Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 02, 2020


Ep 219 ｜ Why Feminism Will Fail You


Episode Stats

Length

32 minutes

Words per Minute

175.3925

Word Count

5,675

Sentence Count

345

Misogynist Sentences

68

Hate Speech Sentences

39


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.
00:00:06.060 So today we are going to talk about women, what it is to be a woman and why we as Christians
00:00:11.900 should reject the world's message about womanhood and feminism and embrace God's view of women
00:00:18.840 instead. And the reason this came to mind is because there was a video that was posted
00:00:23.700 on Vanessa Hudgens Instagram, at least that's the post that I saw. I don't know if it was
00:00:29.200 also posted elsewhere. That was a montage of very provocative images of women and girls that
00:00:36.120 were meant to illustrate what the narrator Cynthia Nixon was saying. Cynthia Nixon starred in Sex in
00:00:42.620 the City and also ran for governor and lost the primary against Cuomo. She is obviously a radical
00:00:49.540 feminist and this video further demonstrates that. I want to play some of it. Now, if you are watching
00:00:56.360 on YouTube, you might want to skip over this part. Close your eyes because like I said,
00:01:01.140 it is provocative, but I do think it's important to set this up and give some kind of context. So
00:01:06.400 you don't think that I'm just making this up. I would not watch it with your kids. It is kind of
00:01:11.820 dark and disturbing. Okay. Now I want to play you just a little bit of this video that we are going
00:01:17.140 to cover today. Be a lady, they said. Your skirt is too short. Your shirt is too low. Don't show so
00:01:23.620 much skin. Cover up. Leave something to the imagination. Don't be a temptress. Men can't
00:01:29.240 control themselves. Men have needs. Look sexy. Look hot. Don't be so provocative. You're asking for it.
00:01:35.820 Now, some of you might be saying, why would you play this at all? Well, because like I said,
00:01:41.900 I want to make sure that you have a little bit of context for what is teeing this up.
00:01:47.540 The video keeps going like that. We only played you a little bit of it. I think it's like over
00:01:51.440 five minutes long. Keeps going like that. It repeats things that women apparently hear
00:01:55.920 very often to, I suppose, drive home the point that women are constantly held to unfair standards.
00:02:03.920 That society, namely men, the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, pressures women into looking
00:02:11.260 and acting inauthentically, unnaturally in order to conform to arbitrary and narrow definitions
00:02:17.720 of beauty and value. I am assuming that is the point of this video. That seems to be the message
00:02:24.320 of not just this video listing all of these oppressive things that women hear, but also the
00:02:31.140 message of today's feminism in general. Are you ready though? Are you ready for my first reaction
00:02:38.180 to all of this, uh, to this video? My first reaction, or my first thing that I want to say
00:02:44.780 about this is that it is true dot, dot, dot to an extent. So let me start with the truth that is in
00:02:53.520 this video that I think has caused women, even Christian women that I've seen to watch this video,
00:03:00.220 to share it and to say, yes, this is so true. And to relate to it and to feel like they are somehow
00:03:06.060 empowered by it. Uh, it's because there is a little bit of truth to it and here's what is actually
00:03:11.920 true. So if you're listening to this and you feel offended by the things that I am saying, just hang
00:03:18.240 on tight. We're going to get to, we're going to get to the rest of it. We're going to flip this over
00:03:22.860 and say what's not actually true about it. But, uh, as a woman, I am telling you from my experience,
00:03:29.480 what is true in this video, uh, women are held to opposing standards in society. The qualifications
00:03:38.720 for what is beautiful, uh, changes change every few years. So when I was in middle school,
00:03:44.120 those of you who are my age, I was born in 92. So if you were born around there, you probably had the
00:03:49.060 same kind of middle school experience. Although I think the middle school experience of just general
00:03:53.740 awkwardness is probably universal, but this particular middle school experience was that everyone
00:03:58.020 wanted to look like Paris Hilton or like Ashley Simpson or Avril Lavigne. So that means no hips,
00:04:05.720 no, but low rise jeans with the skin, like between your belly button and your hips showing. So not
00:04:11.520 actually your belly button, but the skin between your belly button and your hips for whatever reason,
00:04:15.860 that was a good look. And I wanted to be able to pull that off so bad when I was like in sixth and
00:04:22.080 seventh grade, not only would of course my parents not let me wear a shirt that showed my,
00:04:26.880 my stomach, thank goodness. But also I could just never pull it off. I didn't have that body type.
00:04:32.400 Other people did had that just kind of like straight and narrow look. And I remember in middle school
00:04:36.880 wanting that, wanting to be able to look like that and wanting to be able to, uh, to pull off that look.
00:04:43.280 And I just never could and mark my words though, still to this day, if low rise jeans come back,
00:04:49.580 I am going to revolt. I'm going to start some kind of revolution that pushes back against the demonic
00:04:55.120 forces of low rise jeans because I still can't pull them off. And I refuse to even try. So back
00:05:00.500 then people wanted frosty highlights. They wanted like the tiny thin eyebrows in fifth grade. I
00:05:04.920 actually shaved part of my eyebrow the day before school pictures, y'all like this just shows you
00:05:11.740 how little young people, probably especially young girls. I won't say especially young girls
00:05:16.560 because young boys can do stupid things too, but how just silly, silly kids can be in our decision
00:05:23.760 making. But I never had those like tiny thin eyebrows and I had no idea what I was doing.
00:05:27.820 I thought it'd be so cool to be able to like wax my eyebrows or pluck my eyebrows. But instead of
00:05:31.860 getting tweezers, I got a razor and I shaved like half of my eyebrow off. I'll have to find the school
00:05:39.820 picture. So you guys can actually see it. Maybe I'll post it on Instagram after this podcast episode
00:05:45.660 goes up. But that's what women have been doing probably for all of history, trying and very
00:05:51.780 often failing to reach these arbitrary standards of beauty that changed so much. As we got into the
00:05:58.340 21st century or farther into the 21st century, like just a few years ago, it became obvious that that
00:06:04.500 standard of beauty of having these like thin, narrow hips and no butt that was out the window.
00:06:10.140 Then it became like the Kardashian curvaceous thing that became really popular on Instagram and on
00:06:18.440 social media. And that's still the case. Really? We can like exclusively think the Kardashians for the
00:06:23.980 kind of body type that is now coveted. And a lot of the female rappers that are out there, that is what
00:06:29.520 is seen as beautiful and hot and cool and enviable. Now these kinds of changes, the standards of beauty
00:06:37.120 have changed throughout history for women in the dating department. So this is another standard
00:06:42.840 that women have to reach. It's a weird game that women feel like they have to play. Don't be too
00:06:48.680 aggressive or forward. If you want a guy to like you, speak your mind, but learn how to speak your
00:06:53.880 mind. Learn how to say no, though. So you don't want to be too aggressive, but you have to be a little
00:06:58.800 bit assertive. So you have to strike the balance between desperation and dependence. Don't be clingy,
00:07:03.140 but a guy also needs to know that he's needed. There are other standards women feel like they
00:07:07.620 have to chase, like the standard of success. There was a time when fulfillment was equated
00:07:12.720 with motherhood, with having a lot of kids, with keeping your house in order. And then,
00:07:17.140 and I'm talking about just like kind of secular society or society at large here. Then being a
00:07:21.900 stay-at-home mom, then being a stay-at-home mom started to be viewed as the easy option in comparison
00:07:28.380 to having a corporate career. Being a stay-at-home mom was seen as repressive and boring. There is
00:07:34.440 still a stigma, I would say, surrounding being, quote, just a stay-at-home mom. I heard a young
00:07:39.680 woman on the news the other day say that 50 years ago, she would have been forced to just stay at
00:07:46.060 home with her kids all day. Yikes. Like that's still a mentality that a lot of people have on both
00:07:50.840 sides of the aisle. But today you're really expected to do it all. So this is how the standard has
00:07:55.820 shifted. Again, you're expected to be a stay-at-home mom and have a lucrative side hustle or keep your
00:08:01.420 full-time job, put your kids in daycare, but still be perfectly as organized and present and as engaged
00:08:06.840 and as rested as if you were spending eight hours at home with your kids. In the media, as a woman,
00:08:13.240 if you debate with someone, if you debate with another woman, it's a cat fight. If you show passion
00:08:17.240 about something, it's a meltdown. It's hysterical. It's emotional. If you make an impact, you're just
00:08:21.840 seeking attention. If you critique another woman's views, you're just jealous. If you offer your
00:08:26.420 perspective, you're opinionated. If you're unintimidated by opposition, you're brash.
00:08:31.180 And the likelihood of hearing all of these things doubles if you are a young woman in the media.
00:08:36.440 So women, especially young women, they learn to play this game, not just in the media, but just in
00:08:42.640 the professional world in general, of not being too threatening, of dialing it back, of playing the
00:08:47.480 cue card when you can, of feigning ignorance when necessary, of pretending to not have an opinion on
00:08:52.780 something that you're actually very sure about, of being nice when women really should be honest, of
00:08:58.160 not saying that we should, I'm not saying that we should do these things, but women do do these
00:09:05.920 things. We learn this stuff as a means of survival, of getting along. And there's a very thin line in the
00:09:12.200 professional world that I've noticed that as a woman who has dealt myself, I've dealt with a range
00:09:18.040 of people and who's watched other women deal with a range of people in business. If you are passive
00:09:23.600 as a woman, you are taken advantage of, you are walked over. But if you are assertive, then you're
00:09:28.520 called a you-know-what. So most women, at least in the business world, typically decide to be a you-know-what.
00:09:35.220 They say, I'm just going to risk being called that because what else am I going to do?
00:09:39.720 I'm not saying this is me, but this is a lot of women I have noticed kind of take on this mentality
00:09:45.380 because they feel like it's what they have to do in order to move ahead. Women, by nature of being
00:09:50.860 physically weaker than men, are almost always on guard in public, at least a little bit. This is
00:09:56.360 actually an innate biological response to potential danger because the next best tool a woman has in
00:10:02.220 public to a weapon is situational awareness. I am always scouting for danger when I'm in a parking
00:10:08.940 garage, on a walk anywhere in public, periodically watching my back in all these situations, keeping
00:10:15.160 an eye on the guy across the room that looks sketchy, locking my car doors as soon as I get in
00:10:19.980 the car. And that's not paranoia. It's just second nature to a lot of women. It's just something that
00:10:24.900 uniquely women have to deal with. The vast majority of predators are men and women make up a large number
00:10:30.420 of prey. So we are just being statistically savvy when we watch out for ourselves when we're by
00:10:36.420 ourselves. The fact is women are much more susceptible to rape, to assault, and to harassment
00:10:41.960 than men are. Men have lots of other obstacles that they have to face. And if this were a podcast
00:10:48.160 for men, I'd be going into all of those. But this comes with the territory of as women, physical
00:10:54.160 weakness, of vulnerability, of desirability. So women have obstacles. And this right here,
00:11:00.960 this right here, listing all of the obstacles, listing all of the struggles, listing all of the
00:11:06.980 disadvantages that women face is where feminism stops. This is where this specific video stops,
00:11:13.060 giving a list of all of the ways that women are oppressed. And that's it. There was no conclusion
00:11:18.940 to that video, no solution, just anger, just cries of injustice and inequality meant to get
00:11:25.400 women to say, yeah, I feel that way. I'm really mad about that too, to justify our resentment and our
00:11:32.400 rage. That is the sole secular answer to unfair societal standards for women, unfair realities
00:11:40.360 for women, or what is deemed as unfair. To be mad. Be mad at who? Be mad at men. They're the ones in
00:11:46.960 power, so they must be the ones that are making the rules, rules that you can't ever perfectly follow,
00:11:52.400 rules that you were never meant to follow, feminism says. So it tells us to break free of the rules,
00:11:57.560 to smash the patriarchy, to reject toxic masculinity, to take charge, to own your power, to get angry,
00:12:04.460 to stay bitter. How incredibly, how incredibly depressing, like if that is our solution, if that
00:12:11.320 is our conclusion, that's the world's answer to unfairness. It's to just be mad about it, to stay
00:12:17.240 mad about it, to resent men, to be filled with and fueled by rage, to talk about all the problems you
00:12:24.000 face and just be angry that they exist. Heck, you should make up a problem if you can't find one,
00:12:29.900 like the gender wage gap. Keep protesting that, even though you know that when all factors are
00:12:35.140 considered, so education, experience, hours, work to job title, there is no wage gap, but stay mad about
00:12:40.440 that. And as far as solutions for our problems go, feminists have got some incredible suggestions,
00:12:47.400 incredible suggestions. So I guess they do present some kind of solution, but here they are.
00:12:53.100 Be like men. Pretend that you don't have an innate drive to be a mother. Abort your babies if they get
00:12:59.440 in the way of your plans. Suppress that natural inclination you have to take care of children and
00:13:04.760 instead get a dog in an 80-hour-a-week career. Don't rely on a man. Rely on yourself. Take care
00:13:11.660 of yourself. Love yourself. Worship yourself. That's what feminism tells us. These are apparently
00:13:16.480 some of the solutions that we have to our misery and our resentment against men. But as we know,
00:13:23.160 self-worship, self-centeredness leads only to misery, to loneliness, to purposelessness, to sadness,
00:13:29.540 to emptiness. This video exemplifies that. All of the things that feminism suggests that we do to
00:13:36.300 be like men, to abort our children, to focus exclusively on our career and not worry about
00:13:42.400 a family and serving other people. This video exemplifies that trying all of those things,
00:13:48.100 which feminists have tried for decades, aren't working because these feminists are still miserable.
00:13:53.540 They're still sad. They're still purposeless. And they're still empty. Like, do you think,
00:13:58.620 just be honest, do you think that Cynthia Nixon is a happy person? Like, what about Chelsea Handler?
00:14:04.120 How about Alyssa Milano, Miley Cyrus, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Elizabeth Warren? Like,
00:14:10.740 do these frontline feminists seem like well-adjusted, fulfilled, happy people to you? I don't know.
00:14:18.200 Maybe they are. But I don't know very many happy, fulfilled, radical feminists. Do you?
00:14:23.880 Uh, feminism is about pointing out problems, some are real, some are perceived, and offering stupid
00:14:30.840 solutions to them. That is what feminism is. And the result is that girls and women are angry.
00:14:37.040 They're resentful. They're self-absorbed. They're egotistical. They're prideful.
00:14:41.520 While at the exact same time, struggling with self-loathing and insecurity. Does that sound like
00:14:46.540 a good deal to you? Why? Why? How is it possible for them to feel this way? What seems like a paradox?
00:14:54.460 How is it possible for young feminists to be simultaneously egotistical and self-hating?
00:15:00.660 Because while feminism is going around telling women to love themselves, to put themselves first,
00:15:06.640 these same women are the ones making the rules that make us hate ourselves.
00:15:10.720 These standards that I listed that were listed in this video, most of them, not all, but most of
00:15:17.520 them were imposed by other women, not men. We followed, for example, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears,
00:15:25.200 and Kim Kardashian for beauty tips, not a man. We have decided what is hot and what is not. And we
00:15:32.720 have decided that women have to journey towards these goals. And men don't care so long as we continue to
00:15:38.100 take our clothes off and post pictures of ourselves half naked. I mean, are we idiots? Like, are we that
00:15:44.300 dumb that we don't understand that, that women are responsible for so much of the misery that other
00:15:51.160 women endure? The ever-changing standards of beauty, the jealousy, the gossip, the comparison,
00:15:58.320 the passive aggressiveness, the overall toxicity, the inability to be able to cheer another woman on.
00:16:04.500 We have created and cultivated this stuff. This isn't a patriarchy. This is the matriarchy. That's
00:16:11.100 part of the problem. Now, do men prey upon women? Absolutely. They deserve just punishment.
00:16:18.220 And we can talk about that. We can talk about Harvey Weinstein and all of these other terrible
00:16:22.580 predators that we know, and all of those that we know deserve justice, and their victims deserve to
00:16:29.420 see justice carried out. So, of course, there are and there always have been and there always will be
00:16:35.140 men who do hold women back, who abuse women, who take advantage of women. But we cannot blame men
00:16:41.700 for every unfair standard that is set for us, every injustice that we endure, every gap in achievement
00:16:48.700 that we see, every bit of oppression or repression that we experience. So much of the grief that we
00:16:55.700 girls go through is because of our own toxic mindsets, our own ego, our own superficiality,
00:17:03.200 our own insecurity, our own envy and lust and greed. There is this weird, this bizarre mentality that
00:17:10.820 exists both in secular feminism and within what is considered Christian feminism, that women have been
00:17:17.580 so perpetually victimized, that we should not be held liable for our sin. In the secular world,
00:17:25.240 this is seen in believe all women. So that whole mantra that became very popular during the whole
00:17:31.840 Kavanaugh saga, believe all women. So not just listen to women, not just hear their stories, those things I'm
00:17:37.740 definitely on board with, not just, hey, give credibility where credibility is due. I'm on board with
00:17:43.700 that, but believe all women. I'm not okay with that because women are just as capable of lying and
00:17:51.060 deceiving as men are. In Christianity, think about some of the women's conferences that you have been
00:17:57.520 to. If you have ever been to a women's conference that is more sensation than substance, more emotion
00:18:03.860 than actual worship, then you know what I'm talking about. The premise of many messages at these types of
00:18:11.180 Christian women's conferences is that your real problem as a woman, the thing that's really holding
00:18:16.980 you back from living an abundant life, isn't your sin, but your insecurity. We so rarely as Christian
00:18:24.800 women hear that our biggest problem is the same as men's biggest problem, that we are dead in our sin
00:18:31.020 apart from Christ, that we are wretched, that we are depraved, that we are fundamentally corrupt,
00:18:36.620 that we need Jesus to save us from our sin, not just tell us that we're pretty. It would seem
00:18:42.860 if you read many women's Bible studies, not all, but many women's Bible studies and Christian books,
00:18:49.460 Christian women's books, and attend these many of these Christian women's conferences, that the most
00:18:54.780 important thing for women to know, you would think the most important thing for women to know is that
00:19:00.800 we're amazing, that we're enough, that we're worthy, that we're deserving. That is not why Jesus came
00:19:07.680 to die. Jesus did not come to save you, woman, because you are amazing and enough and worthy and
00:19:16.060 deserving. He saved you. He saved me because we're not. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,
00:19:23.760 Romans 5, 8 says. Ephesians 2, you hear me talk about this passage a lot because I think it is such a
00:19:29.460 clear explanation of what the gospel is. For you were dead in the sins and trespasses in which you
00:19:36.120 once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,
00:19:39.340 the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once walked,
00:19:44.680 glorifying, gratifying the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.
00:19:50.500 But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together
00:19:55.520 with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. This line, by grace you have been saved, which most of
00:20:02.260 us Christians know, means nothing if we don't also know the gravity, the importance of the first four
00:20:10.140 words of Ephesians 2. For you were dead. You were dead. You and I were dead in our sin, apart from Christ.
00:20:17.560 That is your problem. That is my problem. Society isn't our problem as women. The patriarchy isn't our
00:20:24.440 problem. Our negative body image is not our main battle. Our insecurities, our self-loathing,
00:20:30.860 our self-deprecation, our emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, all of those may have a negative
00:20:36.620 effect on us, but they are not our biggest issue. Your and my biggest issue is that we are dead sinners
00:20:45.240 without Christ, and we don't get a pass for being women. We will sit before the judgment seat of Christ
00:20:52.340 one day, and without the blood of the Lamb, we will not be justified. That is our biggest problem.
00:20:58.020 It is time that we women start realizing, start facing our capacity for sin, that it is just as
00:21:06.040 great as men's capacity, and our guiltiness of sin is just as great as man's guiltiness.
00:21:12.180 And this emotionalism, this coddling that we're getting from some leading Christian women that would
00:21:17.420 have us believe that our biggest problem is that we don't love ourselves enough is damaging. I mean,
00:21:22.860 are you kidding? We have this mindset that women, again, are so perpetually victimized that we can't
00:21:30.600 possibly be guilty. But it's actually both. Women are victimized in many cases, but we are still
00:21:37.700 ultimately guilty for our sin. A great example of this is with abortion. In Christian conservatism,
00:21:44.980 a lot of people seem to have the idea that women get abortions because they hate themselves.
00:21:49.740 That's not true. Women get abortions because women, just like men, are sinners. Because we can be
00:21:55.620 selfish. Now, are many women deceived? Absolutely. I would say in some way, all women who get abortions
00:22:01.560 are deceived. Some more so and more overtly than others. Are they made to feel, are some women made to
00:22:07.700 feel like it's their only choice? Yes. And should we treat them with compassion? Absolutely.
00:22:12.020 But let's not pretend that women don't also have the capacity for evil and that they don't abort
00:22:19.020 their babies sometimes, very often, if not most times, for sheer convenience. You may have seen
00:22:25.300 some of the viral videos that have been going around on TikTok that are shared on Twitter and
00:22:29.440 Instagram. I don't actually recommend watching them. You can just take my word for it. There are
00:22:34.440 videos by young girls going to get abortions and they're laughing about it. They're excited about it.
00:22:39.860 They're rejoicing over it. They're even showing that their pregnant belly's in the mirror and then
00:22:45.440 they are showing a picture of the moving baby on a sonogram and they are laughing and excited about
00:22:52.300 being about to be killing their child. It is callous. It's chilling. And it shows you the consequence
00:23:01.260 of godlessness. These girls are not laughing about killing their babies because they struggle with
00:23:07.620 insecurity, guys. They are sinners in need of a savior, just like we have all been. They are children
00:23:15.300 of wrath, just like as Ephesians 2 says, we all once were. As women, our sin and our need of our salvation
00:23:23.900 is our number one problem, a problem that Jesus alone can solve. And any effort to alleviate women of
00:23:31.900 the weight of that reality because you think women have been through too much already is unloving.
00:23:39.340 Women need the gospel, the hard truth, the sinners in the hands of an angry God reality that apart
00:23:46.840 from Jesus, we are dead people walking. Contrary to popular opinion in 2020, the gospel is not that
00:23:54.720 you're beautiful. The gospel is not even just that God loves you. Yes, we were made in God's image,
00:24:00.340 so we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that is something to rejoice over. And yes,
00:24:04.540 God is love, and what a wonderful thing to worship him for. But the gospel is that you and I are wicked,
00:24:10.940 that we have hard hearts, and that we need Jesus to make us new. We need his forgiveness, his grace,
00:24:17.160 his sacrifice. He died and rose again on our behalf to save us from our sin, to glorify himself to save us
00:24:24.880 from our sin. The great news is, is that he gives us the things that we are truly longing for. The forgiveness
00:24:32.940 and grace and true deep satisfaction that we want and need. Now, let me address the other side of this
00:24:42.220 in the Christian church. So there has also been a reaction to Christian feminism among some people in, I would
00:24:51.020 say, conservative evangelical Christianity. I'm obviously conservative evangelical, but there seems
00:24:56.720 to be. It's a small minority, but I've just kind of noticed this attitude, especially on social media.
00:25:03.220 There seems to be an attitude among some people in conservative evangelical Christianity in reaction
00:25:09.060 towards what is called Christian feminism that, to me, is too harsh. That kind of seems to take joy
00:25:16.260 in putting women down, in belittling women, in putting women in their place, in regarding women
00:25:21.700 as foolish, silly harlots who need to be pushed back a little bit. These kinds of people, of course,
00:25:27.460 these kinds of self-righteous people have always existed, but I think now they feel like they have
00:25:32.500 a worthy cause against what they perceive to be, and sometimes rightly, the dangers of Christian feminism.
00:25:38.980 This group seems to be hypersensitive to anything that might look like Christian feminism,
00:25:44.140 even if it's not. So, like, even defense of victims of abuse. These people, to me, are too harsh.
00:25:49.740 They're mean. They're patronizing. They see women being coddled, and so they swing in the opposite direction
00:25:55.420 and accuse women, at least implicitly, of being the root of all evil. They see men as victims,
00:26:01.520 victims to women's wily ways, to society's efforts to emasculate, to the aggressive feminist
00:26:06.980 who has turned the American male into a eunuch. And so, they use theology to club women over the head,
00:26:13.040 and they call it speaking the truth in love when that's not what it is. They have a superiority complex
00:26:17.800 that I don't think is glorifying to God. This is wrong. Just as it is not true that woman is any less
00:26:24.900 on the hook for her sin than a man is, we are also not more culpable. In the same way that the patriarchy
00:26:31.300 isn't Christian women's biggest problem, feminism is not the Christian man's biggest problem.
00:26:37.380 And when both sexes act like victims, rather than taking up their crosses and following Jesus,
00:26:43.940 seeds of discord and bitterness and all kinds of ugliness are sown.
00:26:48.980 What we see in the Bible is that Jesus is indeed gentle towards women. He is gentle towards many
00:26:55.660 sinners, but he does seem to be especially gentle towards women, not in a way that in any way belittles
00:27:03.140 their sin or minimizes their sinfulness, but in a way that highlights, I think, female vulnerability,
00:27:09.740 which is different than male vulnerability. That's just how God made us in that complementarian way.
00:27:14.360 And so, we see Jesus in his interaction with women reflecting that uniqueness of women.
00:27:20.500 John 4 with the Samaritan woman at the well telling her of her sin, but also revealing himself as the
00:27:25.840 Messiah, the living water that she can take part in so that she will never thirst. Healing the woman who
00:27:31.420 had been bleeding for 12 years in Mark 5. Jesus makes a point to pay attention to her. He didn't
00:27:35.800 have to do that. He paid attention to her. He looked her in the eye. Someone who had been seen as
00:27:40.360 unclean for over a decade. The woman who was caught in adultery in John 8 that the Pharisees wanted to
00:27:46.220 stone. He said, only those of you who are without sin can cast a stone. And they all dropped their stones
00:27:51.840 and laughed. And Jesus looked at this woman in the midst of her sin, in the midst of her shame, and he said,
00:27:56.960 I don't condemn you, and told her to leave her life of sin. In Luke 7, a woman described as a woman of the
00:28:03.660 city, a sinner, washed Jesus' feet with her tears and anointed him with oil. The Pharisees had a fit over
00:28:10.300 this because she was a sinner, but Jesus is grateful for her love and tells her that her sins are forgiven.
00:28:16.240 Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, comforting and surprising her in her sadness.
00:28:21.660 Jesus is our model. Jesus was gentle towards women. He was gentle towards the wayward, like I said,
00:28:27.340 and the lost in general, but he did not treat women with the particular disdain that many of the people
00:28:34.200 at that time were used to. And we see throughout the Bible that God uses women in special ways,
00:28:39.140 even prostitutes like Rahab, to accomplish his purposes. But at the same time, God doesn't let women
00:28:44.720 off the hook for their sin. Jesus, in his interaction with women, speaks very openly and very
00:28:50.360 boldly about women's sin. And so we see this dichotomy of gentleness and truth of love and
00:28:57.720 boldness in Jesus that I think all of us, no matter our gender, need to reflect. This is why,
00:29:04.720 just as a reminder, I know we all know this on this podcast, but this is why the Bible
00:29:08.940 is sufficient, the only sufficient guide that we have to show us how we should view women and how we
00:29:15.960 should treat women. Women are sinners, no less sinners than any man. And we need the undeterred
00:29:22.220 gospel just as desperately as any man does. That is our problem. Not society, not the patriarchy,
00:29:30.160 not men. While abuse is real, discrimination and sexism are real. They are all symptoms of sin.
00:29:37.900 So the remedy for the sins of others in our own sin is not feminism, but Jesus. We do not need
00:29:45.860 feminism, which is a secular movement to try to achieve equality with men through sameness and
00:29:51.380 includes terrible things like abortion. We don't need sugar-coated emotional female conferences
00:29:57.200 telling us that we're pretty. We need Jesus, his gentleness and his truth, his love and his gospel,
00:30:04.420 which are all intertwined. They're not separate. Jesus in all his gentleness and compassion and
00:30:10.400 truth and eagerness to save and his ability to sanctify. That's what we need. Feminism doesn't
00:30:17.760 solve our problems. It simply creates bitterness, resentment. It puffs up our pride. It seeks to drive
00:30:24.920 out our natural inclination towards being nurturers and caretakers and to replace them with some kind of
00:30:30.940 girl boss mentality that is ultimately unfulfilling. Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be a hard
00:30:36.840 worker. Of course, the Bible tells us to work hard. That doesn't mean that you can't have certain
00:30:41.860 particular goals. I obviously don't think that. It does mean that you are not to become, we are not to
00:30:48.900 become a callous product of this world in search of a success that will not satisfy. We are to be
00:30:55.320 soft-hearted, compassionate women who love Jesus and the people that he has placed in our lives.
00:31:02.220 The world is always going to have ever-changing standards, so forget that. Like, we should find
00:31:07.680 no solace and no empowerment from a video like the one that Cynthia Nixon is speaking in. We have one
00:31:15.240 standard as Christians, and that is the Word of God. So if we are in Christ, the Holy Spirit, our helper,
00:31:21.640 will give us the power to abide by the Word of God better and better as our lives go on and we seek
00:31:28.340 him. We will never reach the standard of perfection that God demands of all who enter his kingdom, which
00:31:34.400 is why it is such good news that Jesus reached that standard on our behalf once and for all and by grace
00:31:41.820 through faith not of our own doing. In Christ, God accepts us. How freeing is it that we don't have to
00:31:49.800 be so mad all the time as women, so bitter, so resentful, so covetous of what we don't have, so angry at the
00:31:57.260 so-called patriarchy. We have unconditional joy knowing who we are and what we were made for. Okay, that
00:32:05.940 wraps up the episode today. We will be back here on Wednesday, and I hope you guys have a great Monday.
00:32:12.460 We will be back here on Wednesday, and we will be back here on Wednesday, and we will be back here on Wednesday.
00:32:19.920 Thank you.