Satan is on the march.
”Those who always bear the burden of suffering in the case of a divorce are the children. Only seldom do adults realize what immeasurable harm they thus inflict on children, and how close they come as a result to the most terrible of Jesus’ curses: ‘Whoever is a cause of stumbling to one of these little ones who believe in me…’”
If you don’t know the NXIVM story, Google it.
My original idea for this blog post, two years ago, came from the story about NXIVM, a supposed self-improvement company that actually was just a means for a man to acquire a harem of willing sex slaves. That, the Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislane Maxwell saga, and the myriad of stories that came out afterward all put the truth to the lie that religion (and specifically Christianity) somehow was inherently designed to put women into these polyamorous situations. Actually, while religion has and is certainly used for that purpose, it is now obvious that not only is no religion necessary to establish these harems, but it only, ever, works one way. Women don’t have willing harems of men, anywhere, but harems of women for one man exist seemingly in all times and places. But, out of concern for public appearance in pointing a finger at women, I decided against it. Still, the line from 2 Timothy 3 stuck in my head, and I was sure it had a broader application than cult-ish behavior.
Floyd “Money” Mayweather and his “staff”. In case you are unaware, he is not a member of the clergy.
Carrie and I are personally connected to seven marriages in the midst of destruction at this moment. When I say, “personally connected”, I don’t mean people we know on FB, but people we actually know and have some kind of real-life relationship with. And, while, of course, they all have their wrinkles, there is a common thread in many of them that we have seen in other collapsing marriages in our circles over the past several years- the absolute twisting and manipulation of words to justify their actions when they are unjustifiable, the flippant disregard for the commands of God in self-professing Christians, and the willful destruction of life-long friendships when those friends do not affirm the sinful acts of the betrayers after a token encouragement.
Of the seven, five are being driven to destruction by the woman, and each of these is frighteningly similar to the others in the above description (the two driven by men are also similar to each other, but look very different from the ones driven by the women). All of these families have multiple children, and the mothers of these children exert no effort to find out the truth about what are the likely results of divorce upon their children. Instead, they off-handedly dismiss the idea that their children will suffer significantly, using the same tired, well-documented falsehood that divorce is somehow better than a marriage with conflict or unhappiness. How convenient that this assumption (which I’m sure they can justify by pulling up some blog post by some counselor) enables them to do what they already want to do!
Oh, look! A blog that says what I want to hear. Time to share it. <saracasm>
Another common thread in these disastrous cases is the combination of men who are decent, who provide and protect, and who aren’t involved in “the big three” - they aren’t beating, cheating, or selling the house for drugs. None have been model husbands, but they also are far from committing the kinds of acts that the Bible and the church have acknowledged are justification for divorce. So, as professing Christians, these women aren’t supposed to have (at least in the eyes of God and the church) the justification for destroying their families. So what do these Christian women do? Do they renounce their faith and declare they are doing it because they want to, and don’t care about what God says? No. That would be too uncomfortable, perhaps even more uncomfortable than obedience.
Instead, they use “plastic words”. A term described by Uwe Poerksen, people using plastic words do not define the words by their meaning - indeed, the meaning cannot be discerned. They use a word associated with certain emotional responses, then use it in a manner that leads to what they WANT to be included in the connotation of the word. Especially, when using a plastic word with regards to defining people, its boundaries are set by the people they want to be included in the description, not any objective definition. One common example in culture is “the church”. The word can be used in a number of objectively defined ways, but, many use the phrase “the church” in a deliberately vague fashion, because the confusion helps make their argument seem valid. So, “the church has hurt me” may refer to a specific incident in someone’s life inflicted by a specific clergy or lay person or group of church leaders or lay people, but the phrase is intended to condemn the entire visible church to justify avoidance of fellowship, or justify disbelief, or justify disdain.
Any reason will do, but we just have to make it sound worse in so many cases.
The use of plastic words in the “attempts to justify divorce” context involves words like “abuse”, “violence”, and “sexual assault” or “rape” The plasticity of these words is not limited to justifying divorce - indeed, the plastic use of these words preceded using them to justify divorce. So, when “silence is violence” (BLM) or “the church abused me [by refusing to let me have the responsibilities I wanted]” (Jo Luehmann), those words have already lost their meanings and become plastic. In the context of justifying divorce, those words are used in this way:
”I am a victim of domestic abuse.” When pressed, the woman admits that she has not been beaten, hit at all, or even suffered a daily litany of vulgar verbal attacks or daily disrespect for her character. She deflects by claiming “there is more abuse than just physical” and may attach the words financial, spiritual, or emotional to the word “abuse”. But, like the word “justice”, once you append a modifier to the word, it no longer has the same meaning…but the intent is to attach the negative emotion to the phrase and thus to the “abuser”, not to actually define anything.
The National Domestic Abuse Hotline website lists nine categories of abuse, some of which have more than ten sub-categories. Let’s just say you may disagree with some of them.
“I am a survivor of domestic violence.” Again, when pressed, the woman admits that no actual violence has been done. But, by using the phrase, she is able to communicate to all that her husband is a terrible person, but that she is very brave for getting out of a “dangerous” situation. These women will also often, well after the fact, explicitly claim they were suicidal or that their husbands would have killed them, or implicitly do so by using the phrase, “I saved my life”. Yet, strangely, none of these women get restraining orders against their abusive/violent husbands, and the men are allowed unsupervised access to the children. Of course, if we understand plastic words, we understand that this isn’t strange at all. The point is to smear the husband, to cause both pity and admiration for the wife, and to put herself above confrontation. After all, what monster would push back on a woman who has suffered violence and abuse?
The mental image you get of the accused when you hear the word “abuse” or “violence”.
“I was sexually abused/raped”. A military lawyer recently said, “Chaplain, all divorces include accusations of marital rape.” What used to be commonly understood as the dance in marital sexual relations between man and woman, when the man (often) desires sex with his wife more often than she does with him, and he uses various methods of seduction, romance, cajoling, and expression as the pursuer to convince his wife to submit to mutually consensual sex, is now being called rape or sexual abuse. The branding of the song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” as “rape culture” is perhaps the most ludicrous - and clear - example of how the word has been hijacked. Now, anything that even began as less than 100% enthusiasm by the wife for sex is cast as some kind of morally bankrupt coercion.
2 Timothy 3, however, with its quirky KJV wording, “silly women laden with divers lusts” (or “weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions” in the ESV) is not primarily a condemnation of those women. I recognize the full moral agency of all people, men and women, and, in the end, the person ultimately responsible for someone’s decision is primarily…the person who made the decision. That said, 2 Timothy 3 identifies the women who are burdened by a myriad of unhealthy desires and led astray as the consequence of the problem, not the cause. Today, we are surrounded by those same types of women - but why? How did they get here? Who is responsible for them being weak, burdened, and led astray? I identify three culprits in the next three posts: the church, the culture, and us husbands. I hope you’ll read with me and respond as I lay out the situation, and that you will work with me to remedy it.