“I can't understand how we got by those troops.
I thought we were dead.”
“The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.” †
A Christian woman posted the following on Facebook:
Because men desire women’s approval and admiration and because they are motivated by sex, men in society generally live up to what women expect. If women expect marriage and faithfulness before they give sex, men step up and become faithful husbands. If women only expect dinner and a compliment before they give sex, that’s generally all women get. Then they wonder where all the good men went. What good men are left are married to the good women who don’t sleep around. But there are fewer good men if there’s no social incentive to be good men. Women set their price. If they sell themselves short, they reap what they sow.
She garnered mostly positive responses, but not from everybody. One person commented:
This is unbiblical gobbledygook. Men are called to a higher standard and stand before God in their accountability. To put men’s behaviour on the action of women is sinful. To state that women provide the social incentive for men to conduct themselves accordingly takes any responsibility away from men.
This raises profound questions: Don't people influence each other, both for good and for ill? The saying “No man is an island” originated in 1624, so this isn’t exactly a new idea. And the Bible repeatedly acknowledges the ongoing reality of back-and-forth human influence. Even pagans are so aware of the power of influence that they engage in expensive advertising, public (and often vicious) argument, campaigns and protests. Western society has even produced a new subspecies: “influencers.”
Why, then, should we think that sexual influence by women doesn’t factor into the behavior of men?
To the Christian man on Facebook, and other married men: Doesn't your wife influence you? (Mine sure influences me—and I’m glad for it!)
There’s definitely truth in what the critic has said. If I didn't think he was at least partly right, I wouldn't be a proponent of Biblical libertarianism, which emphasizes the God-ordained value, right, and power of individual choice.1 But his criticism came close to flat-out denying the readily observable social dynamics described in the Facebook post. Heck, those dynamics aren’t just “observable,” but actually experienced by every single one of us, albeit to varying degrees. Certainly those dynamics are affected by men’s own choices, but it will never be the case that men, though “free,” are absolutely free of women's influence.
Nor did God intend that to be the case. When the Good News about Jesus was introduced in the first century, and the Church was inaugurated, the Apostles didn’t start telling people, “Men shouldn’t be influenced by women (or vice versa)!” Rather, they assumed that influence of some kind would continue to be a reality, but taught believers that it should go in a particular direction.
For instance, in the case of spiritually mixed marriages, the Bible tells Christian wives that
even if some [husbands] refuse to obey the Good News, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over by observing your pure and reverent lives. [1 Peter 3:1-2]
Of course this is only one type of influence; there’s also the opposite, such as in the case of Jezebel, who influenced her husband King Ahab to commit extreme evil. Thus Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus that
women [should] be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. [1 Timothy 2:92]
He didn’t say “Men and women should have no influence on each other.” Modesty doesn’t matter if influence doesn’t happen. Therefore the New Testament acknowledges the reality of women’s influence on men—in line with the Facebook post.
So the larger picture is this: both good and bad influences coming from women are possible because God designed the two genders to interact with each other in such a dynamic. In other words, any capacity we have as human beings can be used for good or evil. But we wouldn’t be able to make that choice if we weren’t designed with that capacity in the first place—including the power to influence others. Thus God said in the beginning: “It is not good for the man to be alone, so I will create a companion for him, a perfectly suited partner.” (Genesis 2:18)
On the word “companion,” the editors of the New English Translation comment:
In this context the word seems to express the idea of an “indispensable companion.” The woman would supply what the man was lacking in the design of creation and logically it would follow that the man would supply what she was lacking[.]
But the introduction of sin into the world has led men and women to twist their “partnership” into rivalry: God told Eve, “You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.” (Genesis 3:163) Again the NET Bible editors comment:
This passage is a judgment oracle. It announces that conflict between man and woman will become the norm in human society. It does not depict the NT ideal, where the husband sacrificially loves his wife, as Christ loved the church, and where the wife recognizes the husband’s loving leadership in the family and voluntarily submits to it. Sin produces a conflict or power struggle between the man and the woman[.]
This dynamic has played out over the entire span of post-Fall history, but obviously it doesn’t always manifest in the same way. When it comes to sex, however, many women offer it indiscriminately, using it as a tool to get something they’re after4—while many men take sex by force or coercion.
Curbing the power of the “Force.” Since I’m an equal-opportunity offender, here is where I turn my sights on the Facebook post itself. I have a very strong measure of agreement with it, for the simple reason that it describes what really happens in a depraved society. On the other hand, one could argue that it paints men as automatons helplessly subject to the “programming” power of women. This is where the male critic’s concern lies.
I don’t believe that’s what this Christian sister meant, though; I think she’d agree with me on another human reality: we look for excuses for our bad behavior. An old and frequently mocked saying is, “The Devil made me do it.” No knowledgeable Christian would doubt Satan’s influence in the world—but no knowledgeable Christian would accept that as an excuse, either.
And if we aren’t willing to buy that Satan himself, with his superhuman intelligence and power, “made me do it,” we certainly shouldn’t accept mere human influence as an excuse. People still try it, though. Like the very first man:
[God asked him,] “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” [Genesis 3:11-12]
Uh, yeah—no. That’s not gonna fly, dude.
Human influence does its thing—but it doesn’t have to be in the driver’s seat.
At the end of the day, putting human influences—including wanton women—in their proper context is akin to how we view drunk driving. The typical drunk driver who kills somebody with his car isn’t intending to kill; he doesn’t “choose” to kill. Yet society, rightly, holds him responsible for that death. Why? Because he chose to drink and drive.
In other words: he didn’t choose the outcome, but he chose what led to that outcome.
In the same way, although an increasing number of women in today’s Western society are sexually loose and/or use sex as a tool to get what they want from men—it doesn’t follow that men have to subject themselves to that influence. A man makes countless choices in a given day that put him on either a Godward or sinward path. Same goes for women. Sin is an equal-opportunity trap for both sexes. It just doesn’t always look the same.
So, how can we avoid the trap?
Off the top I quoted Obi-Wan Kenobi, who said to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, “The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.” Likewise, the “force” of sin influences the weak-minded. But I’m not talking about intellectual weakness; I’m not talking about gray matter. I’m talking about what matters. What matters to you the most in life, such that you choose to dwell on it continuously. That mindset will produce either a godly or ungodly outcome.
Hence the Apostle Paul wrote to believers:
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. [Romans 12:2]
The phrase “let God transform you” is pivotal: it suggests a back-and-forth dynamic between you and God. Paul shed some light on that subject when he urged the Philippians:
to work out your salvation, with great fear and trembling, because God is energizing you so that you will desire and do what always pleases Him. [Philippians 2:12-13]
Notice first of all that it’s “work out”—not “work for.” Paul is telling believers to live in a way that reflects the reality that they have been saved, not in a vain attempt to “earn” salvation. In other words, “you are now light in the Lord”—not in yourselves. “So act like children of the light.” (Ephesians 5:8)
But how can we live this way when we’re still saddled with a fallen nature?
. . . [L]et the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. [Galatians 5:16]
Okay, so how do we do that?
You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. . . . After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? [Galatians 3:2-3]
Which brings us back to Christ Himself:
My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. [Galatians 2:20]
Trust in the Son of God. This is all about a relationship, and all genuine relationships are built on trust.
But part of that relationship is formed in a battle zone:
Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. [1 Peter 2:11]
Peter doesn’t say how to “keep away from worldly desires,” but it’s not by self-effort. It goes back to Jesus himself:
The darkness of night is dissolving as dawn’s light draws near, so walk out on your old dark life and put on the armor of light. . . . [W]rap yourselves in the Lord Jesus, God’s Anointed, and do not fuel your sinful imagination by indulging your self-seeking desire for the pleasures of the flesh. [Romans 13:12, 14]
Jesus Himself is your armor.
Men “leading” women. The Bible teaches that God has designed men to be women’s spiritual leaders. This does not mean domination, force, coercion, or any such thing. It means simply leading the way in a respectful, loving manner. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
How many women would mind being “led” by a man who gives himself up for her?
But even outside of a Christ-centered marriage, in society at large, men still lead. Kind of. I’m using the word “lead” very loosely here: what I mean is that in modern Western culture, men influence women to debase themselves—which in reciprocal fashion influences men to act like brutes toward women.
Too many men are caught up with “a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything [they] see, and pride in [their] achievements and possessions” (1 John 2:16), such that they influence women to “put out” in order to get what they want from men—be that pleasure, affection, money, or power.
This is a feedback loop in which both men and a women are guilty.
But if you want to know what came first, the chick or the bro, an argument could be made that it’s the latter. Men stopped seeking God and abdicated their divinely ordained responsibilities, which led to the indulgence of base appetites—which led to women falling into the trap of appealing to men’s base desires. If men hadn’t adopted that pattern in the first place, it’s reasonable to expect we’d have fewer promiscuous females.
See? And you thought I was just gonna blame the women.
† George Lucas, writer/dir., Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977).
Yes, I believe the Bible teaches principles that most naturally give rise to a form of political libertarianism. I can't get into it here and now, but I recommend exploring the following (**though I don't necessarily affirm every point made!):
Cf. 1 Peter 3:3-5.
Note the information provided by the editors, in footnotes 49 and 50, on the two keywords used here.
Not always the same thing.