Being a Head
Some of you wondered about who was the head of Nancy Wilson, the woman who wrote The Fruit of her Hands. It turns out that he is one Douglas Wilson, "the pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho," and the editor of Credenda, a "bimonthly periodical exploring all areas of life from a biblical, classical Protestant perspective." Pastor Wilson permits Nancy to write a Credenda column for women folk (apparently it's okay for women to get guidance from other other women, but they can't read the advice of men unless their head says it's okay, since that would be adultery).
Some sports are so completely masculine that young women shouldn't even think about participating. These certainly include football, baseball, boxing, and hockey. And it is just plain pitiful to see a woman force herself onto a male team just to cause a stink and force the boys to play with her. This is just a sad attempt for attention.
Nancy says that other sports, particularly volleyball, are okay for girls, as long as they're being taught to play like "ladies." When our daughter played basketball for her Christian school, the team all wore blue ribbons in their hair as a feminine statement that they were not trying to act or look or play like boys. And they were good. They didn't trash talk or play dirty. They were taught to play like Christian women. So if the sport itself is not masculine in nature, and if the program is deliberately striving to promote feminine virtue, then it can be a great blessing to young girls. But there are still pitfalls. Boys need to get hit and learn to take it, but girls need security and love.
Yup, boys need to learn how to get hit and learn to take it. Because that's what makes them men. When insecure girls play sports, they are more susceptible to the temptations to try to become masculine. They may be looking for attention and affirmation from the sport when they really need it from their dads and their moms. They may "feel" unfeminine, so they gravitate to sports where they don't have to be feminine. This means that wise parents will closely monitor their daughters while they participate in sports. And if they begin to show signs of becoming "macho" or unfeminine, they should consider pulling them out.
You will be able to tell if this is happening if they stop wearing ribbons in their hair during games. Anyway, Doug has has written several books of his own. Let's look at a couple of them.
From the publisher: Federal thinking is foreign to the modern mind. Federal has come to mean nothing more than centralized or big. Because your federal government has become so uncovenental, it is not surprising that the original meaning of the word is lost. But federal thinking is the backbone of historic Protestant theology, and the Church needs to recover the covenental understanding of federal headship. Husbands are to lead their families, taking responsibility for them as covenant heads-as federal husbands.
From the excerpt, we learn that, like Ted said, being a head is not a picnic, because besides having to provide protection, safety, and shelter for your wife (and being required to think for her), you also have to atone for her sins. Which, depending on how rebellious and unsubmissive she is, might be a real pain. One of the most difficult things for modern men to understand is how they are responsible for their wives. Men come into a marriage pastoral counseling session with the assumption that "She has her problems," and "I have mine," and the counselor is here to help us split the difference. But the husband is responsible for all the problems. This is the case for no other reason than that he is the husband.
This does not mean that the wife has no personal responsibilities as an individual before God. She certainly does, just as her husband has individual responsibility. They are both private persons who stand before God. But he remains the head, and just as Christ as the head assumed all the sins of all His people, so the husband is to assume covenant responsibility for the state of his marriage. If a husband says that he objects to this because it is not fair for him to be held responsible for the failings of another, he is really saying that he objects to the gospel. It was not "fair" for Christ to assume responsibility for our sins either.
Yeah! Anyway, if the man has to bear the sins of his wife and be her personal Jesus, it's only fair that he get to boss her around, and keep her locked up in the house (because that will help to keep her from committing any really big sins for which he will have to assume responsibility). And now, here's part of an Amazon customer review of Federal Husband:  organic wisdom to be applied here, May 30, 2003
Reviewer "Xurxman"I have taken his writing to heart and put it into practice. First of all, I don't let my wife read it. That would obviously be against what the Bible and Pastor Wilson teaches. I also keep my wife buttoned up in the house, changing our kids diapers, cooking all my meals, and meeting me between the sheets when I'm feeling froggy. This way I never have to help her with the woman's work and can stick to my eight hour work day and come home and relax. It has all worked out quite well. We have well-adjusted children and a marriage that is just dynamite ... and I haven't really had to lift a finger.
Well, being Jesus is hard work. It's really hard work. So, it's only fair that he get some relaxation.
From the publisher: In Her Hand in Marriage, Douglas Wilson points to the modern dating system as the mother of most broken marriages. Dating encourages emotional attachments with covenantal fences and makes a joke of the father's authority. Wilson unearths the almost forgotten pattern of biblical courtship and outlines how it should be applied in our society today.
And it's very important not to make jokes of the father's authority.
In the introduction, Doug points out that dating isn't really working out that well, since divorce is rampant, as is sex. Sure, some good Christians seem to have found suitable mates via dating, but that doesn't meant that there's not something wrong with the system. "People survive plane crashes too, some of them without a scratch, and we should all be happy about it. But this acknowledgment does not disqualify us from opposing the general habit of crashing airplanes." But more importantly, we don't know how good they really are, now do we? - Christians are not as open about their sexual behavior as pagans, and the tight lips can be deceiving. Our tendency is to judge based upon the outward appearance, and everybody at church sure looks moral. But many pastors in their premarital counseling go beyond such a cursory glance. Tragically, many pastors are now surprised when they find Christian couples who are behaving themselves sexually—"You are?" The objective data concerning unmarried Christian couples in the modern dating game is not heartening.
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- Yup, we might assume that Ryan Dobson and his fiancee Laura are fine, young Christians who found each other through dating, but they're probably doing unspeakable things together while Ryan's father is busy railing at SpongeBob.
Plus, dating teaches "emotional promiscuity," which sure sounds bad -- and dating doesn't allow the father to protect his daughter's purity. - Moreover, the modern dating system also leaves the father of the young girl almost entirely out of the picture. The father, who ought to be protecting his daughter's sexual purity, sends her off into the dark with some highly-interested young man, and then does what he thinks is his job, which is to worry.
And dating doesn't teach a girl headship (unless she's one of those sluttty Christian girls Doug talked about earlier). - Headship in marriage does not mean that women submit to men; it means one woman submits to one man. Her submission to her husband protects her from having to submit to other men. Prior to marriage, her submission to her father protects her from having to submit to other men. There is no overall biblical requirement that women be submissive to men in general. The biblical pattern is that a wife should respond to the initiative and leadership of her husband, and only to him. She is prepared and trained for this in her submission to her father.
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- Um, okay.
Anyway, in the excerpt from the first chapter of Her Hand, Doug quotes Numbers 30:3-16, which is about how if an unmarried woman, "being in her father's house in her youth," makes a vow to the Lord or an oath to bind her soul, her father can disallow it. Likewise, her husband, if she is married. Widows and divorcees are stuck.
From this, Doug infers that girls shouldn't be allowed to choose their own husbands. Because the woman has vowed that she is going to give an offering to the Lord of some nature, some might object and say that this passage is simply talking about ecclesiastical vows or some sort of vow to the Lord directly. But we must reason here a fortiori. If a husband or father has the authority to nullify a vow made to God, how much more may he nullify a commitment made to baby-sit?
For example, suppose a woman foolishly promises to watch a neighbor's kids for the next 18 months or so, and then she comes home, kicks herself, and says, "What did I do?" When her husband hears of it, he is not bound by her words. He has the authority to say that the commitment was not yet settled; it had not yet been ratified. According to biblical law, he has the authority to say that his wife is not bound by her commitment. Until he hears of it and says "Yes," or hears of it and says nothing, the commitment is not final.
And even if the woman is happy about babysitting, if her husband just doesn't want another squalling kid around the place, he can countermand her vow. That's why if you want a babysitter, you should forget about talking to the woman and just ask her husband -- it will save you time in the long run. And it's also why women aren't legally bound by any contracts they sign unless their Dad or husband says that it's okay. Now if such authority rests with the father or the husband concerning a vow made to the Lord, how much more does it apply to other issues? How much more will it apply to such things as a commitment a daughter might make to an interested suitor? A vow a woman makes to the Lord would be the most solemn and weighty of all vows. If her father or husband can set this kind of vow aside, then he certainly has the authority to set aside other lesser vows.
Another application from this passage is the fact that there is no hint here of a period of "intermediate independence" for daughters. We sometimes assume that as girls grow up they are to be treated in the same fashion as sons. This is false -- in Scripture, sons leave home, daughters are given. This is the scriptural pattern. A son leaves in order to take a wife, and establish a new home. A daughter is given to a young man who is establishing such a home. The idea that a girl can get to the age of 18 or 19, and leave her father's house in order to be out on her own is not scriptural. She remains under the authority of her father -- even if she is physically away from home -- and then when she is given in marriage, she comes under the authority of her husband. This is the normal scriptural pattern.
And our pattern should be identical to a cultural one of a primitive, nomadic, Middle Eastern one of several thousand years ago -- because the Bible should be our guide to everything. Now, an Amazon customer review: A breath of fresh air!, January 2, 1999
The casualites of recreational dating have mounted in our generation; and this book reminds fathers: It is OUR responsibility to lovingly protect our daughters. Their purity rests with us. I urge every Dad who loves their little pumpkin the way I love mine to get this book...Learn the Biblical mandate well, when she is young. She'll love you, and thank you for it during the teenage years;and especially in marriage.
Yes, the purity of your little pumpkin rests with you. So, keep her locked up too, until you can find a suitable young man to give her to, so you don't have to be responsible for her sins also.
P.S. Bartholomew points out that Doug is the Douglas Wilson who co-wrote that delightful tract on how slavery was actually a "relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence," Southern Slavery: As It Was. You will recall the uproar a couple of months ago when it was learned that the booklet was being used in that Christian private school in North Carolina (for which Doug helped to write the "classical curriculum").
The booklet is available from Amazon, surprisingly enough. Here's the publisher's description: How is it that a pervasively Christian culture could have supported slavery? While opposing the South's abuses and racism, this essay seeks to correct some of the gross slanders of that culture. It explains Scripture's defense of a form of slavery against evangelicals who are embarrassed by it
The Table of Contents indicates that the booklet will cover such issues as: "The Treatment of Slaves," "The Stability of the Slave Family," "The Myth of Slave Breeding," and "Unexpected Blessings." From the excerpted intro, we learn that evangelicals fighting abortion often compare themselves to abolitionists, which is just plain wrong, because abortion is the murder of babies, while there's nothing really that bad about slavery. Nothing is clearer -- the New Testament opposes anything like the abolitionism in our country prior to the War Between the States. The New Testament contains many instructions for Christianslave owners, and requires a respectful submissive demeanor for Christian slaves.
Hey, I guess after spending years bossing around your wife, slavery seems only natural and godly.
7:09:05 AM |
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