Can’t agree? Then get back to the basics!
Readership: All, especially Christians
Theme: Problems with The Red Pill / Infighting / Sectarianism / Socio-Political Misappropriation
Author’s Note: Based on email correspondence between Jack, NovaSeeker, and Thedeti between 2019-2021.
Length: 1,500 words
Reading Time: 8 minutes
Critical Navigating
In response to The Mechanics of Sectarianism within The Christian Red Pill (2024/7/3), Thedeti said,
“I don’t find discussions or topics like these to be helpful or productive.
In my view, the only pertinent inquiries are…
“Is the matter asserted true or false in light of all available evidence and circumstances, including scripture, tradition, experience, and reason?”
“Is the matter or proposition beneficial or detrimental to a man, to men, to his family, or to society, in light of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason?”
God gave us love, power, and sound minds. We’re invited to gather together as men and “reason together”. He did not ask us to leave reason and experience at the door when He called us to Him.”
The questions posed by Thedeti are what each man should be asking himself whenever consuming content. Here we’re referring specifically to Red Pill stuff, but it goes for anything really; listening to a sermon, reading the news, watching YouTube, and so on. A man should always be filtering the information that he takes in, sorting out what is good / relevant / true / useful, and what is not.
But as NovaSeeker and I described in the previous post, when men begin to discuss these topics amongst themselves, there is often a phenomenological misunderstanding which prevents meaningful communication.
Divisive or Inspiring? A Short Circuit Crash Course
Back in 2021 when we were first discussing this gridlock, I couldn’t identify why the rhetorical boat kept toggle-locking and capsizing despite our best efforts — why minds could not meet — not even enough to identify exactly what it was that we were disagreeing about. Comboxes resembled bumper car derbys rather than a caucus of wise intelligent Christian men.
At the time, I guessed that it was female commenters hijacking threads with volatile notions — or legalism, as in, people are operating out of their heads, and not their hearts; people are rather quick to judge, and that puts a damper on the introspection and honesty. But since then, most of the female regulars have ceased commenting and although there is indeed some legalistic judgment going on, I’ve come to see that the more basic reason why minds cannot meet is because there are some outstanding incongruences of awareness / orientation that are based on certain fundamental assumptions.
It took me a while longer to figure out exactly what those assumptions are.
It wasn’t until a couple years later during a series* on Sacramental Marriage in which I studied ecumenical miscommunications, sectarianism, and Meta Cognitions, that I was able to glean a better understanding of those fundamental incongruent assumptions behind the miscommunications. Moreover, five noteworthy dichotomies of viewpoints were identified and recorded in Divided We Fall (2023/6/6). These were copied in the previous post.
It is NOT that readers are mindfully turning to these controversial issues, disagreeing, reaching an impasse on principles, and then shutting down the convo (although it sometimes often happens), but that we all have these assumptions running in our mental software, and the communication protocols don’t function between the different operating systems of awareness — like trying to run a Linux program on MSDOS. This is why the ¡Error! message keeps popping up at unpredictable moments for unforeseen reasons.
* Points of Interest: This series also produced The Peaceful Unity Marriage Model (2023/6/7) and the epiphanies surrounding Gentile Authority vs. Genuine Authority (2023/6/10), which Deep Strength also wrote about, and is directly related to one’s sphere of authority.
Charting a New Discourse
The previous post described how sectarianism in The Christian Red Pill mimics the divisions inherent in Protestantism. More broadly, the problems within The CRP are essentially the same problems occurring in the church. This might be surprising to some readers, but it shouldn’t be, since we are the same people in both communities. Once you see how this is true, especially in the area of interpersonal communications, then you’ll also see how this whole dynamic also applies to our church communities; yea, to our faith itself.
One thing we could try to do is to push the conversation in a different way by backing away from those polarizing issues closely tied to one extreme of a hypergamouse dichotomouse* position and towards more basic ones, such as…
- Living as a Christian in the current culture, and how that overall approach plays out in these issues, no matter which orientation one might hold. I think that the two are related and perhaps we might find common ground here.
- Living as a Man in the current culture, masculinity and what it means to be a man, our relationships with other men and with women, our places in society, our missions, and our visions.
A more general practical approach would be to keep it real and relevant to one’s life, where the rubber meets the road.
* Comic strips and memes that mock and/or parody sectarian differences are needed to increase general understanding and wisdom. Like this one below. If you have the ability, interest, and inspiration to do so, you may have a new calling.
Moving Off the Gridlock Charts
For an example of what I mean, LastHoldOut summed up the basics in this comment from an earlier discussion of this topic.
“The rhetorical and practical question / thread in all these discussions is, “Where is the “church” (small caps church) in all of this?” Church “leaders” have allowed the entire landscape to be re-framed. It is time to come down hard within our own Christian community — to get our own house in order. We can’t correct anything if we cannot correct ourselves.
Until we slap the Christian “leaders” (pastors, authors, and counselors) out of the post-modern feminist Blue Pill world, we’re p!ss!ng up a rope. We’re wandering in the wilderness alone (Option 3). There needs to be a rhetoric that focuses on those pastors, authors, and counselors who have sold Christian marriage (i.e., the marriage foundations) down the river.
There are very basic foundations that have been papered over in the last 50 years:
- The man holds headship in the marriage;
- The wife is to submit to her husband in “everything;”
- The couple are to become one, which, according to Paul, happens only through the act of sex between the two. (See 1st Corinthians 6:16); and…
- The practice of bilateral repentance / forgiveness must be a dynamic that is practiced by husband and wife.
These four are the TRUE Christ : Church :: Husband : Wife parallel:
The Christ : Church :: Husband : Wife Parallel
- The Headship of Christ. –> The headship of the husband.
- The Church submits to Christ. –> The wife submits to the husband.
- “For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). –> “The two shall become one flesh” (Matthew 19:5).
- The repentance-forgiveness dynamic between believers (the Church) and Christ. –> The bi-lateral repentance-forgiveness dynamic between two spouses.
Like many of you, I’ve not heard these preached as foundations for marriage in the last 50 years.
Pastors, authors, and counselors have placed a disproportionate focus on Ephesians 5:25-39 and thus re-framed the marriage.
If we cannot correct our own, how are we to be the salt?”
I’ll briefly sum up some other central tenets that have come to light:
- Men need to find their calling / mission / purpose / work and focus on developing that. (News Flash: Marriage is NOT a calling / mission.)
- Men need to identify their domain of authority and work within their sphere of influence. This means, No More Mr. Nice Guy™ going around squandering his essence by handing out altruistic freebies.
- Single men interested in marriage need to select their pool of eligibles wisely (or change pools) and learn how to detect IOIs from young single gals.
- Men who can detect the IOIs being thrown at them, but who are not attracted to those women who are giving out the IOIs, have to either (1) accept their lot; or (2) level up somehow.
Readers are invited to add others.
The Finnish Line
If we could just all agree on the basic fundamentals listed above by LastHoldOut, regardless of how each man or church decides to implement them, practice them, regulate them, or whatever, then that would bring a clear defining meaning and purpose to the CRP. In the church, it would jumpstart a whole new era of Christian unity in a jiffy. More importantly, it would also bring God back into the equation, rather than playing around with D-E-I stuff (including complementarianism / egalitarianism), ‘gender wars’, gynocentrism, life scripts, political correctness, posture posing, power games, virtue signaling, and other Worldly concerns that everyone feels like they have to constantly dance around, even when in church.
You see, what LastHoldOut is talking about isn’t really just an issue impacting the way male-female relationships are handled by churches, it’s also reflecting the way much of the contemporary lifestyle is handled by the churches as well.
The Christian Manosphere / Red Pill community is just one small but very influential pocket of change.
It’s hard to separate all these issues out, but we’re doing what little we can.
Related
- Preacher’s Institute: Christ, Church, Husband, And Wife (2015/12/7)
- Σ Frame: Red Pill Restructure (2024/3/15)
