Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. In Christianity, the men protect the women, the men die for the women. We saw women in martial array in vivid pictures at this attempted assassination of Donald Trump the other day. And we're here to talk about women in combat, women in protective kind of roles and we have with us Michael Foster and so I really hope you enjoy the discussion. Jason, we just saw the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and we saw flash in front of our eyes one of the great falsehoods of our times in the Secret Service and a manifestation of the whole idea of the interchangeability of men and women, women in martial array, women in sort of combat situations where physical conflict, physical struggle, engagement, you know, with lethal danger is actually given to women.

This is something that we've... To protect men. To protect men. Right, exactly. To protect men.

And I'm delighted to have Michael Foster here to talk about all this with us. He's thought a lot about manhood and womanhood. And so, Michael, thank you for joining us. What are your thoughts about all this stuff that happened in front of us? Well, I certainly wouldn't send, if there's a bump in the night, I'm not sending my wife down to check it, Right?

Like, there's a bump in her night, I don't say, baby, will you go see what that's all about? You know, I grab my gun and I go check it. I think it's quite obvious that men are the ones that are the first line of defense. A woman knowing how to use a gun and how to defend herself should that first line break down. There's nothing wrong with that.

That makes a whole lot of sense. Let's say someone runs into a tent and you got to do something and drive a nail through someone's head like we saw in the Old Testament, but that wasn't in the battlefield, that was in her domain. So I think it is pretty embarrassing to watch those ladies kind of juggle their guns and not be able to holster their gun and duck behind President Trump while the Secret Service is covering them during an assassination attempt. So I think it's definitely improper and not, it doesn't line with scripture or what we even know about women. You know, I was shocked.

You know, you had, you know, one of the women right in front of him reach down to pick up a hat. He picked up, She picked up his hat and exposed him there. But I think what we saw was just the outward manifestation of a culture that's delusional about sex. You had small women protecting big men. Yeah.

You know, aggression levels are different among men. You know, what, what, what per se, how much more testosterone does a man have in the woman? Do you know, do you know what, what percent? No, it's, it's, it's 2000%, man, Men have 2000%. Hopefully, hopefully most men have 2000%.

I guess there are reports out there that a lot of modern men don't have that, don't have too much. All those plastics. Yeah. Well, people, one way you can tell that people are kind of just detached is when Johnny McEnroe was talking about where Venus Williams, I think it was, I forget which one of the Williams sister there was where she fell in tennis And he put her at about 800 and everyone was like 800 overall and they're very offended But he was actually complimenting her. Mm-hmm so you put if you look at if you put a woman boxer in with a male boxer that's trained of the same weight, the male boxer will absolutely destroy her.

Now, is there a female boxer that can beat up a man? Yeah, there's men that can be beat up by children these days, like they're sitting on the couch so much. But the difference in strength, aggression, power, like I kind of, I'm not big on girls doing karate. But one advantage of girls doing karate in mixed sex classrooms is to understand just how much stronger men are than you. Like, to understand just what you're up against.

And scripture makes that very clear. Like, it's in Nahum, I taught through Nahum a couple years ago. Nahum 313 says, I pulled it up here, behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies. Fire has devoured your bars.

So, Or it says as women. In other words, they're scared. They're scared of the battle. And that's what God's saying then. Is God misogynist?

Well, if you're a feminist, where you don't respect the word of God, most certainly. But God's just saying something that's true. Women are meant to be behind the lines, right? Are there women that will be brave or whatever? But sure, there is.

But what's interesting is women, They tend to take in everything very immediately and not section it off. Where guys can work. So if a woman's in a battle line and they see her friend blow up, like to sit to a red mist, that's probably enough to shut her down. But guys, if everything's engaged, they'll just keep going forward. They'll walk through the red mist and keep shooting people.

Then they'll come home and two or three months later, they'll have a complete mental breakdown, they'll have PTSD because they have to process it. But in the immediate sort of intensity, a guy will respond in a way that a woman wouldn't. He'll respond and just keep going. It's for different... Men are triangulating like women do.

They kind of narrow down and they compartmentalize. I think everybody knows that. I really had to laugh though at a comment that Elon Musk made, you know, he said having a small person as body cover for a large man is like an undersized speedo at the beach, doesn't cover the subject." So we saw that on national television, right? You know, I think the things that you're saying are true, but let's just for the sake of argument, Let's say none of that's true. Let's say if the scriptures, what does the Bible say?

What does God want? How has God designed things to work? Hey, we should be satisfied just with that, you know? God wants men to serve and protect women in that way, and not vice versa. And I think the design, the things about the design of men and women that you've been pointing to bear that out as being true, it doesn't make that true.

It's that way because it is true, if that makes any sense. Sure. Well, we know that in the Old Testament, it's 20-year-old men that are going to serve in the army, not 20-year-old women. It's 20 and up. So there's not women serving in active combat role anywhere in Scripture.

Part of that is because they carry life. They carry life in their womb. That's part of it. You would never put that into danger. But it's also distracting the men.

Men are gonna naturally try to protect a woman because that's why they go to war, to protect the family. It's like, I always tell people men are not disposable. People will say, why do women and children go first off the boat? Well, it's because men are the disposable sex. I don't like that.

What I think is going on is that the mission is what matters to the man more than anything, and part of that mission is a godly legacy, and they're willing to die to protect her legacy. So they put the women and children out of harm's way on a boat, and that's why men go off to war to protect their homeland, to protect their households. God made us that way. And so that's, and that's all, the whole contours of Scripture points to that at every point. Yeah, the ultimate meaning of gender is expressed in Jesus Christ in the church.

So there are lots of things to say about gender, you could point to a lot, but the ultimate expression is Jesus in the church. Now we're gonna send the church out to protect Jesus. I hope that doesn't sit well with anybody who hears this. I hope when you hear that, it sort of makes your ears burn, you know, oh, the church protect Jesus, may it never be. How could we even?

No, it's Jesus who has laid down his life for the church, and I think these things are ultimately, there are supposed to be an expression of that. Yeah, and this pattern just flows right through. I'm just gonna give you some bullet points and some scriptures just to in case somebody wants to look them up, I won't read them. Only men were counted to go to war. Numbers chapter 1, 2 Samuel 24, 1 Chronicles 21.

Secondly, the kings only chose sons for war. For Samuel 8, for Samuel 14, only men went to war in Isaiah 42. Abraham attacked the nations who, you know, went after Lot, he chose men. Genesis 14. Moses selects, what, Men to go to war in Numbers 31.

It was men who marched around Jericho, not women, Joshua chapter 6. It was Gideon who chose Men, Judges 7, David's bodyguard, his mighty men were men. That's 2 Samuel 23. Jehoshaphat's army was only men, 2 Chronicles 17. Women and children did not go to war.

That's what you were saying, but there's just a very rich heritage. You know, one of the things I think is on the table here is a matter of the nuances of complementarianism. There are, you know, complementarians who believe that, you know, a woman can't be a pastor, but the moment she steps across the doorway of the church, she can be whatever she wants to be, okay? She can be in politics. The Bible actually has civil leaders as men.

Choose men. That's repeated over and over and over again, and it's the same logic, it's the same language that we use for why we say only men can be elders and not women. Choose men. My perspective is that a woman's nature doesn't change when she walks out of the door of her house, it doesn't change when she walks out of the door of the church, and she can be whatever she wants to be. These are creation order matters.

She's made in a particular way to be protected and to be a nurturer, to be a keeper at home. And that's the best place for a woman to be. And men shouldn't be letting their women going out into harm's way. So and not a second rate place to be. I mean, we're not talking about first-rate, second-rate here.

We're talking about gender roles assigned by God, and actually both of them are very glorious, and both of them are worthy of spending your life for, but you can't have it all. That's the big lie. You can have it all. You could just, you could do this and that. Women in combat is going to run into reality.

This is a social experiment. It hasn't really played itself out on the battlefield, but it will. And what we'll find out is the Avengers is fantasy, right? In the Avengers, men and women are interchangeable. That's Disney.

This is not going to prove to be true on the battlefield. Yeah. I actually saw a meme the other day. It was hilarious. So the younger generations waking up to this, they're like shockingly not PC.

Like the things they say, I'm like, so it's very offensive stuff. So it's refreshing that it's not PC. At the same time, I'm like, well, we got some work to do, but I can work with this. But it was these three or six guys fighting a woman. And it says, in the MCU, so in the Marvel Cinematic University, she beats them all up.

And then they say, in real life, and they just slam her on the ground, and it's over. And they kick her. And so it's funny to see these 20-year-olds, I'd say 16 to 20-year-olds, just waking up and saying this is a joke. Like in the MCU, they have this women will go do this thing where they run and wrap their legs around the guy's head and flip them somehow. Like I grew up doing mixed martial arts and fighting.

If a woman jumped on me like that, I'd just pick her up and slam her and that would be the end of it. And that's, it's just like crazy. Like Zubi is a guy on Twitter that identified as a woman one day and as a joke and broke all female weightlifting records over in the UK just for fun. And this is not like, so he's not like the top male weightlifter at all, he's just a really in shape guy. And he joked that he was transgender, and I think Elon Musk retweeted it.

And he broke all the records just because men are that much stronger. I do think, I like to double down a little bit on design because I want to tell people, you know this is true, I can show it with scripture, but I'm not gonna pretend like what you're saying is dishonest because it's that obvious. It's like if a woman runs from a shooter, that's not... If a woman runs from battle, no one's shocked. That's what women do.

When a soldier runs from battle, that is one of the greatest shames of all time. You're a coward or whatever. Everyone knows this. We just live in a crazy time where, like, let's make the biblical argument, but let's also be a little snide and mock how stupid this is. It's silly to put women out there to protect men and everyone knows.

CS Lewis, I think, my wife said this. I'll have to check it. She said that CS Lewis said, when women fight, it's ugly. It's ugly on a lot of different levels. Well, I'll give you one example about children.

So when my wife, when we're trying to come up with a name for a girl, I was like, what about this name? She said, no, there's this girl that crossed me with that name. When did that happen? Oh, it was like in third grade, in third grade. And so like, and this guy, this guy, my freshman year called me a name.

I said, you will not say it to my face. So he whispers in my ear. And then I punch him in his face. We get in a big fight in gym class. And then a couple of weeks later, we're like really close friends.

We ended up being team captains in the wrestling team. I love that dude. My wife like can't even, won't even consider that name. And I just think, I always tell everyone women are way more vicious than men. Like we, we have a fight cause we like to establish pecking order.

And then once the pecking order is established, like we know our place, let's get some work done. But with women, it's like, I'd rather fight a man than have to deal with the wrath of the man. Oh my. Okay. So, I mean, I think the Bible is so clear on this.

In 1 Peter 3, women are protected by men. They're the weaker vessel. That's either true or it's not. And it's true. In Genesis 2, a woman is a helper.

She's not a commander. In 1 Corinthians 11, she's in a position of submission, not authority. And you know, when you're in a combat situation, you have to take authority. You have to do something. You're going to follow orders on the one hand, but you've got to take action.

In Titus 2, women are keepers at home. They're not soldiers. Women and children stay home. Men put on their armor and they fight. That's the biblical pattern.

And we have an administration that has just followed the culture over the cliff of egalitarianism. And what you see is danger. It's always dangerous when women are not protected and when men are taking a subservient position. Amen. You know, all this happened, you know, progressively.

It's very recent. You know, in 2015, there were the first female graduates from Army Ranger School. In 2016 all combat positions were open to women. I mean, this is so recent. And it's just a part of the progression of the sexual revolution.

North Carolina has a senator, a Republican, supposedly conservative, who is championing women and registering for the draft. Yeah. Well, one thing I think a lot of churches have done, and I know we've done this, is taken a position on not against having our daughters serve and allow them to not go and not to actually object to it. I think churches should do that more and have that in their constitution and bylaws. The more churches that can do it, especially in a denomination, and cite that, the more protection there will be for our daughters.

Because I don't want my sons to go fight in many of these wars. But you can create a lot of your own things, but it's pretty hard to create your own military. So Christians have to be involved in some way, but I'm certainly not letting my daughters. It's just not going to happen. But we do need to push back on this.

And it just shows you how quick things go. I always tell people it's not a slippery slope, it's a trap door. Right. And we saw that with a bergefell. Like it's crazy how quick we've moved to all the things we knew would happen, like all these multiple partners.

And now, what's the plus for, right? You always say in the LBG, whatever plus, yeah, LGBTQ2S plus, plus. Yes. And I think the plus people should stay far away from my children. I left out the IA.

IA. I left that out. Yeah, it's gonna keep going. I don't know, Where can it go now? I don't know.

Yeah. Okay. So God is good. Everything he says is good. God has created man and woman in his own image for particular roles, and God has not created women to be in martial array in combat roles to put on the accouterments of a man, and they ought to be protected.

And you know, my view is they ought not to be carrying guns in the police force. They ought not to be in the military. Men protect the women. Men die for the women. Ephesians 5 makes it very clear that the husband is the head of the wife and he sacrifices himself for his bride.

And keeping that straight is really important. And guess what? You're doing it in your church or doing it in our church, so are you. And may that tribe increase in America. Because we are approximating Jesus Christ and his bride and he's the one who lays down his life.

Amen. Any parting shots, Michael? No, I think that's great. I think it's Jesus that overcame the serpent, wasn't Eve? Amen.

Okay, hey, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope you can be with us next time.

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