Patriarchal Apostasy

I snooped around the Vision Forum site a bit earlier this afternoon, and had a peek at Doug Phillip's blog a couple of days ago. On the google search for Vision Forum, the description that comes up below the link says, "Vision Forum Ministries is dedicated to the restoration of Christian family culture." Well, that settles that. It's not a spiritual message they're promoting. It's a cultural one. Once you get into the site and check out the "Our Mission" page, you see the mission summed up with "Preserving Our Covenant with God through Biblical Patriarchy and Multi-Generational Faithfulness." Seems they want to do away with the "better covenant with better promises" which is preserved through Christ alone and turn back toward Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.


On Doug's personal blog, I saw a LOT about family, babies, sons, daughters...and not a whole lot about Christ. Lot's of pictures of spit-shined little girls and "godly" submissive wives, all with happy smiles, and "godly" patriarchs in suits and ties, looking like Bob's BigBoy, with hair cut high and fairly tight, parted down the side like a godly man should have it...but little about Christ.


I'm coming to realize that their gospel looks different than mine. Mine has always been: Loving Father who creates, Spirit which compels, Son who atones and reconciles. Their gospel looks more like this to me: father who exercises "biblical" patriarchy and authority, submissive wife who knows her place and spits out babies, rigidly obedient children (who are probably too scared to explore the true gospel), all working together to subdue the culture. This seems to be the path that they see to God. Culture. Through patriarchy. In my estimation, it's an apostate gospel.


Something's waaaaaaay out of whack.


To delve over into the Department of Redundancy Department - it brings me back to a point I raised a few weeks ago...


The patriocentric/Christian Islamic system is founded entirely on the human authority structure. Don't agree? Go to the Our Mission page of the Vision Forum website and, just for kicks, take Christ out of the equation of their mission and see if it makes any difference. See if you could still write the same mission statement.


(I want to let you in on a little secret...Christ isn't even included in the mission statement)


Now then...Take human authority and culture out of the equation and see if you could write the same mission statement.


If you take Jesus out of the equation, their authoritarian culture doesn't change. If you take the authoritarian culture out of the equation, they have no Jesus. It IS their Jesus. 


My ex-fiancee's family measured my spiritual and personal "character" by my adherence and submission to patriarchal/authoritarian lording. Not by my spiritual and personal character. I was the greatest thing since sliced bread...until I stood up to and refused to make peace with what I saw as sin and a great evil. Suddenly I became the devil, because where the rubber meets the road, I opposed their Jesus.


What a mess.