But know this: Difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people! For among them are those who worm their way into households and capture idle women burdened down with sins, led along by a variety of passions, always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

~ 2 Timothy 3:1-7

You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

Titus 2:1-5

As I mentioned before, the passage identifies the “idle women burdened down with sins, led along by a variety of passions”, who are led astray, as a consequence of the problem, not the cause. Women who identify as Christian are destroying their families all across the nation. Some of them are wives of clergy, some are lifelong church-goers, some are nominal Christians. But, they are all using the same language and the same methods - plastic words, justifications found neither in the Bible nor in the breadth of historic church law, and a curious agenda of self-promotion for their behavior.

How are these women deceived and led away into what is not only moral (and often financial and emotional) self-destruction, but also unquestionably damaging for their children? How have they fallen under the spell of people who are some (or all) of the laundry list of negative characteristics, where countless women are influenced by deceivers and make terrible decisions based upon those influences?

In contrast to Titus 2, the church has left our women vulnerable through neglect, through the ignorant promotion of these people and their ideas, and through both clergy and laity who exhibit a culturally common moral cowardice. All of these seem to be largely a product of the current age and common evangelical church structures - women’s ministries, failure to inspect as leaders should, and lack of church discipline.

1) Women’s Ministries. There is a lot to be said about the benefits of women’s ministries, particularly in fellowship, prayer, and encouragement for godly women. However, these same benefits existed in the church in the past without formal church programs, and the addition of formal programs designed to provide what the church already provided for 2000 years for women has provided an avenue of decay - “women’s curriculum”. The mere existence of women’s curriculum communicates that they should not be using the same materials as the others (men or couples). However, men weren’t using their own studies, and, as a rule, they still are not. Browsing Lifeway Christian Resources* (an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention) reveals 61 studies marketed for adult men. For adult women? 673! That’s over ten times the amount marketed for men. Why is that? Because we have been communicating to women for 50 years that either the studies for all Christians are not good enough for them, or, as some might tell it, that women somehow aren’t good enough for regular studies. And, while regular, non-study books marketed for women only outnumber those for men by a five-to-one ratio, the message remains clear: women have to read and study things written just for women, not things for Christians.

So, we communicate that they shouldn’t be studying what the church as a whole should be studying, that it has to be tailor-made for women. What does this result in? In the top 25 Bible Studies for women at CBD, 24 are written by women. Why? Because who can better write for women than women, right? Of course, that’s nonsense - women are human beings made in the image of God, and a faithful and interesting curriculum doesn’t need to be written by one sex or the other. BUT - if the assumption is that women are so much different from men that their studies need to be more focused upon emotion, feelings, affect, and the somehow-unique-but-also-universal-experience of women, then men need not apply. And, if you want to have your curriculum used by women, you’d better not only be one, but you’d better write in such a way that continues to reinforce the “feelings-over-facts” assumption built into the industry.

Yes, a good number of those studies are written by orthodox, faithful, believing women who don’t have any kooky beliefs. However, as I realized back when I read my first Beth Moore book (who dominated the women’s studies in the evangelical church in which I was on staff), it isn’t the author’s general orthodoxy that is the problem - it is their methodology. It is a feelings-over-facts, current culture-over-tradition, what-seems-right-to-me-is-right method, and it sets them up for failure, as their feelings are assaulted daily by the culture and by individuals who seek to undermine faithful people and marriages.

Another manifestation of this is the pagan mentality that imagines that if the woman does enough, believes enough, and gives enough, she will get what she wants. Some churches and curricula teach that, essentially, if the woman just does x, y, and z and prays hard enough, her man will be transformed into the husband she dreams he can be. Such myths can only flourish in a sheltered subculture in which neither reality nor wise pastoral leadership can invade.

2) Failure to inspect. Church elders, out of fear, do not look closely at the curriculum, books, or teachings in women’s groups. Like me, they assume that the women’s ministry is choosing well, and comfort themselves that well-known names (Nancy DeMoss, Jen Wilkin, Priscilla Shirer, Lisa TerKeurst) among the selection are equivalent to solid teaching - and don’t bat an eye when they don’t recognize a name. But, even worse, it is incredibly rare for a male elder to roll into a women’s ministry study or fellowship and listen, never mind actually contribute to the discussion or challenge the assumptions of the group! Thus, laywomen are left to fend for themselves in groupthink and separated from the gifts that Christ has left for the church (Ephesians 4:11-13). Why? Fear. Fear of being called patriarchal. Fear of women’s ministry leaders - who have placed their value in a ministry position - mutinying. Fear of lay leaders pushing back. Fear of being called a micromanager. Out of fear the church leaves its women without the protection they deserve.

3) No church discipline. Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and 2 Corinthians 7 give guidance for the confrontation of sin by the church, its purpose and method. But when was the last time you were in a church that followed this model? In most churches, the most important thing is to not rock the boat, not cause trouble. Church leaders know that many in the congregation, unfamiliar with or simply unsupportive of church discipline, will not support the leadership if sin is confronted. Others take comfort in extra-biblical excuses for sins such as addiction, or allow plastic words described in the last post by “Christian counselors” such as Chris Moles, Patrick Weaver, or Joy Forrest to carve out greater and greater space for sinful, selfish behavior, simply because another party has been sinful or selfish. Thus, the leaders abdicate their ordination vows to protect the flock for the purpose of preserving their popularity, power, or position, and sin festers and multiplies as the women in these fellowship groups fall down like dominoes.

Unless you are Roman Catholic, the church isn’t just the clergy: it’s also the people. Not only do the clergy avoid their responsibility, but the laity do as well. The vast majority of friends and associates in the church who are around these deceived women ignore, enable, and even applaud the destruction of their families. They cower behind phrases like, “I am not in control of them” to avoid saying anything beyond an initial expression of discomfort with the utter destruction of family units because the woman is, essentially, unhappy. They willfully buy the lies of plastic words because it gives them an excuse to avoid confrontation and the potential loss of a relationship. Then, when the brave ones do make the confrontation, those few ladies are ostracized by the group as “mean”, “legalistic”, or “judgemental”. In an era where truth must be subordinated to individual feelings, the speaker of truth who makes someone uncomfortable becomes the bad guy, which makes them lose the relationship, which reinforces the fear of the less courageous, who continue to justify their failure to confront sin. And the cycle continues.

Even their friends won’t take a stand for what is best.

By establishing ministry islands for women, failing to inspect the teaching in small groups, and avoiding church discipline, churches set women up to be manipulated by the culture, which is the topic of the next post.

* 1,742 for women, 361 for men at Christianbook.com.