Was there oppression of women in ancient times? Yes. Consider that Michal, princess of Israel, was divorced from David by her father the King so she could marry another. Probably for diplomatic reasons: David was now considered traitor by Saul, and that meant that Saul considered any vows he or his family had made were null and void.

Incorrectly.

Or consider Abigail. She was married to Nabal, who was by all accounts a brute of a man. He had treated David with contempt, and David’s band were about to kill him. Abigail was beautiful and wise: her husband was neither.

But she returned to her husband. In modern churches she would have been told to divorce him for the sake of her spiritual growth, for he was a brute. There is a family violence industry that would account the church of Paul — with the women silent, and the men managing their families — as abuse, and would use the police and courts to blow the marriage up.

This is one of the reasons that three quarters of partnerships (not all Kiwis marry) break up before the children of the marriage leave high school. This is why we now have fragile, entitled, broken young people.

Our women have forgotten where their power is and how to be wise.

I’ll add that the question of a truly abusive husband is a difficult one, and while I’m not aware of any specific direction in Scripture indicating that elders should intervene, I believe that the general instruction regarding following civil authorities as well the instruction on church discipline can be carefully and wisely applied here. But we must be aware that:

1. The purpose of the intervention should be to help bring a brother back from serious sin, and to protect the wife. The purpose should not be to help the wife stand up to her husband’s authority, as Keller and Kassian teach, and as Wilson says he has done. The purpose should be Christian, not feminist.
2. Abuse has been redefined to mean anything that frightens or upsets the wife, and is being very openly used by feminists as a way to abolish headship and make husbands submissive to their wives. The creators of the pervasive legal and social model regarding abuse (Duluth) are very open about the fact that from the beginning their objective has not been to stop domestic

violence, but to stop men from seeing themselves as heads of the household and teach wives to stand up to their husbands.

3. When the Apostles Peter and Paul wrote about headship and submission, they did not feel the need to remind wives to monitor their husbands for sin and call in the authorities. Instead, they instructed wives to win sinning husbands over without a word. This was in the ancient world, in a time (as we are forever reminded) when husbands were violent chauvinists. Yet in our age of open feminist rebellion and docile men, no discussion of headship and submission can occur without telling husbands to mind their own business if their wives rebel, and reminding wives to call the cops if the husband is abusive. Was there an embarrassing omission by the apostles, or is this being added to appease the feminist rebellion? Why must the tone and content of the teaching be so radically different today than in the ancient world?

To understand the depth of this perhaps (to some) subtle flaw in Wilson’s teaching, imagine if he had instead told wives to win sinning husbands over without a word, and had encouraged husbands with wives who rebelled against submission to seek out church discipline. Flipping the message like this would have lead to an open rebellion.

The other major flaw with Wilson’s theses on submission is his denial of the nature of the defining feature of our age, the very open feminist rebellion all around us.

We need to be able to speak freely here. One of the good things that has happened is that terms such as “racist”, “sexist” have lost meaning. We can now look without fear at good examples, bad examples and learn from both.

1 Samuel 25:23-44

²³When Abigail saw David, she hurried and alighted from the donkey, and fell before David on her face, bowing to the ground. ²⁴She fell at his feet and said, “Upon me alone, my lord, be the guilt; please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant. ²⁵My lord, do not take seriously this ill-natured fellow Nabal; for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him; but I, your servant, did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.

²⁶“Now then, my lord, as the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, since the LORD has restrained you from bloodguilt and from taking vengeance with your own hand, now let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be like Nabal. ²⁷And now let this present that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord. ²⁸Please forgive the trespass of your servant; for the LORD will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the LORD; and evil shall not be found in you as long as you live. ²⁹If anyone should rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living under the care of the LORD your God; but the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling. ³⁰When the LORD has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you prince over Israel, ³¹my lord shall have no cause of grief, or pangs of conscience, for having shed blood without cause or for having saved himself. And when the LORD has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.”

³²David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you to meet me today! ³³Blessed be your good sense, and blessed be you, who have kept me today from bloodguilt and from avenging myself by my own hand! ³⁴For as surely as the LORD the God of Israel lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there would not have been left to Nabal as much as one male.” ³⁵Then David received from her hand what she had brought him; he said to her, “Go up to your house in peace; see, I have heeded your voice, and I have granted your petition.”

³⁶Abigail came to Nabal; he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk; so she told him nothing at all until the morning light. ³⁷In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him; he became like a stone. ³⁸About ten days later the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.

³⁹When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the LORD who has judged the case of Nabal’s insult to me, and has kept back his servant from evil; the LORD has returned the evildoing of Nabal upon his own head.” Then David sent and wooed Abigail, to make her his wife. ⁴⁰When David’s servants came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” ⁴¹She rose and bowed down, with her face to the ground, and said, “Your servant is a slave to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” ⁴²Abigail got up hurriedly and rode away on a donkey; her five maids attended her. She went after the messengers of David and became his wife.

⁴³David also married Ahinoam of Jezreel; both of them became his wives. ⁴⁴Saul had given his daughter Michal, David’s wife, to Palti son of Laish, who was from Gallim.

I research violence in mental health, and I despise the white ribbon campaign. It is state sponsored. It appears to do good: id does not. It supports a model in which all men are abusers, and all women innocent. The data indicates that within a partnership men are as likely to hit as women, and in violent partnerships both can hit.

Woman are not innocent. Abigail was not: her actions were a classic example of girl game. She saw a better man, and aimed to catch him, for it was better to be one of David’s multiple wives than be married to a man she despised. Women, note that he was charming, submitted on behalf or her husband, and served his interests.

She saved Nabal’s life, and he knew it.

By doing her duty she made herself appear worthy.

Our current anti violence programmes are not designed for duty, but for licence. They allow women to blow up marriages with state support. This leads to despair in the husbands, broken children, and hardened, lonely women caring for their cats and wondering why their family has left them alone.

The iconography of the advertisements is itself a message. It argues for a multicultural, society. No couple can be of one race. There cannot be happy children. All must be synthetic, and follow the post modern narrative.

We need to stand against this. As men, we have to lead. Women need to use their wisdom to help and cover us. And we need to care for the wife we have, and support her: we need to cover the errors of each other and at times protect one’s husband.

For the times of David were violent, and if we do not preserve our families we will again live in such.

Do not support the white ribbon campaign. It is part of the diabolical narrative of this time that leads to death. Do not be like them. Choose instead duty, and in it find love.