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Elder Ninjas & Lady Teachers

When you speak into a certain context where you are in a group that understands your meaning well, you speak a bit more openly and freely and without as many qualifications because the qualifications are no longer necessary. Removing the unnecessary qualifications doesn’t turn what you are saying into slander and harshness, especially given the context and camaraderie that made the qualifications unnecessary and which cannot be artificially reproduced, though it does make it easier to screen clip and present things as if it were.

When short hand/familiar conversation is sent out to the masses who do not have that context, prior qualifications, and rapport, and added on top of that, in some cases actual quotes and snippets have been edited and made to appear in the worst possible light, the cherry on top is when this mix is all poured out into a (cancel) culture that hates the light of God to begin with, creating the desired explosion that we are currently seeing with Genevan Commons and its screen shots, like the one above. Of course everyone jumps to conclusions, and if you admit, as I did previously, that I have allowed my frustrations and anger to boil over in thought and perhaps even in word/posting (though I stand by the bulk of my interactions in Genevan Commons, on my own Facebook profile, and in this note) at some point and some time, then that becomes tantamount to admitting that you are a racist, misogynist little punk who should lose your job, dignity, and, oh I don’t know, manhood or something like that. 

Give me a break. Show us your private conversations in text, email, and discussion groups, and then apply your same standard to yourself.  

What is going on in Evangelical and even Reformed churches and denominations is an absolute disgrace to God; it is shameful and wretched. The gay but supposedly celibate have a flamboyant foothold (more to come on this in our next and final installment), Feminism bares her fangs, and racist views of racism are espoused from the pulpit such that we must either agree with the pastor or else “expose” our racism by denying the message applies to us. We are told to dutifully get in line and just admit our Reformed and even our national heritage has had it all wrong about male and female, race and slavery, gender and sexuality, at its very core, always.  

So to Aimee Byrd’s book and biblical manhood and womanhood, yes, there have been and still are real abusive men in the Church. Some use biblical, patriarchal doctrines and distort them to their own and their victims’ destruction (2 Pet. 3:16), granting themselves a license or loophole to beat their wives and prey on young women. I know some who have been legitimate victims of this, and it is terrible. It is absolute wickedness and is of course not biblical at all. Such men should be shamed and removed from positions of authority, and in some cases put into prison. But just as hyper-Calvinism is a slander of Calvinism, so too is Hyper-Patriarchy a slander of biblical Patriarchy (father rule). And when even vanilla Complementarianism draws the ire of Aimee Byrd, Rachel Green-Miller, and many men in NAPARC pulpits, you know anything going by the name Patriarchy is the mother (father?) of all evils, the spawn of Satan, a term and ideology that is inherently abusive and misogynistic. To affirm Patriarchy is to affirm you are a bully.   

Let me persist a bit farther. Sorry, poor word choice. Let me carry on. After all, that’s what Genevan Commoners are being accused of, carrying on at a frat party. Maybe this is like getting the virtual Judge Kavanaugh treatment. But you cannot say that either, because, you know, DARVO.

Below is one of the pictures Aimee Byrd linked to on Twitter, and she doesn’t have a clue about what was going on when it was posted apparently, which makes sense given she had a ninja, literally, one of her elders, spy in Genevan Commons: “Aimee asked Jason to be in the group as a "ninja" (to spy) for her. Jason replied to Aimee by text message that ‘I am still in there as a ninja, I have several files of screenshots he (Shane) has said.’

This isn’t a baseless accusation. It can be read right here, and for the record, no dishonest spying and ninja-ing is necessary to read it. When Byrd’s own elder did not view the comments in Genevan Commons exactly as she did (i.e., he did not regard them as “slanderous” and as harmful), nor share everything in there that she wanted access to, it seems she pushed the issue and her session ended up asking this elder to step back from his shepherding duties.

Some of the admins in the Genevan Commons reached out to either Aimee Byrd herself or her allies, to get some idea of what comments/threads were sinful in Genevan Commons. No reply was given. So, as punishment it appears, dialogue was withheld in order to allow the Genevan Commons leaked screenshot site to see the light of day. Well, let’s address some of the supposedly salacious screen shots that were snatched from Genevan Commons to make all in there look like ogres and cave men yelling at the women to bring us some meat and ale, or as the women in Genevan Commons are fond of saying, sammiches. Here is an example of what Byrd has tweeted, saying this image of a drag queen, was “not my [Byrd’s] best make up day I guess.” Notice in the file linked above it is stated that this is a post of a transgendered woman (although it is actually a drag queen, the relevant point is that no one was claiming on the record/among the elders that the drag queen/image was meant to be a depiction of Aimee Byrd herself) with simply one of Aimee Byrd’s quotes overlaying it. Nothing indicates in the file that Byrd thought that anyone was saying that SHE was the drag queen/transgendered woman. See for yourself:

And yet Byrd certainly appears to be tweeting below as if she was being regarded as the drag queen, having a bad makeup day. Maybe she will say she was joking, which would be ironic given we are not allowed to joke, but there is little doubt it gains her tremendous sympathy, paints her as a victim of misogyny, and muddies the waters.


Poor Blake Blount. The full Byrd quote on the picture is “I don’t have to act like a woman -- I am a woman in whatever I do.” And if you haven’t figured out the fairly obvious already, the quote and the picture together are illustrating what Blount perceives as error in Byrd’s theology, which I agreed with, which is why I myself asked if I could share this on my own personal Facebook profile (and I think I did, but it is hard to remember given this was posted over a year ago). There is nothing wicked about this post, nothing to hide. It is effective, it is funny, and that is why it is hated. It makes the point too well.

But the context where it was originally posted makes the innocence of this, that it was NOT trying to depict Byrd as a drag queen for kicks and giggles or whatever, indisputable. I replied with the context to Aimee Byrd on Twitter from the very website that leaked this all out to begin with, which you can find if you click through far enough under all the layers the context is buried in (yet still there so as to give the  appearance that they are being fair):




See? Blount is not trying to make Byrd look like a drag queen, and I think Byrd really knows this given the file concerning her elder linked above. But that would not fit the narrative of the misogynistic men of Genevan Commons. Maybe a little lying or stretching of the truth and distorting is perfectly fine when, you know, these mean men simply CANNOT take away these women’s Bibles or their God-given callings as female teachers. Notice the leftward drift and technique. Post lies to fabricate a scandal, and when it is found out to be fabricated, keep working with that knee-jerk reaction you created by duping gullible and naïve or simply misinformed men (and in the case of the ministers and elders, it is to their shame since they are called by God to NOT be duped, naive, and misinformed), and play off of that for ever-increasing smaller infractions, all the while keeping the initial charges of “misogyny, racism, slander, cyberbullying” going. I don’t have a cool acronym like DARVO, but we can go with MRSC I guess.

The Real Bad Optics: Lady Preachers and Teachers

Below is another screen grab from the infamous website, and the leaker thought it worthwhile to include my comment (“yikes”) as well, I guess as incriminating of wickedness, but I would say of righteous repulsion. I think this picture of Aimee Byrd giving a chapel message from behind what sure looks like a pulpit at Covenant College should be pretty embarrassing to her, certainly to any and all of these OPC ministers and officers defending her, but sadly it doesn’t seem to cause any of them to blush. What does seem to cause them to blush? Sharing this publicly available image of her and saying it is “gross” because women shouldn’t be giving chapel messages like a minister. Does this really make OPC ministers’ faces turn red with anger and earn their accusation of being "overtly misogynistic"? Is this the coarse jesting, deriding of others and foolish talk that they think is going on in Genevan Commons? Only a woman hater would find a woman behind a pulpit disgusting, or so goes the logic, I guess.

[As a brief but somewhat relevant aside, I lasted all of ten days or so at Covenant College back in 2009. Many things made me leave quickly like it was Sodom and Gomorrah (okay yes, that’s a bit of hyperbole, but not by much given this is supposed to be a bastion of Reformed teaching), chief among them my (I think) pyschology professor on the first day of class telling the story about how he considered his male friend to be A HERO for resisting his homosexual desires, marrying a woman, and, well, only committing adultery against her “sometimes”. At this point I cannot recall if the prof. meant the adultery was with another man or another woman, but it hardly matters at this point. Such is not heroic at all. But when you think you are a victim of being born with homosexual desires, instead of rightly owning them as your sin and calling them what God calls them in Romans 1, a vile passion that is contrary to nature, then you get even further irrational thinking/suppression of the truth by the one trapped in such sin, and those who support them begin to think that adultery is no impediment to heroism. You can even find Reformed college professors that think this way. Given this, don’t be surprised when the powers that be start turning Feminists/Egalitarians into martyrs, since their error is only minor after all, if they are erring at all; it is only a slight, intramural difference within confessional boundaries, and therefore not worthy of the outrage and vitriol these confessional women have received.]


 

Yes, pictures do paint a thousand words and sum up whole wicked movements; a thousand nods to a particular doctrine, of female teaching and possibly ordination, of destroying biblical manhood and womanhood, headship and submission in marriage, all in the name of tearing down yellow wallpaper while magically never departing from the Westminster Standards. But what if tearing down yellow wallpaper is tearing down much of God’s Word and redecorating it with something not from the Holy Spirit? In the photo, is Aimee Byrd behaving and looking feminine? As in, is it pleasing in God’s sight for one of His children, whom He made as a woman to bear that particular image/glory of Himself, to stand behind what certainly looks like a pulpit, giving a lecture/talk/sermonette during chapel at Covenant College, which is the college of the PCA? Well, is God pleased when women fight bloody battles on the front lines, getting down and dirty in the bunkers with guns, helmets, camouflage and corpses? Is that feminine, is that virtuous for a woman to be doing? Does that display God’s glory well, or does it distort it into something quite disturbing, that makes you say things like “gross” and “yikes” or even, “where are the men?”

The answer is obvious, even if the Bible never explicitly says, “Thou shalt not send your women into the heat of battle”.  Is it virtuous for men to allow women to fight the physical wars? No. Is it virtuous, is it manly, for men to be silent cowards (or worse, male cheerleaders) as women assume the duty themselves of fighting spiritual battles? No, this is even more devastating. Women are not created for and are not equipped to fight the spiritual battles, anymore than they are the physical ones. There was a time where this was obvious in both cases, and it was also obvious that women helped the men fight these battles in ways that men alone could not help each other, whether as nurses/maids, moral support, encouragement, motivation to return home alive and victorious, etc.

So in this whole affair with Genevan Commons and the screen shots, if anyone or anything is being slandered and hated, it is God’s glory in making male and female in His own image, according to His likeness. No amount of twisting Deborah and Huldah and Phoebe from Scripture gives you the right to tear down as extra-biblical yellow wallpaper -- “And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control” (1 Tim. 2:12-15). Ah yes, there’s that word again, nevertheless. But God’s nevertheless for women is quite different from Beth Moore’s, who is speaking from another spirit on this matter.  

Now to state what should be clear but has been misconstrued, no one is saying that Byrd is physically unattractive or gross. Those in Genevan Commons are not the kind of people who would make fun of someone physically ugly just to score cheap points in a doctrinal argument anyway. But let it be known that things like this, with the whole data dumping and victim claiming and not answering legitimate questions from respected professors and pastors who differ with you, certainly make it where men cannot be and frankly do not want to be “friends” with such women like Aimee Byrd. In addition to standard propriety. Sorry.

As I am writing this, I see that Byrd has tweeted again. It is a still shot of her gesturing in a semi-casual setting from a video series recorded with Zondervan on her book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (By the way, can I get away with writing a book entitled “Recovering from the Monstrous Regiment of Women?” No, I’m not John Knox and I don’t recommend such a title. But I do recommend the right to joke about such things.) In the tweet Byrd says, “The freeze frame shots though -- egads.”

She says that because comments on this freeze frame from Genevan Commons leaked out:


Now out of context (of her linked video, her overall teaching, the ongoing discussion in the group at that time, etc.) this sure looks rather petty on our end, perhaps even just mean-spirited and harsh and cruel. But for me and others, we were quite frustrated that not only is there a book teaching and even titled in such a way as to promote error and move us away from Scripture (biblical manhood and womanhood isn’t something you want to recover from but embrace, you know), but also the book gets, through its major publisher, its own video series called a “Master Lecture” or something to that effect. In fact, it was too much for me to believe, honestly. I thought surely this had to be a joke, due to the whole setup AND the optics. I really wondered for a moment if this was Babylon Bee or something. The freeze shot isn’t the best, and having now watched the series, there were plenty of better ones from the other videos that Zondervan could have chosen. So yes, indeed, I did think due to the photo and the title and everything else, that this might well be a parody. Some said her femininity is withdrawn, others disagreed but said the vibe sent out was inappropriate. Why make these comments? Because a woman teaching in this capacity on these subjects is inappropriate! But look, I can grant that the comments about Byrd’s appearance could be kind of petty. It is just a freeze frame. I thought the clip made it look like she was going for more of a grungy haggard look, and it came off to me as something like an SNL skit from the freeze frame, but oh well. It’s just a freeze frame.

I know it seems like mere picking at nits for those inclined to take what Aimee Byrd is teaching and saying as legitimate or at least serious and worth considering, but for those of us who believe this is an unbiblical travesty (not only her teaching but that she is teaching on this in the first place), this all really does seem like a sick joke at times. “Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood? Taught by a woman who claims to be pulling back the wallpaper of many centuries that patriarchal men and ministers throughout the Reformed tradition have placed over Scripture in order to ostracize women? Doing all this with, until very recently, the platforming and support and defense of PCA and OPC men and conservative Reformed groups such as ACE? Ah yes, please continue. We like the sound of where this is going.” 

So, this is not some myopic obsession over small potatoes. Understand, from my and others perspectives, this whole thing is a sad charade. Masculinity and femininity, what God says about manhood and womanhood, what women can and cannot do in the context of the church and teaching and so on, is literally what Byrd’s book is all about. How you carry yourself, present yourself, how you speak, and how publishers choose to display you, has much to do with manhood and womanhood, masculinity and femininity. If the whole issue were over, oh I don’t know, something meek and mild and not controversial at all in recent days like the Ontological Trinity (heh heh), and pictures and discussion were flying back and forth about the speaker’s physical appearance while pontificating on said doctrine, then yeah, that’d seem like an unkind and irrelevant ad hominem attack. But when we are literally discussing topics on what men and women are called to do or not do regarding teaching in Christ’s Church and ruling over God’s people, on gender differences and what they entail, on headship in the home and how that works itself out in society and the workplace and all of life, then you have to expect these discussions to be had if you want to hold to and discern what Scripture’s teaching is. And these questions are deeply personal, because they are addressing our persons, our souls, our bodies, and their God-given designs and telos (Byrd's view on this will be fleshed out in the final installment). Read 1 Cor. 6:9-10 in the KJV and find the word effeminate, or Paul’s admonition in 1 Cor. 16:13 to “act like men” in many English Bible translations. We have to be able to define what this looks like because God commands men not to be effeminate and to act like men. And therefore, for women to behave and look like women. That it is uncouth culturally to talk about this and apparently considered to be “the opposite of love” by many OPC officers doesn’t change God’s word, try as some might.  

And as others have noted, it is the men with either wobbly spines or poor discernment (or both) who have platformed Byrd (and others) and enabled her. They bear the greatest guilt, because yes, in the Church they do indeed have the authority over her regarding what she writes and teaches, or whether she should be writing and teaching at all. Her elders especially should have stepped in, though I imagine that is hard to do when she has already, for years, been on a podcast with two prominent ministers/teachers in NAPARC churches, both of which are considered (rightly in many cases) to be conservative and orthodox. And I hope her elders do take a righteous stand, but so far the only known action is that the one elder who agreed to be Byrd’s “ninja” was asked to step away for not being ninja enough. From the outside looking in, it doesn’t sound like the men are in charge. I genuinely hope that is not the case.  

To wrap up this post, let’s explore what would happen if the tables were turned and out of context quotes were taken from Aimee Byrd. Consider her saucy words from an old tweet: "Poor guy. What's one to do when they have the face and body of a 49-yr-old? He apparently doesn't need any age reassignment surgeries, just the change on the birth certificate. Come on, people, it's for the ladies!"

Without context that sounds, I don’t know, odd, maybe insensitive and mean. I wouldn’t get riled up about it, but many these days would. But here is the context of the tweet, which (if you take the link) shows that what Byrd is saying is funny and a good way to shame a bad dude (if you want to know why he is a bad dude, look it up, and I think we’ll all agree that Byrd’s ridicule and scorn is fully deserved and wholly appropriate):


 


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