As I wrote on Friday, the CBMW’s response to the generations long push by feminists to insert women into all parts of our armed forces is to pretend that something else entirely is going on. To avoid confronting the very open feminist rebellion, the CBMW pretends that men are insisting that women be forced into combat in their place. No one else believes this, and I have to believe that deep down even the complementarians themselves know this is a farce. However, confronting a generation of women demanding to usurp men’s roles is difficult, and to a complementarian downright terrifying. Changing the subject from reality to a fantasy world allows complementarians to avoid what is difficult and instead focus on posturing.
Look at how much tougher and braver I am than other men! Look how much more I care about women!
But make no mistake, this is only posturing. The Bible teaches us that women are more easily deceived. As Christian men we have a responsibility to Christian women to try to protect them from temptation of feminist rebellion. Pretending that no rebellion is occurring is worse than remaining silent, and it is the opposite of brave. In pretending that feminist envy and usurpation is really about men insisting that women take their roles, complementarians are actively encouraging women to be deceived into sin.
The compulsion to change the subject from reality to fantasy land is so great that CBMW member writing on the topic reads like articles from the Onion. Here is a quick review of articles by CBMW members on the subject over the last ten years. Note how the women who want to usurp men’s roles are praised as courageous, smart, and noble, while the real villains (the men who are making them usurp men’s roles) are castigated instead. All emphasis mine:
John Piper: Co-ed Combat and Cultural Cowardice
If I were the last man on the planet to think so, I would want the honor of saying no woman should go before me into combat to defend my country. A man who endorses women in combat is not pro-woman; he’s a wimp. He should be ashamed. For most of history, in most cultures, he would have been utterly scorned as a coward to promote such an idea…
Piper followed up with: More on women in combat
…Women may be more courageous than men in any given situation. They may have nobler vision. They may be smarter. That is not the issue. What God has written on our hearts and designed for our survival and our joy is the issue. Manhood puts itself forward between the women and the enemy. That is part of what manhood means. That is who we are by God’s design. The courage of women will show itself in a hundred ways. But when a man is around, he will not exploit that courage to fight the battle where he belongs.
Joe Carter in Women in Combat: A good idea?
Unfortunately, many men will be more than willing to allow women in combat if it will lessen their chances of having to defend their country in wartime. One of the harsh realities we face is that American society is filled with men who are anti-woman cowards.
Denny Burk: Women in Combat and the Undoing of Civilization
Perhaps some people believe that women ought to be able to volunteer for whatever job they are qualified to do. But what if the draft were reinstituted? Under the right conditions, the draft would be a very real possibility, and that specter of a draft is really clarifying. It’s one thing for women to volunteer for combat service. It’s an entirely different matter for them to be drafted into it. I have a hard time believing that the women of America would want to be forced into such conditions. Any man that would countenance for one second his 18-year old daughter being pressed into this kind of service is abdicating his responsibility. Are we really going to be the kind of people who press our wives and daughters and mothers to fight in combat?
Owen Strachan closes Women Should Not Be in Combat (Says a Female Marine Captain) with:
Complementarian Christians, like the Lord himself, are not anti-woman. In humility and full recognition of our sin, we are the most pro-woman group there is. We love women, and want them to thrive, both in natural terms and in their walk with Christ.
Any other path is unwise; the call by men for women to fight in their place is the height of cowardice, and worthy of the strongest possible rebuke.
Strachan again in Women in combat: A complementarian perspective
If men will not own this responsibility, then women will be forced to take it on as did biblical women such as Deborah and Jael (and the extrabiblical figure Judith).
See Also: Turning a blind eye.
