[Vision2020] Rationalizing Not Knowing How To Do It

[Art Deco]

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   Tag Archives: douglas wilson
 July 18, 2012
<http://wtfaith.com/2012/07/18/who-put-the-blog-in-the-blog-re-blog-re-blog/>
Who put the blog in the blog, re-blog,
re-blog?<http://wtfaith.com/2012/07/18/who-put-the-blog-in-the-blog-re-blog-re-blog/>
By Daniel Mitchell <http://wtfaith.com/author/wtfaith/>

I’ve mentioned Rachel Held Evans before. She’s got a blog I read on a
pretty regular basis, and as I’ve mentioned before (this is important, now)
she kinda looks like Claire Danes in *My So Called Life.* Not that that’s
important. Except I said it was. Crap. I’m lying again.


 <http://wtfaith.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/angela.jpg>

SO lying.



Anyway, I was reading her blog today, and what I read made me bubble with
impotent fury. My insides are percolating like a coffeemaker, only instead
of making coffee, it makes *raw rage*. A “Mr. Rage”, if you will.


 <http://wtfaith.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/angrycoffee1.png>

Concept drawing, patent pending.



I’m angry because I read
this<http://rachelheldevans.com/gospel-coalition-douglas-wilson-sex>article
(written by Rachel Held Evans) about
*another* article (written by Jared Wilson on behalf of the Gospel
Coalition) that mentions a *book* that supports some crazy backwards views
on the role of men and women. . . in sex. Per the Bible. As if my brain
wasn’t already confused by the Russian doll of re-blogs that I’m presenting
my readers with, I have to wonder – are people *paid* to talk about how God
wants men and women to bone?

Want to share my rage – or confusion? Read the
article<http://rachelheldevans.com/gospel-coalition-douglas-wilson-sex>
.

Here is a great quote from the blog about the blog about the book written
by Douglas Wilson (the book is *Fidelity: What it Means to be a One Woman
Man*):



*“When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has
ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act
cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates,
conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is
of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled
against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means
that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as
they relate to the marriage bed.”*

* *

I read that, and my first thought was, “Man. . .this guy and his wife
are *doing
it wrong!*” I mean, I’m not going to provide any details of my sex life on
this blog, but I really feel the need to make a point. So instead of coming
anywhere near dropping an unwelcomed info-bomb on What the Faith, let me,
instead, ask this question to the fellas who read this blog.

*Hey fellas – if you and your woman are involved in ‘the act’, and you can
characterize her response to you as ‘receiving’, ‘surrendering’ or
‘accepting’, do you interpret that response as proof that you’re. . .you
know. . . decent at the actual carrying-out of said act?*

You can feel free to accept that question as rhetorical – but heck, if you
answer in the comments, *bonus!*

Also, I’ve *read* Song of Songs. It’s basically the Kama Sutra of the
Bible, and there is nothing complementarian about it. As RHE points out in
her article:



*Wilson** conveniently leaves out the fact that the Shulamite girl in Song
of Songs initiates much of the action in the romance. **She is the first to
speak in the poem, declaring, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth” (1:1). She actively seeks out the handsome shepherd in his fields,
saying “Why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your
friends?” (v. 7). When the two are separated, she goes out into the
streets, looking for him, and at one point is accosted by the city guards.
When she finds him, she brings him into a private room. There, she says, “I
held him and would not him go” (3:4).  It is she who initiates a sexual
encounter in a vineyard in the countryside, and it is she who offers her
lover a frank invitation to drink her wine and to enter her “garden” to
taste its choice fruits. Her lover confesses “you have ravished my heart,
my sister, my bride.” And so the lengthiest and most detailed description
of sex found in scripture is characterized by mutuality and shared
pleasure, not conquering and colonization, authority and subordination.  It
is precisely what Wilson refers to as an “egalitarian pleasure party.”*

 <http://wtfaith.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/songofsongs.jpg>

Look at those two – ready to tear off six or seven layers of clothes and
GET THIS EGALITARIAN PLEASURE PARTY STARTED!



I know I’ve been over this before, but I really don’t think that God has
that much to say about how two consenting adults in a loving, monogamous
relationship combine their private parts. I think that once people are a)
consenting, b) loving and c) monogamous, I think that God is pretty much
laissez-faire about their junk. If people who fit into those three
categories want to engage in *the business* in a vat of Jell-O, I can’t
imagine God is going to condemn that. He might *look away* from that, but
then again, I would.

But Rachel (and several of her commenters) make a very, very good point
about the language used in Jared Wilson’s blog (and by extension, in
Douglas Wilson’s book). This is where the (slightly amused) confusion I’m
feeling turns into anger.



*His characterization of sex as an act of conquering and colonization is
disturbing, and his notion that women are little more than the passive
recipients of this colonization, who simply “accept” penetration, is as
ignorant as it is degrading.  What is perhaps most disconcerting is the
fact that even after multiple women expressed their concerns in the comment
section, both Jared Wilson and Doug Wilson repeatedly dismissed these
concerns with exasperation and condescension, ridiculing the commenters’
lack of “reading comprehension.”*

Wow. This actually happened. I read the comments. I don’t want to repost
any of them (mostly because I would have to repost a long chain of
comments, which is a bit distracting for people who don’t want to read
them, and also a hard thing to do and still maintain a short blog post) but
you can read them right
here<http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2012/07/13/the-polluted-waters-of-50-shades-of-grey-etc/?comments#comments>.
 The worst part is that two authors gave offense, and neither one of them
said, “You know what? I can see how that could be really offensive. I’m
sorry, it’s not what I meant.” They both took a stance that anyone who
wasn’t an *idiot* would read those words as they were meant to be read, and
be totally moved by how kind, caring, loving, and completely rad Jared
Wilson and Douglas Wilson are.

They certainly wouldn’t see them as misogynistic assholes, would they?

 Anyway, here I am, sitting at work, steaming out of my ears, and then it
occurs to me – Jared Wilson’s article started as a commentary about *50
Shades of Grey. *A book that started out as a *Twilight* fan fiction. It
almost made me laugh out loud.



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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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