51 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-30-15”

  1. Good morning, evening, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack times wherever the good Lord placed you on earth today.

    Miss Bosley says “purr, purr, purr…don’t forget cuddle time, anytime is a good cuddle time!”

    Beautiful photo share, Roscuro. It’s wonderful to see fall in so many areas.
    Thanks for capturing the leaves at their height of beauty…Canada is lovely.

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  2. Morning all, just had an hour of a nice rain here. I opened the windows and listened to the sweet sound. It was hard enough to be running into the tanks. I checked our tanks today and they are both 3/4 full. Two, two thousand gallon tanks for just two ladies, so we are doing fine. Others have just one tank for an entire family, so the rain was very needed.

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  3. As you all know I LOVE where I live, but seeing these nice Fall photos and the changing colors does make me want to experience it again. Perhaps next year Mr. P and I can plan a trip through the Smokies when the leaves are changing. One of the goals I wrote for myself last December when I was actually trying to have goals was to take a vacation that did not involve grandchildren. (I haven’t achieved anything that I wrote on the goal sheet, which is why I resist setting goals so much) You know we never took a honeymoon. We got married on a Sunday and both got up and went to work on Monday.
    Enough maudlin comments. There is a nip in the air here this morning. It will warm up in a few hours but it is nice to experience just a little. I bought another box of Christmas ornaments yesterday. I had lunch with BG. It was nice to be home.
    Today I will pay for that.

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  6. Another Friday, more political cartoons.

    It’s parent teacher-conference time, your education tax dollars at work. I had nine parents in four hours last night, and only one scheduled for today. I guess I can go to the teacher’s lounge and have another donut.

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  7. Beautiful photos. I guess it really is fall? We’re still very warm out here, but the nights are cool and windy.

    Well, that sounds like a creepy website, cheryl. Think I won’t even go there. 🙄 And horrifying to think any nonbeliever could see something like that and think ‘Ah-HA, those conservative Christians really are a weird and scary bunch.’

    I can’t believe how dark it is in the mornings right now — I got up at 6:45 as I still had some trash to roll out to the curb and it was still mostly dark. Well, that’ll change next week. And it always prompts me (in the beginning, anyway) to get up a little bit earlier.

    I need to call the gardeners today, they never did get back to me with an estimate and schedule for my big tree trimming job.

    Annie’s purring on the back of the couch, she was coming unglued about 30 minutes ago, demanding I get up and let her out.

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  8. We don’t have our conference until next week. On Wednesday, we will visit with about ten teachers in about forty five minutes. Fifteen minutes per child. Then we will know whether eighteen year old will continue as a Sophmore or if he will move on to other things.

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  10. Cheryl – I have not taken the time to read anything in depth on that site, but from a couple things on the first page – that one must be 18 or older to proceed, & that one of the reasons the site exists is so that people into CDD (Christian Domestic Discipline) don’t have to wade through pornography for ideas – it sounds to me like BDSM with a Christian veneer. 😦

    I could be wrong, but that’s how it struck me. People in BDSM often refer to “discipline”.

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  11. Karen, they hint that it can become arousing, but say that isn’t the point and they are deliberately avoiding “going down that path.” But I did read several of the essays on the site (remember that I know people caught in patriarchy–I think that I need to stay informed of these issues in case I ever have an opening to help anyone), and one case was about a woman who shouldn’t have caffeine, according to her doctor, so her husband spanked her if he caught her with it . . . and then spanked her (less forcefully) periodically just as “maintenance.” She was saying how helpful it was that he helped her in such a way. OK . . . so what if he has a habit he has a hard time breaking (let’s say it’s something really destructive like porn). She isn’t given authority to spank him, even though in his case it’s an actual sin.

    All over the site they go out of their way to show how loving it is and what good husbands these are, and how it’s often the wife who asks for them to have such a relationship. But then they also say that a wife can’t rescind permission for him to spank her before, during, or right after a spanking, and they consider “implicit” permission adequate to have a spanking relationship. For example, if the wife ever says, “You’d put me over your knee if I ever acted that way in public,” he is to take it as consent that he is to spank her if she ever does anything bad enough. I reminded my husband that he sometimes says “no” to picking up another church obligation by “Cheryl would kill me” and by that logic he is saying that if he ever takes on too many responsibilities, it is understood that I will kill him. Um, no, sometimes a wife might say “If I ever do that, take me over your knee and give me a few swats” facetiously, not because she actually expects him to do such a thing!

    But the whole idea of the site is wives who can’t control themselves, with husbands who “sanctify” their wives by spanking them once or twice a month, or even (in the 10:19 link) daily spanking her to the point of tears, even if she does not deserve a spanking! There is no way to see that as loving. There is no way to classify that as anything less than abuse. And there is no way a boy raised in such a home is going to see women as worthy of honor, or a girl see herself as valuable in God’s eyes and to her father.

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  14. Cheryl – It is very disturbing that that kind of teaching is out there, & even more so that some people actually believe & practice it. I thought the same as you – that kind of relationship is detrimental to the children.

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  15. Update on Lee: He will be training Mike through next week. Unfortunately, the company says they “do not have the money in the budget” to pay him to do this. Being the good man he is, he can’t let Mike just take over with no training.

    He recently found out that Mike is a Christian, too, & they have been talking about their faith. That’s cool.

    A younger friend (also a Christian) he trained years ago at Hostess/Wonder, who owns a Pepperidge Farm route now, has offered him a part-time job helping him out (his current helper is leaving) until something else comes along. Lee has toyed with the idea of having to work a couple part-time jobs to get by, if necessary.

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  16. Thanks for all the nice comments. Those are sugar maples along our fence line. When my parents bought the property, it had been used for market gardening, and was bare of trees. My parents planted all those maples – and many other trees.

    Cheryl, knowing what I know about the patriarchal movement, it comes as no surprise to me. I often say Islam is what Christianity would be without Christ, and the legalism in the patriarchy movement and the legalism of Islam bear an uncanny resemblance, i.e. the emphasis on modest dress to produce sexual purity, the teaching that the woman is more easily led astray than the man, the encouragement of the use of force to make the woman submit. Whenever we begin to think that we can work ourselves into any kind of better standing before God, that we can on our own strength behave in a more Godly way, we forget that all our merit is in Christ; and our works done in the strength of our own flesh produce the fruit listed in Galatians 5:19-21: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.”

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  17. Roscuro, I actually had a woman in a patriarchal mind-set (who is also a theonomist . . . not sure how much the two things overlap, but I would imagine there’s a pretty large overlap) tell me that America’s failure to be Christian enough in our laws and our cultures has opened the door for Muslims to come in and do it for us. That wasn’t her exact words (only because I don’t remember her exact words), but it’s definitely what she was saying. It was in regards to homosexual marriage, and so one can only assume that the Muslim response to homosexuals (killing them) is more “Christian.” I don’t remember what issues she put under that umbrella of “things the Muslims do better,” though I know for sure she’s one or two steps from them in her views on modest dress. But it rather horrified me to hear Christianity reduced to “law” to such a degree that a fervent Christian would speak with admiration of Islam.

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  18. A beautiful rainy day here. We did get lots of the new plants into the ground before it started, a few more to go. The mighty hunters elected to not go out as the deer would not be moving.

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  19. There’s a thread of theonomy in our church (including our pastor) but what I’ve learned about that also is that there’s a spectrum of thought on that particular grid, and certainly not all of it leads to executing gays or spanking wives (shudder).

    The view is more along the lines that the Bible informs (or should inform) our secular laws. When and where it doesn’t, society suffers (because all of it — government, society, etc. — is, after all, part of God’s creation and should reflect the order he designed).

    Thus, gay marriage is contradictory and Christians (most of us anyway) are right to see it as such, as a rejection of both biblical and natural law that will bring on the people an ill wind. On a personal level, it stands as an opening that will lead some individuals down a harmful path. Collectively, it contributes to a general breakdown of core values in a society.

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  20. Does anyone have a ballpark figure for how high a percentage of Christians are in the Patriarchy movement? I really, really hope it is a low percentage.

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  21. Karen, humorously, I thought, “Well, if you divide the number of people who are rumored to be patriarchy by the number of people who claim to be Christians, the range of error is probably something like 100%.”

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  22. Karen, I think it is largely a fringe movement of those who consider themselves Reformed (but would not be recognized as such by others of us in the Reformed camp). Doug Wilson’s self-created denomination, the CREC, some Reformed Baptists, and I’m sure some others.

    Thing is, though, many, many more people are in some way influenced by it all. Gothard wasn’t Reformed, but he had many followers, and has influenced homeschooling greatly. Many have read Wilson’s books. Nineteen Kids and Counting (a show I’ve never seen) exposed it to thousands. Many take some tenets of it but not all. Many women are in it voluntarily, even influencing their husbands into it. And from what I can see, only a small fraction of people accept the most fringe beliefs (e.g., a young woman is in rebellion and sin if she moves out of her father’s house other than into a marriage he approves–even if it is to go to Bible college or missions work).

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  23. Karen, the patriarchy movement filled with very loose associations between branches. It includes things as widely varied as: non-denominational IBLP/ATI (Bill Gothard was forced to resign for inappropriate behaviour) which enrolled thousands and impacted many more; the now defunct Vision Forum (after Doug Phillips admitted to an inappropriate relationship); many Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches (two names, Jack Hyles and Jack Schaap, represent many more other cases) and their attached educational institutions, as well as Reformed theology figures such as Douglas Wilson (whom Cheryl posted some troubling info about recently) and R. C. Sproul, Jr. (who is currently under church discipline). [I mention the scandals because that is the fruit of the movement.] It has a wider range than that, but those are the branches I am most familiar with. I may sound like a broken record at times, but this is why Christians can not withdraw into their own little enclaves to protect themselves from the culture. This is what happens when Christians define themselves by works rather than by Christ. This is what will keep happening if Christians respond with fear and anger to what is happening in society.

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  24. I had a friend who ran into that on a Reformed Christian dating site, the guy corresponding with her insisted she needed to move back in with her parents.

    Huh?

    She was 40ish by then, had been out on her own for years and had moved from California (where her parents lived) to Colorado years before.

    That didn’t go far, needless to say. 🙂

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  25. Here’s an example of how “fringe” some of this is. This is a summary of the story line of a 36-page paperback (long short story) selling for $8.97: “Nikki Russell is sure she has met the man of her dreams in Mason Hart, but Mason isn’t so sure. Nikki’s temper tantrums force him to take action to see if there is a future for them. Will a dose of good old-fashioned discipline fix things for this couple or will insecurities and stubbornness rob them of the mate of God’s design?”

    Nobody I have ever heard would say that a woman should “obey” her boyfriend, much less that he has authority to punish her if she does not. This was on a site where other stories are labeled as containing wife spanking; this one is not labeled, but it would seem by the description that it actually includes girlfriend-or-not-yet-girlfriend spanking. Now, I would say that when a couple is engaged, that she should be beginning to have him give her some life direction that she takes seriously. He is not yet her head, but she’d be foolish (for example) to accept a new job without talking it over with her fiancee, and seriously considering his counsel. But if any young girl I knew came to me telling me that her boyfriend spanked her for her own good, I’d be trying to get her to go to the police, and I would do everything in my power to talk her out of ever seeing that man again.

    There is no possible way that this would hold up in a court of law: “My wife agreed to let me spank her when we married, and she knew that she could not withdraw consent right before, during, or after a spanking. Yes, she was yelling stop, but that’s only because she’s rebellious. And yes, she has bruises, and yes, she twisted away from me and so one of my blows landed on her back and not her buttocks, but she agreed to this and she had no right to turn around and call it abuse.”

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  26. Cheryl, I notice your paragraph about no way this would hold up in a court of law could also be applied to the BDSM movement (there could be similar court cases and pleas either way). The patriarchal movement would insist it is upholding Biblical gender roles, and the sexual revolution would insist that it is breaking down the idea of gender roles – yet they end up in precisely the same place.

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  27. Roscuro, for the record, Doug Wilson self-identifies as Reformed, but he had to start his own denomination in order to preach, and he is not ordained. He’s as independent as they come, and some of the teachings of his “denomination” have been formally refuted by pretty much every conservative Reformed denomination.

    For more, check out “A Daughter of the Reformation,” September 30, “A Question for Wilson Fans.”

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  28. Cheryl, that is why I said Reformed theology figures – I was aware that established denominations had distanced themselves from him, but I have come across links to him by other mainstream bloggers of a Reformed persuasion.

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  30. Chas, the only person whom I met out of all the names I mentioned was Bill Gothard – I met him very briefly but even that short glimpse gave me evidence that the charges against him are true. I have heard the preaching of an IFB pastor – a man who later committed suicide when his extramarital affair was about to be found out – whose church was once associated with my family’s church (before our pastor, who was trained at that IFB pastor’s Bible school, was excommunicated for holding to Calvinist ideas). So through both church and homeschooling, I have a lot of personal links to those from within the patriarchy movement and have seen some of the rotten fruit firsthand.

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  32. This is all making me feel blessed to have missed out on some things. Some of my college friends spoke highly of Gothard’s IBYC 40 years ago, but seem to have turned out okay. I’d never heard all this later stuff about him. And I’d never heard of this Christian Domestic Discipline nonsense before today. Not a hint of it in any of the homeschooling circles I’ve been in for the past 20 years. Weird stuff!

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  37. The last man to spank me was my father and I was 10 years old. I am not into BDSM. This is horrid and probably is why so many women feel hurt by the teachings of certain “churches” No way. NO MEANS NO.

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  38. I know a family who believed daughters should stay with their parents until they marry. They almost infected (yes, that’s the word I would use) D2. But she moved out four years ago, and is now engaged. She wasn’t totally on her own, as she moved back to where she was born, and lived with my brother for part of her time there. She also had her older sister and brother-in-law, as well as my sister and an entire church watching over her. Not that she would go astray, as I think she is the strongest Christina among the three of my children walking in the truth.

    As for the family, we still have a good relationship with them. We even had lunch with them when we went to a Bible conference they also attended.

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  39. Kevin, when my parents first started to homeschool they had never heard of ATI. The ATI/Gothard community tended to be exclusive. I find that not many people who were actually in the program have heard of it, and I have heard from others that Gothard discouraged discussion of materials with those who were outside. After my family joined, we never attended other homeschooling functions; but there were hundreds at the ATI conferences and seminars we attended.

    RKessler, sadly it isn’t. I have come across commenters on other sites who insist that men have the right to rule over their wives. This link may not seem as bad as wife spanking, but the last two paragraphs, which I will quote, are just as scary: http://www.reformedsingles.com/not-where-she-should-be-douglas-wilson

    The first time the dishes are not done, he must sit down with his wife immediately, and gently remind her that this is something which has to be done. At no time may he lose his temper, badger her, call her names, etc. He must constantly remember and confess that she is not the problem, he is. By bringing this gently to her attention, he is not to be primarily pointing to her need to repent; rather, he is exhibiting the fruit of his repentance.

    He does this, without rancour and without an accusative spirit, until she complies or rebels. If she complies, he must move up one step, now requiring that another of her duties be done. If she rebels, he must call the elders of the church and ask them for a pastoral visit. When the government of the home has failed to such an extent, and a godly and consistent attempt by the husband to restore the situation has broken down, then the involvement of the elders is fully appropriate.

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  40. While I know this stuff happens it is just so foreign to me. I wasn’t raised that way. For that I am thankful.
    I have known women I suspected of being in this type of situation. I am here if they ever need me.
    Mr. P once asked me if Southern Christian women were supposed to be this way. I asked him what he had been smoking?

    Several years ago I did some councelling with abused women. This is abuse. No two ways about it.
    I have always been taught that the man is the head of the house, but he is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. That means that he loves his wife above all and would lay down his life for her. A woman with such a man should be thankful she has him. Any relationship is give and take and each should do what they are best at doing. I am thankful that Mr. P pays all the bills and I don’t have to worry about them.
    As a matter of fact I just read this to him and he said I should do all of the above things and he thinks perhaps the problem with me is that I need a good spanking….which which I replied “Good luck and you will have to catch me first”
    As we sit here laughing….

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  42. If Elvera had remained with her family, we would never have met.
    She moved to Columbia to get away from Brush Creek.
    She lived with her older sister until she found two other women who could share an apartment.

    Like me, she was independent the instant she left home. We were dating several months (Like 4-5) before either family knew that the other existed..

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  45. Women being viewed as, essentially, children. 😦

    Looking forward to the weekend — a new woman showed up at the dog park and joined our little informal group last weekend. Funny because she’s tall and a redhead … and her dog is an Irish setter, so yeah, they kind of look alike.

    When she said her husband was a diplomat, I thought she meant he was easy to get along with — but I guess he’s actually a Diplomat, stationed currently in Iraq of all places. They recently moved to LA from Santa Barbara and she’s probably going through major culture shock.

    Let’s just say she’s a few (several?) notches above us, culturally and social status-wise. She dresses much nicer than any of the rest of us (which actually is not a high mark to reach) and she mentioned in passing that she was going to have to return to Santa Barbara to get her dog properly groomed.

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  46. The reason I asked about the size of the Patriarchy movement (& those like it) is that I know at least a couple people who would try to paint most Christians as being a part of it.

    One of my Facebook friends, was disgusted by Kim Davis’ clothing – that she “has to” wear very modest, plain clothes. The implication was that she & her husband are part of something like the Patriarchy movement. (Don’t know if they are or not.)

    She also posted something making fun of Davis’ plain appearance. It mildly amuses me when feminists, who supposedly should know better, pick on another (usually conservative) woman’s appearance.

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  47. In my day (’70s) — during the beginnings of the modern-day feminist movement — the whole idea was to be more “plain.”

    Makeup, hair coloring/stylish cuts and other accessories like pretty jewelry and high heels were discouraged. Long hair, fresh-scrubbed faces, jeans or cords and sandals or boots or sneakers was “the look.” I called it the Granola Girl look (and yes, I loved it and adopted it while I was in college — and I still like it on young girls.)

    Of course, when you’re young, you can carry the “natural” look off beautifully — a little harder when you’re older? At least that’s my painful experience. 🙂

    But yes, it’s odd that women tear into another woman like that. But feminism (their version of it) trumps orthodox Christianity so conservative women become natural targets.

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  48. Peter, I think it’s wonderful when adult children can stay with their parents and have a peaceful household, with the young adults contributing to the finances and the chores; if they continue to live at home, someday they will be caring for their parents. I have actually known a good number of women who live with their parents until one and then both die, and it’s a beneficial situation all around. Right now both of our girls are at home, with one attending college part-time locally and working full-time and the other one working and engaged to be married. Not sure how long we’ll have the younger one at home, but it’s a peaceful household.

    The problem is, we can’t insist it is a more biblical option and that daughters cannot choose to live elsewhere. If my mother had somehow gotten it into her head (and I had submitted) that we girls could not leave her home, I could not have gone to college (I couldn’t afford the options in Phoenix) and my sister would not have moved to the state where she met her husband. And my mom has been dead for 12 years now (whoa, that is hard to believe), which would have dumped us out of the parental house by now anyway. The idea of moving in with any of my brothers and somehow working out personal space in their family lives gives me the shudders just to think about it. And two of them travel for a living; would I have been required to go with them, which would have required at least one of them to get a larger vehicle, and would have made hotel accommodations exceedingly awkward? Would I just be “one of the children” along with my younger nieces and nephews? I was content to be single all those years, but I think that under those circumstances I might have jumped at any hint of a possibility of marriage just to get away–and I can’t help but think a lot of these young girls might be doing just that, and in some cases finding that they are worse off than before.

    Again, adult children living at home can be a blessing all around. But it cannot be turned into law!

    (Oh, and Roscuro, yesterday you said something about by some definitions you wouldn’t be considered an adult yet. If you were living at home being lazy, that would be the case. But you’re an asset to your household in adult ways. I suspect some of my sisters-in-law have never held full-time jobs, but obviously that doesn’t keep them from being adults.)

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  49. Weird memory from my Granola Girl days: I registered for the basic philosophy 101 class when I was a college freshman, hoping to learn a bit about the big thinkers of the past … I was searching even back then.

    Professor was a long-haired guy (I think he was later fired) who liked to sit on top of a table, crossed legged, Indian style, at the head of the class while the students were arranged at desks in a semi-circle in front of him.

    He said … Nothing. Literally. I’m serious. The guy was totally strange, but had this semi-smile on his face always.

    We, the students, were to conduct the class ourselves (but he gave us an “out” saying we could just pop into his office once a week for a signature and not go to class at all, if this just wasn’t our “thing”).

    After the first few weeks yielded little beyond a bizarre class discussion on the allure of women not shaving their legs or under their arms (started by the boyfriend of one such woman), I decided to opt for the signature “out” and got (I think) a B? at the end of the semester. Never went to class after that.

    What a ripoff.

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  50. There also was a lot of silence in those class-led “discussions,” as I recall.

    I did kind of wonder how it all wound up, whether there were ever any discussions of any depth — or if they only talked about women not shaving for the entire semester. 🙄

    Ah, the ’70s.

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  51. Happy Halloween!

    Off to bed. (Today–yesterday now–was Misten’s 11th birthday, and she seems not to hear well anymore, but she enjoyed a bit of raw hamburger with a couple of cheese “candles” as part of her breakfast.)

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