Dear visionaries,
Joanne writes: “My observations suggest that it’s very poor countries–often fundamentalist regimes of various kinds–that have poor facilities for personal hygiene and women who are hidden from public view.”
To which I reply, all regimes are fundamentalist. The only thing that distinguishes them is the nature of their fundament. Prudent legislation has spared us all from discovering the real nature of Moscow’s fundamentalism.
And Joanne continues, “You don’t own the Trinity, Doug.”
Right. The Trinity has owned me since I was baptized in the triune name. And everyone who has had that sacrament applied to them has a responsibility to seek out ways of thinking and living which reflect ultimate trinitarian realities, seeking to avoid the cultural forms of trinitarian heresies. The Muslim view of women is radically Arian — for them submission and authority necessarily entail ontological subordination. But Enlightenment egalitarianism is modalism — equality must mean abolition of all distinctions. But a robust cultural Trinitarianism necessitates equality between the sexes as well as a distinction between them. And what fun it is!
And then she writes: “You’ve said that it’s a boring and ugly world in which women are not primarily erotic objects.”
But I am not exactly sure how that word “primarily” got in there.
And she also writes: “There can be no uglier or more mind-numbingly tedious world for women than one in which their erotic and reproductive potential is the primary dimension of their existence.”
Amen. So keep your shirts on — so that men who want to be faithful in mind and heart to their own wives, and who want to treat other women they meet during the day with all dignity and respect, are not forced to duck down alleys or climb trees. This is not a difficult concept, people.
Still waiting on the sexual harassment language that will eliminate all legal language that assumes a difference in male and female bodies. And while we are at it, maybe we could outlaw all the sexist stereo cables down at Radio Shack.
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.