OK. Today I am going to put the application first, then the principle behind it, then the application.

The ugliness of the feminist mind-frame towards cooking, cleaning, and caring for others is so profound that it is difficult to process. These women are so obsessed with not showing Christian love that they make it a priority not to serve their own families. Cooking, cleaning, and caring for their own husbands and children is a concept which is repulsive to them. Acts of service to others are in their twisted minds traps to be avoided, and many go so far as to order their entire lives around avoiding showing love to others, especially their families. These women are so gripped by miserliness they have made it a priority not to show love to their own children. When they find themselves unable to avoid an act of service and love to their families altogether, they first steel their hearts with resentment, turning their hearts to stone to avoid the feelings of selfless love they live in constant terror of developing.

It is important to remember that while these women have avoided love and service to others in an attempt to profit, this does not profit them at all. The philosophy of the miser is profoundly destructive to the miser themselves. While we shouldn’t lie about the extreme ugliness in this frame of mind, we should remember that the miser is suffering immensely from their own perverted outlook. There is also great opportunity here. While what I’m describing is quite plain to see once you consider it, very few have ever had the opportunity to really examine it. We can help explain the profound ugliness of a miserly heart, and in doing so (if we are doing it right) we are doing an act of love.

The new year is a time of resolutions, and one resolution I would offer for us all is to truly consider the folly of a miserly heart and not only repent ourselves, but help others to do the same.

That is the pagan trope, and the principle is simple. We are not to be like them. I have put in bold one of the tersest descriptions of the current tropes of the mainstream media I know of, and I was written to the Ephesians around 1900 years ago.

Ephesians 4:17-32

¹⁷Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. ¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. ¹⁹They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. ²⁰That is not the way you learned Christ! ²¹For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. ²²You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, ²³and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

²⁵So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Now the application, again in part. We need not to he like those outside the church, but we have allies outside the church. This is what one of them says about marriage.

When men have full reproductive rights, and cannot be forced into fatherhood (as women cannot be forced into motherhood) a few dramatic changes will take place. The era of the babymama will essentially evaporate overnight. When men are given the same rights as women to choose fatherhood, all the incentives to trap men and extract maximum resources without consequence will be eliminated. The only men who will have child support orders enforced against them will be those men who have legally agreed, in writing, to father children with a particular woman.

We used to call that “marriage”. We still can, but I see no reason why any sort of legal agreement to parenthood should not be enforceable. And marriage itself is not a sufficient condition in which to enforce parenthood. Couples who intend to be childless need to specify that legally. Every child must be wanted by both parents. Every individual reserves the right to parent alone, but when that gargantuan task becomes even more difficult, we will see the rates of single motherhood collapse.

Men are grossly exploited by child support laws, and ending that is a matter of keystrokes. Change the legislation and give men and women equal reproductive rights.

Well, that’s half correct: but not the way it used to be. This is the old formula — where in marriage the procreation of children was expected.

DEARLY beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.

Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.

The good divines who wrote the Book of Common Prayer knew what they were doing. They saw marriage as a bulwark, a place that took desire and made it fruitful (with children and with good works) and a bulwark against our fallen nature.

And since the enlightenment freethinkers have tried to tear it down: now that the children of freethinkers are the elite, the more clear eyed intellectuals are seeing destruction ahead and suggesting that we pick up again those discarded virtues: chastity, fidelity, and oath-keeping.

But you cannot rediscover duty if you do not train for it or teach it. Here Paul (who was preaching to a congregation who lived in a fairly dissolute time) has comments.

We should work honesty. We should not steal, or work in places that manipulate. This is a challenge for all in the financial sector, where the government is now running Ponzi schemes, making it very hard to find an honest market and do honest trades. It’s even harder for those who work in government, or interact with the bureaux (which is most of us).

We should tell the truth. This is fairly revolutionary. We should not tolerate things that do not tell the truth, or deal with things that tell lies. Much of the current discourse — to subvert a word from the cathedral — is done using technical jargon where the plain English meaning of the word is incorrect. We need to stop using euphemisms, and start calling things dung when dung they are.

We need to allow grace to control our anger. The cathedral rejoices when the peasantry lose their temper: it reinforces the sense that anyone who is not of the elite is but a brute beast and requires regulation. This is not so. Let’s return to the sacrament of marriage: it is not something for the elite and specifically not for those who have a religious vocation, And part of it is a comment that we enter it not as brute beasts. We need to keep anger in control: let it go, (splitting wood is optional) and we need to speak with grace and without rancour.

And here most of us fail. But we all fail at times. However, slipping into a pagan lifestyle that celebrates failure — is not of Christ, and is not an option.