The ugly truth is this: Feminism isn’t just out there; it’s in here. In our hearts and minds, our churches, homes, families, clothing choices, and in nearly everything we’ve been taught to believe about duties, society, culture, choices, and life.
Feminists hate God, men, women, children, and all that is holy or normal. Until we understand that, we will continue to swallow feminist’s lies.
Even saying “men’s and women’s roles” rather than “duties” smacks of swallowing the poison of feminism. God didn’t give us roles to play or fill but duties to perform. To some this might seem a slight difference but nothing could be further from the truth. “Roles” suggest mutability, the ability to step in and out of roles as the need or desire arises. “Duties” suggests that God has given men and women different but equally important inherent responsibilities that they have to fulfill so that God might be glorified and all might work as it is designed to work.
Feminists, egalitarians, and complementarians refute this. Or purpose, in their views, are open, changing, and interchangeable–at least to some degree. Men can be Mr. Mom if Mom can earn more than he can and the church supports this. Mom can be the soldier, the fire chief, or the cop, and no one thinks anything about it. Tell a woman that the Lord says that her first and most important duty is to her family and the church along with the culture will protest, argue, and deny God’s plain written truth–men were created for one purpose and women for another. We are so awash in feminism, we cannot and will not see the truth and anyone trying to show it to us is attacked for creating dissention.
The Lord designed men to lead, protect, guide, defend, and provide. Women are designed to nurture and care for home, family, neighbors, and the church.
Consider Matthew Henry’s words:
“And as God is the head of Christ, and Christ the head of the whole human kind, so the man is the head of the two sexes: not indeed with such dominion as Christ has over the kind or God has over the man Christ Jesus; but a superiority and headship he has, and the woman should be in subjection and not assume or usurp the man’s place. This is the situation in which God has placed her; and for that reason she should have a mind suited to her rank, and not do any thing that looks like an affectation of changing places. …. And this was probably the fault of these prophetesses in the church of Corinth. It was doing a thing which, in that age of the world, betokened superiority, and therefore a tacit claim of what did not belong to them but the other sex. Note, The sexes should not affect to change places. The order in which divine wisdom has placed persons and things is best and fittest: to endeavour to amend it is to destroy all order, and introduce confusion. The woman should keep to the rank God has chosen for her, and not dishonour her head; for this, in the result, is to dishonour God. If she was made out of the man, and for the man, and made to be the glory of the man, she should do nothing, especially in public, that looks like a wish of having this order inverted. “–Matthew Henry’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 11
and
It [Deuteronomy 22:5] forbids the confounding of the dispositions and affairs of the sexes: men must not be effeminate, nor do the women’s work in the house, nor must women be viragos, pretend to teach, or usurp authority” –Matthew Henry’s commentary
Or
John Calvin: “…what is closely allied to the office of teaching — and not to assume authority over the man; for the very reason, why they are forbidden to teach, is, that it is not permitted by their condition. They are subject, and to teach implies the rank of power or authority. Yet it may be thought that there is no great force in this argument; because even prophets and teachers are subject to kings and to other magistrates. I reply, there is no absurdity in the same person commanding and likewise obeying, when viewed in different relations. But this does not apply to the case of woman, who by nature (that is, by the ordinary law of God) is formed to obey; for gunaikokratia (the government of women) has always been regarded by all wise persons as a monstrous thing; and, therefore, so to speak, it will be a mingling of heaven and earth, if women usurp the right to teach.” –Calvin from his commentary on 1 Tim 2:12
We are so utterly blind as to the ugly truth of what feminism has wrought that we have forgotten what we have lost.
Elisabeth Elliot: “Do the women’s liberationists want to be liberated from being women? No, they would say, they want to be liberated from society’s stereotypes of what women are supposed to be…. Some very interesting facts have been uncovered by scientists which will feminists will have to treat very gingerly for they show that it is not merely society which determines how the sexes will behave…. The idea of matriarchy is mythical, I’ve learned, for not one that can be documented has ever existed. Doesn’t it seem strange that male dominance has been universal if it’s purely social conditioning? One would expect to see at least a few examples of societies where women rather than men held the positions of highest status…. Isn’t’ it really much easier to believe that the feelings of men and women throughout history bear a direct relationship to some innate prerequisite? … It was God who made us different, and He did it on purpose. Recent scientific research is illuminating, and as has happened before, corroborates ancient truth which mankind has always recognized. God created male and female, the male to call forth, to lead, initiate and rule, and the female to respond, follow adapt, submit.”
John MacArthur: “One expression in Titus 2 deserves special notice. It is the word homemakers. The Greek word is oikourgous, which literally means “workers at home.” Oikos is the Greek word for “home,” and ergon means “work, employment.” It suggests that a married woman’s first duty is to her own family, in her own household. Managing her own home should be her primary employment, her first task, her most important job, and her true career.”
John Angell James: “Every woman whether rich or poor, married or single, has a circle of influence within which, according to her character, she is exerting a certain amount of power for good or harm. Every woman, by her virtue or her vice, by her folly or her wisdom, by her levity or her dignity, is adding something to our national elevation or degradation. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others, she will raise that community from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy.”
God’s design for women can be seen in these, among other, verses:
Titus 2: 3-5, Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Proverbs 31: 26-30, She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Ephesians 5: 22-33, 22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.[a] 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
1 Peter 3: 1-6, Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, …
The ugly truth of the world’s design for women, and their view of God, can be seen in these quotes:
Vivian Gornick: “Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession. The choice to serve and to be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn’t be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that.”
Sheila Cronam: “Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.
”Declaration of Feminism (1971):“The end of the institution of marriage is necessary for the liberation of women; therefore it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not live individually with men. All of history must be rewritten in terms of oppression of women. We must go back to ancient female religions like witchcraft.”
Ann Lori-Gaylor: “Let’s forget about the mythical Jesus and look for encouragement, solace and inspiration from real women. 2,000 years of patriarchal rule under the shadow of the cross ought to be enough to turn women toward the feminist salvation of the world.”
Taylor Caldwell had this to say about feminism’s destructive influence:
“Remember this: The strongest sign of the decay of a nation is the feminization of men and the masculinization of women. It is notable that in Communist nations women are exhorted, and compelled, to do what has traditionally been men’s work. American women, some of them, feel triumphant that they have broken down the ‘barricades’ between the work of the sexes. I hope they will still feel triumphant when some commissar forces a shovel or an axe into their soft hands and compels them to pound and cut forests and dig ditches. I hope they will be ‘happy’ when a husband deserts them and they must support their children and themselves alone. (After all, if a woman must be ‘free’ she shouldn’t object to men being free too, should she?) I hope they will feel ‘fulfilled’ when they are given no more courtesies due to their sex and no kindnesses, but are kicked aside on the subways buses by men, and jostled out of the way by men on busy sidewalks and elevators…. I hope, when they look in their mirrors, that they will be pleased to see exhausted, embittered faces, and that they will be consoled by their paychecks.”
Repentance is in order
I compiled the page Addressing Feminism Biblically to help us to do just that. The church has an obligation to teach men to be masculine and women to be feminine once again. What ought to have been so clear–that God created men and women for different purposes and duties–has been muddled due to our jumping into the shark infested waters of feminism. That we chose to keep on swimming in them rather than jumping out in abhorrence at the damage being done to the church and God’s people (not to mention society in general) speaks volumes about our lack of biblical knowledge and understanding.
Our problem, sisters, is that when we don’t know God’s Word like we ought, we easily accept lies for truth. Being ignorant of Scripture, we henceforth open ourselves up to the scourge of feminism that Satan has unleashed on us.
The lies of feminism are so widespread, so pervasive, so ingrained in our world, homes, churches, and our own thoughts that we don’t see them as lies but as truth. Consequently, when we are challenged with “Did God really say…?,” we very often fall into the trap and cannot discern whether He did or not.
We must repent and we must keep on repenting. We have played with the enemy. We’ve invited him into our gates and made his lies our truth. But truth doused in lies will never be acceptable to God for it will never really be truth.
Sisters, it is time for us to take a stand. Repentance is in order. Let it start with us.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Photo by Natalie Hua on Unsplash
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