A Quiet Misconception
Em July 27th, 2008
This weekend, I attended a Christian conference for the first time since 2002. I think it was as that conference so long ago that I first began to lose taste for them. Don’t get me wrong; God does powerful things at these conferences; many wise, studied men and women of God say many wise, studied things that make me think; I see more old friends than when I go to a wedding. I’ve just gradually moved away from a faith that is based on singing songs and hearing a sermon.
Any Christian girl I know shows no surprise at the statement that females, at least those who have reached sexual maturity, seem to vastly outnumber males in Christian circles. (I believe that this fact leads to sites like these, where pseudo-theology is grotesquely twisted around physical and emotional desire.) I am often puzzled as to why. Is there a church, a city, a nation somewhere where the ratio is reversed, a place anticipating the collision of my world with theirs so that there can be another wedding every weekend and a new baby every week? I used to think that was Millwoods, or possibly Evangel, but in nine provinces, the ratio seems consistent. There are simply more Christian women than there are men.
I am always aware of gender ratios and biases; the very idea of it fascinates me. And so, this weekend, I picked up on some very subtle clues to the mystery of this pervasive asymmetric gender distribution. One song in particular grabbed my attention:
She is yearning
For shelter and affection
That she never found at home
She is searching
For a hero to ride in
To ride in and save the day
And in walks her prince charming
And he knows just what to say
Momentary lapse of reason
And she gives herself away- “Does Anybody Hear Her?” Casting Crowns
The song is about how we treat newcomers in our churches, and to our shame this pregnant girl was not accepted. But notice her position juxtaposed to the prince charming in the song. He seems to be in it only for the sex, whereas she is an innocent victim who made a bad decision. Throughout the song, she sins because she is the victim of her circumstances.
So he works and he builds with his own two hands
And he pours all he has in a castle made with sand
But the wind and the rain are comin’ crashing in
Time will tell just how long his kingdom stands
His kingdom standsHis American Dream is beginning to seem
More and more like a nightmare
With every passing day
“Daddy, can you come to my game?”
“Oh Baby, please don’t work late.”
Another wasted weekend
And they are slipping away-”American Dream” Casting Crowns
Here, again, the woman (and child) are victims of the man’s doing. His sin is based on the work of his own two hands, his own selfish greed. There is no attempt to blame some smooth-talking woman who would work him into his grave for her own temporal pleasure.
Neither of these situations are wrong or unrealistic. But I feel that they open a tiny window into a quiet misconception that drives men from church; that, in addition to their own mistakes, they are responsible for the mistakes in the lives of the women closest to them. And this is not unique to Christians. Men are constantly put down in the media, contemptously stereotyped as slaves to their ravenous sex drive, stuck in ubiquitous immaturity, slowly dulling themselves through mindless consumption of beer, sports and porn. Women take the position that if the men would shape up, so many problems in our lives would be sorted out.
“A contest in my local paper invited war-of-the-sexes witticims, and as I read them over I realized that the ones aimed at women were all along the lines of ‘She sure likes chocolate!’ while the ones about men could be summarized ‘He’s a big boorish idiot!’ You might notice a difference there, and once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere. In general, anti-male humor has a bitter hostile edge lacking in even the dumbest dumb-blonde jokes. … Along the same lines, do you notice how many TV ads and sitcoms have this plotline: stupid guy gets his comeuppance from a tough woman? Does anyone ever see any plot that’s the reverse? Not on my TV.
…[G]uys are good sports, good at laughing at themselves, but I think there’s a more serious cost to all this hilarity. When all we see are dumb daddies, bad daddies, and absent daddies, there isn’t much for a little boy to aspire to. Movie heroes still follow the James Bond convention of carefree, commitment-free womanizing, and images of brave, steadfast family men are few.”
- “Flowers for the fellas,” Gender: Men, Women, Sex, and Feminism, Frederica Mathewes-Green.
Incredibly, we sometimes fail to realize is that women are indeed responsible for their own decisions. We have had permission to hide behind our husbands for so long throughout history that the pattern continues to this day, even in spiritual matters. And so the man is portrayed as the bad guy, the fallible one who messes things up for the poor girls.
Why would anyone want to be a part of something where, at any moment, he could be burdened with the sins of two genders?
Don’t be fooled. We women can mess things up just fine on our own.
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