Shortly after waking up this morning, I made a discovery that had me regret it: Disney is now advertising drag “Disney Princesses”, and this even after losing over half of their public approval in the past twelve months thanks to the same sort of thing. The sexual perversion cult is everywhere, from child grooming in public schools across the country to the upcoming month dedicated to public perversion by our cultural elites. Then we have same-sex “marriage” as the law of the land, broken marriages, out of wedlock birth rates nearing 2/3, and pornographic material being sent by the terabyte onto screens in the hands of children of all ages. We have slaughtered nearly seventy million children in the name of autonomy. We have no shame.

Compared to America, Sodom is beginning to look downright pious.

What do you think the men of Sodom would have said if Abraham had come and begun to preach sexual ethics? Would they have approved? Just asking the question feels stupid. And yet American Christians think that the Bible, rightly handled, will not grate against them in their neo-Sodom in any way.

The Bible is a thoroughly against androgyny and egalitarianism. It assumes men lead their households. It literally teaches that God the Father rules the cosmos. It commands wives to submit to their husbands. It teaches young men to have self-control and young women to be busy at home. It teaches that women ought not speak authoritatively in the church on doctrine because Eve was deceived and Adam wasn’t. It teaches that womanhood and childbearing go hand-in-hand. It teaches that husbands are to love and sacrifice for their wives.

The Egalitarian reaction to the Bible is two-fold. First, twist the passages that can be twisted. Paul was speaking “at a certain time and place”. Who cares if he cites the creation order? Second, deny the passages you can’t twist. Paul was just a misogynist, after all. And look at all the misogynists he’s enabled. Most Christians tend to focus their efforts on twisting. Most nominal Christians focus their efforts on denial. Either way, this is a terrible way to approach the text.

The Egalitarian reaction to Christian authors like CR Wiley, Zach Garris, and Michael Foster who write on patriarchialism and egalitarianism is much more simple: cite examples of women being abused by men who like these guys and try to create guilt by association. That’s it. A good dose of name-calling doesn’t hurt either.

Given that we live in Sodom 2.0, why would we expect to see anything but a wild, raging, frothing reaction to Biblical standards for gendered piety? Isn’t that sort of reaction a necessary – but not sufficient – condition to knowing that something is Biblical? If egalitarian feminists in the 21st century read their 1st century Bibles written by literal patriarchs of the church without finding anything they didn’t like, that stretches credulity. But if they read that Bible and get upset, we’re onto something. And it isn’t like just egalitarian feminists have things in Scripture that are hard; we all do. But uniquely, egalitarian feminists have found a way to claim Biblical orthodoxy despite effectively rejecting these passages.

If the Apostle Paul went to Sodom and began teaching on sexual ethics, he’d be killed. I don’t think we’d kill Paul in Sodom 2.0. I think we’d de-person him. He’d be banned from churches and conferences and seminaries. How. Dare. He.

We know this, because faithful men and women who teach what Paul did have this happen to them all the time. Why would it be different if Paul did it?

I’m not planning on writing an organized series, but I have a few additional thoughts related to this topic I’d like to write about in future posts. I’ll note them here for my own accountability:

  • Why complementarianism fails; why it can’t really address the concerns of egalitarians or patriarchalists.
  • Why the complementarian position is so shallow and completely dependent on the Overton window.
  • Why egalitarianism is a form of Gnosticism.