Crossed Wires - Femininity

There are a lot of women who have rejected modern feminism and like to post encouraging and inspirational information about how to embrace true femininity and be a classic kind of woman. All of this is well and good, as they are mostly on the right track. There is one department where I get frustrated with them, of course, and that's the typical behavior where they say women are better when they embrace being women, and thus behave femininely, and then define "feminine" as they desire with no true benchmark for reality other than what they think it means. Maybe they see pictures of women in the 1950s and decide that's what it looks like to look feminine, and then suddenly, poof, that's it. Being a woman means being feminine, and that means... you're pretty.

Men who believe women should be more feminine and reject feminism also tend to believe this, and also tend to believe a lot of other things that are also questionable. The big problem with all of these people is that there is a definite and specific way women should behave, as outline by God Himself, and none of it requires women to be pretty. Some women are ugly and it would be very odd to believe that it was not possible for them to be feminine and traditional because they can't look pretty. It's a little bit of an eye-roller for a random man to believe he's the arbiter of how women should behave and appear, but it's a little wild to see a woman who is supposedly for "empowerment through God's will for His creation" say that women should work really hard on their appearance so that they look pretty.

There are a lot of facets here that make it a complicated subject. There are some instructions in the Bible that insist women do behave and dress a certain way, but most of those instructions relate to how women should be modest and proper (e.g. in the sort of way that honors God) and not so much that women should spend a lot of time and money on make up and jewelry so that they look nice, or that they need to wear sun dresses, or dress in any particular style or fashion. It's of course important to take care of your bodies, as the Holy Spirit resides in us, making them temples (which is where that whole thing comes from) and so it may seem right to tell women they aren't supposed to be fat. But there is not actually anything sinful about being fat. Being fat can be a symptom of any given sort of sinful behavior, like gluttony, or not taking care of your body, but you can't simply look at any given fat woman and assume she is not behaving womanly because, well, "clearly, she simply shouldn't be fat!" It doesn't work that way.

While there are Bible verses about dress, they mostly refer to how women should dress modestly, and does not specify the type of garment this insists upon. Clearly women can wear whatever they want, but only if it's modest. It's not complicated. Further, some people refer to a certain verse, which another website has explained for me:

God instructed the nation of ancient Israel in Deuteronomy 22:5 as follows: “The woman shall not wear that which pertains unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD your God.” This is a command against transvestitism and still applies to men and women today! However, some have mistaken what God is referring to here, believing that it is wrong for a woman to wear pants—this is not the case—clearly, God is referring to a woman dressing up to look like a man and vice-versa.

Some women argue that it's not right for a woman to wear a "man's uniform" which appears very reasonable given Deut. 22:5, except that "uniforms" aren't prescribed one way or another in the Bible. What's a "man's job", what's a "man's uniform" as far as the Bible is concerned? The only thing I could see here would be that a woman should not dress as a pastor, I suppose. God doesn't consider police officers or firefighters to only be men's jobs, since He never said anything about it one way or the other. Women who decry working men's jobs or wearing men's uniforms or not dressing "femininely" in any given form one way or another are surely and most definitely just making that up themselves. Even if they say they are followers of Jesus, this is something they inferred themselves via being ingrained in the world, and they did not gleam it from God's word. You can have the opinion that "women shouldn't work men's jobs" if you want, but you're going to have an issue finding support for your opinion in the Bible.

Women are to dress modestly and behave modestly, and that's about it (without going into all the stuff about how they should behave as wives, of course). God's intention for the behavior of men and women alike revolve around 1. their unique roles as they relate to one another and 2. being modest and pious, behaving in a way that honors God. That's it. Stop acting like women have to be pretty to be proper, godly women. Sometimes women have to do hard, backbreaking labor, or wear a uniform. Sometimes women don't have the money or time to dress for a party every day, or sometimes women are fat despite trying their best. Our bodies get messed up after we have kids, messed up with age, and "looking in a way that is considered pretty by the standards of the pop culture world around us" is definitely nowhere in the Bible.

"Why Doesn't God Just Prove He Exists?"

A common argument from atheists is, just as the title reads, "If God exists, why doesn't He simply prove it?" Funnily enough, this is actually answered in the Bible itself.

In Mark 8, the Pharisees demand a sign of Jesus (Then the Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus, testing Him by demanding from Him a sign from heaven. Mark 8:11). The following verse answers the atheists' hypothetical:

And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation." Mark 8:12 ESV

What has happened here is that Jesus, being fully human and fully God, is keen to the Pharisees and acutely aware that they have already denied many signs and would certainly not respond to another. The sign would be wasted. Despite the multitude of signs they had already witnessed, they demanded a sign of Jesus.

"A generation incapable of appreciating such demonstrations shall not be gratified with them." - Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary

Why would Jesus give a sign to a group of people who had already witnessed such miraculous signs and ignored them? They would not be satisfied with any sign Jesus had produced, as He has already produced multiple and they ignored them. They will not believe regardless. You must be open to seeing the miracles of the Lord for them to have any meaning or value to you. If you would ignore them anyway, you don't deserve them. Do not be surprised that unbelievers do not witness miraculous signs. Why ask God, "if You are real, give me a sign," if you would ignore that sign when it was given? You may think "oh I'd certainly believe God existed if He reached down from heaven and smacked me in the face!" but you would not, because your disbelief is emotional in nature. You refuse to believe in God not because there is no evidence but because you have rejected the evidence. Plentiful signs have been given already and you've denied them all. God does not "simply prove He exists" because He has already, and you've ignored it.

Further reading of interest lies in Luke 16:19-31, the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. The rich man in hell pleads to Abraham to allow him to warn his brothers of the perils of eternal damnation, where the final exchange takes place in verses 29-31:

“But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ “But he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ “But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Here Abraham contests that the rich man's brothers have all the testimony they need to understand and heed the words of the prophets, but they deny it. They would not be persuaded by any more "signs".

God's word contests further that we have all the evidence we need.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Romans 1:20

Further, asking God to "prove He exists" as a nonbeliever is testing the Lord (as it was when the Pharisees tested Jesus in Mark 8:11), which He surely does not appreciate: "You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah." Deuteronomy 6:16

How did they tempt Him in Massah? By raising the unbelieving question, “Is the Lord among us, or not?” - Ellicott's commentary for English readers

In Massah, humans attempted to test the Lord our God by asking Him to prove His presence, which is what the unbeliever does when they posit this argument.

You must be sincere in your prayers and without pride or spite if you wish to ask the Lord of any miracle - humble and genuine. God will not be tested by an unbeliever, to give a miraculous sign to one who asks in unbelief and scorn. God may choose to answer genuine prayers of the faithful and sincere. Faithful people who pray to the Lord are not testing Him, as they know God is capable of such miracles. They know God does not need testing because He is capable of infinite amounts of anything and everything. This is why it is said, James 1:6 "But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind."

The unbeliever and the doubter both receive the same response from the Lord, as the problem is the same - the unbeliever is the doubter. The doubter is the unbeliever. They are the same. If you believe you are faithful, but doubt the Lord can answer your prayers, you are no better off than the unbeliever. God is the Maker of Heaven and Earth, the Creator and Lord of all. It is not wrong to have doubt at times, it is a struggle we all have periodically (or even very often), but if we pray with doubt and ask of the Lord while simultaneously believing He cannot perform our request, we will see no signs. Doubt is a temptation and can be overcome, refusal of God's plentiful signs is a choice and you can choose differently.

If you will not believe the Lord when he answers you, He will not answer you.

Further reading here.

Veganism Stands in the Way of Animal Welfare

In following chicken lovers and chicken farmers alike, I view a strange juxtaposition. People who keep chickens all have different viewpoints, reasons, behaviors, and motivations. One person I noticed rescues hens from egg operations where they are being mistreated, but normally only after they have been ditched by uncaring chicken farmers. For instance, on the side of the road, feathers a mess, awaiting a death by predator, where their former owner intended for that very thing to happen. It sounds cruel, surely, to dump your domesticated chickens with no survival skills on the side of the road to be eaten at a passing fox' leisure.

Keeping the chickens in the first place, of course, is seen as just as cruel. To the vegan animal activist, the only correct option is to go back in time and stop animals from becoming domesticated for use by humans. Barring that, we should simply stop "exploiting" animals for their products and meat. The whole animal-based food industry should dissolve and we should release all the animals into the wild, or something.

The problem I mainly have with veganism is that we were given dominion over animals. A strictly biblical interpretation reveals we can, actually, use animals for their resources. However, when we love and respect God and His creation, we would treat animals with respect, too. This does not mean not killing them for their meat or keeping them for their products, but doing these things with the reverence of God on the forefront of our minds.

Many of the chickens this woman rescues have missing feathers, wounds, are pale, and scared of the outside. They were raised trapped in a coop with no nighttime - chickens naturally lay more consistently with more exposure to light. Artificially encouraged to lay as much as possible and fast as possible, they are discarded long before they stop laying entirely, but merely when they are not as productive as a young hen, replaced with a new one that lays more reliably. When you make a chicken lay as nonstop as possible, they entirely stop laying, sooner. You burn them out, so to say. Chickens lose feathers because all their protein and energy goes to laying eggs. One of the ways to tell when a chicken isn't laying anymore is actually if her feathers are nice looking - it means fewer resources are going to eggs.

So this woman rescues these chickens, gets them back into shape, and sells them to people who are looking to keep chickens as pets. Her clientele are the kind of people who also think animals shouldn't be used for our benefit, and they give these chickens a "retirement".

All of these behaviors lie in the concept that they believe animals have rights and that each one of their lives is as unique and valuable as a human life. These are bastardized concepts of our broken world - we get our wires crossed and apply truths in a false way. Animals should be respected, and there is nothing innately wrong with giving a chicken a retirement, but their motivations are born out of a warped worldview. If all they were doing was offering to give chickens a retirement as opposed to using them for meat simply because they enjoyed pet chickens, there would be no fault. The fault lies in the application of thought of believing that it is wrong to use the chicken for meat or eggs in the first place.

What does it really mean to "have dominion over animals"? Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Genesis 1:26 - As God has dominion over us, He gave us dominion over animals. In the beginning, people and animals lived in harmony, but immediately after the fall we see God Himself create clothes for his disobedient creation out of animal skins. Now, we are clearly not congruent with God, but what this display shows is that the death of animals is a result of the fall. In this broken world, animals die and are used as resources for our needs.

Even still, we did not have permission from God to actually eat animals until after the great flood. In Genesis 9:3 we see "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything." Of course, some animals were still unclean, and yet later still when Jesus came to fulfill the law, we were given permission to eat what were formerly classified as unclean animals as well. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) Mark 7:18-19 - Why would all these things be in the bible if we were not actually supposed to eat meat at all? We could not fathom being given permission to eat animals without the expectation that we would then eat those animals. It would make absolutely no sense for God to permit these things but then expect us to not do them. It's simply an illogical and absurd claim that should require no further attention. 

Personally, I'm staunchly opposed to raising chickens locked inside, covered eternally in artificial light. I definitely don't condone the process of keeping hens like robots and not animals - but the need to do this arises from the way egg farming and selling in the large-scale is regulated. The farmer is likely operating barely above breaking even, if not merely breaking even. They must, to make a living at all, treat their hens like robots. If the hens must be treated this way to keep the farmers human family fed, then it's acceptable. That's the final truth - human lives are more valuable than animals'. But what situation is making the farmer require such robotic operation of his hens?

I am against not the farmer but the obtrusive regulations of the big government who force the people who make our food to behave certain ways to survive. Ethical animal treatment isn't profitable, not because people don't want to pay for the difference, but because the government forcibly makes it less profitable due to their regulations. Small scale operations where a farmer has perhaps a couple flocks of chickens and sells them on the roadside or to the local grocery store would be great - but the government makes it nearly impossible to get into that business.

It varies state to state, but at least I know here you can't have, say, 35 chickens and sell ten dozen eggs a week to the grocery store - the licenses and fees and government intrusion is excessive. First, you must own enough land to be permitted to have so many chickens. Secondly, you must be open to intrusive and surprise inspection and be held to a standard higher than that of a large operation. As a residential person simply looking to own chickens and sell eggs, you must submit to more regulation than a company or business that operates a chicken based business. Why? It's designed that way on purpose by bloated government regulations intentionally looking to keep small suppliers out of the way of larger operations.

You have to expand to a larger operation to be able to start making money this way - and depending on your state, you may have to bend to intense regulations to sell even one dozen a week, to any human person. It's illegal for me to sell any amount of "unregulated" eggs to any person. If I want to make $3.50 a week selling eggs I have to have a $125 license that needs to be renewed every year and subject to random and unannounced inspections of my single coop containing fewer than 10 chickens. To sell to a grocery store requires an even more expensive license subject to the same renewal fees and additional regulation and intrusion. Once you've expanded to a larger operation, you've spent so much on the whole project - superfluous fees that don't actually have anything to do with raising your chickens - that you're starting out in debt, in the negative, and to push anything close to a profit, you have to cut corners. And for whatever reason, the government lets the larger businesses cut those corners, while tiny operations cannot.

The vegan would say the solution to this is to simply stop eating animal products. No amount of keeping animals is ethical, just because they have concluded so through faulty logic. They magically improvised human attributes to chickens and now it's unethical to keep a chicken for eggs no matter how many, how much attention is paid, how well kept, or whether they will be allowed to live their entire natural lives even after they finish laying. But we see this is simply not the case - that elevation of animals to the level of a human soul is based in a biblical truth that has been warped into something nonsensical. Even removed from a biblical standard, it is nothing more than a fantasy to think humankind could simply forgo animal products entirely in a safe way. Unfortunately I've seen more than one vegan admit - either accidentally or proudly - that it does not matter to them if human lives suffer in exchange for the end of animal suffering. For the most part, vegans know it's impossible to remove animal products from our food web without people dying - but they're okay with it. Not only have they attributed human value to animals, but they've devalued human life in the process.

So the real world, non-fiction solution to animal cruelty in factory farming lies in removing the intense, intrusive government regulations so that people who keep animals can make a living and feed their families while treating their animals with respect, as reverence toward God to His creation. Five modest egg operations could easily supply a grocery store with more than enough eggs to feed a local community. Providing you have the right chicken breeds, you get about as many eggs per day as you have chickens, and if you're operating intentionally to sell eggs, you've surely done your research. The problem has nothing to do with the inability for such a system to exist, the problem is in the intrusive regulations of government. Surely, people say, government regulations are good because they keep people safe. This is naive, as these regulations are not designed to keep people safe, but exist mostly as a result of lobbyists for factory farm conglomerates attempting to keep competition out of their way. Indeed, why else would small operations be subject to harsher regulations than large operations? What is good enough for the chickens living in an enormous egg bunker with 20,000 other chickens is surely good enough for 35 chickens in a modest coop in someone's backyard. It's illogical to propose otherwise - they are the same animal. Varying regulations based on operation size is arbitrary and not based in science, fact, or logic - and especially not in the interest of the animals.

I'll take a couple more moments to address another veganism argument. First, we see the "animals are valuable and should be respected for having souls" juxtaposed to "animals can eat meat because they are unthinking and acting on instinct and don't have a choice" argument. This is even further juxtaposed toward the idea that we could feed our dogs vegan diets (as they are omnivores and "can thrive" on vegan diets). Some vegans would of course say they shouldn't be keeping the dogs as pets at all, while PETA goes around killing as many pets as possible including abducting and euthanizing them.

It should be obvious that these stances are all unable to stand next to one another. The idea is that, as advanced humans who can make choices, we should make the choice not to eat animals. Animals can't make that choice, and so a fox killing an outdoor cat is just nature and the fox is at no moral failure for doing so. It shouldn't take a lot of thinking to conclude that, perhaps, this places the animal on a lower pedestal as far as consideration toward containing a human-congruent soul. This does not forgo respect toward them, but continuing to keep them on the same level of respect requirements as humans would be an illogical conclusion of these stances. And yet they continue to believe both of these things at once.

If dogs can be fed vegan diets opposed to their natural inclinations to eat meat, that would violate the dogs' instincts. So by doing this, I would contest you aren't respecting the natural order of the dogs' behavior. You are forcing a choice on them, your own human-led decisions made with your advanced human brain you already established is capable of making choices while animals' brains aren't. Of course the dog will eat whatever you give it, it's hungry. When I was younger once I put a bunch of vegetables in my dogs' food bowls because I thought they were hungry. They were so excited to see that I put food in their bowls - and they dove in only to stop short, smell everything, and walk away.

Dogs may be biologically omnivores but that doesn't mean they actively eat vegetables. They crave meaty protein, and can merely digest and process non-meat to their advantage as a survival benefit. We all know cats require a strict protein diet and could never be forced by a vegan owner to eat a vegan diet and not suffer immensely for it, but vegans see the omnivore and go rogue, feeding their dogs processed protein feed disguised as being meat flavored by additives and act like their dog is a vegan. Honestly it's nuts.

It's possible to be cruel to animals, and I would contest the main problems here are overbearing governments and humans without reverence for their Creator. Of course, regulations for the safety of consumers are not intrinsically immoral, but many of these are actually money grabs by the government in disguise of "consumer protections". Why should the license to sell one dozen eggs a week cost the same as the one to sell five hundred dozen a week? Why create a roadblock like this? Why make it require renewal every year, for the same initial price? It's just a money grab to the detriment of communities as a whole, which would surely benefit from small scale egg operations providing food to them.

They could have easily made the license not only not require money to be renewed, but free in the first place and only require an inspection - surely a negligible cost to the government, truly only for "consumer safety", for the good of the local community who now has a new source of food. The license fee doesn't help them make money toward insuring small scale agriculture is regulated properly, it does nothing but stops you from starting up entirely unless you have enough money to put in at the get go to make sure you make more money than you're going to spend on regulations and licensing - and make enough money that the additional daily effort you will have to put in to satisfy the intrusive, heightened regulations is worth it.

The fee of $125 is so much for someone looking to sell a dozen or two per week that they wouldn't break even for nine months of selling one dozen a week at $3.50/doz, resulting in a profit of $42 at the end of the year, with the same overbearing regulations as someone making ~$680 a year profit selling give or take four dozen a week (which is still pitiful, if we're honest). Some people do want to keep just a few chickens - two or three chickens will make just short of two dozen a week. Assuming you keep some and sell the remaining dozen a week for profit, the only real option to you in light of the government overhead is to simply eat way more eggs a week, as the effort required to sell that extra dozen "legally" is absurd. Now a potential customer who would love your eggs from loved and nurtured chickens they could stop by and personally watch frolic in your backyard is resigned to mystery eggs from the grocery store. The only winner is the sustainment of the factory farm conglomerates and the government that profits from them.

So, if we are honest, vegans are part of the problem of animals being mistreated because they mask the true problem and provide the incorrect solution as loudly as possible. People with the right solutions are smeared as animal haters by the vegans (keeping animals at all is wrong!) and seen as suspicious and entitled by regulation-lovers (the outrageous fees and upkeep is for our safety!) while the government continues to dictate how we can make, eat, and buy our food. The key to the alleviation of animal suffering is fewer factory farms and an increase in small operations that make it easier to treat the animals like living creatures, but the system is set up specifically to avoid that result. This obvious reality is drowned out by a sea of ideological and impossible cries for the total and complete "liberation" of "animal slaves", making it even more difficult to acknowledge that it is actually bad for animals to suffer without being dismissed out of hand by people tired of loud and obnoxious vegans.

Literally the Bible

Whether or not something in the bible is literal is useful for discussion when we're trying to decide what a certain biblical excerpt is trying to tell us. For example, Jesus' parables were not literal stories of events that occurred, probably, but an example of using story telling to portray a certain message in an understandable way. This affects their impact and purpose for us. There are, however, events as detailed in the bible where their literal-ness is naively debated, like Jonah's story. Other events are debated like literal Creation, literal Eden etc. These debates are harmful and stem wholly from a position that denies properties of God and truths as revealed in the bible.

The story of Jonah, very abridged version, is this guy is swallowed by a big fish or whale, in there for 72 hours, then literally thrown up onto a shoreline where Jonah then preached a bunch of people to repentance. He wasn't chilling in the mouth like Finding Nemo - he was in the stomach, presumably, as the bible says he was "swallowed". This is what people take issue with to try and argue this story is figurative.

There are even more aspects to this that are in fact very relevant as they too require miracle work, but those details aren't important for this point. The fact of the matter is that people are arguing whether or not Jonah is literal, and the only reason they could really feel compelled to argue that it is not literal is because it is so chock-full-'o-miracles that it seems to us in our ignorance to be very unlikely to have happened. How could a man survive in a whale stomach? Stomachs are where food goes to get digested. Clearly this must be metaphorical as no man could survive in a stomach for longer than a few agonizing moments, let alone three days.

Here is the problem: the only position it makes any sense to be in, to argue that Jonah was not literal, is if you are an atheist or anti-theist attempting to disprove the bible. When believers question if things like Jonah as described in the bible could be figurative because they are such wild stories, they are not simply questioning the logistics of surviving in a stomach, they are losing the plot entirely. They claim to believe in an all-powerful God capable of any number of incomprehensible miracles, but somehow draw the line here, at a man living in a stomach for three days.

You cannot reconcile believing in an omniscient, omnipotent Creator who willed space, time, and matter into existence through unimaginable circumstances with "man can't live in fish!" This is nothing more than attempting to appeal to atheists who refuse to believe in miraculous, supernatural phenomena, by saying "whoa bud, I'm not one of those irrational Christians who believe in crazy stuff like "man live in fish", I am a smart, reasonable Christian, who just believes in the bible as, like, a guidebook for good behavior, or whatever." Maybe even a naive attempt at finding common ground with these atheists, saying "no, that's fair, some of these crazier stories probably didn't really happen, so it's not that crazy to believe in the bible" forgetting that they will never believe in Jesus's resurrection if they are obstinately opposed to miracles.

Yes, believing that a man could survive in a fish for three days and three nights just to be barfed onto shore somewhere else is the sort of thing that anti-theists look at and go "Christians believe things that are not scientifically possible, and thus, they are dumb," but whether someone thinks it's impossible for a man to live in a fish for 72 hours doesn't affect whether or not God could perform such a miracle if He desired. There is another story in the bible where three men are cast into a furnace so hot that the men operating the furnace died from the residual heat alone, but they emerge alive and unharmed. This is also obviously not possible, even moreso than Jonah and the whale, but I see very few atheist-appeasing Christians argue that the story in Daniel 3 was somehow figurative. It seems almost that the more farfetched the story is, the more likely most Christians accept that it's a miracle from God, but as soon as a story sounds like it could maybe be scientifically explainable but falls short, it's suddenly not legitimate.

It is not defensible as a believer to question whether or not an event as described in the bible could happen, if you simultaneously believe in God, especially if you believe in Jesus rising from the dead, which is so much more intensely unscientific than any other biblical miracle. If you want to debate Jonah's literalism for another reason, just because you truly believe it is metaphorical for some reason perhaps. But you really can't justify arguing that it's not literal just because it is farfetched. If you can't reconcile Jonah's story with your belief in a God that can in fact do absolutely anything, then you have much worse problems facing you can "can man live in fish".

Strong Independent Women

Being a strong, independent woman is a powerful selling point for multiple reasons. It not only comes with the benefit of sounding nothing but positive, but it plays off of woman's natural desires, stemming from the original sin.

Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you. ” Genesis 3:16 NLT

When Adam and Eve sinned against God, He placed upon man- and womankind gender specific curses. The curse upon womankind was painful childbearing and the declaration of the war of the sexes.

God's word here is not a command, but rather predictive. He is not commanding here for husbands to rule over their wives, but that wives will specifically desire to control their husbands and will instead be met with opposition in the form of their husbands ruling over them (which is actually also bad, but more on that later).

The emphasis on desire here is important. Unlike pain in childbirth, which is a natural condition that is not avoidable through our own willful actions, the desire to do something can be overcome. However, we can also give in to our desires and let them control us. In this way, the curse of the woman's desire to control her husband is something like an avoidable trap.

The movement of "liberation feminism" tends to lead women directly into this trap.

This is a tricky subject that I see a vast majority of people get wrong. The long and short of it is that the curses upon man and woman from original sin are real parts of our lives and even people who deny God tend to find this truth. The problems arise when these people formulate their opinions on the subject without keeping God in mind.

From this straightforward curse, we end up with two extremes: radical feminism's rampant misandry and belief that men are, in no uncertain way, the cause of all the world's problems as well as each individual woman's life problems, and genuine "sexist" attitudes toward women (MGTOW is an example of this, if you know what that is) that demonizes women up to extremes of people who genuinely believe that women should be little more than slaves, of both the sexual and labor variety. Both of these extremes also include people who unironically believe that the woman or man populations should be stripped of rights or even "population controlled" (read: killed).

Now these are just the extremes - obviously there are people in between. The vast majority of men, even those who were scorned and believe that women are generally bad people, would never dream of actually owning a woman and forcing her to bend to their every desire on threat of beatings or death, and just as well the vast majority of women don't really think men should all be killed except for a few that are kept in labs to artificially continue the propagation of the species. But extremes are what you get when there is a lot of push and push back, so extremes are coming out of the woodwork and will continue to build up until a more neutral equilibrium is reestablished.

So, how do these extremist attitudes - that any normal person would of course believe are completely outrageous - relate to womankind's curse?

I mentioned push and push back as being a cause of extreme attitudes. This is - almost literally - illustrated by the wording of the curse. Woman will desire to control her husband, but he will instead rule over her. Woman will attempt to control her husband, and in response he will rule over her. When you push, you get pushback.

What this means in practice is that when woman gives into this desire to wrest control, she pushes against man - who then push back, and in response rules over woman. This is directly in line with the curse of original sin and is in all likelyhood the very basic cause of almost all strife and conflict between men and women. Unfortunately, just like the original sin itself, this is arguably the woman's fault. However, in alignment with original sin, it is truly the fault of both sexes, as when men and women live together the way that God intended them to, both have responsibilities in the way that they behave. When you have women battling for control over men, it's just as against God's design as men ruling over women.

God spells out very clearly what the relationship between husbands and wives should look like, and control and rule on either side are both clearly lacking in these commandments.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.  Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Ephesians 5:22‭-‬27 ESV

Many different kinds of people love to abuse the first part of this snippet, mainly the "wives, submit to your own husbands," part, which - like many misuses - doesn't even go to the end of the verse. Ranging from disgruntled women-hating men to your general every day atheist trying to "gotcha" someone, this half of a verse, completely out of context, is very clearly understood differently when viewed in context.

Relationship between husband and wife as laid out in the bible is simplified in the observation that both are called to serve one another, but differently. This coincides with the obvious reality that men and women are in fact different, which is absolutely fine (feel free to view my other entry on why different or "unequal" is not the same as "one of these things is superior to the other"). Husband and wife are in a covenant with God and thus, while indeed promising to one another, are in fact promising to God how they will behave in the context of their marriage. Like every other facet of following the Lord, we are compelled to follow through with our servitude and live under God's will not out of fear or obligation, but because we truly want to.

When a husband behaves as God intends and when a wife behaves as God intends, they both serve each other willingly and out of love and compassion for one another. If a husband loves his wife as Christ loved the church (quick reminder: one of the biggest reasons Jesus even came to earth was the live and die for the church), what qualms would any woman have submitting to such a husband? If a wife is obedient and follows her husband's guidance in raising and protecting her and her children, what God-fearing man would be so vile as to manipulate this trust and devotion?

Worldviews that don't acknowledge both the curse of original sin and its role in men and women's daily lives and God's design for the interaction between man and woman will always be flawed and harmful.

A worldview in which one believes that men should rule over women ignores the sacrificial love that men are to show women. As written, the husband is not simply to guide his wife, but that he would sanctify her, which is to say specifically to lead her to live a good and righteous life in the light of the Lord. Ruling over a woman implies an acute lack of compassion - it is not necessary to love someone in order to demand that they behave a certain way. Which is to say, a man who would not lovingly guide, but in fact command, in a way of legalism or authoritarian expectation, a woman to be a wholesome, good, and righteous woman is in fact falling quite short of God's commandments and His design for the interaction and relationship they are to have. This would be perhaps comparable to tithing, but doing so reluctantly and out of obligation. You may as well not even tithe if you are not doing so joyfully. You may as well not even bother leading your wife if you are doing so without the sacrificial love that Christ showed the church.

Likewise, a worldview that insists women should in fact control men - or more reasonable sounding, simply not submit to their husbands - dodges the submission that women are to have. Now, remember - women are not submitting to an emotionless ruler. None of this works out of context of the whole thing. If women are submitting to an emotionless, demanding ruler who does not show sacrificial love, the designs is still not being followed correctly. You do not get one part without the other. This is why it is so important to understand God's commands and the bible in context - God's design isn't women submitting to men who are willy nilly just doing whatever they please and demanding that women do things because it is pleasing to the man, no, the entire design rests upon the man and woman submitting to the Lord and fulfilling His commandments.

There are many different worldviews on how the relationship between men and women should be approached, and any of them that do not acknowledge the original sin for how this relationship tends to happen and Jesus's commandments for how it should happen will fall short of ever accomplishing anything. Worldviews that believe women should rule over men are as flawed as worldviews that believe men should rule over women - they are both wrong, though perhaps for different reasons. Whether one is better than the other is inconsequential, as the correct answer will always be the way that God intended. When we live within His will for us is when we will be most fulfilled.

Eight Glasses a Day?

I'm out of left field with the topic today, but, we're on about hydration (and a bit later, sugar).

There are a lot of articles "debunking" the "eight glasses of water a day" suggestion, which is fine and good - eight glasses of water a day is not exactly a good guideline, all things considered - but instead of debunking it in an acceptable way, they say very unhelpful things like, "just drink when you're thirsty," and attempt to debunk our bodies' need for water entirely (it's in your food!), in some sort of mad vendetta against water.

I have a personal anecdote and some amount of information, but I didn't source anything because no one reads this and I don't care. Any facts presented in this post were found by searching briefly on the internet, so I'm not worried about it.

I used to not drink very much water. I used to only be able to stomach drinking ice cold water and drank a lot of other things like soda. Once I stopped soda, I drank more water. I started focusing on drinking more and more water, as my goal was being properly hydrated, knowing it was good for my body. Now, having conditioned myself to drink only water when it's not coffee time, I drink a lot of water. I drink at least 16 ounces, sometimes more, when I first wake up (before coffee time, very important!), following that I drink a few ounces short of a gallon per day throughout the day. It's not because I feel pressured by a goal to remain healthy, but because I'm thirsty - all the time. I just always want to drink more water. I don't even need it ice cold - I prefer it room temperature, as I can drink more without having to stop due to cold sensitivity.

I'm not diabetic, yes some other things have changed about me since those days, but the biggest thing is that I don't drink soda anymore. I drink very few diuretics, only coffee in the morning and rarely an 8 ounce cup of tea. I sometimes drink milk but I consider that food. I know it's "a drink", but I don't drink it with dinner, or when I'm thirsty, but as a source of satiation, almost like a snack. If I only drank when I was thirsty, I would still drink all the time. Before I made myself enjoy drinking water through sheer force of will, I would drink sodas and other non-water drinks when thirsty.

The thing about other drinks is that scientists have studied what "satiates our thirst" and have found that the brain sends "thirst quenched" signals to our brains before the consumed water has even managed to actually support any hydrating functions. Within the mouth and throat are systems that tell our brain we've had plenty to drink and are no longer thirsty. When we drink diuretics and all those drinks that we've always been told "always make you more thirsty," but feel like our thirst was actually quenched, we are suffering a negative side effect of this built in system of our bodies. The mouth and throat tell the brain we've quenched the thirst before the soda does anything. Once it begins being processed, we recognize that we are thirsty again, and drink more. The mouth and throat signals continue to trick us into thinking we are satiated when we will never become so. This is why people are so hellbent on justifying their tea and soda as "not making them more thirsty" - the thirst they cause is later, after you've forgotten you drank it, not to mention if you drink more you'll reset the cycle, making your mouth yet again tell your brain you're hydrated from that soda.

For perhaps even this reason alone, telling people who don't drink water to "only drink when they're thirsty" is terrible advice.

First, it's not the first step to being properly hydrated as a habit. People are notoriously bad at understanding their own body's needs in the first place. A person who regularly drinks things that aren't water isn't going to drink enough water if they "only drink water when they're thirsty," because they will - consciously and unconsciously - drink other things instead, saying, "I just had water, I can have a soda", tricking their brains into thinking the soda is actually doing anything valuable for them. I've heard people say, "I drink a bottle of water a day", as if that's enough, using it as justification for why they're drinking soda or something else instead. The fact of the matter is, the amount of water you need a day varies based on your body's needs, and if you are drinking soda, you're probably actually going to need more water overall.

The first step to being properly hydrated is to drink more water, all the time, even when you aren't thirsty. I saw an article attempt to argue that you'll become "over hydrated," from drinking water when you're not thirsty. This is absolute nonsense they came up with to try and make their point. Over hydration won't occur until you're drinking levels of water unimaginable to the transitioning-from-soda-dependent person. It also only happens when you drink too much too quickly, or have a condition that restricts your kidneys from removing the water fast enough. Don't chug a gallon of water to settle your water intake for the day. That's not even how it works. You need a steady consumption of water, as your body uses it and keeps using it. If you drink a gallon at once, your body will pee out the unneeded water as quickly as possible to stop you from being over hydrated, and then resume normal water usage. Then you'll then need more water later.

The "who is at risk of over hydration" list is extreme sport participants plus some people with medical conditions. The over hydration scare is nonsense, and for what purpose? Scaring people who want to be healthy into... drinking less water? For whose satisfaction? Honestly, that they even attempted to make this argument is offensive on several levels.

So we've established that "only drink when you're thirsty" is bad advice for the average person. It could possibly be decent advice if that person only drank water in the first place, but imagining a person in America who drinks only water and yet needs advice about how much water to drink is rather tough.

Being dehydrated is hard to tell. It causes headaches, dizziness, light headedness, weakness, fatigue, etc. The symptoms can be mild, indicating potentially deadly levels of dehydration if the problem isn't addressed. People go to the hospital all the time with these symptoms, fearing they have some terrible disease... but they just need more water. These people writing these, "drink when you're thirsty," articles are disconnected from the habits of the average person and the understandings these average people have of their own bodies. "Drink when you're thirsty" isn't advice you can be giving to people who are suffering from serious, potentially deadly dehydration more often than once in their life, and never once were able to tell that that was the problem. You trust these people to know to drink when they're thirsty? The "at least eight glasses a day" mantra, with its incredibly limited scope of usefulness, is infinitely better for the average person than "drink when you're thirsty". Let's please not make that the new mantra - people will be hospitalized for it. I'm not even being dramatic.

Secondly, for people like me, who are thirsty all the time, it's obviously invalid advice. I could not possibly drink water every time that I'm thirsty. For people like those extreme sport participants who are at risk of over hydration, it's also terrible advice. Looks like generalized advice is pretty bad for the individual person, whether it's eight glasses a day or not.

If you're the average Joe schmo who is not drinking enough water, drink when you're not thirsty. Drink water - drink it a lot. Be careful not to "overdo it", but be aware that overdoing it is practically impossible - for you. If you're not making an effort to drink more water as is, you're not going to overdo it. Some people do suddenly go hard on a new goal, so it's not an impossible risk, but if you're fighting yourself over that glass of water, you're not going to over hydrate - and you are probably dehydrated.

I crave water now when I'm thirsty, as I've stopped soda. I crave sweet things less, overall. People make arguments about how for example, they're "going to die anyway", "moderation is fine for things", "I enjoy it and I don't overdo it", etc. But it doesn't make it not bad for you. A slice of cake every once in awhile won't kill you, and it's enjoyable, but if you don't eat it, that's even better. If you're denying yourself and you want it, that sucks - but imagine not wanting it.  Imagine simply not being tempted by that cake and not needing to make excuses for yourself to indulge in something unjustifiably bad (nutritionally) for you.

I don't want sweets. There's no, "oh no I'm living such a bad life because I'm denying myself things I want and thus I am sad and feel hollow", or whatever nonsense. I don't want to eat candies and cakes all the time. Why eat them at all? The only reason is because you enjoy them - they have little benefit to you. Refined sugar in processed foods is the one thing that basically all professionals agree on as being entirely terrible for you. You can find conflicting studies on practically any food or nutrient, but not sugar. Sugary, processed food is the one thing that's always bad for you no matter what bias stunt you try to pull in your nutrition study. You could always eat something better for you and cut the sweets, but people want to make "you only live once wah wah" arguments. Yes, you only live once, so try to make the quality of that one life a little better by being properly hydrated and not sugar-poisoned.

I don't want the cake, and I'm not "just saying that" because I'm some kind of health nut. I eat bread, I put creamer in my coffee, and yes I do even eat some cake and sweets now and then, but I don't crave it and eat a far smaller serving than anyone would imagine. I often force myself to eat cake when it's offered as to not offend the host of whatever event I'm at - I'd much prefer a second helping of dinner. I don't suffer for not eating sweets. I don't walk through the snack aisle of the grocery store and pine after all the junk food. When I do eat candy or sweets, I'm appalled at how enormous the serving size is. If I eat both the snack cakes in one cellophane pack, I'm close to vomiting at how overly sweet it was. I've cut a zebra cake in half and put one and a half snack cakes back into the freezer. I cut the sugar added in my homemade sweets and even a pinch more flavored creamer in my coffee than I'm used to will ruin the whole cup for me.

I used to crave sweets more. It subsided nearly entirely once I stopped drinking soda.

That's an anecdote, yes. It may not be so straightforward for others. But what am I truly missing out on for not being sugar addicted? Writing a "DEBUNKING WATER!" article is the dumbest thing I've ever seen, intentionally trying to make people feel justified and self-righteous in the face of those crazy health nuts with their energy and stamina and not-constant headaches - what do they know? - while depriving themselves of a better life if they just drank more water - and perhaps specifically, less soda.

Water is not a cure-all, but it's the oil for our engine. You can run your car on low oil, but, well, not for long.