17 November 2022
Far be it from me to demand that people simply stop being whatever God made them to be. If your brain works in certain ways, if your personality and interests take you in certain directions, that's what you'll have to live with. However, I can warn you that there is a critical difference between what our western society does to program us, versus the way God says we should think about this world.
God's revelation is not a matter of intellectual content; it's not knowledge in that sense. Rather, it's a revelation of Himself. It's a matter of getting to know a Person. Moral truth is ineffable; it cannot be told in words. The words simply point to something beyond words. You should learn to recognize His warmth and Presence versus all the various counterfeits our Enemy offers.
Thus, moral truth asks only one question: Will you be faithful to Him? Are you accountable to Him? Every other question is the wrong question.
I realize that our Western Civilization insists on chasing down the nature and function of things, the basic questions of being and doing. There's even an obsession with debating which of those two should dominate, and under what conditions. Those are head questions; they are not what your convictions will address. The convictions in your heart will address only your duty to the Lord. It doesn't matter how you define things intellectually. What matters is whether you will cling to your Master and His design for you.
I'm not arguing with Jack's definition of the word agency. But beyond the academic discussion he offers, there comes a point when it just doesn't matter. It's one thing to have intellectual categories in which to place things. It's another thing to seek peace with God regarding what He demands. Any intellectual discussion must stand on the foundation that we will or will not obey Christ and His teaching. Jesus didn't teach intellectual categories, but moral duty.
This blog assumes you are seeking peace with God. There's nothing to discuss here outside of that. The persona I use for this mission will not waste much time referring to the intellectual questions. On the contrary, I'm doing my best to dampen any enthusiasm for such things. The only real question is to know what our Lord requires of us, and how we can overcome our fleshly resistance to that duty.
So my comments about "female agency" are all aimed at seeing what God requires. The Lord holds women accountable for certain things, never mind whether anyone imagines that women have agency, or whether women will or will not accept accountability. Yes, we know our western society does its best to confuse the issue, because few cultures in human history have been more hostile to divine revelation than the West. Yes, we should understand what a demented and defiled context we live in. We should know just how very far America is from God's expressed will. We should spend some time talking about how we as men and women today will seek to draw closer to what God desires. But the business of trying to define what we mean when we use the word "agency" is missing the point. The only real issue is accountability.
Women are accountable for their sins, same as men. The two are not accountable for the same kinds of moral duty. I could not care less how this truth shocks others and provokes arguments. The demands of the Covenant condemn America totally. The condemnation includes the very assumptions about reality itself. Discussions should emphasize the vast gulf between America and the Covenant.
The Covenant also assumes multiple layers of accountability. We bear the consequences of human sin on multiple levels. Those levels tend to affect each other, so it gets very confusing if you try to nail it down intellectually. But our task here is to emphasize the moral realm, because it is not visible to the fleshly senses and logic. We already waste too much time on answering the questions of the flesh. We need to assert the demands of the moral realm, which is where convictions operate, and fleshly intellect must stand mute and obedient.
I'm not interested in the question of what "agency" means. I don't care how other people use the term; most of the people commenting on Jack's blog aren't interested in my viewpoint in the first place. A few are openly hostile. That's their problem. Jack asks me to comment, so I do.
One more time: How do we go about communicating the moral accountability portrayed in the Bible? That's the only question I want to answer. Not in the specifics; that must inevitably vary with convictions. How do people go about moving themselves closer to the place where they have peace with God? I'll offer my take on that answer, and encourage others to consider for themselves what God demands of them. Everything else is just noise.
This document is public domain; spread the message.