It is silently ravaging our souls...

(HT: Z)

Mr Big Man and Ms 75-cent and our need for the Gospel

Why are subtle (and not so subtle) revelations of the female form so powerful? Why are they such an enticement to men? And what beckons a woman to reveal?

It's summer in Fort Collins and I'm asking myself these questions. There is a ritual in these months nearly as obvious as the dance of the whooping crane or the crested grebe. What isn't obvious is the motivation of this ritual... because it is deeper than animal instinct.

I prayed about this on a run last week. The trail seemed to be the hot spot for "the ritual" that day and my prayer was simple.

"Lord, what is going on in all this revealing and noticing?"

About a half mile later, things began to clarify. If the beauty of the feminine form is like a Mack truck in its effect on the male soul, the communication behind revealing it is like a freight train. The dude who lingers in his glance at the beautiful lady covered by 75 cents of material is receiving more than aesthetic satisfaction. He is hearing more than he is seeing. He is hearing something like "Hey Mr. Big Man, I'm interested in YOU and so I wore this today for YOU." Mr. Big (Drooly) Man is receiving a specific invitation that affirms him and that affirmation is like crack to the masculine soul. But all this affirmation is predicated on a specific communication. It means much less (and maybe nothing) if he isn't being specifically addressed in this non-verbal exchange.

Now, men, listen to me, Ms. 75-cent isn't communicating anything to you. In fairness, she may be looking to be noticed, but not by you. She doesn't know you. She is looking to turn heads not a head. Her call is a general one and you have received it specifically. Your hunger for affirmation will not be addressed here in this fantasy. As a matter of fact, if she was interested in you alone and you were to actually relate to one another, eventually she would discover your weaknesses and not affirm you in the way you desire (you know, in that "affirm-me-like-a-real-man-without-me-having-to-really-sacrifice-like-a-real-man" kind of way). You're not going to find it there. In actuality, a strong man would not reinforce her pattern of seeking to be infinitely delighted in by finite Mr Drooly men.

At this point if would be easy to go all moral and stuff but it would completely miss the point. To simply say "stop looking at her and wipe the drool off your face" to the men and "put this burqa on" to the ladies would be no help at all.

Dudes, you need an identity that transcends the ladies and what they think of you. You need real, not imaginary, propped-up, strength. And that comes not from your bench press, board room, impossible cool or lovely lady. Study what it means to be freely justified (Romans 3:23) and to be strong because the word of God lives in you (1 John 2:14). Satisfy your need for affirmation in the finished work of Christ and you'll stop reinforcing her pursuit of being cherished for what she doesn't wear. And you'll be less lame as a bonus.

Ladies, you are noticed if you are in Christ. You have the eternal affection and adoration of one whose opinion is the only one that matters.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; (Isaiah 49.15–16)

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, (Isaiah 61.10)

as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62.5)

Consider those engraved hands until your need to turn heads has been adsorbed by the turned head of your un-forgetting Savior (Ephesians 3:17-19).

This summer ritual of revealing and noticing only truly reveals our need for the Gospel. We need something beyond ourselves; something we can't achieve and others cannot give. The Bible calls it justification or righteousness and basically it is the notion that you have been given something far more important and lasting than all the ritual Cancun could provide - you have, in Christ, the eternal admiration and affection of God.


Additional Resources
What Biblical Femininity is Not
"The Weight of Glory" by C.S. Lewis

Fallen Right Down to Our Gender (video)

From the Rock's Noonies (a lunch-hour campus bible study at CSU), some thoughts on the fall and gender from Genesis 3. This is the second message in a series so, if you need some context, you can listen to the audio of the first message here.

Additional Resources
What Biblical Femininity is Not
Cheating the Thief - Week 1

Sally Jenkins (Washington Post) on Tim Tebow

(HT: Josh Harris)

Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins writes about the controversial pro-life commercial Tim Tebow helped make for the Super Bowl:

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

Read the full article

What Biblical Femininity Is Not

Studying Genesis 3 has revolutionized my understanding of my sin and need for the Gospel... as a man. There is much to learn in contrasting Adam's passivity with Christ's joy-seeking sacrifice. The vocabulary built on that contrast has been a basis for men at Summitview to challenge and encourage one another in biblical masculinity.

This message was developed as an effort to build a similar, useful vocabulary for the women at Summitview.

Some summary points:

• Biblical femininity does not easily give up on the goodness of God.
• Biblical femininity lives by hearing and not by seeing.
• Biblical femininity does not find security in self-exultation.
• Biblical femininity does not subject God’s wisdom to another standard.
• Biblical femininity does not violate God’s word in an effort to provide security.
• Biblical femininity does not find supreme delight in created things.
• Biblical femininity does not lean on its own understanding.
• Biblical femininity does not wastefully cover its shame.
• Biblical femininity does not find its final security in men.

Acknowledging it might be difficult for ladies to take my word on the benefits of this message, here are few endorsements:

"God definitely had something for me in the "What Biblical Femininity is Not" message. I'm now seeing my flesh and my need for Jesus so much more clearly. Somewhere along the way I stopped seeing my continued need for the gospel-the fact that Jesus is my righteousness and that I can lose nor gain anything that matters for eternity because of my justification in Chirst. I sense God transforming my motivations and beliefs from the core as result of the truth I received, now that's good stuff!" -Sandy Stoltzfus

"This talk opened my heart to the freedom of being who God has called me, and me alone, to be and gave me a clear recognition that Satan has been successfully destroying my view of God! I am thankful to be daily choosing freedom from the bonds of constant comparison and concern whether my life is measuring up against other women's. I am striving to wash myself in the precious blood of Jesus, allowing him change my heart as I rest in Jesus' power to turn my scarlet sins into glistening, sparkly in the moonlight, freshly fallen snow (Isaiah 1:18). There has been peace in my life spurred on by peeling away fig leaves of my own accomplishments, pride & self-righteousness as I am clinging to my Savior, exposed and naked, allowing Jesus, and Jesus ALONE, to adorn me with garments of salvation, the robe of righteousness, and the beauty of wedding clothes and jewels (Isaiah 61:10)." -Samantha Alvarado

"Speaking about femininity these days seems a broad and inevitably sensitive subject, and all the more so in church. Mitch didn't mess around when he jumped right in and pointed the Word directly at the root of our greatest trial and temptation as women. We distrust God, which opens the door to fear, which compels us to grasp for security in either self-exultation or idolatry (the worship of created things rather than the Creator). I was encouraged and challenged to remember that Biblical beauty and true femininity is found in not easily giving up on the goodness of God and who He says He is." - Amber Constant

Additional Resources
Ladies beware, there are many gospels...this one is false
Discussion Questions
Message Outline

Ladies beware, there are many gospels... This one is false

"If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3.1-4)

Your value [your righteousness] was given to you by Christ. He bought it with his blood. If you have trusted Him, nothing can add or subtract a thing from this perfect standing. Let that thrill you freshly today. Many "gospels" are competing for your attention (Galatians 1:6)

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17.3)

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. (Revelation 2.4-5)

Additional Resources

"very urgent and practical" and worth repeating

deserting him who called you

"Real Women Are Bad Porn" - Carolyn McCulley

What affect does porn really have on men and their relationships? The common responses range from an unhealthy male sex drive to violence to encouraging promiscuity in women as a key to finding men but there is more.

From Carolyn McCulley's book "Radical Womanhood":

Some argue that today's raunch culture is a reaction to the omnipresence of pornography. In order to get and keep a man's attention, women feel the that they have to act and look just like porn stars. According to a New York magazine article, on Manhattan-based sex therapist says she's seen many young men coming in to chat about Internet-related porn issues. "It's so accessible, and now, with things like streaming video and Webcams, guys are getting sucked into a compulsive behavior," she says. "What's most regrettable is that it can really affect relationships with women. I've seen some young men lately who can't get aroused with women but have no problem interacting on the Internet. I think a big danger is that young men who are constantly exposed to these fake, always-willing women start to have unreal expectations from real women, which makes them phobic about relationships."

Feminist writer Naomi Wolf agrees. "The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it," Wolf writes. "Today, real naked women are just bad porn."

Twenty years down the line from the "porn wars" of second-wave feminism, Wolf notes that part of what was forecasted then has come true now - and part was wrong. In an article titled "The Porn Myth," Wolf writes of running into antiporn feminist [Andrea] Dworkin at a benefit which caused her to reflect on what Dworkin had one prognosticated.

If we did not limit pornography, she argued-before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility - most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would follow...

She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training - and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.

But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as "porn-worthy." Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention."

Additional Resources:

Porn-Again Christian - a frank discussion on pornography by Mark Driscoll, download it free here.

Carolyn McCulley's Blog