men. Sure many of the leaders are still male, but they openly berate their own gender for the praises of the other. We are told to "man up" and marry sluts, deceivers, and bitches because it is our fault they are that way. We are charged to marry such deplorable women without guidance on how to tame them and make them into good, Christian women. Because when you get marry a good Christian, you automatically become a good Christian yourself. Because Jesus.

In light of this, we now see inactive churches all over America. With women becoming the spiritual and moral head of the household, we see emphasis on prayer without follow-up. We see collective Bible studies where nothing serious is addressed. We see subjective morality where single moms (not widows or even divorced moms) are looked upon with pity rather than disdain. We accept that divorce is all right if the woman isn't happy with her marriage.

In essence, we have gutted the true meaning of being a Christian in favor of accommodating some feminist farcical notion of equality. But equality is not a word that appears in the Bible, not when it comes to any kind of relationship. There is always a dominant and submissive role in any relationship. Never forget that.

Lastly, I challenge any Christian to ask their pastor why the Serpent chose to tempt Eve over Adam. I doubt you'll get a good answer or any answer relating to her gender.