See this index.
A few months ago in “Habitually Being Wrong” I noted that many men often make a habit of saying objectively false statements that could have been invalidated by a simple Google search.
This is not a mistake or accident, it’s a habit. I noted how:
Here we have a blogger who makes sweeping, exclusive claims—which are used to sit in judgment over others—but can’t even be bothered to do even a minimal amount of research over a five year period. Of the claims he did research, I was able to debunk one of them by doing a single Google search.
This is not a mistake or accident, it is a habit.
Sharkly argued that only men—and not women—were made in the image of God. He wrote:
All surviving evidence shows that the early church unanimously believed that only men are in the image of God. Tertullian, Ambrosiaster, Augustine, and others all wrote of men alone being the image of God. The women of the early church knew they were not in the great and glorious image of God like their husbands, and consequently they would have no reasonable basis to claim equality with men. Furthermore women were not only looked upon as lesser and weaker vessels, but they were in fact viewed as a source of uncleanness and defilement, the original source of transgression against God, and prone to giving in to their passions and their ever emerging lustful desires.
…and later…
The men who wrote in unanimous agreement that only men are the image of our Father & Son Godhead, were all the apostolic and patristic fathers of the church.
The claim that all evidence (including all the apostolic and patristic fathers) supports a position is a massive, extraordinary claim. I rarely make such claims, because in most arguments there is evidence supporting both sides.
One rare area where I make exclusive claims is with regards to the Eucharist. That’s because I know that the Roman Catholic Eucharist did not exist before the latter half of the 4th century, because the Roman Catholic Church did not exist yet. So, it is an historical impossibility that the Roman Catholic Eucharist existed prior to Roman Catholicism. There can’t be evidence of a thing that didn’t exist, so I was comfortable making such an extraordinary claim. And during my series, I showed exactly how overwhelming the evidence is.
But this is the key point: even though I knew the evidence was unanimous, I still subjected it to an extensive examination as if the evidence was not unanimous. I didn’t simply make a point and assume that it was true. I checked. And checked again.
But Sharkly does not have overwhelming evidence, because the belief that women were made in the image of God cannot be identified with any particular historical starting point. Indeed, it can be derived from scripture itself.
So I took Sharkly’s claim, and I went to Google, and within 5 minutes I debunked his claim. It was that easy. Here is where we left the discussion last.
Those who argued against women being in the image of God:
Ambrosiaster
Tertullian
Those who argued that women were made in the image of God:
Basil of Caesarea
Didymus the Blind
Gregory of Nazianzus the elder
Gregory of Nazianzus the younger
Irenaeus of Lyons
John Chrysostom
Origen of Alexandria
For those keeping score at home, not only is the “women are not made in the image of God” doctrine not unanimous, but it’s not even the majority view! Now, I don’t have time to read all the patristic writers on this particualr topic, but I wanted to try to search for some more.
Regarding Sharkly’s position, all I could come up with was Tertullian, Ambrosiaster, and (potentially) Augustine. However, regarding Augustine, he viewed the image of God as more of a gradient rather than a binary: men are more rational and so display the image of God to a proportionally greater degree. Since this implies that women are actually made in the image of God, just to a lesser degree, I’m not including it in either list (since it could, arguably, go in either).
Regarding the traditional position that all humans are made in the image of God, here are three that I had not considered previously:
Jerome
Athansius of Alexandria
Epiphanius
Jerome wrote:
For, among other wicked things, he has presumed to say this, too, that Adam lost the image of God, although Scripture nowhere declares that he did. Were it so, never would all the creatures in the world be subject to Adam’s seed—that is, to the entire human race
…
For never would all things be subjected to men if men had not— together with their authority over all—the image of God. But the divine Scripture conjoins and associates with this the grace of the blessing which was conferred upon Adam and upon the generations which de scended from him. No one can by twisting the meaning of words presume to say that this grace of God was given to one only, and that he alone was made in the image of God (he and his wife, that is, for while he was formed of clay she was made of one of his ribs), but that those who were subse quently conceived in the womb and not born as was Adam did not possess God’s image
He believed that the whole human race rules over the creatures of the earth as the “seed of Adam”, and he explicitly states that Adam and Eve were made in the image of God.
Athansius wrote:
And among these, having taken special pity, above all things on earth, upon the race of men, and having perceived its inability, by virtue of the condition of its origin, to continue in one stay, He gave them a further gift, and He did not barely create man, as He did all the irrational creatures on the earth, but made them after His own image, giving them a portion even of the power of His own Word; so that having as it were a kind of reflexion of the Word, and being made rational, they might be able to abide ever in blessedness, living the true life which belongs to the saints in paradise.
Athansius emphasized that the image of God was contained in the rational capacity of mankind, which necessarily includes both men and women.
Epiphanius wrote:
To deny this doctrine of God’s image is not faithful, or true to God’s holy church. All people are plainly in God’s image and no one whose hope is in God will deny it, unless certain persons, who are expelled from the church and the tradition of the patriarchs, prophets, Law, apostles and evangelists, make up their own mythology.
This brings the score up to 10 to 2!
Did all the apostolic and patristic writers agree that only men were made in the image of God? Absolutely not. It’s not even close to being true.
I also explored the question of the universality of Tertullian’s views and determined that while Tertullian’s viewpoints were highly influential, they received limited acceptance among the broader Christian community. Considering his association with the Montanist movement, we are not surprised that his views would not be universally accepted. Later writers such as Cyprian and Augustine would be influenced by his works, but would not take them authoritatively. Augustine in particular developed a particularly nuanced view of the image of God with regards to men and women.
It’s been roughly a year now since Sharkly made his claim to me. In that year, I’ve consistently refuted his claims. But I’ve also shown that he’s habitually wrong. Many times when I found someone else to add to the list, I noticed that he had never published anything on that person on his blog:
It’s easy for the under-informed to ignorantly claim that all the early writers are unanimous on a topic when they’ve never read or (at the very least) publicly published anything about most of them.
Out of interest, I also decided to check to see which patristic writers believed that humanity lost the image of God in the fall. I have previously written about that in “Sharkly on Women, Part 2.” I found allegations that the following writers argued that it was “lost” through corruption:
Irenaeus of Lyons
Tertullian
Theophilus of Antioch
But I found a few that argued that it was lost completely:
Origen of Alexandria
Augustine (see: “Confessions (Book 13)” and “The City of God”)
Ambrose of Milan (see: “Six Days of Creation”)
This is interesting, because Tertullian believed that only men were made in the image of God, but still wrote in “On the Soul (De Anima)” (in Chapter 6) that man’s image was defiled, injured, severely corrupted, and subject to passions and afflictions. In particular, he understood the image of God to be “reason and free will,” which I believe does not conform to Sharkly’s definition of the image of God.
I also found a suggestion that the belief that men reflect the image of God more fully than women is a Gnostic belief. Specifically, the Gospel of Thomas and the Pistis Sophia may indicate this, and it may be found in the beliefs of the Valentinians. These may be worth further study.
This is all I could find in writers writing before the 5th century. If I find more supporting either position, I’ll post a follow-up.
Sharkly’s main problem(other than him having poor reading comprehension as he projects onto others when it is pointed out to him, as he is the ”expert” on the subject) in the ”Christian Manosphere” is he doesn’t listen even to his supposed ”BFF”, Jack like in this exchange (that ties together with your post here) from a year+ ago:
”Sharkly says:
2023-07-18 at 7:54 am
“Sexual equality” is the satanic foundation for Feminism. It must be countered with the truth of God’s word, that God made only men to be the image of His patriarchal Father & Son Godhead. Which then makes all men categorically superior to womankind.
1 Corinthians 11:7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.
The husband images Jesus Christ, who is God, while the wife images the ever-straying church, not God.
Until men can tell women that their sex is the categorically inferior one, not the superior sex created by God to rule in His image, and that it is in every man, woman, and child’s, best interest for the superior sex to rule over the weaker vessels in accordance with God’s holy patriarchal order, then Feminism’s foundation of sexual equality is still in place and it remains seemingly a usurpation for men to rule over women and marriage seemingly remains a form of slavery whereby a man unfairly subjugates his equal.
Things won’t get fixed while churchians blasphemously tell women they too are the images of their goddess, or of their hermaphrodite god, Baphomet. Is God truly our Father? Or is he just a hermaphrodite lying to us about His sex? We need to repent of our emasculating blasphemy against God and return to the unanimous and biblical belief of the first church, that only men are the image of God. Because if the sexes are truly both equally in the image of the Most High God, then men and women are equal in the highest possible regard, and the Feminist were clearly right, and we were wrong to try to usurp over them, and we should all take a step back and follow their agenda for a while, for being so wrong, and buy some tuckwear to keep our toxic penises tucked between our legs in shame.
But thankfully that isn’t the case. Women are not an image of the Father nor of the Son, nor of the masculine Holy Spirit who Himself impregnated Mary.
But, I can assure you, anybody who blasphemously still maintains that women are also the image of the Most High God and Father, are directly supporting the religious and ideological foundation of Feminism, which is fundamental sexual equality. And they have left the first church’s doctrine.
Ambrosiaster wrote: “Paul says that the honor and dignity of a man makes it wrong for him to cover his head, because the image of God should not be hidden. Indeed, it ought not to be hidden, for the glory of God is seen in the man. … A woman therefore ought to cover her head, because she is not the likeness of God but is under subjection.”
”Jack says:
2023-07-18 at 8:43 am
Sharkly,
Would you care to tie your commentary into the topic of the post? If not, then please post similar sermons on your own blog.”
”Sharkly says:
2023-07-18 at 10:12 am
I recognized this connection in the original post.
1) Women choose poorly. They openly admit to preferring bad boys, and then want to blame those men for being bad boys.
That makes women sound morally inferior, unfit to rule over men, and like they choose to incentivize evil when they do make a choice. (defilers)
2) Women cling to a gynocentric microcosm built on feminist notions of equality, and therefore set themselves up in a relationship that is either abusive or unfulfilling.
Maybe those notions of equality are wrong? Maybe women are inferior?
3) Women do not have the moral capability to take responsibility for their decisions. They need a man’s moral covering.
That sounds pretty morally inferior to me!
4) Women refuse to submit to the man in their life and thereby accept his moral covering.
Being so rebellious and stubborn about defying and denying their God-appointed heads, doesn’t seem morally superior to me. But, morally in need of covering, as you explained.
It’s like we’re both tunneling through the mountain of Feminism from opposite sides. Y’all have almost figured out that women are morally inferior, by practical observations. And I’ve been trying to tell y’all that women are the inferior second-class sex based upon Gods word telling us repeatedly, in many different ways, that men are the images of God, while being quite careful to never say that any woman is God’s image.
e.g. God cursed both the serpent and the woman with a bodily curse, but God would not curse Adam like that because Adam was God’s own likeness, instead God cursed the earth from which Adam was taken before being formed into the image of God. And for those who missed the fact that God didn’t curse His own likeness, God explains again why we aren’t supposed to curse men in the New Testament:
James 3:8(KJV) But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
It is quite clear that God is telling us that men are representative of Him:
Matthew 25:40(KJV) And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Go is not stupid. If He had actually meant “brothers and sisters”, He’d have written that. Even the least of Men is still an image of God. Men are CATEGORICALLY the superior sex.
If you claim men are superior because of just physical or mental abilities, then it varies by degree and some women may actually be stronger and shrewder than their husbands. But husbands categorically have been given the headship to rule over their wives because men were categorically made to rule as likenesses of the supreme Ruler of the universe.
If y’all will come a little further with your line of reasoning, and accept what I’ve presented from many scriptures, over at my own blog, we’ll meet up together and we’ll all have two complete sets of reasons to know that women were created inferior to men. Thereby making it in everybody’s best interest that there is complete rule by patriarchy, on earth as it is in heaven. God’s holy patriarchy is morally the rightest form of family government as explained by God in the Bible, and pragmatically the best as deduced from observation.”
”Jack says:
2023-07-18 at 8:43 am
Sharkly,
Would you care to tie your commentary into the topic of the post? If not, then please post similar sermons on your own blog.”
Just like so many months ago Sharkly brought up his ”Patriarchs should be trusted to execute their wife and children ” doctrine here but somehow forgot to do a post on it at his site(s) or comment about it at SF or Spawnys(most likely)reason why?:
Either he saw how insane it was or others I.E.SurfDumb and Feeriker told him ”that kind of talk will get us and others to shun and abandon you and your site(s).”
Also:
For some reason ”BOLD & Biblical” Sparkly is still afraid(a year plus later after i posted it at Spawnys)to comment on his idol Jordan Peterson’s position(maybe he secretly agrees with it?) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu9079rbaLY
Jordan Peterson CLARIFIES The Creation of Woman | “Women Are NOT Subordinate To Men”
Sparkly pretends(as he lives in his own tragicomic fantasy land) that his BFFS and idols like Peterson agree with him, then later cries, ”I was twicked, bros,” to whoever will listen.
Also:
If Sparkly were more than just another latter-day mainstream NPC troll bot emulating the ”Theobros” trendsters preaching Doug Wilson and Jordon Peterson, he would preach Jesse Lee Peterson like DAL’S right-hand tradcon Cane Caldo would do sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDoBewoTHo
Why God Made Women, and Why They’re All So Evil
Well, that just settles it doesnt it?
If women are are not in the image of God…..and are made just for man. Then, man cannot expect women to have any agency. She is just a “thing” to have sex with. She also cannot be held to any biblical standard bc she has no agency. She cannot “help” herself for anything because she is unable to grasp anything that would require a “moral” duty or obligation.
These men “just dont like women” and yet spend all their time talking about them. Again, these men have a very odd fixation on “sex” and how that only makes you a man, while telling men the “thing” they have sex with isnt made, or worthy, or cant reach any level of responisbility.
This is mental illness. And should be ignored Derek.
Don’t worry, I more-or-less agree with you.
I wrote this article because I’m, at my core, a scholar. The question of who is made in the image of God (and when, where, and how) is, from the historical perspective, quite interesting to me. That was my primary reason for writing this post.
But, I’m also interested in sociological topics, such as why people assert as dogmatic religious truth things that are easily verified to be false. Many people who are not mentally ill exhibit this behavior. Otherwise perfectly normal people will insist that objectively false things are true. So exploring that is the secondary purpose of this post.
I met a “christian” over the weekend at Target in line, he asked me if I “knew” Jesus Christ as my “lord and savior”
I gave him the look to “go on, keep speaking” and he told me I had to recite the sinners prayer, and accept Jesus as the “lord of my life” and then I had to wait on “The Holy Spirit” and “speak in tongues” and then I would be “written in the book of of life to be be dancing with jesus for eternity”
I purported “you have to speak in tongues?” and he said “Yup, no other way to have the Kingdom. Real Christians believe this”
This wasnt some teen, this was some hard hat guy maybe a decade or so younger than me
“So” I asked “If one doesnt speak in tongues, they go to the Lake of Fire”
He nodded, “most christians are sadly blinded by satan and the modern church” (oh here we go) “and on judment day will be tormented forever”
I quoted “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” John 11 25-26
He then told me “the KJV is a corrupt version of the Bible” (oh here we go again)
I told him, “you seek God your way and I’ll take His word for it. Not yours. Merry Christmas.”
This sloppy evangelism today we see in the RP and from people like this is exactly why the modern church is pretty much dead. Call it what it is. A social club to lord over how much better you are than anyone else.
😉
I met a “christian” over the weekend at Target in line, he asked me if I “knew” Jesus Christ as my “lord and savior”
I gave him the look to “go on, keep speaking” and he told me I had to recite the sinners prayer, and accept Jesus as the “lord of my life” and then I had to wait on “The Holy Spirit” and “speak in tongues” and then I would be “written in the book of of life to be be dancing with jesus for eternity”
I purported “you have to speak in tongues?” and he said “Yup, no other way to have the Kingdom. Real Christians believe this”
This wasnt some teen, this was some hard hat guy maybe a decade or so younger than me
“So” I asked “If one doesnt speak in tongues, they go to the Lake of Fire”
He nodded, “most christians are sadly blinded by satan and the modern church” (oh here we go) “and on judment day will be tormented forever”
I quoted “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” John 11 25-26
This sloppy evangelism today we see in the RP and from people like this is exactly why the modern church is pretty much dead. Call it what it is. A social club to lord over how much better you are than anyone else.
YEP! In happier news, Our friend BtM is just about to give up on the endlessly boring and tedious ”Gender wars” that plague most of the ”redpill”oshere it seems here:
Bardelys the Magnificent says:
17 December, 2024 at 9:51 pm
”I posted this on a YouTube video and it got shadowbanned {I should have known better after knowing about ”Truthseekers” like Brian Forbes AKA Jack Wayne(who couldn’t stand the heat of THE Capitol-T TRUTH GBFM tells nor the BRIGHT spotlight that GBFM has), getting other ”Truthseekers” on WP to shadowban(like an average butthurt yet envious lefty coward I might add while SMH) GBFM between Sunday, February 5th, 2023 until GBFM told everyone he was NEVER going back to SF on Wednesday, August 16th 2023}, so I’ll say it here:
If women are going to insist on being the worst version of themselves; if they are going to insist on making relationships and marriages to them as difficult as humanly possible and wear that difficulty as a badge of honor, then there’s no solution to this gender war. None. We can talk all day about how men need to lead better, and that’s certainly true (we’re human, after all), but if women steadfastly refuse to follow, there’s not much else we can do. In no other aspect of a man’s life is he expected to put up with so much crap for no reward. Even God tells us our suffering has value. Not so with women.
If women have agency like they claim they do, then they have enough agency to act right. If they don’t have agency, they need to submit to a man’s authority and shut the fux up. Either way, the current war cannot be resolved at the level it’s being waged at now. Something has to give, and it HAS to be the rebellious sex.”
i was listening to that Redeye radio show for a few minutes last night out of AM station on the East Coast and they said ”Everyone thinks it’s money why people do not have kids and it’s not but culture!”This has been known for decades-has anyone ever heard of ZPG that rebranded itself ”The name Population Connection was officially adopted in 2002. Our mission never changed, and our new name reopened doors for us. We continue to hold the copyright for Zero Population Growth and ZPG and use both in our materials when it makes sense. We even have a legacy-giving circle called the ZPG Society (learn how to join here)!
Why did they change their name?”Well, the truth is, what started out as an effective name DID start to seem “broken” after the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, which resulted in a widespread perspective shift that denounced demographic targets and embraced family planning and reproductive health for the sole benefit of women’s health, empowerment, and rights. Of course, we know that rights-based family planning programs help women, their families, their communities, and the planet.
Stabilizing the Population at a Sustainable Level
Following ICPD, many individuals and institutions started assuming a negative connotation when hearing our name for the first time. People who didn’t have a firm grasp on demographic terms thought that the organization being called Zero Population Growth meant that we were advocating for zero people. Of course, that was never the case—the mission has always been to stabilize the size of the population at a level that will ensure the planet can support people for many generations to come.
Still, some school administrators were reticent to host our Population Education program, journalists relied on us less as a helpful resource than they had in earlier years, and scheduling meetings with members of Congress became more difficult. Basically, the heyday of the ZPG movement that started in the 1960s had ended, and we were finding it more difficult to do our important work with a name that no longer resonated with activists, lawmakers, and educators who weren’t already supportive of our mission.”
IOW?
Young people since the 1960s especially would latch onto anything they thought made them seem ”caring”like the dopey(in more ways than one😉) Married couple Meathead and Gloria on the sitcom All in the Family (who for a few years were scared to harm ”Mother Earth” with their offspring), which seems to be a Favetote-in the current words of Deti, of the guys at Spawnys😉
What were the ”Christians” doing back then?
Pretty much what ”RP Christians” of today do carefully obey and listen to very caring millionaires/billionaires like their Senators, Elon MUSK & TRUMP & the Christians of the last 50 years will blame their sin of refusing to tell the Gospel of JESUS to every creature, onto those same millionaires/billionaires like their Senators, Elon MUSK & TRUMP instead of exclaiming ”my bad, my bad JESUS” like supposedly ”RP Pope”-wanna- be Jack did after he supposedly quit blaming his site-destroying gay porn post on RPA=redpillapostle.
Sparkly speaking from his classic Bleeding Heart Tradconnic Lefty Victim status here by trying to revoke it as in”It seems like, as a man, folks want you to be a worker drone who never misses going to work to constantly provide for everyone else. Whereas women are all honored as goddesses for merely existing. And women don’t need to provide anything, not even the sex they vowed to provide, even though it costs them nothing to provide sex. Sex is literally as free as fux, and yet women still withhold it, just to defraud their rightful head, to make an ass of him instead of treating him as a head over her.” yet Sparkly still stands and salutes those who still believe in that i.e. his ”BFFS” Brian Forbes AKA Jack Wayne and Oscar who both say ”puh-puh Please work hard and give my daughters all ye money son!”-even though they be supposedly Anti-Misandrist O.G.s in their mind, just like MR.”FOLLOW YOUR RESPONSONSIBLIRITIES AS A MENZ”(as he supposedly was ALL” BOLDLY & biblical” told i at Spawnys while playing the gay porn-loving chicken$#it AKA the real Sparkly,here at Derek’s) Sparkly below:
Sharkly says:
18 December, 2024 at 12:18 am
About the guy crushed by the falling bear:
Lindsay Bender, one of Harvey’s daughters, also spoke proudly of him.
“He put a roof on with vertigo, framed houses with sickness, he never missed work, he never took a bowel movement without wiping SMH here Y,’ all!” she wrote.
It seems like, as a man, folks want you to be a worker drone who never misses going to work to constantly provide for everyone else. Whereas women are all honored as goddesses for merely existing. And women don’t need to provide anything, not even the sex they vowed to provide, even though it costs them nothing to provide sex. Sex is literally as free as fux, and yet women still withhold it, just to defraud their rightful head, to make an ass of him instead of treating him as a head over her.
Men are expected to consistently deliver things they never ever vowed to provide, just to be considered an acceptable man, whereas women welch on their vows and are automatically assumed to be victims when they defraud a man by refusing to perform their vows and their marital duty.
Women vow to stay faithful “for richer and for poorer” yet seem to expect they can default on all their vows if their husband doesn’t always turn over a six-figure income, which wasn’t ever part of his pledge, nor is that always within his control. Yet women will deny sex to their hardworking husbands after they vowed to be his “to have and to hold”, for no other reason than that they’re worthless-to-the-bone contempt-filled daughters of their lord and master, Satan.
I’m in agreement with Martin Luther that frigid wives should be burned at the stake as well as sodomites like myself SMH as I LOL at my hypocrisy I tell ya! It is a choice of sexual immorality to defy your sexual vows for no sound reason while I instead play tickle my pickle with my ” little Buddy” at work. And you being full of contempt and hate because you lack decent character is not an acceptable reason. Adultery is a capital offense, but if your husband has stayed faithful, and not violated his vow, then you need to keep your vow too. Otherwise, “Christian” marriage is only an evil fraud perpetrated on men by women and their woman-serving churches. If the church is not holding women to their vows, then that damned whore of a church should bite their tongue off rather than to be cast into hell as Feminist hypocrites for venturing to say a peep about men’s marital shortcomings as I tickle my own pickle as I puh-puh Please in the words of Brian Forbes AKA Jack Wayne! Peace out, my homies on the down low (especially)keep it all hush hush and she’ll never know what WE have together on the DL!!!!
Until the church is ready to consistently speak against the sins of defiling and defrauding women, they need to shut up and stop using Jesus Christ’s name at their Sunday cuckoldry classes. Their eternal punishment will be less severe if they don’t teach their Feminist defrauding in the name of the Son of God.
After the above by that O.G. Chick$#it known as Sparkly , you can tell why i agree so much with Bruce Charlton here today yes?
Tuesday, 17 December 2024
In some ways, I’m amazed that anyone ever converts to the theology of church Christianity
Sometimes I find myself in a frame of mind in which I experience evangelical rhetoric as an outsider to Christianity – and then it strikes me, with greater and greater force each time, how extremely complicated, implausible, and indeed contradictory it all seems. It doesn’t convince, and it just doesn’t appeal.
The classic service pre-Christmas of nine lessons and carols is probably the main way in which most non-Christians are exposed to the Christian message; but If one actually tries to make sense of the readings and put-them-together… Well, if they make any converting appeal to the alienated atheist in search of meaning and purpose – it is not clear to me.
(I accept that the nine lessons services are not meant to convert atheists; but nonetheless, they are probably the only scripture and sermon to which most atheists get exposed in the course of a year.)
And when Christianity is summarized briefly but in terms of its primary concepts; the philosophical explanation of what it’s all about, seems to require all kinds of assumptions that aren’t at all natural or obvious – or even good!
Not obviously right, confusing and incoherent stuff, from my perspective, is:
That God (and then Jesus) are in practice mainly interested in judging us for our sins, and will inevitably find us deserving of punishment – probably horrible and everlasting punishment…
Yet Jesus, as saviour, seems to be saving us from a situation that (by definition) has been entirely set-up by God.
But God and Jesus are essentially the same – yet “the Jesus aspect of God” was somehow necessary for the work of salvation to happen. Apparently; God needed to become Man (while remaining God) in order to save us from a God-created situation…
But that the fact this world is full of sinful people is not God’s fault, despite that he created absolutely everything that exists – instead the universality of sin the fault of some combination of inherited original sin (hence the Genesis reading in the nine lessons) plus our own freely-chosen individual sins.
It seems that, faced with the sinfulness of His Creation; God would – because of justice – condemn every single person to damnation – except that Jesus (who, by some selection or combination of his birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension) somehow negated this damnation* – on certain conditions (which conditions vary between different churches and denominations).
(*Various theories are offered; maybe God punished or sacrificed Jesus instead of us; maybe Jesus experienced the totality of suffering that otherwise would have been experienced by us… there are various theories, none of which fit common sense ideals of good relationships or virtuous behaviour among people.)
Most of being-a-Christian is about these conditions required for salvation: what we must do (and not do) to satisfy our judge/s, and avoid the punishments of Hell.
But Jesus (for reasons which aren’t clear) did all this is a two-phase process – beginning the work during his life as a Man some 2000 years ago, and ending the process at some future date when Jesus will (in some sense) return and finish the job.
It is not terribly clear what we (and all humans of the past) are supposed to be doing in the meanwhile…
I can only suppose that all this business is utterly bewildering to most people (insofar as they take the slightest notice of it), and that it does not amount to something that one would obviously endorse as a way of setting-up and running things.
I also think it is factually wrong in many important respects, and that reality is not really structured thus.
But you all know what I think already. My main point here is to point out that – quite apart from whether the teachings are true – all this doesn’t come across as anything like as self-evidently appealing as some Christians seem to think it is…
(I know all this can be and is nuanced into other and more positive and appealing stuff by the many and complex abstractions of official theology… But Christians need to ask why it is that they are so utterly unable to explain their religion concisely and lucidly, what it “offers”, what is its appeal, how it “works” – even when they have the attention of a captive audience.)
Red(like Sparkly’s ”joyous” message above),Blue or Fed the ”Christian” message one usually hears does make one not want to be one, and as MOD said ”this sloppy evangelism today we see in the RP and from people like this is exactly why the modern church is pretty much dead. Call it what it is. A social club to lord over how much better you are than anyone else.
😉
Hey MOD see where sir Jack is being a hypocrite again?-by letting a woman give advice to MEN & NOT just any MEN BUT ”the good MENZ of the Christian Manosphere” as his fellow hypocritical yet deranged blogger/commenter Sparkly said here at Derek’s some 10 months ago.
I mainly like Brian Forbes, aka Jack Wayne’s Honesty and Hopeful attitude about his next post in the last paragraph being one of his biggest of the year.😉
Boundaries : Self-Control vs Drawing the Line
Posted on 2024-12-19 by Jack
The tricky dance of courtship.
Readership: All
Targeted Readership: Single Men and Women; Mentors of Singles;
Theme: Boundaries; Virtue; Virtue in Relationships;
Author’s Note: This essay was submitted on 2023/10/2 by a long-time happily married female reader who wishes to remain anonymous. Reorganized and expanded for clarity and emphasis by Jack.
Length: 1,000 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Foreword
I was just about to write a long spiel about sex before marriage. Fortunately, Jack beat me to it when he posted, Is Sex a Necessary part of Vetting? (2023/10/2) on the same weekend. Jack said EXACTLY what I was going to say. So this will be a follow-up post (four actually) that fits nicely into the themes of Boundaries [and Virtues in Relationships].
The Necessity of Pushing the Boundaries
One of the axioms of the Manosphere is, “She must be willing to break the rules but just for you.”
Why is this important?
For a man, this is a confirmation that a woman trusts him, submits to him, and is under his domain of authority.
But truth be told, this approach does not work for women. A single woman cannot break the rules for a man, even only one man, and expect that to play out well.
A woman who breaks the rules because she is sexually attracted to a man is a woman who believes sexual attraction HAS to be ACTED upon. But for women, Chastity does not work that way. Sexual Purity does not work that way.
We all want a spouse to remain faithful, so it doesn’t work for a man to teach or tempt a woman to relax her boundaries “just for him”. Besides, Men have no way of knowing whether it’s “just for him” or “just for the man she’s with at the time”.
A girl who kisses a man simply because he bought her a coffee or who does not mind if he grabs her breast may be very sexually attracted to him and therefore submissive to him in their relationship. But she is NOT a chaste woman. She does NOT have boundaries.
These days, a lot of women are demanding much more than a coffee date before they put out, but it’s still the same ritual only with a higher admission fee.
OTOH, if a woman does NOT care to kiss or have her breast grabbed on the first date, it does not necessarily indicate a lack of attraction. She may be a modest and chaste woman who is wisely drawing a boundary, biding her time, and doing her own vetting for a husband. Just because this type of woman is rare does NOT mean they don’t exist.
But as Sir Red Pill Apostle said, a man has to press those boundaries in order to know her reaction.
This is where it gets touchy in this day and age (pun). Such actions place a man in a very vulnerable position.
If a man does NOT press her, then a boundary cannot manifest and the relationship may not develop properly along those lines.
If a man presses her and she gives in, then he’s opened the door to promiscuity.
Even if he presses her and she rebuffs him, there remains the problem of determining whether that means she is NOT a 304 or she is NOT attracted to HIM enough to be a 304.
Another problem is the risk of him being accused of h@r@ssment.
These difficulties in communicating intent and reading women accurately is precisely why identifying IOIs and S1ut Tells have become so important in recent years. In a word, discernment. And in a sentence,” Y’all need ya boi Brian Forbes AKA Jack Wayne”
More on this point in the next post entitled ”Why younger (& older) MENZ need their boi Brian Forbes AKA Jack Wayne in a ’90s but now very 2020s world(word to my sistah Latifah).”
I’m hoping that post could reach a ton of comments, I’m talking at least 25-30(what passes as a ton of comments here after MOSES, JESUS & GBFM left and NovaSeeker suddenly ”Withdrew from ” the ‘sphere(”some 14 years in it and after 6 months with ya boi Brian Forbes AKA Jack Wayne dic(k)tator boot at his neck he just ups and leaves with NO goodbye to his audience?-Hmmm…. even ya boi ”RP” pope and dic(k)tator Brian Forbes AKA Jack Wayne doesn’t fully believe it BOYS) after supposedly ”getting a job in another state” as I told it some time ago?
“If a man presses her and she gives in, then he’s opened the door to promiscuity. Even if he presses her and she rebuffs him, there remains the problem of…”
So you have to attempt your own version of promiscuity to see if she’ll (rightly) reject it? And, somehow it’s required that you try for it? But, God forbid she reciprocates by trying for it back! If she does reciprocate, then she just doesn’t respect boundaries? And even if she passes the test by standing her ground and refusing, it’s still not good enough!
It’s never enough.
How incredibly stupid.
How is she supposed to respect boundaries if you don’t respect proper boundaries?
No wonder these men have had a lack of success with women.
“One of the axioms of the Manosphere is, “She must be willing to break the rules but just for you.””
I’m sorry, hypocrisy is a requirement for a good marriage? What’s next? She has to be willing to lie for you? Sounds like Deti’s “If the husband tells the wife to sin, she has to do it. Everything means EVERYTHING.”
Do you know why no historical patriarchal society allowed single men to be alone with a single woman? Why chaperones and escorts were required? Why they had to meet up in public locations? Because promiscuity was presumed. Nobody was ever foolish enough to rely on young men and women to make the right decision: to rebuff when pressed.
If these men got the Patriarchy they wanted, these loyalty tests would be impossible because men wouldn’t be alone with women. And, of course, a woman under the authority of her father—as the Bible describes—shouldn’t be willing to break the rules of her date and no other. These loyalty requirements—which are incompatible with Patriarchy—reveal their own hypocrisy.
Let me tell you how I built trust: by never lying to my wife. And she did the same by never lying to me. Trust is earned, not subjected to stupid loyalty tests. How did I accomplish this magical act? Through communication.
As they admit here, loyalty tests are always “necessary, but insufficient.” No kidding they are insufficient! Even after passing the test, there will always be “a problem that remains,” because you can’t prove loyalty (or love) through tests.
I’ll say this plain: no wife has to blindly break the rules if she and her husband already have mutual trust and loyalty. This…
“She must be willing to break the rules but just for you.””
…is just insecurity speaking loud and clear. They don’t trust their women and so resort to the “next best” thing: control.
“it does not necessarily indicate a lack of attraction”
Oh please. That’s exactly what they think. A woman has to be showing all sorts of indications of interest and desperate acts of desire to prove their attraction, or else their relationship is doomed. I mean, if she has to lean/tilt towards him standing straight and tall whenever they get their picture taken, or say goodbye to the relationship.
That’s what these tests are for: for the woman to give in to his advances. None of these men want a chaste woman, they want a woman who RESPONDS and ACTIVATES to his groping hands. That’s why most of the men pushing these things have a deep HISTORY (and they’ll, with their contrite hearts, humble-brag about it all day long).
“Before I met my wife, I was with a woman every weekend for twenty years. That’s over a thousand women. And they were not average women, no. They were HOT.
Oh, it was so terrible, and I regret even thinking about it. I’m so glad that I found a virtuous women who I will be with for eternity and will never divorce me.
Did I mention that sometimes I was with multiple women at the same time? Goo…I mean, bad times were had.
I got a lot of valuable experience out of it. Without it, I wouldn’t be the man I am today or have the audience I now have. But make sure you don’t repeat my, uh, mistakes.”
This is just expensive virtue signaling. It is what you expect from females. It’s a feminine approach to relationships. Women try to enforce all sorts of arbitrary expensive social behaviors (e.g. fashion; style; ideology; speech patterns) on other women, because the top-tier women can still acquire what they want even if they debase themselves, or even better get other low-tier women to debase themselves without having to personally do so. The goal of such virtue signaling is to out-compete lesser women who can’t get away with it.
I once read of how rich men in patriarchal middle eastern cultures will shower guests with expensive gifts as a show of wealth and power, regardless of whether or not they can afford it. It’s oneupsmanship.
In exactly the same way, these men know that any women they are with are not going to rebuff their advances when pressed. And if they did rebuff them, they’d reject them for it. No, they want you to reject those high-tier women—in the off chance they respond positively—so they are still available for them! They want you to be the one who settles for the unattractive girl who isn’t attracted to you. And, they won’t be getting busted for harassment either. As for you? Good luck with that.
Because, let’s be serious, it is a zero-sum game. If the Manosphere’s Red Pill ever got out, there wouldn’t be enough women to go around for all the Red Pilled men.