There was a link yesterday back to some comments about lesbians divorcing more than gay men now that we have gay marriage and in a related article I realized that I had written pretty much the same thesis as the Artisan Toad had just put up.
I wrote this comment back in May
Prediction — there will be wommenz begging to be second wives, because the government is a gonna divorce them when the US buck is no longer a reserve currency (which is happening — The rest of the world is making Free Trade Agreements without the USA) and you have to pay market rates to borrow — then prostitutes will drop their fees as the market is flooded with the newly unemployed “empowered” women. Being a second wife will be so attractive.
Not..
And in the long thread about polygyny that the Toad started at SSM I linked to Leviticus and the purity laws and then added…
By my count, we have loosened the rules of incest, ignore menstruation, have tolerated adultery, and homosexuality. We have abortion instead of the fires of Molech, but it meets the same function. The only things on that list we still ban are bestiilty and marrying cousins or sisters.
And if God has not changed (and he is not) we need to pray fervently for reform and revival . For as God said the land vomited to Canaanites out, so we will be torn from the lands we love.
Now, this is the context we live in. Today’s text stands as a warning: both of them. For God has not changed. If he threw Israel into exile, he will do the same to us. And the consequences will be devastating.
8 The LORD determined to lay in ruins the wall of daughter Zion; he stretched the line; he did not withhold his hand from destroying; he caused rampart and wall to lament; they languish together.
9 Her gates have sunk into the ground; he has ruined and broken her bars; her king and princes are among the nations; guidance is no more, and her prophets obtain no vision from the LORD.
10 The elders of daughter Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the young girls of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out on the ground because of the destruction of my people, because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city.
12 They cry to their mothers, “Where is bread and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom.
13 What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can heal you?
14 Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen oracles for you that are false and misleading.
15 All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at daughter Jerusalem; “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”1At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.” 3He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. 5Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? 6I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
9He left that place and entered their synagogue; 10a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. 11He said to them, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? 12How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” 13Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. 14But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.
Why these two texts: for in the time of Lamentations there is no one telling the turth and the pretty lies have led to destruction. And the Gospel because this what telling the truth looks like. Jesus would have go complaints in our modern churches. He is too hard. He is too legalistic. He is too confrontational. He hurt feelings. But the truth was told: the Pharisees were clearly mistaken on the law and healing was licit, in fact demanded, as was the daily sacrifice. (Which means that I have no guilt about being on call on Sundays).
But we need to hear some ugly truth. I think Deti is the same age as I am, and he was taught the same lie as I was.
The slut culture is widely accepted, even in mainstream Christianity. It’s simply accepted as a fact of life that most girls will sleep around (if they want to), or so we are all told. Traditional Christian sexual morality is given perfunctory lip service but in practice is universally ignored, even by Christians themselves, even by Sunday School teachers, even by pastors. Christians don’t like it, but instead of calling it out they look the other way for fear of alienating members (and their mothers, who 25 years ago were doing the same things their daughters are now doing).
When I was growing up in the early 1980s and then in college in the mid to late 1980s, we were told simply that men and women were exactly alike except for our reproductive tracts. We were told that if men can sleep around, then women can too; and men have exactly jack-squat to say about it. And if you’re a man and you do say anything about it, then you’re a short-dicked man who has obvious “issues” about your own sexuality; or you’re a sexist male chauvinist pig asshole; or you’re just an angry bitter guy who can’t get laid and you’re probably a virgin.
Men are going to react to sluts in one of two ways: (1) ignore them because they can’t have sex with them; or (2) have sex with them and then ignore them.
Well, I’m raising two teenage sons: I have colleagues and friends who have teenage daughters. From what I can see the observations of my teenagehood were correct: the girls are different and strange. With experience of life, they are no longer scarey to me, but they terrify my boys. I note this when I go to the final assemblies of the female high school (to pick up sons from orchestras) — the girls are gushy, the boys are stoic. The girls celebrate. the boys do not. The neurobiology of male and female brains is different. And anyone who does not know that is a fool.
But the lies are still taught.
Back to waiting tables. An elderly couple comes in flashing their AARP discount cards. While taking your order, they ask you how old you are. When you tell them, they tell you you should go to college so you don’t have to wait tables the rest of your life. You contemplate glassing them with their mimosas before politely telling them that you did go to college.
In the West, we have a binary choice: we change and reform, or we will go under. The smaller nations know this: there has been a move to conservatism (at least of the financial sense in Canada, Australia and NZ. Many in the US and South Africa (ZA) know that: indeed a fair number of people from the US and ZA now live in Canada, Australia and NZ because they see the writing on the wall.
But the church needs to stand up. Again, from the thread from yesterday…
What we need to be doing in the church is make women marriageable (again) . This means that the very old women who predate the feminists dropping their kool aid in the communion wine need to say “ Sisters, we have taught you wrong and you have done wrong. You are not going to attract anybody at 200 lbs and without skills. So we are going to get you skinny, teach you to cook from scratch and clean without chemicals, and then the single men in the church MIGHT find you attractive, If not, you will be able to teach your daughters better”.
Tell the truth. Support those who do tell the truth. In these fallen times, that’s at least counter revolutionary, if not prophetic. But be aware of the cost. Counter revolutionaries, like prophets, are the first put in front of a firing squad.