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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

The Changing Definition of Misogyny and the Making of a Man

We want your love to flow through us, transforming us as it transforms the world.

Now, Lord, we are opening our hearts to you, to your spirit, to your presence in the Word.

And we're praying that we would worship you through a life of obedience, willing, freely given devotion.

Now, bless us, Lord, as we tackle a tough topic.

I'm entitled to my message this morning, The Changing Definition of Misogyny in the Making of a Man.

And I'm here to tell you my wife does not like my sermon title.

Comes from 2 Greek words, meaning hate and woman.

And you hear the word used a lot these days.

As a matter of fact, you're hearing the word more and more, which is what I wanna talk to you about.

When I was praying over what I should talk about, I realized I'm never here on Father's Day.

And that means that I don't naturally circle around the topic of manhood and fatherhood.

And so this year, I felt impressed to take a few moments and talk about this because in my opinion, the vacancy of the father in the lives of the rest of the family, especially the children, is a detriment that cannot be easily made up.

For all you single ladies that are trying hard to be both mom and dad to your kids, praise the Lord, keep up, don't give up, continue to mix them in with the extended family and the church family, and may the Lord strengthen you and help you as you attempt to be both in the absence of a dad.

But in 2012, Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia, went on kind of a, depending on how you view it, some would call it a rant, some would call it an impassioned speech.

In the midst of her speech, she looked across the aisle at her opposite in the form of political opposition, who had been critiquing 1 of her members of her cabinet.

They both had made inappropriate comments, which we would call sexist or misogynistic.

Whether they were misogynistic or sexist depends on your definition.

But for a period of several minutes on a video that went viral on the internet, She pulled together several terms and after that the Australian Dictionary changed its definition of misogyny and it started to include the words sexism or sexist.

Now if you're a sexist you can have a strong prejudice against women, or you could be lumped in in the category of those who hold patriarchal views.

Now I want to remind you that as most conservative Christians who still believe in the inspiration of Scripture, it's very easy to lump evangelicals and other conservative Christians into the category of patriarchal, which is barely separated and not at all in the minds of some from the word sexist.

Now if sexist and misogynist mean the same thing, pretty soon you've taken those who believe in traditional roles and you've turned them into woman haters, and society has just kind of gently broadened their embrace of all those that stand in the way of the new genderless roles." Now, when I came up with my sermon title, I was quite surprised to Google my subject matter and find all this information out.

I had been thinking to myself, you know, the word misogyny is being used to encapsulate a lot more than it probably really means.

And lo and behold, when I go ahead and start researching it, 1 of the first things that pops up is a Wall Street Journal article from 2012 on this very topic, the changing definition of the word.

Now it matters because you might respectfully disagree with the genderless agenda of modern feminism and secularism.

You might actually believe that a father and a mother have complementary but different roles.

You might actually believe that a woman ought to be paid the same amount as a man if she's doing the same job.

But you still might actually believe that God designed the people, though both representing his person and his image, to project different components of that image into the home, the school, the workplace, and society.

It's exceptionally important for you to understand that what makes up this genderless agenda of the far left is an attempt to achieve something that they believe will open up the doors of creativity and a superior life.

So away with traditional values and away with traditional roles.

They're all inhibitors to a greater self-actualization.

But I'm here to tell you this morning, we are not many years away from a reaction to the secular experiment that is creating more fractured homes, more broken homes, more broken people than at any time in American history.

And it won't be too many decades from now, if that long, before the world will cry out that we need to get back to the things that created some semblance of normalcy in our society.

Yes, indeed, the word misogyny, woman hater, is enlarging itself to anyone that would stand in the way of an agenda that distinguishes between male and female.

Now, I was informed by my good work associate, Pastor Joe, that he had been watching a series by Ken Burns called American Lives.

And there are 2 in that chapter that I watched on the women's suffragette movement.

What these women had to go through to get the right to vote.

But along the way, the movement was, if you would like to say, connected to, some might say hijacked by, elements and issues underneath that would propel it on farther down the way and even in its infancy to represent things that were beyond the abuses that were in society.

So as I was dialoguing with Pastor Joe, he made a very excellent observation.

He said that Ellen White was very careful about which movement she connected herself to.

The woman voting rights movement connected itself to the Women's Christian Temperance Organization, of which we find Ellen White being a strong supporter.

But after thinking about what Pastor Joe said, I decided just to research it a little bit, and sure enough, what I discovered in the Adventist Review is that Ellen White never attached herself to the woman's suffrage movement.

So reading out of an article written by Gerald Klingbill, surprisingly, Ellen White did not endorse or use her influence to promote the women's suffrage movement.

As far as women's suffrage went, she personally supported the treatment of women as equals, but she saw no reason to spend time, money, and personal effort in a cause that would not directly build God's kingdom.

This morning, I'm here to tell you that I believe his summary is good as far as it goes, but now watching, we're seeing that it's not just that it would not build God's kingdom, we can see and will see that many of the elements of the movement stand in direct contradiction to God's movement, God's pre-established kingdom, God's plan for the family, and God's plan for order in the home.

This morning, I'd like for you to take your bulletin, and I wanna read the Reflecting Christ statement in there.

For as much as divided the Adventist Church on issues of gender as of late, 1 thing stands unequivocally clear, that when it comes to the home, Ellen White never deviated for a moment from what we would call the Judaic Christian or some might negatively call the patriarchal understanding, depending on how you define patriarchy.

Some people would not dare define patriarchy in the ways that it's used disparagingly as a dominating, dictating, aggressive thing.

In regards to the home, she is… She repeats herself over and over again about the basic structure, the basic roles, the beauty of harmony between husband and wife.

But what's here in this bulletin is not a remotely grabbed little piece of data that flows in the opposite direction of her general tenor of statements.

And this morning, I'm here to tell you we have a crisis.

I heard once anecdotally of a of a greeting card company that offered greeting cards to all the prisoners on Mother's Day, and there was a real rush on the free offer.

But when it came Father's Day and the same offer was made, very few men wanted, or maybe I should say needed, a card.

Because there are prison cells full of people who have either abandoned or were never taught how to grow up to be men.

There are vacancies in homes where loving men ought to be holding down a beautiful statement and regular ordinary witness of the glory of God when the kindness of God's heart and the service of God's heart along with the proper structure and direction of God's heart is brought in to a little part of society.

The home, Adventist home, page 211 to 212.

So if you throw out the Bible, If you believe that it itself is the original patriarchal document it itself is what is in the way of societal advance We've already got a problem The home is an institution of God If this is true, maybe the keys to a societal regeneration are to be found here.

God designed that the family circle, father, mother, and children should exist in this world as a firm.

All members of the family center in the who?

How about what happens when the father's vacant?

How about what happens when the father's preoccupied?

How about what happens when the father makes a profession of Christianity, but does not have Spiritual emotional intimacy with God If this family is centering in the father's leadership and there is no father present, mind, body, and soul, what can we expect in a society where the evil flow is a rampant, ravaging River waiting to sweep away the ones we love If ever there was a day when we need dads if ever there was a day when we need to teach manhood If ever there was a day when we need to nurture the masculine It's today Our society finds itself awash in the agendas and the activism of feminism and man has been at the whipping boy end of society's displeasure for about 6 decades now.

We're a long ways from leave it to beaver and my 3 sons.

We're a so far away that we can find home after home where the dad has been a playboy instead of a man and Everybody's suffering because of it If ever there was a day that we need to re-educate ourselves on what it means to be a man, it is today.

If we are centering in the form of leadership in the home of the Father, It's superbly important that the Father is like God.

He is the lawmaker, illustrating in His own manly bearing the sterner virtues, energy, integrity, honesty, patience, courage, diligence, and practical usefulness.

The father is in 1 sense the priest of the household, laying upon the altar of God the morning and the evening sacrifice.

Well, I've been doing a little bit of looking into this, and I want to tell you, it's been quite an interesting journey.

Now, I'm not going back to the chromosomal beginning, but I would like to read a little bit.

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The Changing Definition of Misogyny and the Making of a Man

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