The Foundation of Society

People go back and forth about current issues, ideologies, and potential solutions for our current cultural moment. We hear all about the Culture War, what it will take to fight it, how to own the libs, and what to believe in order to combat different social and political agendas. It’s all so tiresome, isn’t it? Well, while people continue to politicize moral issues, the answer to most of our concerns remains the same, as it has since God spoke everything into existence. The answer is family. Two people loving each other and becoming one flesh in order to create life is how we are wired, how we were made. Family, and the accompanying values, is the only way to get out of the cultural hole that we’re in.

Most of society’s ills can be boiled down to the attack on and destruction of this core idea. When you have men and women coming together in a proper way (getting married, then having sex) and raising healthy, well-adjusted children who share their values and worldview, things work out. The cycle continues, and this is a recipe for a healthy, functioning society, because this is the way it should work and the way it was always designed to. If this is in balance, chances are that other things will fall into place.

Obviously, this whole idea is a spiritual one, and people who reject spirituality (specifically Christianity, but also others) will reject this on the basis that it’s only one way of doing things and it doesn’t fit their political agenda. Regardless of your views on how things should work (which is the essence of politics), you have to acknowledge how things are, and the family being the central component of society has always been there. Men and women build relationships with each other, and require each other to have kids, and marriage gives them the responsibility of each other and the child so they don’t treat it frivolously (ideally, obviously not the case for many people). Biological sex affirms that this way of living is more than just a conservative or Christian talking point. It’s the way things are.

This is how things ought to go, and the sad thing about what we’re seeing today is that many people have no spiritual awareness, and they feel so alien to their people and culture that they have no interest in contributing to it. Everyone’s identity is so fractured by culture and the media that people have no loyalty to or passion for anything. They have no sense of self, no sense of community, no sense of responsibility. The Christian, the conservative, the American, and however you else one would define his or herself, has a responsibility to his or her group. This is about individualism vs. collectivism, and individualists put so much value on themselves, what they want, and what they should be allowed to do because they have nothing else, no group or community to call their own. Why do so many young people say they don’t want kids? Because they haven’t been taught to see more than just the immediate physical and carnal desires in front of their faces. In fact, they’re actively being taught the exact opposite. Life is about more than you and what you want. You are a person with a family, race, history, and a God in Heaven, and your loyalty to and love for these things that make up who you are is why you get married, why you have kids, and why you contribute to your people and community. If you don’t have an identity, you have nothing. People’s desire for a family comes from an understanding of who they are and that there are more important things than whatever trivial things they want.

If you’re wondering why things are the way they are now and what exactly is going on with people, this is it. People are crying out for meaning and purpose because their hearts desperately crave it. People who say there is no meaning are obviously wrong because, if meaning didn’t exist, then they wouldn’t want it. The fact that our souls desire purpose proves that there is purpose out there, otherwise, how would we desire it? This purpose, despite what culture will tell you, is not found in pursuing whatever vice or desire you have at the moment. It’s about developing a sense of self in your home and in God’s plan, and then actively working toward things proven to be beneficial to everyone, like family. Taking a wife or husband is such a special thing because we get to, in a very small way, live out God’s relationship with us and His church, and experience it. The family allows us to more fully embody this idea, since we’re sub-creators under God (look at how innovative humans are), and creating human life is obviously the ultimate and most beautiful thing one can experience, and therefore an experience that would bring us closest to the Lord. It’s hard to make uninitiated people understand this, since it’s something that just kind of has to click with you at one point or another, but this is it. This is the foundation of my worldview, and the foundation of society. Marriage and family equal healthy people and societies.

The Christian and Rational Argument Against Feminism

One of the biggest issues I see with the culture and society today is people sacrificing their principles and truth in order to fit in and to look supportive of whatever is popular. This is especially problematic because it’s manifested itself in politics, especially with the moderate right and how many of their ideas are essentially just repackaged neoliberalism masquerading as conservatism. Now, please understand, I’m not saying that what happened as a result of feminism is necessarily bad. Like anything, this has to be looked at with some amount of nuance. Of course I think women should be allowed to work, vote, have healthcare, etc., but the problem is that the movement that adopted those ideas into its mission statement was not a good one. It was a liberal/egalitarian, non-Christian movement that ultimately morphed into the toxic “third wave feminism” that we see today. It’s a rejection of biblical and moral principles, and because people will embrace their natures if given the choice (in this case, women embracing their feminine natures), feminism was and is an indoctrination tool that propagates and sustains itself through manipulation.

A lot of the original activists and movement principles did push for equal rights between men and women, but they also pushed for this “equality of outcome” idea that’s liberal and unrealistic because everything being fair for everyone is just not going to happen. Men and women should have fair shots at everything, but this thinking creeped in that all women were paid differently and became this erroneous “wage gap” idea (women on average have different interests than men and go into different fields as a result, different fields that often pay less).

Now, while it’s fine if women want these rights, the idea that society has always been set up to oppress them at every turn is absurd. While women may have not been able to do as much as men, they also were viewed differently, and they didn’t have to do things like get drafted and go to war. Society has been set up to value women. Men go out, work, and provide for women, who don’t have to work or go to war. Also, back in the times that people often cite as having oppressed women, such as the 1920s, women were still in some powerful positions. Back then, voting and work was set up to privilege land owners, who were often men. There were women who owned land and could vote and make important decisions, but the fact is that men were more often the land owners. Also, when a man voted, he represented his home and family. I don’t believe the idea that all men completely ignored their families and voted solely based on their own opinions. The framing of the whole debate is “men vs. women,” and it erroneously assumes that the majority of men and women are working against each other for their own interests as opposed to working together to raise up families and contribute to creating a healthy, functioning society (Genesis 2:24, 1 Corinthians 14:4-7).

The idea here, which many women probably would have agreed is solely more equal rights, is actually largely the idea that men and women are largely the same, which is not true. Christians must reject feminism on the basis that it’s ultimately about opposing God’s creation and natural order. The Christian man and woman should ask themselves not how society can better benefit them, but rather how they can better glorify God and His will with what they’ve been given. Christ and Christian thinkers have for generations said that men and women are equally valuable, so no problem there. The issue is that feminists want to believe that men and women can do all the same things, which is just not true. Men are stronger, more aggressive, more assured, and women are more tender, caring, compassionate, empathetic, etc., and they were clearly built for different things. We are all equal in the eyes of God, and all afforded certain rights, but not all of us are created equal in the way that some might like. Men and women clearly have different roles. Men can’t have babies or use their bodies to nurture them, and women can. Women are the weaker vessel, but they are also crucial to continuing society, which is more proof that God has set everything up to be perfectly balanced. Feminism was never just about giving women the option of working and having a family (an idea that is kind of a false dichotomy), but about discouraging women from fulfilling their natural role which is having and raising children. Marriage is a partnership, albeit one where the man is the head of the household who respects and provides for his wife, as outlined by the Bible (Ephesians 5:22-23). Feminism tries to indoctrinate people against marriage by framing it as some sort of dictatorship where men rule the lives of their wives instead of supporting it and painting pictures of healthy, loving, ideal marital relationships. Instead of telling women that they don’t have to enter into that agreement if they don’t want to, it actively worked against the institutions of marriage and family as a whole.

An important question to consider when talking about feminism and the importance of the right to work is what the importance of work is. For husbands and fathers, the importance of work is to provide for your wife and family. But feminism posits that women must either raise families or work. Now that feminists have drawn this false dichotomy, we must ask why. What is the intrinsic spiritual or nurturing value of work in itself? Obviously there are cases to be made for the virtue of testing yourself and completing tasks, but the importance of that comes from doing everything as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23), and from the ability to provide for and contribute to your loved ones and community (1 Timothy 5:8). We aren’t talking about building homes for people or giving to the needy or whatever. We’re talking specifically about going out and making money. Feminism doesn’t tell the woman to go work for her family as the man does. No, it just says to work. Where is the value in that? We know that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10), so feminism advocating for working at the expense of one’s family or community is simply wrong. Work is good, but it has to be with a certain goal, and not at the expense of other Christian callings or life goals.

Feminism also ushered in the Sexual Revolution, a disastrous movement that we’re still seeing the effects of today. Many women were taught that their sexuality was “repressed” and that they needed to liberate it, which resulted in the beginning of the widespread sexual promiscuity we see today, and it also caused men to be more open about their sexual desires which caused this demonization of all men as rapists and pigs that we hear a lot now. It’s this vicious cycle where people want to be free and selfishly do whatever they want, but then they blame tradition for the outcomes of their decision to break tradition. The idea used to be that, because women had more to give and lose in a romantic and sexual relationship, they would keep their guards up and spurn the advances of most men, finally letting their guard down for the right man with whom they would then form a marital and romantic partnership (Ephesians 5:22-23, 1 Corinthians 7:1-40). This is the difference between seduction and rape, and seduction and romance are now classified as rape by many feminists, as well as basically any male-female relationship where the man is more than a houseplant. Feminism ushered in all the sexual deviancy and upending of traditional relationships, and now they blame everyone else for it. It again hypocritically emphasizes the female sexuality while attacking the men who are victimized by it. Sexuality for sexuality’s sake is not virtuous (1 Peter 3:1-5).

Anyone who does any research into the movement and its roots can see the problematic ideas on display. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the core feminist activists and founders of the early period, notably said this; “The Bible and the Church have been the biggest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.” She opposed the Bible and the Church, two of the only institutions consistently advocating for the value of women as beautiful, God-made creatures who can keep our species alive and be a loving companion to Adam and men. Dimwitted people who have not read the Bible say that Christianity is sexist, most likely based on the idea that woman was made as a companion to man (Genesis 2:18), but they ignore stories about people such as Ruth, Esther, and, most notably, Mary Magdalene. On top of this, they ignore what Jesus and the Bible say about the necessity that women are (Proverbs 18:22, Proverbs 19:14, Proverbs 31:10, etc.) Another founder of feminism, Simone de Beauvoir, said; “No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” This woman is advocating for women to abandon the central aspect of themselves, the ability to have children, and ignore it in order to be like men. Doesn’t sound very empowering to me. Add to this the fact that Simone also brought us gender theory, which says a lot about the legitimacy of any other ideas she has. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, another founder, was a self-identified humanist and reformed Darwinist who believed in “the patriarchy.” Wilhelmina Drucker was a socialist. Simone Veil was an abortion advocate. These are the people behind this movement that so many blindly say they support, and it was always going to become what it is now.

The evil feminism we see today hates men, says that women are empowered by ignoring the traits most unique to them, and advocates not only for not having children, but for being able to slaughter them. These people talk about not prioritizing family, going out and working, and living only for oneself. Is it any wonder that this generation of single, angry feminists is not happy? This type of feminism is a symptom of the larger problem of selfishness in America and ourselves, but it was always going to stem from the original feminism we saw all those years ago. If you’re a Christian or conservative, think long and hard about some of the things we are just supposed to accept and support, like feminism, before pledging your allegiance and singing its praises.