Those damn women
I had been up for over an hour this morning before it registered with me that it is International Womens’ Day, but some people are not so lax, and I had an email from commenter Alan in my inbox by the time that I got to work. I am sure that Alan wouldn’t mind me quoting a couple of excerpts:
Well, there’s a most peculiar development going on in the churches at the moment.Archbishops and ethics lecturers are mounting a new campaign to get men into church.The argument runs like this:men hate the church(that of course will be news to women who look around and find its men who run the place),for five reasons:
*church meeting styles are feminine
*church leadership model is weak
*church is boring and safe:no risk
*church doesn’t relate to a man’s world
*blokes like to get their hands dirty
(”Five reasons why men hate the church”,Jeremy Halcrow,29.1.07 Syd Anglican website)
But maybe there’s another reason.
Perhaps men look around the church and don’t like the way other men are treating women.Maybe there’s too many men now comfortably and easily working with, working for,being directed by,in partnership with, women, that they are uneasy about the kind of blokey culture about in too many of our churches, and dont want to be a part of it!
I don’t know whether I agree with the latter commentary, but I find that there is a real paradox about the church/gender debate. First it seems clear that there are many more men in formal leadership in churches than women. If anything this is even more true of church plants and alternative model churches. As much as I embrace the “emerging” discussion, the movement does seem to have a more than usual affliction with the “angry young man” syndrome. No offence intended to any angry young men in the audience.
However, at the same time, there is a concern about the fact that men as a demographic are under-represented among church attenders. The NCLS says that only about 39% of church attenders in Australia are male and suggests a number of theories as to why. Part of this imbalance is almost certainly due to the fact that the elderly are over-represented in churches and women on average live longer than men. But what of the rest of the difference?
Increasingly, as Alan has pointed out, I have heard people discuss the idea that men are less likely to be involved with the church because church culture is somehow uncomfortable or anti-male. These are the arguments for people who endorse or at least condone a “bloke”inisation of leadership and culture in the church to “correct the balance”. I find these positions to raise some logical conflicts. I think we can point to the following facts that seem to be fairly well established.
- More women than men are regular church attenders
- More men than women are in formal leadership in the church
Which raises a whole bunch of questions. If the culture of the church is anti-church, then who creates the culture? If the leaders create the culture, then why are a group of predominantly male leaders creating such a “feminine” culture so as to be anathema to men? What about the culture of the church is feminine? The worship? The openness? The confessional? The singing? What?
In response to that, if the culture of the church is too female, then what changes will make the place more attractive to men? Surely most men are more sophisiticated than to respond to an increase on the ‘bloke’iness dial? So I have a couple of simple questions I would like an answer to, and I think that the commenters at signposts on this day are well qualified to give me those answers:
- Why are there more men than women in formal leadership in the church?
- What can be done to encourage more women into formal leadership in the church?
- Why are there more women than men amongst regular church attenders?
- What can be done to encourage more men to be in regular church attendance?
May 1st, 2007 at 10:03 pm
that’s nice rev. my wedding night, niether of us having done it before was interesting to say the least, and made me glad that I was sharing a very important experience with someone I loved and trusted more than anyone in the world. That was more important than the actual event I think….again, it’s about realistic expectations i think.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Bec
Re my comments following:
“These (I’m generalising) women get out because they want something “better” and because they now can - can have all the sex they want or don’t want, earn lots of money if so inclined (education assumed), and bail whenever the want cos they can.
Both men and women will do the same thing - except the stats are showing that women do it more - and the men are too braindead to know whats going on til its too late. May be women are better at keeping secrets from men - or we’re just too stupid or attuned.”
and your response:
“I find these two paragraphs…I think the best word is “bizarre”. I also find them offensive - both to men and to women. I think people sometimes have affairs because they think they can have something “better” - I don’t know anyone who’s left a marriage because they thought they could have something “better”. I think people leave marriages because they don’t think it can work anymore - not because they think they can have something “better”. And while women have affairs, I suspect that the statistics still show that men tend to have them more.
As for women being better at keeping secrets - what evidence do you have for this? I personally think it’s untrue - I know plenty of men who are extremely good at keeping secrets. I also think that it’s quite an offensive statement - it taps into the old ideas of women being more manipulative than men.”
Yes Bec - I’m generalising, but I don’t resile from my comments either.
The evidence is in - women are relationally far more sophisticated than men - they generally read people better, and communicate better than men. Doesn’t mean women make better decisions, but I do think that it gives women an edge.
Yes men keep secrets too, but I don’t think as well as men - perhaps the nature of the secrets are different - don’t know about that.
But I think the “game” has changed radically over the last 50 years, and like it or not so much of relationships is about trying to exercise power over the other - both for men and women - add in the power of the “one” which has grown like topsy with Hollywood (which both women and men subscribe to).
I know many people who whose marriages or relationships have split with many classic scenarios - abusive relationships, hubby runs off with wife’s best friend, and vice versa, grown apart etc - I can’t think of one around theology - but I can name plenty where the wife has walked out with or without ready made replacement and the hubby didn’t have a clue. Yes I know of men in that situation, but the women have the numbers in terms of what I have observed at the moment. Mostly this is in Christian circles - and it has nothing to do about theology.
My reading of it goes like this - men tend focus on sex, women focus on being understood - perhaps as you say these people got married early because the church I grew up had no idea how to deal with sex - if you’re angry about how “churches” have failed people over sex relationships etc I am a smoking Mt Vesuvius on that one. The most common scenario is marry young - hubby thinks he knows whatever he knows, wife tags along - the husband thinks he is loved, but as the marriage rolls on the wife realises this is not turning out how she would like. Hubby is busy earning the money to build the domestic empire, while the wife looks after the kids, runs the house and often works as well. Wife has a dawning awareness that this isn’t going to ever really going to change - she feels unacknowledged - hubby never thinks to ask the right questions that could initiate a revealing and constructive conversation, has sex but goes thru the motions, loves the kids, does all the right things, but there’s this nagging feeling….until somebody comes along who just gets her - understands without seemingly having to ask what she’s thinking, how to make her feel wanted etc. Nobody has made her fell like this ever - a direct quote “I’m treated like a queen”. Meanwhile hubby is still off building the domestic empire and effectively has taken his hands off the marital wheel. He doesn’t see it coming - he’s a rabbit in the headlights.
This is personal experience from a number of marriages I have observed over the years - including my own -except we got help - and for the record - my part in in it was unlike the above was unrealistic expectations, and not being prepared to put my wants/needs second (legitimate though they were) to my wife’s - bluntly in a way I didn’t recognise here and didn’t try and help her to be all that she could be.
Re the above scenario - do I blame the woman - both are at fault as far as that goes - because both parties are more concerned about their own worlds and either don’t know how or choose not to communicate this. It may seem as if I’m having a go at women, but in reality I’m more having a go at men, because we’re not stepping up to the plate out of a combination of selfishness and just plain lack of skills knowlegde about how to do this or what it means. End result: women vote with their feet and who can blame them. My wife didn’t quit on me, alhtough she got very close to it - she pushed through - God bless her.
As to my experience observing other marriages - that is my experience - you could probably substitute it the other way round.
I also know a lot of people the work in the CSA and acts of bastardry and selfishiness abound with both genders.
Cheers
MN
May 1st, 2007 at 10:14 pm
mn, do you think maybe this is a generation thing too? I mean do you think nowadays there is a little more emphasis on young guys being more emotionally attuned to their wives etc? wheras maybe your generation the man’s role was portrayed as more practical rather than emotional.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Emma
going back to the theology thing - I think this remains a problem moreso in Christian circles, because the secular world has moved on. But I’ve seen it there as well.
If you have kids then you’ll know from them via their mates at school about what’s happening.
I don’t support the abusive relationships whether physical or emotional, what really are loveless marriages etc. But I think this generation - both men and women do not work at things or persist as hard as earlier generations simply because they can bail very much more easily - and our materalistic self fulfilling world where its all about developing the power within for ourselves, and where the TV and Mags say we all deserve better in the ads in between the shows that show we can find the “one” in an hour or tiwo.
Unfortunately as someone observed above it doesn’t help the pain for those left behind - man or woman.
Also if someone has a slightly dysfunctional family background with no backup - where do you learn the skills? Who do you model on?
Cheers
MN
May 1st, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Emma
I don’t think churches who hold tightly to doctrine in a legalistic way, with an inadequate emphasis on the value of good relationships in themselves help much. It ends up teaching people that relationship is about how things look, about getting things right, and not getting it wrong. We need positive models and a grip on how to positively relate with each other, than a focus that is more on law than love.
The other thing is that as Christians our confidence needs to be in Jesus rather than on the fleshly person we are and are with. It gives a longer more sustainable perspective.
Cheers
MN
May 1st, 2007 at 10:51 pm
I was at a seminar with Josh McDowell and he was talking about how the broken family contributes to poverty. At the time I was a youth pastor and had 30 kids in my youth group and 27 were from broken homes. I asked him what was I supposed to do in this situation. His response was prophetic to me:
“the way you ask the question tells me you have the first part of the answer right, you need to love them. Do you have a wife?” I nodded, “and children?” I nodded again, “then you need to love your wife and your kids in front of them, because you may be the only real family they ever see”
Since then I have learned more and more that this message transends every issue, we are called to be incarnational people, bringing Jesus into our culture. People need us to live the gospel, as we may be the only Jesus they ever see. It is that important.
rev
May 1st, 2007 at 10:53 pm
I just want to say that if I found as much grace evident in formal church as I have found in this blogging community-particularly since my last post, when I really thought I would need to duck for cover….. I would happily skip off to ‘church’ everyday to participate in christian community.
Thank you.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:56 pm
dirty sinner!!!
rev
May 1st, 2007 at 11:07 pm
It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it. Lol
May 1st, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Rev
at this point (154) I’m in complete agreement with you - although don’t to it very well.
Cheers
MN
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:17 am
yes re 154 we do need to model Jesus in every way, most importantly thorugh our mariages. But I think in some circles this has become “let’s model a perfect marraige/family” beacuse this apparently reaches people. Rather I think let’s model real marriages, where people see you can have disagreements and work through them, without resorting to hurtful words or actions, where sometimes you don’t feel “connected” but you work through it, where your kids do the wrong thing but there’s love and forgivenmess waiting for them.
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:22 am
Very true Emma,
rev
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:05 am
Lance, I know this isn’t your usual thing, but I’m wondering whether your “journalist antenna” could look into the issue of teaching about relationships in churches… how widespread is this kind of teaching: “God’s got only one right person for you and you’d better not date them til God shows you the One”?
Like to know a chapter and verse reference that inspired that bit of silliness.
There are even more extreme churches where you have to get the permission of an elder / pastor / some kind of “covering” person before you’re allowed to date someone.
My brother in law’s neice married into a family where you not only had to have the approval of the eldership, but they didn’t kiss before they were married. Man oh man, that would make for an interesting wedding night.
Our denom. will soon employ a state youth minister… this thread’s got me thinking that developing strategies to teach about sex, sexuality and relationships in a healthy and down to earth way really needs to be a priority of any churches that have youth… I’d like to hope this can get on the radar. Any “ammo.” would be appreciated.
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:20 am
Janet
Sometimes I think the model in Titus - the ‘older women’ teach the younger women to love their husbands - is a good idea. For the past 10 years or so, I have got to know my children’s friends as they grew up, and taken the time to particularly get to know the girls.
I deliberately took the initiative to instigate conversations about sex/relationships, to leave the door open for them to talk back. Surprising how ready they were to talk to someone who was older, had been through it all without embarrassment.
Somehow, there needs to be the message that sex is good (and have overcome your own hangups from your youth teaching), so good, it is best served in a ‘unique’ (as in - only one) relationship. But, you got to be open and non-judgmental with the reality that very very few of them will not have sex - in fact, it is expected that they will.
Arhh - I am not happy that this is properly thought through, but it contains a kernel of what I am thinking… maybe others have better ideas
Janet McKinney
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:29 am
Janet Mc
it is wonderful that you are taking that time with those younger. I have found that my life has been changed more by people, that walked along side of me, than any church service, or message.
rev
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:39 am
I totally agree… I think young women should hear frank information and have frank discussions with married women to disperse the worst of the silly notions about sex and relationships.
(This needs to be those of an appropriate age… I’m not suggesting 12 year old girls who are still giggling and passing notes and dreaming romantic notions and not actually talking to any boys should be dumped with the whole truckload of information about sex and marriage)
For that matter… youth group boys need frank discussions about this stuff with older men too.
I don’t think we should throw out ideals about God’s intent is that sex is a sacred part of a covenantal relationship… not some kind of commodity or a biological impulse alone. I’d like to see frank information married to Christian values… because I do think God’s standards are there to protect us spiritually, physically and emotionally… not to “spoil our fun” (hard to see when the hormones are raging, but true all the same).
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
I remember raging hormones, I think they played at my prom. Did a good version of Jesse’s girl.
rev
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:52 am
oohhhhh…GREAT posts from everyone. MN, am loving reading your posts. All - I can’t believe more about modelling “real” relationships - and this is related to modelling “real” faith and “real” lives generally. My biggest problem with “evangelism training” and the dominant mode of evangelism generally is that it’s so focused on presenting something consciously - it’s so focused on being “perfect”…I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard things about how important is is for Christians to look a certain way, appear successful, appear happy, yadda yadda yadda. Yet I’ve also lost count of the number of times non-Christians (sorry for the huge generalisations and clunky language) have said to my husband and/or I that one of the things they like about us is that our faith is “real”, and we are honest about our struggles, problems etc.
We need to be similarly real about our relationships - AND our expectations of others. Our expectations of people in pastoral positions are insane - we constantly put male pastors in the position of caring for women in vulnerable positions (and vice versa), without simultaneously creating a space where the people in pastoral positions can be honest about the difficulties that might arise from that.
Janet - I’ve got quite a few friends that saved kissing for marriage, and I always thought the same thing…I just can’t imagine going from zero to 100 in one night like that. I actually find the idea incredibly brutal, and potentially dangerous…
Janet Mc - you express perfectly my own intuitions…and I was lucky enough to grow up being nurtured by several people who took the approach you have. I grew up believing that sex was amazing, wonderful, but that it could also be awkward, difficult - and for both those reasons was best kept to the marriage relationship.
In the church cultures I encountered as a young adult, however, I felt that there was a lot of talk about God’s intent that sex is a sacred part of a covenantal relationship, but that the underlying message actually WAS one of commodity and/or biological impulse. The constant message was “kids…sex is utterly amazing, and we know you’re all obsessed with it, but you can’t have it until you’re married”…sex was built up into some sort of Holy Grail to aspire to, and yet we were constantly told we couldn’t have it. The emphasis was on the act of sex, not on relationships and healthy intimacy. As Janet puts it, the message was that we “couldn’t have fun”, rather than on spiritual, physical and emotional health and wholeness.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:21 am
MN… one of the feelings evoked for me as I’ve read some of your reflections is a sense of wistfulness for the past… life was simpler when people stayed togther out of a sense of commitment, when the roles of men and women were clear, etc. I don’t know if that resonantes with you.
The picture that comes to me is that of the flaming sword guarding the way back to Eden… even God does not undo the past… what God does is redeem it. We cannot go back where we were before… but we can redeem life as it is. We can do our best to be covenental people, and to be people of life and love and honest communication and mutual understanding. It is possible to do a better job of our relationships with God’s help! And it will be more complex and messy and failure prone than in the past… but potentially richer.
I hope that makes sense.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:45 am
hi janet, the state youth pastor thing and being honest with kids in regards to relationships is a great idea. to be honest it’s so hard to know where to start because it ultimately gets so legalistic and young people particularly seem to want to know “how far is too far”. we tried having a sex disussion panel at my old youth group and half the questions were “so are you allowed to…?” After I was married I was shocked to learn most of my friends who had “waited” had only done so “techincally” and in fact most had had oral sex etc way before their wedding night. This was despite the “rules” being you weren’t “allowed” to be alone together ever.
bec I agree sex is held up as this holy grail and with the mistruth told that all you need to do is wait until you’re married and everything will be perfect. A place for starting with young people is honesty - sex is important for any healthy mariage, but only one of a number of things. And I think too we need to encourage young people to desire more from their faith. If being a Christian is nothing more than wearing the right clothes and being cool, then faith doesn’t really change their lives…if we got young people to really engage with Jesus in an authentic way, I think they would probably come to their own conclusions about sex etc that would be very healthy.
I find all this very interesting beacuse I often wonder what I’ll tell my kids. In alot of ways it seems to be swings and roundabouts. My parents lived together before they were married (they became Christians later) and after that experience were pretty terrified of me having sex before marriage. I waited, and while I want to encourage my kids to wait, it’s not as big a deal as it was for my parents.
I’d be interested rev - and whoever else has teenage kids - what they’re planning on advising their kids.
.
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:06 pm
we advise our kids that sex is an amazing and beautiful thing that God designed for a man and a wife and a few of their closest friends.
We usually ask them what they think God wants for them, and why? They are smart girls, and love and trust God, so I believe they are capable of navigating these waters. We share our own journey with them, and why we believe what we believe, but trust God can lead them as well.
rev
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Arhhhh the most interesting one - what to tell you own kids about sex as they grow older. My darling daughter was around 19 yrs old or so - and was going to visit a boyfriend in another town. She had already declared that she didn’t consider herself a Christian - and I had learned the most ineffective thing to say about moral issues was “God says….” or “The Bible says…”. However, I am not reticent to say what the Bible has set down as principles - and both my kids say they would be disappointed if I didn’t.
Anyhow the big question came up - so why shouldn’t you have sex before marriage Mum. I delayed the answer - saying I wanted time to think through an answer. In the end I said - it depended on what was more important to you - gratification now, and having what you want now, or being prepared to wait so that something you may have in the future would be incredibly much better.
I said that if you wanted to have a long term relationship sometime, and you wanted that relationship to be the best it could be, then wait. There is evidence that it is better for you physically, emotionally, relationally to only have a sexual relationship with your long-term partner.
Then I said, if that is not an issue for you, then there was no reason why you should wait till you were married.
She thanked me afterwards - and said that it made a lot of sense, and that if I just said “Just because…” type of answer, she would have not listened, whereas what I said was worth considering.
Janet McK
PS - no I don’t/didn’t get everything right - but I suspect that time I may have said the right thing. Didn’t mean that she ended up making the decision I would have preferred!!!
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Janet Mc; very interested and relieved to read your posts. I am in agreement with your stance. You explain the best way you can, you leave young adults to make adult choices & and either way you open your arms to love them no matter what.
How much more difficult it must be for the young person who has grown up in christiandom to tell their parents they are gay……
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Rev, FWIW, that’s how my parents approached it, and it definitely achieved what they hoped it would…and I reckon your girls are smart girls…and that any boyfriend would be scared *&^less of you.
Janet McK - that’s also pretty much what my parents, and minister, approached the issue. I remember discussing it with some Christian friends when we were in our late teens/early 20s…quite a few of them were rather astonished, and said that the only reason they hadn’t had sex was because “the Bible said not to”. No prizes for guessing that having sex and leaving the Church were pretty closely linked for them. Approaching the issue with a simple “the Bible says so” just doesn’t cut it for a huge number of reasons: it reduces the Bible to a book of rules, it reduces Jesus to the Fun Police, and it doesn’t assist kids in constructive a positive, constructive framework for making ethical/moral decisions, and for caring for their physical, spiritual and emotional health.
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:07 pm
“No prizes for guessing that having sex and leaving the church were pretty closely linked for them”
I dont doubt it. If my observations are anything to go by, that is exactely what it means particularly for girls…….
“Bye Bye harlot stop messing up our church”. I wish it wasn’t so, but currently that is how it is.
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm
True Daisy…
but it can also be “bye by church…whoopee! now I can have sex!”
That’s a crude way of putting it, but that’s what I’ve seen many times over - sex is used as a statement of rejection of the church (though ironically it just means that people are still making decisions based on what ‘the church’ thinks)
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
good advice from all you parents…makes me rather glad mine are still 2 and 3
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Lot of stuff since last night on this one.
I’ve told my (4 - 3+1) kids get someone pregnant and they die - I’m a 50’s bastard - I can say what I like - they get the idea.
Yes Janet you could say I am wistful.
I didn’t grow up in a pente environs and married the 10th girlfriend - says something about me and the patience of my wife. I wouldn’t have cut it in pente land.
My uncle was married to some who became pente - (Shiloh). She was a “Christian” - he wasn’t - the pastor said she shouldn’t sleep with him while he wasn’t a Christian and kicked him out of the bedroom after 13 years marriage. She’d had a stroke and he looked after her, and continued to look after her in his own way after he left the marriage failed because he’d made a promise to his father-in-law that he would.
My wistfulness comes from knowing the pain experienced in my own marriage (by both of us) and the others I know closely or not so closely. A lot of the time its like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The people on board know somethings wrong but can’t seem to anything about it.
Also Janet as you know I’ve railed about the last 100 years or so in terms of “doctrinal” developments and think we’ve lived in the most self seeking generation ever in the last 50 years or so - from about 1960 onwards.
I think feminism and the pill has had a major part in that because it in a lot of ways is seeking to release women from the power of men either fairly or unfairly. A comment about the pill - one of the things it has done is give women (and men too I guess) a level of control and independence over our reproductive cycle never experienced before in history - it has given an unheralded freedom from the previous longterm consequences of sexual activity - how does this fit with God’s creative scheme? Is that in keeping with what He intended?
If you’ve noticed, the pendulum of history never gets it right - it always swings passed what the ideal is - in a lot senses I think historical movements are reactionary and adopt reactionary dogma which are no better than the one from which distance or escape is being sought. I think that is true of feminism. Despite the CSA I wonder how much easier it is today for men to avoid responsibility and the consequences for their actions. Add in the increasingly materialistic society that we have with level of entitlement that is rife throughout all levels of our litigious society, men and women, accumulating as fast as we can go in our McMansions (the bank owns mine).
Where have we gone over the last 250 years?
From a village society 250 years ago through the industrial revolution we have slowly seen the fragmentation of the family that lived and worked together to one which is scattered to the four winds during the course of the day with many kids coming home from school without parents being there, and many wandering the streets. We see an increasingly fatherless society, or kids split between two and three families once removed, together with the increasing sexualisation of children from the tweenies upwards fueling an evergrowing desire for the next thing to make us happy.
Men and women live longer, are fed better, and have more and yet we are evermore dissatisfied with our lot and move onto the next thing once it becomes apparent this won’t do it.
And then we see the pain, fruitlessness and emptiness when the promises people have been fed by Hollywood and the all the glossy mags etc because my spouse won’t or can’t deliver what I need.
You mentioned Eden and the block to go back, but I often think about what it would have been like in Eden to get a handle on what God intended, and therefore what we should be like as Christians even in this fallen world. Jesus obviously gives us a picture of that, and the Scripture is full of other illustrations about that. We will never quite crack it in this world - we live in a war zone, but the yearning is that which God has planted in us to remind us that were created for a higher way. Sexual, material, relational desire is about pointing to God as the source over and above the good or bad things that they might lead to. That yearning should drive us to God, to seek Him out, and try and live it out what He wants us to, what should aspire to.
And as you point out it is about relationship and working thru that and living it so that others can see it as Rev pointed out at 154. In another thread Rev and Bruce quoted verses talking about contentment - which is a word I think that is odds with the driving forces of our generation - it si something I think I am only just beginning to learn about and get a glimmer - but with Jesus it provides the opportunity for peace and rest.
Having enough confidence in God to live out of the moment and that He will provide, but not get sucked into the rubbish as I did tonite with my daughter, and not being dependent on the next hit of consumer or addictive whatever, is where it comes together. Its a slog. My Catholic mate who would like to do the Lords work with a streetsweeper - if u know about guns u would know what that is - he’s pretty right wing, but has 5 kids says its just a case of putting your head down in the storm and taking the next step, and then the next step - I would add to that - knowing that God is with you all the way even when it seems darkest.
My wistfulness in that sense is for my own loss - which is what it is to me - but also and moreso for those that suffer thru these things now, and for what my kids will go thru. Once upon a time I was impatient to live my life - now I’m becoming increasingly impatient for the Lord to come.
A blessing in my life apart from my family? Within 50 metres I got 4 - yes 4 Christian neighbours who are real salt and light, and who are honest about their struggles and put their heads down for Jesus.
Sorry to ramble
Cheers
MN
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Sorry if that was a bit off topic
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:40 am
hi mn a couple of things.
“I’ve told my (4 - 3+1) kids get someone pregnant and they die - I’m a 50’s bastard - I can say what I like - they get the idea.”
I know you say this with a half-smile on your face, but to me this attitude is strange. Why is getting someone pregnant the worst thing your kids could do? If as you say you think the pill is a bad idea then pre-marital sex will probably lead to a pregnancy, most likely unwanted. I would prefer to saee a young person who decides to be sexually active on the pill than bringing yet another unwanted baby into the world, and forced to marry its father because there’s no other choice (i’m also assuming abortion for you is not an option). Yes, even if you believe God says sex is for marriage, to me it is certainly not the worst thing we could be doing.
what if one of your kids did make a mistake? I’m guessingn you wouldn’t “kill” them bnut instead meet them with love and forgiveness.
also “I think feminism and the pill has had a major part in that because it in a lot of ways is seeking to release women from the power of men either fairly or unfairly. A comment about the pill - one of the things it has done is give women (and men too I guess) a level of control and independence over our reproductive cycle never experienced before in history - it has given an unheralded freedom from the previous longterm consequences of sexual activity - how does this fit with God’s creative scheme? Is that in keeping with what He intended?”
i hear you - but in light of our recent conversations about using violence, you and I would both agree we live in a fallen world. In God’s kingdom, no child would be unwanted. People would marry for life and bring children into the world with love. But this just doesn’t happen. And when an unwanted pregnancy happens the man has a choice - either they can stick around, or they don’t have. A woman does not have this choice. She is stuck with the baby. yes, people should think about the consequences before they engage in sexual activity bou the reality is a woman “pays” more than the man does, and the pill goes to some extent to rebalance this. Also , if you take away the pill - then you are forcing women to have abortions. It amuses me that the pro-lifers are usually the ones who don’t want contraception available or young people to know about it. One friend of mine (a strong pro-lifer) said women who have more than one child out of wedlock shouldn’t be able to get government support because one mistake’s okay, but another isn’t. I could hardly believe he was serious. Firstly - the man walks off scott free in this arrangement, secondly, you’re punsihing the child not the mother - and one could argue not allowing women to take the pill and thus ensuring unwanted children are born is punsihing them too - thirdly, women are forced to have abortions because they cannot provide for the child and fourthly, I’m glad God forgives as seventy times seven.
Also, as a married woman who has taken the pill - i’m pretty glad it was around, because I don’t want 10 kids like my grandma had and I wanted to spend a few years getting to know my husband before we had a family.
I see your points, but putting women back into the situation where they are really at the mercy of men is not the answer.