Beware lest anyone captivate you through philosophy and vain deceit, in the tradition of men and the elementary principles of the world, and not after Christ.

—Colossians 2:8

The Christian ethic in the Western world is being slowly displaced by a new trinity: evolution, feminism, and the mind sciences. The influence of these three on the recent generations is seismic in its impact on the view of men. Combined, they have created a secular culture that disrespects men and simultaneously places women on a pedestal. It doesn’t take much to see it daily in the various forms of media. The toll it has taken is devastating, with the Western culture sliding into a character that more resembles Sodom and Gomora than it does the Garden of Eden. Let’s look at each of the three and how they fall into the category of "vain deceit."

Evolution

Evolution is inflated to a construct that is used to destroy the root of Christianity. It is an attempt to rationalize away accountability to the "I Am"—the loving, omnipotent, eternal, and just God. For those who buy into the evolution fantasy, it is used to clear the way for ignoring the objective ethical code of the Bible and to create a subjective set of rules that serve their own purposes.

As it relates to marriage, evolution undermines the biblical historical account of God’s hand in the marriage relationship. It denies the deliberate design in the dynamic between a husband and wife, modeled after the Christ-God and the man-Christ relationships. "But I would have you know that the head of the woman is the man, the head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor. 11:3). Evolution grants a false permission to deny the spiritual, relational, and ethical aspects of a healthy biblically based marriage because it subverts the Genesis historical account.

Evolution created fertile ground for the other secular progressive influences to take root. While the impact of evolution on the presentation of marriage in the pulpit is not as evident and direct, the mind sciences and feminism have had a profound effect. Infiltration of these ideologies into Bible colleges and seminaries has contributed to the overthrow of the biblical marriage ethic in the Western world.

Feminism

While evolution attempts to undermine the legitimacy and authority of God, feminism is the battering ram that is used to bully the masses into a biblically opposed worldview. Feminism is embraced by those who willfully seek opposition to their Creator—to His moral code and to the accountability it brings. Modern feminism disguises its hostile stance against biblical principles as an empathy of protecting women and reserving their place, superior to men. Feminism employs an aggressive agenda that demonizes men. Their evolution-based ideology portrays men as aloof Neanderthals that violently take sex from women and have inferior communication and relational abilities. Their agenda is simply a convenient and dishonest power play. Feminists manipulatively position women as victims while they broad-brush all men with the character of those who are rapists, exploiters, and abusers of women.

Feminism had very quickly shifted from a movement of advocating for women to a movement that stands in hostility toward men and patriarchy. Their early roots in gaining women’s rights to own property, vote, and compete in the workforce are noble, right, and consistent with Christian ethics. Other positive issues had been brought to the forefront of discussion and action. Unfortunately, militant feminists hijacked the noble causes and worked their extreme agenda into academia, seminaries, Bible colleges, our justice systems, corporations, and our churches.

The current feminist agenda is anti-Christian. A true Christian cannot honestly accept modern feminism without denying the biblical precepts that demand women hold their husbands in esteem as head of their marriage. True Christian mothers and fathers cannot honestly embrace modern feminism and look their son or son-in-law in the eyes and accept him.

As if their hostility toward men isn’t bad enough, feminists will play their manipulative strategies and tactics to marginalize and demonize anyone that questions their militant views.

Unfortunately, many pastors today are so duped with the feminist ideology that they are intimidated to bring to their congregations any instruction to women, let alone admonishment. They refuse to hold women to the biblical ethic. They hide behind a distorted view, myopically citing selective verses in Ephesians 5, demanding the husband "sacrifice" himself on the altar of feminism. They dare not balance their sermons with admonishments to the women of their congregation, lest they risk blowback of criticism, shame from their female audience, and risk the flow of tithes from the same.

Of the two primary schools of thought in viewing biblical gender roles, complementarian and egalitarian, egalitarians are more aligned with the feminist agenda. They embrace evangelical feminism in many ways, and the influence is apparent in how they read Scripture dealing with gender roles in the home and the Church—neutralizing the scriptural differentiation between men and women in the context of marriage and the Church.

The feminist agenda has reached so far into modern institutions that women are given a "pass" on accountability to behave like adults. Pastors fail to admonish their female followers to uphold biblical instruction in the way they are to conduct themselves with their husbands. The police and the courts do the same—the woman is permitted to behave in ways that the man cannot. The lack of accountability across these institutions has opened the door for many women to become the antithesis of the biblical woman—they are odious, contentious, and rebellious.

Those with an anti-male/anti-patriarchy view believe that men are inferior to women and either need to be civilized by women, marginalized, or eliminated entirely from the family. With their ideology rooting in evolution, feminists believe men are, by natural selection, violent beings that will take by force what they want. Feminists believe men are inferior to women in their ability to communicate and relate to women. On the other hand, their presumptions about women are equally distorted. Feminism positions women as victims who are unable to bring any form of physical or emotional harm to men. When the woman is in fact guilty of any form of aggression, the man is blamed for provoking her.

Feminism removes accountability from women in the marriage and flips the dynamic of the marriage relationship on its head where it demands the man submit to his wife—to her self-centered, entitlement mindset where rebellion is in her heart and contentiousness becomes her weapon. Feminism is a cancer in the cultural body and has stricken its critical organ—the marriage.

The Mind Sciences

Let me start off by saying that the secular religions of psychiatry and psychology do get some things right. Although their non-Christian worldviews corrupt their understanding of root causes and solutions, their factual observations are useful. Just as some biologists (who, in error, root their origins of man in evolution) can accurately and factually observe and categorize species of birds, those in the mind sciences accurately and factually observe and categorize human behaviors. Therefore, there is no reason to discredit their work in this area. Their observations of increased prevalence of narcissism and borderline personality disorder (BPD) in women are telling. What they call narcissism and BPD are what Christians can break down into sinful behaviors that have at their root spiritual matters of the heart.

The mind sciences embrace feminism and incorporate its presumptions about men into its ideology. They accept the idea that men are inferior to women in matters of relationships and communications, especially in terms of empathy, intimacy, and self-expression.

It is encouraging to find that some in the mind sciences are finding just the opposite; there are plenty of marriages where it is the woman who lacks empathy, willingness to express intimacy, and is overtly or covertly hostile. These women are clearly displaying behaviors that are antithetical to biblical values and instruction.

Until those in the mind sciences, including Christian counselors, wholeheartedly embrace the Word of God and renounce their beliefs rooted in secular humanism, they will continue to be a hindrance to healthy biblical marital relationships.

The Cultural State

Women's expectations are signaled by the secular culture. As an example, music of the last fifty years has characterized the man in the servile position—crooning and stooping to the woman in hope that she will dole out approbation. Listen to the popular music and how men sing of women—the knight in shining armor syndrome, the Cinderella syndrome—projecting a woman who expects a man to deliver emotional or material tokens before she responds. It is exactly the opposite of the "help meet" and "aide" she is to assume in relation to him. It signals the woman to expect a transactional relationship: I will do this, if he does that. No such thing is found in the biblical marriage relationship.

Secular culture relegates the husband in the wife’s mind. He becomes second to, well, you name it—her children, her friends, even television. Sadly, in too many cases, he simply becomes a means to a lifestyle.

In contrast, Scripture provides another fine example of the place in her heart that a woman should have for her husband. "Then said Elkanah her husband to her, ‘Hannah, why are you weeping? And why do you not eat? Why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?’" (1 Sam. 1:8).

Elkanah comforts Hannah with what she should already know—her husband is number one in her life and that her focus, eventually, needs to come back to him. I can hear many today saying, "Yeah, right. What kind of thing is that to say to a hurting woman who has just realized she is unable to have children? What an insensitive oaf!" No, Elkanah’s comment to Hannah highlights the disposition that Hannah should hold in her heart. Yes, she may be distraught in the short-term, but her hope and value needs to be in her husband. And so it should be with wives today. Their love for their husbands should be so deep that he becomes her anchor, her default this side of heaven. A loving wife will make her husband, in her mind and heart, her most valued in all circumstances.

He Needs to Earn My Respect

"The man must earn his wife’s respect" is a sentiment that prevails today in and out of Christian circles. How many women boastfully state that their husband must earn her respect? How many hold some arbitrary standard that their husband needs to meet before they "respect" him? What is the hurdle of respect that they expect the man to meet? The concept is a fabrication of our modern culture.

The idea of men needing to earn their wives’ respect is a secular concept that is a token substitute for proper biblical instruction to wives.

There are a couple of repercussions in this false belief. It places the man in a position of submitting to his wife’s mutable emotional state. It is not based on any biblical standard, and it leaves the wife as the sole arbiter. There is no biblical basis for the claim that the man must earn the woman’s respect. There is no biblical basis (explicit or implicit) for making such a claim, let alone operating in a relationship under it. She is to submit in everything.

There is Scripture that speaks to respect in the marriage. Proverbs 31 clearly speaks to the properties of a virtuous wife and her effect on the husband and children. The cause-effect is made clear: "Who can find a virtuous woman? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts in her, so that he will have no lack of gain. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.…She opens her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the teaching of kindness. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her" (Prov. 31:10–12, 26–28).

The woman of Proverbs 31 gives cause for her husband (and children) to praise her and to have trust in her. Trust and praise are outgrowths of respect. Proverbs 31 makes it clear that the woman earns her husband’s trust and praise.

Am I saying that the Christian man has license to be disrespectful? Of course not. Most Christian men with loving wives will want to please them and act appropriately. According to 1 Peter 3:7, men are to honor their wives. The Greek word is timḗ (tee-may') and it means to "esteem."²⁷

The point is that the concept of men having to earn their wife’s respect is a fabricated red herring that changes the biblical dynamic of the marriage. It is a standard that is secularly derived with no biblical basis. Women have no biblical reason to expect their husbands to "earn" their respect; and they certainly have no place to withhold any relational capital that is contingent on some arbitrary hurdle where the man must prove himself. This type of teaching opens a man up to be a doormat for his wife’s emotional swings and volatility. It places him in a futile position that emasculates his biblical role in the relationship.

Lack of Accountability

Some Christian women who are aware of the man's requirement to "be not bitter" take advantage of his requirement. She also knows the family courts have an extreme bias for women and often disregard her part in the failed marriage, whether it is her outright emotional abuse or whether she shirks the vows she made to have a heartfelt love for her husband.

Look where women get their cues—where they spend their time and attention: television, work, school. Adults aged 35–49 watch more than 33 hours of television a week.²⁸ TV time increases the older we get. The average American watches more than five hours of live television every day. Given the time in front of liberal academia and the steady diet of cultural garbage on television, it is no wonder women have self-centered expectations of men, if they don’t outright hate them.

With the convergence of this self-centered man-hating signaling in our culture, the absence of accurate teaching of forgiveness, the lack of admonishment of the woman’s position and obligation to God and her husband, and the institutional bias in family courts, laws, and policies, women have no reason to hold themselves accountable in the marriage. Whether it is in how she talks to and treats her husband or in bringing false accusations upon him, she knows that all the above institutions will favor her. Only those women with a strong moral compass will conduct themselves in an accountable and respectable manner.

Of all the institutions, the Church should stand apart in holding women accountable, but our church leaders abandoned their guard.

A Curious Secular Phenomenon

It is interesting to see the secular phenomenon of a minority of men pushing back on the very things that are destroying marriages and families—feminism and gynocentrism. The essence of this phenomenon is a natural response to an unnatural order. God’s laws are written on our hearts. We carry with us the image of God. There are some believers (both men and women) who are calling out these destructive forces.

Even nonbelievers have God’s laws written on their hearts. There are nonbelievers who are pushing back on feminism and gynocentrism. They don’t know it, but they are responding to the perversion of the biblical construct of the male/female relationship in marriage. They embrace Men’s Rights Movement, Men’s Rights Activists, Men Going Their Own Way, and other views that are secular responses to the anti-male, anti-patriarchal culture. They recognize it from outside the Christian worldview and assigned their own lexicon and reasoning to make sense of it, oftentimes inconsistent with the Christian ethic. Just as secular scientists see creation and fail to attribute it to God, so non-Christians are recognizing that something is awry with women’s hearts and attitudes toward men, but they miss the true underlying "physics" as to why and what should be an appropriate response.

Continue to Chapter 7