Saving Our Women

Men, we must act like men. Men protect women. They don't reduce them to objects.

Nor do they allow women to objectify themselves to their ultimate shame and condemnation before the Lord.

If you stand in the check-out line of any grocery store (and who of us doesn't,) you can't escape images like the one above. In nearly every magazine or print media directed at women, you will in one form or another find a reference to sex, women promoted as sexual objects, or at the very least, a negative light cast on "the average woman." You will see photographs (doctored, nearly 100% are) of mostly young woman, dressed or exposed in a sexually available way, promoting the image of today's ideal American woman as fit, shallow, dressed to inspire a lustful reaction, and physically perfect. You will see men depicted as fools, shallow, unnecessary except for financial reasons, and largely unintelligent. Sexually free, independent of true womanly responsibility, today's woman is portrayed as seemingly more concerned about her appearance, her next plastic surgery and her next pair of shoes than with family, children, or faithfulness. Career, physical appearance, and a good sex life are the hallmarks promoted by every advertiser, mass media source, and the society at large as the keys to happiness for modern woman. Turn on the T.V. "The Bachelor," "Sex in the City," "Real Housewives of..." fill in the blank. All promoting a trashy, shallow ideal for women. Even the women who deliver the news on cable news networks are crafted to be more sexually accessible to inspire viewership by men.

Men, this is our fault. Not women's. It is a result of our sin.

When we objectify women, forgetting the spiritual and focusing only on the physical, we allow the kind of environment that promotes the destruction of the lives and spirits of the women we can not live without. God created women to be our helpers. They give birth to us, they nurture and love us, and they devote their lives to our care, either as mother's to our children, co-laborers for the good of our families, or by fulfilling our most basic needs as wives and companions. When we accept a society that has feminized men to the degree that we can no longer stand up for the women we love and say enough is enough, where we allow the ideology that makes our mothers, girlfriends, wives and daughters into sexual tools, we should be ashamed. For too long we as men have sat quietly while an ungodly feminist agenda marginalizes of the need for men in the lives of women. Lesbianism has grown into acceptance in our society by railing against the need for men to raise families, be father's to children or even hold a place in society. Anger against men is promoted, nurtured, proliferates as today's man seems unable to respond.

Without a biblical perspective on the roles of men and women, the problem of our secular societies attitude about women and the abuses that take place as a result will not be solved.
Secular unbelieving man will continue to be largely ignorant of this problem. But we as Christian men have an informed conscience, refreshed by the Holy Spirit and given to us by God as part of His saving work in our lives. The Holy Spirit compels us to see the women in our lives as spiritual beings, and not objects of sex or lustful passion. We have a duty to protect the women we love and to honor them with the act of serving them as the Lord would have us serve. By making Him first in our lives, leading and teaching our families as spiritual role models, and by being men who honor God.

Only then can we counter and protect the women we so very much need and care for, and whom God has given us as helpers and companions. The Hard Truth is that women do need us as much as we need them. It's time to be men and stand up and speak up. We should not accept the way our media and society corrupts the hearts and minds of the women around us. Honoring God's truth about the difference and nature of the sexes may not be popular, but if we live by Christ's example, God will bless our faithfulness to His divinely designed role for us as men, and will aid us in being protectors to the women we love.