Long Live The Patriarchy: Honor

Introduction

Let us begin by quoting the quotable words of one of the most quotable authors, C.S. Lewis who said,

“Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honour millionaires, athletes, or film stars instead, even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”

Like pretty much everything Lewis wrote, there is always more than meets the eye. On the

surface, the statement is certainly true. If you do not honor this one thing, it is not as though you will you exist in an honor-less world. It is not a matter of whether but which. If you do not honor this thing, you will honor that thing. The question is not whether or not honor will be given, but to which thing it will be given.

The deeper question still, is whether or not that-thing, as opposed to, this-thing is worthy of honor. And if not, what are the repercussions of said honor displacement? A king, is not just a person, but a title, and office. This office is worthy of honor, even if the particular person who holds it is not. King, is an office of authority, sovereignty and rule – which is reflective of much more than the office itself.

If this office is not allowed to be honored, or is openly dishonored or mocked it will have a ripple effect that will be felt through the rest of society. Honor, is not like a Mr. Potato Head, in that, you cannot just replace one piece with another piece and expect everything to look the same. If you put an eye where an ear is supposed to go, you haven’t improved its beauty or function or even made a horizontal change…you’ve made a monstrosity.

This may sound like a bit of an overreaction regarding a Mr. Potato Head, and so it is. However, it most certainly is not regarding the honor that is owed to a king and displaced to a millionaire or a film star. When you honor a king you honor what, or rather whom the king is to represent, namely the Triune God of the Bible.

His office and authority are derivative. They come from God and are to be directed back to the glory of God. That is, kings are to rule according to the will and word of God. This is the primary reason why wicked kings and rulers suck so bad, they misrepresent the Godhead. So then, you honor the position before you honor the person, because you honor what/Whom the office/title represents.

To give this honor elsewhere then, is to give honor to what the person is representing. For

example, to give honor to a millionaire is to honor wealth, to give honor to an athlete is to honor physical prowess, to give honor to a film star is to give honor to fame, to give honor to a prostitute is to give honor to lust, and to give honor to a gangster is to give honor to power and so on.

When we are forbidden to honor that which should be honored we will fill that void with

something that should not. When this happens at a foundational level, it is not as though that one thing is forbidden to be honored, it is that everything else that flows from it will be as well.

“if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3

It is not as though the building will be without a foundation, that would be impossible. It’s that the building will be on sinking sand…or if you will, “deny it food and it will gobble up poison.” If this is understandably true in the civil sphere, which I believe it is undoubtably and observably clear, then how much more so regarding everything on which the civil sphere is based.

That is, the honor of a nation comes from the honor of its king/ruler (which should cause us all to weep, and wail, and lament in sackcloth and ashes given our current rulers). This is also true in the home, in that the honor of a home comes from the honor of its father. Given that this is the most primal and primary form of, “rule” - nations being made up of homes, and if those homes know no such honor – that is, for father-rule, than those homes will not give proper honor to the king, either erring to the right or the left.

Therefore, the most honorable and foundational title/office is that of father. Therefore, if fathers are not honored as such, nothing else will be either. And to honor fathers, means to honor father-rule, which is what the title/office of father assumes.

Honor The Patriarchy

Of course, I’m biased, but I think it’s really impossible to disagree with Lewis’ statement. We were made as image bearers of God. We were made to reflect. We were made to mimic. We were made to behold and worship. Therefore, as image bearers we become like what we behold, we become like what we worship and most highly value and esteem and honor.

We all come into the world under authority. Our first parents were created under authority, the authority of the Almighty, Triune God. He is holy and perfect, and true and good…He is all-knowing and powerful and loving. His love is a perfect love, His power is a perfect power, and His knowledge is a perfect knowledge. Therefore, His rule and law are perfect. To rebel against Him, then, would not be to remove oneself from authority, but would be to place oneself under an authority that is the opposite of God and opposes all that He is.

The greatest joy that we could have, is conforming our will to His will…He is a good and

gracious Sovereign, He is a good and gracious King…To submit to His Lordship is for His glory, and the glory of the kingdom, which will also be for our good and the glory of our homes.

So then, as God’s image bearers, we are image bearers all the way down and all the way through. Which is why it’s not good for man to be alone. God is Triune: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is one God and three Persons. Man needed a helper fit for him. Like him but different from him, equal in value but unique and different in function.

When male and female come together in a covenantal one flesh union for life they further

represent the glory of the Godhead through the unity and diversity of their union with the full expression of their love being procreation. That is, creating more image bearers, primarily and fundamentally of God – yes, but also now, in a very real and tangible sense, bearing the image of the parents as well.

So then, the child comes into the world under the authority of the Godhead, but also under the authority of their parents, and it is through the loving authority of their parents that they learn of the authority of the Godhead. Yes, the members of the Trinity are all equally God, they are all, all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving.

They are all perfect in holiness and lacking in nothing. But there is also an economy in the Godhead because there is a diversity in Person. There is also an authority within the Godhead and function within the Godhead that does not lessen the infinite value of any member of the Godhead.

Therefore the economic diversity of the male and female or of masculinity and femininity is just as foundational to who and what we are as is our ontological equality is. Our unity and our diversity runs all the way down and all the way through. This means that we reflect God not only in our person but also our action, not only in our being but also our role.

Which means that when male and female come together in one flesh union they not only further reflect the glory of God in their love and oneness but also in their function, which means that authority is necessarily baked into the cake, without any minimization of value. Man was created as the head, and woman as his helper which is exercised in the covenant of marriage, and then is extended through procreation. Which means children are to learn of the authority of God through the authority of their father.

This also means that the family and the economic unit of the household is the most basic

authority structure there is in civilization upon which all others are to be built, whether

ecclesiastical, private or public. Hence, Paul’s words in Ephesians 6:2 are far broader than

would initially appear, “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

The clear implication being that if you do not honor father and mother that it will not go well with you and that you will not live long in the land – this is language of covenantal cursing. That is, if you do not honor father and mother it is baked into the cake of creation, that over the long run, things will not go well for you, your home, your nation and so on.

But in order to honor father and mother we have to honor father and mother as such. This isn’t honor like Mr. Potato Head parts. That is, if you give a mother honor as if she were a father it is no honor at all and vice versa. Therefore, the idea of Mr. Mom, or of the Woman King are not only destructive and stupid, but also dishonoring all the way down and all the way through. In trying to honor and esteem woman in the same way that you would honor a man, or a mother as you would a father, is actually to dishonor both, but even more so, to dishonor every form of authority in creation.

Anthony Esolen writes,

“Men and women are made for one another. I believe it, because it is in front of my nose, and I will not let any ideology compel me to pretend that I do not see what is right there to see. But if that is so, then we cannot corrupt one sex without corrupting the other. Male and female stand or fall together. If men fall into a bad way, women will be soon to follow, and vice versa.”

And it’s not just male and female that will fall into a bad way, but everything else will as well. This statement is going to blow everyone’s mind so let me hit you with some knowledge: human civilization is made up of humans…which are made male and female. Males and females are not just physiologically different, but also functionally different…and their proper honor doesn’t just belong to their physiology but also their function, neither of which being interchangeable.

My ear sees nothing and to say that it does is stupid, it brings it no greater honor to pretend that it is an eye. To do so, distracts and dishonors the actual beauty of both the ear and the eye that were created for distinct and complementary reasons. The same is true of both male and female, husband and wife and father and mother. To not understand that men and women are creationally different not just in physiology but also in function is to miss the mark entirely.

Therefore people can continue to complain about all of the homo and tranny garbage that is being marketed towards children, anyone really, but especially children, by fortune 500 companies. They can continue to boycott these stores which is well and good and as far as it goes, but the problem is, this is as far as it goes. We can be disgusted by all of this crap when it’s displayed in the streets, like the emperor’s junk, and we should be. Much more than we are, actually!

However, we can complain and boycott all we want, but nothing will ultimately change if you’re still functionally transgender in your marriage and home. Complementarianism is usually just egalitarianism in disguise and is forbidding honor that is to go to the father as the head of the home and is also actually forbidding honor that is to go to the wife and mother as the helper.

Patriarchy is baked into the cake and is unavoidable, because we were created in the image of the Triune God. To forbid the honor that is due to the father as such, doesn’t remove authority, nor honor from the equation, it just simply displaces it and in doing so, dishonors all of it, or if you will, a little poison upstream, poisons everything downstream, or perhaps, a more biblical example will suffice, a little leaven, leavens the whole lump.

The point being, you can’t look at male and female as though their roles are any more

interchangeable then their body parts. Until we understand that, and honor both men and women as such, the way that God intends for them to be honored, namely, in the way that He created them in form and function, then not much will really change.

Conclusion

We have a nasty habit of treating symptoms and not causes, we do this in every area of our lives. Paraphrasing Tolstoy, “Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change themselves.” We are stuck in the middle of a circus, like a bad dream we can’t get out of, and we are all looking for a way out like a child at the White House.

We see a lot of things we don’t like, not realizing all of the most icky things are not isolated in and of themselves…they have causes. Until we are ready to uproot the causes we are not really going to see any real restoration, revival or redemption of our culture, because there won’t be any real repentance yet. Right now, our country is like a fat person that’s ticked about being fat, and doesn’t want to be fat, and is ridiculing the things that made them fat, while they are eating cake, and being convinced that cake is not a contributing factor too said fatness.

All of the homo and tranny insanity and mass normalization of pedophilia that should be dealt with swift execution, has been built on the shoulders of feminism, egalitarianism and soft-complementarianism. We can’t get rid of the latter until we get rid of the former, and we can’t get rid of any of it until we first honor the patriarchy as such. So then, long live the patriarchy.