Shocked expressions fall on everyone looking at their screens as they do a double take to make sure they saw it right. Grandt White is not a fan of John MacArthur Jr’s book on the family? I know, it’s a surprise, but no I am not a fan of this book. I was three books behind schedule and evangelical parenting is a concept that interests me, so I picked up a couple in the last two days and look at that, I’ve already finished two.
Allow me to discuss some issues that I had with this book. Firstly, MacArthur acknowledges that Paul’s message to the churches of his day was a liberatory one when weighed against the Greco-Roman culture of the time. For a better understanding of Paul’s message specifically to women, I recommend the book The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr. Anyway, while JMA Jr acknowledges this, he nevertheless just kinda… ignores the implications of it, whilst decrying women’s liberation movements as if Paul’s message wasn’t itself a kind of women’s liberation message. So that’s interesting. I also think that JMA Jr’s use of scripture to illustrate his point fell through most of the time. Like it’s reasonable to say that the basic ideas of women and children submitting to authority are in scripture but everything past that, every way in which JMA Jr extrapolates on that sounds more like a rant typical of 80s, 70s, even 60s evangelical intellectual leaders. He makes the tired old claims that the destruction of the family will lead to the downfall of civilization or whatever. The only evidence he provides for this is that God’s design for the family is perfect so messing with it will inevitably have consequences, and sure that’s possible, but not in any unique way compared to breaking any of God’s other designs and commands. I would also like to caution JMA Jr and others that going along with the culture doesn’t just mean secular culture, it can mean going along with the mainstream Christian culture rather than what is biblically supported. We see this in JMA Jr complaining about the Carter administration’s policies related to children. JMA Jr provided no bible verses to go along with his problems with Carter’s policies which… do with that what you will.
I shall leave you with one of the most bizarre quotes of the book: “To break a marriage is equal to aborting a baby” heheh, what a weird thing to say (that’s a Penguins of Madagascar reference for ya.) But yeah, no, that quote about divorce being equal to aborting a baby was in fact in this book and I was so incredibly taken aback by it. Like I’m so confused why he thought it was a good idea to say that. Anyway… maybe don’t read this book, idk, do whatever you want. It’s not a fun read in my opinion, Heart of Anger by Lou Priolo was more fun to read, if almost as frustrating.