--> Have you ever heard the expression
“kick the dog and he shall bite you”? When we're not behaving in
optimal ways, we human beings have a tendency to take out our
frustrations and disappointments on lesser creatures or even
inanimate objects. If you had a bad day at work because the boss
gave you a lot of grief, did you come home to take it out your
frustration on your children or your spouse? Did you loose patience
with the family pet when they were behaving like a pet because you
had not productively expressed that stress in a healthier way? It's
much easier to vent at other people who are not a threat to you,
expecting that there will be no consequences or limited consequences
for doing so.
Adam
started doing it in the book of Genesis. But as the first phrase
aptly notes, consequences do revisit us.
But what Adam did was a bit more
complicated and went beyond venting frustration. He also attempted
to lay blame on Eve to avoid bearing the consequences of his own
actions himself. The complementarians claim that this was a just and
reasonable conclusion on Adam's part to some extent, because they
assume that women are subordinate to men because they are
defined
by complementarianism as ontologically (of essence) and
teleologically (of purpose) subordinate and therefore man's lesser.
It's more than just an issue of a hierarchy in terms of the rules
they believe that God established. That isn't enough. They have
misused Scripture to “read into” what has been
written in order to make women into lesser creatures in terms of both
essence and sole purpose. Why would this be a problem? Their
concept of perceived hierarchy adds to the weight of the blame placed
on Eve and takes some of the burden off of Adam (and therefore men)
in their minds.
Remember the other cliché that says
“'misfortune' rolls downhill”?
Status and the fallacy of the
appeal
to authority often gives people moral permission to treat
subordinates differently and with less consideration than they would
give to a peer who is on a linear par with them or a superior.
Demoralization and Dehumanization
Hanna
Arendt wrote extensively about the holocaust and totalitarianism,
and she wrote some of the best commentary we have today concerning
the trials at Nuremburg, particularly concerning Adolf Eichmann. She
was tough on everyone. She not only noted how Germany blamed the Jew
for all of the evil in the world, but she also believed that those
sitting in judgement at Nuremburg also laid too much blame on
Eichmann, holding him accountable for more than just his own human
rights violations. Each group of people felt great motive and found
it easy to demoralize their opponents because of the benefits the
perception afforded them (though in the case of Eichmann, there was
great cause and just reason to rightfully moralize). Demoralizing an
enemy makes it easier to hate them, therefore it is easier to justify
any immoral acts committed against them. During wars, one must use
every weapon one can find against the enemy, and ideological weapons
prove profoundly effective.
In her writings on totalitarianism,
Arendt also notes how much of Europe manifested anger and greed which
fostered their hatred and jealousy of Jews because of the
Rothchilds
who controlled much of the banking in Europe prior to the World Wars.
She believes that this greed and jealousy fostered the conditions
that favored discrimination against Jews in the early 20
th
Century. Germans gained great benefit by considering that the Jewish
People were less than human, and Hitler capitalized upon this greed
and selfishness.
As
I've written in the past, quoting the book
Occidentalism,
demoralization can quickly become dehumanization, as we see also see
in the case with the Jews.
(“The
dehumanizing picture of the West painted by its enemies is what we
have called Occidentalism,” pg 5.) If someone is seen as
less than human, people feel that they are not obligated to treat
them with human dignity. They can be defined as
deserving of
inhumane treatment. This is very common during times of war, and
it's remnants can still be heard in the South following the War
Between the States in the phrase of “Damn Yankee” which carries
with it the connotation that those from North of the Mason Dixon line
cannot be Christians and are actually something more like demons who
hate Christianity. This belief continues to thrive in the US today,
even
among Christians.
We also must consider the inherent
human trait and drive to punish evil.
Bandura's
studies (and those of
Milgram
and
Zimbardo
also) demonstrate that people will be gracious and kind to those they
believe are innocent and good, but to those who are defined as
immoral and as “animals,” they tend to deliver great punishment.
They are also willing to subscribe to “
moral
disengagement” for a cause, displacing their sense of ethics in
favor of following what someone else has decided for them. They
believe that this reduces their own culpability for their personal
actions, because the means used to carry out harm and punishment can
be justified by the ideology of a group. Please visit the embedded
links in this paragraph to understand the very powerful influence
that these human traits carry in terms of a person's willingness to
participate in and natural tendencies toward punishment.
Defining Women and Wives as
Adversaries
Within complementarianism, we see all
of these factors at work. We see many examples of
logical
fallacy and
extra-Biblical
doctrine used to justify aggression towards women. Women are
said to naturally seek to dominate and overthrow men. We see
leaders
in complementarianism state that men have good cause to consider
abusing their wives when they don't submit to a husband's authority,
and though they don't officially condone the behavior, they justify
it indirectly. We see leaders in complementarianism (
Piper
and
Patterson
and
Gothard)
state that women are obligated to endure at least a certain measure
of abuse in the name of their ideology's submission requirements.
And there's plenty of ideology to go around.
Add all of these things to the premises
of complementarianism. In addition to teaching that women are
ontologically and teleologically subordinate to men which in some
ways defines them as less human and less spiritually capable than
men, they teach that women are little more than a type of child that
requires an overseer. Though they ignore that Genesis Chapter 4
notes that Eve named her sons without mentioning any input from Adam,
they attest that Eve is subordinate to Adam because he named her.
They assert that
Adam
failed to lead Eve around like a child in the garden (a s
in
before sin?).
All
women are said to be easily deceived, lacking spiritual
discernment. Women's testimonies and reciting of Scripture are said
to be
without
meaning, power, value, and effectiveness. I could list and list
the teachings of the
Council on
Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) for days, but I'd rather
just refer you to a critique of their
Danvers
Statement. In addition to the denial of full personhood, CBMW
are also saddles women with the blame for original sin
(Piper, J,
Grudem, W, eds, Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Wheaton,
IL: Crossway Books (1991), p.179- 193.). They claim that it was
really Eve who committed original sin, but since she was not created
fully in the Image of God and did have a childlike, secondary status,
Adam had to take the blame because of
primogeniture.
But there is another factor which
perhaps fosters more discord in marriages because of the Danvers
Statement than all of these factors put together. CBMW teaches that
it is woman's natural and inherent drive to seek to dominate and
overthrow men. You can read it in the
Danvers
Statement and in the volumes of rebuttal in
the
570 page book which defends the Statement because CBMW feels that
Christians require this much explanation to discern what the Bible
teaches. You can also
link
here, paying attention to “Affirmation #4” in my response to
the Danvers Statement. I hope complementarian men sleep with one eye
open in bed at night, because only God knows what the evil woman
might do while he's unconscious! Just as the Michael Pearl
identifies children as the natural, “diabolical” enemy of the
parent, so does CBMW define all women, even Christian women, as the
bane of men.
Cause for Retaliation and Punishment
at a Men's Conference?
Almost two weeks ago, Paul Dohse
attended a men's conference in Central Ohio which featured Voddie
Baucham as the keynote speaker. Having little prior knowledge of the
dark underbelly of the specific teachings of complementarianism and
what the ideology requires of women, Paul was appalled by the things
that were said about women. He was especially perplexed by the
teaching that there was sin that is not sin unto death, apparently,
because it was stated that Adam sinned before the Fall of Man by
failing to lead his wife. Baucham identified only two possible camps
in the church: either you were on God's side (complementarianism, of
course), or you were a part of the evil empire of evangelical
feminists.
Paul expressed great distress at what
he viewed as passive-aggressive behavior on the part of men who were
permitted to use the ladies rooms in the church because of the large
volume of men in attendance that day. He found that the ladies room
stalls to be disgusting, noting puddles of urine on the floor which
he could not avoid. Even the tread on his shoes for which he was
grateful could not protect his pant legs from baptism. He believed
the behavior to be be deliberate on the part of the men attending
that day, particularly after listening to the speakers define women
according to the complementarian paradigm.
I guess it’s an
age thing, but I needed several trips to the bathroom during the
conference and noticed something that was indicative of all of the
stalls in the women’s restroom. When I encountered it the first
time, I cleaned it up myself, but soon realized that would be futile
to continue if I didn’t want to miss the whole conference. I am
talkin’ urine all over the toilets and the floor. In regard to the
toilets, the first time I left a stall that I did not clean up
myself, I was not careful to not touch the toilet as I turned
to open the stall door and got urine all over the back of my pant
legs. As far as the floor, we are talkin’ large puddles. We are
talkin’….”I’m glad these shoes I’m wearing have a high
tread.”
I would like to
suggest to Voddie that he teach his kool-aid drinking followers to
get it all in the toilet before they attempt to take on
Christianity’s number one enemy, “gender feminists.” Somebody
had to clean that mess up, and if it was the ladies at Calvary, they
may all now be feminists at this writing. And because many of your
followers believe that Adam sinned before the fall, teaching them to
get it all in the toilet may be difficult, so maybe you could teach
them how to clean a toilet. Because after all Voddie, if they can’t
even pee in a boot, they will be no match for the feminists.
Jocelyn
Andersen, a domestic abuse survivor, corresponded with Dohse and
wrote in two venues about Paul's observations I believe that she
would agree that Calvinism has already become a Christian woman's
worst nightmare and has been for decades, though she would note that
the problem does not merely rest within Calvinist circles . At the
Freedom
for Christian Women Coalition Website, Andersen wrote that
Baucham
“even labeled women as being just
a notch above the serpent on the “food chain,” of which males
were at the top, of course.”
Paul Dohse,
editor of “Paul’s Passing Thoughts” at WordPress.com, wrote
that while using the women’s restroom, he found the toilets and
floor in every stall sprayed with urine. He wrote that this was
the case throughout the entirety of the conference. In an email
interview, Dohse’ would not go so far as to say that he believed
men at the conference were demonstrating hatred and contempt for
women by symbolically urinating on them, but he did say that, “it's
hard for me to believe what I saw wasn't deliberate.”
'
He blamed the
condition of the women’s restroom, in part, on the anti-woman
messages preached at the conference by Dr. Voddie Baucham. Baucham,
who will be coming to the Orlando area this fall to speak at a
conference with Dr. R. C. Sproul, is a prominent leader within the
complementarian movement. He presented three keynote messages at the
Bellefontaine conference, and according to Dohse, Baucham’s
messages were saturated with anti-feminist rhetoric and an “us”
against “them” attitude. From the urine-sprayed condition of the
women’s restroom, it seems clear that Baucham was successful in
whipping the men into an anti-feminist frenzy.
New Calvinism's Scapegoat
In the Old Testament, the Isrealites
were required to take a lamb or a goat to the Tabernacle on the Day
of Atonement in order to cover the sins of their family. Once every
year, the Levitical priest would then go before God for the sins of
all the people to pour blood on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the
Covenant. But before Jesus came to rend the veil that separated both
men and women from God's presence, allowing both to go boldy to the
Throne of Grace to find help and forgiveness directly, people were
required
to select a goat upon which they imputed the sins of their family
which was sent out into the wilderness, the payment that was also
owed to sin. The goat would be devoured alone in the wilderness, and
there was quite a panic if that
scapegoat
wandered back into the camp
as
it is recorded in the ancient Jewish literature!
CBMW and groups that promote their
ideolology have effectively made scapegoats of the very women that
they contend to defend and protect. Instead of receiving the
blessing of Christ through imputation of our sins to Him on the Cross
in exchange for His holy status of right standing before God through
justification through the Blood of Jesus, they insist on imputing sin
onto women. They blame women for every problem found within home,
church, and society. Is it any wonder that men “whipped into a
frenzy” would seek to express their frustration in some way against
dehumanized, demoralized, demonized, and scapegoated women?
In Occidentalism, Westerners are blamed
for all of the evil in the world. Hitler blamed the Jews.
Complementarianism blames women, even the Christian women for whom
they assume the role of leader, caretaker, and
intercessor.
The Response
I understand that elsewhere online,
members and representatives of the church that hosted the conference
claim that Paul deliberately lied about the conditions in the ladies
room when their local newspaper featured a quote from The Examiner on
the
local
topics section of the Bellfontaine, OH website. And as a consequence, I've
learned that Paul was approached by three church leaders (who did not
represent the church that hosted the conference. The church that did
host the conference contacted the leadership of the church to express
their concerns about what Paul had written when he came forward to
speak about the condition of the restroom as well as the doctrinal
issues which encompass not only complementarianism but the doctrinal
errors of the infused, progressive justification preached and
believed by the speakers of the conference, a doctrine sometimes
called “Gospel Sanctification.” Please note that the group did
not consider the meeting to be a “
Matthew
18 confrontation” (what some see as a formula among Christians for dealing with
offenses as well as overt sin). The men parted amicably (without
offense) with the three leaders from local church that approached
him, though they strongly disagreed about the situation. It was
stated that the pastor of
Calvary
Baptist Church in Bellefontaine, OH does wish to meet with Paul
to discuss the matter further.
What I don't understand is why
doctrinal issues and matters of observed behavior require what
appears on the surface to me to amount to what most Christians
consider a “Matthew 18” confrontation, even though the
people who recently met with Paul denied that it was such an effort.
I can well understand that the pastor of the church that hosted the
conference would be grieved to read about Paul's experience, but I
don't understand why that pastor could not express that directly on
Paul's blog in the comments in an open forum. I know that the type
of feedback that Paul offered is painful for ministers to hear,
especially concerning special events like conferences such as these
which are meant to help believers and to promote a better
understanding of Scripture, not detract or hinder their spiritual
walk. I also fail to understand why the church in Bellefontaine went
to the effort of first figuring out who Paul was, who attended with
him, and who might intervene and confront him on their behalf. Why
not contact Paul directly? Why require several private
meetings?
I cannot but consider to some extent
that this is an effort in
damage
control on behalf of these men who are rightfully embarrassed but
also likely feel uncomfortable with the fact that their doctrine has
been challenged so openly and directly. We shall see what unfolds,
and I hope that the individuals and groups that take issue with
Paul's experience and statements about the doctrines preached at the
Men of God 2012 Conference in Bellefontaine follow liberty.
Will the pastor of Calvary Baptist
Church view these matters of gender and Gospel Sanctification
doctrine under the
liberty
among believers, viewing the matter as an issue of intramural
doctrine? Or will he side with CBMW and Baucham who attest that
matters of gender represent essential Christian doctrine, a direct
reflection of God's Identity and Lordship? It is the
position
of CBMW as well as Vision Forum with whom Voddie Baucham is affiliated that those who reject their specific gender views worship a
false god and are little more than open theists. I suppose that time
will tell. I certainly hope that the matter doesn't degrade into
this.
I would, however, not be a bit surprised if it did.
