The Write Place

Though I am far closer to Butker in his position, it is not so original as he has come to believe (and I have serious issues with his Roman Catholicism). Close and well intentioned as he is, society underwent serious development that brought us to this point. What he pushes against was a doubling down on a serious problem that continued in the wrong direction in feminism. What Butker advocates, good as it is, remains only a step behind in the progression that has been harmful to the family.

Why is that?

Our contemporary industrial family model has proven harmful to marriage and family.  The model early in the last century that kept woman at home all the time is viewed as pejorative to women (in it’s own ways it was).  The blame has been attributed to Christianity and Christianity has been seen as degrading to woman. In reality Christianity elevates women quite highly.  For example, it was not good for Adam to be alone even walking with God (Genesis 2:18). Completely as Adam bore the image of God, there was something he lacked as a man. He could not complete the mandate to come (Genesis 1:28) and exercise dominion over the whole earth. He could only most fully model the image of God with a partner, the other half of his humanity.  It wasn’t until Eve was made by God that Adam had this need met.  Together Man and Wife bear the image of God even more perfectly than we perfectly do alone and only together can they fulfill the mandate to multiply and subdue the earth.  

In our fallenness however we have struggled to maintain a wholeness in our relationships between men and women.  We created a dichotomy where there should be unity between two complimentary parts.  So let it be known this is as much a critique of today’s “complementarianism” or strains of it.  Today we have reacted against an inaccurate and unbiblical model with one reactive and just as unbiblical. Let me start of with an illustration.

The contemporary model that is both attacked by feminists and all too often affirmed by conservatives is anachronistic and contrary design in its own ways.  While it does contain the strength of affirming the differences between male and female it did so in an unhealthy way. The more radical liberation feminism is far off indeed, but many the Christian community seems to have bought into the dichotomy that “The Feminine Mystique” originally critiqued, then resolved by desecrating feminity even further.  Both husband and wife used to work together in the home.  Culture shied away from this more team oriented male leader model to completely split realms, observe the absurdity.

Don’t forget the asbestos gloves too, you sexist

That was the new standard of modernism, but it’s not the classical model of male headship. The original was not the dichotomy of separating the man from the family life, the original was the homestead that provided the presence of both parents.

Until the Industrial revolution took people out of their homes in the 19^th century and put everyone in factories (starting with the men, whose now uncivilized tendencies led to the term “toxic masculinity”), the family stayed and worked together in the home.  A butcher’s wife helped him be a butcher, a bakers wife helped bake and learned how to bake for herself.  There was division of labor, but more equally so especially in regards to business.  The wife would work with her husband in their house (where their business was) and he with her.  She would learn a skill that would help her should she be widowed, and they would share in parenting duties in the house, teaching children their craft.

Division of labor has always existed and differed culture to culture. The chart below seems to indicate men did the jobs requiring their strength (showing an emphasis on necessity and tendencies in biological reality).  This chart shows generalities and there are exceptions such as the Pawnee who assigned woodworking to women.  Yet even with this until the industrial revolution man and wife worked together in the home and out of the home.  The common task of running a farm or a business and raising a family was shared by both.  There are some who still hold to this pattern in Western society. The work of keeping a household and raising children was more equally shared.

Nancy Pearcey in her book Total Truth tells how she witnessed the older model in family-owned businesses in Europe, bakeries in her case. While I was in Europe, I too saw some vestiges of this remained, albeit ones that are growing weaker. A family I knew still made wine as their family had for generations, but it had become a side business. Family, duty, and community were far more the purpose of marriage and family which were inseparable.  Today we split the family and it started with this dichotomy.

Trust me the old family model was way more chipper than American Gothic, but it still proves my point

This is exacerbated with today’s view  that marriage (and all things) as primarily about personal fulfillment.  Today it’s “happiness” that is seen as the ultimate good in a marriage, of course your own not anybody else’s. Why then get married or commit to a marriage if it’s value is contingent on how you feel at a moment? This misperception of marriage is common even in the church having been absorbed from the culture.  Still, it is the real difference between a biblical and the secular model. Happiness is a product of a good marriage, but we have made it an ultimate thing. The separation of man and wife has created a terrible situation. 

For the first time in history, husband, wife and children are all living separate lives not just their own shared lives.  Families spend far less time together. Naive children likewise are learning not from wise elders but equally naive children their age which likely contributed to rampant sexual brokenness in our youth.  Such was the character of the stories and advice I heard when I was high school.  Advice was often “oh yeah I’ve done that” and therefore it was okay.  In the stronger homestead and community, long term consequences could be taught by adults.  Without adults however children are feeling their way around in the dark making damaging lifelong mistakes. Without those strong parental connections, children are seeking elsewhere the attention they cannot get but desperately need from their parents.

The industrial revolution led to the further atomizing of the family.  Atomic family units are weakening to society as individuals break themselves off and tend towards pursuing pleasure.  This contributed and led to the sexual revolutions’ emphasis on personal sexual fulfillment (if it feels good, do it) and todays understanding of what marriage is.  If pleasure and self is central, what kind of relationship can be forbidden if it makes you happy?

Is a woman’s place in the home? The question often assumes the man’s place is outside the home.  The man should be in the home too.  So of course, a woman’s place is in the home, just like a man’s place is.  In the old model as well, the men did not get off “scott free” but missed out on the raising of their own children, enduring their own backbreaking work alone. Just because you could measure it in money doesn’t mean it was “a man’s world” or the valuable work. If we see the whole picture, everyone had their share of misery.

The old and new models were together unfair to the men.  They were expected to not be at home and not invest personally in their family. It is also worth, noting the idea of a male and female sphere (keeping the woman in home and the man at work) grew out of the fact/value dichotomy.  Science vs Religion created two realms of truth and the notion of having a male and a female realm just seemed the natural outworking.  

Yet instead of reclaiming the mutual sphere of united family life, feminism reacted largely against this and did not bring husbands back into the home with the wife. Feminism to be blunt, is just chauvinism in a female form. The proper response to the chauvinism of the industrial model would have been to talk up the things women do and find ways to get men back, instead we decided to break apart the family even further.

The more contemporary feminist movement became “have it all,” have jobs and get out of the house like the men had.  Apply the same mistake twice, and somehow you would have a solution. Men should not have had those expectations on them in the first place.  Women became what they hated, and men have been forced to retreat and get out the way.  Instead of stopping at equality society has gone so far as to reverse the two roles that were too strongly opposed to begin with.  Women are encouraged to be “what they want” while choosing to be a stay-at-home mother is seen as somehow choosing to be oppressed.  Women are told to put off families, sleep around and pursue a career above all else.  In essence they’re being told to be men before feminism, in a way even the men shouldn’t have been (Women have become the men they hated).

Butker hit this sacred cow between the eyes, a sacred cow that gives women direct access to wealth and the illusion of liberation. All this feminist lie really did was provide an illusion that they don’t need men. They are being told they can be irresponsible and call it liberation, and wicked men are benefiting for it. They are being told they can avoid their creatureliness, and Harrison Butker pointed out the beauty of their creaturehood. Telling a rebellious creature the beauty of God’s design for it is the cardinal sin in a fallen world.

This old new model of separation led to harm for both male and female.  It certainly lent itself to “Gender Arianism” which feminism rightly railed against, then agreed with and made themselves men.  To say or live as if women are ontologically (in being) less or inferior to men is to reflect the Arian heresy.   Men and women are equal in being and humanity, but not identical.  Like the Godhead there does exist a hierarchy meant to be lived out in self-sacrificial love. This ordering does not imply a difference in value, but that’s how people take it. It implies distinction in doing.

What is Gender Arianism you ask?
I also recommend C. Fitzsimmons Allisions’ book “The Cruelty of Heresy” on this.

Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself it’s Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands love you wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkly or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.  28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.  he who loves his wife loves himself. 29  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church 30 because we are members of his body. 31 therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.  32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.  33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Ephesians 5:22-33

Christ died for his bride and conquered death for her, that doesn’t sound sexist to me.

With such a huge hole in our modern industrial model, what’s the solution you may ask?  Other than a better Gospel realization than even the older industrial male centered model I am not certain how, but men and women need to be brought back together into the home in an industrialized world.  The temptation for society is payback and to reverse this with a reversed gender Arianism (which we are suffering as we celebrate women surpassing men in most typically male metrics).  Reform and return to a model of male headship that places both parents together is the only real solution.  

The family needs to be restored and a belief that both partners are equal in being but with differing roles in hierarchy needs to be established.  Our atomic family structure with its over-emphasis on the individual and devaluing of family ties has led (as it always does) to hedonism and societal decay.   A trustee model where marriage and the family are sacred (in which civilizations flourish) or a domestic model (where family and individual rights are balanced) are the only two stable ways of being.  An atomistic model is the mark of a dying civilization. The family must not just be “restored” but the creation design for the family needs to be realized at last in our fallen world.

Instead, we have made male and female interchangeable and the same in an attempt to make them equal. Is it any surprise that we laud the transgender or damn Harrison Butker for loving how different his wife is?

Whatever happened to “behind every great man stands a woman?” or “the hand that rocks the cradles rules the world?” It’s pretty sad that in a society that recognizes the significance of Mother’s Day, we find it insulting and enslaving that any man (or woman) would give a speech about praising the greatness of motherhood.

Well did God speak when he cursed our first ancestors for their sin.

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to^[f] your husband,
    but he shall rule over you.”

Genesis 3:16

The word used for desire is the same for Cain’s sin, and indicates her desire will be against her husband and for his position. You can see this in the caveat as to how the husband will rule over her anyway. What argument are Harrison Butker’s opponents making other than this? That the woman should have a man’s position and do what a man does?

Harrison Butker is not 100% right, that needs to be identified. But on what matters, the unique dignity, beauty and yes power of a woman as a wife and mother, her two unique callings and gifts he is very right. It is not only for what he gets right, but for exposing what is wrong that is he is hated.