30 November 2021
God made man first, and then woman. Yes, the Bible is flatly patriarchal from start to finish. Get over it. The Bible also says that a man's greatest treasure in this world is his woman.
We all stand before God as neither male nor female when it comes to our fallen nature. But the remedies of redemption are distinctly different in terms of Covenant boundaries, because the specific provisions of the Curse are different. Man must dominate; it's how he dominates that is the issue. The default image of the Covenant male is the shepherd.
Thus, a major emphasis of all covenant law is keeping the distinctions between male and female. Different clothing, different hair, different rules for social conduct, etc. -- this is what God requires. Whatever "equality" is indicated in Scripture, it does not mean interchangeable. Men and women must be different and be handled differently. Men being in charge of certain things does not make women inferior; it makes them different.
There are things in which women are supposed to take the lead. A Hebrew man would build his house according to economic and geographic realities, but the layout was subject to the woman's wishes. And when it was nomads in tents, the wife controlled the whole thing; it was her tent. But then, by law, she was his property. But the Law of Moses was rather unique in making the man her property, in a certain sense. She had absolute claim to his physical affections and provision for life.
And virtually all Old Testament laws about it were taught as part of the New Testament boundaries. Women should not expose much flesh, wear jewelry, fancy hair styles, and should not address non-family men in public, except as required by other covenant priorities. A New Testament covenant community is your family now. A female dresses like a woman and has long hair to show that she is under spiritual covering. A major element in all of this is that the Bible recognizes that women are more likely than men to stray from the moral boundaries. But they were also critical household assets.
There's a reason for that. Women are designed to be soft on moral boundaries things. It's not her job to assert the moral direction of the household. She must be flexible enough inside herself to follow the moral leadership of her husband, father or other spiritual covering. She needs the ability to not worry too much about her covering changing directions. This also makes her somewhat open to deception about such things, but that's just how it works. It was like this before the Fall. This is why Eve was deceived, but Adam wasn't.
For men, the big issue is getting off their duffs and taking the lead. Adam knew who Satan was, and should have kept his guard up. He didn't; it's a man's nature to get distracted from such things. This is how men are. It was like this before the Fall. We should assume he was involved in something else and didn't want to get sidetracked when Satan began talking to Eve. But he should have been on guard and watching closely the whole time, regardless how his larger mission might have had to wait for him to get back to it. He let himself think he was too busy to worry about her choice to eat the Forbidden Fruit. She was confused about the moral truth; Adam was not confused but lazy about it.
Get this: Western Civilization is a mixture of Greco-Roman heritage and Germanic mythology. Both were pagan, but from the Germanic tribal culture we got the crazy nonsense that women are morally superior to men. This is directly opposite of what the Bible says. Letting women have moral leadership has been the cause of all sorts of horrific sorrow in the Bible; it's considered idolatry. Most Western men claim to despise feminism, but it's built into Western Civilization. The only cure for feminism is to adopt the Hebrew cultural orientation of the Bible.
This is where we got Mariolatry. At some point, the official church leadership in the West, at the threat of being overrun by these pagan hoards of uncivilized Germanic tribes, compromised with Germanic mythology in order to bring them under church control. Keep in mind that in Germanic tribal law, a woman's wergild (blood price) was twice that of a man in the same social class. The whole mythology tipped in favor of worshiping various avatars of Mother Earth as the ruler of their pantheon. Men were just clients of the women. Their political power rested on the approval of the women. So, with the church under threat, the Hebrew assumptions were buried under Germanic tribal mythology and it ended up with the worship of female deities becoming church doctrine in the elevation of Mary.
It's exceedingly difficult to wash out the feminist bent in Western law and society. This alone is sufficient reason to reject Western Civilization as a whole. For American men, this is a very bad time in history to seek a Western wife. Finding one that isn't still somehow deeply infected with this idolatry is well nigh impossible. Today's American churches are by far even worse than most of secular society, as common church doctrine is so deeply stained with feminism it's hard to get away from it. This is the kind of transformation that requires a series of divine miracles nudging an American church girl step by step away from it, until she embraces her Covenant identity.
Once again: The Hebrew outlook on this is God's revelation of what's real. It's true that women are a strong civilizing influence, but the Bible condemns civilization in the first place. That's because a woman's nest-building instinct is fine for the home nest, but is a horrible evil for the wider society. It violates all the moral boundaries God revealed, substituting human boundaries in their place. It's the inherent female desire to control outcomes that marks their lack of faith and trust in the Lord.
This is a major element in materialism. And can you understand that communism is also inherently materialist? Communism is simply feminism in government. But then, what we call capitalism is simply the masculine attempt to placate the feminist demands. It's all evil, because it seeks to control the factors of life that God says we must turn over to Him in faith. Women are the ones most easily led astray by Satan; God says that is how He designed them.
We could publish a whole library explaining how far American culture is from the Bible on this question alone. It still wouldn't solve the problems. It's only a miracle of God that can cleanse the mind by the supremacy of the convictions in your heart.
Women are not inherently evil, but God says they can not be in charge of a covenant society.
Finally: Do we have to say it? God gives you your gender identity. Argue with Him all you like, but the Covenant excludes everyone who doesn't joyfully embrace their birth gender. Everyone else is a child of Satan. We might debate what marks male and female gender types in this world, but not the fact itself and the necessity for men to be very obviously men, and women very obviously women. And sexual desire is part of being mortal. God has provided one outlet: one man, one woman for life. All other sexual desires do not come from God, but from our fallen human nature.
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