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HYPER-PATRIARCHY ERROR #3: THE MAN IS ALWAYS RIGHT
It is worth noting that the apostolic pattern consistently gives sex-specific commands in pairs. Commands are given to wives… And then to husbands. To men… And then women.
Yet in HP discourse, it is becoming popular to speak as if the women are the problem with the world. If we could just get all of those stupid women to shut up, then the world would be fixed.
Problem is, there would still be all the stupid men to deal with.
The HP woman blame is almost as overt and laughable as Obama’s recent statement that if we just let women run the world, it would make the world a better place.
Now that’s a Hillary-us proposition. But right now I’m going after HP, so I’ll make fun of the idea of women running the world later.
There is a fundamental assumption that if a woman would just submit herself to male headship – her father, her husband, even her brother perhaps – then she will be just fine. Because he knows best. And we know that he knows best because – well, because he’s a man.
I say this as someone who is in favor of repealing the 19th Amendment and who does believe that Scripture teaches that women are more easily deceived. (1 Tim. 2:14) Nevertheless, just because men often walk into sin with their eyes open doesn’t mean that they don’t walk into sin, and just because women are more easily deceived does not mean that they are always deceived, nor does it mean that men do not ever get deceived.
There actually are bad men out there. There are bad husbands. There are bad fathers. There are men that, no matter how respectful and submissive their wives and daughters are, will remain evil, wicked tyrants. There are men out there who have less wisdom than their godly Christian daughters do. There are men out there who are more prone to lead their household into destruction than their wife is- see Nabal and Abigail. (1 Sam. 25)
The idea that in every situation, it is always a good idea for a woman to put herself under the authority of a husband/father/etc. is laughable. Sometimes those guys are wicked, and she needs to get out.
And no, I’m not talking about the “divorce your toxic husband“ trend. You bet I am still skeptical of that ambiguous “abuse” stuff- the “triggers” and “harm” and “trauma” and “not feeling safe” “mental health” mumbo-jumbo.
But there are occasions where there is real abuse and it is bad enough that a woman needs a way to get to safety. There are occasions where a husband is using his authority so poorly that a wife should interpose herself (exactly what Abigail did). A woman can call the police on things that are actually crimes, and that is actually biblical – Romans 13. A woman can call the church to intervene in an ungodly situation – Matthew 18. She’s still a Christian, she’s still a person, she still has rights.
Yes, a wife should seek to win an ungodly husband by her conduct. It does start there. (1 Pet. 3)
But it does not end there, nor does 1 Peter 3 serve as proof that anytime the man is doing things incorrectly, it must just be because she didn’t 1 Peter 3 hard enough.
We know this instinctively when we read about our duties to submit to the government in places like Romans 13. The same people who argue for seemingly unlimited patriarchal authority and nearly unqualified wifely submission are often quite happy about the prospect of disobedience when the government even slightly oversteps.
But no human authority is absolute, and no human who is under authority is left without recourse in a Christian model if they are under the thumb of tyranny.
“But women are going to take this and use it as an excuse for rebellion!”
Women who do this need to be rebuked, and they need to repent. But we don’t get to only preach half the Bible because we are afraid of what the other half might lead people to do. (1/2)
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Authority and responsibility go together. This is why when patriarchy guys try to blame women for everything, they undermine their own argument… And why feminists, when they try to act like men are at fault for not protecting and caring for women, undermine their own argument.
Can a woman argue that a man is spiritually responsible for his wife while also arguing that a husband is not allowed to supervise her in any way?
I don’t necessarily think “supervise” is the best word, but I’m trying to view it in a more gracious light.
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HYPER-PATRIARCHY ERROR #3: THE MAN IS ALWAYS RIGHT
It is worth noting that the apostolic pattern consistently gives sex-specific commands in pairs. Commands are given to wives… And then to husbands. To men… And then women.
Yet in HP discourse, it is becoming popular to speak as if the women are the problem with the world. If we could just get all of those stupid women to shut up, then the world would be fixed.
Problem is, there would still be all the stupid men to deal with.
The HP woman blame is almost as overt and laughable as Obama’s recent statement that if we just let women run the world, it would make the world a better place.
Now that’s a Hillary-us proposition. But right now I’m going after HP, so I’ll make fun of the idea of women running the world later.
There is a fundamental assumption that if a woman would just submit herself to male headship – her father, her husband, even her brother perhaps – then she will be just fine. Because he knows best. And we know that he knows best because – well, because he’s a man.
I say this as someone who is in favor of repealing the 19th Amendment and who does believe that Scripture teaches that women are more easily deceived. (1 Tim. 2:14) Nevertheless, just because men often walk into sin with their eyes open doesn’t mean that they don’t walk into sin, and just because women are more easily deceived does not mean that they are always deceived, nor does it mean that men do not ever get deceived.
There actually are bad men out there. There are bad husbands. There are bad fathers. There are men that, no matter how respectful and submissive their wives and daughters are, will remain evil, wicked tyrants. There are men out there who have less wisdom than their godly Christian daughters do. There are men out there who are more prone to lead their household into destruction than their wife is- see Nabal and Abigail. (1 Sam. 25)
The idea that in every situation, it is always a good idea for a woman to put herself under the authority of a husband/father/etc. is laughable. Sometimes those guys are wicked, and she needs to get out.
And no, I’m not talking about the “divorce your toxic husband“ trend. You bet I am still skeptical of that ambiguous “abuse” stuff- the “triggers” and “harm” and “trauma” and “not feeling safe” “mental health” mumbo-jumbo.
But there are occasions where there is real abuse and it is bad enough that a woman needs a way to get to safety. There are occasions where a husband is using his authority so poorly that a wife should interpose herself (exactly what Abigail did). A woman can call the police on things that are actually crimes, and that is actually biblical – Romans 13. A woman can call the church to intervene in an ungodly situation – Matthew 18. She’s still a Christian, she’s still a person, she still has rights.
Yes, a wife should seek to win an ungodly husband by her conduct. It does start there. (1 Pet. 3)
But it does not end there, nor does 1 Peter 3 serve as proof that anytime the man is doing things incorrectly, it must just be because she didn’t 1 Peter 3 hard enough.
We know this instinctively when we read about our duties to submit to the government in places like Romans 13. The same people who argue for seemingly unlimited patriarchal authority and nearly unqualified wifely submission are often quite happy about the prospect of disobedience when the government even slightly oversteps.
But no human authority is absolute, and no human who is under authority is left without recourse in a Christian model if they are under the thumb of tyranny.
“But women are going to take this and use it as an excuse for rebellion!”
Women who do this need to be rebuked, and they need to repent. But we don’t get to only preach half the Bible because we are afraid of what the other half might lead people to do. (1/2)
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Furthermore, this exact same reasoning can be applied to the men – “the men are going to take biblical patriarchy and use it as an excuse for abusive tyranny!”
We like trying to use rules to preclude potential problems, but God gives us His Word and then tells us to grow in wisdom. We have to be comfortable with biblical caveats and exceptions, and we have to pursue God with a whole heart so that we don’t make the exceptions the normative.
The fundamental presupposition that if we could just get the women to shut up, it would fix everything is a bad one. There are good women and there are bad women. There are good men and there are bad men. All men and all women need to be given levelheaded biblical counsel that includes how to deal with other sinners.
We cannot just tell women to go cosplay a 50s housewife and that will magically fix everything. They do need to be equipped to deal with bad men. They do need to know what it means to be an Abigail.
This is not only true in counsel towards families, but in the way that we speak of the broader problems throughout society. Women are not the only thing wrong with America.
Sure, feminist women have murdered their babies through abortion. But they didn’t get pregnant by themselves.
It really is a bad thing that the political authority of America rests so largely in the hands of women. But let’s not kid ourselves that the men are doing a very good job either.
Fundamentally, this is an issue of partiality. To glibly cast all of the blame on the women is to participate in the sin of our forefather Adam. (Gen. 3:12)
If you want biblical patriarchy, men, you do not get it without also assuming a greater responsibility. It is wrong for society to demand chivalry of men and allow dishonor in women. It is equally wrong to demand submission from women and allow selfishness in men.
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A lot of the guys arguing for patriarchy today seem to think they are rediscovering something that has been missing from the church for decades. Y’all need to understand that the patriarchy movement is not new. I literally grew up with this stuff. 20 years ago there was a patriarchy movement that was *less* rabid than the one today, and the fallout from some of the errors was still severe.
Unlike many of my peers who abandoned it entirely, I still believe in patriarchy, fundamentally because I believe that it is what the Bible teaches. But when I say that we need to be biblically balanced, not only is that a self evident and biblically taught truth, but I’m speaking from experience.
It was all there. The perfect families. The idealistic pictures of 50s-style normal America. The stirring rhetoric. The glorious, brave leaders in the war against the corrupt culture.
It was full of rot deep in its bones.
It was a movement. God seems to consistently be in the business of humbling movements.
May seem funny for me to say, given that I am such an extremely conservative, anti-cultural weirdo. I still believe many of the things that that movement taught, because I believe that they were biblical and true, and still are. So I’ll keep proclaiming them.
But I pray God that I may never be beholden to or responsible for a “movement.”
You don’t have to repeat the same mistakes that conservative Christianity made 20 years ago.
Please, don’t make God burn it all down again.
Be a Christian. Stick to Scripture.
That’s it. That’s the job.
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A general who responds to threats on multiple flanks is not “all over the place.”
Until we understand this… We will not gain the field.
Also, if a little bit of thoughtful biblical balance is enough to get “feminists” to “love” posts that advocate repealing the 19th, tell wives to obey their husbands, and point out that women shouldn’t hold public office, you might should reconsider your definition of feminist, as well as the effectiveness of whatever strategy it is that *you* are advocating.
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HYPER-PATRIARCHAL ERROR #2: THE INFANTILIZATION OF WOMEN
I really don’t like bringing the wives of other men into the conversation at all, but the attached screenshot from Lexi Sauve, the wife of patriarchal figurehead Brian Sauve, is simply too instructive to ignore.
Is it a joke? Of course it is.
Is it a joke that represents a deeper seed of truth? Also, of course it is.
It is not the only one. @JoelWebbon says that women are NPCs (non-player characters- video game parlance for the bystanders that you might interact with but you cannot play the game as). @Brian_Sauve says that women having unsupervised access to one another is insane. The jokes and broad-brush statements abound.
Many of these statements, as I have argued in the past, can be understood in such a way as to be defensible.
But the comprehensive weight of the statements tends in a very particular direction, namely, the infantilization of women. “Wives and adult daughters are fundamentally incompetent at life and rely on male headship to keep them sane and functional.”
We can respond to this in two separate directions.
The first response is that, quite simply, it’s not true. Women are not dumb. The Proverbs 31 woman is not being constantly supervised by her husband. The daughters of Zelophehad are functioning as an independent household. Scripture is full of women who, though often under patriarchal authority, nevertheless show very high levels of intelligence, initiative, decisiveness, courage, and conviction.
So to infantilize women is actually the opposite of what Scripture does. Scripture expect and encourages women to be thoroughly feminine and located squarely within their God-given roles. But Scripture also expects and encourages them to be – well first of all, everything that a Christian is called to be, which includes spiritual maturity, having an abundant walk with Christ, being involved and gifted in their local church, etc. – but also to be industrious, intelligent, convictional, courageous in the face of evil, and so on (Jael, Proverbs 31 woman, Ruth, Deborah, Esther).
Do these examples get terribly abused by “Christian” feminists and egalitarians?
They absolutely do. Nevertheless, they are part of scripture’s vision for godly womanhood. They do not justify the modern picture of an independent, ”empowered” woman. But they certainly militate against the idea that women are just stupid and passive and cannot think for themselves.
This erroneous pattern is observable in frequent HP statements about how women follow the leadership of men. And I agree. They do, by design. But if you apply this principle with too broad of a brush, the logical conclusion is that women are not responsible for their actions at all. They are only following the leadership of the men in their lives, or responding to the lack thereof. Yet Scripture does not do this. Women are called to act a certain way, regardless of the leadership of the men in their lives, for example, in 1 Peter 3.
They’re called to act like Christians. They are “empowered” by the Holy Spirit. They have agency, intelligence, personhood, and responsibility.
This mindset is also regularly evidenced in the jokes within the HP community. It actually does matter how we joke, because how we joke shows what we think is funny, and what we think is funny reflects what we believe to be true.
The same guy who will happily joke about how dumb women are would be disgusted by a man who jokes that his wife is “the boss.”
And the latter joke *is* disgusting.
But this is the point. Both jokes represent unbiblical views of the world. The view of the world which says that women are stupid and helpless children and the view of the world which says that men are lazy dumb oafs who need their wives to keep them in line – these are both unChristian and destructive. (1/2)
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The other equally effective way to respond to the “women are dumb” stuff is to simply observe that men are dumb too.
One of the great examples of this is how Amy Coney Barrett is held up as the penultimate example of why women should not be in positions of civil rule. (And they shouldn’t, by the way, see Isaiah 3:12.)
The conclusion in this case is correct, but the premise is that Amy’s bad votes on the Supreme Court happen *because she is a woman.* The problem is that there are a bunch of male judges on the Supreme Court who also reliably make terrible voting decisions. So it’s an issue of partiality – when she votes in a bad direction, it proves my point about the stupidity of all women, but when the men vote in a bad direction, well, that doesn’t prove anything about all men.
Yes, women have a lot of problems and they need a lot of help. Men do too. Yes, their problems are often different, and require different kinds of help. But if we are going to infantilize women as being completely helpless by magnifying their faults and weaknesses, then biblical impartiality would require us to also magnify the faults and weaknesses of men. So women are gullible, helpless little NPCs… And men are raging tyrannical perverts. Everybody happy now?
I didn’t think so.
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1. God says that the death penalty is the necessary and just punishment for certain crimes.
2. Lifelong imprisonment is more barbaric than swift execution.
3. The prison system unjustly places the economic burden of providing for criminals on the law-abiding members of society.
Hi Nick, I greatly respect you. You are a fighter for life. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
I don’t think those who support the death penalty are themselves personally inhumane and did not say that in my post. I think the death penalty itself is inhumane in a nation where we can effectively secure violent offenders and prevent them from harming others.
The ancient Israelites did not have the prisons we have today, which made the death penalty acceptable under those circumstances, as a means of protecting the public from the criminal. But the Bible doesn’t mandate the death penalty for modern America. Today we have the ability to imprison violent offenders for life. Taking their lives is unnecessary to protect the common good.
Whether the death penalty is justified does not depend on the degree of confidence in a criminal’s guilt. In the modern world, the death penalty is unjust even for those we know are guilty. A crime, even a horrific crime, does not erase the criminal’s humanity.
We have a duty to protect the public and to protect the innocent. But vengeance is the Lord’s alone.
There is also a separate concern that I find compelling: entrusting the government—with all its capacity for overreach, corruption, bias, and human error—with the ultimate and irreversible power to take the life of one of its citizens. Our government has made terrible mistakes, and you have been a stalwart critic of government overreach and corruption. In my view, the most conservative position would be to say that, in modern America, the State should not wield the irreversible power of execution when it can protect society through life imprisonment instead.
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The death penalty as practiced in America is barbaric and inhumane.
Not because of the execution, but because of the lack thereof.
The death penalty as instituted by God is just and righteous.
Bring back the gallows.
BREAKING: Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is still alive after two lethal injections, her lawyer says in a motion to again halt the execution. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ahe…
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Sir, you are not a Christian. But you can become one if you repent.
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals… will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
- 1 Cor. 6:9-11
I am a gay Christian. Scripture is explicit that salvation comes by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by perfect adherence to any cultural or sexual standard (Ephesians 2:8-9). The same New Testament that contains hard passages also declares that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39). My standing is defined by that grace, not by whether I meet every traditional expectation around orientation.
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“Wives be subject to the Twitter mob, as unto the Lord, for the Twitter mob is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church.”
- 1 Hyperpatriarchy 18:5
Them: go listen to your husband
Me: okay (I already was) returns to regular programming
Them: NOOOO NOT LIKE THAT!!!
Me: my husband said it's okay
Them: NOOO he's wrong and you need to listen to me instead
Me: you're not my husband
Them: hurls insults at me and my husband
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HYPER-PATRIARCHAL ERROR #1: IF IT IS AGAINST FEMINISM THEN IT MUST BE GOOD
We need to get this one out of the way at the outset because this is the kind of mindset that makes rational discussion impossible. This is the Internet equivalent of “shall we do evil that could may come?” (Rom. 3:8)
Except the anticipated answer to the question is a resounding “yes!”
Feminism is bad. It is a toxic evil wicked ideology from hell. It needs to be eradicated.
But this does not mean that anything that can be construed as being “anti-feminism” is therefore good.
If a vile serial killer lives in an apartment building, and he is eminently worthy of death, so the cops set the entire apartment building on fire, killing eighty other innocent people – the fact that they successfully executed the serial killer does not justify the way in which they did it.
So anyone who responds to the subsequent points that I’m going to make on this topic by saying that “feminism is the problem in our culture today” or “you need to know what time it is” is missing the point.
Feminism is *a* problem in our culture today. It is even a *big* problem in our culture today. But this does not give us the right to misrepresent God in how we respond to it.
Feminism is bad. This does not mean that you should be a rude jerk. It does not mean that you are justified in being a tyrannical husband or father. It does not mean that you should yell at random women on the Internet to go home and make a pie.
So many of the excesses within the hyper-patriarchal (HP) community are glazed over because “at least they are attacking feminism.” But this is not a Christian way of thinking. We are never given the right to jettison biblical standards for our own conduct because at least we are going after something that is bad.
“Never repay evil for evil to anyone… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Rom. 12:17, 21
Closely related to this topic is the dodge that “it was just a joke,” or “that’s not what he meant.”
OK, well if it’s not what he meant, then he shouldn’t have said it. It is good and right to give someone the benefit of the doubt. But it is also good and right to recognize a cumulative pattern.
“There is one who speaks rashly like the thrusts of a sword, But the tongue of the wise brings healing.” - Pr. 12:18
And when that cumulative pattern points very clearly in a certain direction, “well that’s not what he meant” is not a sufficient defense against criticism.
There comes a point where the only way to accidentally do the same thing so many times is by doing it on purpose.
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I’m preparing my series on patriarchal abuses and excesses, but I am nervous. I’m not sure how I’m going to withstand irrefutable augmentation like this.
But seriously, my gaynon friends should know that every response like this which demonstrates complete lack of Christian maturity or the fruit of the Holy Spirit only reinforces the truth of what I’m saying (and my determination to say it.)
Your fruits are showing, and they are only proving that the tree needs to come down.
Just so you know.
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JON HARRIS IS FAKE AND GAY NOW
No, that title isn’t clickbait, I’m just trying to be the first to bring some lucid and incisive reasoning in response to his post about Christian Nationalism. I don’t know how any of the CN Bros are going to top the intellectual TKO that I just delivered.
OK, I will now set the jokes aside and encourage you to go read this excellent (and courageous) article by @jonharris1989.
I have fought over the term Christian Nationalism for a long time. Knowing myself, I probably will continue to so. But the points that he makes in this post are excellent, and they cannot be refuted by calling him names or saying that he was bought out by the Jews.
Because frankly, even if he was, everything that he said in this article is demonstrably true.
The information he provided about the speakers at the upcoming “Christ is King” conference was quite illuminating as well. At this point, many of the Christian Nationalist figureheads need to repent of taking the name of Jesus Christ in vain.
I’m talking about you, @JoelWebbon and @Brian_Sauve.
You do not get to invoke His Name as an excuse for wicked behavior or a stamp of approval on unrepentant and blatantly sinful “thought leaders.”
Especially when you are eager to condemn other Christians who do the same thing… But for sins that aren’t as based. This is hypocritical judgment. It is partiality.
If you want to have a conference headlined by ungodly men, fine. Just drop the pretense of Godliness. Call it Nationalism. White Nationalism. A longhouse burning party. Call it the White Men Are Kings conference. Whatever you want.
But keep the Name of Jesus out of it unless you want to be governed by the Words of Jesus as well.
For my part, conservative Christian is good enough for me.
Whatever happened to Christian Nationalism?
The term exploded, became a movement, and now seems to be losing its usefulness. But the debate over Christian political thought is far from over.
I explain why I have become more reluctant to use the term, what happened to the movement, and where Christians should focus instead.
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HYPER-PATRIARCHAL ERRORS: INTRODUCTION
Over the next little while I will be walking through some of the common errors, excesses, and dangers of patriarchal teaching. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you will know that patriarchal teaching is one of the primary things that I do. However, any good thing, when taken beyond its Biblical boundaries, can become very destructive.
The recent video by the Botkin sisters which I posted yesterday served to reopen a very important conversation about the patriarchy movement, both in general and for me in particular. I really appreciated that their approach was Biblically based, rather than a bitter deconstruction. Listening through it reminded me of realizations and repentances that I had to go through in my own marriage.
If you have not yet, I would strongly encourage you to look up the podcast episode which I did with my wife entitled “My Years As a Tyrant.“ It’s available on YouTube as well as on Spotify and Apple podcasts under the podcast “The Dance”, and it will demonstrate how personal this conversation is to me and put flesh on the idea that we must discuss these things with biblical care and not simply as Internet flamethrowers. The consequences of failure to do so are dire.
If you hear in the following sequence of posts a repudiation of the things that I was saying five minutes ago about patriarchy, please know that that is emphatically not the case. Don’t worry, I will have the feminists yelling at me again soon enough. I firmly believe in biblical patriarchy, and I firmly believe that it is not biblical unless it is actually defined correctly according to Scripture.
But this series *is* intended as a corrective. There are a few things, particularly that I’ve said recently about daughters, that this re-examination has caused me to realize were going beyond Scripture. Getting out over my skis, as it were. I do wish to correct those things.
More broadly, I hope that these will serve as a corrective for potential misunderstandings of things that I have said, and a corrective more broadly to the hyper-patriarchal community that is too drunk on being based to be willing to be biblical and balanced.
Buckle in, and bring your rotten vegetables.
It’s gonna be fun.
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THERE IS A BETTER WAY
The reactions from people who hear that I just had my sixth child are predictable. Shock. Pity thinly disguised as congratulations. Anecdotes about how much of a pain children are. The age-old question of whether or not I know what causes that. (I do, and we enjoy it quite a lot lot, actually.)
Yet I cannot blame people too harshly, for the sad reality is that we live in a time of multi-generational chaos. Children of broken homes are now parents in broken homes. People who grew up disconnected from their parents and siblings are now expected to know how to burp an infant, train a toddler, raise a child. The roles of men and women have been confused into oblivion. Sexual promiscuity has been normalized as simply part of being an adult. Having a therapist and a bottle of pills for your mental health is more common and culturally acceptable than Biblical marriage is. Having an abortion is more normal than having six children.
You are more likely to get agreement and sympathy for talking bad about your spouse than you are for praising them; for bemoaning the life of a parent than for rejoicing in it.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Imagine a world where husbands loved their wives as Christ loved the church. Where wives treated their husbands with respect and honor. Where parents disciplined their children with patient, loving firmness, so that their children were happy and productive members of the family instead of little terrorists.
Imagine a world where multiple generations, lived together in harmony – the older generations pouring their wisdom into the younger, and the younger giving of their strength for the older. Imagine a world where older women actually teach younger women how to successfully nurse a newborn. Where older men push younger men both to greatness and humility. Where children are a source of effervescent joy instead of a thorn in the flesh.
This is the kind of world that the Gospel of Jesus Christ creates.
So leave behind the lies of a culture so stupid that it doesn’t even know what boys and girls are.
Leave behind the sin that promises you pleasure, but provides only chains.
Come to the One Who has the answers – not just for the ethereal, spiritual questions, but for the day-to-day questions of life that leave our culture completely stumped.
Come to Jesus.
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