The Woe of Woman

“The Woe of Woman”

By Jim Culp

July 14, 2019

I’ve heard about this religious theory for 40 years, but a few months ago was the first time I saw a drawn diagram of the principle. If my religious education serves me correctly, this diagram speaks of the verse in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, to quote:

“For the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church: and he is the savior of the body.” 5:23

I know there are many others, but this one makes the writer’s intentions well known. The woman is to be subservient to her husband, and the husband subservient to the Christ.

The thing I want to know is, how many women today (or even 30 years ago) want to be ordered around by their husbands? Isn’t a marriage one of mutual respect and personal dignity?

In my practice of spirituality, women are a gift to mankind, because they can give a man things that no other being can…love, affection, and sex. The fact that she is probably a better cook is just a bonus. The feminine entity is sacred, and the giver of all life. To say she is subservient to anyone is both ludicrous and condescending. However, I can speculate on two levels that this is not the case with most world religions. I’ll refer to the two that I am most familiar with, and those are Christianity and Islam.

In the version of Christianity (in which I was raised in) of my day, the man was indeed superior to the woman, and even as a child, I marveled that most women of that time (70’s and 80’s) were “waking up.” The preachers would drive the Word of God home on Sundays and Wednesdays, but in between women were learning that they had just as much a right to be leaders and speakers as any man did.

In my travels of the Middle East, I found that Islam practiced a far more radical form of following the Word of God. I will take this opportunity to say that not all Muslims that I met followed the strict regimen of the Koran, or even the teaching of their local elders. They went along peacefully… but did as they wished when behind closed doors. In the strictest forms of Islam, women are indeed wholly subservient to their husbands, and it is no secret that they can be and are sometimes beaten for even the slightest infractions. Again, large numbers of secular Muslims do not practice such insanity; and go about their lives in a civilized manner.

Please stop for a moment and picture the old TV show “Leave it to Beaver.” Ward comes home from work and sits down in his living room chair. The newspaper is already laid out for him, and his wife removes his shoes and adjusts the pillow behind his head. She then proceeds to fetch him a glass of iced tea, lemonade, or whatever beverage he wants. After that, she patiently waits for his next need or request, which she is prompt to attend to, and keep him happy (right out of the 1957 Home Economics Textbook). After all, he’s the provider, the worker, and the reason they live in a two-story house in a safe and friendly neighborhood.

But think about this…how would the people of the USA have responded if they had tuned into channel 13 at 3 o’clock, and found that June had spilled Ward’s iced tea on his lap by accident, and in the next scene Ward was beating her with a cane until she screamed for mercy? Well, that has been happening in the good old USA for 200 years, my friends…and do you know where the man got that mentality? Yes, that’s right. Christianity or Islam. Both religions call for the wife to be silent in the presence of the man, and to be his servant while in the household.

So, when people are calling for the United States of America to become a Christian State, they are calling for something that the Founding Fathers had already been subjected to when they were subjects of King George in England. Religion and Monarchy were one in the same, and just a hundred years before him, James I had instituted the Divine Right of Kings, very much as Augustus (Gaius Octavius) had done years before him, claiming that an Emperor was empowered directly from gods, making him divine in his own right. That’s why the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written. Let me quote it for you unless you forgot it.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That means that our government (including the President) can be “religious” all they want, but church and state stay separate. Otherwise, we start governing the people using rules made up in a book that someone wrote over a thousand years ago.

So when would be Dictators like Donald Trump (and many others) speak about their faith in God, and simultaneously talk about “grabbing women by the pussy,” it’s time for Americans to wake up and realize that these kinds of people are no good for our Republic, and need to be tossed out like yesterday’s kitchen garbage. Religion is a sickness that has riddled our planet with death, hate, and greed for 3,000 years. It’s time to rise above it and use our minds for the purpose of bettering ourselves and making our planet a place of prosperity and peace.