{Warning: This post contains very blunt and pointed language that may leave Church Ladies everywhere blushing}
Most of you are aware of the patriarchal idea of the father "guarding the heart" of his daughter(s) - and all of the seedy offspring the idea produces, from courtship, to emotional purity, to all kinds of other "let's clean the outside of the cup but act like it's all about the inside so we can be truly godly!" ideas. I've written a lot about courtship (and here I am doing so again today), and I hope you guys caught Darcy's excellent series on emotional purity. Katherine has written some compelling pieces lately which delve into these topics, too.
First, let's get this part out of the way...
Where adults are concerned, courtship is stupid. That's S-T-O-O-P-I-D. I know of no other way to describe it. Perhaps "rabidly stupid". It's a grift, people. Let me repeat that: IT'S A GRIFT. Don't let them grift you, because courtship isn't about you - it's about the movement. ITS health is paramount, not yours. It can only thrive on your perpetual infancy and ignorance, and that should tell you plenty.
You know how I've compared P/QF to communist tyranny? Check out this nugget from Reformed Online (hat tip, D)...
"When people in Reformed churches marry Arminians (and such behavior is actually quite common), they are allowing the poison of false doctrine into their households. They are saying by their actions that biblical doctrine and even the truth of the gospel is really not that important. As Reformed believers who have professed the true gospel as taught by Christ and the apostles we should be obsessed with maintaining purity of doctrine in our households and churches....The father should protect his son or daughter by never permitting the courtship of unbelievers, Roman Catholics, Arminians and other dangerous heretics."
Just like with the Soviet Union and other oppressive communist dictatorships, regardless of what is said, "guarding your heart" isn't designed to keep bad things out. It's designed to keep you in. You AREN'T free to leave whenever you want, and largely, you're a resource to the dominion mandate (the ruling factor in most patrio families). Your father grifts your heart to be sure you marry within the dominionist agenda. Your parents indoctrinate you - from the moment they accept the agenda - to see everything else as evil and a threat, such as "the world's system of dating", creating imaginary boogeymen to steer you where they wish. The Iron Curtain descends over your heart.
I remember a news piece from back in the 80s, before the fall of communism, where the reporter was (miraculously) allowed access to the common Soviet people. He would ask them "Who do you consider your enemy?" Every man, woman, and child offered the same answer..."Americans". When asked why, the consensus answer was, "They want to destroy us". Totally brainwashed, given no choice, whatsoever, what they could believe, and they believed lies. They believed what was repetitively fed to them to scare them straight, despite it being false, because, in reality, they were nothing more than a resource to the government that was "guarding" them. The government was actually grifting them. They, in turn, taught the BS to their own families as truth (which they believed it was) which perpetuated a system of intellectual dysfunction and ignorance. See any patterns there? False information distributed to the first generation to control them, then spread from the first generation to the second, and so on, to perpetuate the control, to remove critical thought, and to drastically limit alternate viewpoints that might arrive at a semblance of truth.
The people at the top of the pyramid want to keep you dumb. They're grifting you.
You don't think it works? Check out any gathering of second generation homeschoolers. They've fallen for the courtship, guarding your heart, and emotional purity cheese like it's golden. The sad part of it, they have no idea what the alternatives are like. They haven't tested all things, holding fast to what is good. They've merely blindly believed what they've been indoctrinated to believe. They'd be more biblically sound in their position if that passage actually read "Let you parents tell you what is good, for that's their godly purpose, and you hold fast to them". Perpetual children.
There's no scriptural instruction for a father to "guard his daughter's heart". The only scripture that even directly speaks to guarding the heart is Proverbs 4:23, which is speaking to guarding against evil. It has nothing to do with emotion, romance, dating, courtship, or a father's authority over a daughter.
This may generate some negative responses and make those on the other side of the issue angry. To those I say: It isn't my fault that you've placed a higher premium on a lifestyle than on the people involved, nor is it my fault that you've built your foundations on beliefs that are bogus. It's a free country, and as long as you operate within the parameters of the laws of our nation, you can choose whatever lifestyle you want, but don't expect me to like it, agree with it, or have patience or tolerance for your choices. I don't, and I never will. I've seen too many of you discount the wounded to justify your poor decisions and defend that which will be brought to nothing, and that makes me VERY angry. So - save it. If God is responsible for the courtship model, the idea of emotional purity, or the idea of a father guarding the heart of his daughter, I wholeheartedly renounce my faith. I couldn't possibly be more serious.
Now, one last thing about "guarding your heart"...
My advice to young women in patriarchal homes: Yes, your heart does need to be guarded...from your parents, cause if you don't let your father "guard your heart", your parents will beat the hell out of it.
I've nothing BUT experience/evidence to back up that statement.
Don't be grifted.
Editorial and commentary on Christian culture, religious and political fundamentalism, and more.
Ha, there's more where that came from. That article you quoted from Reformed Online? He just barely stops short of saying that girls found to be not virgins should be stoned. Here's link to that whole article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reformedonline.com/view/reformedonline/famdate.htm
That should give you enough ammo for a month. :P
Good grief, Lewis! I didn't know whether to laugh out loud, cheer, or stand and salute you, so I did them all!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, this needed to be said and it is not all in the reformed groups. These ideas from the dominionist and reconstructionist groups have spread like a plague throughout arminian and reformed camps to the degree that no one even knows where these ideas even originated. These folks have no problem with eating their young. It is stunning, shocking and full of blind ignorance. It is the most prideful and spiritually blind group I have ever seen and they would rather throw their children overboard than turn from this lie. My advice to them is to fall on their knees and pray for God to open their eyes to the loving, simple truth of his Holy Word and to read it afresh because it is good and healing and full of grace and love. It is not a stick to beat their children with nor should it be used to break their children's spirit. They use God as a means of instilling fear into their kids as if God was the evil one, "Get back under our umbrella! You don't want to be directly under God!", as if God could be controlled by some fictional, man-made "umbrella" or "chain of man authority". Their god is weak. Their god is evil. Their god cannot be trusted with your heart. Their god is a lie.
They need to pray that the true and living God will remove the scales from their eyes before it is too late.
Lewis, I wholeheartedly agree with this blog post. That courtship article that you cited makes me want to spit. No joke.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
I'm mad too.
Excellent article! I couldn't have said it better. Now, if only those who need to hear will open their ears!
ReplyDeleteDoctrinal purity, where to begin, well since I KNOW communism [was one for years, LOL], let me add here,
ReplyDeletefirst, don't Believe all the propaganda you hear from Western sources about former Soviet and communism, etc., it works Both ways, believe me, fascism is fascism, that includes capitalist, corporatist, socialist, religious, scientific, ideological, philosophical, etc etc etc
And what I found, is that more likely than nought, one Fascist bent is simply replaced for Another fascist bent/thought purity/control and That is where I think a lot of this ultra-extreme religious dominion crap comes from, it's the Child of other dominion/purity types of thinking/control, which is why I often Do urge to dig a bit deeper, Because these tendencies towards being 'lured' to such extremes isn't just in the patri-center dominion religions,
it's in our society across the board, Extremism, and one thing the extremists Heavily rely on,
is mob control. To have that mob control/or mass following [Eric Hoffer, read his books if you can find them though One warning, he tends to focus on the mass following of left despots while ignoring the other subtle fascist forms of right despots, but if you read critically/think critically you can spot them], but anyhoo,
to Have mass following, you have to weed out individual or grass roots thinking. And in ALL DESPOT TOTALITARIAN FASCIST, RIGHT OR LEFT, THEY ALWAYS, ALWAYS,
TARGET THE WOMEN FIRST. Never fails, this is Why they are adamantly obsessed with controlling Sexuality [of women], who they marry, what they think, because the seed they carry is what the social engineers are truly after. Read Camus's Algeria's Unveiled, its a critique of liberal colonization's attempt to control whole society via through the 'myth of liberating women' but you can take that and turn it around, and it Still applies,
and to be really blunt, the fault lies right in our very own Old Testament, Genesis. The minute that laws [based from laws of Ancient Mesopotamia and in NT laws based on same Plus Roman slavery, to curb the mass suicides of Yes, various slaves from regions that had pagan beliefs merged into a form of Christ where martyrdom was THE WAY OUT OF SLAVERY, to the Roman Empire, the Rulers 300 years later knew by then the strategy of the slave revolt, destroy through mass martyrdom because loss of slaves = loss of Power via Income, historical fact],
so my point is, to Deconstruct and Deprogram the engineering of slavery/totalitarianist cults over women/citizens,
see the similarities of methods used. Weber's 13 varieties of fascism would be good start...the Danger in this however,
is that well at least what I am finding, the more you deconstruct, the more you have to begin to Question the entire religion itself--which, shaky foundation there,
but I found, that critically looking at Man's doctrines/writing of what HE perceived to be God,
is not full truth. Heretical, yes, but maybe far more Spiritual, and well, the scary thing is,
tends to lean more towards Self Accountability, having to learn to hear God's voice [or Spirit] in one's own self, which leads me to this,
con't the strength of the mass cults today, Is that, we have So many beliefs/doctrines that we've been indoctrinated to rely upon for Security [including secular] that listening to them all is Confusion, loss of security, humans want security,
ReplyDeletealas, here comes the ones Promising that security, the wolves. The hyenas, the lions, the wild dogs, and numerous other pack animals, religious, secular, ideological,
in the deserts, in the fields, in the mountains...all over the place. Those with the more apt to control/hem in, the more popular they seem to be, it's Security after all, the sheep not much better, why they all in the end are Eaten,
question is, eaten by Whom?
[solitary not much better, the vultures await them, hawks, etc]
Goats, they just tend to stand isolated on tall rocks, consuming all in sight, kicking one another off the rocks, etc., while the Sheep are scattered,
where's the Shepherd, the True Shepherd? How do we know, with thousands of Shepherd's out there???????
What a Mess! And the ONE thing that they all can agree on, that we hear, to Defy the rule of the Lord, any kind of Lord [from de Bible or as some say, Buy-Bull, kind of wondering about that one],
is to be Satan, to be disobedient, HOW convenient for all those Lords [landlords, robber barons, gold hunters/miners, slave and genocidal Explorers for Queen Isabella types butchering tribes that, oh my gosh, lived in harmony with the Great Spirit and only took what they needed, like Sheep, in pastures, etc., the Empire of Rome, ah huh,] all those Lords and Legions out there!
Yet, Noah, walked with God... in a world that full of violence, giants and Nephalim [taking women as wives it says to create giants that Consume], and what do we Know about Noah,
God says, the animals will come to you, put on a boat, here's how to make the boat, and Noah heard and did,
Noah, alone, hanging with the animals, nature,
kind of like, those Natives did back in the day, prior to the onslaught of Rome, via Catholics and Protestants, who raped the land for Iron [railroad], Steel [ships/cars], Gold [for de temples of stinking wealth and pedophilia to boot], and Black Gold [oil],
like the days of Noah Jesus said, world full of violence and like Isaiah, numerous Shepherds and the sheep are scattered, children sacrificed for Molech, passed through the fire, loving works of hands on mass freights across the seas, with cruise ships to boot [trafficking sex slavery IS funded by Tourism], loving idols, of wood, brass, copper, silver, gold, glass, etc.,
Noah, walked alone with God, the animals will come to you [Indians call them animal guides] two by two, put them on a boat,
more fish dead in the Amazon, birds and fish, dead, fifth day of creation, six is man and animals,
Noah, walked alone, John the Baptist in the desert, alone, Elijah, alone,
the widow women [that Jesus referred to], alone in the wilderness and Elijah came,
something is Wrong with all these mass followings, Jesus said, Many false prophets and those coming in My name, in the desert, mountains, fields, do NOT follow them,
to those who have ears, let them hear...Noah, heard God,
and the animals, nature, felt secure with him. Why is that? I'm sure thinking on this, A lot.
Jane
Lewis, I had a thought the other day when I saw a video clip of a well-known patriocentric leader at his daughter's wedding reception. He took the little silver heart she had given to him years ago as a symbol of giving him her real heart and handed it over to the groom right after the marriage ceremony. I remembered reading the account of the "ceremony' when she and her sisters had given their hearts to their daddies and my first thought was that it was odd to me that only AFTER the wedding could a daughter have her heart transferred to the husband. And then I realized the significance of it all. I believe it is more about handing over her virginity than it is handing over her heart. Which left me with this thought....how are the patriocentrists any difference than they world? they seem to be equating love and sex. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Lewis. This is all so conniving, and yet, it seems so convincing for many...
ReplyDeletethatmom, I think this is a great question!? Could they be putting so much emphasis on sex as if it is equal to love?
I remember as a girl (I'm in my early thirties, grown up in a small town, in a Christian family that sent us to public school AND loved Jesus), some folks invited us to go to a Father-Daughter dance and they had some odd tradition of the daughters' giving their dads a contract and some sort of ring. My father refused to go! He was way to macho for that, and he thought the whole thing sounded ridiculous. At the time, I thought my dad wasn't as "good" of a Christian as others around us, but now, I see that God protected me from yet another formula that does NOT liberate Christians, just restricts. The most interesting part of this story? Almost every single one of the girls who attended the party ended up (by their own standards) to be "rebellious" at some point in their teen years. They had formulas, but nothing else! As for myself, I am almost embarrassed to admit that I was pure on my wedding day. I didn't have a formula, I never had long discussions with my parents on this, I could never tell you the passages of scripture on physical purity, and I have no idea if I was emotionally pure because it seems ridiculously ambiguous. BUT I entered marriage as a virgin. Do I have regrets today? Absolutely not! But when asked to speak on purity, I almost always refuse because it always seems to lead directly to lists, rules, and LAW, LAW, LAW!
By the way, you may wonder why I say that I am "almost embarrassed" to have entered marriage as a virgin. The reason I say this is because I do NOT want to be placed into a category, specifically the category that includes these legalistic folks who demand non-biblical things from their daughters!
Fascinating subject, Lewis... It's got me thinking about the purpose of the Law in Scripture (Romans) and how we are no longer under the Law. Why, you foolish Galatians (and patriarch group!) would you return to these former things?! I might have to go write a blogpost!
Thanks again,
Karen
Thank you for writing this.
ReplyDeleteWhat would your answer be to anyone who would want to argue that "My son, give me thine heart", which I think is repeated several times in Proverbs, is about committing your heart to your parents?
Anyway I agree with what someone said.... "keeping your heart" is way more about sex than anything else IMO!! They couldn't even admit to themselves where their minds are.
HisRuthie...I've always taken that phrase as an expression that means "give what I'm saying your full attention" or "heed the wisdom in what I'm saying". Personally, I don't think it's in the same zip code as how the patrios might spin it once context is added.
ReplyDeleteKaren (thatmom)...I think they mix so many ideas together that it can mean whatever they need it to mean to be able to manipulate with it in a given situation. One thing I DO know, though, is that they have little understanding of basic human emotion (my personal favorite part of God's creation), so I think there's a great deal of merit in what you're saying.
Great, great thoughts - all of you guys. Thanks for your comments.
Karen...If you do write that post, please link it over on the Facebook CoM page if you don't mind.
Man, I had some ugly flashbacks when I went and investigated Reformed On-Line further. I knew of Brian Schwertley (sp?) and he mentions Greg Price in his article on courtship. GP used to be my pastor when the Reformed Presbytery in North America was still functioning. Eventually the whole thing imploded due to them continually excommunicating everyone who didn't fall into line on a number of issues. I was excommunicated along with my entire congregation five weeks after my marriage suffered its own implosion. If you want to read a sad history of what the QF/Reformed/Patriocentric movement can reduce a person to, the history of my excommunication is in my blog starting around August or September of 2006. http://www.knoxknoxwhosthere.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteFantastic as always, Lewis. :) Great comments as well. Nothing to add except thanks that there are so many people fighting this. :)
ReplyDelete"Who'd have ever predicted
ReplyDeleteThe moment would come
When I’d find myself grateful
They’ve kept women dumb!"
from "Tomorrow Night" in Yentl sung by Barbara Striensand.
I think of this song every time I hear "Courtship" or "Guarding your heart" or "giving away pieces of your heart". It's all about CONTROL. Nothing else. Keep women DUMB and they CAN believe they are "glorifying" God [and not their Earthly Daddy] by staying home and raising his kids, cleaning his home so his wife can bear even more kids. Keep her dumb so she'll ACCEPT marriage as a "privilege" even when it's only offered with a clone of her father and promises nothing for her except risking her life bearing child after child unto the end of her fertility.
I know many "arranged" marriages are called "happy"--but are they really happy or did the two decide go with tradition and make the best of what they got?
ANOTHER THOUGHT: just about every repressive regime has resorted to forcing or rewarding ("Hero Mothers" etc) the birth of huge families. It keeps people to worn out to think. The Catholic Church, during WWII Hitler & Stalin, the horrible guy in Romania whose name I can't spell and on and on--they all call women to their "duty" of pushing out baby after baby with no thought for how they will grown up.
"When people in Reformed churches marry Arminians..."
ReplyDeleteIn the Reformed circles I grew up in, this was known as "missionary dating." Reformed churches were so dominated by egg-head or wounded-soldier males that there was a severe shortage of women. One church I attended, the ratio of single men to women was 10:1. And the women that WERE there were usually ugly and homely. So, men looked to gain attractive Arminian women with little theological training, so they could train them to be Calvinists. Building the kingdom one hottie at a time. :-)
{Warning: This post contains very blunt and pointed language that may leave Church Ladies everywhere blushing}
So do the comments. ;)
@Steve...I reread these comments this morning for the first time in months, and I gotta tell ya...
ReplyDeleteBuilding the kingdom one hottie at a time. :-)
...cracked me up. Love it. May have to borrow it at some point.