Our Only Tribal Tattoo
So some of the discussion in the comments to the previous post about angry husbands made me think of something else that needs saying.
It is not possible to say everything at once. If I write a post about angry husbands, it is not, by its very nature, a post about slothful wives. I could write a post about slothful wives, and maybe someday when I am a much braver man I will do so, but that hypothetical post wasn’t this one.
But I have noticed that whenever I address certain particular temptations that various natural groupings in the Body are in fact prone to, the troops sometimes tend to rally in problematic ways. Specialized admonitions have a long lineage in Christian epistolary exhortations. Husbands, do this. Wives, don’t do that. Children, think about this. Servants, take care to fold the linen right. Paul tells husbands not to be bitter, although I am sure he would grant that wives can be bitter too (Col. 3:19). He tells children to be obedient, even though parents are themselves capable of being disobedient. The Scriptures tell rich people not to love money even though poor people can also love money. Now when someone in the twenty-first century church undertakes this perfectly natural pastoral duty, loud objections begin. This indicates, I would argue, that the prevailing power of identity politics is seeping into the church. What do I mean?
