She begins by declaring her reason for writing the article:
“I am frustrated by egalitarians – most of the ones who have crossed my path, anyway – because of the incorrect assumptions they make about me and other complementarian women.
And it’s not just that the assumptions are wrong, it’s that the assumptions are often hypocritically, “log in the eye,” wrong.”
Well, this ought to be good! I can’t wait to hear about all the reasons a belief system that treats women as children and men as gods is merely being “misunderstood” by those who oppose it. Or how those who view and treat women as full human beings with equal value to men are somehow being hypocrites.
Michelle’s first point may be the most offensive in the entire article:
“It’s a spiritual issue.
The reason you hold the positions and opinions you hold as an individual is based on one thing – your relationship with God. This is a me versus God issue. Do you love and obey God as a genuinely regenerated Christian, or do you reject Him and rebel against His commands as someone who is still lost?”
Right from the start, she has already engaged in bullying rather than answering anyone’s actual objections. If you disagree with her, you’re disagreeing with God and being disobedient (a classic method of attempting to be authoritative when you don’t actually have anything good to say). She continues:
“The Bible makes crystal clear from Genesis to Revelation that people who genuinely know and love God obey Him, and that if you don’t obey Him, you don’t know Him or love Him.
Additionally, if you’re not saved – a “natural man” – the things of God are folly to you. It’s not that you’re smarter or enlightened or have a different opinion than those who obey Scripture. It’s that you’re spiritually incapable of accepting, embracing, and obeying what God has told you to do. That’s why you see those of us who do as fools.
Let me say it plainly. If your general trajectory in life is to consistently find yourself angered by, indifferent to, or unable to accept the plain meaning of Scripture, and your heart persists in fighting back against God’s Word even if you’ve been biblically corrected, you are almost certainly not saved.³ That’s not me saying that. That’s a whole lot of Scripture saying that.”
This is not an argument. This is emotional manipulation. She is attempting to stir up fear so that people will stop thinking and simply obey her (not God!).
“This is the fundamental reason most egalitarians disagree with most complementarians. It’s usually not that either side doesn’t understand what the other side stands for. It’s that both sides generally do understand what the other side stands for and they reject the other side’s view because of where they are, spiritually.”
In other words, she dismisses any argument in favor of egalitarianism by simply labeling anyone who disagrees with her as being in the wrong place spiritually. She clarifies later that she doesn’t mean being an egalitarian causes you to be unsaved; rather, she simply means that if you’re truly saved, you will be growing all the time, and so won’t stay in the “rebellion” of the egalitarian mindset. She goes so far as to say “most people who are already false converts gravitate toward the egalitarian viewpoint as a fruit of the pre-existing condition of being unsaved.” Besides the fact that we still have heard no argument against egalitarianism or in favor of complementarianism, I would like to ask her who made her God and gave her the right to judge the salvation of others!
She goes on to say:
“As I’ve stated many, many times in my articles, the Bible is our authority as Christians, not a pastor or Christian leader who holds a particular position, not your loved ones who are in error but you’re certain they love Jesus, not any church or denominational structure or position that conflicts with Scripture – the Bible. If you are going to argue against a biblical principle, you need to support your argument with rightly handled, in context Scripture, not examples of fallible human beings – however godly or well-intentioned they might be. Scripture is our standard, not people.”
I agree with the above paragraph. I just wish she would read it to herself! The complementarian position is not biblical at all; the entire support for it is based on a few isolated verses that are taken out of context and have a lot of translational ambiguities. So I would repeat right back to Michelle: If you’re going to argue against the biblical principle of the complete equality of all believers (regardless of gender), you need to support your argument with rightly handled, in context Scripture!
In the next section, she assures us that complementarian women don’t feel oppressed and are not in need of rescuing:
“Obviously I can’t speak for every complementarian woman out there, but I can say that of the dozens of women I know personally and the thousands who have followed me online for the last eleven years, and speaking for myself, I have never met a single, genuinely regenerated, complementarian woman who felt diminished, held back, chained up, or walked all over by the role God lays out for us in Scripture.
We don’t need your pity, egalitarians, any more than a kid in a candy store needs to be pitied. And we don’t need to be rescued, just like you wouldn’t think of trying to rescue a child from Disneyland.”
That’s certainly the first time I’ve heard someone compare a belief system that subjugates an entire class of people to another for no apparent reason to a candy store or Disneyland. I find it ironic that both of her analogies involve children, since complementarianism ultimately views women as children in need of adults (men) to govern them and make decisions for them “for their own good.”
Of course, it’s not hard to find stories of miserable and dysfunctional complementarian marriages. Either Michelle has purposely avoided them, or she is being dishonest. But it’s very telling that she leaves herself an escape route: she specifies that never met a “genuinely regenerated” complementarian woman who felt diminished etc.! In this way, she can simply dismiss any who claim to be complementarian but are unhappy as not being real complementarians. In this way, she judges anyone who is not happy to be oppressed as not being a true Christian.
“If egalitarians can’t see how arrogant, hypocritical, and sexist it is to stand on a pedestal and declare that they’re the ones who will empower women, ensure that women are heard and valued for their independent ideas and unique contributions, and then turn around and condescendingly assume that women who have used those very independent minds they themselves tout to reach a non-egalitarian conclusion are brainwashed, I’m at a loss as to how to explain it. “
I love how throws in the word “sexist” just because she’s tired of hearing it used to describe complementarians, even though it has nothing to do with what she just said. I don’t think it’s arrogant for egalitarians to say that they’re empowering women (because that's exactly what they're doing!). Regarding the charge that this is hypocritical: no, not quite. Not all ideas are equal or equally valid. This would be like saying all viewpoints are accepted, including the belief that not all viewpoints are accepted! If the goal of egalitarians is to empower women, this necessitates having no tolerance for those who would attempt to prevent the empowerment of women. In fact, it would be hypocritical to tolerate this, which is exactly the opposite of what Michelle is saying!
Besides, egalitarians are not saying no one is allowed to live their lives any way they want. If a couple decides that the brunette will make all decisions for the blond, or that one gets to make decisions during the week and the other during weekends, no one is stopping them. Egalitarians are simply fighting so that such ideas are not pushed on others along with the lie that God has commanded such a thing.
Her next point shows to what lengths complementarians will go to try to glamorize their position:
“Complementarian women aren’t limited or lesser, we’re specialists.
Oh, that poor cardiologist! He’s so limited in his profession. If only he could be a General Practitioner!
I just feel terrible for that guy – he only practices civil law! He doesn’t know what he’s missing by not also practicing criminal, personal injury, estate, real estate, corporate, family, and malpractice law!
In the professional world, we normally regard specialty positions as more prestigious than more generalized positions.
But somehow, for egalitarians, that concept doesn’t translate to complementarianism. In the complementarian church, male pastors, elders, and teachers are the general practitioners. Women are the specialists. We specialize in discipling women and children, because we have a unique, God-given skill set for ministering to that unique segment of the population. God has given us the luxury and freedom to concentrate on this population He has called us to serve without the added burden of also having to teach, disciple, and oversee men.”
Unbelievable. Men are told they are qualified to do any task they like simply because they’re men, and women, simply because they’re women, are relegated to a single type of task, and yet this is portrayed as a “luxury and freedom” without the “burden” of having to oversee men. She might as well say the slaves in the 18th century had the “luxury and freedom” of not governing themselves and providing food, shelter, etc. Anything can be glamorized if you’re dishonest and manipulative enough (and if you truly believe the people listening to you are idiots who will be easily fooled).
Also, notice how terrible the analogies of complementarianism are. Women are told that they are unfit to teach men. Sometimes no reason is given for this, other times it’s suggested that women are more easily deceived and so should not be teaching men. One wonders why it makes sense for those who are more easily deceived to be teaching others who are also more easily deceived, rather than the men who would supposedly be able to see through any false teaching. But anyway, in order to try to butter it up, she compares this to “specialization.” Once again, this is like saying the slaves in the 19th century “specialized” in picking cotton. This is not to say that teaching women, keeping the home, raising children, or other tasks to which complementarians regulate women are similar to slavery. The problem is not the tasks themselves, but the disingenuous portrayal of restricting women to only these roles based on nothing but who they are.
Michelle closes with the following points:
“The egalitarian worldview looks down on women who specialize in discipling women and children in the church and being the chief operating officer in the home. Our teaching only has value if there are men in the audience, which reeks of sexism. As if men are the standard, the high bar to be set, the only ones whose mere bodily presence can validate a woman’s teaching and suddenly make it worthwhile. Who cares about teaching women and children?”
This is a common misleading tactic among complementarians. If the egalitarian says it’s not necessary for all women to be homemakers, for example, the complementarian tries to twist these words to mean that there’s something wrong with being a homemaker. But clearly the egalitarian said nothing of the sort. It’s very telling that the complementarian must always rely on trickery such as this and is entirely incapable of addressing what the egalitarian plainly said.
This tactic is used here to claim that egalitarians are suggesting that the teaching of women has no value unless men are present. She even has the audacity to claim egalitarians are sexist! Of course, the egalitarian doesn’t care if men are actually present; they are simply pointing out that the complementarian devalues women by claiming there is something in their very nature that automatically disqualifies them from teaching men. But Michelle has desperately avoided answering such an objection.
“The egalitarian view does not value women as women. It only values women who are cheap knock-offs of men. Complementarians are the ones who value women as a separate, and equally significant, unique creation of God – not measured by how well we can imitate a man, but measured by how well we live up to all God created us to be as women. And we’re supposed to feel oppressed, limited, and lesser by that?”
It’s hard to know how to seriously respond to such ignorance. Complementarians, who worship men as being more godlike simply because they’re male and imply women are lesser image-bearers of God; who tell women their very purpose is to bear children for men, serve men, keep the home for men, and obey men; who tell women that because Eve was deceived first, all subsequent women are naive and lacking in judgment and must be ruled by men - now want to claim it is THEY who value women as being equally significant creations of God? And they want to accuse egalitarians, who simply say God does not discriminate based on arbitrary factors such as social status, race, or GENDER, somehow don’t value women? It’s hard to imagine how anyone could not see through such blatant lies. And yet, sadly, some don’t.
But I also have a problem with this (also common) claim that egalitarians are pushing women to “imitate men.” We do no such thing, because there simply are not activities that are “manly” activities in the first place. The complementarian’s point is circular: they designate certain positions or activities to be for men only, and then suggest a women doing these activities is acting like a man because she is doing the activities they have already defined as being for men. But I could just as easily say that eating peanut butter on Wednesdays is a feminine activity, so anytime a man does so, he is “acting like a woman!” Women who preach, have careers, or make decisions are not acting like men; they are acting like the full human beings only egalitarians acknowledge they are!
Finally, there is the following abominable statement:
“We’d have to be brainwashed to love a worldview that values us for what we are, not for clawing and scraping toward some impossible standard and state of being God never created us to reach?
When you set men up as the standard and tell women they have to measure up to men to have any value, what you are is not egalitarian. What you are is sexist.”
Again, we must marvel at the irony of a complementarian lecturing anyone on sexism. Do they even know that sexism literally means to discriminate based on gender, the very thing complementarianism is based on?
But perhaps the worst part of the passage above is the fact that she says women will be “clawing and scraping toward some impossible standard.” Yes, she is referring to what she believes is “acting like men.” In other words, women can’t do “the things men do”, such as become leaders, understand and teach the Bible, make good decisions, or take care of themselves. Yes, Michelle is explicitly telling us she believes women are simply inferior to men.
Sorry Michelle. You haven’t even come close to defending the complementarian view, but you have given us more reason to be horrified by it. You have proven you haven’t even taken the time to understand the view you’re criticizing. But this is no surprise to us, since you must know, deep down, that your position is indefensible. No, we can’t say for sure that you’ve been brainwashed into believing it; it’s entirely possible that you have done so by your own free will and intellect. But this would only mean that you have chosen to align yourself with egotistical, controlling men in order to join in the fun of oppressing and looking down on any women who disagree with you. I sincerely hope you will one day care more about what God actually says about the equality of men and women, rather than your pet traditions that are based not on the Bible but on the secular social structures of the ancient world!
Link to the original article: https://michellelesley.com/2019/05/31/mythbusting-complementarianism-4-truths-egalitarians-need-to-know-about-complementarian-women/
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