The Difference between Christian and Secular Patriarchy

I love superhero movies. Yes, even when we are inundated with them, and even when they are horribly  woke. I still have a place in my heart for them. Ultimately, I think it's because they stir something up that looks much like the gospel, especially the ones where the superhero dies to save humanity. It's the ultimate sacrifice that reminds us of Christ's ultimate sacrifice. The superhero is a protector to the very end. He is the ultimate man because he represents the ultimate Man.

There are two types of men. Some men are predators. Some men are protectors. Some men will use their strength and power to fulfill their desires and others will use that strength and power to protect the prey of these men from these men. In other words, there is a patriarchy that exists to feed the self-exaltation, the self-deification of fallen man, and there is a patriarchy that exists to protect the would-be victims of this sinful type of patriarchy. Every man, of course, has a capacity for both. There is in every man the desire to be a predator and a protector. The issue is what exists in the man's life to sway him into one role or the other at any given time. 

For some, the desire to be protector actually stems from a selfishness to be exalted as a hero. This plays on his flesh and desire to be praised as a deity. He wants to be a superhero, not because he loves those he wishes to protect but rather because he desires to be loved by them. This man, unfortunately, is only a protector for the crowd. In secret, he will end up having little to no desire to be anything other than a predator. We'll call this the "Bill Cosby" type of protector. 

Many people were shocked to learn that Bill Cosby had preyed upon women the way that he did, especially since he presented himself to be such a protector in the public eye. Anyone who grew up in the late 80s viewed Cosby as America's Dad. The problem is that the desire to exalt the self is not enough to make a man from the inside-out into a protector. He is a protector only due to temporary environmental factors.

This is why many men will decry prostitution and porn for their victimization of women in public but in private support the industry by participating in it. 

I am not saying, of course, that Christians do no such things due to the conflict within them, but rather that Christians identify this hypocrisy as sin and seek to rid themselves of such contradictions in an effort to become only protectors and no longer predators at all. So I am not arguing that Christians do not sin but rather that they identify their hypocrisy as sin and are swayed to live in the role of protector both in public and in secret.

The reason why they do this is because biblical patriarchy, despite the overly simplistic condemnation of all types of patriarchy by a pseudo-feminist culture that is actually male chauvinism at its core, is all about protecting those who are weaker, whether they be women, children, or the poor and sick. 

Biblical patriarchy exists as God's instruments, His images, through which He protects those who are weaker in the world. Hence, the law is primarily about protecting victims. There are no laws that exist in the Bible that favor the strong and their abuse of the weak. Those who use their power to prey upon the weak will answer to God for it.

Having said all of this, therefore, two things are imperative if we are thrive as a community. The first is that getting rid of the patriarchy has been disastrous for our secular culture. The predators convinced women in our culture that freedom from a man's authority is a necessity in becoming truly human. Instead, the argument of these serpents simply turned women into the slaves they desired to use as whores to fulfill their desires, votes for political power, and life-time workers for the industrial complex. Rather than becoming truly human, women were made into dogs.

Biblical patriarchy looks like oppression to the modern mind who has been brainwashed by predators because it protects women so that they might become truly human, and protection is limitation. It guards them from predators by limiting their relationships with other men both before and after marriage. It protects them by limiting their power in demanding that they defer to their federal heads. It protects them by limiting their voices in teaching and exercising authority in the community in order to keep them from both losing their motherhood in favor of fatherhood and from the judgment of God who desires the roles remain distinct. 

But it does not use this authority that is given to the man, an authority given to limit the woman in order to protect her humanity, as a way to limit her humanity itself, and that is the difference between the secular and biblical models of patriarchy. 

A woman should be encouraged to thrive within the role she is given and become her true humanity as a mother, and mothers are honored in Scripture, not dishonored. We do not treat them as slaves by making them whores, instruments of political power, or workers that do the jobs we don't want to do. In other words, they do not exist to fulfill our sexual desires at the cost of their dignity and honor as a daughter of God and a mother; they do not exist to be our politician in spreading gossip and slander against our opponents within a community, and they do not exist to be our personal slaves at home, even if we have the authority in the patriarchy to abuse in such ways and to make them so.

Does this mean that women do not have an obligation to honor the authority and fatherhood of the man by feeding into his manhood by fulfilling her role in marriage as one who is sexually available to her husband, honoring him where she can in her speech to others, and serving the household through work? Of course she still must do this if she is to become the female version of the Christ-like humanity that she is meant to become. The issue is whether the man, as her leader and teacher, accomplishes this in his wife in a biblical or unbiblical way.

The biblical way to make a woman who she needs to be is to become the protector the man is meant to be. This means showing that he cares for his wife and children by using his authority and power in service to them. It means being secure in his manhood so that he need not constantly reestablish it by asserting a selfish authority that is unwavering and irrational. In essence, his submission to God's mission and to God in self-sacrifice is the primary means by which he teaches his wife and children to do the same in their submission both God and to him; and in doing this, they take upon the image of God, the true humanity, into which God has called them.

There is a way to make your wife lesser, to make her a dog, all the while citing the biblical mandate for the man to take headship. Ephesians 5:25-6:4 is instructive here to counter this tendency.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she recognizes her husband's authority . . . 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. 

Here we have the man's marching orders from God. He must enter the patriarchy if he is to become true humanity. He must become a husband and a father. He must become a federal head. But he is not to become the secular picture of patriarchy but a biblical picture of patriarchy that presents the character and ministry of Christ to the church. 

If anyone could demand that He be treated as God, it would be Christ. Yet, this passage tells us that he loved the church, not by demanding he get his way in all things, but rather by serving and giving Himself up in order that His Bride might attain to her full humanity. His children are not humans to rule over in order for him to feel superior and in control as the right of deity he wishes to assert, but rather as one who uses his position for the good of the others, and that good is to bring them up into godly human beings who are also self-sacrificing, loving, and in joyful submission to Christ's authority.

Biblical patriarchy is not primarily about control, therefore, but about how to use one's power to benefit the healthy and godly humanity of one's family, church, or nation. It is not about getting one's way. That would be secular patriarchy that desires to fulfill the serpent's plan for humanity in self-deification. Instead, biblical patriarchy stands as the means through which men become true men, women become true women, and children grow up to be one or the other without spot or blemish. It defends the weak and gives justice to those that a more predatory patriarchy has victimized. In short, it's becoming the superhero who saves humanity by dying because that is what our Superhero did for us.