Vocation in the University

Gene Veith reports on the state of "Christian" education in the Sept. 10 issue of WORLD Magazine. He writes, "As John Mark Reynolds, a professor and director of the honors program at Biola University, observes, 'Many profs view their mission as helping poor, right-wing Christian children outgrow their parents' faith.'"

What a travesty this makes of vocation, not only of one's own as teacher, but also of that of parent.

While the vocation of teacher properly flows out of the Fourth Commandment, a teacher does not replace the parent in a child's life-- not even at the college level. Yet here is an ideology that arrogates to itself a "right" to do just that. Thus not only is one not righly attending the duties of his own vocation, he is also meddling into the affairs of another's. It is one thing to speak to the hope that is within us, confessing rightly the Christian Fatih; it is another to seek to destroy that faith because of academia's own intolerance for those who adhere to such outdated notions as absolute truth and scripture's inerrancy and infallibility.

One of the hallmarks of feminism is its totalitarian nature. It always knows what's best for you. This goes hand-in-hand with it's vocation-destroying tactics in order to commit Patricide. Feminism blurs the distinctions between vocations, but that is not its ultimate goal. As with the first sin, Satan enticed the woman in order to bring down the male. However, Satan's target was The Male in whose image Adam was created in order that he might eventually overcome the one in whose name all was created, redeemed and sanctified: God the Father.

Although Gregory J. Lockwood (Lockwood, G. J. (2000). 1 Corinthians. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.) does not discuss Satan’s attack on creation in his 1Corinthians Commentary, one can extrapolate the same when he writes, “One important consequence of man being created in God’s image is his commission to represent his Maker in ruling the creation (Gen 1:26-28); 2:15-24).” (Lockwood, 2000) 366. That is to say, if that ruling is overthrown by another, then the one in whose image that one has been made has also been overthrown. Satan’s target in the deception of Eve was not man, but the Creator of man, God the Father, the one in whose image man was made and of whom equality was promised by Satan.

F. Carolyn Graglia (Graglia, F. C. (1998). Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism. Dallas: Spence Publishing Company.) describes a trait common to women: “single-minded narcissism.” This is not a negative criticism. Women alone are endowed with the propensity of the species to bear children and sustain them. Thus, they given over to the knowledge “the woman nursing her baby knows- in a way a man can never know- that she is the center of the universe.” This is the ideal of what is feminine, and is very different from feminist ideology which rejects such notions. In the 1960s the Feminist Movement widened the gap between men and women by closing the distance between them in what is feminine. “Women in revolt fostered what came to be called the generation gap of the youth rebellion.” Males adopted narcissism in the form of feminine pacifism. The political failure of Vietnam was a feminist triumph. “Feminist revolutionaries illustrated [Amaury] de Reincourt’s observation that the woman who becomes sufficiently ‘frustrated by her unsatisfactory relationship with the other sex’ ‘will invariably attempt to rouse her children against their father.’” Denouncing what she called an ‘obscene, immoral, war like the one in Vietnam,’ Betty Friedan accurately characterized the actions of war protestors (including her own son) at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as ‘defying the masculine mystique as we had defied the feminine one.’” (Graglia, 1998) 58-59. This single-mindedness that was meant for the good of the family has been turned by Satan into a weapon against the very one who was meant to protect her, the father, who is icon of the Father. In her single-minded narcissism, a woman is the nurturing mother, a precious one bearing the next generation. She, too is an icon, that of the church who begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God” (LC 2, 41). It is the man who is to be the protecting father. Feminism rebels against the notion of female “preciousness.” Feminism considers this relationship as one in which all who are in such positions to be perpetually infantile. It is a relationship of patriarchy, hierarchy, and, according to feminism, clericalism. Therefore, it must be corrected. From this sort of interpretation, all manner of abuses flow, demonstrating themselves not only in the family, but also in congregational life and society. The plethora of tv shows in which the man of the household is depicted as the idiot and is the butt of the jokes (Raymond; Simpsons) demonstrates that ours is a man-eating society. Ultimately, the target is God the Father, and His Son.