There is one clear and present reason why conservative men, whether in politics or religion, are largely incapable of really transforming our culture, and it is a glaring issue. What is this issue? It is simply the fact that they by and large do not understand how to hold women truly accountable for their role in degrading society, or even really think that you should hold them accountable. I have seen this problem for a while now and it is incredibly widespread, endemic really, and is probably one of the core reasons why our society is in the bad moral and cultural situation that it is.
The reason this is such a problem is that these conservative men will look at the bad behaviour of women and then immediately look around, behind, or above that woman who is acting badly and try to find the man or men responsible for her sin. And if they cannot identify a specific man or class of men, they will just broaden it to all men or male society in general. Now, of course, as a bible believing Christian, I do believe that men should be held ultimately responsible for errors in their family, community, church and wider society. God has created men to hold authority and lead. When Adam and Eve both sinned in the garden it was Adam that was held responsible, for instance. This is not an interpretation just held up by a so-called “patriarchal lens” either, the entire gospel hinges on this point; Jesus Christ, the second Adam according to Paul, came to reverse the sin and damage done by the first Adam. This shows who God held ultimately responsible. So, these conservative men have started off with the correct basic assumption that men are ultimately responsible and need to be held to account, but they have not applied this accountability properly. Because they have failed to recognize that part of being a man and holding the perpetrators responsible, is to also hold women to unrelenting accountability as well as men......
.......What would you do? “Get up on my feet and let go of every excuse.” What is he saying here? Woman, take responsibility for your life. And then he tells her that is exactly what his mother did. And countless women have done this. It is a bit of a trope in society that women do not like having accountability. If this is the true, and many people can give anecdotal evidence that it is, then the person who struggles to do something, should not they be held to a stricter standard to help them achieve it?
The people who wrote this song knew that a large part of the answer to the problem was holding women relentlessly accountable. He does not say, “Oh dear, I am so sorry to hear that.” He instead says, “let go of every excuse.” Conservative men need to realize that to help change society around you cannot fail to call 50% of society to a much higher level of accountability. The next time you see a woman who has had an abortion don’t think, “Oh you poor girl.” Think, “That poor kid, what kind of mother does such a thing to her child?” This does not mean the woman cannot experience grace and forgiveness and that you cannot have compassion on her. It just means we should not immediately default to absolving the perpetrator of harm to that child by shifting the blame away from her. The child is the victim. Abortion is a form of abuse. We would never absolve a man who hurt his child, so why do it with a woman?
I do not believe this issue can change until conservative men in this public space fearlessly hold women to the same level of accountability that they would any adult man. Ironically, this is actually men taking responsibility and being willing to receive all the attacks for being labelled “anti-woman” etc, etc, when this could not be further from the truth. Abortion and porn do hurt women. And holding women to a higher account than we generally do, will help steer more and more women away from these things. Which is the ultimate goal, is it not?
