Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

October 31, 2013

Hang In There With Me, Friends!

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 10:45 pm

As I mentioned, I’ve been on the road . . . again . . . taking care of a difficult situation in my extended family, so I haven’t been writing much.  But that changes tomorrow.

Oh, yeah.

It’s gonna get verbal in here, and it’s about time.  So if you’ll give me a day to unpack, do the laundry, pay some bills, and catch up on correspondence, I’ll reward you with a fair amount of continuous Christian feminist anti-masculinism and social revolution.  Plus the occasional paean to a hero, and, who knows, maybe even something totally random.

Because “totally random” is good, and being away from my blog isn’t.

October 26, 2013

From Arizona

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 6:10 am

An unexpected family health situation has me on the road once again, so, Prevailing Winds-watchers, bear with me — I’ll be home at month’s end, and I have a lot to say about a lot of things.  First, though, I have to take care of this, and I would covet your prayers.

October 10, 2013

About Your Comments … Wow, Do I Have A Spam Problem!

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 4:27 am

Well, here I’ve been on WordPress for less than a month and already I’ve got a ten-to-one ratio of Chinese-generated spam to legitimate comments.  Because any of these fake comments could carry a virus, and they all show up in my Inbox looking the same, I’m going to simply delete any WordPress-generated notice of comments, effective immediately.

But I still want to hear from you!  Just send your comment to my email address, siyocreo@live.com, and I’ll cut/paste it as is on the blog.  Just put “COMMENT” in the subject line and you’ll show up on Prevailing Winds — with my thanks.

Again:  If you want to comment publicly, send your remarks to me at siyocreo@live.com.

October 9, 2013

Like Rigatoni With A Cat Hair

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 7:01 pm

Crecmemes.com is proving to be the “Criminal Minds” of my Internet experience — no matter what else I have going on, I drift back over to it to see if there’s something new that I haven’t seen before, to the detriment of swept floors, folded laundry, and thawed chicken.

But I find crecmemes to be not only funnier than I would have first expected, but a fascinating place to witness, and participate in, the back-and-forth between critics of Doug Wilson (the Meemers) and supporters (in this case, Seth).  And while I understand why they don’t use their names, I will be consistent and mention that I really wish they would.

Could, that is.

Because I know full well why they can’t.

I know that being a CREC member or an employee of Wilson’s or a student at NSA — which, astonishingly enough, is all the same thing, which makes my point for me — disallows you to question or criticize him.  At all.  To anyone.  Ever. Your disbelief in what I say can easily be corrected — just do it.  Just go up to someone after worship and mention a concern that you have over Federal Vision doctrine, or this semester’s reading list, or even the curious inconsistency in embracing Chesterton and Tolkien when he has stated that Roman Catholics have missed the ol’ salvation train.  Then wait just a little while for a visit from the elders, or wait a bit longer for the cold shoulder from people you thought were friends.  You’ll find yourself as frozen out as an abstinence lecturer at a Rolling Stones rehearsal.

I’ve been engaging with “Seth” on crecmemes regarding all of this, and, begging the patience and permission of the Meemers, here’s my latest challenge to him, and to anyone who feels the need to plug their ears, squinch their eyes closed, and continually repeat “He can’t be wrong, he can’t be wrong …”:

From my comment on crecmemes.com, with thanks to the proprietors:

Seth, I’m going to respond to this as one of Wilson’s original, charter Intoleristas — and, perhaps, the only one still “nipping at his heels,” as another commenter wrote, other than Rose Huskey. I’m proud to be part of his leftist/radical/egalitarian axis, and the only Trinitarian Intolerista in the bunch. I’ve debated Wilson (KRFP, 2007); you can ask around for how the debate went for him. I think it went not very well, and that only by the grace given me by my God. I followed the Biblical admonition to confront him in person first before going all egalitarian-leftist on his ass, although I believe the Scriptures also teach that public error demands public rebuke. I have engaged with him numerous times in public events, I don’t EVER use a pseudonym in writing about him on my blog, http://www.keelyprevailingwinds.com, and I say nothing about him, anywhere, that I wouldn’t say TO him, anywhere. And I know my stuff. All of which is to say that you are grossly mistaken, profoundly mislead, embarrassingly beholden to a narrative that has proved false over and over and over again and, it seems to me, inordinately desperate to defend a man who would spit you out like rigatoni with a cat hair if you ever publicly disagreed with him. Instead of wrenching yourself into pretzel-like positions trying to avoid understanding the obvious — that is, your pastor/mentor/employer/master is a sorry excuse for a pastor, a scholar, and a human being — why not take a breath and ask yourself a simple question: WHY? Why, in a town of a dozen Trinitarian evangelical churches, is Doug Wilson singled out for criticism? (My question is why, in said town, a menopausal homemaker, me, would be virtually alone in doing what Moscow’s brave, complementarian, male pastors seemingly can’t bring themselves to do, but I digress …). Why is it easier for Wilson and his defenders to cry “religious bigotry” when his primary critics share his (putatively) Christian faith? Why is it that when the reformed community finds itself in turmoil, the quickest way to understanding is to follow the stench and look toward Wilson, the CREC, and the Federal Vision, which even this Arminian sees is an utter rejection of Reformed theology? A brave person asks questions and deals with the answers, Seth. Are you a brave person, or a beholden one? (I use “person,” not “man,” because unlike Wilson, I don’t ascribe character traits to one’s sex, which is enough to spin me into his little Axis of persecutors). If you want to engage off-list, find me at siyocreo@live.com, or call me at 509-336-4841. But please, for the sake of your Spiritual health if not your salvation, start using the brain God gave you to analyze the work of a man He most certainly . . . didn’t give you.

 

Seth, I’m going to respond to this as one of Wilson’s original, charter Intoleristas — and, perhaps, the only one still “nipping at his heels,” as another commenter wrote, other than Rose Huskey. I’m proud to be part of his leftist/radical/egalitarian axis, and the only Trinitarian Intolerista in the bunch. I’ve debated Wilson (KRFP, 2007); you can ask around for how the debate went for him. I think it went not very well, and that only by the grace given me by my God. I followed the Biblical admonition to confront him in person first before going all egalitarian-leftist on his ass, although I believe the Scriptures also teach that public error demands public rebuke. I have engaged with him numerous times in public events, I don’t EVER use a pseudonym in writing about him on my blog, http://www.keelyprevailingwinds.com, and I say nothing about him, anywhere, that I wouldn’t say TO him, anywhere. And I know my stuff. All of which is to say that you are grossly mistaken, profoundly mislead, embarrassingly beholden to a narrative that has proved false over and over and over again and, it seems to me, inordinately desperate to defend a man who would spit you out like rigatoni with a cat hair if you ever publicly disagreed with him. Instead of wrenching yourself into pretzel-like positions trying to avoid understanding the obvious — that is, your pastor/mentor/employer/master is a sorry excuse for a pastor, a scholar, and a human being — why not take a breath and ask yourself a simple question: WHY? Why, in a town of a dozen Trinitarian evangelical churches, is Doug Wilson singled out for criticism? (My question is why, in said town, a menopausal homemaker, me, would be virtually alone in doing what Moscow’s brave, complementarian, male pastors seemingly can’t bring themselves to do, but I digress …). Why is it easier for Wilson and his defenders to cry “religious bigotry” when his primary critics share his (putatively) Christian faith? Why is it that when the reformed community finds itself in turmoil, the quickest way to understanding is to follow the stench and look toward Wilson, the CREC, and the Federal Vision, which even this Arminian sees is an utter rejection of Reformed theology? A brave person asks questions and deals with the answers, Seth. Are you a brave person, or a beholden one? (I use “person,” not “man,” because unlike Wilson, I don’t ascribe character traits to one’s sex, which is enough to spin me into his little Axis of persecutors). If you want to engage off-list, find me at siyocreo@live.com, or call me at 509-336-4841. But please, for the sake of your Spiritual health if not your salvation, start using the brain God gave you to analyze the work of a man He most certainly . . . didn’t give you.

October 8, 2013

I Found It! Toughts On Ephesians 5

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 12:30 am

Well, perhaps my new laptop isn’t as disloyal as I earlier thought!  I came back from running some errands and lo and behold and God be praised — what I thought I had lost came right back up on my screen!  So . . . I reiterate my apology to Joshua, and I have some thoughts about the theology of the Credenda/Agenda article.

In response to a comment I received, posted at the end of the Prevailing Winds post including the article on the husband’s role in marriage, whose author insisted that as Jesus took responsibility for the sins of humans, the husband, per Ephesians 5, must take responsibility for the sins of the wife:

No.  That’s wrong.  Terribly, hopelessly, pitifully wrong.

First, you cannot derive a theology of marriage from a five-verse section of one book in the New Testament when that point would appear to contradict the plain teaching not only of the Gospel — that there is one mediator between God and human beings, the Human One, Christ Jesus — but larger sections of the Word that describe the mutuality that ought to be found in Christian marriage, like 1 Cor. 7.  Developing theology from proverbs, or Proverbs, is not a wise hermeneutic, even though it’s one that Wilson regularly employs.  It’s also not wise to generate a theology from metaphors in Scripture, which quite certainly is what the Lord gives us in Ephesians 5.

I find it amusing, but kind of not really, that complementarians insist on taking Ephesians 5: 23-30 in an absolutely literal sense, even though it uses the metaphor of Christ as the Source (kephale, Greek) of the Church as the husband is, in patriarchal societies like Ephesus in the first century, awash, as it was, in weird Aphrodite-worship and false teachings that elevated women above men, the (kephale) of his wife.  But they never take “literally” the earlier verses — like the “capstone” verse 21 that introduces the concrete and the metaphor — that not only prescribe mutual submission in marriage, but also make the assumption that in reading vv. 24 and 25, we all know that a woman must never MERELY submit to her husband but must love him deeply as well, and that a man must never MERELY love his wife but must, as v. 21 says, submit to her as well.  That part is clear, yet rarely preached on, however much it’s generally held as an unstated model of Christian marriage.

No, Wilson and his patriarchal pals build their marriage theology on the flimsiest type of Scriptural texts — metaphor — while ignoring that which is presented as straightforward. Neither do we hear much from the pulpit about the beauty of matrimonial mutuality found, again in the most straightforward manner, in 1  Corinthians 7, where half a dozen “he does as she does, she does as he does” examples pepper the text.  But Ephesians 5 and the 1 Corinthians passages prescribe what Wilson evidently cannot abide:  a Biblical egalitarianism that threatens  the position of individual patriarchs clinging to metaphor to bolster their case, but also a view of male-female relations that’s in tune with the worldview and promise, the hope and the vision, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That isn’t always the gospel of Doug Wilson and his CREC counterparts, unfortunately, and the fact that it reveals not only their desperate grasping for power-over relationships with those among them but a weak, unscholarly hermeneutic as well should give his followers at least a robust, hearty pintful of doubt.

Sadly, though, most of them are either too enamored of the Magisterium of Moscow or too afraid of repercussions if they object.  It may be lousy theology, but when you keep people afraid they might “despise their baptism” and not “persevere until the end,” or when you keep your disciples financially dependent on you, it’s one hell of a way to keep the sheep in line.  That women and men will suffer, in the family and out, appears insignificant in the building of an empire that hails Wilson and his tight circle of Beholden Toadies as the ones in the know when it comes to theology.

They prove over and over again that they aren’t.  More tragically, they exhibit fruit that calls into question whether they know the One of whom and for whom they’d have us believe they speak.  The stakes are high, and the error is profound.  Sadly, there’s no room for questioning, and the silence that looks like unanimity . . . isn’t.

October 7, 2013

I Was Wrong. And Then I Wasn’t.

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 8:26 pm

I’m having some keyboard problems, so, having lost a much longer public apology dedicated to Joshua, I’ll make this one briefer so that it posts.  Joshua pointed out that the Credenda/Agenda article on marital discord and husband-like responsibility that I said wasn’t available any longer on the C/A website — as in, it had been taken down — is, in fact, in the archives.

I was wrong, and I apologize not only to Joshua but to all of my readers.  The site I looked at didn’t have it, but the archives on another C/A site does.  The Kirk has deleted from public sites some controversial articles; that appeared to be the case here.  It wasn’t, and I got it wrong in saying that it was.  I ask Joshua and all of my readers’ forgiveness.

I don’t, however, apologize for my analysis of the article, which said that Wilson’s analysis is not only absurd to the point of nauseating, but, not surprisingly, not a wise handling of the Biblical text.  I had developed a much longer post to address his poor handling of Ephesians 5, but I lost it.  I don’t want my flighty computer to erase my apology, though, so I’m going to stop now.

 

Good Words

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 7:36 pm

“Tell the truth and let the consequences fall on God.”

Deborah Smith Pegues

October 6, 2013

Doug Wilson’s “Brand”

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 9:10 pm

Doug Wilson has a piece on his blog regarding the foolishness of “thinking outside the box”  when everyone else is intent on doing the same thing, or, as he calls it, establishing and maintaining a “brand” that sets you apart.  His point, of course, is that this is a silly endeavor, no doubt the fruit of a pomosexual, sentimental, culturally- and Biblically-illiterate attempt at “I Gotta Be Me.”

He claims to be different, happy to think “inside the box” and not at all in need of any sort of branding.  I found that . . . ironic . . . and left the following comment on his blog.  Believing, as I do, that I take responsibility for everything I write, I’ve now imported it onto my own.

Regarding Doug Wilson and “branding” and the foolishness thereof, I wrote:

Sadly, Doug, your “brand” is quite pronounced.  And guess what?  It’s not Reformed Christianity or Small-Denomination Trinitarianism, or classical Christian education.  It’s not even your pompous punditry regarding things you know little about. No, your “brand” is clear — as easy to identify and no less commercial than that of Harley-Davidson’s.  Your stock in trade, your modus operandi, your “brand,” is the gleeful defense of the indefensible, a defense wielded by your Serrated Edge and promulgated via numerous enterprises the Saints would hardly call “ministries.”  Your beards, dark beers, and Disputatio robes are props.  The substance? Grotesque theological error and egregious pastoral conduct, trumpeted by the tin-horn vanity presses you employ.

October 4, 2013

From Doug Wilson: Why, Husband, It’s All Your Fault

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 8:10 pm

Funny, you won’t find this on any current website for Doug Wilson’s Credenda/Agenda magazine.  Being that it’s utterly absurd in analysis, answer, and application — a theological morass not unlike a sinkful of week-old dirty dishes — it was, like some other examples of challenged dimwittedness from C/A writers, taken down quietly.  But here’s what was really featured in the culture-transforming, Christ-honoring, Reformed call to righteousness he and others believe to be C/A:

From CREDENDA/AGENDA, on “husbandry” in dysfunctional marriages.  Hint:  The wife is just a reflection, if she’s fat, sexually unresponsive, a messy housekeeper, or in any other way not up to par, of her husband’s simpering sinfulness.  Neat, huh?

****************************

The problem can come about in many different ways. Perhaps a couple marry when both were non-Christians, and he later becomes a Christian. Perhaps he was a believer who disobediently married an unbeliever. He repents later, but he remains married. Perhaps husband and wife are both professing believers, but through his abdication of godly authority, she has backslidden to the point that he simply does not know how to lead her. Most married Christian men are not in this position, but at the same time we cannot say the problem is extremely rare.

The symptoms can of course vary. He may be distressed over her spending habits, television viewing habits, weight, rejection of his leadership, laziness in cleaning the house, lack of responsiveness to sexual advances, whatever. But however the problem is manifested, what should a husband do? Suppose for a moment that he really wants to serve God in their marriage, and she appears to be distinctly unenthusiastic about changing. What course should a man pursue?
First, the husband in his capacity as a private person should confess to God his own individual sins as an individual which have contributed to the situation. For the typical husband, such sins will be numerous, and may even include the initial decision to marry her. In other words, to take an example at random, if his name is Jay, he begins by confessing Jay’s sins.
Second, the husband as a “public person” should begin confessing the sinful state of his household before God, assuming full and complete responsibility for the way things are. But what is meant by this phrase “public person”? A husband is an individual, but he is also an officer–he is invested with the office of husband. In this status, he is not his own man; he is a public person–he represents others. The responsibilities of a public person are not the same thing as the guilt of a private person. When a wife neglects her duties, the guilt of the sin is hers. The responsibility for her negligence is her husband’s.
The husband should confess, on a daily basis, the sinful status of his household before God, and his responsibility for it, until it changes. A “problem wife” cannot be worked on like a car that has broken down. Because of the organic and covenantal nature of marriage, the problem is never “over there, with her,” but rather here “with us.” And who is the spokesman for “us,” the spokesman for this particular household before God? The husband is, and he must learn the importance of such corporate confession. If his name is Jay Smith, he must learn to confess the Smiths’ sins, and he must do so as the covenant representative of that household.
Third, when he has learned to assume full responsibility before God for the spiritual condition of the household (and not before then), and the ramifications of this lesson have settled in his marrow, the husband should then sit down and have a talk with his wife. In this talk, he must assume the complete responsibility for the way things are. The chances are that he has previously blamed her many times, both in his heart and out loud. This is not to be a sanctimonious version of the same thing. While granting the reality of her negligence and her individual guilt before the Lord, his talk should not be accusing. After he has acknowledged his responsibility, and his failures to exercise it properly, he should then make clear what his expectations are for her in the future. He should also make clear his complete unwillingness to step in to do for her what she neglected to do, or to tolerate a lapse into the old way of doing things.
Fourth, his expectations for change should not be exhaustive, but rather representative. He should want to address the problem in principle, not in toto. The purpose of this discussion is not to present a twenty-year-old list of grievances–love does not keep a record of wrongs–but rather to help her learn to do her duty, and to lead her as she learns what is, for her, a difficult lesson. She can learn on a representative problem. She would be overwhelmed with a requirement that she change everywhere, all at once. If, for example, the problem is one of poor housekeeping, he should require something very simple, i.e. that the dishes be done after every meal before anything else is done.
The first time the dishes are not done, he must sit down with his wife immediately, and gently remind her that this is something which has to be done. At no time may he lose his temper, badger her, call her names, etc. He must constantly remember and confess that she is not the problem, he is. By bringing this gently to her attention, he is not to be primarily pointing to her need to repent; rather, he is exhibiting the fruit of his repentance.
He does this, without rancour and without an accusative spirit, until she complies or rebels. If she complies, he must move up one step, now requiring that another of her duties be done. If she rebels, he must call the elders of the church and ask them for a pastoral visit. When the government of the home has failed to such an extent, and a godly and consistent attempt by the husband to restore the situation has broken down, then the involvement of the elders is fully appropriate.

In God We Live, Move, And Have Our Being

Filed under: Uncategorized — keelyem @ 7:18 pm

From Julian of Norwich, in a vision the Lord gave her:

And he showed me something no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and round as a ball.  I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought:  What can this be?  I was amazed that it could last, for because of its littleness I thought it would fall into nothing.  And I was answered in my understanding:

It lasts and always will, because God loves it.  Thus, everything has being through the love of God.

 

 

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