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This gives me quizzical eyebrows. There are multiple examples of God, in the Bible, treating people as a class. Surely not every single child in Jericho was more inherently wicked than an Israelite child, and yet God instructed the Israelites to kill them all, young and old.
Not every single person in the Kingdom of Israel could have been fully deserving of being conquered by the Assyrians. But they still were caught up in the disaster that fell upon the Kingdom, which God had been warning them about, as a class, for some time.
That being said, there are, I firmly believe, millions of good women out there in America. I want my boys to find the good woman for them, and then be good, responsible, kind, loving husbands who deserve their position at the head of the family, just as much as I imagine you would want the gender-swapped version for your girls. The problem is that those millions of women either have next to no voice or are not exercising it to sufficiently to reel in their sisters. Isaiah and Josiah tried everything they could, and the general trend of Judah was still in the direction of being conquered by Babylon. Even Deborah managed to get the Israelites to stay in line for only 40 years.
This is less to do with woman specifically, but I don’t think Christian moral rules are cucked. I think they’re great, the result of literally the best thing that ever happened to the Earth and humans. I just also think Urban II was a good Pope and that as recently as 1881 in our Church and civilization, Christians just like you and I could grasp the idea that the guy who started the chant “God wills it!” and was the first mover for hundreds of years of bloodshed, is also Blessed in Heaven.
No disagreement there. I too have read Theology of the Body.
This I’m really confused about, because I don’t think they line up well.
If I treat a woman, in the workplace, in accordance with her God-given gender role, perhaps by saying something like “I don’t know if it’s really worth it for you to keep being a lawyer/doctor/shelf-stacker if you can at all avoid it. Children benefit way more from having Mom around, vs going to daycare, and you might find that you like being a stay-at-home Mom more than you thought.” Or something like “It’s better to get married and have kids when you’re young, then think about building your career later.” I mean, really, what’s your over/under on when HR comes around to tell me to stop being such a sexist, or just cuts straight to finding a reason to fire me?
Maybe I should do it anyways, and have the courage of my convictions. I’m no Daniel, I’m not brave to face the incredibly lame corporate arena like the martyr’s, better men than me, were.
But I just don’t see why I shouldn’t treat the average woman like a radical feminist? I don’t see a need to invite more unpleasantness into my life by being chivalric towards them. I’m chivalric towards my wife, the parish ladies, and that’s about it, honestly.
I don’t know if you think that I have some desire to grind the boot into women’s faces or something, but I don’t.
I do, however, think that we are living through the consequences of the modern bio-Leninist view of equality, and the child sacrifice/sexual perversions/upending of gender relations and even the concept of sex itself that came with that view.
I hold out hope. Nineveh received a long reprieve when they repented. We still could too. I just don’t think it’s likely, and that we’re all going to get what some of us wanted, good and hard, eventually. I think having this point of view is at least as loving as, say, Jeremiah, who really did want the best for his people.
You are not God. God is not you.
But in any event, the biblical account of God also has multiple examples of God engaging differently with some individuals out of a class. These things are not trivial to just take one way or another.
If you can go back through my post history, and tell me where I said or even, in your opinion, implied I am God, I will then assume this comment is in good faith.
Let me be clear: nothing in my comment implies that you have ever said or implied that you are God. It is purely a matter of a tool for biblical interpretation. AFAICT, the Bible says that there is a difference between you and God. (Nothing to do with anything you have or haven't said.) Ergo, presumably, the Bible may think that there are things that God does which may not necessarily be things that you should do. One possible thing that might be in that category could be "treating people as a class". But of course, it could be complicated; maybe it's not in that category! But I don't think one can generally reason from, "Here is an example of God doing X," to, "Therefore, I should do X."
Disagree, but I’ll move on.
"What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for a cow.”
With you so far.
You’ve lost me, because this maps exactly onto “treating people as individuals.”
If “for everything there is a season,” and everything includes in a non-exhaustive list, “a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace,” then I think it is perfectly reasonable to argue that there is “a time to treat as a class; and a time to treat as individuals.”
Both of those “times” can also be happening at the same time on different levels. I can’t imagine the author of Ecclesiastes was thinking “When the time for war with another nation comes upon me, the time for peace within my family is ended. It’s the war of all against all, baby!”
Neither am I thinking “The time has arrived to acknowledge that women, as a class, are damaging the civilization in which they live, ergo, I should treat my wife or even individual women like shit, because they are damaging the civilization in which they live.”
For this willingness to occasionally treat women as a class, I get accused of Gender Marxism, which is wild, because if that’s what my views are then the first Gender Marxist was…God.
And for men:
None of that says anything about “Some of you women will be helpers suitable, and some of you will be total girl-bosses who don’t need no man.” It also doesn’t say “Some of you men will be hard-working providers for your family, and some of you will be stoners or alcoholics who let your wife do all the work both at home and outside.”
There are failure modes for both groups, we are just currently much more afflicted by the female failure mode and should address that situation as it is.
Unfortunately for your argument, Christ is also God, and we are called to be like Christ, reasoning at a minimum from “Here is an example of Christ doing X,” to “Therefore, I should do X.” And Christ is not a gentle hippy, and he does treat people like classes sometimes.
For example, we know there was at least one decent Pharisee, Nicodemus. And yet, Jesus doesn’t say “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees! Except Nicodemus, he’s one of the good ones.”
He just says, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees!”
This is why I don’t think it’s inappropriate or un-Christian to say things that boil down to “Beware the leaven of what modern women tell each other they should be like!”
I think plenty of people see daylight between treating people like a class and being able to speak with labels. Even going back to the Scholastics, this could probably be viewed as a component (lol) of mereology.
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