Gender Distinctions and Professing Christians Not Handling the Truth: Revisiting the Case Study of Bob Jones University

Last week I talked about Bob Jones University rule changes.  The girls wear pants to class now.  I haven't heard why, but other people have explained for BJU out there, let's call it pantsplaining, providing many different explanations.  Let me explain.  Pants at one time were masculine, a symbol of manhood, which is also one of authority, headship, being in charge, wearing the pants.  Everyone knows that.  It's a symbol on the door of the men's bathroom.

Several things have happened. The country has turned away from fundamentals of the truth of the most basic social unit, the family.  This dovetails with a lack of conversion.  If you are saved, you follow God's design.  This is an attack on scripture and, therefore, God.  Take away God's design and then created order, and you can have egalitarianism. The symbols have to go.  The representation of the roles have to change.  Women now wear the pants.  This was forbidden in the culture and then accepted.

Professing Christians, who could not handle the truth, dealt with pants on women with a flurry of options, taking away certainty.  It makes my head spin.  They complicate a very simple issue and then say it's complicated.  Since you can't really know anyway, pants are fine.  If they still believe in a male garment, they say there are male pants and female pants.  There aren't female pants.  None are pointed out.  Nothing is designated.  The biggest differential that is noticeable is tightness, which can't be admitted either.  If women are wearing pants, they're tighter, and immodest.

The world mocks the idea that women shouldn't wear pants.  Now professing Christians mock the idea that women shouldn't wear pants.  If they aren't ridiculing the practice or the requirement, putting space between them and those who hold to it, then they are talking about how unimportant it is.

Bonobos, which I had never heard before the last two days, is called a "menswear brand," Walmart owned, I have come to learn.  In an advertising campaign the company is calling "project 172," it attempts to sell its product by "redefining masculine." Bonobos is calling this "evolve the definition."

Truth falls and deconstruction of gender makes sense.  You can just change the meaning of words into what you want them to mean.  It's already happening and Christians are cooperating.

Someplace where I saw the television commercial playing, I heard about half, so later I searched for on youtube.  My first impression was that they were either homosexual or effeminate males, one after another, easily judged.  They read the dictionary definition of masculine and as they did, I thought, "this definition doesn't characterize the people on this commercial" and "they're not masculine." I didn't need anything more than their looks and mannerisms.  At 28 seconds, one of them says, "None of these really sound like me."  Uh-huh.

Instead of admitting they weren't masculine, the effeminate males of the Bonobos commercial decided to change the meaning of the term, masculine.  They wanted to change the definition.  They were very bold, but is that acceptable?  What's wrong with that?   Isn't it true that words and definitions are evolving and that the English language changes?  Haven't Christians themselves already capitulated on such meanings?  In practice they have.  They allow it.  They allow for effeminate men and effeminate behavior and they say nothing.  Maybe they scorn such men outside their presence, but not while they're there.

In the secular world, Prager University refuses to evolve the definition of masculine.

Prager pushes back against erosion in the culture.

Bonobos says it opened a conversation about what it means to be a man today, assuming the meaning of manhood can change.  If the culture can change, then meanings will.  Manhood is adaptable and variable.  The Bible does not define "masculine."  God, however, assumes we know, and we do.  We know the men in the Bonobos commercial are effeminate.

Redefining masculine is here, but before that, it was capitulating on the distinctions in role and the elimination of the symbols.  Truth lost support.  Is it is a gospel issue?  1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

Same sex marriage and gender roles are the same issue.  Are you saved if you are same sex or if you are effeminate?  Scripture says no.  This is the issue of reducing doctrine to gospel issues and non-gospel issues.  It doesn't work.  God is one and the truth has oneness, since it proceeds from God. You can't take away from the truth without effecting all of it, as in the nature of God.

The family is the means by which truth is passed down.  Less people believe the gospel because of the apostasy of the family.  You can't deny the truth and believe the gospel.  They go together.  Except a man repent, he will likewise perish.  Don't let these professing Christians fool you.  It affects the gospel to accept role reversal.

Around 35 years ago, I interacted with various traveling music or drama groups from Bob Jones University.  I traveled three summers myself all over the country and ran into them multiple times. My impression was their men were effeminate and women were masculine.  This wasn't true of all other Christian college groups that I witnessed, as it was for those from BJU.  From what I saw, this didn't matter to them then.  BJU chose these people to travel for them.  Even at that time, of the leaders sent to represent the school the girls were wearing something closer to a butch haircut and the boys were lispy and limp wristed.  The boys weren't masculine.  Some of the girls were more masculine than the boys.

Today there's a threat even to say something like I have written here.  It's not going to change if we can't admit something is wrong.  Writing this is a bigger offense today than the actual behavior.  The Apostle Paul, speaking of the gospel, said that the effeminate shall not inherit the kingdom of God.  You can be right on the Trinity and wrong on this and you will not enter the kingdom of God.  You can be right on the deity of Christ and you will not enter the kingdom of God.

If you can change the symbols and their meaning, then don't be surprised when the meaning of masculine changes too.