I want to keep up my series on Relationship, having finished part one, and I will, but when I saw this article and then read it, I knew I had to write this instead.  I will be coming back to finish the Relationship series, Lord-willing, however.  I don’t know how many parts it will be, but it could be many.

Apostasy is a real and ongoing threat to Christianity.  It has never stopped since sin entered the Garden of Eden.  When true believers dwindled to eight out of about eight billion before the Genesis flood, that process took over a thousand years.  Churches don’t jump straight to apostasy either.  However, it can happen quickly.  When Jesus wrote to the church at Laodicia in Revelation 3, it had run its entire course in the space of about 40 years, start to finish.

What often occurs did in Corinth with church members’ denial of the bodily resurrection.  Corinthian culture declared all flesh evil and bodily resurrection didn’t conform.  Due to pressure of various sorts, the church at Corinth straddled mythology with the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Churches see their own beliefs and practices as a threat to their existence.  The world opposes and they negotiate a truce by conceding some of what they believe, convinced that it isn’t important enough to preserve.  They relegate biblical teaching that clashes with the world to a secondary matter.

How is apostasy stopped?  Someone like Paul mediates, as he did in 1 Corinthians 15, confronting the problem.  He also revealed the cause of deceit, which were relationships that exposed them to wrong thinking (cf. 1 Cor 15:33).  Likewise, in the six earlier letters to the other churches in Revelation 2-3, Jesus admonished and warned them to repent or face negative consequences.

In the slide toward apostasy, the beliefs and practices that clash most with the world depart first, which of necessity requires a dismissal of biblical authority.  God is One.  His truth is one.  The surrender of any part at least anticipates a total abandonment.  A path of deviation reaches a tipping point, one that seems like a place of no return, where Christianity might not be Christianity anymore.

On February 5, Greg Morse published an article for Desiring God, the organization of leading evangelical John Piper, entitled, “Play the Man You Are:  Will Effeminacy Keep Anyone from Heaven?”  If someone believes the Bible, knows 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and so cares about the eternal soul of a professing Christian man who exhibits effeminate traits or characteristics, he can’t let this one go.  What Morse has written, represented by the following tweet on the Desiring God twitter address, follows very close to scripture on a cultural issue.

If we are faithful to the word of God, we will call men away from the sin of brutality. We will also call them away from the sin of effeminacy. https://t.co/F7h33PBRuv

— Desiring God (@desiringGod) February 5, 2019

Men should rejoice in what he’s done, his explanation and application of scripture.  I want more of this in evangelicalism and fundamentalism.

What Morse wrote, I don’t know of any fundamentalists right now who would write it.  I haven’t read it anywhere, except here on my blog in a two part series December of 2017 (part one, part two).  Please reread those two posts and compare them with what Morse writes. Very few joined in my concern.  Churches are full of effeminate men and they are doing next to nothing about it.  Leaders are afraid, which will result in more and more effeminate men in churches.

acting cowardly or “womanish” in battle 

inordinate love for luxury 

acting like a woman in one’s demeanor, speech, and gesture 

lispy sentences, light gestures, soft mannerisms, and flamboyant jokes 

American culture associates pink with women, as it does dresses 

to walk down the street holding hands with another man 

a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him 

peak flamboyantly, gesture lightly, or wear lipstick

The Gay Vibe

 Morse writes:

On a recent family vacation to Orlando, I witnessed men blatantly, boldly, proudly play the woman in public. What did I observe? They did not commit any sexual acts before me. What I observed was not homosexuality but effeminacy. They were effeminate, sending out what Doug Wilson calls “the gay vibe.” They were living out of step with their nature, and out of step with our cultural expressions of maleness, and denying in their behavior their God-assigned manhood.

A part of the problem here, as I’ve witnessed it, is that Christians make playing the woman no issue today, as if it can’t really be done anymore, when men know it is done.  We should not be giving this behavior a pass — those who exhibit effeminate qualities.

Sex Governs ‘Gender Expression’

In the midst of this section, Morse comes back to Deuteronomy 22:5, something we just don’t hear today from either evangelicals or fundamentalists, but it is true:

From the beginning, God clearly wed sex and sex-expression. Under Moses, Deuteronomy 22:5 expresses a timeless prohibition that stood true long before the old covenant and long after the coming of the new covenant: “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” God means, in the strongest terms, for men to dress as men, and represent themselves as men, because he desires no observable confusion between the sex he gave and our expression of it.

For women to put on a male garment there has to be one designated and for men to put on a female garment, there must be one.  Earlier, Morse said men don’t wear dresses.  It is true.  Of course, all readers here know that women don’t wear pants either.

A First Part

In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, the Apostle Paul makes this strong statement about people with certain ways of life.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?  Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

All of these matter.  They should matter.  I’m not sure they do matter too much in the contemporary church.  However, I’m targeting one of these mentioned by Paul, the “effeminate,” which is distinguished from “abusers of themselves with mankind.”  Those two might be related, but they are not the same.  You might be a man who is not an abuser of yourself with mankind but still be effeminate.

Some in Paul’s list require more judgment than others.  Today, you can know when someone has fornicated, committed adultery, practiced a homosexual act, stolen, gotten drunk, reviled, or extorted.  Reviling is slander — we know what that is.  You can perceive some visible idolatry and covetousness without seeing what’s in the heart.  You can’t judge all idolatry and covetousness.  There may be much more of those two than what you see.

“Effeminate” is more like reviling and stealing than it is like committing idolatry and coveting.  You should assume that you can judge effeminate behavior, call something effeminate.  The behavior better be judged.  The effeminate won’t inherit the kingdom of God.  That’s the worst thing that could happen to someone.

Paul assumes people can recognize effeminate men.  The antithesis must also be true, that is, people can distinguish masculine men.  That means there are effeminate traits and masculine ones and that they can be judged.  I’m saying that most people know this too.

You know that today in American society that judging male behavior to be effeminate is considered more troubling or unacceptable than the effeminate behavior itself.  It might be called “bullying,” to even call male behavior, “effeminate,” or in more modern tautology, “sissy” or “girly.”  You would be judged to be wrong for saying someone is a sissy or girly or effeminate as a man.  The idea here, it seems, is that you can’t even know that, when actually you can know that.

To put two of the list together, someone isn’t being reviled if it isn’t slander.  If it is effeminate, saying it is effeminate isn’t reviling.  Later in scripture, Revelation 21:8 says “all liars” “shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”  When effeminate isn’t called or referred to as effeminate, then it is a lie.  Reviling and lying are both wrong.  Men need to hear the truth about being effeminate.

Scripture doesn’t say what “effeminate” is.  It assumes we know.   Evangelicalism cops out on applying scripture and fundamentalism follows suit.  This is following the current of the world.

Since scripture doesn’t describe what it is to be effeminate, I can hear evangelicals say that knowing effeminate traits is “above that which is written” (1 Cor 4:6).  How do I know?  That’s what evangelicals do with music, dress, and other cultural issues.  If scripture doesn’t say what effeminate qualities are, then judging them is “above that which is written.”  This should enlighten in the realm of judgment.  God doesn’t accept what is worldly lust, fleshly lust, or conformed to this world and music can be all of those.  Just like we should assume we can judge what is effeminate in men, we should assume that we can judge worldly, fleshly music.  Neither of these is “above that which is written.”

Another avenue of evangelical capitulation is dismissing something as “not a gospel issue.”  Evangelicals and many fundamentalists say, the gospel is first in importance, and you undermine the gospel by not keeping it first in importance.  Including “effeminate” in a list of people who won’t “inherit the kingdom of God” puts it in a gospel category, even if you and I don’t agree with the way evangelicals prioritize the gospel.

I want to say that I can’t believe I’m having to make this argument, the one of this post, but you know I have to make it.  I have to argue about men not being effeminate.  I’m also saying that it’s essentially and overall going to be dismissed, which says something else about the condition of Christianity.  It might matter who says it, but I’m not sure that anyone will listen or at least do anything about it.

At risk of someone dismissing this entire post (if he hasn’t already), I think this started when we said that we can’t judge male and female dress.  There became no male and female dress and now there is no male and female behavior.  Nothing can be differentiated in these areas and it started when women said, I’m going to wear the pants, and men abdicated that symbol of headship.  They have nothing now.  Nothing.  Some of you are sitting there being OK with that.  I think that’s sissy too.

I added in parenthesis to the title, “and separating from it,” because 1 Corinthians 6 lies within the context of 1 Corinthians 5 and the separation of a professing believer out of a church.  Obviously this person in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 is separated from God for all eternity.  In the short term, if he doesn’t repent, he shouldn’t be able to stay in the church, and he certainly shouldn’t be a church leader, let alone a member.

How controversial is it to say that a professing Christian man is effeminate, to name names?  Further, how bad is it to say that he needs to stop his effeminate behavior?  He’s effeminate, so he, so-and-so, shouldn’t be a Christian leader, and without repentance, he shouldn’t even be considered a Christian.  He can be here, but he needs to show that he is willing to stop acting effeminate, to stop being a sissy.

Why might effeminate behavior be indistinguishable anymore from masculine, so that it cannot even be judged?  That’s not going to change if we can’t first say we can judge — anything.  That’s not going to change if we can’t say that we know what effeminate traits or qualities are.  That’s not going to change if we can’t say a particular, real man is exhibiting that behavior.  We should start with private confrontation, entreating someone.  If someone is a public figure, it should at least be able to be pointed out and then be pointed out.  A person pointing it out should not be criticized for pointing out what should be obvious.  I’m not talking about name-calling.  I’m talking about indicating a particular effeminate quality that belongs to the name of a real man.

I want my gag reflex to effeminate behavior or qualities to stay.  I don’t want to tamp down my distaste.  The sissified traits are the problem, not my reaction to them.

More than ever men use an effeminate cadence, style,  mannerisms, and vocabulary.  I didn’t grow up hearing it.  In my adult life, I remember starting to hear it.  Now it’s everywhere.  It’s not just tolerated in evangelicalism, and even in fundamentalism, but accepted.  I see an even larger percentage among professing Christians than I do in the world.  I don’t like it.  Should it be accepted?

To understand the seriousness of effeminate behavior for men, we should consider what the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, . . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Certain appearance and behavior in scripture are said to be either like a man or like a woman.  God’s Word assumes that we can judge the differences between these.  Differences between the genders are to be kept.  A man sounding like a woman is against nature, that is, against the natural laws that God creates and sustains (cf. Rom 1:26, 1 Cor 11:4).  Women also shouldn’t talk like men.  That is happening too, but it is even more grotesque for men to take on female characteristics.

I know that society says there is nothing wrong with a man sounding like a woman.  It is even preferred.  The public schools like effeminate behavior in their boys and are encouraging it.  In part, they see effeminate boys a lesser discipline problem.  Effeminate men pose less a threat to women or are less likely to be violent with all people.

This post is not intended to diagnose what went wrong in order to have so many effeminate sounding men.  The underlying cause should be understood and addressed.  However, this is just to admit that it exists and that it is a problem.  Men need to know that they are sounding this way.  They need counsel to stop it, but they aren’t going to get it if we don’t inform them that it’s happening and it’s a problem.

A certain effeminate way of talking is so prominent and so well understood, even in secular society, that people have other terminology for it, such as “gay lisp.”  Since people know what it sounds like, technical terms have arisen, such as “linguistic profiling.”  Studies have shown distinctive patterns of phonetic variation that allow listeners to detect sexual orientation from audio-only samples of read speech.  Those listening in the studies recognized homosexual men to sound less masculine than heterosexual men.

Most of you reading, I think, know what I’m talking about.  You know when a man sounds effeminate.  He takes on certain qualities.  I recognize that just because a man sounds effeminate doesn’t mean that he is a homosexual.  Even if he isn’t, it also isn’t right, according to scripture, for a man to behave effeminate.

At one time, society as a whole policed itself against effeminate qualities in men.  A boy would grow up with effeminate qualities and other boys would make fun of him.  I’m not saying this is the best way for a boy to stop acting like a girl.  However, it often had that effect.  It was the right instinct and reaction to reject it.  Rejecting effeminate sounding boys or men was normal.  Now what we hear is that instead of being a normal rejection, an effeminate sounding boy is being bullied by his classmates.  It is now called misogyny and sexism by the homosexual lobby.  Toleration alone is now acceptable.  You’re in trouble if you were to tell someone that he sounds effeminate and needs to work on and change the way he talks.

Should effeminate sounding men be allowed to lead in churches?  Should they be held up as positive examples?  Can it be judged?  Is it even wrong?  If scripture prohibits it, then why is it being accepted?

Many articles have been written and research has been done on what makes effeminate sounding speech for men.  It has to do with the way the consonants are pronounced along with a kind of both pitch and rhythmic pattern.  Depending on the degree, one could add the way the eyes, lips, head, and hands work.  A man can move his eyes and gesture in an effeminate manner.  Each could be described.   Also, certain word usage is associated with girls.  One such that equals an effeminate hesitation and lack of certainty is the extreme overuse of the word “like.”

The renowned, contemporary linguist, Jame McWhorter, lists three modern popular usages of the word, “like.”  Frequent use  of “like” is effeminate.  He offers three sample sentences with the three uses:

This is, like, the only way to make it work.
There were like grandkids in there.
And she was like, “I didn’t even invite him.”

The first communicates unwelcome news or discomfort.  The second of these means actually.  It indicates surprise.  The last is used to initiate a less than exact quote.  It is used instead of the words, saying or said.  I contend there is a weakness in each of these uses that do not characterize manhood in its strength.  I don’t think women should use “like” such as this either, but when men do, it is effeminate.  Women popularized the popular usage of “like,” and men should not take on what started as female speech or even very girly speech.  Now we hear it from forty year old men.

I bring the use of the word “like” as one example of certain effeminate vocabulary, separate from the mannerisms, style, patterns, and cadence.  Masculine verbiage is strong, confident, assertive, and commanding.  It isn’t disrespectful, but it also isn’t overly sensitive and with a strong emphasis on feelings.

When someone says “effeminate,” can anything be effeminate anymore?  Can a man look or sound effeminate?  He can, but we have to recognize this is true.  It is bad for a man to look or sound effeminate.   If he does, he needs to stop.  If he wants to stop and he doesn’t think he can stop, he needs help.  He won’t get help if no one will admit it.  We need to admit it.  We need to point it out.  We need to do something about it.  If we don’t, then plan on the growth and spread of effeminate sounding men.  It’s going to get worse if we won’t do anything about it.

Phil Johnson is on the board of directors for Wretched radio.  He does a program regularly with Todd Friel, called Too Wretched for Radio or what Friel calls “Philsosophy.”  At the beginning of this segment is a montage of audio of Phil Johnson from sermons and speeches, and one of the statements that surely is included to characterize Phil is “Act like men, not like girls.”  In a sense, Friel is saying, “that’s Phil for you.”  Especially among evangelicals, Phil is considered to be a tough guy.

Incidentally, the military tone of this verse is clearly deliberate. These are orders for an army going to combat. Paul was reminding them (and us) that the Christian’s existence in this earthly realm is a battle, not a banquet. We are soldiers engaged in warfare, not merry-makers enjoying a party. Do we get that? because frankly, most contemporary evangelicals don’t get it. The typical evangelical church seems to think Christ has called us to be clowns who entertain the world rather than soldiers whose duty is to wage war against false religion and spiritual lies. There are churches not far from here this morning where the pastors are doing exegesis of the latest movies or trying desperately to plug into whatever the latest cultural fad is. Look around and listen to what’s happening in the evangelical movement today and you might get the impression that friendship with the world is the number one goal of the church. It’s not. It is a grievous sin to be avoided. “Friendship with the world is enmity with God.” The church is supposed to be an army waging war against worldly values.

Back in the day, I sat in Baptist Polity class (we had that where I went to college), and I remember then Dr. Weeks (what we called our instructor) bringing up the fundamental pie.  He drew a circle with five pie slices on it and for each piece, because my pie was too small to start, I drew a line with an arrow to the inside of each slice and wrote out each of the “fundamentals” in each one.  It’s something I never questioned at the time, because that was typical, accepting without question. After that I proceeded to memorize the pie, including drawing the pie.  Later it occurred to me, “Why is it a pie?”  Why not just a list with 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 fundamentals?  That would be the list of fundamentals, instead of a pie.

I have revisited the pie in my mind, and maybe it’s a pie because each piece is part of a whole.  There are five, get that, five, fundamentals.  Not four.  Not six.  Not ten or twelve.  Five.  Making up pie for a nice tidy pie chart.  The 9 Marks guys have to be shaking their head at the number five.  Nine is it.  I’m now saying, Nope.  I don’t even know why it is five.  It does remind me of the argument the Pharisees had about what the was the greatest of the laws.  Their discussion.  Pharisees.  Jesus could reduce the whole law down into two parts, because you could put all the laws into to two categories, two legitimate ones as spoken by the Lord Jesus Himself.

Today we return to the Pharisaaical attitude of numbering the fundamentals for, I believe and believe I can prove, many of the same reasons as the Pharisees.  You reduce everything down to a few number because you’re not prepared to have more than that.  You can hold together, maybe, a coalition with the number five, even if it does deny literal twenty-four creation or baptism by immersion for believers only.  Is God pleased with five?  Does God want five?  Does God even want us making up lists of fundamentals?  I’m saying, no.  Take seriously everything that He said.  Listing fundamentals is a basis for not doing that.

When men start making up a list of fundamentals, you should think that a major premise of such a list is making room for not doing something that didn’t make the list.  God didn’t make the list.  He exterminated Ananias and Sapphira for something not on the list and killed Nadab and Abihu for something not on the list.  That’s more like how God thinks.  He killed numbers of people for the numbering of people.

What got my attention on this — again — is another “fundamentalist” bringing fundamentals up as a bogus argument.  I’ve got three words now I can use every time that someone says something isn’t a fundamental as an argument for pandering or capitulation or obfuscation or just plain disobedience, sometimes out of cowardice:  same. sex. marriage. In a nicer way, maybe it’s just deceit or ignorance.  Delusion is defined as the misleading of the mind.  The Greek word translated “delusion” in the New Testament (plane, basis for the word “planet”) is most often translated “error,” and the portrayal of the Greek word is something wandering off the beaten path.

The recent president of Bob Jones University, Steve Pettit, played Rocky Top with a professing Christian musical group.  SharperIron linked to this occurrence and a long discussion ensued (at 62 comments at this writing [there will be more]).  Many questions could be asked about Pettit’s activity with the knowledge that he represents this fundamentalist institution in the most obvious way with its long, long time stand and standards on music, both for worship and personal listening, the latter as a matter of Christian living.  People should ask and in public, since it is public.

I know that this should not be considered a good quality of me, but I am very able at ridicule.  By testimony of others, I have been often judged to be quick-witted.  Well crafted mocking comments come to my mind.  I think they are best left unsaid and tamped down.  A high percentage of the commentary at SharperIron toward any criticism of Pettit was ridicule by some that think they’re good at it and that it must be a good way to deal with criticism, their mockery.  That isn’t a fundamental either in the fundamentalist pie, that is, whether it is right or wrong to mock critics.

A lot of mockery or ridicule occurs at SharperIron with almost no moderation.  It’s typical everywhere, not just there.  Much of it continues there because it isn’t moderated for whatever reason.  I see it as either a fear of a mob, the desire to be one of the cool guys, or the tendency to capitulate to the left.  The targets are deemed, it seems, worth the ridicule and in this case they are advocates of traditional or conservative music.  I think it would be better for them if they could be put in their place by defenders.  Answering them in kind wouldn’t be allowed, so they continue on with their unfettered scoffing. The scoffers are actually low hanging fruit themselves with their unmoderated attempts to diminish critics with this method.  If that’s the way things are there, more power to them.  I don’t think it is the right or even best way to deal with criticism.  It is the best a mocker can do, very much like the apostates in 2 Peter 2-3.

I want to get back to the idea of “fundamentals,” but first playing Rocky Top or even the place of blue grass among Christians.  The song Rocky Top expresses the virtues of wild fornication and desperate drunkenness, enjoyed and without judgment.  Someone might say, “It’s just fun; let it go.”  Meats for the belly and belly for meats.  If you watched, you saw singers and instrumentalists participating with great support and gusto.  They loved it (1 John 2:15-17).  It’s one thing to be attracted to it because it titillates the flesh, but another thing to push and promote it. If this is a Christian liberty, as some people judge it to be, which I don’t believe it is, even then it violates many of the limitations Paul requires of liberty in 1 Corinthians 6-10.

The big argument about judging such activity, which scripture says to judge and you should judge if you take the biblical and historical view of sola scriptura, is that it isn’t worth judging and that it isn’t a fundamental worth separating over.  They are really both the same argument.  Something isn’t worth judging because it isn’t a fundamental.

Scripture says everything is worth judging and God kills people for violating things not on the list of fundamentals.  It’s a replay of the practice of the Pharisees, ranking truth as a basis for what will be tolerated and what won’t.  It’s not how God operates.  It isn’t following Christ.  He doesn’t do it.  It’s also an attack on the perspecuity of scripture and the biblical understanding of unity (1 Cor 1:10).  Unity isn’t disregarding biblical teaching to maintain a coalition.  I know they would say they aren’t doing that, but the denial rings hollow — they are in fact doing that.

Someone in the comment section of SharperIron, G. N. Barkman, a pastor who is a regular contributor there, writes in two separate comments (here and here):

Fundamentalism, historically speaking, is about defending the fundamentals of the Christian faith against those who attack and erode them.  In the “old” days, the attackers were called Modernists and Liberals.  Now, they are just as likely to be called Evangelicals.  Along the way, cultural issues began to take their place as part of the definition of Fundamentalism.  That, in my opinion, is when things began to go off course.  Cultural issues are, for the most part, too subjective to defend or decry Biblically.  I have my opinions and preferences, and you have yours.  I will not break fellowship with you over yours, and expect you to do the same with me.  Liking or not liking a particular style of music is not a fundamental of the faith.  Let’s keep God’s Word central, and allow Christian liberty where clear Bible doctrine is not the issue. 

But back to the original premise.  Do you consider music styles a fundamental of the Christian faith?  How many other fundamentals do you include?  I believe that when everything becomes a fundamental, nothing is a fundamental.  The word “fundamental” indicates something of greatest importance.  If everything is equally important, nothing is of greater significance.

Barkman barks up the wrong tree.  Protecting fundamentals is a delusion, not intended to protect truth itself.  There are no “fundamentals.”  Where is this list?  I get the original idea, meant to gain a widespread defense of Christianity against liberalism, to attempt to salvage something.  I don’t agree with it.  I just get it.  But it’s taken on a shape of its own, mutating into deformity.  Fundamentalism is nothing scriptural to defend.  Defend scripture.  Defend truth.  Defend Jesus.  Defend the church.  Fundamentalism at the most was a means to an end, an unscriptural means that led to a less than scriptural end.  No one should be satisfied with it.

You can read the comments and there’s no scriptural basis.  He leaves himself some deniability with “for the most part,” which I’m assuming is to deny things like same sex marriage and smoking crack pipes.  Those are not fundamentals though and so the list expands and then you see truth as subjective, just conventional thinking.  It’s true because you cobble enough support for it to be true.  Every Christian was against rock music at one time.  Every Christian was against shorts on women. Now it’s no longer conventional, so it’s only a preference.  We’ve already arrived at effeminate male behavior, rampant in churches today.  God expects different from us.

The “fundamental” is now a tool for capitulation and pandering.  Rocky Top panders.  People who support it are pandering.  They want approval.  It’s the days of Noah, marrying and giving in marriage.  Just move along, nothing to look at.  Five things are worth looking at.

Read the first chapter of Ephesians.  The purpose of salvation, the reason we were chosen, what we read in the first three and half verses are “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (v. 4b).  Being holy and without blame in love aren’t fundamentals.  The adoption as children to Jesus and the redemption through Christ’s blood abound toward “all wisdom and prudence” (vv. 5-8).  In other words, true doctrine, what might be “fundamentals,” you know, what you’re really supposed to be parking on, are there to produce the right application of the knowledge of His will (v. 9), which is “wisdom” and then thinking straight, which is “prudence.”

Holy living, living without blame, loving behavior, the right application of knowledge, and thinking straight are tied to “the fundamentals.”  They are the purpose.  If you have “bad music” and “wrong dress” and all these cultural issues, that’s part of not knowing and doing the will of God, which necessarily proceeds from right doctrine.  The first three chapters of Ephesians, the doctrine, are about the last three chapters of Ephesians, the practice.

Paul ends 1 Corinthians in v. 22, saying this:  “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”  It seems loving Jesus is a fundamental.  Yet, it isn’t on the list or in the pie.  Can you love Him by singing to Him like He’s your boyfriend or girlfriend?  Barkman would say that’s not a fundamental and its a cultural issue, so it’s impossible to judge.  You have to know what love is to love.  If love is actually lust, so someone isn’t loving the Lord Jesus Christ, then that’s Anathema Maranatha.  A curse is on that person.  Churches are full of a lack of affection for Jesus Christ.  They have passion produced by ecstatic experiences, choreographed by rhythm and syncopation, other atmospherics and instrumentation and suggestion.  It isn’t reverence and sobriety required by God from those who worship Him and love Him.

Dismissing the cultural issues as preferences is not prudent or wise.  Christians are here to say “no” to Rocky Top.  The world isn’t going to do it.

Numerical growth of a church isn’t hard. Most of the people I’ve met who see swift numerical growth aren’t either smart or knowledgeable. They haven’t discovered some secret.  They shouldn’t be rewarded, as they very often are.  Churches with big numbers are the most emulated in the United States. Their tactics are also the most likely to be sent to foreign countries.  The most notable standard for success is still size.

I want to protect and defend women, but I can’t when they don’t do what I tell them to do (and I’m not talking about something in disobedience to scripture).  If I have to protect my daughters, and I tell one of them not to go somewhere, that means they shouldn’t go where I tell them not to go.  You can’t have it both ways.  If we live in an egalitarian society, women don’t need men’s protection — they can protect themselves.  If they can’t protect themselves, then that’s not egalitarian.  The truth is, women need men’s protection.  Egalitarianism itself has resulted in the abuse of women.  It’s only natural that this has occurred and is occurring.