No doubt breaking the hearts of women around the world, earlier this week, Pastor Douglas Wilson (below) declared that Christian women are simply prettier than “women in the general population.”

Devastated non-Christian women everywhere need not fear, however. There is a remedy!

If you want to be perceived as more attractive by Pastor Wilson and those who share his views, all you have to do is be a duly-shamed and submissive doormat.

(Did I say doormat? What I really meant was glory. That’s right, glory!)

You see, while it may seem like a raw deal for women that God’s perfect plan involves men being in charge of their womenfolk, women are actually the “most glorious” portion of God’s creation. (Though, oddly enough, we still have to take orders from the less glorious portion…) It’s all very convoluted, but Pastor Wilson helpfully explains:

The phenomenon is grounded in the order of creation, and in the purpose of redemption. What are men and women made out of? The first man was made from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7), and he was made to be the image and glory of God (1 Cor. 11:7). But the raw material that went into the creation of Adam was dirt. The first woman was made from the rib of the first man, not from dirt (Gen. 2:22). This means that man was made into the image and glory of God out of dirt, and woman was made out of the image and glory of God to be the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:7). This means that with regard to the importance of source materials, there is more wisdom in old nursery rhymes than in our current academy-approved gender studies. Because man was created before the woman, the apostle tells us that he is the head, he is the authority (1 Tim. 2:11-14). Man surpasses woman in authority. But the order of creation tells us something else as well. If we are talking about glory, and not authority, woman surpasses man. On creation days one, two and three, God created the structure. On days four, five and six, He came back through and filled it out. On the seventh day, He rested, filling that day with Himself. On day six, He created the man, and then He came back through and filled out that day, making it complete. He filled that day with glory by creating the woman. In this sense, the creation order tells us something important about women. As God’s work of creation progresses through the creation week, it does so with ever-ascending glory. When man is created, He is almost done, but not quite. The capstone still must be placed. The crown must still be set. The final glory touch, the woman, must be presented to the man. So when we are talking about glory, the last thing created is the most glorious. That is the finishing touch, the final flourish.

In case you didn’t catch it through all that glorious mumbo-jumbo, women are little more than possessions in this worldview. The trophy wife, if you will, the crown to be man’s glory; but, always, her place is in relation to man, her worth measured by her value to him.

Pastor Wilson tries so very hard to layer his antiquated views in nice, but ultimately meaningless, fluff, but he tries a little too hard. It reminds me of when I was looking to purchase a home a few years back: the homeowner liberally applied cinnamon air freshener in all the rooms where her dog had soiled the carpet. It didn’t fix the problem and the application was so sickeningly thick that it at once roused your suspicions.

Likewise, subservience wrapped up as the price to pay for being the ultimate glory is still subservience, now wrapped in a bit of condescending flattery.

With Bible verses about good works and gentle, quiet spirits, Pastor Wilson goes on to explain how women can, post-Garden of Eden, adorn themselves according to Biblical injunctions, thereby “learning how to be a true glory, without ostentatious or seductive display.”

But it’s the alternative — the path of the non-Christian woman — that is really quite interesting:

Unbelieving women either compete for the attention of men through outlandish messages that communicate some variation of “easy lay,” or in the grip of resentment they give up the endeavor entirely, which is how we get lumberjack dykes. The former is an avid reader of Cosmopolitan and thinks she knows 15K ways to please a man in bed. The latter is just plain surly about the fact that there even are any men.

There are many absurdities in this piece, from the very basis for the article to the assertion about the attractiveness (itself, a largely subjective measure) of groups of people based on religious belief. But the simplistic alternatives and misogynist caricatures here are so heavy on judgment and light on reality that it seems like Pastor Wilson wasn’t even trying at this point. As if, after paragraph upon paragraph describing the glorious, wonderful, extra special deal that a life of Christian submission is for women, he figured that a “you don’t want to be one of those slutty sluts or bitter men haters, amirite?” would do the trick. (It doesn’t.)

But, as I said earlier, there is always hope. Not just for the non-believing women out there, but for the “Christian women [who] are sadly in the process of being deprived of their glory”:

… They are listening to the serpent again, and they have falsely muddled the serpent’s faux-sympathy with Christian compassion. And the fact they are doing so registers in their faces. They are taking, to use my wife’s pithy expression, ugly pills. But when we receive true forgiveness, when we receive God’s grace and kindness, when imputed righteousness is declared to be ours, He then gives us His standards as a token of His sanctifying love. We are no longer under condemnation, and have been set free to pursue the standard apart from the accusations of guilt. This grace is active and alive in this world, and is working wonderfully. And that is why Christian women are as gracious and as lovely and as glorious as they are.

So there you have it, women. There is hope, not only for the wayward heathens, but for the uppity Christian women too. Stop taking those ugly pills. Remember — you’re a glorious treasure, a crown, a glory!

Just don’t step out of your place, you glory you.

(Image via Facebook)



