Of course he enjoys it.
The puerile always do; it’s no fun to engage in potty talk and wade into the choppy waters of vulgarity if you don’t have someone to either laugh with you or become offended.
But the little nugget below, courtesy of yesterday’s Blog and Mablog — a blog title which ought to offend anyone who grasps the wordplay on “Gog and Magog,” the archetypical enemy in Scripture of all that’s good and Godly — is particularly noteworthy, if not pitiful. Not because Doug Wilson made a reference to “circle jerks,” which is a group masturbation session that your teenaged son will be shocked that you’ve heard about. Wilson engages in frequent juvenile mirth about breasts, gay men, feminists, and other things; “circle jerk” is hardly the worst example of the Bearded Bishop’s bawdy bluster, albeit a bit more cringeworthy when used in defense of his intellectual disagreement with the Rev. Dr. N. T. Wright, the British Anglican bishop, over the leadership roles of women.
Here’s what Calvinism’s Patron Saint Of Crude, Swaggering Macho Frat Boys says:
“There is a difference between men who love the Lord their God with all their minds, and those intellectualoids who want us to submit the things revealed by God to a peer-reviewed circle jerk. I am only against the latter . . .”
Well, good to know. Of course, Wilson hasn’t done so well in the peer-reviewed experiences he’s waded into — something, thankfully, he can avoid by using his vanity press to print and distribute his weighty tomes. But just in case anyone reading BM yesterday, or today, or ever, has any doubt that Wilson’s arguments against women’s ordination and pastoral leadership are simply an example of solid Biblical exegesis, he adds the SHOCKING and HORRIBLE picture of an attractive, lip-sticked woman in a feminine-print cassock, which he offers as more — may we dare suppose “final”? — proof positive that his are not only intellectual, but utterly Scriptural, arguments. Nothing more.
Whereas, you know, everyone else is just frantically searching for their Kleenex and wiping their sweaty palms on their jeans as they hear Mom approaching.
I believe that one solid argument against the absurd idea that women are more easily deceived than men are — something argued in the “comments” section of his previous posts taking Wright to task — is simply that most of his readers are men. The beholden toadies he surrounds himself with are all men. His elders and the pastors in his made-up denomination? Men. The “fellows” at New Saint Andrews are all fellas, and the folks invited to his yearly “Grace Agenda” conference — the main part, which is only for guys — are men.
It might not be the best argument for mens’ greater ability to detect and discern error, just as “manliness” and patriarchal bravery may not be best demonstrated by taunting people behind cutesy pseudonyms or the walls of anonymity, when so much error and stupidity are so eagerly lapped up by men for whom manliness is everything.
Fortunately, the Kingdom is full of women who, having been gifted, equipped, and called to pastoral ministry and leadership, not only continue to serve without The Great One’s permission, but know enough to not deride those far, far more educated and infinitely more “pastoral” — or, really, anyone at all — by describing their positions and beliefs as having come from something most people haven’t thought of since they were 14 and haven’t spoken of ever. Those Godly men and women deserve better counsel from a better teacher whom I cannot imagine ever calling “pastor” no matter how many unfortunate, undiscerning men around me do.