What Have We Become?

I can't tell you how sad, and how angry, I was to watch multiple candidates in the New Hampshire Republican debate endorse making women sign up for Selective Service. What have we become? What are we that we, as a nation (even many of the leaders who most tout their Christian stands), are considering drafting women into the brutality and horror of war?

It strikes me that much of the crumbling in our society we see is in part stemming from a collapse of Godly men in the homes. Men who protect their wives and children. Men who train their children up in the Scriptures and God's ways. Men who open doors for ladies. Men who provide. Men who teach their daughters what a Godly man looks like, what appropriate touch is, and give them a model of the man they should look for. Men who teach their sons to love and cherish and honor and protect women. And now, it seems, that men can't even defend and protect this nation.

And before someone calls me sexist, let me just say that to do so is to level the same claim at God. He ordained the structure of the home. He ordained the roles of the Home. He told men to love and cherish their brides and to lift them as ones without spot or blemish. He died for His bride.

At West Point and in the Army I had the privilege of serving alongside many amazing women who volunteered to be there. Volunteered. But the inevitable result that anyone looking could see coming is now here. The push to be equal, equal, equal has now "drafted" in those who were not pushing. Daughters who don't want to kill, be killed, be captured (and everything that goes with it), see the horror of death thrust in their face won't have a choice. What have we become? Can we no longer even protect our women from that?

Based on some responses I got when I posted about this on Facebook, there is almost a smug "hey, women, you wanted to be equal so now lie in the bed you made" attitude. My response is this—not all women wanted this, but all women will be subject to this. And before you think in some perverse way you are "getting back" at feminists through this let me say that that line of thinking is akin to firebombing a city to get back at a few criminals in it.

I believe that how we view this goes directly to how we view Scripture and God. Do we believe He has ordained roles and different strengths for the different sexes? This isn't to say a women shouldn't (or can't defend herself). This isn't to say anything against women. But to make law a variance to God's structure is to say something different. It is to fly in the face of God and the truths and order He has given us.

I guess, though, what do we expect?!? We undermine the Scriptures. We rewrite God and our theology to fit what we approve of. We remove the idea that we are handcrafted, each uniquely, in God's image and we teach instead that we are all evolved animals. In that light, what does it matter? But to have men who claim to believe in God and the authority of Scripture believe this is good is grievous to me, and it scares me.

I can't—and won't—describe to you some of the things I've seen on the volunteer fire department. Images flash through my mind I'll probably never be able to forget this side of the grave. And I can't tell you how grateful I am that my wife and daughters don't have those images in their minds. That I could stand in a place so others don't have to. The thought of my daughters being drafted into an environment where that could be their exposure sickens me, and angers me. But, in light of the rejection of God and the Scriptures we are avalanching into in this nation, I guess it shouldn't surprise me . . .