What is wrong with the Church parts I-IV

What is wrong with the church Parts I-IV

I feel sorry for the southern Baptists. In an effort to show how hard core conservative they are, they put the New Faith Mission Ministry out of the fellowship of the SBC. The only problem was not only is ‘Baptist’ nowhere in the name, nor has the “New Faith Mission Ministry” ever had any affiliation with the SBC, but it was for having a woman pastor. Trump was way, way ahead of his time and behind it at the same time. He loved to talk about ‘witch hunts’. With all the problems mainline Christianity has in post-modernity the SBC went out and dug a problem up that to be frank is only a problem in the interpretation of texts. I can tell you one thing, I’d certainly rather have a woman preacher/pastor with conviction than many of the men I’ve seen running around in the Holy robes with television ministries.

If one of the things, perhaps even the defining thing about being a southern Baptist preacher is having balls and a wanger, well, that’s setting the bar kind of low isn’t it? With all mainline denominations losing members and influence in American culture left and right, you’d think the southern Baptist would be trying to hold on to any preacher and fellowship they can get and that will pay dues. Talk about a clerical error. Did no one check to see had the church paid its dues in 20 years (of course not, they were not a part). That should have been the first red flag to the administrators at the SBC that there was problem. If they hadn’t paid monetary dues in 20 years, that is a clue as to how they ‘feel’ about your authority and whether or not it is authoritative for them. In nearly every relationship there is an exchange of reciprocity often in the form of money or goods upon which it is affected. On a date the implication is that someone will pay (eventually). To get food to cook or eat one must give money. To reliably get on the internet and shop on Amazon you must have purchased Wi-Fi.

As a matter of fact, it is presumed that the people who really love you; parents and relatives spend and spend money on you. My aunt bought me my first boom box in middle school and my first stereo after that. This is not to mention the funds parents and care givers spend on clothing and feeding you which your parents will never get back. Even if your mother was on food stamps they could have easily sold the stamps instead of getting you some food. I’m being petty for a reason. So is the SBC. Along with Saddleback they were proactively looking for churches to disaffiliate. Sam Smith is on the Grammys doing live satanic rituals on national American and international television and the SBC comes to the conclusion their next giant step and leap for mankind should be putting women preachers and their churches out. Socialist-atheism taking over the Democratic Party and ‘will to power’ materialism taking over the Republicans and the conclusion the SBC came to is that they need to make a statement to the nation(s) by putting women preachers and their churches out.

Mostly Lilly white religious revivals are going on at Asbury College and other White churches scattered across the nation with young people and young men and women and the SBC’s contribution to it is putting women in their places. The White revival in their children that they have been praying for seems to be occurring at Asbury and the like and their reaction to this evangelical environment is to double down on arcane interpretations of a 3500 year or so theological and intellectual tradition. In itself the issue of female pastors won’t draw or push away any real Christian. So why make an issue of something that clearly isn’t an issue for anybody else?

Violence in America at every turn, people 60 and 70 giving up on life, wigging out and killing people and themselves. Teenaged violence and drugs, the opioid epidemic and they’re selling weed gummies in convenience stores by the candy…but the SBC gotta make a statement on those women preachers. People scared to ride public transit in New York because someone will push you in front on the train or walk past you at random, pull out a bat and beat you like an animal. There are those in America who prey on old Asian people and pummel them to the ground at random upon sight…but the SBC has to get these women out of the pulpit! America has threats from Russia, and now China is according to the United States sending and supplying artillery to Russia, determined to avenge Sino/Euro-American relations since the ‘Opium Wars’. And unlike Black people, ‘reparations’ will be more than monetary and lifestyle conspicuous consumption for the Chinese and will represent a global political and economic leadership shift. But the SBC has to get these women out of the pulpit and reestablish doctrinal control over their churches. The mainline denominations are falling apart and losing members so fast that for the time being, like armies before they lose the war, they start drafting children, the retarded, old men, criminals and yes, women so masculinized they are willing to fight and avowed homosexuals, and putting them on the frontlines before surrender, like the Nazis. That is how mainline denominations should look at the precariousness of their position in post-modernity before they go to putting people out on a humbug. At this point, if the churches can pay their dues and apportionments, they must be tolerated until a more stable position is available for the conservatives to make the rules more stringent and not further increase the number of people’s leaving the church.   

What’s Wrong with the Church Part II

I feel sorry for the Southern Baptists. They walked right out and fell into liberal’s hands by making complete fools of themselves and proving themselves terrible administrators at best, and at worst inviting jokes, as it were the worst jokes which is to say, sinning against the Holy Ghost. That is to say, mocking the Holy Ghost. The secularists have occasion to ask a question I ask post-modern mainstream denominations too. The Holy Ghost didn’t raise any alarms when you put out churches for having female pastors and then went to putting out churches in clerical errors of the most ridiculous magnitude that aren’t even in your ‘denomination’. How are we to believe you have the Holy Ghost on issues of gay marriage, abortion, politics or anything else if it doesn’t even help with  clerical errors? This is not to say religious people can’t make mistakes, but in culturally diverse times like these the last thing churches need to do is mock themselves, but this is increasingly what they are doing. In the name of Homosexuality the Anglican church has split, the presbyterial church has split, the United Methodist Church has split and the UCC has split. Liberals have sacrificed the ‘mother church’ to push the homosexual agenda, bleeding and purging her of her life’s blood and children to satisfy the need to change temporal rulers. On the other side, conservatives have sacrificed the ‘mother church’ to push against the ‘new temporal rulers’ in the name of doctrinal purity. Who knew the ‘mother church’ would feel so comfortable aborting some of her children? Or is she being forced to abort some of her children according to the whims of the liberal and conservative forces in the church? Who knew that the new ‘temporal’ rulers of the church could ‘take/seize mama by force’, padlocking the doors of churches and paying high power worldly lawyers to contrive legal arguments to justify their actions instead of being justified by Christ, the Father or the Holy Ghost, just like all the other ‘things of this world’ that while rendered unto Caesar because it is Caesar’s, have no part in God? And now just like the veil in the temple split when Jesus gave up the ghost on the cross, the church is split and we might even argue Jesus is giving up the ghost again. This time it is on the cross of human sexuality. Perhaps even the new liberal temporal rulers of the church have forced the ‘mother church’ to even abort Jesus. The liberals are asking, how can Jesus have a place in the modern world, He doesn’t even know what a man or a woman are or that there can be LGBTQIA. How can we have or have had an ignorant ‘God’ and ‘Son of God’? How is that possible? It is not possible and the liberals have forced the ‘mother church’ to abort Jesus in the name of their own version of ‘doctrinal purity’, defined as being pro-LGBTQIA.

In the name of sexuality in the church we have put Jesus on the cross again; forcing him to prove himself, questioning him of issues of sexuality and what He knew or taught. Each one of us is a crowd of onlookers just watching as the interrogation, flogging and crucifixion spectacle takes place. We regular Christians are just crowd members watching Jesus, the body of Christ, the church get split up, cut up and put on trial in a worldly court of law to see not only whose right theologically but which side, progressive or conservative get to keep the spoils (the money, the real estate, etc.). I ask the question like Paul, if in our rejection of earthy, worldly (legalistic) human values, in favor of biblical and religious values and by thus are judging the world, how is it that we go back to the world and local, state and federal courts, nay even the Supreme Court for confirmation of our political and materials positions in the temporal rulership of the church as religious conservatives and liberals.

Therein lies the whole problem of the present debate. Instead of the church projecting traditional Judeo-Christian values out into the world, we have decided to adopt and adapt the teachings of the world to suit our splintered ends in this age of identity theology and politics. In essence we capitulated. No, I do not make the argument the church should never say it can’t be wrong politically, socially, culturally or even theologically. I make the argument it doesn’t matter if it is wrong in ‘the world’ or not, it is what the good Lord gave us and I’m sticking to it by faith. This probably sounds like doubling down on ignorance but it is not. Christians should understand the socio-political and historical arguments that sexual progressives make and the traumas that more often than not led to their chosen lifestyles. But that is not what we teach, and apologetics and evangelism are not simple rituals of capitulation, they are intellectual resources used to bring the heathen doubters to our side not merely adopt the ways of the heathen. Furthermore, the fact that the Church teaches the traditional view does not in itself mean that we are compelling others to believe as we do or that we can simply go on political campaigns to get judges and politicians to ‘owe’ us something…playing the political game to use the law to compel and control people’s behavior, instead of biblical teachings and the Holy Ghost. That is different than having politicians who are politicized Christians. Donald Trump is a perfect example. For all the political right’s hatred of Jimmy Carter, his Shadow was way more a Christian than Donald Trump’s entire body but because Trump could deliver Abortion restrictions, federal and supreme court justices that all but owed allegiance to him and Freedom of Religion legislation to the SBC and the evangelical right. So the SBC and Evangelical right (not God) forgave Trump of his past, present and future sins apparently, that is to say blasphemed according to the Pharisees.

What’s Wrong with the Church Part III

For lack of a better phrase, during my jailhouse ‘born again’ conversion to Christianity back in the late 90’s, my first reading assignments (as it were) were from Paul’s letters onward. I skipped the gospels. This was partly because in my arrogance as a born Christian going back generations, I thought I knew them. Then I started critiquing Paul because I thought I knew him so well I could speculate on what his ‘thorn in the flesh’ was and why he was so adamant in multiple places that he wants to do (good/holy) but so often does if not the opposite then certainly not exactly the ‘right’ thing (according to him).

As I have matured in the faith my critiques of Paul, for instance his apparent views on women teachers, preachers etc., have changed. At first I simply berated him for his apparent views on women and the horror of trying to live with it in a post-women’s liberation post-modern environment. Now I make excuses for him and argue feminists and progressives took his words out of context. I don’t blame them, nor do I see anything wrong with them exploring the issue, but we must be careful not to end up canceling him out of context, which liberals and the ‘woke’ crowd love to do. Catch a White man saying nigger one time or asking the question why rap music and nigger shit is violent and we want his head on a plate for simply pointing out the obvious. The ‘nigger in the woodpile’. He is merely pointing out that the nigger rapper himself is quite pleased to say he is violent and violent to an inordinate degree at that. He will tell you to put some ‘spect’ on his name or else! The Negro rapper himself claims with a straight mean mugged face that he and his homies will shoot you for not respecting their block by not coming on it and trying to muscle in on their illegal drug or prostitution sales and transactions.

Recently the creator of the Dilbert cartoon said White people should just stay away from niggers, we cannot be helped or made to feel welcomed or understood because in 2023 50% of Black people feel negatively towards White people. Notwithstanding whether or not that is a ‘glass half empty’ assessment, I suppose in his mind it’s too late. Too much water is under the bridge. I sympathized with Adams in that niggers claim they want honesty and a genuine conversation. And then when White folk say something/anything unpleasant we want their heads on a plate. Open dialog and ‘wanting your perceived opponents head on a plate’ don’t go together. So now the Dilbert man has been literally cancelled. Ben ___ made and interest comment in that if the statistic was inverted and 50% of Whites had a negative view of Whites…wait that is the case it’s just White folk know what to put on a survey post-Martin Luther King Jr. He had a dream you know. I was not a fan of the Dilbert man’s humor or cartoons, so I can’t say what the loss to humanity is of not being in ‘woke’ cities and regions and their newspapers. I can only say that it is unfortunate that it has happened like this and my heart honestly fears because I know there will be a White backlash. There was a White backlash after the Civil War and Reconstruction that included Jim Crow, Black Codes and the KKK. There was White backlash after being forced to integrate public schools in the rise of the private schools all throughout the country. Screaming at little black girls integrating schools was just the overt part of the backlash. There was a White backlash after the Civil Rights movement to the present moment where affirmative action in education and relative to the state, is now ‘persona non grata’ and the courts have now continuously struck down affirmative action in higher education to the point that not only are White men and women pissed off because they ‘can’t’ get in the college of their choice over a nigger, Asians are pissed off because they excel niggers and White people and still can’t get coveted positions in elite White mainstream academic institutions. I’m going to go one or two deeper on you with regard to the White backlash phenomena. Oj thought he got away with it. Niggers celebrated the ’not-guilty’ verdict and thought we were sticking it too the White man. They lured OJ by his own ego into committing armed robbery to (as it were) ‘get his shit’ (his awards and trophies that the White man gave him for being such a good li’l nigger athlete). Not only that, I would argue White people lost a lot of faith in niggers with the Black reaction to the OJ verdict.

Was it racism…is it not always the boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, ex-husband? And we celebrated the verdict! The Dilbert dude probably remembers that shit. We might even suppose it is evidence for any self-respecting White person that ‘White lives don’t matter’. Oj got away with killing somebody and we allow him to still be ‘the Juice’. My favorite White backlash-whiplash of the week is Kanye West. Adidas dropped him like a ‘hot potato’ and overnight he goes from celebrity billionaire bragging about his fashion and music sensibilities like he’s God gift to humanity to…not being a billionaire anymore. Literally with all of this accidental and on purpose comparison to Jesus he does, and saying he is better than Bach, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Duke Ellington, etc., and wanting to start a church…he went from that to everyone thinks he’s crazy, which unfortunately for him and his ego, is the exact opposite of everything he said he was comparatively speaking to the greats of human history. His stripper whore White baby mamma turned her back on him and thinks (like everyone else) he’s bat shit crazy and wants to get on with her life and he keeps dating look-a-likes, stuck like a dog that smells his own shit and piss, licks his balls and eats his own vomit.

Is it possible Black people in the post-Civil Rights era ‘cried wolf’ (racism) too much. Obviously wolves exist, are real and wide ranged and are by default and hunting style lurking around some, if not all corners waiting to see ‘whom they might devour’. But to cry racism when wolves are merely howling off in the far distance perhaps may be a bit much, is it not. Children probably do have a right to be scared of what might be under their beds, in their closets and outside lurking in the shadows and bushes, and yet disavowing them of the notions seems easier than trying to get Black people to understand they are free (by some definition, maybe not yours), when the president of the United States is a Black man; and when a vice president of the United States is a Black woman (even though she is mediocre and shockingly incompetent, but that’s what rises to the top when a people does not define excellence for themselves). Rosalind Brewer is CEO of Walgreens, having come from COO of Starbucks and President and CEO of Sams Club. I could list others name but I shall not.

It is like a reverse Juneteenth in 2023. Whole sectors and regions of Black America do not know we are free and continue living with the habits and proclivities of the ignorant and enslaved. In the South in 1863 we understood why the state of Black literacy and education was lower. In 2023 it is not so evident why Black schools with Black staff, Black principals, Black administrators and superintendents are graduating childing reading two or three years behind grade level.

Indeed it is like Juneteenth but backwards and some of us don’t know we are free. Nick Cannon thinks he’s a buck slave on a some plantation and its his duty to impregnate as many women as he can and fill the world with quadroons, octoroons, mulattos and Latinx nigga babies (nothing wrong with the above mentioned ethnic varieties). And if he read my critique he’d probably be dumb enough to say I’m saying this because I’m jealous. Yep, I am jealous of the White man’s nigga stud on the White man’s plantation, but I’m self and people respecting enough not to be embarrassed about it theologically and emotionally.

Didn’t the White man take care of us in the antebellum south and slave states? Be damned if many of us don’t expect the White man to ‘take care of us’ now. In the antebellum days the plantation owner gave us daily rations and housing in shacks. Now we are housed in government projects, ghettos and wherever they accept Section 8 housing. Most of the effects of poverty like crime is in these areas along with substandard schools (if at all), circa 1863 and 2023. Most of the women do not build medium to long term families but rely on the government master where they get their monthly rations from the White man in the form of WIC, government housing and government stipends for dependent children…dependent precisely because they have no father. Their father literally got sold up and down the river whether we mean to another plantation or we mean incarceration in the criminal justice system. Juneteenth 2023 indeed, in some weird amok time where we choose to live like we did in slavery in certain social, economic and regional categories as African Americans. Many of us are living like we do not know we are ‘free’.

With freedom comes responsibility. You have to take responsibility for your own children, not complain about what the police should be doing, what local politicians should be doing and what the government should be doing about your children. Really niggerdom, the solution to juvenile crime and violence is government mandated curfews? Damn niggers, we just spent the post-George Floyd BLM era saying the criminal justice system was too involved in our children’s lives and inherently racist and now we are depending upon police outreach and city/state sponsored outreach to save our children? Are Jews begging the government for curfews and metal detectors at their local shuls and community centers? Are the Imams of the Masjids here in America clamoring for government programs like midnight basketball because they can’t control their youth? What about White youth or Latino youth, are any sectors of their communities clamoring and begging the government to come up with shit to save them? Sheer logic should tell us that is impossible. If crime and youth violence was better without curfews prior to shall we say 10 years ago, how can curfews in themselves be the solution? Seems to me a better frame of analysis would be examining how the conditions now (in the family, church, community, school) are different from conditions then and extrapolate from that what the solutions might be…not simply begging the force of the government and state to scrutinize your children even more than they were doing before when you were complaining your children were getting stereotyped by cops.

It’s 2023 and we don’t know how capitalism works. After all we claim rabid capitalism did to us through slavery, Jim Crow and the lingering high Black poverty rate we witness today, we haven’t made a decision to learn about, apply it and use it towards our own community ends. Indeed it’s Juneteenth all over again and many of us don’t know that we are ‘free’, thus we are content to live in the same relationship to capitalism (dependency) we have lived with for 400 years. This lack of ‘capitalist quotient’ is sufficient enough that nearly all of the convenience stores and gas stations in any urban Black area are owned by immigrants. Apparently some of us don’t know we are ‘free’ yet, Juneteenth all over again. And in the same plantation era politics now transported to 2023 dependency with better treatment is still the strategy as post-Civil Rights era politicians continue to sell the masses on the idea that increasing our quality of life as African Americans is dependent of ‘affirmative action’, set asides, reparations and forced integratory schemes.

What’s wrong with the church part IV

But now let us get back to Pauline theology and its relevance to post-modern Black Christianity. Paul’s works are riddled with the admonition to beware of new ‘apostles’, ‘preachers’ and Christ based spiritualists calling themselves Christian but teaching another gospel than the one Paul and the Apostles taught which revolved around Jesus teacher and miracle worker, Jesus reviled by the Jewish and Roman authorities, Jesus crucified and Jesus arisen from the dead. Everything else, Gnosticism and questions of whether Jesus was ever really human were not Pauline or Apostolic but new teachers, teachings and practices were introduced upon that which the Apostles built. Paul seemed consistently worried about churches falling prey to new teachings and doctrines and would be new doctrinal practices. I’m reminded of Jude’s admonition to the church that ‘we must contend for the faith once delivered to the saints’! By presupposing intentionality on his part in using the phrase ‘once’, we might first argue that the ‘once’ he was referring to was in the past. It was a past condition and we might also argue the writer of Jude was implying that what is going on now is not that which was done ‘once’, i.e. back then. A casual reading also presumes that the author of Jude is implying that what is going on now is not as good as what went on ‘once’, back in the day.

I ask the mainline denominations that are splitting over the issue of human sexuality if they aren’t prepared to ‘contend for the faith once delivered to the saints’ now, when in God’s name do they think Jude’s scripture would ever be applicable? Churches are approving gay marriage, ordaining gay pastors and supporting the LGBTQIA agenda. If not now when! When are Christians going to ‘contend for the faith once delivered to the saints’ because of a certain, this new shit ain’t it! And I say that as sinful a man as anybody. If you tell me a Methodist, Episcopalian, Catholic, Presbyterian or UCC is hosting transvestite reading hour one Saturday a month for the children of the church, I will not stop you or even argue with you. I would merely ask is that ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ Jude was talking about? If it was, it’s amazing how they of that generation missed talking about the condoning of homosexuality explicitly then, or for 2000 years in such dramatic fashion that they through Pauline teachings promoted the exact opposite in the form of one man-one woman marriage.

If none of this counts in Black American or general American Christianity as one of those ‘Jude’ moments the Church must ‘stand up for the faith once delivered to the saints’ I do not know some other time. What has to happen to qualify as a time to ‘contend for the faith once delivered to the saints’? A Satanic ritual was performed on the Grammys and an entire auditorium of God thanking awardees clapped and applauded in affirmation as if some great victory for ‘something’ had been won. Indeed, in the Sam Smith performance a great victory was on, for the enemy! And an auditorium full of folk who say they believe in God and use Christian terminology clapped for the victory! When are we going to ‘contend for the faith once delivered to the saints’? Fatherless boys are shooting up their own communities trying to fake authentic self-esteem with a gun, and fatherless girls are trying to fake authentic self-esteem by sexualizing themselves (one way or the other, desexualizing yourself or contrastingly sexualizing yourself is just sexualizing yourself by another means). The NAACP awards, once bible based and holy in it’s mottos and assumptions about life, now is celebrating their affirmation of the LGBTQIA lifestyles. Would they have done that at the 1963, 1973, 1983 or 1993 NAACP image awards? Is Gabriel Union’s angry preaching of a new doctrine the NAACP faith ‘once delivered’ to the NAACP saints and founders?

Paul found himself in very similar places in the Greco-Roman world sexually. And as mentioned ‘different’ ‘apostles’, speakers, Christ based preachers would preach in the church, to the point that some people would have been baptized under Apollos. A detailed reading of the new testament gives us even more personalities preaching, talking and getting up testifying, prophesying and talking in tongues. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians I believe describes just such a situation. People popping up in meetings, services and ‘love feasts’ some over eating and over drinking like the heathen do in their Greco-Roman feasts to idol gods. Some of them would jump up on a whim talking in tongues in just such a state, babbling spiritually enough in words were assumed to be of ‘divine’ origin even though it was impossible to tell if it was the alcohol or madness that prompted the impassioned talking in tongues. Paul thus reminds his readers (and us) that with no spiritual or intellectual interpretation of the ‘babbling’ in tongues it is of no use to the Body of Christ (the Church) for edification and education in spirituality and spiritual disciplines.

People would jump up in the middle of a service, worship meeting or ‘love feast’ and sing songs, some of which they make up in the spirit when it hits them like the heathen do in their temple rites and celebrations. Where from we get our perpetual admonition as Christians to do things ‘decent and in order’. And now let us get to the thick of the matter. We might argue the Hebrew faith was patriarchal and indeed that certainly seems to be true, even though today the Jewish lineage is reconciled unto itself by having a Jewish mother. Spiritualism in the Greco-Roman world greatly involved women. The oracles at Delphi were a women cult. Of course, there were other female deities like Diana, Isis, etc. In pre-Islamic Arabia as the Quran states, there were female deities and ‘daughters of god’ even being worshipped in Mecca. There are female deities of even earlier antiquity. Just recently doing some research on pre-Christian/Roman Germany they had female deities as very important women as seers, diviners and prophetesses. There were fertility cults and temple prostitutes. In a ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ truism, I believe post-modernity still has fertility cults devoted to the worship of the female physical body (breast/hips) in the form of strip clubs, complete with temple prostitutes.

So now, when Paul chastises the women to keep their heads covered, keep silent, don’t teach and be subservient to their husbands and families, the context should be looked at theologically rather than sexually, in terms of gender or even emotionally. If we’re behaving like heathen in church no less, let alone anywhere else and people are marrying their father’s wives and people in leadership have more than one wife how are we preaching a better lifestyle than the heathen? How can we be imitating the heathen and then proclaim a unique gospel! If we are eating food dedicated to idols (without qualification), men laying with men and women laying with women as the heathen do, how can we be preaching a unique gospel? And if it is not unique then it certainly cannot be from God (as He is unique in all aspects). How are people to know we’re ‘saved’ and how are we to teach and justify being ‘saved’ by doing and performing the very same heathen behaviors, attitudes and values we once described as being of a ‘sin sick world’. Indeed, what has the salt become? Church what has the ‘salt’ become if it is just another gritty substance in the world?

The progressives are correct, because it was a time and context assessment, it can be re-evaluated the same way prohibitions against menstruating women were largely to be seen as pro-women in a world before tampons, pads and other sanitary products designed to protect ‘the knowledge of a woman’. It guarded girls and women’s privacy to be away from the ‘camp life’ while they were menstruating. But of course 3000 years later it looks horrible and cruel to bar women from important public spaces simply because they are menstruating. But I found something else fascinating about the idea of women going off to themselves in tents outside the camps. 3000 years later it looks like a socio-physical liability for women to bear, to ‘banish’ menstruating women from the camp. But I began thinking recently that it may have been a wonderful time for female bonding. Women gathered together during these times and if I’m not mistaken in households and groups of women synchronous menstruation can quite often occur. The idea being that over time as a girl goes through the process of her first menstruation, she might indeed look forward to it because she will be with the big girls and women in the outer camp sharing and telling stories about what it is like to be a woman, to have a husband, to have a baby and be a mother. In effect this kind of female bonding I’m sure included much mothering that went on as well. With not a streak of irony, perhaps I might pause to ask the question whether in the absence of these kinds of ‘mythic’ menstrual feminine bonding rituals and the lack of sisterhood in post-modernity, might that be why some men seem to think it is easy to be a woman…indeed so easy one just dresses up like a woman, put on make-up and cut your dick and balls off and guess what…you’re a woman. In biblical days, which I’m certainly not romanticizing, the standard for being a Hebrew woman would be, being monthly without the camp since you were 13 onwards, and being schooled by older girls and women the whole time. I’m not sure the average transgender woman would cut the mustard. On one level it isn’t just a period that determines a woman because many females are pre and post menstruation for whatever reason. But on another level the implications of a period and the assumptions of a period socially and biologically separate a biological girl/woman from a boy/man. That is why adolescent girls and menstruating women had to be without (outside) the camp to themselves. It is the common mythology of the experience and interpretation of the experience that an adolescent girl soaks up ‘outside the camp’ from older girls and women, many of whom are married that a transgender man can’t recreate. That is why feminists should be the first ones objecting to men ‘bo-hogging’ their way into being women just because they say so and cut their dicks off.

Maybe that lack of feminine storytelling and mythology about periods and menstruation and the idea of the value of the uniqueness of the experience of that feminine energy is why grown ass women who should know better are letting men run around proclaiming they are women and can be women just as good as ‘born’ women, to the point of being ‘Woman of the Year’ in contests and shit.

And if we think about the whole idea of private bathrooms by biological sex, it is precisely with the demands of the menstruation experience in mind, so that women have privacy with regards to their biology. It is out of respect for women that there is the initial separation. That is the fucking reason historically, not because men got together and artificially/culturally instituted definitions of what a man and/or a woman are or aren’t. We are shy post-Adam and Eve (not withstanding their sex toy commercials). Human beings in general including men, tend to get embarrassed by even the proposition of others watching us ‘assume the position’ and relieve ourselves. If a person has seen us relieve ourselves they have not only seen us in a vulnerable position, as Saul, David and Jonathan would attest; but to be understood as having uncovered someone’s nakedness, shame and vulnerability oftentimes understood literally, physically, emotionally, intellectually and politically. I think an implication of the biblical text is that David uncovered Saul’s weakness and added insult to injury toying with him by not killing him while he was taking a shit with his armor off and his pants down.

And the weird fact that Saul communed with witches when the effects of falling out of favor with Samuel began to hatch their evil brood in he and his son Jonathan’s life is another fascinating part of the biblical narrative. Saul made deadly mistakes. The first mistake was showing enough faith in witches to think that they could communicated with a deceased Samuel. The second mistake was to believe anything they came back with and if I’m not mistaken according to the text, it was a curse of some sort and he apparently believed it wholeheartedly instead of hoping for forgiveness and penance. Saul used idol gods, spirits and witches to seek for the God of Israel, the one God. God of the Shema. God of Samuel. And then to believe what idols and devils and witches come back with…which is to say, to serve them. Of these mistakes, having gone to a witch is absolutely forgivable with sincere repentance and dependence and reliance upon the one God. The second mistake Saul made believing that what the witches said was real and contained the ordaining spirit/power of God was the unforgivable sin…as it were, Saul sinned against the Holy Ghost.