Complementarian Christians Do Not Think Women are of Equal Worth to Men – Case 2 – Christian Men Mocking the “Me Too” Sexual Assault and Harassment Twitter Tag and Bob Who Detracts (Part 1.3)

Complementarian Christians Do Not Think Women are of Equal Worth to Men – Case 2 – Christian Men Mocking the “Me Too” Sexual Assault and Harassment Twitter Tag and Bob Who Detracts (Part 1.3)

Part 1 | Part 2 | (Part 3)

Regarding the Tweets by a person named Bob‏ (Twitter handle: @JustBobThx) to Dee.

You can view several Tweets that Bob sent to Dee under Dee’s first Tweet (Link): here. I will be referring to those tweets through the remainder of the post.

In the midst of conservative, complementarian Christian men, such as (Link): Tim the Bible Thumping Wing Nut (his screen name) and Fred Butler mocking women sexual harassment and sexual abuse victims by way of the Twitter hash tag “Me Too,” and and (Link): Ricky Masuer  defending said aforementioned mockers, Bob jumped in to dress down Dee, who was responding to the sexist tweets.

Here is a text copy of one of his tweets:

Replying to @wartwatch (“wartwatch” is Dee) @JeffTheGK (JeffTheGK has been on Dee’s side in this debate)

Bob said:

Is that so. Here’s [he includes screen captures of other people’s tweets] 1 of ur many pro- LGBT buddies in ur “we stand against abuse” club. Waiting 4 ur outrage. Better get writing a blog 2 warn ppl. This is degrading, disgusting, & vile. Ur CONSTANTLY telling GOBC 2 call out their own-so go ahead & do it urself. @Biblethumpingwi ///

Bob is quite simply trying to change the subject.

(Bob later gripes and complains about gender egalitarian Jory Michah and rants about abortion).

The issue that initiated all this dialog was (Link): Tim (aka “Bible Thumping Wing Nut”) ridiculing the sexual harassment or sexual assault of women via the “Me Too” twitter tag.

The subject was not about LGBT topics or Christian gender egalitarian Jory Michah.

Bob, because he is sexist but probably thinks he’s NOT sexist, needs to read my (Link): Post 2 about Rick Mauser, as well, at least the portions of that post under the headings of

• BIBLICAL PATRIARCHY
• CHRISTIANS SEXUALIZE GIRLS AND WOMEN, NOT JUST SECULAR CULTURE
• SEXISM EXAMPLES
• SEXISM IN THE FORM OF UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

My Views

I have been a conservative over the duration of my life.

I have been pro-life on abortion, and I always voted Republican (though I am no longer Republican. In the last few years, I have come to realize that the Republican Party is either similar to the Democratic Party in some ways, or it has its own set of flaws).

As far as LGBT issues are concerned: I believe the Bible says that homosexual behavior is sinful, but, I’m rather “libertarian” on the topic – if two adults of the same gender want to get it on, it’s not hurting me, so I do not care what they do.

However, I do not generally support liberal, social justice warriors who want to do things such as sue Christian bakers out of business for refusing to bake wedding cakes for homosexual weddings. (I am open to being persuaded otherwise on this topic.)

I do not support things such as LGBT people bullying porn actress women (Link): who refuse to have sex with homosexual men. Liberals definitely get some things wrong.

I am definitely not a liberal.

BOB’S SEXISM AND “PASTRIX”

Bob is sexist.

Bob uses the sexist derogatory term “Pastrix” (which I believe was coined by sexist radio Christian host Chris Rosebrough) to refer to women pastors, or to women who write blog posts about theology.

(I refer you again to (Link): Bob’s posts in this Twitter thread to see for yourself).

If you want to have a respectful dialog with someone on the subject of whether women should be allowed to be preachers in churches or not, that’s all fine and good, but there is no reason to use sexist, disrespectful terms such as “Pastrix” in the process. 

Former Pastor Says He Lost Faith After Staff Member Beat Spouse, Faithful Mother Lost Baby – and Some Sanctimonious Christians Are Sitting In Judgement Of This Guy

Former Pastor Says He Lost Faith After Staff Member Beat Spouse, Faithful Mother Lost Baby – and Some Sanctimonious Christians Are Sitting In Judgement Of This Guy

I appreciate this pastor’s honesty in why he’s left the Christian faith.

Some excerpts from his story, which I’ll discuss below the excerpts:

(Link): Former Pastor Says He Lost Faith After Staff Member Beat Spouse, Faithful Mother Lost Baby

Excerpts (written by Leonard Blair):

Jim Palmer, a former evangelical pastor who once served in ministry at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago and went on to preach the power of faith to hundreds as lead pastor of his own church in Brentwood, Tennessee, is now the vice president of the Nashville Humanist Association, which promotes humanism and a secular state.

Palmer, 53, (Link): told The Tennessean that his journey away from faith in God was triggered about 20 years ago by two devastating events. He said his faith was shaken when he learned that a church staff member was beating their spouse.

It then suffered another blow when a woman encouraged by his sermons believed her unborn child diagnosed with a fatal disorder would live. The mother blamed herself when her child died soon after birth.

“That triggered, ‘How can I preach this stuff?'” Palmer said. “Beneath the appearance and the surfaces of people’s lives there was a level of suffering and brokenness for which my theology did not touch.”

In his journey away from faith, the former pastor also lost his marriage.

I saw this article Tweeted a few days ago on the Christian Post account, and I glanced at a small number of replies to it, as well as to the replies people left under the article on the Christian Post.

As to be expected, the Christians who left comments below the tweet questioned the guy’s reasons for finally rejecting the faith, some of them quite snotty about it, as well.

Does Jesus Alone Really Fill That Empty Space? And: When God Acts Like An Atheist

Does Jesus Alone Really Fill That Empty Space? And: When God Acts Like An Atheist

I was wondering if anyone else reading this, who accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior (became a Christian), ever experiences a feeling that something is missing in you or your life, or if you ever feel as though there’s a hole in your heart, or if you ever feel an emptiness?

I do at times, and I don’t understand why, since I grew up hearing that everyone has this hole in their heart, and only Jesus can fill it. And, further, if you believe in Jesus, Christians say, that emptiness will go away. What if it does not? Or, what if it returns?

I’ve done the whole Jesus thing. I was a devout Christian for years and years, but at times I still feel as though something is missing.

Gallup: Record Low 24% Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God

Gallup: Record Low 24% Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God

(Link):   Record Few Americans Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God

(Link): Gallup: Record Low 24% Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God by A. Cone

Excerpts:

May 16, 2017

Fewer than one in four Americans believe the Bible is “the actual word of God, and is to be taken literally, word for word” — a record low in 40 years of surveys conducted by Gallup.

The 24 percent of literal believers is a 4 percentage point drop from the last (Link): Gallup survey in 2014.

Among respondents, 26 percent believe the Bible is “a book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man” — the first time that the biblical literalism view is not greater than biblical skepticism. In 2014, 21 percent were non-literal believers.

Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

I almost forgot to blog about this. I really related to this guy’s letter (which I’ve included much farther below, both in text and video format – I’ve embedded the video that contains the letter at the bottom).

This guy wrote this question to the hosts of The 700 Club – Gordon Robertson was the host.

I wasn’t too impressed by Gordon’s response – I felt his reply was just “meh” or “so-so.” It was not an awful response, but I didn’t feel it was great and really answered the guy’s concern.

My interest, though, is not in Gordon’s reply, but in the guy’s question (or maybe it was a lady). This letter resonates with me so much. Sometimes I don’t know if God exists or not, and on some days, I skip praying, because some of the same 3 or 4 things I’ve been praying for over a period of ten or more years now have not been answered.

Either there is no God to hear my prayers, or he doesn’t keep the promises he makes in the Bible about meeting our needs and so on.

Too Cool for School: The Ex, Quasi, or Liberal Christians (and Atheists) Who Think Their Snarkiness Against Christians Makes Them Clever (But It Doesn’t)

Too Cool for School: The Ex, Quasi, or Liberal Christians (and Atheists) Who Think Their Snarkiness Against Christians Makes Them Clever (But It Doesn’t)

This post contains some vulgar language.

edited to add: I’ve already been told by two different people that this post is too long. Sorry, being concise has never been a talent of mine.

Someone also informed me that this blog post of mine has been linked to at a sub thread on Reddit (Link): here / on (Link): Reason and Faith on Reddit

Someone in that Reddit thread thinks my title of this post is “an atrocity,” but I feel it pretty much accurately sums up what I’ve seen online the last decade or more

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In my faith crisis of the last few years, I’ve visited more sites, blogs, groups, and forums that are critical of Christians or Christianity. I sometimes find myself agreeing with some of their criticisms of evangelical, Protestant Christianity (sometimes not).

One of the recurrent tendencies that crops up in such blogs, forums, and groups that disturbs or annoys me  (or has me doing a lot of eye rolls) are that many of the people who post to these types of groups act as though they are Too Cool for School.

Critique of Pastor Groeschel’s “I Want to Believe But…” Sermon Series (Re: Unanswered Prayer, etc)

Critique of Pastor Groeschel’s “I Want to Believe But…” Sermon Series

Christian Post recently published this summary of Groeschel’s sermons, and I take strong issue with it, which I will explain below the long excerpts from the page – but if I didn’t blog my criticisms of this guy’s sermon, I was going to go nuts -several of his points or assumptions annoyed me up the wall:

(Link): God Is Not Your Puppet, Says Pastor Craig Groeschel by A. Kumar

Here are some excerpts from that page, and I will comment on this below the excerpts, which is pretty long, so please bear with me:

Pastor Craig Groeschel, senior pastor of Life.Church, has started a new series, “I Want to Believe, But…,” to address difficulties some have in believing in God.

In the series’ first sermon on Sunday, the megachurch pastor dealt with the notion that God should give us exactly what we want and when we want it.
“God is too big to be a puppet of mine,” he stressed.

Some believe in God and others don’t, but there’s “a newer category of people that are saying, ‘I wanna believe in God but I’m struggling to,'” the popular pastor said as he introduced the (Link): series to the congregation on Sunday, the 21st anniversary of the church.

One Foot in Christianity, One Foot in Agnosticism – In a Faith Crisis

One Foot in Christianity, One Foot in Agnosticism  – In a Faith Crisis

November 2016. (There is a moderate amount of swear words in the post below)

Some of the points in the post, in brief (the long explanation is below):

• I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior before I was ten years old
• I have read the entire Bible.
• I spent many years reading books ABOUT the Bible (e.g., books about its formation and history)
• I spent years reading Christian apologetic literature
  – so do NOT tell me that I “do not understand Christianity” or that I was “never a REAL Christian to start with”
• I currently have doubts about the Christian faith and/or aspects of the Bible
• I have not rejected Jesus Christ Himself
  (he’s pretty much Christianity’s only good feature or selling point, as far as I can see at this point)

• I am not an atheist
• I am not a Charismatic
• I am not a “Word of Faither”
• I was brought up under conservative, Southern Baptist and evangelical teachings and churches

• Even though conservative Christians claim to believe in the Bible, they
  • cannot agree on what the Bible means or how to apply it – this is a huge problem as I see it in the faith
  • they diminish the role of the Holy Spirit or deny Him and that He can work for Christians today, because they are “hyper sola scriptura” and have reduced the Trinity to “Father, Son, and Holy Bible,” (this is also problematic),
    they usually do this because they are hyper-cessationist and paranoid or hateful of Charismatic teachings or practices
  • they teach that most to all of the biblical promises are not for Christians today but are only for the Jews of 5,000 years ago, there-by teaching that the Bible is NOT relevant for people today  (this is also problematic)
• If you are a Christian, do not act like a smug dick about any of this and immediately disregard any points I have to make about God, the Bible, or other topics, because in your view, I am a “Non-Christian who was ‘never’ really saved” -not to mention, that is not even true.
  I was in fact “truly” saved, and I am / was, a “real” Christian.
• No, I don’t want to enumerate a detailed list of reasons why I have doubts about God, the Bible, or the faith.If I were to provide such a list or explanation, your average Christian would only want to debate each and every point to argue me back into fully believing. (A witnessing tip to Christians: doing that sort of thing is NOT an effective way of “winning back a lost sheep to Jesus.”)

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DETAILED EXPLANATION

I find that people who are both Christian and Non-Christian (and several other categories of people I bump into on Twitter and other sites) get frustrated when they cannot easily box me in.

People seem to be more comfortable with labels, but I’m not sure what label I would give myself these days.

I have briefly tried to explain my current religious beliefs on my Twitter bio, and I explain them a little more on my blog’s “About” page and have mentioned them in a post or two over the course of the last few years I’ve been blogging here.

Here is my background:

I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior prior to turning the age of ten.

That means: I believed that Jesus took my sins upon himself, he was without sin, he paid the price for my sins, and was raised from the dead three days after having been crucified – and if I believe in all that, if I put “saving faith in” Jesus (as opposed to mere intellectual assent), my sins have been forgiven by God, and I go to heaven when I die.

I read the entire Bible through when I was 18 years old, and afterwards, I read a lot of the Bible in the years after. Prior to that age, I had read portions of the Bible when younger.

Tolerance, Compassion, and Knowing People Personally

Tolerance, Compassion, and Knowing People Personally

I keep running into politically left wing types or touchie-feelie Christians (some of whom may be somewhat conservative, which surprises me) on social media who assume the reason I must oppose certain things, such as–

-Mass Muslim immigration
-Allowing biological men into women’s bathrooms and fitting rooms under transgender laws

is due to some kind of personal animosity towards these groups of people.

The reason I object to, or am concerned about, things such as mass Muslim immigration or transgender bathroom bills has NOTHING to do with personal hatred on my part towards Muslims or transgender people.

I find this so frustrating that this is assumed about me from the start, and this assumption occurs constantly on Twitter and other blogs.

If you bother to get to know me, or read many of my blog posts on this blog, or stop and ask me my feelings about things (instead of JUST ASSUMING you know why I must hold thus- and- so an opinion on a given topic), you would discover I’m pretty laid back about things, more so than the people who yell at me online.

Teen-Raping Texas Pastor Gets life in Prison After using the Bible to Justify Abusing Women – Equally Yoked is BUNK

Teen-Raping Texas Pastor Gets life in Prison After using the Bible to Justify Abusing Women – Equally Yoked is BUNK

Far below is a link to a page about a pastor who raped girls in and from a church. Notice in the article how other church-goers who went to church with this guy described him as being “very nice” or as being a “good Christian.”

My Christian parents brought me up to think if I wanted to marry, that the best place for me to meet potential spouses would be at a church. I suppose the assumption with that is that the type of men who attend church regularly are going to be “safer” or better moral choices than the type of dude you might meet at a bar.

However, in the last few years of running this blog, I have seen (Link): so many news stories of church-going Christian men who get arrested for abuse or perversion, I now have my doubts about that.

Secondly, single women out-number single men in churches. I know that every church I’ve been to in person, I’ve been one of the few singles there. The only men in attendance and 80 years old, which would be fine if I were 80 too, but I’m not, and May December relationships (Link): make me want to barf. (I do not want to date or marry dudes who are over 5 or 10 years my age.)

I’ve done blog posts before about Pat Robertson, who has criticized women on his Christian TV show, for having married jerks, perverts, or abusers. Robertson seems to think women should be able to instantly spot if a man is a jerk, creep, loser, or abuser from the start. He’s wrong and an idiot about this.

The fact is, as this article below shows, even other adults who go to church with these kinds of deviant men are not aware of what a creep or pervert these guys are.

These are not people who are dating the guy – they are simply sitting next to him in church every week. If they cannot spot the perverts among them easily, why do Christian conservative men like Robertson think women who date men should be any better?

Evangelism Using Death, Heaven, Hell Talk Don’t Work on ‘Unchurched’ Americans, Survey Finds

Evangelism Using Death, Heaven, Hell Talk Don’t Work on ‘Unchurched’ Americans, Survey Finds

(Link): Evangelism Using Death, Heaven, Hell Talk Don’t Work on ‘Unchurched’ Americans, Survey Finds by  B. Showalter

Excerpts:

July 2016

Non-church-attending Americans are generally open to talking about faith but few wonder about life after death – which is the tactic many Christians are taught to begin conversations, a new LifeWay Research study commissioned by the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College finds.

Nashville-based LifeWay Research published a (Link): study Thursday that examines the types of church activities that “unchurched” Americans are interested in as well as how open they are to talking about faith.

By “unchurched” the researchers mean “those who have not attended a worship service in the last six months, outside of a holiday or special occasion like a wedding.” Surprisingly, the survey found that more than half of Americans who don’t go to church self-identify as Christians.

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

This is one of those topics I’m working my way through right now. Maybe a year from now, my opinion will flip on it. But here is where I am now.

I was first made aware of this post from John Piper’s “Desiring God” web site via someone posting to SCCL Facebook group.

Here it is:

(Link):  How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God by John Piper

Excerpts:

• I said that one of my reasons for believing this comes from 1 Corinthians 10:31. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I asked, “Is it sin to disobey this Biblical commandment?” Yes.
• …Some of you then asked the practical question: Well, how do you “eat and drink” to the glory of God? Say, orange juice for breakfast?
• ….Orange juice was “created to be received with thanksgiving by those whobelieve the truth.” Therefore, unbelievers cannot use orange juice for the purpose God intended—namely, as an occasion for heartfelt gratitude to God from a truth heart of faith.
• But believers can, and this is how they glorify God. Their drinking orange juice is “sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”

Yes, it’s an entire post explaining why and how Christians may drink Orange Juice to the glory of God.

This is a part of Christianity that I am glad to leave behind. In my faith crisis of the last few years, there have been some advantages to ceasing turning to the Bible as an authority in decision-making in life in every area.