Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 07, 2020


REPLAY： Why Feminism Will Fail You


Episode Stats

Length

34 minutes

Words per Minute

176.91855

Word Count

6,110

Sentence Count

376

Misogynist Sentences

72

Hate Speech Sentences

37


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
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00:03:34.300 little bit of this video that we are going to cover today. Be a lady, they said. Your skirt is too short.
00:03:41.220 Your shirt is too low. Don't show so much skin. Cover up. Leave something to the imagination. Don't be a
00:03:47.600 temptress. Men can't control themselves. Men have needs. Look sexy. Look hot. Don't be so provocative.
00:03:54.100 You're asking for it. Now, some of you might be saying, why would you play this at all? Well, because like I
00:04:01.420 said, I want to make sure that you have a little bit of context for what is teeing this up. The
00:04:07.460 video keeps going like that. We only played you a little bit of it. I think it's like over five
00:04:11.460 minutes long. Keeps going like that. It repeats things that women apparently hear, uh, hear very
00:04:17.000 often to, I suppose, drive home the point that women are constantly held to unfair standards. That
00:04:23.860 society, namely men, the patriarchy, toxic masculinity pressures women into looking and acting inauthentically
00:04:33.120 unnaturally in order to conform to arbitrary and narrow definitions of beauty and value. I am assuming
00:04:39.660 that is the point of this video. Uh, that seems to be the message of not just this video listing all of
00:04:47.460 these oppressive things that women hear, but also the message of today's feminism in general. Um,
00:04:54.460 are you ready though? Are you ready for my first reaction to all of this, uh, to this video? My first
00:05:01.820 reaction or my first thing that I want to say about this is that it is true dot, dot, dot to an extent. So
00:05:10.360 let me start with the truth that is in this video that I think has caused women, even Christian
00:05:17.460 women that I've seen to watch this video, to share it and to say, yes, this is so true. And to relate
00:05:23.720 to it and to feel like they are somehow empowered by it. Uh, it's because there is a little bit of
00:05:29.480 truth to it and here's what is actually true. So if you're listening to this and you feel offended by
00:05:35.280 the things that I am saying, just hang on tight. We're going to get to, we're going to get to the
00:05:41.060 rest of it. We're going to flip this over and say what's not actually true about it. But, uh, as a
00:05:46.660 woman, I am telling you from my experience, what is true in this video, uh, women are held to
00:05:54.860 opposing standards in society. The qualifications for what is beautiful, uh, changes change every
00:06:02.040 few years. So when I was in middle school, those of you who are my age, I was born in 92. So if you
00:06:07.100 were born around there, you probably had the same kind of middle school experience. Although I think
00:06:11.380 the middle school experience of just general awkwardness is probably universal, but this particular
00:06:15.800 middle school experience was that everyone wanted to look like Paris Hilton or like Ashley Simpson
00:06:22.380 or Avril Lavigne. So that means no hips, no butt low rise jeans with the skin like between your belly
00:06:29.440 button and your hips showing. So not actually your belly button, but the skin between your belly button
00:06:34.060 and your hips for whatever reason, that was a good look. And I wanted to be able to pull that off
00:06:39.260 so bad when I was like in sixth and seventh grade. Not only would of course my parents not let me wear
00:06:45.100 a shirt that showed my, my stomach, thank goodness, but also I could just never pull it off. I didn't
00:06:50.920 have that body type. Other people did had that just kind of like straight and narrow look. And I remember
00:06:55.740 in middle school wanting that, wanting to be able to look like that and wanting to be able to,
00:07:00.540 to pull off that look. And I just never could and mark my words though, still to this day,
00:07:06.940 if low rise jeans come back, I am going to revolt. I'm going to start some kind of revolution that
00:07:12.860 pushes back against the demonic forces of low rise jeans, because I still can't pull them off. And I
00:07:18.100 refuse to even try. So back then people wanted frosty highlights. They wanted like the tiny thin eyebrows
00:07:23.960 in fifth grade. I actually shaved part of my eyebrow the day before school pictures, y'all like this,
00:07:30.300 just shows you how little young people, probably especially young girls. I won't say especially
00:07:35.760 young girls because young boys can do stupid things too, but how just silly, silly kids can be in our
00:07:43.120 decision-making. But I never had those like tiny thin eyebrows and I had no idea what I was doing.
00:07:47.520 I thought it'd be so cool to be able to like wax my eyebrows or pluck my eyebrows. But instead of
00:07:51.580 getting tweezers, I got a razor and I shaved like half of my eyebrow off. I'll have to find the school
00:07:59.540 picture so you guys can actually see it. Maybe I'll post it on Instagram after this podcast episode
00:08:05.360 goes up. But that's what women have been doing probably for all of history, trying and very often
00:08:11.780 failing to reach these arbitrary standards of beauty that changed so much. As we got into the 21st
00:08:18.480 century or farther into the 21st century, like just a few years ago, it became obvious that that
00:08:24.200 standard of beauty of having these like thin, narrow hips and no butt that was out the window.
00:08:30.240 Then it became like the Kardashian curvaceous thing that became really popular on Instagram
00:08:37.740 and on social media. And that's still the case. Really? We can like exclusively think the Kardashians
00:08:43.340 for the kind of body type that is now coveted. And a lot of the female rappers that are out there,
00:08:48.440 that is what is seen as beautiful and hot and cool and enviable. Now these kinds of changes,
00:08:55.520 the standards of beauty have changed throughout history for women in the dating department. So
00:09:01.460 this is another standard that women have have to reach. It's a weird game that women feel like they
00:09:07.060 have to play. Don't be too aggressive or forward. If you want a guy to like you speak your mind,
00:09:11.760 but learn how to speak your mind, learn how to say no though. So you don't want to be too aggressive,
00:09:17.220 but you have to be a little bit assertive. So you have to strike the balance between desperation
00:09:21.320 and dependence. Don't be clingy, but a guy also needs to know that he's needed. There are other
00:09:26.180 standards women feel like they have to chase like the standard of success. There was a time when
00:09:31.300 fulfillment was equated with motherhood, with having a lot of kids, with keeping your house in order.
00:09:36.460 And then, and I'm talking about just like kind of secular society or society at large here,
00:09:40.500 then being a stay-at-home mom, then being a stay-at-home mom started to be viewed as the easy
00:09:47.100 option in comparison to having a corporate career. Being a stay-at-home mom was seen as repressive
00:09:52.280 and boring. There is still a stigma, I would say, surrounding being quote, just a stay-at-home mom.
00:09:58.780 I heard a young woman on the news the other day say that 50 years ago, she would have been forced
00:10:04.120 to just stay at home with her kids all day. Yikes. Like that's still a mentality that a lot of people have
00:10:09.880 on both sides of the aisle. But today you're really expected to do it all. So this is how
00:10:14.880 the standard has shifted. Again, you're expected to be a stay-at-home mom and have a lucrative side
00:10:20.080 hustle or keep your full-time job, put your kids in daycare, but still be perfectly as organized and
00:10:25.180 present and as engaged and as rested as if you were spending eight hours at home with your kids.
00:10:30.740 In the media, as a woman, if you debate with someone, if you debate with another woman, it's a cat fight.
00:10:36.220 If you show passion about something, it's a meltdown. It's hysterical. It's emotional.
00:10:39.880 If you make an impact, you're just seeking attention. If you critique another woman's
00:10:43.900 views, you're just jealous. If you offer your perspective, you're opinionated. If you're
00:10:48.060 unintimidated by opposition, you're brash. And the likelihood of hearing all of these things doubles
00:10:53.720 if you are a young woman in the media. So women, especially young women, they learn to play this
00:10:59.960 game, not just in the media, but just in the professional world in general, of not being too
00:11:04.720 threatening, of dialing it back, of playing the cue card when you can, of feigning ignorance,
00:11:09.640 when necessary, of pretending to not have an opinion on something that you're actually very
00:11:14.100 sure about, of being nice when women really should be honest, of not saying that we should,
00:11:20.960 I'm not saying that we should do these things, but women do do these things. We learn this stuff
00:11:27.180 as a means of survival, of getting along. And there's a very thin line in the professional
00:11:32.260 world that I've noticed that as a woman who has dealt myself, I've dealt with a range of people and
00:11:38.360 who's watched other women deal with a range of people in business. If you are passive
00:11:43.320 as a woman, you are taken advantage of, you are walked over. But if you are assertive,
00:11:47.920 then you're called a you-know-what. So most women, at least in the business world, typically decide to
00:11:53.140 be a you-know-what. They say, I'm just going to risk being called that because what else am I going
00:11:59.040 to do? I'm not saying this is me, but this is a lot of women I have noticed kind of take on
00:12:04.360 this mentality because they feel like it's what they have to do in order to move ahead.
00:12:08.940 Women, by nature of being physically weaker than men, are almost always on guard in public,
00:12:14.720 at least a little bit. This is actually an innate biological response to potential danger because
00:12:20.020 the next best tool a woman has in public to a weapon is situational awareness. I am always
00:12:26.380 scouting for danger when I'm in a parking garage, on a walk, anywhere in public, periodically watching
00:12:32.840 my back in all of these situations, keeping an eye on the guy across the room that looks sketchy,
00:12:37.860 locking my car doors as soon as I get in the car. And that's not paranoia. It's just second nature
00:12:42.600 to a lot of women. It's just something that uniquely women have to deal with. The vast majority of
00:12:47.760 predators are men and women make up a large number of prey. So we are just being statistically savvy
00:12:53.320 when we watch out for ourselves, when we're by ourselves. The fact is women are much more
00:12:58.980 susceptible to rape, to assault and to harassment than men are. Men have lots of other obstacles
00:13:04.720 that they have to face. And if this were a podcast for men, I'd be going into all of those.
00:13:10.280 But this comes with the territory of as women, physical weakness, a vulnerability of desirability.
00:13:16.580 So women have obstacles. And this right here, this right here, listing all of the obstacles,
00:13:23.900 listing all of the struggles, listing all of the disadvantages that women face is where feminism
00:13:29.400 stops. This is where this specific video stops giving a list of all of the ways that women are
00:13:35.940 oppressed. And that's it. There was no conclusion to that video, no solution, just anger, just cries
00:13:42.600 of injustice and inequality meant to get women to say, yeah, I feel that way. I'm really mad about that
00:13:49.200 too, to justify our resentment and our rage. That is the sole secular answer to unfair societal
00:13:57.360 standards for women, unfair realities for women, or what is deemed as unfair. To be mad. Be mad at who?
00:14:04.940 Be mad at men. They're the ones in power. So they must be the ones that are making the rules,
00:14:09.880 rules that you can't ever perfectly follow, rules that you were never meant to follow, feminism says.
00:14:15.060 So it tells us to break free of the rules, to smash the patriarchy, to reject toxic masculinity,
00:14:20.700 to take charge, to own your power, to get angry, to stay bitter. How incredibly, how incredibly
00:14:28.400 depressing, like if that is our solution, if that is our conclusion, that's the world's answer to
00:14:33.860 unfairness. It's to just be mad about it, to stay mad about it, to resent men, to be filled with and
00:14:39.900 fueled by rage, to talk about all the problems you face and just be angry that they exist. Heck,
00:14:46.360 you should make up a problem if you can't find one, like the gender wage gap. Keep protesting that,
00:14:52.380 even though you know that when all factors are considered, so education, experience, hours,
00:14:56.880 work to job title, there is no wage gap. But stay mad about that. And as far as solutions for our
00:15:03.080 problems go, feminists have got some incredible suggestions, incredible suggestions. So I guess
00:15:09.680 they do present some kind of solution, but here they are. Be like men. Pretend that you don't have
00:15:15.940 an innate drive to be a mother. Abort your babies if they get in the way of your plants. Suppress that
00:15:21.260 natural inclination you have to take care of children and instead get a dog in an 80-hour-a-week
00:15:26.780 career. Don't rely on a man. Rely on yourself. Take care of yourself. Love yourself.
00:15:32.680 Worship yourself. That's what feminism tells us. These are apparently some of the solutions that
00:15:38.120 we have to our misery and our resentment against men. But as we know, self-worship, self-centeredness
00:15:44.300 leads only to misery, to loneliness, to purposelessness, to sadness, to emptiness. This
00:15:51.000 video exemplifies that. All of the things that feminism suggests that we do to be like men, to
00:15:56.880 abort our children, to focus on exclusively on our career and not worry about a family and serving
00:16:03.240 other people. This video exemplifies that trying all of those things, which feminists have tried for
00:16:09.420 decades, aren't working because these feminists are still miserable. They're still sad. They're still
00:16:14.540 purposeless and they're still empty. Like, do you think, just be honest, do you think that Cynthia
00:16:20.340 Nixon is a happy person? Like, what about Chelsea Handler? How about Alyssa Milano, Miley Cyrus,
00:16:27.400 Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Elizabeth Warren? Like, do these frontline feminists seem like well-adjusted,
00:16:33.800 fulfilled, happy people to you? I don't know. Maybe they are. But I don't know very many happy,
00:16:41.380 fulfilled, radical feminists. Do you? Feminism is about pointing out problems. Some are real.
00:16:47.660 Some are perceived. And offering stupid solutions to them. That is what feminism is. And the result
00:16:54.120 is that girls and women are angry. They're resentful. They're self-absorbed. They're
00:16:59.400 egotistical. They're prideful. While at the exact same time, struggling with self-loathing
00:17:04.340 and insecurity. Does that sound like a good deal to you? Why? Why? How is it possible for them to feel
00:17:11.960 this way? What seems like a paradox? How is it possible for young feminists to be simultaneously
00:17:17.120 egotistical and self-hating? Because while feminism is going around telling women to love themselves,
00:17:24.860 to put themselves first, these same women are the ones making the rules that make us hate ourselves.
00:17:31.260 These standards that I listed, that were listed in this video, most of them, not all,
00:17:36.240 but most of them were imposed by other women, not men. We followed, for example, Paris Hilton,
00:17:44.120 Britney Spears, and Kim Kardashian for beauty tips, not a man. We have decided what is hot and what is
00:17:51.140 not. And we have decided that women have to journey towards these goals. And men don't care so long as
00:17:57.240 we continue to take our clothes off and post pictures of ourselves half naked. I mean, are we idiots?
00:18:02.580 Like, are we that dumb that we don't understand that, that women are responsible for so much of
00:18:09.720 the misery that other women endure? The ever-changing standards of beauty, the jealousy, the gossip,
00:18:17.140 the comparison, the passive aggressiveness, the overall toxicity, the inability to be able to cheer
00:18:23.080 another woman on. We have created and cultivated this stuff. This isn't the patriarchy. This is the
00:18:29.160 matriarchy. That's part of the problem. Now, do men prey upon women? Absolutely. They deserve just
00:18:36.800 punishment. And we can talk about that. We can talk about Harvey Weinstein and all of these other
00:18:41.900 terrible predators that we know and all of those that we know deserve justice and their victims deserve
00:18:48.900 to see justice carried out. So, of course, there are and there always have been and there always will
00:18:54.540 be men who do hold women back, who abuse women, who take advantage of women. But we cannot blame men
00:19:01.400 for every unfair standard that is set for us, every injustice that we endure, every gap in achievement
00:19:08.400 that we see, every bit of oppression or repression that we experience. So much of the grief that we
00:19:15.400 girls go through is because of our own toxic mindsets, our own ego, our own superficiality,
00:19:22.700 our own insecurity, our own envy and lust and greed. There is this weird, this bizarre mentality that
00:19:30.520 exists both in secular feminism and within what is considered Christian feminism, that women have been
00:19:37.280 so perpetually victimized that we should not be held liable for our sin. In the secular world, this is
00:19:46.280 seen in believe all women. So that whole mantra that became very popular during the whole Kavanaugh saga
00:19:52.400 believe all women. So not just listen to women, not just hear their stories, those things I'm
00:19:57.460 definitely on board with, not just, hey, give credibility where credibility is due. I'm on board
00:20:03.220 with that, but believe all women. I'm not okay with that because women are just as capable of lying and
00:20:10.760 deceiving as men are. In Christianity, think about some of the women's conferences that you have been to.
00:20:17.460 If you have ever been to a women's conference that is more sensation than substance, more emotion than
00:20:23.960 actual worship, then you know what I'm talking about. The premise of many messages at these types
00:20:30.680 of Christian women's conferences is that your real problem as a woman, the thing that's really holding
00:20:36.680 you back from living an abundant life isn't your sin, but your insecurity. We so rarely as Christian
00:20:44.500 women hear that our biggest problem is the same as men's biggest problem, that we are dead in our sin
00:20:50.720 apart from Christ, that we are wretched, that we are depraved, that we are fundamentally corrupt,
00:20:56.460 that we need Jesus to save us from our sin, not just tell us that we're pretty. It would seem if you read
00:21:03.920 many women's Bible studies, not all, but many women's Bible studies and Christian books, Christian women's
00:21:09.880 books and attend these many of these Christian women's conferences, that the most important
00:21:15.060 thing for women to know, you would think the most important thing for women to know is that we're
00:21:20.660 amazing, that we're enough, that we're worthy, that we're deserving. That is not why Jesus came to die.
00:21:28.700 Jesus did not come to save you, woman, because you are amazing and enough and worthy and deserving.
00:21:36.200 He saved you. He saved me because we're not. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,
00:21:43.460 Romans 5, 8 says. Ephesians 2, you hear me talk about this passage a lot because I think it is such
00:21:48.920 a clear explanation of what the gospel is. For you were dead in the sins and trespasses in which you
00:21:55.820 once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the
00:21:59.160 spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once walked,
00:22:03.760 glorifying, gratifying the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath.
00:22:10.220 But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together
00:22:15.220 with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. This line, by grace you have been saved, which most of us
00:22:22.120 Christians know, means nothing if we don't also know the gravity, the importance of the first four
00:22:29.860 words of Ephesians 2. For you were dead. You were dead. You and I were dead in our sin, apart from
00:22:36.720 Christ. That is your problem. That is my problem. Society isn't our problem as women. The patriarchy
00:22:43.620 isn't our problem. Our negative body image is not our main battle. Our insecurities, our self-loathing,
00:22:50.580 our self-deprecation, our emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, all of those may have a negative
00:22:56.320 effect on us, but they are not our biggest issue. Your and my biggest issue is that we are dead sinners
00:23:04.920 without Christ and we don't get a pass for being women. We will sit before the judgment seat of Christ
00:23:12.040 one day and without the blood of the lamb, we will not be justified. That is our biggest problem.
00:23:17.040 It is time that we women start realizing, start facing our capacity for sin, that it is just as
00:23:25.740 great as men's capacity. And our guiltiness of sin is just as great as man's guiltiness.
00:23:31.880 And this emotionalism, this coddling that we're getting from some leading Christian women that
00:23:37.000 would have us believe that our biggest problem is that we don't love ourselves enough is damaging.
00:23:42.000 I mean, are you kidding? We have this mindset that women, again, are so perpetually victimized that
00:23:49.640 we can't possibly be guilty, but it's actually both. Women are victimized in many cases, but we are still
00:23:57.400 ultimately guilty for our sin. A great example of this is with abortion. In Christian conservatism,
00:24:04.820 a lot of people seem to have the idea that women get abortions because they hate themselves.
00:24:08.840 That's not true. Women get abortions because women, just like men, are sinners because we can be
00:24:15.320 selfish. Now, are many women deceived? Absolutely. I would say in some way, all women who get abortions
00:24:21.260 are deceived, some more so and more overtly than others. Are they made to feel or some women made to
00:24:27.400 feel like it's their only choice? Yes. And should we treat them with compassion? Absolutely. But let's not
00:24:33.440 pretend that women don't also have the capacity for evil and that they don't abort their babies
00:24:39.320 sometimes, very often, if not most times, for sheer convenience. You may have seen some of the viral
00:24:45.680 videos that have been going around on TikTok that are shared on Twitter and Instagram. I don't actually
00:24:50.380 recommend watching them. You can just take my word for it. There are videos by young girls going to get
00:24:56.880 abortions and they're laughing about it. They're excited about it. They're rejoicing over it.
00:25:00.620 They're even showing that like their pregnant bellies in the mirror. And then they are showing
00:25:06.520 a picture of the moving baby on a sonogram. And they are laughing and excited about being about to
00:25:14.540 be killing their child. It is callous. It's chilling. And it shows you the consequence of godlessness.
00:25:22.540 These girls are not laughing about killing their babies because they struggle with insecurity,
00:25:27.840 guys. They are sinners in need of a savior, just like we have all been. They are children of wrath,
00:25:36.100 just like as Ephesians 2 says, we all once were. As women, our sin and our need of our salvation
00:25:43.600 is our number one problem, a problem that Jesus alone can solve. And any effort to alleviate women of
00:25:51.600 the weight of that reality because you think women have been through too much already is unloving.
00:25:59.060 Women need the gospel, the hard truth, the sinners in the hands of an angry God reality that apart
00:26:06.540 from Jesus, we are dead people walking. Contrary to popular opinion in 2020, the gospel is not that
00:26:14.420 you're beautiful. The gospel is not even just that God loves you. Yes, we were made in God's image.
00:26:20.040 So we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And that is something to rejoice over. And yes,
00:26:24.240 God is love. And what a wonderful thing to worship him for. But the gospel is that you and I are
00:26:30.300 wicked, that we have hard hearts and that we need Jesus to make us new. We need his forgiveness,
00:26:36.060 his grace, his sacrifice. He died and rose again on our behalf to save us from our sin, to glorify
00:26:43.300 himself, to save us from our sin. The great news is, is that he gives us the things that we are truly
00:26:49.820 longing for. The forgiveness and grace and true deep satisfaction that we want and need. Now, let me
00:26:59.420 address the other side of this in the Christian church. So there has also been a reaction to
00:27:07.660 Christian feminism among some people in, I would say, conservative evangelical Christianity. I'm
00:27:13.140 obviously conservative evangelical, but there seems to be, it's a small minority, but I've just kind of
00:27:19.680 noticed this attitude, especially on social media. There seems to be an attitude amongst some people
00:27:25.380 in conservative evangelical Christianity in reaction towards what is called Christian feminism,
00:27:30.640 that to me is too harsh. That kind of seems to take joy in putting women down and belittling women
00:27:38.520 and putting women in their place and regarding women as foolish, silly harlots who need to be pushed
00:27:44.140 back a little bit. These kinds of people, of course, these kinds of self-righteous people have
00:27:49.280 always existed, but I think now they feel like they have a worthy cause against what they perceive to be
00:27:54.380 and sometimes rightly the dangers of Christian feminism. This group seems to be hypersensitive to
00:28:01.680 anything that might look like Christian feminism, even if it's not. So like even defense of victims of
00:28:06.480 abuse, these people to me are too harsh. They're mean, they're patronizing. They see women being
00:28:12.820 coddled and so they swing in the opposite direction and accuse women, at least implicitly, of being the
00:28:18.140 root of all evil. They see men as victims, victims to women's wily ways, to society's efforts to
00:28:24.900 emasculate, to the aggressive feminist who has turned the American male into a eunuch. And so they use
00:28:30.880 theology to club women over the head and they call it speaking the truth in love when that's not what it is.
00:28:35.800 They have a superiority complex that I don't think is glorifying to God. This is wrong. Just as it is
00:28:42.280 not true that woman is any less on the hook for her sin than a man is, we are also not more culpable.
00:28:49.140 In the same way that the patriarchy isn't Christian women's biggest problem, feminism is not the
00:28:55.760 Christian man's biggest problem. And when both sexes act like victims, rather than taking up their
00:29:01.600 crosses and following Jesus, seeds of discord and bitterness and all kinds of ugliness are sown.
00:29:08.960 What we see in the Bible is that Jesus is indeed gentle towards women. He is gentle towards many
00:29:15.360 sinners, but he does seem to be especially gentle towards women, not in a way that in any way belittles
00:29:22.840 their sin or minimizes their sinfulness, but in a way that highlights, I think, female vulnerability,
00:29:29.120 which is different than male vulnerability. That's just how God made us in that complementarian way.
00:29:34.060 And so we see Jesus and his interaction with women reflecting that uniqueness of women. John 4 with
00:29:40.900 the Samaritan woman at the well telling her of her sin, but also revealing himself as the Messiah,
00:29:46.040 the living water that she can take part in so that she will never thirst. Healing the woman who had been
00:29:51.380 bleeding for 12 years in Mark 5. Jesus makes a point to pay attention to her. He didn't have to do that.
00:29:56.320 He paid attention to her. He looked her in the eye. Someone who had been seen as unclean for over a
00:30:01.240 decade. The woman who was caught in adultery in John 8 that the Pharisees wanted to stone. He said,
00:30:07.320 only those of you who are without sin can cast a stone. And they all dropped their stones and laughed.
00:30:12.120 And Jesus looked at this woman in the midst of her sin and the midst of her shame. And he said,
00:30:16.700 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
00:30:23.360 city, a sinner, washed Jesus' feet with her tears and anointed him with oil. The Pharisees had a fit
00:30:29.800 over this because she was a sinner. But Jesus is grateful for her love and tells her that her sins
00:30:34.780 are forgiven. Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, comforting and
00:30:40.060 surprising her in her sadness. Jesus is our model. Jesus was gentle towards women. He was gentle towards
00:30:45.700 the wayward, like I said, and the lost in general. But he did not treat women with the particular
00:30:51.220 disdain that many of the people at that time were used to. And we see throughout the Bible that God
00:30:57.060 uses women in special ways, even prostitutes like Rahab, to accomplish his purposes. But at the same
00:31:02.760 time, God doesn't let women off the hook for their sin. Jesus, in his interaction with women, speaks very
00:31:08.840 openly and very boldly about women's sin. And so we see this dichotomy of gentleness and truth of love
00:31:16.800 and boldness in Jesus that I think all of us, no matter our gender, need to reflect. This is why,
00:31:24.420 just as a reminder, I know we all know this on this podcast, but this is why the Bible is sufficient,
00:31:30.320 the only sufficient guide that we have to show us how we should view women and how we should treat
00:31:36.180 women. Women are sinners, no less sinners than any man. And we need the undeterred gospel just as
00:31:43.360 desperately as any man does. That is our problem. Not society, not the patriarchy, not men. While
00:31:51.120 abuse is real, discrimination and sexism are real. They are all symptoms of sin. So the remedy for the
00:31:59.660 sins of others in our own sin is not feminism, but Jesus. We do not need feminism, which is a secular
00:32:07.600 movement to try to achieve equality with men through sameness and includes terrible things like
00:32:12.940 abortion. We don't need sugar-coated emotional female conferences telling us that we're pretty.
00:32:18.560 We need Jesus, his gentleness and his truth, his love and his gospel, which are all intertwined. They're
00:32:25.720 not separate. Jesus in all his gentleness and compassion and truth and eagerness to save and his
00:32:32.680 ability to sanctify. That's what we need. Feminism doesn't solve our problems. It simply creates
00:32:40.440 bitterness, resentment. It puffs up our pride. It seeks to drive out our natural inclination towards
00:32:46.480 being nurturers and caretakers and to replace them with some kind of girl boss mentality that is
00:32:52.480 ultimately unfulfilling. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be a hard worker. Of course,
00:32:57.400 the Bible tells us to work hard. That doesn't mean that you can't have certain particular goals. I
00:33:03.000 obviously don't think that. It does mean that you are not to become, we are not to become a callous
00:33:09.720 product of this world in search of a success that will not satisfy. We are to be soft-hearted,
00:33:16.240 compassionate women who love Jesus and the people that he has placed in our lives. The world is always
00:33:23.420 going to have ever-changing standards, so forget that. Like, we should find no solace and no empowerment
00:33:28.960 from a video like the one that Cynthia Nixon is speaking in. We have one standard as Christians,
00:33:35.840 and that is the Word of God. So if we are in Christ, the Holy Spirit, our helper, will give us
00:33:42.060 the power to abide by the Word of God better and better as our lives go on and we seek him. We will
00:33:48.940 never reach the standard of perfection that God demands of all who enter his kingdom, which is why
00:33:54.800 it is such good news that Jesus reached that standard on our behalf once and for all and by
00:34:01.100 grace through faith not of our own doing. In Christ, God accepts us. How freeing is it that we don't have
00:34:09.360 to be so mad all the time as women, so bitter, so resentful, so covetous of what we don't have, so
00:34:15.880 angry at the so-called patriarchy. We have unconditional joy knowing who we are and what we were made for.
00:34:24.220 Okay, that wraps up the episode today. We will be back here on Wednesday and I hope you guys have a great Monday.