It seems that the US women’s soccer team has been making a big stink about the wage gap because they make less the men’s team–as though men’s soccer doesn’t generate an order of magnitude more revenue than women’s. As I’ve written before, the wage gap is essentially a rhetorical sham employed by covetous women as they demand equal pay for unequal work. This instance is no different.
Nevertheless, something has been nagging me as I watch conservatives pointing out the obvious fact that women can’t physically compete with men in sports like soccer. The disparity is so wide that these very women–some of the best female players in the world–were beaten by a team of 15-year-old men down in Texas not that long ago. And as some have suggested, if they really want equality, the men and women should compete against each other for spots on the same teams in the same leagues. That would show ’em.
But would it really?
Everyone apart from a handful of Kool-Aid drinkers already knows that women aren’t the physical equals of men. Ignorance can be remedied by presenting the facts and stubborn ignorance by rubbing their noses in those facts, but we’re dealing with something far worse than mere ignorance. We’re dealing with a fanatical devotion to the broken notion of equality–a faith so blind and a pride so recalcitrant that it actively denies reality whenever it challenges the ideology.
Whenever fanatical equalitarians place men and women into the same physical challenge, they always re-engineer that challenge until there’s a tiny straw of that denial to grasp onto. The “advancement” of women into the military provides a pretty good illustration of this dynamic. Women coveted the honor of soldiers and so demanded that vocation as their own. Of course, that vocation came with some substantial physical requirements–requirements that almost no women could meet. But at every step they take, they simply lower the requirements while claiming they aren’t until more women can meet them. When the natural consequences ensue, they are obfuscated. Now, you have representatives of what was once the greatest military in the world saying that diversity is going to help them win wars. What is integrating soccer going to prove when we’re already adept at ignoring matters of life and death for the sake of blind faith in equality?
I’m not raising this question to tempt us to despair in the face of feminism, but rather to suggest a change, or at least broadening of tactics. To be clear, I’m not saying that we should stop placarding the truth, just that doing so is insufficient. These people are not ignorant–they are fundamentally broken by their own sinful pride. Sinful pride requires a different remedy than what is demanded by ignorance. Or more precisely, it requires two remedies–one for each of the Two Kingdoms.
The sin of pride cannot be healed apart from the repentance which the Holy Spirit works through the proclamation of God’s Word. So in the right-hand kingdom–the Church–the solution is simple: faithfully proclaim God’s Word and administer the Sacraments according to our vocations.
Now, lest anyone take that to mean “just keep doing what you’re doing,” let me put the same thing another way: We need to stop withholding God’s Word from our congregations. The Bible is by no means compatible with feminism. If most Christians think otherwise, then our preaching and teaching have probably been skipping the parts we hate or treating them with skepticism. Too many have also shied away from mentioning all the blood and especially the broken families left in its wake–or at least failing to note their obvious connection with the feminist ideology in which they spawned.
When such teaching is redacted, its likely that the institutional organization of the congregation has also been submitting itself more to worldly standards than to God’s Word. Odds are good that they’ve already been dissolving gender differences in its various roles for awhile. Our churches need to stop starving Christians of the parts of the Bible which impale our sacred cow of equality.
But that’s only one of the two remedies. The one that remains is not for healing, but merely for civilization in a fallen world–the overt restraint of sin so that the harm it does to others is limited. I’ve already mentioned some of that harm, though by no means all of it–much of the sexual deviancy in our society grows from the same foundations, as does the assault on religious freedom. Make no mistake, eventually, God will take a providential hand, as He always does, and lay down the mighty. There is all manner of trial and tribulation which fall upon such peoples which break their pride.
But that is for God to decide–not us. Our task in the left-hand kingdom is to build and maintain civilization. But what can restrain the kind of wickedness that surrounds us? I’d be lying if I said I had a definitive answer to that question, but my thoughts are continually drawn back to the revival of shame.
If there is one thing the prideful cannot stand, it is shame and scorn. There’s a reason that equalitarians tend to place such a premium on sensitivity. There’s a reason they require safe spaces and trigger warnings. There’s a reason they try to exile everyone with a different view from civil society. There’s a reason they focus so hard on thought-crime (the various -ism’s and -phobia’s) above all else. They cannot psychologically cope with the knowledge that decent, respectable people hold them in contempt–even in their thoughts.
If part of the answer lies there, then that leaves us with at least two tasks. First, we should gather our courage and be open about our disdain for the lies and nonsense that surround us. I do not mean to become busybodies and interject our views at every opportunity. I do mean to unapologetically state our views and refuse to affirm others in their idolatry and wickedness when these errors confront us. Will they call us sexist? Sure, but why should that bother us? We need to learn to shrug off the epithets we’ve been raised to fear and submit ourselves to God’s judgement rather than man’s. Will our boldness cause conflict with the world? Sure, but Christ already promised us that. We have no business being conflict-avoidant in this respect.
Second, we need to support and respect one-another instead of throwing each other to the wolves when the world attacks. One of the ways the prideful try to escape the contempt of respectable people is to paint the respectable as outcasts. Oh, that’s just one of those retrograde fundamentalists; who cares what they say? Well, the reality is that the target of their contempt clearly cares, or they wouldn’t be trying so hard to escape it. Unfortunately, too many of us are afraid to love one another lest we also be seen as one of “those” Christians. We take every excuse to withhold support when we should instead be affirming our outspoken brothers and sisters–for their sake as well as to civilize by making it harder for the prideful to evade their shame.
We’re all sinners, therefore there will always be some basis for finding fault in one another. And we should by no means cease to approach one another privately about such things as Jesus taught us. Nevertheless, we ought not pillory one another in public over subjective peccadilloes like being insufficiently sensitive. Those who do this are looking more to their own worldly reputations than to justice.
Try as you might, you cannot convince people of what they already know. You can, however, tear down their idols, treat their lies as shameful, and treat their degeneracy as disgusting. Their desperation to annihilate such scorn is indicative of its effectiveness.
