1. Rick, good article, but I have an observation. The scenarios you offer seem to recognize responsibility only on one side. That bothers me. We shouldn’t be pointing fingers or hurling blame because we’re just as responsible as the next person. Adam couldn’t blame Eve for his decision to eat of the fruit any more than Eve could blame the snake. They both had responsibility for their actions.

    In the same way, guns aren’t responsible, but there is something to say about selling automatic weapons that clearly aren’t for hunting purposes. But the shooters are responsible for their actions and the bullies who incited them and the parents who didn’t discipline them and the teachers who overlooked their odd behavior and the kid at the next locker for giving him a dirty look. I mean, really, if we’re not loving God and loving our neighbor, we’re responsible.

    Same with women. We’ve sort of bought into society’s idea that women have been suppressed all these years, so now we’re entitled to do whatever we want and any bad result is men’s fault. Sorry, but women are still responsible for our actions as much as men are for theirs. It’s not he said/she said. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

    Becky

    • R. L. Copple says:

      Rebecca,

       

      Fair point, but doesn’t deal with my point directly. Those are all examples of blame-shifting. Where a person sins, they should accept responsibility for it. Whether on one side or the other. One may be to blame for tempting another, and have sinned in doing so, but that doesn’t lessen the responsibility of the one who sinned the sin.

       

      The rapist cannot get off the hook because a woman was wearing sexy clothing. Nor does that fact negate the sin the woman might have committed by dressing scantily or that it might have been a temptation to the rapist. She cannot blame-shift her sin onto him, nor can he shift his onto her.

       

      That is our problem so often, when we focus on the sin of one party, we tend to think we are negating the responsibility of others involved. The examples I used say nothing about the sin that others involved may have, only pointing to valid examples when people do attempt to shift the blame for their own sins onto others.

      And that is specifically anti-gospel. God expects repentance, not pointing the finger at someone or something else. If you sin, own it. Don’t play the Adam and Eve game. That ends in expulsion from the garden.

       

       

  2. I’m glad we’re on the same page, Rick. I thought we were, but I could see others reading the examples and missing the fact that there isn’t just one side to responsibility.

    We really have taken the gender issues to an extreme in the last few decades. Of course women aren’t responsible for a rapist acting on his impulses or his anger, but women are responsible for sensual behavior and dress. We just don’t say that any more because it sounds misogynist.

    So many people who don’t accept the Bible as God’s authoritative word accuse the Apostle Paul of being misogynist because he dared to define women’s role in the church and in the home. But to get to misogynist, a person would have to completely overlook what Paul wrote about husbands loving their wives with the same sacrificial love Christ showed when He died to save us. What wife wouldn’t want to submit to a husband who said, My number one goal is to love you to the point of dying for you if need be. It’s silly to think of such a relationship as patriarchal or oppressive or opposed to the good of women.

    But that’s where people get to who do not read the admonition to husbands. They go no farther than the idea of a wife not being the head and they draw all kinds of erroneous conclusions.

    So I think it’s important to tell both parts, even in an example such as you used in your post.

    Becky

    • R. L. Copple says:

      But that’s where people get to who do not read the admonition to husbands. They go no farther than the idea of a wife not being the head and they draw all kinds of erroneous conclusions.

      So I think it’s important to tell both parts, even in an example such as you used in your post.

       

      Yes, and I believe I covered that specific topic with those points last week in the article: Submit, Woman. Maybe you missed it. But point taken. It may have helped to at least indicate in a paragraph what we’ve just discussed, just to avoid misunderstanding.

       

What do you think?