The easy things are the known. Jezebel was a Phoenician princess who married Ahab, King of Israel, as a treaty bride. She bought with her into Israel the cults of the Philistines: the ritual orgies of Asherah and the sacrifices of children to Topeth. She also bought in corruption and violence and a seeking of power.

Her teaching involves the use of sexuality as power, regardless of consequences. One could refer to Salome if you want another example: these women were glamorous. Quite unlike Elizabeth and Mary, the wife of a priest and a girl living in what would have been Hillbilly country in Jesus’ time. Note that Salome was Mary’s and Elizabeth’s contemporary.

The question now is who is the Jezebel? How do we find her? How do we warn against her? For it appears that the ideology of this age would damn the Christ of Revelations, for he criticizes women.

Ideological justification of a self-serving double standard, whereby feminists relentlessly criticize men while exempting themselves from any criticism at all, is nowadays so widely accepted that it is seldom even noticed, much less subjected to skeptical scrutiny. Are the problems of “male violence and misogyny” so pervasive as to justify a “critique of men and masculinity,” per se? If a man is non-violent and pleads not guilty to the accusation of “misogyny” (i.e., woman-hating), can he be permitted to object to this categorical condemnation of masculinity?

Well, no, says our dysphoric teenage expert, because any male who criticizes feminism is exercising “control and domination and validation and entitlement.” Feminism accuses all men of oppressing women and, if a man endeavors to defend himself against this accusation, his defense is cited as proof of his guilt. The definition of “misogynist” is a male who criticizes feminism, and any man who defends himself is condemned as an opponent of women’s “liberation and safety.”

But there are consequences to this, and more of this below.

“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.

“‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. But to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you I say, I do not lay on you any other burden. Only hold fast what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

(Revelation 2:18-29 ESV)

The first problem with any ideology is that it cannot reflect reality. We are too small; we cannot see everything. Our science gives us knowledge in part… but almost every paper I have read or written has at the end that more work is needed, for all projects have flaws, if not in design, execution.

The second problem is that this annoys the almighty. He sees this as error. He sees us as worshiping the younger and beautiful, the ephemeral. He sees us driven by our appetites: we neither discipline what we eat nor what we see nor what we believe. I think it was Lewis who said that if you say you believe nothing you will end up believing everything, and he was probably quoting. [1] He threatens tribulation and illness on those who do not repent: for what we do has consequences to our bodies and souls.

And the third reason we should be wary is that illness and victimhood is now seen as a justification. Note that the teenage women in McCain’s post had to claim transsexual status and a mood disorder to get any authority. If you don’t have a disability you have to make it. The idea that we let our lives be ruled by the triggers of the broken is stupid. It is also bad for the broken: the idea of most Cognitive Behavioural therapy is, at the end, to expose the person to that which triggered them so that the emotional response lessens.

Being a victim is not a way to live your life. Defining yourself by your weaknesses is no way to live. Celebrating irrationality and seeking raw power destroys Societies. If we follow the code of the social justice warriors, the petunias, our society will become dust, just as if Israel had followed the perversions of Jezebel.

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1. Which is why, ironically, I get on well with old fashioned skeptics and socialists. They believe in reason. You can use an argument, not mere emotions: dialectic not rhetoric.