Introduction
A few weeks ago, I wrote something that caused some consternation in some predictable quarters. I said:
“But here are some different examples. This one is taken from the world, not from Scripture, but we can learn something about the world from it. Why, if a woman sleeps with a hundred men, is she slut-shamed, but if a man sleeps with a hundred women, he can get away with bragging about his ‘conquests’? Well, consider this factor. A key that opens a hundred locks can claim to be a master key. A lock that opens to a hundred keys can only claim to be pretty much worthless. And lest you think that I am somehow ‘approving’ of the man in this instance, I actually include him among the fornicators who will not inherit the kingdom of heaven (1 Cor. 6:9). The point is not that his sin is praiseworthy and the immoral woman’s is not, but rather that their sins are radically different because they are radically different. But to say they are radically different is not to say one is blameworthy and the other not. He is a scoundrel, and she is a tramp—let us not praise either one, but let us not confuse them either.”
And a few years ago, the blameless and respectable Jared Wilson had quoted a passage from my book Fidelity, a passage that sought to explain how something as demented as rape fantasies (like the 50 Shades business) could ever gain a foothold with anybody. At that time, I said this:
“In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”
There was, of course, an uproar. People don’t like hearing true things that are commonly denied, and they really don’t like hearing obviously true things that are commonly denied.
And in case you were wondering, I would say the same thing today. Not only would I say it again today, I would also continue to include all the surrounding context that the yellers—the missers of nuance, the ignorers of argument-flow—insist on overlooking.
Some of that context is provided below. But because of the times we live in, such context, being also true, will necessarily be provocative also. I would apologize, if I needed to, but I don’t, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway.
Promiscuity and Cowardice:
Christian men and Christian women are both required to be chaste. In that sense, God’s law is the same for both sexes. But as they are chaste, they are doing different things. They are both required to be chaste, but when they are unchaste, they are giving up different things. Chastity is a virtue for both sexes, but chastity in a woman is her glory. When a woman throws away her glory, she is losing something of greater value (to her) than a man loses.
For a man to lose something of comparable value to him, he would have to do something like run away in battle. Mark it—God calls both sexes to be courageous, but courage is a man’s glory.
There have been periods of history (most of history, actually) when these things were widely understood. But because of the lie of egalitarianism, the driving satanic force behind feminism, this crucial distinction has been lost. The liberation of women has consisted of getting them to despise and throw away their glory, and not surprisingly, one of the corresponding sins of our age is cowardice in the men—in preachers and politicians, in generals and CEOs, in elders of churches, and in boards of directors. Apply any kind of indignant pressure today, to any particular group of males, and everybody folds like a card table you bought at a yard sale.
But part of the reason our system of doing things is still tolerated is that in a generation when many of the women are easy, cowards can still get laid.
Debt Free Virgins without Tattoos:
And of course, this should bring to mind the subject of debt-free virgins without tattoos. A short time ago, there was a nice Christian lady who wrote a piece online in which she opined that discriminating gentlemen actually prefer debt-free virgins without tattoos—which is self-evidently the case—and being self-evidently the case, a zeitgeistian fury descended upon her for saying it. This fury included numerous Christian women, who heaped scorn upon this fundamentalist observation. They used wide snow shovels to help them heap scorn upon it. And by fundamentalist observation I mean an observation that was true in the fundamentals.
I need to appear to digress for a moment. I suppose you see those periodic “news” stories where some tranny dude announces that the men who won’t date him in his her-ish-ness are guilty of bigotry, hate, and other double-plus-ungood thoughts. They are displaying, or so his argument goes, that they have a phobia. I think it is more likely that they have a gag reflex, but let us not tarry there. I briefly want to analyze the philosophical assumptions that undergird the structure of this argument.
There are two basic worldviews. One is that God is our Creator, which means that we are things. Invented things. There is a teleological point to us, which is assigned to us at conception. The other view is that we are the end product of so many years of evolution, the epiphenomena of a mindless cosmos, the foam on a meaningless sea. In the former, we have meaning, meaning that is assigned to us. In the latter, the only way for us to have meaning is if we roll our own. This is what existentialism does. The universe is absurd, existence precedes essence, and so if you want to have an essence, you will have to manufacture and make up out of your own head.
This unfortunately puts you in an adversarial relationship with the world that God actually did make, but still, you do what you can. One of the things you can do is shout down those people who make unsettling observations about your incongruent relationship with the world God actually did make. They have the problem. They are the bigot. They are the ones teeming with hate.
So the tranny demands that his exercise of his choice to be a girl be treated by everyone else as though it were a responsible decision, and not a reflection of his deep-seated spiritual problems. The rest of the world must bow down to his choice. That was the deal, wasn’t it? Everyone has to offer a pinch of incense at the altar of everyone else’s personal choices?
So this shrillness, this unreasonable self-absorption, this frenzy, has even affected Christian women, who joined in all the yelling about the nice lady who made the observation about debt-free virgins without tattoos. “My dearest friend in the world has a tattoo, and she is saintly, and how dare you, ma’am! And she has cancer!”
Look, sister. Everybody should be able to see that being debt-free is an asset. And the Bible commends virginity, and so that’s a good thing. So the issue that maybe set everybody off was the tattoo part. And so, here it comes, my late contribution to that imbroglio. For the overwhelming majority of western civilization, if a woman got a couple of sleeve tattoos, the only thing she would be qualified for after that is a job at the circus. Now’s she is every other waitress you see at upscale eateries and bistros. This has been the direct result of a cultural spasm, about the roots of which more in a moment, but when the spasm passes, as it will, there will come a time when women will realize how massive the deception was, and how deep it went, and how much corrupting influence it had.
A Brief Interlude:
I have not forgotten that one of the central themes of the Bible is how the whore is transformed into a virgin bride. I have not forgotten Mary Magdalene. I have not forgotten the glory of grace, and the clean mountain water of forgiveness. We know and exult in the fact that the splendor of God’s mercy to this seedy and corrupt planet is enough to stop the mouths of the principalities and powers. But grace does not invert the standards. Grace brings us back to the standards. Grace restores virginity—it does not overthrow the glory of virginity. And so the bride of Christ will be presented to Him, without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish (Eph. 5:27). She will not be taken down to the parlor to be tatted up with a few more.
The Conspiracy to Lie to Women:
The Bible teaches that women are susceptible to deception (1 Tim. 2:14; 2 Cor. 11:3). The Bible also teaches that men are liars (2 Tim. 3:13). This is a bad combination. And when the women demand that the men lie to them, it gets worse and worse.
You know for a fact that whenever you see a woman out in public in some godforsaken get-up, there were at least three people in her life who told her it was “darling” before she got out into the daylight. This bad pattern has been extended into areas far more central than mere fashion. How many feminine glories have been corrupted in this way? I have already mentioned chastity. Another is modesty. Another is domesticity.
But the central one is motherhood, and what the abortion carnage has done to it. American women were seduced into playing the cruel role of Lady Macbeth—“unsex me here, fill my breasts with gall,” before chopping the babies into penumbraic pieces.
Abortion is about the most unmotherly thing you can imagine, and the fact that this high-handed repudiation of feminine glory has been performed in our country tens of millions of times, and has been celebrated as a constitutional right, and remains the central blood sacrament of secularism, sets the pattern and tone for everything else.
And so all of these things are connected. You want to have abortion and not have homosexual travesties of marriage? You want to have abortion, and not have drag queens reading to the little kids at the library? Then what you actually want is salvation without Jesus, and good luck to that.
You want to be righteous while remaining corrupt. You want to be holy while being defiled. You want to be virtuous while living in a vile way. You want to be turned without actually turning. You want to be saved from drowning while remaining at the bottom of the reservoir.
In short, you don’t want this Jesus to rule over you. But your rebellion will be short-lived. Not only is His shed blood gracious, it is also inexorable. He bought America, and He will have her.
But we will know when He has done so by the effect. He will never save us by leaving us where we are. We are currently marinating in our lies, and He will lift us out of them.
“He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings” (Ps. 40:2).