This Guy's Chestnuts Ought to be Roasted over an Open Fire

Peace and goodwill shall not extend to all men from my quarter this Christmastide, least of all to this archetypical "Christian" male chauvinist pig whose recent spleen-leakage appeared in the online version of Christianity Today, of all things. I am still reeling from the notion that CT--whose doctrine has long been considered by many of my dear friends to be too liberal--should have endorsed this particular piece of anti-female bigotry by giving it electron-space, but my aforementioned friends might opine that when one looses one's moral moorings, all sorts of odd combinations develop. I reserve judgment, being still so shocked.

Riddled as this article is with infected sores of logical error, insulting misinformation and deliberate misunderstanding, it is difficult to know which pustulating boil to lance first. I think, though, that the best approach is to proceed from the opening sentence, having donned a exegetical hazmat suit with oxygen mask, carrying a large can of grammatical sulfur powder in one hand and a sharp red pen in the other.

Mr. Illian, age unknown, begins his diatribe with a disgusting episode from his own past, wherein he was lip-locked by an aggressive woman on a dance-floor, a woman who, despite her diminutive stature and claimed church-going habits, displayed all the tact and reserve of a hungry pit-bull. He continues thereafter: "Now, I'll admit this is an extreme example of an aggressive Christian woman, but there are other documented examples out there. In the last month alone, I've spoken to about half a dozen godly men who have been dumbfounded by the bluntness and aggression of our female counterparts."

He then cites examples of similar Christian female "aggressiveness"—a woman who incessantly telephones the unfortunate man who took her out just once, and a girl who apparently was in league with a roommate, so that a hapless suitor, thinking he had a date with one, found he was squiring the other. While both these behaviors are annoying in the extreme, I am not sure they can be accurately categorized as "aggressive." Irritating, yes. A sign of mental imbalance (in the first example), also likely. And in the second, what could well could have been conceived as a subtle and face-saving way to AVOID a date (one can just imagine the conversation between the girl roommates: "I know I said I'd go out with him tonight, but I couldn't think of a good excuse, and he'll be here any minute." "Oh, I think he's nice, he probably won't mind if I take your place, this is only the second date, after all." "Would you??? That would be so sweet!") on the part of the one girl, was perceived by the man as a brazen move by the roommate.

What is doubly curious to me is Mr. Illian's application of the word "godly" to the men of his acquaintance while he castigates "Christian" women for behavior that in and of itself implies they are not, indeed, Christian (I speak of the lip-biting, not the subsequent examples, which to me have no moral scandal about them, but instead are issues of purely social faux pas). A few nice remarks about one's church attendance does not a Christian make. And yet this was apparently all he knew of the background of a woman—she who subsequently snogged him at the danceclub—before he deemed her a "safe" date and asked her out. One wonders what sort of godly Christian man presumes so much of the character of any person, male or female, based on the barest acquaintance.

Frankly, other than Mr. Illian’s own testimony, I would find this story of the unwanted and painful smooching hard to believe. I have quite a few non-Christian friends, and I don’t think any of them, however steeped in the highly-sexualized popular culture his article so deplores, would—without the assistance of significant amounts of intoxicating substances, and the direct connivance of the other party—engage in such intimate interaction within an hour or so of their first meeting.

But to move on.

In the briefest of conciliatory gestures, Mr. Illian reflexively indulges the tender feelings of his female readers, saying that “the majority of Christian women are doing a wonderful job of being approachable and noticeable without being predatory.” Oh, really? Do tell us more. But no. Immediately, he’s back on the attack: “But like most things, the misguided minority can give the whole female gender a bad reputation….” It’s petty of me to expect Mr. Illian to have respect for the English language when he has so little for fifty percent of its speakers, but the politically-correct misuse of the word “gender” (as any prim English teacher will tell you “people have sex, nouns have gender”; “gender” is a grammatical construction, not a physical one) particularly rankles, given his approach to his subject.

Both “genders” are treated to a perfunctory scolding in the next paragraph, which claims that they are “pursuing relationships and sex all wrong.” This although Mr. Illian has mentioned heretofore—and will mention in whole of the rest of the article—no examples of male malfeasance. Other than (unintentionally) his own.

But, this wouldn’t be a truly “Christian” article if God’s Word didn’t get dragged (however unwillingly) into the mix, and the author have an opportunity to show off his little Hebrew language skills. He knows how to use a concordance! I’m impressed. It’s a pity, again, that his English grammar skills are far inferior to his Hebrew vocabulary. After millennia of church history, it is to Mr. Illian, a young single male who demonstrably conflates nominal and real Christianity, that a “fundamental and profound truth about women,” hidden in Genesis all those many, many years, has been revealed! The problem is, it isn’t, and hasn’t.

Genesis 3:16 reads, as Mr. Illian quotes it, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you,” which he takes to mean that women “desire to be desired.” His Biblical quotation is correct, except for a single, signal word omitted at the beginning: “yet”. Still, with or without this pivotal conjunction, his interpretation is in error. The pronoun “he” is an unequivocal reflection of “husband”; if the text had meant that the desire would rule, the pronoun “it” would have been used. The “desire” is not what will rule over the woman—the ruler is her husband. Here or elsewhere, the Bible does not say that women “desire to be desired” any more than men desire to be desired. And about that omitted “yet”…

This verse follows on the heels of Genesis 3:15, which declares that, as a result of the Curse—the burden laid on people as a result of sinning—women would have pain in childbirth. So for God to say that women would “yet desire” their husbands (after all the discomfort they would go through having babies) was actually one of the blessings on the sex that made his judgment bearable, if you’ll pardon the pun. Given this context, and the fact that this was not part of “God’s original design” of women (being part of the Curse, not the Creation), the “desire” in this verse cannot be justly mixed-and-matched with sin itself, which Mr. Illian does, using the neat fact that “the Hebrew word for “desire” in Genesis 3:16 is the same one used in Genesis 4:7—“Sin is crouching at the door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” Having deliberately misapprehended his proof-text in the same way that popular sages opine that “Money is the root of all evil” (rather than, properly: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”), Mr. Illian says “This seems to imply that a woman’s desire, like that of a lion, will defeat her, subdue her, and exploit her if it extends beyond God’s original design.” Given the hundreds of other, more direct Bible verses about both sexes’ need to maintain mastery over their desires, I do not see how the warning about indulgence should be limited to just the one here. But, clearly, Mr. Illian has an axe to grind. Except it’s a spoon, and he is fruitlessly digging to China with it.

Finally, Mr. Illian concludes his essay by distinguishing three “types of predators”: three villainous archetypes against which he admonishes his female readers to measure themselves. This would be well and good for a summary—and in fact useful from a social and spiritual point of view—had any of these sorts of les femmes dangereaux actually been mentioned in the preceding article, and thus form part of a logical argument. Or had I, or any other genuinely Christian woman (by which I mean having a personal relationship with Jesus as her Savior that affects her private and public life, bringing her ever closer to the standards set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments) I know actually met women who fit any one of these profiles. The Barbie Doll Girl, the CEO’s Wife, the Suga Mama—all are catchy titles (much like the article’s oh-so-clever moniker “Let Us Prey”), but totally unreal even in the abstract.

The “Barbie Doll Girl,” for instance, is a shallow nymphet who hangs around bars (!) seducing men through sexual favors. Um, didn’t Solomon cover this type (in much more sophisticated terms, she’s the “Wayward Woman”) in Proverbs? And Solomon himself didn’t allege she was a God-follower. The notion that any godly man would be “unsuspecting” around such a obviously nonChristian creature, or frequenting the spots or situations that Mr. Illian says are her regular hangouts (What sporting events is he talking about? Is he describing athletic team groupies?) is preposterous, and disrespecting the intelligence of his own sex.

The “CEO’s Wife” is another “Christian” type I have never encountered in the churches that I’ve attended in several different states and across multiple denominations over the past twenty years. But then again, “prosperity gospel churches” (since when are these considered Christian?) and country clubs are not my turf. Apparently Illian moves in more monied circles than I do. Besides, most of the women I know who have genuinely expensive taste can satisfy it themselves, thanks to their own self-provision. But I don’t know many of those, and few I would call believers.

Last but not least, Illian’s description of the “Suga Mama” reveals more about so-called “Christian” male shortcomings than about the character of the type of woman he so despises. I know literally dozens of attractive, talented, and successful women who are single, but none can be accused of using these good attributes to “draw in a man.” That any person, male or female, is distracted from previously intense and oftentimes noble desires by present comforts is a sad tendency of human nature, not necessarily something that can be blamed on someone else. Illian is obviously hurt and chagrined by a friend of his, once married into wealth, losing the wherewithal to produce his first musical CD. But the world may be a better place for an insufficiently self-disciplined not-quite-musician’s not having afflicted a lengthy sample of his less-than-stellar talent on the general public.

A common thread of “it’s all the bad woman’s fault” runs through all the reportedly real-life examples which accompany each of the aforementioned typologies. But, away from the immediate acquaintance of Mr. Illian, I am hard-pressed to find similar examples. The sweet lady who initially sent me the link to “Let Us Prey” [she had noticed the article initially because it had—in its author’s only other sop to female frustration—a one-sentence admission (prior to further criticism of “love-hungry tribal women”) that “many men are simply sitting in the stagnant pond of romance like a bloated water buffalo”; she thought the male passivity point was overlooked] could think of only one hypocritical “Christian woman” she had seen: on a TV reality show, a buxom blond in a bikini sitting in a hot tub with an interested male, lecturing him, Bible in hand, about the evils of lust. But in real reality? I won’t say presumptuously that these women don’t exist simply because I haven’t met any like them myself, but it does seem strange that physical-beauty-centered, cash- and status-directed women who are also (in a contortion of worthy of a circus troupe) Christ-followers are not to be found throughout my life experience. If these are indeed the sorts of people Mr. Illian regularly encounters, and not just broad paper targets he’s set up for the perverse purpose of ripping them to shreds, he needs to check his own definition of Christianity.

In its parts and as a whole, this article is not, I believe, an accurate or even approximate picture of what is truly Christianity Today.