Introduction:
Allow me to begin with the heads up. If you are squeamish about some of the more tawdry things that are being done on a massive scale all around us, not to mention those things being done to us, and would prefer to keep your gaze averted, at least for the time being, this post is not for you.
Learning to Deal With It:
The sexual revolution has metastasized, and this reality is revealing any number of things. For our purposes today, I want to emphasize that it has revealed the demented nature of our contemporary lusts, on the one hand, and the bankruptcy of modern evangelical casuistry on the other. And by casuistry, I mean, as one dictionary has it, “the resolving of moral problems by the application of theoretical rules to particular instances.” Another way of describing this would be as “worldview thinking.” Fine. So the Scriptures never say anything about virtual reality debaucheries with cartoon characters, but shouldn’t we still be able to reason from scriptural premises and find our way to a hearty condemnation?
Let me demonstrate the need for casuistry first. If a married man has intercourse with a sex doll, has he committed adultery? Does his wife have grounds for divorce? Is he guilty of an unclean thing? How about if the doll is manufactured to look as though “she” were twelve-years-old? These cases are coming, and we will either be ready for them or not. If we are ready, we will be able to provide the biblical case for what we are doing. If we are not ready, then we will be functionally paralyzed, whether or not we are like Lot in Sodom, internally vexed. Because if you just glibly say that “of course it is adultery,” then what will you say when the man, in his defense at the church trial, says that his wife started using a vibrator before he ever thought about using a sex doll? Was that adultery?
Those who refuse to do what is necessary in this are not defending sola Scriptura, whatever they say. What they are actually doing is denying the sufficiency of Scripture. As Van Til once said, the Bible is authoritative in regard to everything it addresses, and it addresses everything. But in order to get to that point, we have to agree to do some disciplined thinking, and I believe this is where the problem lies.
When we consider the sexual tsunami that is headed our way, we have to arm ourselves with something more than a “mild distaste,” or “decent people don’t acknowledge the existence of such things.” And while it is true that Paul said it was shameful for us to mention what unbelievers do in the dark (Eph. 5:12), he at least told us that much. So of course we are not to gratify any sublimated and moralistic prurience by vicariously denouncing dirty deeds, because it gives us a chance to get a second-hand thrill. We should of course assume that much.
Our situation is not identical to the pagan corruptions of the first century. At that time, they were the establishment, they had been given over to licentiousness for a long, long time, and the Christians, by requiring chastity for men and women both, were introducing the novelty. The sexual revolution of that day was instigated by the Christians.
Today the sexual infidels are the ones on a crusade, and they are not content to leave normal people alone. In the first century, the morality of Christians was simply off-putting to them. “With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4, ESV). But today, our biblical standards are more than off-putting—they are hate crimes. So to modify the quote about war that is (probably falsely) attributed to Trotsky, you may not be interested in the sexual revolution, but the sexual revolution is interested in you.
You may not be interested in really disturbed people, but really disturbed people are interested in you. You may not be interested in really disturbed people, but really disturbed people are interested in you.
So we have to be willing to say—by good and necessary consequence—that the lusts of postmodern man are to be despised by us because they are hateful to God.
Framework of Understanding:
Before addressing the heart of the issue, allow me to give some background. Here is one piece, followed by some other quotes that may help orient us.
“Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices” (Ecc. 7:29, NASB).
“Ransom replied, ‘Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. . . . Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. . . . On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place’” (That Hideous Strength).
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, ‘we are all just prisoners here, of our own device’
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast
Hotel California
“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (Eph. 4:17–19, ESV).
Here it is, in black and white. You cannot remove God from the equation and have the answer be anything but godless. The result will never be secular peace and harmony, the result will necessarily be godlessness. And godlessness prevents no barrier whatever to the imperious demands of lust. And someone should be warning us that it is going to get pretty sick.
Our Situation:
People have always been immoral, and there have always been places where they could go in order to indulge themselves. My point here is not to single out the individual people given over to their lusts. We have them, just as Victorian London did. Their presence with us is nothing new.
My point is that today, when someone is given over to some great evil, he can get a reputable paper to write it up as though it were normal, albeit somewhat unusual. Weirdos are treated like far-seeing pioneers, and losers like heroes. Society at large, through our ruling elites, applauds this kind of stuff. The average reader might not be “ready,” we are solemnly informed, for such “progress.” And we might be talking about sex with a mare, or someone buying “underage” sex dolls, or bestiality brothels in Germany, or virtual reality orgies, or instant access to phone porn, or vibrating dildos, or brothels staffed with sexbots only,
And all of this, taken together, amounts to a seething contempt for women. It begins with such contempt, and it certainly ends with a great deal more of it.
Despising Women:
“From ancient times, the principle is that a culture that engages in abortion, infanticide, and sexual license is a culture that disrespects women” (Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body, p.74).
Pearcey’s insight is like that arrow that Robin Hood shot one time, splitting the other one. And notice that she does not say that “the patriarchy” disrespects women, but rather that a particular kind of culture does. And the cultural leadership in our culture, the one that despises women, contains an awful lot of women. In fact, women have been in the fore-front of despising women. Feminists are sexual quislings. If the corruptions of the sexual revolution can be compared to the Nazis, feminists have provided us with the Vichy government.
This culture that treats women like dirt is the culture that the feminists demanded. And if I might take this opportunity to remind everyone, there is no solution apart from repentance and faith, no solution that does not include reformation and revival. Jesus is the only way out of this labyrinth we have lost ourselves in.
There is an important side-comment to make here as well. The thing that the godless despise is the image of God, and the image of God is displayed in both male and female. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27). And so I am not saying that in our culture men treat women like dirt. I am saying that in our culture the godless treat men like dirt, and the godless treat women like dirt, and they train and catechize each sex to treat the another one like dirt.
A long post could be written on how masculinity is despised, but that is not my purpose here today. Real masculinity is routinely dismissed as “toxic” masculinity, and much needs to be said about that. But my point here is the femininity is despised, and that feminists have been loudly demanding it.
Take a quick snapshot. What does it take to be a woman? Nothing at all. You just declare yourself and identify yourself as one. I don’t know what all that fuss and bother was. And what was that “honoring womanhood” that they used to do all about? Bruce Jenner was able to become a “woman of the year” with a lot less training than it took him to win his Olympic medals. And what does it take to replace a woman? Not much there either. Your one-handed magazines can do it, and the ever-available porn sites, and now a sexbot industry is gearing up. You can get sex whenever you want it, and no backchat either. You can get sex the same way that people buying a double-wide trailer in the 70’s could get wood paneling.
When the feminists started rearranging all the furniture, and they dispensed with “traditional womanly” functions, like the essential role that mothers play in child development, they were showing us the way. We apparently have the right to dispense with anything women do that we find inconvenient—like wanting to have a real relationship with a real person with sex at the center of it. Now we just want sex at the center of an undefined “it,” but that it standing in, most likely, for everything in the cosmos. And real women just get in the way of that kind of pursuit.
So do real men, but as I said earlier, that is another point for another day.
Soon-to-be-outsourced women cope with this in different ways, some by cooperating and others by revolting against it in stupid ways. Some decide that if a sex doll is what is wanted, then they will play the role of a sex doll. This is the approach of prostitutes, easy-lay twinkies, and starlets who take off their clothes for the camera. And in a necessary aside, let me observe (mildly enough) that to acknowledge the mere existence of easy-lay twinkies is not to disparage women in general. It is to critique those females who have joined in with the general degradation of womanhood. If I were to object to someone spray-painting a priceless Vermeer with some neon-tastic color, I would be doing this as a lover of art, and not as an ally of the vandal. Objecting to art vandalism is not synonymous with objecting to art.
Other women revolt against what they are pleased to call “stereotypes,” and resort to the “you-can’t-fire-me-I-quit” strategy. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. This is what lies behind the angry lesbianism inculcated by our institutions of higher learning. You know—all the slut-walks and the inane smash-the-patriarchy sophomoro-talk. Now a man should want a woman who, as Chesterton once put it, sees the thickness of his skull and the thinness of his excuses. Cat Stevens once wanted that kind of hard-headed woman—before he gave up and went over to the facile Islamic solution. But with that acknowledged, no man should want to be anywhere close to the feminist harridans who are simply a travesty of the demure Christian spitfire, the kind that Lewis once had Screwtape describe.
“I have looked up this girl’s dossier and am horrified at what I find. Not only a Christian but such a Christian – a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss. The little brute. She makes me vomit. She stinks and scalds through the very pages of the dossier. It drives me mad, the way the world has worsened. We’d have had her to the arena in the old days. That’s what her sort is made for. Not that she’d do much good there, either. a two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she’d faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile. A cheat every way. Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who’d find ME funny!”
So anything that contributes to the project of chasing men away from women is a key part of the war on womanhood. And this means that bitchy women are a big contributor to the problem. And again, please note that if someone argues that because I acknowledge that there are some bitchy women, it must follow that my position is that all women are bitchy, such a person should not be reading my blog, or any of my books on marriage, family, or sexuality. Rather, I would recommend starting here.
In the meantime, Scripture is clear enough on the point.
“It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman and in a wide house” (Prov. 25:24).
“It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman” (Prov. 21:19).
What Then Should Women Do?
The assault is not being made on women considered as such. The assault, as mentioned earlier, is against the image of God. This means that women must do exactly the same thing that men must do, and that is to repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus. When we reject the authority of a transcendent Word above us all, we are left with nothing down here but a godless desire to bite and devour one another. And if we persist in that, it will not be long before we are all of us consumed.