The Captain Marvel movie did well at the box office for its first weekend. I didn't see it, so this is not a review. However ...
If you've been disconnected and didn't know it, the title character is a woman. If you've been connected from the start, you might know that it wasn't always so. Captain Marvel was introduced to the Marvel Comic line in 1967 when an alien named Mar-Vell (I can't make this stuff up) arrived on the planet. (To tell the truth, Fawcett Comics introduced their own Captain Marvel in 1966, but you might know him better as "Shazam" today.) His assistant was Carol Danvers in the Marvel series. An Air Force pilot and love interest for Captain Marvel, they called her Ms Marvel in 1977 when they endowed her with superpowers of her own. (Note the "Ms", a hat tip to feminism in the 70's.) She wasn't actually promoted to "Captain" until 2012 "pushing to create a safer space for women inside comic fandom." So Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios head, thought it was important to have a female-driven, female-written, female-directed female superhero star to be "the most powerful Marvel superhero." Why? As one fan wrote, it is the end of "dying patriarchy."
Ah, there it is! We're not looking at defeating bad guys. Just guys. No, no, that's not accurate. Just guys in power. Patriarchy. That's the thing that's gotta go. But ... why? What's so bad about patriarchy? The truth is, nothing. It's not patriarchy that's the problem. It is the abuses of patriarchy. It is the control, abuse, inequality, the rape and sexual abuse and cruelty done in the name of patriarchy. It is the dismissal, rejection, and "foot on the neck" treatment of women done in the name of patriarchy. It is displayed in the MeToo movement and all its offshoots. So horrendous are these abuses of women in all its forms tied to men that they have simply substituted the term "patriarchy" to mean what the abuses have been perpetrated rather than, you know, what it means.
Now, I'm thinking ... whose idea do you suppose that was?
Patriarchy, you see, as an original concept, was not the idea of men. It was God's idea. He made Adam first (Gen 2:7-8) and made Adam responsible (Gen 2:15-17; 1 Tim 2:13-14). He warned that the sin condition would cause a conflict of authority and responsibility between men and women (Gen 3:16). He calls Himself "Father" (Matt 6:9; 1 Cor 8:6; etc.). He set up a hierarchy with a clear delineation: "The head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3). It's in there. To deny it is simply to deny Scripture. So, if we agree that patriarchy is bad and patriarchy is dying and should be finally snuffed out, to what are we agreeing?
If we concur that patriarchy is bad, in the words of Robocop, "There will be ... trouble." Since patriarchy was God's idea, we would be stating unequivocally that God was mistaken. God erred. God goofed. He may have gotten a lot of things right, but not this. He certainly is not "Father". "Mother" maybe or "Other" perhaps, but not "Father". And, of course, that would mean that Jesus was wrong. He consistently referred to God as "Father" -- 42 times in Matthew alone; 92 times in John where He repeatedly stresses His relationship with the Father where He is in subjection to the Father. He was clearly wrong, wrong, wrong. And, of course, having clearly proven that God is not Father and Jesus is wrong in His ideas about His relationship to God, we've effectively nullified anything approaching reliable Scripture which, in the end, terminates any hope of a meaningful religion at all. Christianity, with an errant God, a misguided "Savior", and an unreliable guidebook, becomes errant, misguided, and unreliable. So I ask again, whose idea do you suppose this "end of patriarchy" thing was?
Perhaps, then, there is another possibility. Perhaps we might consider that abuses of a concept don't nullify the validity of the concept. If it was God's idea and God's design and God's plan, perhaps our misuse of it does not rightly reflect what God's idea, design, and plan should be in it. Like Christianity, in whose name lots of anti-Christian things have been done, patriarchy is not the problem, but sin is. Perhaps addressing "patriarchy" as the problem produces little net gain since it doesn't address the problem. But, of course, any attempt to point this out and redirect our attention to the real problem will be shouted down today, even in the church, because genuine biblical Christianity is not on the "bestseller" list, even among many called "Christians".
Conclude what you will here. Understand, however, that the problem is sin, not patriarchy, and that the militant feminism that the Captain Marvel thinking feeds is not about equality. It's about superiority. It's another "I want what you have and I hope to take it away from you." Or ... sin ... again. The "she" of this kind of feminism will not be satisfied. There is no "enough." Because with sin there is no "enough." It's like Christ surrendering authority to His Bride; never happened. Would you want it to? To many, the answer is "Yes!" To many, they've already usurped that authority. It's called "sin."
2 comments:
Well, part of the curse was that women would want the authority of men, so should we really be surprised? There difference between then and now is that men are no longer willing to maintain that God given authority because we've been tricked into believing the atrocities of patriarchy nullify the position.
And they've painted "patriarchy" as defined by the abuses and, therefore, anyone who says anything positive about it (like God, I suppose) is abusive and hateful. It's called "poisoning the well."
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