Tag: feminism

How Feminism Has Been Bad For Women.

Is Modern feminism a good thing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“Modern feminism has done more to harm women than the so-called patriarchy could ever dream of doing.”

This is what I put on my wall on Facebook Saturday night. Someone did post wanting to know more and it was late and I figured, “There’s a lot here. Why not write a post on it on Monday?” So having said that, let’s go through and see how I think this has been a bad thing.

Now what sparked this was the videos about women in gym talking about guys watching them while there. In some cases, a guy is treating a woman like a piece of meat when all he’s doing is just glancing her way from time to time. In one such video, we found out that one of the girls talked about how traumatizing it was and yet had an OnlyFans account. This is just one example and I will expound on it.

Let’s also be clear. What I mean by modern feminism is an attitude that is often anti-male or thinks that men and women are absolutely equal in everything, save perhaps biological differences. I am not saying anything about women having the right to vote or have a career outside the house or being able to have higher education.

First way is that modern feminism has helped women suffer under the transgender movement.

If you want to try to eliminate all differences between men and women, one idea that can easily come about is that men and women are practically interchangeable. Then what happens is that men undergo an operation, claim to be a woman, and then compete in women’s sports and lo and behold, they win. This is because generally, men are stronger and more capable than women in these areas due to how their bodies develop vs. how a woman’s body develops.

“Well that’s not true! I know a woman who is far better than most men in these areas!”

That’s why this is a general statement. It’s not saying all men are better than all women at XYZ. Generalities do allow for exceptions, but the fact that they are the exceptions demonstrates the point.

Not only are men winning women’s competitions, now they are even winning beauty pageants and other such titles. This is pushing women out of the rightful positions they should have here. I am also not saying that modern feminists intended for this to happen, but many of our actions do result in unintended consequences.

Let’s also be clear at something. When we say men and women are different, it does not follow from this that one is superior to the other. All that is said is that they are different. I like what Peter Kreeft has said about this. Men are superior at being men. Women are superior at being women. Unfortunately, the transgender movement now has it that men are going to be superior at being women also.

The second way is telling a woman that a career is most important.

Once again, this is not saying that a woman cannot have a career or should not pursue a career, but it is saying that women cannot put career first and still expect the rest of their lives to work out normally. Many women have even sadly been shamed because they didn’t do anything with themselves but be a stay-at-home Mom. A housewife is treated as a lower position. It’s also seen as servile. Staying home and cleaning and fixing meals and making sure your husband has a meal?

If you are a stay-at-home Mom because that is what you wanted to do, God bless you. You have not chosen a lesser path. What job could be greater in the world than raising the next generation of human beings and preparing them to be contributing members to society?

Now, women are told to put off marriage and children. Go and get a career and then you can think about those things later. Unfortunately, biology disagrees. The older a woman gets, the harder it will be for her to conceive. A man does not have this problem. A man can be a senior citizen and still father a child.

Because of this, women will often go out and work on their career and then realize their chances of being a mother are greatly lessened. Not only that, if they do not date to marry at this time, they will find that many of the good men they are wanting are gone. Who got them? Those women that chose that “lesser position” of being a housewife and stay-at-home Mom.

Now this gets us into the sexual marketplace. One of the biggest mistakes of feminism has been championing abortion. One of the biggest distinctions between men and women is that women can give birth. Abortion treats this fact as a hindrance and a problem to be dealt with. Let’s ask a simple question about this. Who benefits?

Well, feminists tell us also that men only want one thing and that’s sex. Last I checked, in abortion, man gets what he wants then, the sex. Not only that, he has no consequences. He doesn’t have to be involved in the life of a child. He doesn’t have to pay child support. He gets to have his fun, and then the woman removes the consequences for him. Guess what the man gets then overall? Sex without responsibility. He doesn’t have to owe anything to the woman or promise to be there. This only helps enable the negative attitude that women have toward men.

The increase in something like no-fault divorce also doesn’t help women for the most part. Now men who would normally marry and make a commitment do not do so because they can get with a woman, then she leaves him when he is the innocent part, and he ends up paying alimony and child support for the rest of his life and she takes half of his stuff. (This did not happen with me lest anyone thinks I am writing this out of personal vengeance.)

So what happens? They move in together instead and don’t get married and what happens? The man can leave at any time. A woman will often go for this thinking it’s a stepping stone to marriage. The man can go in easily thinking “Sex without commitment. Sounds good to me.” Again, I am not saying this is how it happens every time, but it is something that is expected. Once again also, the man is the real beneficiary.

Also, if a woman is willingly doing porn, she is doing what she has complained about men doing to her, objectifying her. Let’s go back to OnlyFans. What is a woman doing with this? Sure, she’s making money, but what she is saying to any complete stranger is “If you pay this bunch a month, you can see me naked.” How is the woman treating her self-worth? She’s worth whatever the charge is. In the past, if a man wanted to see a naked woman, he either had to go down to the magazine stand or video store which was public and people could see what he was doing, or else he had to do the work of winning a woman’s heart and making a lifelong commitment to her. Women have now made it easy.

Now let’s look at the situation of women at the gym. Newsflash everyone! Men notice beautiful women! A book I remember going through explaining the way men are to women said that picture a group of men watching the final moments of the Super Bowl or the World Series or something of that sort and then a woman comes in and starts taking her shirt off.

The men will lose complete interest in the game.

In my area, there was a challenge given to women and these were recorded on video. You never saw the woman aside from perhaps non-sexual body parts, at least normally from our culture’s perspective. The challenge was these women had just got out of the shower and had only a towel around them and they would go to their men who were either husbands or boyfriends and were playing video games. They would then do something like toss the towel at the man who would for the overwhelming most part stop whatever game they were playing and go for the girl immediately.

Not only this, but generally, men notice anything in the world normally, not as a whole first, but as several individual parts. This implies to women also, which is why men can easily notice what they see sexually desirable in women. I am not saying this is a good thing necessarily. I am saying it is just a reality.

So if a beautiful woman goes to a gym and is wearing something that really clings to her body or is wearing something exposing her midriff or anything that makes her attractive, men will notice. In the book “Through a Man’s Eyes” by Shaunti Feldhahn and Craig Gross, Feldhahn writes about talking to a couple at a church about a movie called Cold Mountain. She asks the wife how they handled the sex scene in that together. The wife asks “Was there a sex scene?” The man just looks up briefly and says “Yep.”

Men notice this.

The problem is feminism now punishes men for being men. In the video in question, which I am not finding on its own, but here is Candace Owens talking about it. (I would have gone with Joey Swoll, but there is language involved there.) This man is made into a villain when he simply looked over a couple of times, and then came over, offered help, and then left the woman alone.

First off, if a man notices a woman at the gym, that is not wrong. I am not talking about the man who stares and gawks at a woman with his tongue sticking out or something like that. Yes. A guy can be creepy in his attraction to a woman. However, suppose he is attracted to her. Is it necessarily creepy if he goes over and starts to talk to her and eventually asks her out? (One wonders if the woman would complain if the man looked like a Brad Pitt type to her.)

Second, a man could watch a woman for any number of reasons. Could she use some help? What if someone who is creepy does come up to her? Many men just like to be aware of their surroundings. That includes the women in the area.

What women do here is punishing men for being men and wishing they would think more like women. No. They will not. That desire that you think is creepy can also be what will drive them to be the best for you and care for you. Many men overall really want to protect and cherish women.

Yesterday, I saw a video from Just Pearly Things about how men only want one thing and they don’t expect much in return. No. The video is not about what you expect. Men ultimately want respect and will do anything to help out the women in their lives. Yes. There are exceptions, but we’re not talking about those. Any time I have been somewhere and seen a woman in need, I have wanted to do what I can to help her.

However, because of these videos coming out, what are men less likely to do? Ask out women. After all, you can get a sexual harassment lawsuit headed your way. If a woman has a phone at the gym, a man will stay away. He might stay away period just to avoid getting in any trouble.

By the way, that means also good guys will stay away. Those good guys that women ask about where they are? They’re the ones that don’t want to be ruined for the crime of being attracted to women. This isn’t just me saying this. I see plenty of women saying the same as well.

Women can often complain about what they call the patriarchy, but they are doing the worst damage to themselves. They don’t need the patriarchy to ruin women. They have met the enemy and it is them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Eve In Exile

What do I think of Rebekah Merkle’s book published by Canon Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I saw a quote from this book, and I do not recall which one it was, and I immediately went to Amazon to see if I could order it. Turns out, I had already ordered it. So off I went to find it in my Kindle library and enjoy it.

The main point of this book is how feminism has destroyed femininity. The #1 area that this is talked about in is in the area of being a wife and how being a mother is seen as a sort of letdown in life. Yeah. You could go off and have a career and make a lot of money and build up a name and do something good for the world, or you could become a mother. It’s as if being a mother is a lesser position. After all, all you’re doing is bringing a new human being into the world that could spend eternity in the presence of God.

The sad part is some people will then think that Merkle is automatically against women working at all and wants all women to be in the kitchen making their husbands sandwiches while pregnant. Not at all. Merkle never forbids a woman getting a job or an education or anything like that, but she does say to make sure your family comes first.

She also gives a history of feminism and who the major players have been in it. They weren’t Christians for sure. At the start, there were a lot of noble intentions, but it has gone more and more downhill so much so that feminism is often anti-feminine. However, there is a mistake conservatives can make.

Our mistake is we can look back on the past and think the 50’s were a paradise and have an Ozzie and Harriet type of family. Part of the problem was women were too complacent as technology was more and more doing everything for us and there was that desire to go out into the world and do more. We could say women wanted to be a lot more like men.

Merkle regularly makes it clear in the book that she is writing to Christian women and assumes her audience is female, which is fine, but men should read this too to understand feminism better. As she says in the end, most all of our negative major events have been led by women. Abortion? Women. Redefining marriage? Women. Transgenderism? Women. Now guess who’s being replaced in sports? Yep. Women.

If there is one more thing I would like to see in this book, it would have been more on how if women are to be wives and mothers and display the beauty of God in their lives, how should they relate to their husbands? Perhaps Merkle will write another book someday focusing on this on how the feminist movement has damaged marriage as well and how women are the worse off for it.

Either way, this book is a good book every woman should read and it couldn’t hurt the man to read it. Want to have a good book for a women’s Bible study at your church? Go with this one.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Eve’s Punishment

What did Eve get? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So Eve has taken of the fruit and ate and so has Adam. The serpent receives the first sentence, but we’re not going to look at that except for one part relevant to the woman. We are told that her seed will crush the seed of the serpent. Now some look at this and say that this is a proto-evangelium of the virgin birth (Which I do affirm). After all, women don’t have seed. Right?

Not so fast. Hagar is said to have seed in Genesis 16:10. Rebekkah is said to have seed in 24:60. The term refers to offspring in Genesis many times, although it can certainly refer to seed as in plant life. Now while I do affirm the virgin birth, this passage could be evidence of it, but the term seed of woman, does not necessitate it. Not only that, if we take the serpent to be the devil, do we really want to say that the devil has seed like that?

However, let’s look at the punishment now of the woman. The first punishment she gets is that her pain in childbirth will not just be increased, but it will be multiplied. I leave it to the readers to debate the nature of pain before the fall. For my view of the garden, this isn’t a problem. I fully accept the universe was not created perfect for God knew we would fall.

However, some think that this refers not just to physical pain in giving birth, but also to the pain of having to raise a child. How many times do you hear parents talk about how exhausting it is to raise children? If you are a parent, you’ve probably said it yourself. Would we have this problem if we lived in a sin-free world? You would not have to discipline children or teach them to be good. You would not have to protect them from evil people who wish them harm.

Children are also something that is usually most precious to a woman. Generally, if you ever want to see a woman get angry, go after her children. Mama bear will come out normally and it will not be a pretty sight. Of course, I know not all mothers are like this, but many are.

Today, the feminist movement really embodies the second part. The husband will rule over the wife. In the fall, Eve took the lead and gave to her husband. Now in reply, she will be the one who submits to him. It as if saying “You failed at leadership. Now he will lead.”

Now I do believe headship was already there, but this is just a way of saying that the desire will be frustrated. Today, feminists many times want to rule over and control men. Submission is thought to be a dirty word and the way it is used by too many Christian men today, rightfully so. Hint guys: If you have to use the word submission, odds are you’re probably not leading your family right anyway.

Eve has it rough, but as we shall see, Adam has a greater sentence. After all, he should have stood up to the serpent and yet he did nothing. He sat by silently. What does he get? We’ll see that next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Sex Matters

What do I think of Mona Charen’s book published by The Crown Forum? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Feminism has failed women.

This is not to say that everything it has done has been a catastrophe. What it means is that the movement has done more harm than good. While it hailed itself as pro-woman, it has actually been anti-woman. The damage has been because it had an idea of what they would like women to be, but ignored what women really are, and the same for men as well.

The movement assumed that for many women, the dream is to be a career woman. It assumed that women should experience sex the same way that men do. It assumed that women must be able to have abortions in order to be on equal footing with men.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for the majority of women. Women tend to really want to feel security. Marriage is one of the great ways that women can have that security. Not only that, that also has a positive effect on the man as the marriage covenant usually domesticates a man.

It started with some good goals for women, but then it went on to other ones. Many of the earliest feminists would be appalled at what feminism is today. The first one to really change the way the movement was seen was Betty Friedan with the Feminine Mystique. Much of what she said was rooted in Communism as well.

From there, more and more feminists wanted to push the envelope further. Marriage was seen as a bondage for women. Women should pursue sex outside of marriage. Motherhood should not be a major goal for women. Abortion should be a right for women.

Unfortunately, all of this denies what women are. Women have a natural longing for the most part to be mothers. Many women would be willing to sacrifice a career to raise their children directly. Sex outside of marriage does not do women good but rather allows them to be used.

This is built on the idea that femininity is something artificial that can be bent to be whatever we want, but if women have a nature and we are fighting against that, then we are doing harm to women. The same is also done to men. We live in an age where we hear about toxic masculinity and complaining about the patriarchy, automatically assuming that masculinity is a bad thing and a man is a villain if he leads.

This has also led to women severing their bonds. In abortion, a woman severs the natural bond she has to be a mother to her children. Abortion is actually the most anti-feminine behavior I can think of. First off, many of the babies aborted are themselves women. Second, a woman is doing the exact opposite of the motherly instinct and learning to kill her own children for the sake of something else. It could be money or career or just wanting to have free sex. Either way, a woman does herself great harm as she has to find a way to justify abortion.

A woman also has to shut herself down during sex which can lead to the hook-up culture. Women are too easily used and many women have taught themselves to not feel anything during sex lest they form a connection that get severed. Many women will also say yes to sex when they don’t really want to because of fear of losing the guy or of being seen as a prude by society.

We’re also told men need to stop pressuring women to have sex. This is true, but at the same time, in reality, men also have far more testosterone in their bodies and think about sex a whole lot more than women. We are also far more aggressive. Andrew Sullivan is even cited with an example of how he was getting testosterone for something and at the start, he almost got into a fight with his neighbor because of it.

Do men need to control their strong desire for sex? Yes. Will you change male nature though? No. The more you do that, you will find yourself fighting against reality.

Let’s consider some ways we are doing that. Charen cites someone who complains about a tool that is used by women to help them see if a date rape drug has been put in a drink. A woman complains saying she doesn’t want to live in a world where she has to fear that her date has done something like that.

That’s a fine goal, but the reality is we do live in that world. We do live in a world where some men are scum and you might not know if that guy you just met in a bar is one of them or not. I remember hearing actress Bates say about the Weinstein situation that in her day, when a man invited you up to his hotel room, you knew what it was about.

Men, however, also can be natural protectors. If a man has a wife, for the most part, he will want to protect her and provide for her. I remember even when I worked at a movie theater as a young adult. We worked at a mall and often got out of work after midnight. I would always walk my female co-workers to their cars and told them the same thing. “If someone comes after us, you run. Don’t look back. Don’t worry about me. Just run.” After all, I’m a Christian. I knew where I was going. My goal was to keep the women safe.

This has also changed college culture. Date rape is on the rise and more and more control is being exerted. Many a woman can seduce a man or at least have sex where the man thinks it’s consensual and then months later he’s slapped with rape and abuse charges. The problem is usually when a couple is having sex there aren’t a lot of witnesses around.

And what about after that? The family is in crisis. It was long beforehand, but it has only gotten worse because of feminism and “sexual liberation.” We have let government take the role of parents and it just doesn’t work. The main loss is the loss of fathers. Children are best raised by their biological mothers and fathers in a committed relationship.

The breakdown of the family is a disaster for men and women both, but especially for the children afterward. We are fighting against reality by doing this. We need to go back and examine feminism and see what is really good for women, and not for men, and not just what we would like to see.

This is an excellent book that we definitely need to read and the data is far more than I can show in just a blog review. I would that more people would read a book like this. Our society is on a downhill track and we really need to change it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support my Patreon here.

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/21/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Many families will not put their dysfunction out there for the world to see. If you post on Facebook, very rarely will you see something like, “Wife and I got into an awful fight over how to do the laundry and we ended up yelling at each other for an hour.”

The LGBT community might look happy on the outside. We just want to get along. This is a group all about love and tolerance. Right? Maybe not. Maybe there’s a lot of chaos going on in this family as well. What if they can’t all just get along?

My guest this Saturday has done a lot of looking into this community. Things are not as they seem. The feminist movement already doesn’t like what’s happening with transgenderism which puts a lot of tension between the L and the T. The B movement isn’t going so well with that either since that assumes that there are only two genders.

Okay. So the LGBT community isn’t getting along with itself. What does that have to do with us? For one thing, if this is accurate, this can show us the path we could be going on. What if we Christians are right and this is a war against reality? What if the tensions underlie a much deeper issue? What if issues of sexuality have to do with more than just whoever you sleep with?

To discuss this, I’m bringing on someone who has researched this movement and has the knowledge about what’s going on. He came highly recommended by Dr. J of the Ruth Institute. He’s a writer for the Christian Post and his name is Brandon Showalter.

So who is he?

Brandon Showalter is a 2007 graduate of Bridgewater College of Virginia. He earned a BA (cum laude) in International Studies and Spanish and was a fellow the Flory Honors program, studying abroad at the University of Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain in 2005. He is also a fellow of the John Jay Institute for Faith, Society, and Law.

Since 2016 he has been a journalist with The Christian Post covering a wide range of topics. His reporting has been cited in the US State Department’s 2017 International Religious Freedom report and in the 2018 book “Braving the Future: Christian Faith in a World of Limitless Tech.” Earlier this year, the Evangelical Press Association awarded him and one of his colleagues first place for best Article series. In late October 2017 he traveled to Germany to report on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Tomorrow then, that’s what we’ll be talking about. We are working on updating the shows and getting them to you. I hope to be fully caught up before too long.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Mama Bear Apologetics

What do I think of Hillary Morgan Ferrer’s book published by Harvest House? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Move over, Captain Marvel. True feminism has a new force to represent it and that’s Mama Bear Apologetics. Not all in this movement are Mamas, but all of them are women on a mission. They are women out to protect the younger generation from the forces that seek to destroy their faith.

The book is an introduction to apologetics as it were for mothers and is written in a style easy to understand without dense terminology. It is for women and it is by women. This doesn’t mean fathers and other men won’t get something out of the book, but it is quite likely to speak to mothers more.

Every chapter deals with a different topic so each chapter can be read on its own if one desires. They follow the same pattern ending with ways to pray and then with icebreakers on how to talk to your children about the topics included. This also includes ways for mothers to talk to other mothers.

The book deals with a lot of isms mainly. Relativism, pluralism, emotionalism, Marxism, feminism, etc. It has a synopsis of each of the views it deals with and then spends a little bit of time talking about ways that we can agree with those views, but then it goes into the bigger problems that they get wrong. This will help mothers in conversing since they don’t always have to be in attack mode and can instead find common ground and go from there.

Feminism was a topic I found particularly interesting, especially since it came from women. It’s one thing for men to critique feminism, but it’s another for women themselves to be doing that work. The critique is greatly appreciated.

Some might be surprised that Marxism is included. After all, why should we be going political? It’s because Marxism is about a lot more than politics. It’s a worldview that encompasses also one’s response to the family today and who is going to be in control and has led to the deaths of millions.

If there is a concern I have about this book, it’s that I wish there were more topics covered. I understand that it was intentional how it was done, but there aren’t topics covering the existence of God, the reliability of Scripture, or the resurrection of Jesus. I would prefer that there be at least one chapter on each of these and then go from there to critiquing the other worldviews while the foundation is already in place.

Still, this is a great opener in equipping mothers to be defenders of what their children believe and to enable them to know how to dialogue not just with their own children on these topics, but with other mothers as well. Apologetics no longer belongs to just the men and it never should have been that way to begin with. Mothers need to get this book and in the words of the authors “Roar like a mother.”

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Who Won The Feminist War?

When women started fighting for liberation, who won the war in the end? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I’ve been thinking more about my virginity post. There has been some reaction online, quite likely from people who didn’t really read it. Consider for instance, James Lindsay (Who by the way has refused to have a debate on TheologyWeb with me on the topic of if Jesus rose from the dead.) who wrote on his twitter feed (And I’m Apologianick on Twitter if you want to follow me) that

“The whackjob apologist talking to me now wants us all to know why #virginity matters. Cracked. #ModestIsHottest
http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/why-does-virginity-matter/ …” See the tweet yourself here.

To which you can find him saying that I say

“According to the apologist, it’s for something even greater and grander, infinitely important magic morals because God hates sex.”

Because God hates sex…

Yep. Because I, as a married man, want to give the idea out that God hates sex.

Because, you know, as soon as you say sex is something sacred, that’s automatically a laughable idea.

And keep in mind, the Christians are supposed to be the ones that have the low view of sex.

What strikes me as most ironic in all these discussions is how many women go along with this idea. So many women want to say that there’s nothing sacred at all about sex. I have been told that it’s just an appetite like anything else. It’s a natural desire like anything else.

Of course it’s an appetite.

Of course it’s a natural desire.

But it does not follow that it is like anything else.

You see, our culture is a culture that is big on equality. We like things to be equal and we don’t like people to be treated differently. So when we see men and women being treated differently, we can often think that there is an equality going on. The mistaken notion is to think that if men and women are not equal in everything, then they are not equal in worth.

This would be like saying two breeds of dogs are not equally dogs or two breeds of cats are not equally cats. Differences does not always mean a lack of equality when it comes to worth and nature. Differences are instead something that celebrate the great diversities. Do you want a big dog to be a guardian? Great! Get a German Shepherd or Pit Bull or a dog like that. Do you want a small one to be a companion? Great! Get a beagle or a chihuahua or something like that. There are all kinds for all people.

Now here comes a shocker to many people today.

Men and women are different.

No really. They are!

And this goes beyond just our bodies. Sure, we have different genitalia, but we differ in so many ways. The way my own wife thinks is so foreign to me. I do not understand it so many times. The way her emotions work is something that makes no sense to me. Learning to communicate with a spouse is sometimes like learning a foreign language and some of that you don’t learn until you enter into the marital covenant.

Now here’s the other part of that. Men and women are different, and that’s a good thing!

We could see these as opposing differences, and in some cases they are, but we could also see them as complementary differences. When the two work together, they are capable of doing something that neither one of them could do on their own. The greatest example of this of course is sexual intimacy. When the man and the woman come together, they can have a joy and a passion that neither one of them would have attained alone.

And oh yeah, they can also make a new human life.

But women had this idea that they were not on the same playing field as men. The largest area was in that of sex. After all, a woman can get pregnant, something a man cannot do, and she can bring a new life into the world.

But this process takes about nine months and in that time she’s not as available to the world and after that time, well she might actually want to do something bizarre like, oh, I don’t know, bond with the baby.

How can you be a career woman in that?

And if you don’t want that, how is it you can have sex without consequences in such a society?

Enter abortion into the picture. Now if all else fails and you get pregnant, no big deal! Just go and have a little routine operation so that that little intrusion won’t be a problem.

The baby is a human life? Well nonsense. That’s just a fetus after all! It’s not a life! Never mind that we know of nothing else that it could be. As far as we know, if all things are equal, these things actually do turn out to be human beings in the end, but hey, details. Who needs them?

Yet consider this. What if being able to give birth is something that makes a woman distinct from a man, which it could very well be since after all, only women give birth. If a woman instead ends up killing a baby in her womb, isn’t she in fact doing the exact opposite of her role as a mother? Isn’t she rather being an anti-mother?

If giving birth is something radically feminine, killing a birth is radically anti-feminine.

So now we move on and we get more and more of a divorce culture especially with no-fault divorce. Now men and women could split easily without having a real issue. It can just be on a whim. Of course, this meant in the long run a man had to make no real commitment to a woman whatsoever. That commitment could come apart at most any moment and for any reason and if that is the case, well it’s not much of a commitment is it.

Today then, we live in a culture of shacking up. After all, we want to make sure our commitment does not become one of those so let’s live together first! Let’s see how well we work out! This will naturally mean trying each other out sexually.

Because there’s no harm in treating another person like a car you take for a test spin as we all know.

We all have heard the old saying of why should someone buy a cow if they can get the milk for free? Why is a man going to be driven to make a commitment to a woman if she’s willing to give the man what he wants most at no cost? Well it might cost something sometimes. Maybe it costs dinner or a movie or something of that sort. But after that, hey. Go ahead. That’s the price and you’ve paid the price for the totality of having a woman’s whole being given to you. Enjoy. Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to pay something such as your entire life?

In our culture today then, women are often seen as simply eye candy. The sexuality of a woman is even more emphasized than it has been. The moment of victory in a sitcom, movie, TV drama, etc. is when the man and the woman have sex, which frankly doesn’t cost that much. The marriage doesn’t mean as much. Not as much changes because, hey, they were already having sex and most often living together beforehand.

So the women had their movement to make sure they were treated equally. Who won it?

The men did.

Sorry ladies, but if you went by this model, you lost.

You see, now a man has even more reason to treat a woman like an object. After all, sex is just something you do together. It might as well be the same as playing tennis together or watching a movie or belonging to a book club. You do all those things just to have some fellowship. Well now you have sex for the same reason. It’s just what you do together. No real commitment is involved. The man doesn’t have to treat the woman like a woman. He just has to be willing to give what he’s got.

Which surprisingly, isn’t much of a sacrifice for a man. A man doesn’t have to have much to motivate him to have sex. All a woman needs to pretty much do is go up to a man and say “Would you like to have sex?” and the man is willing and ready to go.

In the past, a man would usually have to fight and prove himself the man to earn the right to the woman. That woman was a treasure and she was treating herself like one. She was the one who set the price and if she set it high, well the man would reach and go as high as he could because what he wanted was worth it. If it was not worth it, then the woman could move on and find a man who would treat her the way she was worth.

But now since sex is no big deal and it’s just something common, well what a shock that marriage is no big deal either. Just get a divorce. What’s the big deal? Just change the nature of marriage. What’s the big deal? Marriage after all is all about making the people involved in it happy. If you split up, you split up and you’ll do better next time. There’s no incentive to stay in because hey, a guy can find a woman willing to have sex very quickly. Just go down to your local bar. They’re there.

If sex is no big deal and marriage is no big deal, it’s not a shock that human life is no big deal, and abortion already has shown us that. Men and women are simply sexual beings like animals. Now of course we are sexual beings, but the word simply does not belong. Our sex does in many ways define us but it is not the sole purpose we serve. A woman can be fully woman and be a nun for instance. As some have said rightfully, she even has a sex life. Everything she does, SHE does. SHE does it as a woman. Her vows keep her from having sexual intercourse. They can never stop her from being a woman.

So what happened? Well our society went from one where women did not want to be treated like objects to where women are eye candy in all the media and men don’t have to make any real commitment to have sex and can get out of a relationship at any time.

Sounds like the men won.

After all, if a man is using a woman just for sex, he’s sure not respecting her. If he was a respectful man, he’d go for a woman who has a high price. He’d go for a woman where he actually has to be a real man. A woman who does not challenge him and make him earn her love is not going to be a woman who will challenge him to be a man. A woman who gives in too easily will not only lower herself as a woman, but she will lower the man.

So while we could say both lost in the long run, the men still get the better part of the deal because they got all the perks that they wanted and the woman were nice enough to remove all the costs to them.

Let’s go back and see if we can change this.

Start with this. Sex is good. (Amen and amen) God does not hate sex. God loves sex. God created it. (To which all we men can give abundant praise someday when we stand before the throne.) Just really think about that. Sex is God’s idea! Everything that you love about sex if you’re a married person is something that God created. He designed the body and the system that builds up that pleasure and intimacy.

When we say we value virginity then, we don’t mean we value virginity for the sake of virginity. Giving up sex for a time is not an end in itself. It is a means. It is a means to a higher end. If you give it up also, note that you are saying that it is something you perceive as a good. After all, if you ever sacrifice something, for it to be a worthwhile sacrifice, it has to be something you view as a good. You don’t sacrifice your freedom to go swimming at your local sewage treatment plant. You want to avoid that. You don’t sacrifice your freedom to eat bugs off of your living room floor. You don’t want to do that. If you instead do something like sacrificing time spent at the pool or sacrificing pizza or some other food, now that is a real sacrifice.

So whenever a Christian or anyone else gives up sex for some time for something else, they are saying that that something else is a good worth sacrificing for and to show how much it is worth sacrificing, they will sacrifice something that is extremely valuable. For those who are able to sacrifice sex in this lifetime, well more power to you. If you can keep it, you have indeed made a real sacrifice. At the same time of course, that does not make you more spiritual or more Christian than anyone else. After all, some of us do have to marry and Paul said there were some of us who would burn if we did not marry. Yeah. He knew how strong that drive was.

So what happens if we treat sex as something sacred? It’s no longer a common good and a woman becomes once again a prize to be won. She becomes the princess that the knight must go and fight for. If he proves himself to be a man, well he can have access to the garden of the princess. If he does not, well good-bye, because there will certainly come along another knight who will earn the hand of the princess. (In fact, to this day, I still call my wife my Princess. Check my phone sometime and you’ll see she is not listed by name but listed as Princess.)

What happens then? Well marriage becomes sacred again. A guy has proved himself a man and the woman treats him like a man. The best way she does this is by giving herself to him and trusting him and knowing that there is no one else. The man does not take advantage of this. Instead, he works everyday to make sure she knows how much he appreciates this and how delighted he is to be her men. Note this women. A real man will always strive to be a real man for you.

Then after this, life becomes sacred as well. Life becomes something beautiful because humans are not cheap. They are immensely valuable. The medievals said that one human being is worth more than the entire universe. They were right. Had there been just a universe, there would have been no need for the death of Christ. Enter in one human being in need and there’s a purpose to the plan of redemption.

The ultimate change of this lies with the women. It lies in them realizing that in many ways, they should be treated as equal, but they should also celebrate their differences from men. They should learn to realize that they are not cheap. They come with a price and that price can be as high as they want it to be. Worried about finding a real man? A real man will earn you. If a man is not willing to pay the price for you, then he is not a man. Period.

Another essential part of this is that this is what we have to start teaching in churches. Our churches do not talk about sex enough, which is problematic since everyone in the world talks about it constantly. Like many men, when I often see another woman, I look away or my eyes glaze over. Recently I was walking at a mall when I saw another woman. To avoid the temptation to lust, I instead look to my right. What do I see? The display for the local Victoria’s Secret. Yep. It’s everywhere. A man will be tempted with lust relentlessly. Even if a man doesn’t watch TV shows and movies, if he is just out going grocery shopping, he will be tempted with lust.

And we somehow think that 2 or 3 sermons a year will be all it takes to help a man in this area?

Our young teenagers are being constantly tempted. Many of them in high school have friends who are already sexually active and the question they’re being asked is “Why not you?” When a Christian boy and girl are on a date together and they’re alone on a couch at a parents’ house, do we really think a few verses from Paul is going to be enough to stop them?

Look at it this way. Many of us know the Bible verses about dealing with temptation and about other aspects like not worrying and how to avoid careless spending and how we should love our neighbor as ourselves.

If that’s all it took for us to do those things, we would all be a whole lot better, but it’s not.

Yet when it comes to the most powerful natural appetite that a man and woman has, we somehow think those few verses that we have will be enough to overpower them.

If you think it will be, you are a naive fool.

This also starts in the home. Parents need to model a healthy sexuality. Of course, I’m not saying invite the children to the bedroom. That would be stupid and destroy the sanctity of the bedroom. I’m saying the parents need to live before the children a life that shows a loving marital commitment. The parents should never make the children the focus of the marriage. The wife’s focus is the husband and the husband’s is the wife. Make the children the focus and you will have a marriage fall apart. This of course does not mean the children are unimportant. They are immensely important, but they do not take first place.

The children need to see that Mom and Dad have a loving relationship. They need to see their parents kiss. They need to know that their parents are going out on dates. The husband needs to show his sons the right way to treat a woman and show his daughters how it is that a good man will treat her. The wife needs to show her daughters the right way to respond to a man and show her sons how it is that they should treat a lady.

When it comes to single people, if they want to be single, let them be. Don’t treat them like an aberration. If we do that, then we get them into the mindset of “You’re not having sex? What’s wrong with you?!” If they are fine with that life, then let them be fine with it. They are not less as Christians or less as men and women. If they are wanting to get married, then by all means help them. Teach them the advice you have on dating and marriage. (In preparation for my marriage, I spent time with many men asking them questions and getting advice. Today, I try to offer the same kind of advice to men who are preparing to marry. If you’re on Facebook also and you’re a Christian man marrying or planning to marry or hoping to someday marry, I also have a Facebook group dedicated to helping you learn how to be that kind of man.)

In fact, that advice just given works for men and women who are married. Get together with people of your own sex who are married and talk about the issues that you face in marriage and what’s the best way to overcome them, because marriage takes work. If you’re a married couple, get together with other married couples who want to build up their own marriages and learn what you can from them.

In the end, men and women will be different.

But that’s okay. We were supposed to be.

But we will also all treat each other with a bit more respect and value.

Who will win that battle?

The men will.

But so will the women as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 2/22/2014: Lynn Cohick

What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

We live in an age where equality is praised as a good. Today one idea that we try to value equality in is men and women. Of course, we know they’re not identical, but women are allowed to vote, to own property, to have jobs, to drive, etc. Yet if women are privileged to have such rights in our society, where did they come from?

I would contend that if we want to see the one who most helped us break down many of the barriers between male and female, we start with Jesus and how he revolutionized the world, including in his treatment of women in the society that he lived in. To discuss this, who better to bring in than a female scholar?

That’s why my guest will be Lynn Cohick out of Wheaton. Cohick is the professor of NT there and she is a highly accomplished author with numerous books and articles to her name. We’re going to be talking about the role of women in the NT and if there’s anyone who is equipped to handle it, it’s her.

Cohick has been in several peer-reviewed journals and is a member of a number of professional organizations with regards to her writing. She has writings not only on women, but on the patristics in church history and on Paul.

Cohick graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Bible and Religion from Messiah College in Grantham, PA. She went on to get her PH.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

What was life like for a woman in the Greco-Roman world where Jesus lived? If you were a pagan, what could you expect being part of such a world as a woman? What rights would you have and how would you be treated?

On the other hand, if that wasn’t so good, how would it be if you were a Jew. Did Jews have a high view of women or not? We can already suspect that many did not such as by the fact that a woman’s testimony was not worth much and yet women were the first ones to witness the resurrected Jesus and the empty tomb.

So how did Jesus actually come to change the way that we view women and get us to the point in our society where women have reached the place that they are at? What about Paul? Did Paul have a view that was anti-woman or did he have a view that really lifted up women beyond where they had been before? What about problem passages in the Pauline epistles? Was Paul a misogynist or not?

These are all important questions and I will be discussing them with my guest this weekend. I hope that you will join me as we welcome Lynn Cohick to the Deeper Waters podcast. The show will air this Saturday from 3-5 PM EST. The call-in number with your questions is 714-242-5180. The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Objectivization of Women

Are women better off in our society? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Last night while watching TV, my wife and I came across a sitcom we hadn’t seen before but within a few minutes, I saw the usual problem I see in many sitcoms today. The whole idea was one character had been introduced to some women and was trying to do everything he could to get them to sleep with him.

At this point, I told my wife that it was really sorrowful how our society has lowered to seeing women as nothing but sex objects. A few moments passed before I added a second point that I think it’s even sadder that the women themselves in these sitcoms seem to often have the same attitude and want nothing more than to immediately get naked for the guy and every woman is instantly available.

Let’s start out with some clear points on how sex is from a Christian perspective. Sex is something that is made to be enjoyable. A husband and wife are to thoroughly enjoy the passionate love of one another. Both are intended to get pleasure from the act. While it is normally seen that men have the highest libidos, women too can have libidos. There is nothing wrong with a woman wanting sex for physical pleasure any more than there is a man wanting to have sex to get some emotional closeness.

But in all of this, men and women are not just meant to be used for their bodies. A man is not to approach a woman solely for sexual pleasure and it is a shame that this can happen in marriages even where a man wants to have his wife around so he can get in his kicks and then when he’s done with her, he is immediately absent, as if he just got out a movie, book, or video game, and after he was done playing, put it away again.

A woman meanwhile is to honor her husband sexually as well and the great danger for women is that sex can be used to get something someone wants. In both cases, neither party is focusing on the joy of the other. There is nothing wrong with finding one’s own joy, but the true lover wants when done to know that he or she has done their part to please the spouse.

As I was thinking about this, I thought about shows I used to watch. Consider for instance, the Mary Tyler Moore show. This was a show about a woman rising up in the world seeking to take her piece of the pie. Nudity did not show up on the show. There was no doubt about how many men around Mary wanted her, but they would not have been as overt as they are today. The woman was still respected and you had to win her heart and treat her honorably. Mary was a woman who was going somewhere and a man would have to rise to the occasion in order to be worthy of her.

Meanwhile, on most sitcoms today, the woman meets the man and immediately she wants to take him back home and sleep with him. There is hardly any thought of STD’s, unplanned pregnancy, family commitments, or values of any kind, other than the value to have a lot of fun.

With that is gone any idea that sex could mean something greater than just a pleasurable time. It could also be a builder of commitment between two people who have formed a covenant with each other. It could be an ever-increasing way of actually getting to know the other person. For all we know, maybe it just might be that when you stay married to one person for life, you get to know that person exceedingly well.

Keep in mind that all this is happening in a society that is supposed to have got past the oppression of women that supposedly took place in its Christian heyday. Now we are secular and we have thrown off the shackles of the past. We have embraced abortion and thus given women control over their own bodies. Truly, women are free today.

And yet, for all their freedom, they seem to be treated as objects just for the purpose of sex. Is this an upwards move? Is this any more about launching careers or being incredible mothers? Is the highest aspiration a woman can reach in this life that of giving a man a really good time in bed?

This also has an effect on the way men are. Men can grow to expect women to always want sex. Women can grow to expect that men want nothing but sex. For the Christian, sex is an important aspect of a woman, but her greatest good is not in the pleasure of men but in the pleasure of God. The opposite is true for a man. A man’s greatest good is not in pleasing the woman, but in pleasing God.

Yet this is supposed to be the age where we are free from the shackles of religion that treated women as objects. Go look at how several skeptics speak of how women are treated in the Bible. Well now you have supposedly broken free of that and what can I see regularly on TV? Women being treated as objects of sexual pleasure on TV and no other redeeming factors are mentioned. The important part of a woman on the show is what her body looks like and how good she is in bed.

As a Christian man and as a Christian husband, I do believe women are better than that. In fact, the danger for us with lust is that we will lower our wife by thinking the other woman might be “better” and in doing so, we won’t just lower our wives, but we’ll lower all women by treating that as the standard. On the other hand, if a man wants to truly love the female species, the best way he can do that is by honoring his wife and forsaking all others.

And as a married man, I have indeed made a serious commitment that I intend to honor till death do us part. Part of that commitment is that I am to have sex with no one else but my wife. I have made it a point to honor my wife sexually so much that she thinks I can be paranoid around other women because I do not want to risk giving off a wrong idea or adding an image to the rolodex that men have in their heads.

What would happen on a sitcom if a woman in response to the invitation to sleep with the leading male actor said “No. I won’t. You have to marry me first. I just believe that sex is to be reserved for marriage.” Chances are in our society, she would be immediately a prude and part of the lead’s task then would be to rid her of this concept.

Let us hope that our society will move past this stage where instead of reaching maturity, we are acting rather immature and realize the sacredness of sex and the sacredness of one another. If you ask the question “Is nothing sacred?” in a scheme without God, the answer has to be “No.” In the Christian system, the answer is all that is is sacred. The more something is like God, the more sacred it is, and thus humanity and our sexuality are incredibly sacred. Let us not treat them as cheap.

In Christ,
Nick Peters