Look who’s doing the exploitation

The Baptist Standard ran a story about sex trafficking of young girls.  While young boys are also abused, it is mostly the girls.  Recently there has been much talk about this and various groups have discussed it.  They focus on the exploitation of young girls and boys.  But what they are not saying is who is doing the exploitation.  

For instance, if you have 10 girls under the age of 16 on the street selling their bodies, that doesn’t equate to 10 males.  One male cannot support one female or young boy on the street.  I don’t know how many it takes, but you can be sure that for every youngster on the street selling his or her body, there are multiple males who are buying.

Males make up 95 percent of the prisoners in Texas.  Males start the wars, males are responsible for most of the killing of women and children. Males use the services of prostitutes.

I listened to the Mark Driscoll interview found on the website of Pastor Jonathan Martin.  Mark Driscoll speaks “boldly” about sexual issues and this interview was prompted by his book on sex and marriage.  He and Ed Young, Jr., a Southern Baptist pastor of several off campus churches of his megachurch in the Dallas area, are on the forefront of bringing the bedroom into the church house. A year or so ago, Ed Young, Jr literally brought a bed onto the stage and he and his wife were on the bed in front of the whole congregation.

Dr Young, Jr. is currently promoting a series on sex for married couples.  He calls it sexperiment.

This is voyeurism, folks.  These pastors have forsaken the gospel and are parading themselves and their wives onto a national stage of sexuality.  A man who loves his wife will not parade her out onto a bed for the men in the audience to visualize. She is being exploited, much like the young women sold on the streets.  Like many of those young women, she cannot say ‘no.’

Remember that these wives, much like the pimped prostitutes, do not have any say in the matter.  They are submissive wives and when their husbands tell them to do that because he is her spiritual head and leader, she must do it.  He may also throw in the fact that the private planes, luxury vacations, fine clothes and jewelry, and the good life may also go down the drain if he can’t keep titillating his congregation with something new and outrageous.

In his interview, Mark Driscoll makes fun of women preachers.  I doubt seriously that any woman preacher would engage in such sexual exploitation of her husband.  Mark Driscoll didn’t put his wife out on the bed as Ed Young, Jr, did, but he put her down as being equal-but, and built up these men in his church as being the head of the women.  While not specifically saying that there were men in his church who engaged in various pornography, he says he councils men on this subject, which he is graphic about.

Both these pastors tell men that they are lord over their wives (the husband is the head of the wife) but that they must not lord it over them.  What do you think these men who are into pornography, bought sex, and without a history of knowing Christ, hear?  They hear exactly what the pastor wants them to hear – their wives were created to serve them, because women are not favored by God enough to even be a deacon. Then they are apt to take it to another level, one of abuse and sexual exploitation.  After all, one of these pastors is sexually exploiting his wife on stage in front of the entire congregation.

Exploitation of women is society and church approved.  It is approved by pastors who bring the bedroom into the church house.  It is approved in the churches where women are told that ANY KIND of husband is to be her leader and she is to submit to him.  It is approved in churches where certain offices are withheld from women on the basis that they are women and God doesn’t allow women to serve in those hallowed offices.   Don’t blame Eve.  The Adams of the world need to keep their fig leaves stitched.

The preachers themselves are exploiting women, in particular their own wives, through the antics of the husbands who bring sex into the conversation with the public. 

How can they expect to keep women from being demeaned when they hold the bible over women’s heads and tell women that they were created to have men control them?

Will you pray for a great awakening and getting off the bed and out of the bedroom for these pastors who continue to demean all women by denying them full fellowship within the church, and who demean their wives in front of their congregations?