@resisfertile I was hoping for a genuine response to you atleast. Thereâs ALOT of back biting on here, and what seems like resentment. Your post seemed genuine
@thisisfoster I wish you uploaded these to instagram, all my fragile egos are on there. (I half kid, Iâm a fragile ego too) but this was really good! It would be great to share it on there too!
One of the huge challenges in ministry right now, and there are many, is helping women regain agency and strength.
Now, before I say what I mean by that, some of you are already thinking, âYeah, but what about men? Isnât that one of menâs biggest problems too?â Of course it is. I just said there are many problems.
But another problem is that many of you canât read whatâs right in front of you without immediately thinking about the opposite. Youâve been trained to read antithetically. Instead of taking the point being made, you immediately think about how it isnât universally true or how it applies to someone else, and you miss the point entirely.
When it comes to men and women, our culture assumes you can never talk about one without immediately talking about the other. If you praise men, you have to praise women. If you criticize women, you have to criticize men. Everything has to be perfectly balanced. Itâs one of the ways our age has made honest conversations unnecessarily difficult.
Back to the point.
Modern culture has told women they can do anything a man can do, and probably do it better. It has told them they can have it all. They can be a mother, a lawyer, an astronaut, bake sourdough, keep a spotless house, and become the next Allie Beth Stuckey.
At first glance, that sounds like the culture is giving women unlimited agency. But thereâs a twist. While women are supposedly capable of everything, theyâre also told theyâre rarely responsible for anything. If they fail, itâs because the âpatriarchal systemâ is rigged. If theyâre anxious, itâs because their husband doesnât love them like Christ enough, not because they refuse to take their worries to God. Then thereâs trauma culture, which labels nearly everything as trauma and then uses that label to excuse sinful reactions and behavior.
So women are told theyâre stronger, smarter, and more capable than ever, yet theyâre also taught that their failures and sins are almost always someone elseâs fault. That combination produces people who are proud and fragile at the same time. Theyâve been raised in a culture that constantly flatters them, so correction feels like an attack.
Thatâs what I mean by women losing agency.
Women need to be told they are responsible before God for the outcomes of their lives. They are responsible for their sinful attitudes and actions. Outside circumstances affect everyone, but they do not remove personal responsibility. Women must own their sin, repent of it, and accept the consequences that often come with it.
That isnât misogyny. Itâs love. Itâs helping women recover adulthood from a culture that constantly encourages them to remain children.
I am very much in favor of strong women. But by strength, I mean strength of character. Nothing keeps a person weaker than refusing to take responsibility for their own sin, and nothing makes a person stronger than humility, the ability to see yourself truthfully before God.
That kind of humility produces remarkable women. Women who are gracious. Women who walk through life with poise. Women who are not easily offended because they are far more concerned with their own souls than protecting their pride.
Any pastor or ministry that undermines a womanâs agency is a people-pleasing, woman-fearing, God-dishonoring ministry. They do not have the courage to love women enough to tell them the truth. More often than not, they are married to women who think this way themselves. Instead of helping them grow in grace, they flatter them, excuse them, and surrender to their weakness and sin.
Another part of this, and this is where the men come in, is that many men are married to women who have bought into these modern lies. They are proud and very difficult to correct. The husbands have either bought into the same lies themselves or have simply surrendered to the fact that their wives wonât receive correction.
These are the âhappy wife, happy lifeâ kinds of men. More than anything, they just want to keep the peace. They want their wife to be happy regardless of her spiritual condition so they can go about their lives without conflict.
So when something in the culture or the church upsets their wife, they get upset too, not because youâre wrong, but because youâve disturbed the little bit of peace theyâve managed to carve out in their marriage.
Thatâs when the names start. Youâre a misogynist. Youâre a woman-hater. Youâre unloving. Theyâll say whatever they need to say because they have to reassure their wife that they donât agree with the man calling her to repentance. They need her to know sheâs basically fine, or at least that youâre overstating the case. The goal is simple: get things back to normal.
Many of these men are pastors.
On the other side are men who have become embittered. Theyâve watched this for years, theyâre tired of it, and now theyâre overcompensating. They speak without patience, but patience is exactly whatâs needed. When an entire sex has been catechized by a lie for decades, sanctification takes time.
So youâve got flattering, enabling husbands on one side and embittered men on the other. Neither helps.
Itâs our mess. God has given it to us, and itâs our responsibility to deal with it. So we must.
In 29 days, we will celebrate the 250th birthday of our exceptional nation, which became the greatest of all because we were the first to declare the self-evident truth that all people are created equal by God.
Not âborn equal.â We are âCREATED equal.â
Because God made us all in His image, it means EVERY SINGLE PERSON has inestimable DIGNITY and VALUEâand our value is not related in any way to the color of our skin, what zip code we live in, what our talents are, our health condition, or any other factor. Our value is inherent, because it is given to us by our loving Heavenly Father.
When a culture devolves to the point of depravity where âinfluencersâ can go online and so casually dismiss the deliberate murder of their own precious child, the survival of that culture itself is at risk.
God have mercy on our nation as we pray and work for an end to this evil, for hearts and minds to change, and for a renewed understanding of the self-evident truths and the sanctity of all human life.
âBefore I formed you in the womb I knew you.â (Jeremiah 1:5)
@GavinNewsom You know I think you guys have villainised trump so much that he doesnât have regard for opinions. Heâs kind of like âwell they already hate me, maybe they could hate me moreâ