Psalmist

Wow…talk about showing what one is really made of!  Matt Slick has been given over to his error and he’s glorying in it.  He’s guilty of everything he claims you are, Cheryl.  Meanwhile, you’ve maintained impeccable Christian propriety and extending to Matt the respect and courtesy that every Christian ought to show, but which Matt refuses to give you.
He’s showing one of the huge flaws in patriarchalist thinking in his very words.  Thank you for posting them, so that we can be aware of his vitriol and his illogical, emotional rants against what you’ve so soundly shown us the Scriptures say.
Keep up the good work.

Cheryl, you should be aware that Donna has made some serious(ly false) charges against you at her blog. Not that she has an apparently wide readership, but she feels free to name you by name, probably because her comments are disabled and she knows her lies can’t stand the light of day.

That is, sadly, how Donna operates. She shows her position to be based on ad hominem attacks, rather than anything even resembling truth. She can’t/won’t deal in a mature manner with being refuted. She retreats to “safe” dark little corners and posts wild, accusatory comments with no heed toward biblical proscriptions against such terrible behavior.

It’s obvious that you’re no heretic, and that Donna is highly unqualified to judge you even if you were one. I simply thought it was right to make you aware of her dirty tactics.

Donna said:

“So, what I have suggested to myself and to others is to stay in your communities and discuss these things of common interest.”

That is wonderful, if what one values most is being agreed with and not having to substantiate what one asserts. If one actually wants a conversation, however–at least, one that is more than mutual congratulations and agreement–one must risk being disagreed with. Disagreement is not evil. Lashing out with insults and false accusations when one is disagreed with, however, most definitely falls short of the standards of decent Christian discourse.

“So, just FYI. The experiments at trying to dialogue are failures – total and utter failures.”

Only if one failed in one’s personal agenda and projects that failure as everyone else’s failure. There is a wealth of things that COULD be learned from the attempt, if one is willing to learn them.

If you are determined to take offense at others daring to read what you write, perhaps the motivation in writing could be examined a bit. People don’t generally write in order to be ignored, especially by those they’re targeting with their writing.

Cheryl, thank you for taking the trouble to edit posts when they need to be edited. Not all blogging platforms have that feature, but it’s nice when a blog owner who does have it, uses it when commenters can’t be bothered to be civil in their communications.

Reading Donna’s latest blog post might show you how she’s twisted and invented many things in her mission to discredit biblical equality and we who practice it.

http://dlpartida.blogspot.com/2008/02/key-points-in-feminist-gospel.html

You’re the one who, on Lynn’s blog, made the false claim that egalitarians aren’t interested in mutual submission, but are about female empowerment. You’ve been shown a number of times that this is false, that in fact, egalitarians DO practice mutual submission precisely because the Holy Spirit empowers BOTH husband AND wife to do so.

So far, you’re the ONLY one who is twisting submission into “empowerment.” God empowers us to serve one another. That is, if we LET God empower us for service.

Will you let yourself be convinced of the truth, or will you persist in this tangent of misinformation you’ve been spreading?

Thank you, Lynn, for this documentary trip down memory lane. I sometimes wonder how those “they’re making up abuse to get sympathy” folks will face the very real people who have suffered terrible abuse at the hands of “patriarchs.” Patriarchy certainly does not mandate or inevitably result in physical or sexual abuse. It does, far too often, provide abusive men with a religious shield for their sin. It wrongly puts unilateral power in their hands and misuses the name of God to do it.

Just once, I’d like to see an INTELLIGENT argument from patriarchalists that shows ANY harm that can come from a couple practicing biblical submission to each other.

Oh, we’re not supposed to go to “places we don’t like” if we don’t like them.

Translation: How dare we go read what Donna and her friends have said elsewhere in order to properly understand what she means when she maligns people.

Posted at the CCC-Forum, 2/26/08, 7:55 p.m., by Donna L. Carlaw:

“Kamilla, have you noticed that egalitarians respond to anything? All they do is react and act up. I think that they have burned out their critical-thinking skills. Egalitarian thinking is sort of like an intellectual mad cow disease, isn’t it?”

It’s no wonder that several there are touting Ann Coulter’s “Godless” as a good book. Talk about queens…

And you’re correct, Cheryl, that there are plenty of complementarians who try to interact with others as they would wish to be interacted with. I don’t agree with them on various points, nor they with me, but they’re a joy to converse with. A basic grasp of the difference between truth and falsehood in communication is necessary. Thankfully, most Christians can and do have a firm grasp of this skill. 🙂

I’ve been reading what Donna says on a number of different blog and forum venues for quite a few years now. It never fails that once she has pulled a stunt, she falsely accuses those who object to it of doing the exact thing she’s done. It’s predictable.

Yes, you’ve been more than patient, Cheryl.

Donna has a lot of nerve making the accusations she has here, against you, when she deliberately misquotes other people, then yanks or drastically edits her own blog entries in order to falsely accuse them and smear them based on her lies. She’s proud to let such untruths stand; she ignores requests that she retract the lies. Yet YOU’RE gossiping?

Choice. Really choice.

(Did you know that she appears unable to tell the difference between a quote from you, Cheryl, and one from me? Let’s see…there’s ONE letter–L–in common between our names. I don’t think that’s an excuse for the confusion.) 😉

What do you think, Donna, about a Christian sister who refers in her own blog to two different conversations on two separate blogs somewhere else, using two different people’s quotes to smear a third, by claiming falsely that the third person actually said those things, and twisting what the quotes actually said into something that no one in either conversation actually said? What do you think about never dealing with the falsehood, and insisting that the third party just forget about it in the interest of “peace”?

Is that not gossip? Or does it just depend on how intimately close to the blogger in question you are? Do you think it’s OK to lie about other people if they’ve “hurt” you (by holding you responsible for previous untruths)?

Lin, it depends who you talk to (kind of like patriarchy in general); the definitions are all over the map.

Grudem has claimed to like the Colorado Statement. It has more to do with bible translation (it’s a club he used to wrongly beat up the TNIV), but I believe it has something to say about inerrancy. I would think that Grudem ought to be very clear how HE defines inerrancy, given his rather novel re-definitions of so many other things. Perhaps he does define it. I didn’t waste money to buy a copy of it, so I can’t look it up right now. (Excerpts showed me he was just making it up as he went along, as I WAS familiar with the work he supposedly refutes in his ponderous tome).

Light, I’m glad that made sense to you. It just gets clearer and clearer, the more I read patriarchalists’ objections to mutual submission and fully shared ministry in the church. It’s ALL about worldly power to them! Some think, and perhaps a few pretend, that their system is godly, but it’s the antithesis of what we find consistently throughout the Scriptures.

How can anyone who would keep women powerless and subordinate to men, claim to be following the Christ “who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…”?

When will they understand that if they’re full of worldly power, there is no room for the Holy Spirit to give them true godly power? We all must choose between God’s way and the ways of this world. It’s no surprise to me that some of the most highly patriarchal churches are also some of the coldest, dead churches you could ever find. God has been crowded out and the idol of male-only “authority” threatens to take over. It’s an intoxicating thing, to have all that kind of power over other people. No one’s telling pastors of those churches how spiritually bankrupt they are…or at least, no one they’ll listen to. God has a great deal to say about in in Scripture, but without the Holy Spirit being permitted to teach them, they may never learn it until eternity.

Cheryl, I think the advice was proved sound when you got the response you did.

When someone contacts you uninvited, at the hostile urging of a third party, and claims to want to instruct you, it simply must be done in public or not at all. No mature, healthy Christian would object to saying in the presence of witnesses what they intend to say in private. Your “instructor” knows you made perfectly sound, reasonable statements at the Bayly blog. There was no reason for you to be “instructed,” and she knew it. She merely has a big axe to grind against her declared enemies, those who believe in and practice biblical equality. You were right to invite her to say her piece in public, and it says volumes about her that she was offended by the public venue.

IMO, you could not have handled it any better.

Corrie, I think it’s pretty obvious. Accept that EZER refers to help given from a position of strength, and strength can’t be one of the “masculine attributes” in a world where “masculine” and “feminine” are opposites. And that’s what the world of patriarchy revolves around. There’s not very much celebration of men’s and women’s shared humanity, and their differences as male and female are elevated to an absurd level, in some instances even to the point of idolatry, if one takes the writings at face value.

So if WOMAN can be strong, then that automatically weakens MAN, in that world view. MAN can’t be anything that WOMAN is. So it’s a whole lot easier to change the meaning of the Holy Scriptures than it is to change a hardened heart and a made-up mind.

Or maybe it’s fear of the idea that woman can be strong FOR THE MAN, rather than him being the he-man protector of the universe. NOBODY’s stronger than the man! Sadly, sometimes, God is even weakened to keep that “true.”

Donna,

Based on your false accusation against me on your blog, I invite you to return to comment #100 here and see who said what, to whom.

Unbelievable. At least you could bother to quote, accurately, if you’re going to accuse someone.

You’re in my prayers, Cheryl.

Cheryl, here’s my take on why strong women play chorus to the Baylys.

They’re all hierarchalists. If the women at least appear to be submissive to the top dogs–and really, to whom are the Baylys accountable? No one but God, and they speak for God, so…–then they can create their own pecking order, of course with the alleged heretics who disagree with the Baylys’ would-be imposition of patriarchy under the guise of godliness at the very bottom of the heap. They more they echo the prevailing voice of the masters of the venue, the higher their status among the mere women on the venue.

Though I caught wind of a bit of trouble in that pseudo-paradise in this regard. Apparently it’s not always so congenial for all the strong female proponents of female subjugation.

It would help if I spelled that correctly:

Masculoidolatry

I nearly answered that last question, Paula, but it wouldn’t have been fair to the existing religion I would have named. In truth, it would be one never seen before except in the self-worshiping world: Masculoidoaltry.

If Mr. Duncan is actually serious about this:

“. . . ministry must carry the different distinctions between equal persons of the Trinity.”

And he makes it all about the “doctrine of Christ,” my question is, where is the Holy Spirit in all this? I can see how, when it suits them, advocates of patriarchy tell men that God the Father is their analog and an eternally subordinate Christ is the woman’s analog. But if we are going to properly reflect ALL THREE of the equal persons of the Trinity in their supposed “different distinctions,” where’s the Holy Spirit?

Nowhere, that I can tell, in patriarchal “doctrine.” Maybe because a human marriage relationship of two-in-one doesn’t make for a very good analog of the divine Three-in-one in the first place, and eternal subordinationism is rightly considered a heretical doctrine that has long since been proved antithetical to orthodox Trinitarian doctrine. Funny how the husband has to be the authority as Christ is the authority when it comes to marriage, but then somehow still the WIFE is supposed to be like the eternally subordinated Christ.

Am I the only one who sees a certain cognitive dissonance in the hodgepodge that is pro-patriarchy “doctrine”?

Suzanne, that’s an excellent point. It appears that when it works in favor of the premise that woman is subordinate to man, it’s just fine to tell the man to presume to the place of Christ, as in be an “authority over” his wife because Christ is the Authority over the church. But then, when it suits their purpose, they claim that Christ the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father, and so THEN women must be the analogs of Jesus.

It simply never made sense to me that they’d be so foolish as to bring the Trinity into it in the first place. A relationship so fundamentally based on a divine Three-in-one isn’t going to work on any level as an analog for a human two-in-one relationship.

When objections to this kind of nonsense get raised, however, the response seems to be, “It just IS, that’s why. No further dissent allowed.”