-
Biblical Families is not a dating website. It is a forum to discuss issues relating to marriage and the Bible, and to offer guidance and support, not to find a wife. Click here for more information.
A dating daughter is a father's failure
- Thread starter NVIII
- Start date
You need to keep testing your leader.
Check case of DeSantis. He stopped being good moment he started presidential campaign. He was good while being only governor of Florida.
Good leader can stop being good leader.
Politicians, like underwear, should be changed often.
Marriage is for the long haul, choose someone you can trust before committing.
The woman who claims that Jesus is her leader isn’t truthful, she isn’t asking him how to negotiate her life, she is relying on herself.
A married woman who follows her own counsel is a concubine.
Megan, I have a few reactions to your message, but I'll open with something I've asserted to numerous people (y'all can contact my brother Eric on here, and if he responds he'll tell you I've heavily encouraged him to see things this way -- our father is dying of kidney failure and our mother of dementia, but the history of our birth family included violent and unpredictable beatings, incomprehensible chaos and sexual abuse, so 'honor your parents' couldn't be solved without nuance): sometimes honoring one's parent can only be appropriately exhibited by holding one's parents' feet to the fire. It's akin to Tough Love. Of four boys, I escaped with the least damage despite having had the majority of the anger, violence and disrespect meted out upon me, but rather than the abuse having produced who I became, it was my insistence on being a fiercely and unquenchably tenacious black sheep that propelled me to refuse to fully internalize the message that I didn't deserve to exist that the beatings, mind games and violations were intended to convey.
All three of my brothers have at various times criticized me for my adult habit of standing up to my parents, which is something I began while still at home at age 17. The knee-jerk assertion is that challenging them is disrespectful or a failure to 'honor' them. Sometimes I have to point out that my insistence on forgiving them combined with my refusal to discount their potentials has caused me to sustain my relationships with them throughout my adulthood, as opposed to the full disappearing acts most individuals with my history would pull on their birth families (and understandably so).
But I've insisted for myself that I refrain from running off altogether for two reasons:
But at some point, I had to acknowledge within my own heart and soul that remaining bitter toward them for these transgressions bore no power to influence them or to lift my own burdens. On the way to producing sincere forgiveness, I got myself into what has been since then a lifelong habit of thanking my parents for conceiving me, carrying me, giving birth to me and raising me without killing me along the way. Not one of us ever had any possibility of having any other life than the exact life we've had, most especially the initial part when our parents were raising us, and -- not to be too graphic, but -- that uniqueness was from the start entirely DNA-dependent on the particular sperm that got the particular egg. So I (or anyone else) can wish all I want about how life would have been better if my parents had been better parents or if I'd've had other parents, but that's just nonsense. In order to have had the rich life I've had during the 47 years I've been in charge of myself, I had to experience the shit show I went through for the first 2 decades.
So now I still regularly thank my father for not killing me.
Megan, I think Samuel did a pretty good job of responding to your question . . .
It was designed to shut people up. "Back the fuck off, because I've experienced a horror you can't imagine and that can't be challenged."
I was still somewhat of a pussy when you and I first 'met,' and maybe you'll regret having had a crucial role in my shedding of that last significant chunk of unwillingness to assert my masculinity a couple years ago, but -- no matter how many people say I'm being mean or misinterpreting you or 'hitting the girl' -- I'm not going to back away from asserting that you're grinding an ax about your father that (a) will never reverse the fact that he raped you, (b) instead functions as a mechanism within which you perpetuate your own abuse as an adult, and (c) causes you to assume not exactly this but something similar to assuming that men need to prove that they're not daughter-rapists before you're about to consider them worthy of headship.
And, in using your father's rape this way as a talisman, you are also turning the Honor-Your-Parents commandment inside-out in a way in which you've generalized it onto men in general.
Why inside-out?
Because YHWH commands that we honor not only our parents but His remaining instructions that haven't subsequently been scripturally discontinued or amended, which includes wives submitting to husbands. It's like a stop sign; it's not a stop-if-you-feel-like-it sign or a stop-if-you-consider-the-state-DOT-worthy-of-compliance sign. And submitting isn't qualified in Scripture as the Feminists do with an only-if-it's-what-Girl-Power-would-compel-you-to-do clause.
Why else inside-out?
Because you're looking at it from the wrong angle -- because, even if in some circumstances it would be justified to jettison a husband as one's leader, the appropriate time for that to occur is after one's husband has engaged in some type of egregious act. If your husband rapes you, or if your husband abandons all of his godly husbandly duties, or if he beats your children without provocation, then you would have justification to question his headship, but what you're doing is assuming that women have the right and power to question men's headship in advance and beyond doing so in the context of deciding whether to join a particular man's family. This is a guilty-until-proven-innocent posture and has no standing in either Scripture or our legal system, not to mention defying common sense, given that, aside from in the context of purposefully-destructive cultural devolution, women would never be able to lead men or even lead their children without the presence of men in their lives.
And despite @NickF's protestations, I stand by my assertion that you are casting aspersions on men in general when you remind us you
In fact, I'm just honoring you the way I honor my father and mother. Most of the time, what's called for is conversation and hugs, but when bullshit is being disseminated, because I honor them and you and refuse to discount any of you to the point of assuming you're incapable of transformational transcendence, I'm going to speak up.
Is it love to confront someone for getting in the lake before he learns how to swim? Or would it be more loving to let him drown while refraining from embarrassing him?
So here's the summary answer to your question about how you were supposed to honor your father after he raped you: you should have done everything within your power at the time to hold him accountable and stopped trusting him until such time as he demonstrated he could once again be trusted.
What it wouldn't have made sense to do is start off your relationship with him as a little girl expecting him to prove in advance that he wasn't going to become a rapist before you would submit to his parental leadership.
[3 slight edits for grammar/syntax/emphasis]
All three of my brothers have at various times criticized me for my adult habit of standing up to my parents, which is something I began while still at home at age 17. The knee-jerk assertion is that challenging them is disrespectful or a failure to 'honor' them. Sometimes I have to point out that my insistence on forgiving them combined with my refusal to discount their potentials has caused me to sustain my relationships with them throughout my adulthood, as opposed to the full disappearing acts most individuals with my history would pull on their birth families (and understandably so).
But I've insisted for myself that I refrain from running off altogether for two reasons:
- An intuition that running from one thing would only lead to running from many other things, combined with awareness that that which doesn't kill you only makes you grow stronger; but, more importantly, . . .
- I refuse to assume that my parents are entirely incapable of transcending their own demons, because to do so would fail to fully recognize the grandeur of God's Creation. Therefore, to honor my parents when they remain in the grip of evil would be to dishonor them, because it would treat them as just being fucked-up individuals who simply didn't have a higher level of potential.
But at some point, I had to acknowledge within my own heart and soul that remaining bitter toward them for these transgressions bore no power to influence them or to lift my own burdens. On the way to producing sincere forgiveness, I got myself into what has been since then a lifelong habit of thanking my parents for conceiving me, carrying me, giving birth to me and raising me without killing me along the way. Not one of us ever had any possibility of having any other life than the exact life we've had, most especially the initial part when our parents were raising us, and -- not to be too graphic, but -- that uniqueness was from the start entirely DNA-dependent on the particular sperm that got the particular egg. So I (or anyone else) can wish all I want about how life would have been better if my parents had been better parents or if I'd've had other parents, but that's just nonsense. In order to have had the rich life I've had during the 47 years I've been in charge of myself, I had to experience the shit show I went through for the first 2 decades.
So now I still regularly thank my father for not killing me.
Megan, I think Samuel did a pretty good job of responding to your question . . .
. . . but you and I both know that your question wasn't designed to elicit an answer you would accept.
It was designed to shut people up. "Back the fuck off, because I've experienced a horror you can't imagine and that can't be challenged."
I was still somewhat of a pussy when you and I first 'met,' and maybe you'll regret having had a crucial role in my shedding of that last significant chunk of unwillingness to assert my masculinity a couple years ago, but -- no matter how many people say I'm being mean or misinterpreting you or 'hitting the girl' -- I'm not going to back away from asserting that you're grinding an ax about your father that (a) will never reverse the fact that he raped you, (b) instead functions as a mechanism within which you perpetuate your own abuse as an adult, and (c) causes you to assume not exactly this but something similar to assuming that men need to prove that they're not daughter-rapists before you're about to consider them worthy of headship.
And, in using your father's rape this way as a talisman, you are also turning the Honor-Your-Parents commandment inside-out in a way in which you've generalized it onto men in general.
Why inside-out?
Because YHWH commands that we honor not only our parents but His remaining instructions that haven't subsequently been scripturally discontinued or amended, which includes wives submitting to husbands. It's like a stop sign; it's not a stop-if-you-feel-like-it sign or a stop-if-you-consider-the-state-DOT-worthy-of-compliance sign. And submitting isn't qualified in Scripture as the Feminists do with an only-if-it's-what-Girl-Power-would-compel-you-to-do clause.
Why else inside-out?
Because you're looking at it from the wrong angle -- because, even if in some circumstances it would be justified to jettison a husband as one's leader, the appropriate time for that to occur is after one's husband has engaged in some type of egregious act. If your husband rapes you, or if your husband abandons all of his godly husbandly duties, or if he beats your children without provocation, then you would have justification to question his headship, but what you're doing is assuming that women have the right and power to question men's headship in advance and beyond doing so in the context of deciding whether to join a particular man's family. This is a guilty-until-proven-innocent posture and has no standing in either Scripture or our legal system, not to mention defying common sense, given that, aside from in the context of purposefully-destructive cultural devolution, women would never be able to lead men or even lead their children without the presence of men in their lives.
And despite @NickF's protestations, I stand by my assertion that you are casting aspersions on men in general when you remind us you
You're not talking about 'people' in general; you're talking about men, because your previous similar assertions have generally been about how most men haven't earned the right to expect to be followed. I can tell some are concluding that what I'm writing to you about this is defensive on my part, but, unless you reverse what you always tell me about how you don't see this as applying to me in particular, I see no reason for me to be defensive.
In fact, I'm just honoring you the way I honor my father and mother. Most of the time, what's called for is conversation and hugs, but when bullshit is being disseminated, because I honor them and you and refuse to discount any of you to the point of assuming you're incapable of transformational transcendence, I'm going to speak up.
Is it love to confront someone for getting in the lake before he learns how to swim? Or would it be more loving to let him drown while refraining from embarrassing him?
So here's the summary answer to your question about how you were supposed to honor your father after he raped you: you should have done everything within your power at the time to hold him accountable and stopped trusting him until such time as he demonstrated he could once again be trusted.
What it wouldn't have made sense to do is start off your relationship with him as a little girl expecting him to prove in advance that he wasn't going to become a rapist before you would submit to his parental leadership.
[3 slight edits for grammar/syntax/emphasis]
Last edited:
That is all testing before making him leader. He is not president yet and probably never will be. But it's also worth noting that from an individual person's perspective a president has far less authority than a husband - so voting is a far less important decision than marriage. And they are changed every few years.
This regular change does not exist in marriage. Marriage is intended to be permanent. The decision must be carefully thought out and made before starting the marriage. There is no place for continued testing and regular changes.
So simple, yet so easily missed.
Yet you chastised me about the Commandment which you interpreted as a non-negotiable and absolute rule. You staked out a concrete position, chastised me, and now you're equivocating. As you should.
To me this is not an unconditional entitlement for parents. It is an expectation from God that parents will be honorable and THEN their children would be obligated to honor them as is their due. A child should render honor to their parents as their parents are due or else they are rebellious children.
A Muslim child who rebels against their parents to become a Christian would be condemned under your initial reading of the Commandment. The child would be rebelling against parental instruction and parental authority. But is the child wrong? Not to me.
Inherent in so much Biblical instruction is the fact that that this is the manual for a Godly people.
If a woman wants to be respected as a good and Godly woman then she must be a good and Godly woman.
If a man wants to be respected as the leader of his family then he must be a leader.
If parents want to be honored by their children then they must be honorable before their children.
To claim the mantle of God by His Commandments and then not be worthy of that mantle is to mock God.
2 Timothy 19:
If you confess the name of God you must turn away from wickedness.
If you say God Commands that you be honored then you MUST be honorable before God.
If you say God Commands that others submit to your leadership then you must be a Godly leader.
If you say you are due Godly respect as a woman then you must be a woman of Godly respect.
Wicked people are not due the graces of Godly people.
I strive to be honorable before my children. My husband strived to be their leader. If we had rebellious children we'd remind them of what they already know of God's Word. But we do not have rebellious children. We have tried our best to be examples to them and they in turn respect us and honor us as a matter of course.
Their honor and respect are both earned and freely given.
As to my father I cannot say that I ever forgave him. He's dead and for me that settled any dispute between us. Perhaps that is a kind of forgiveness. The evil he did to me is a part of me, it left a scar. My father and my husband have for me clearly defined what it is to be a Godly parent and a Man worthy of submission from his family. I've experienced two extremes and will say with my dying breath that my father had no claim on any of the titles, love, honor, or respect that Steve did. This will never change.
I confess that I fall short and that I am grateful that my children love me, respect me, and honor me anyway. They at least know that I do my best and this is what I expect of them as they go forward in life. I would not presume to demand honors or obedience that are not mine to claim in the name of God.
Last edited:
You will be tested anyway.
No divorce started by women would happen if women only test before marriage.
But God tells your children to honor you and He does so without reservation or caveat.
I can't be the only one finding it ironic that some of the men are criticizing one of the very few women on this forum who has fully submitted herself to her husband. All because she values actions over words?
Perhaps that's because the dismissal of words is a thorn in the side of the few who prioritize their time by verbally debating on the internet over the most miniscule statements rather than taking action in their everyday lives.
It's amazing to me that the men are seeing one thing from Megan's statements, and as a woman, I see something entirely different.
Many others who have gone through similar trauma can relate to Megan since she is vocal about her father's wrongdoings. Despite her father's ultimate betrayal, instead of choosing to hold all men responsible, she voluntarily made the decision to submit to her husband.
That's a lesson that many women, including myself, need to hear. If a woman who has been through so much more than I have can submit herself to a man, then what's my excuse not to?
I'm thankful that she shares her experiences so that others can learn from it. Instead of gatekeeping her abusive father's honor, some of you could instead choose to learn from her experiences as well.
I haven't seen Megan insert her ideals into anyone's marriage directly. It's absolute dramatics to correlate something as simple as sharing a negative personal experience to her influencing a sudden rebellion among married women.
It's also important to keep in mind that, because we are the weaker sex, women tend to have less faith in men overall. Women have a fundamental understanding that our safety is never guaranteed outside of the presence of an admirable man, and often this awareness is heightened by past trauma. Many times, after being mistreated by men, women are then reminded that we are commanded to submit to the same sex that was the source of our trauma. Men are unfamiliar with this feeling because their responsibility to submit belongs to Yah, Yah doesn't first mistreat men, then require them to bow to his authority.
This is not to minimize male abuse; in actuality, most of the time, male abuse has a considerably greater detrimental affect on a man's life than it does on a woman. I'm simply pointing out how processing abuse differs between men and women based on our gender roles within a marriage.
Looking back on the people I have loved and respected the most, I don't once recall any of them ever even uttering the words honor, respect, or authority.
Their actions alone commanded all of those things.
Perhaps that's because the dismissal of words is a thorn in the side of the few who prioritize their time by verbally debating on the internet over the most miniscule statements rather than taking action in their everyday lives.
It's amazing to me that the men are seeing one thing from Megan's statements, and as a woman, I see something entirely different.
Many others who have gone through similar trauma can relate to Megan since she is vocal about her father's wrongdoings. Despite her father's ultimate betrayal, instead of choosing to hold all men responsible, she voluntarily made the decision to submit to her husband.
That's a lesson that many women, including myself, need to hear. If a woman who has been through so much more than I have can submit herself to a man, then what's my excuse not to?
I'm thankful that she shares her experiences so that others can learn from it. Instead of gatekeeping her abusive father's honor, some of you could instead choose to learn from her experiences as well.
I haven't seen Megan insert her ideals into anyone's marriage directly. It's absolute dramatics to correlate something as simple as sharing a negative personal experience to her influencing a sudden rebellion among married women.
It's also important to keep in mind that, because we are the weaker sex, women tend to have less faith in men overall. Women have a fundamental understanding that our safety is never guaranteed outside of the presence of an admirable man, and often this awareness is heightened by past trauma. Many times, after being mistreated by men, women are then reminded that we are commanded to submit to the same sex that was the source of our trauma. Men are unfamiliar with this feeling because their responsibility to submit belongs to Yah, Yah doesn't first mistreat men, then require them to bow to his authority.
This is not to minimize male abuse; in actuality, most of the time, male abuse has a considerably greater detrimental affect on a man's life than it does on a woman. I'm simply pointing out how processing abuse differs between men and women based on our gender roles within a marriage.
Looking back on the people I have loved and respected the most, I don't once recall any of them ever even uttering the words honor, respect, or authority.
Their actions alone commanded all of those things.
Last edited:
Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare [6] the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?
25 Far be it from you to do such a thing--to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge [7] of all the earth do right?"
26 The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake."
27 Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes,
28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?" "If I find forty-five there," he said, "I will not destroy it.
29 Once again he spoke to him, "What if only forty are found there?" He said, "For the sake of forty, I will not do it."
30 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?" He answered, "I will not do it if I find thirty there.
"31 Abraham said, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?" He said, "For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it."
32 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?" He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."
Abraham was allowed to question the most high, yet we're to believe that mere dust and ashes are above questioning?
Last edited:
If a daughter is raped by her father, the Bible undoubtedly does not require her to honor him, because he should be put to death.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness.
I would assert that being put to death for that would be an act of honor, and the 'scars' women carry from rape would be greatly diminished if actual rapes were adjudicated in that manner, because, in my personal and professional experience, most sexual assault 'scars' are predominantly associated with shame, because our cultural hesitancy to fully prosecute actual rapists leaves those who are raped with the impression that instead of it being an unequivocal violation they're left with the impression that it might have been their own fault or that it says something about their own character (this dynamic is exacerbated by the fact that close to half of all sexual assault allegations on the part of women turn out to be false, serving to cause even those who are true victims to be challenged).
This discussion is, on the whole, only further convincing me of the superiority of marriages being arranged rather than initiated by two nearly-clueless youngsters who do so primarily based on infatuation.
I'll emphasize again that I believe common sense supports that conclusion, but emphasis has been placed by the OP that this thread is to be guided by Scripture, not by any conclusions we individually come up with as if we have the power or authority to second-guess God by becoming our own self-elevated gods. Nor are we at liberty either via Scripture or common sense to elevate our personal preferences by citing exceptions that prove the rule. Exodus 20:12 says, "Honor (respect, obey, care for) your father and your mother, so that your days may be prolonged n the land the LORD your God gives you." [Amplified Bible]
It does not say, "Expect advance proof of lifelong honorableness before honoring your father and your mother." Nor anywhere in Scripture does it say that women are to have independent agency that will endow them with (a) the entitlement to decide based on whims when they will enter or leave marital relationships or (b) natural leadership capabilities that will endow them with the power to properly judge when men should be honored.
Scripture from Genesis to St. Paul establishes male headship over female. We can, if we like, assume that YHWH asserted this hierarchy in an absolutely arbitrary manner, but nowhere in Scripture is this asserted, so anyone who makes that assumption would be guilty of adding to Scripture, and such an assumption of arbitrariness flies in the face of common sense, because it can be readily demonstrated that women are incapable of leadership without the overarching leadership of men. Therefore, women simply aren't qualified to adequately judge what the general standards should be when it comes to assessing whether men are worthy of honor or submission. Ephesians 5 is thus the template: wives, submit to your husbands, and one doesn't have to make any assumptions about whether or not a woman can escape having to submit to a man simply by avoiding marriage, because elsewhere Scripture makes it clear that she should be under the headship of her father until she's married. Nor can a woman logically appeal to the continuation of Ephesians 5 in which Paul describes the manner in which men are to love their wives, because (a) those are admonitions to men, just as "submit to your husbands" is an admonition to women. The linguistic trick with which Christian Feminists attempt to hoodwink us is to assert (a) that wifely submission is none of the man's business, because it's addressed to women (and, men, it's not up to you to enforce that), while also asserting that the wife-loving prescriptions are a woman's business, ignoring that it's addressed to men.
Last edited:
Agreed, and I suspect that I'm joined by every man engaged in this discussion when I agree with Megan that men should aspire to demonstrate actions that command honor, respect and authority rather than making demanding appeals to receive accolades of honor and respect without first inspiring them.
No one is challenging the fact that men are called (by Scripture -- and by each other) to earn respect.
What is being challenged is the perception that it might be a woman's place to arbitrate whether men are meeting their marks or not -- or thus whether it's a woman's place to excuse herself from submission because she judges her man worthy of it. What's therefore also being challenged is that men who don't receive a stamp of approval from women don't have authority. We do in fact have authority. It's granted to us by Scripture; it's granted to us by our physiology; it's granted to us by our Creator-intended tendencies to innovate, organize and maintain the world, and it's granted to us by our predisposition to lead. It's not a woman's place to challenge this, because as hypergamous as women are (always wanting more than they deserve) it's inescapable that, for every man who isn't Mr. Perfect or Prince Charming or even just an Average Joe, there is a female counterpart who is miles from being Miss America -- and what is a woman's place is to challenge other women to be better women, which is what you're pointing to here:
As am I. Megan is a tremendous woman, and I would unreservedly declare that any man should consider himself honored were Megan to marry him; she sets examples almost across the board that we should all be in awe of. Women inspiring women is appropriate; women declaring large swaths of men unworthy of submissive wives, however, is not. Paul said, "Wives, submit to your husbands," and it is well and good for women to challenge other women to better submit. Paul did not say, "Wives, submit to your husbands after they meet your female standards," any more than he said, "Men, love your wives, but only after they stop being rebellious." [I can guarantee you I've been loving @Kristin Martin pretty much non-stop since 1987, but she didn't even begin to submit until 2 years ago.]
Not one voice has been raised to silence @MeganC from providing women with the lessons they "need to hear." Not one voice has even been raised to silence @MeganC from voicing her opinions that men aren't entitled to submission or that parents aren't entitled to be honored until they demonstrate that they've earned it -- in fact, I assert that, when it comes to suppression, some voices have come closer to attempting to silence any voice that challenges what @MeganC (by the way, close to my best friend in this organization) has had to say on many occasions on this topic. No one has even attempted to stop her from offering her opinions, but suppression efforts (your own included) ramp up just because Megan is challenged on her perspective. Are you asserting that Megan should be exempt from criticism? Do you expect that for yourself? And are you implying that women will stop sharing their inspirational stories if women are sometimes criticized for statements they make?
What's the point of women even offering their opinions if they're not going to be subject to criticism?
This is evidence of the degree to which even Biblical Families, much like 'The Church,' is infected with gynocentrism, a cultural framework within which it is verboten to criticize women or promote something women don't like.
False on both counts.
It's not ironic; it's appropriate -- in fact, last I read from her, Megan welcomes the criticism. First of all, one cannot logically assert that the exhibition of any particular laudable trait, no matter how righteous or godly, transforms every belief of the person possessing that trait to be unassailable, even when the professed beliefs are on the same subject as the laudable trait. We don't grant that to popes, priests or pastors, so those of us who are mere rabble don't get that pass, either. Secondly, while some among us may come close, I have yet to know a woman either in Biblical Families or elsewhere who has fully submitted herself to her husband. Some come close, and we would do well to listen carefully when they speak on submission or when they offer insight into the female heart and soul, but none of that qualifies them as experts on men, if for no other reason than that, if they're following Scripture, they're almost entirely exempt from having to trouble themselves with achieving competence in the wide array of human skills and capabilities that are well-known to be part and parcel of the male realm. Thirdly, there's an incongruence between asserting the right to be equal participants in a discussion and expecting a woman to receive kid-gloves treatment.
That one sentence attempts to dismissively invalidate the totality of arguments various of us have with @Megan's assertion. It most certainly is not a matter of anyone attacking her for asserting that actions speak louder than words. Of course actions speak louder than words, but no one challenges that; what is being challenged is an effort to elevate the concept of actions speaking louder than words to a height that would justify ignoring Scripture -- or to grant women the power to be the arbiters of when men will be permitted to be leaders. Men start off owning the right to be leaders based on what they collectively do for women that women could not do for themselves.
So I have a challenge for you.
As tempting as it is -- assuming that your ad hominem attack doesn't apply to me and should thus be ignored -- to just let the stink of this particular paragraph of yours linger as it wafts on the wind, given that your choice is to attributionlessly invalidate some indeterminate amount of men, I challenge you to identify those about whom you're casting aspersions
Who, @theleastofthese, are
And, if you can, please explain how you have the power to look that deeply into their (our?) hearts. What leads you to assume that those who engage in disagreements here are not also taking action in their own lives? How do you know that engaging in these values-clarifying discussions doesn't actually enhance the degree to which men will take such action?
Because what I see in your writing is assigning virtue to Megan's online challenges while assigning vice to men who challenge her.
[You're new here, so there's no way you'd know this, but this particular conundrum has been addressed multiple times in the past, one in which simultaneous arguments go on about how we men should be easier on the girls and at the same time how it isn't fair to exclude women categorically from rough-and-tumble discussions. This, always with great support from me, has tenuously been resolved in favor of welcoming women into the fray as long as they don't mind a contusion here and there. It's "iron-sharpening-iron," not "iron-featherdusting-doilies," after all.]
It's amazing to me that you would find that amazing. Can we not agree on the fact that, while sharing humanity, men and women are otherwise alien beings to each other?
This, though, @theleastofthese, is where your assumptions most go wrong.
Please excuse the strong language, but, if this belief is held by most women, it's best described as delusional -- and many feministized men hold that same delusion.
The safety of a woman -- and not of only a woman, but of a man as well -- is most assuredly not guaranteed by the presence of an admirable man. Safety is never guaranteed, but to the extent that it exists, the safety of women and men is produced by the existence of an overwhelming collective of admirable men. In essence, every 'right' that women consider themselves entitled to is protected by the willingness of men to do the dangerous and difficult work of engaging in that protection. Even the so-called 'right' to kill one's own children is enforced by men, not by women. Many dangerous people exist in the world, and it is men in the form of the military, the police, the firefighters, the vast amount of EMTs, who protect everyone else. It's a joke that women also perform those functions. No one wants two female cops showing up at a domestic disturbance, and an even bigger horror than a house fire would be seeing a fire truck pulling up with nothing but women on board.
Which, by the way, leads me to my final point, one I would be remiss if I didn't make. Your paragraph includes dishonesty by (probably unwittingly ignorant) omission:
What you write that follows that is fruit of the poisoned tree, because men are not at all unfamiliar with the experience of being physically mistreated. Women frequently forget that men are also the victims of male violence, but that itself ignores the real gorilla in the room. The Census Bureau's National Crime Victimization Surveys have consistently indicated (and have been backed up by a plethora of other unbiased studies) that women initiate 70% of physical domestic violence and over 90% of emotional domestic violence. In fact, on average the most violent interpersonal relationships are between lesbians, and gay men have the lowest instance of domestic violence.
Wouldn't you consider it worthy of challenge if you read men writing that the existence of female-on-male violence in marriages was justification for adding amendments to the Word of the LORD?
You are conflating asking questions with testing. They aren’t the same.
Abraham had a respectful conversation with Yah and asked Him questions about what He announced that He was going to do. Abe attempted to get Him to change His mind, but failed to realize that the situation was worse than he had assumed, there weren’t even ten righteous in the entire city. So Abe”s questions were for naught. Nothing changed about Yah’s plans. Abe never questioned His right to lead in the manner that He chose.
“Testing” leadership, in the way that I am using it, is to judge the right of a leader to lead. If a wife has to judge the righteousness of her husband’s decisions, she doesn’t have a husband, she has a junior partner. Thus the need to judge him before she marries him.
An unrighteous father is a horse of a different color. Choosing to not murder him could be the level of honor that is expected. Each case should be judged on its own merits.
I have known truly horrific situations where, as has been mentioned, the father should have been stoned. In one of those cases, the adult daughter came back and was his hospice provider. She has become a woman that many could only hope to be. She has the scars, physically and mentally, but she is living past the past.
The danger is what people always do, they want to disallow the requirements because of worst case scenarios.
“Stealing must be accepted because there was an 8 year old girl who would have starved to death if she hadn’t taken an apple from someone’s yard.”
We have to approach this issue from the baseline that God’s Law requires death for this infraction. In this instance you can honor your father and still participate in his execution. The concept appears to be quite expansive.
Or Abraham has overestimated number of righteousness people. He didn't think situation is so bad. Perfectly logical explanation.
And why pray if our desires can never be fullfiled?
Who has right to question husband and make him justify him actions? If nobody can, sovereignity is his.
It's interesting that in Medieval Europe conscience was public affair because you had to do public justification of your action. It has disappeared with reformation. So if husband does something bad who will intervene and decide is intervention permissible? Does wife has right to start legal process?
If she has, then has judged her husband rightneousness.
Any legal system to stop abuse in marriage has to have sort of protecting mechanism. And nobody better to start mechanism then by action of abused. Person most interested in stopping abuse. And only was to feel abused is to perceive being treated unfairly which requires testing partners decisions.
I don't see that it must logically follow that man has right to decide everything for women.
Does woman has to ask permission to go to toilet?
Which exactly decisions has man to decide yo his woman?
This forum has again gone into Bible says without thinking which this exactly implies for our lives. Same situation as at start of thread.
And women can use different decision criteria made to achieve other goals for choosing their husbands than what we, men, assume them to be. Existence of "I'm such good husband, why no women wants me" is proof of sentence before.
Best conception of marriage is partnership. Word which implies active participation and contribution of all partners. Same applies to our walk with Lord. He can show way and we go in opposite direction. We can plead and He close ears. Well, both situations aren't good.
Yes! This is exactly it; there feels like a huge disconnect between this forum and the real world at times. It seems as though some people here love to speak in absolutes; absolutes don't always work in the real world. If that were the case, the Bible would consist of only the 10 commandments. Instead, scripture gives us many examples of everyday lives that people lead, and that has to be for a reason.
I’m confused, how is that different from what I wrote?