Question: In the history of the world, who has caused more suffering, men or women?

Stop. Don't run to the comment section to answer this question. I have intentionally set this as bait to test the reaction it made you have when you read it. Where did your mind immediately go to? If you are a woman, did you immediately feel resentment towards men and start thinking of all the chaos they've caused? If you are a man, did you immediately feel resentment towards me a woman asking this bizarre question? Did you start thinking of all the horrible things women have convinced men to do? Or did you blame your own gender? Men and women, did your minds skip to the very beginning of Eve giving the fruit to Adam, and Adam blaming her in front of God?

I have been seeing so many posts lately on polygamy, hierarchy models, and hate towards the opposite gender.

Dear friends, these arguments have been going on since Genesis 3:12,13. Maybe the words are phrased in different ways, but do you think that any one of us has actually ever won the argument or proved their point to the opposite side? I have three words to label this argument, this divide between men and women, and they are: The Great Distraction.

By engaging in arguments over hierarchy, polygamy, and offensive questions that direct hate, control, or blame towards one gender, we are playing right into the Enemy's game. Lately I've been having such a strong sense put on my heart over where the Enemy's eyes have always been directed and why these discussions are ramping up. Do you realize how many generations your own resentment can impact?

While men and women put their focus on fighting and dividing and blaming, our offspring dwells in vulnerability and unprotection. The division and discord of two parents causes deep psychological damage in the brains of our children. Sin comes in many forms, but few things are more damaging to children than a lack of unity between their father and mother. The more we listen to the lies of the enemy, "she just wants to control you," "he just wants to force you to submit," the more we are distracted from instilling hope, love, and joy in our offspring. Where the soil is barren in the minds of our children from our neglect, the enemy sows his tares and makes them his own. His attack against our offspring is from the beginning. We were specifically warned that the Enemy would despise woman and all her offspring.

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed."

Last week I read some excerpts from the Acts of Thomas, a false gospel supposedly written about the story of the apostle Thomas after the Messiah was resurrected. "Thomas" goes to India where he teaches couples that they should not marry because it is sinful and fleshly to have sexual relations, and he breaks up couples who are already married, calling them to a life of celibacy. The wording is written so that this calling sounds noble and holy and above reproach, but it is the poison of the devil behind every word. Without godly marriage, there is no holy offspring to carry the light of the kingdom to the ends of the earth.

I have also been studying mother enmeshment, where a mother emotionally enmeshes with her son(s) and treats him like her husband because of her neediness and deep psychological problems. The burden of being a non-sexual husband to his mother since childhood creates permanent damage to the son's brain, and makes him incapable of functioning in healthy relationships with other women. He resents other women because he suppresses his resentment towards his mother whom he fears. If he ever does marry, which most of these men do not, he is often unable to perform sexually, making him to unable to bear offspring. If he does manage to bear offspring, his brain damage makes the marriage to be one filled with discord, thus passing the damage on to his offspring.

Then we have abortion with both men and women are slaughtering their own offspring.

Then we have transgenderism where there is mutilation of the body so it cannot function the way it was designed to and bear offspring.

Polygamy is making a huge comeback, and again, who ultimately suffers down the line from this dysfunction? The offspring. We see the profound chaos it brought upon offspring throughout Scripture.

The enemy will use every form of dysfunction to attack the woman's seed, and we are contributing to this the more we engage in The Great Distraction. Every single one of us are susceptible to this trap of getting caught up in dissecting the failings or weaknesses of the other gender. We can read our bias against the other sex into every page of the Bible and then decide that this is the way it SHOULD be, rather than that this how the world functions. People use the curse - which says men will dominate and women will wrongly submit to this domination - to be what we should be emulating. But no, THE CURSE IS NOT A BLUEPRINT FOR THE KINDGOM.

Look closely - God and His true followers in scripture don't want men dominating women or women dominating men (Paul describes a husband having authority over his wife's body and a wife having authority over her husband's body - not one or the other). We can choose to have the Domination Mindset and lose our offspring to the Enemy, or we can have Partnership Mindset and use this unity of minds to instill Kingdom light in our offspring, foiling the Enemy's distractions.

Instead of fighting over hierarchy, men and women need to be unifying, partnering. Men, us women need you to protect us from the Enemy's hate and lies being taught to dominate and hurt the mothers of your offspring. Women, men need you to raise up their arms in righteous authority over the Enemy. Men, the power God gives you through the Messiah is not over women but over the Enemy. Women, the power God gives you is not over men, but for you to bear offspring that will continue to crush the Enemy's head through the Messiah.

The last post I wrote on male dominance and a false interpretation of submission had over 200 comments, from which I was able to glean so much insight. I was so grieved by some of the comments I saw there, though, that my first instinct was to write a follow-up post that exposed the brainwashing we've been subjected to. I wanted to dig further into the curse on men and women... but then I realized, this is what the enemy wants. He wants us to put all our energy on the curse, the injustices, the offensive arguments, and waste our time debating over why polygamy, domination, and hierarchy mindsets are wrong. While sometimes we do need to call out wrong mindsets, what if instead of that being our focus, we focused on teaching what is right?

Love

Unity

Partnership

Respect

Forgiveness

Healthy Boundaries

Healing from Dysfunction

Justice for the Innocent

Men Protecting Women

Women Refining Men

Safekeeping Our Offspring

If any of these phrases makes something defensive rise up in your heart, I would like to gently suggest that it is because you have been caught up too much in the Great Distraction. We all have. We need to build up a resilience to the trigger words/questions/arguments that the Enemy is using to create defensive walls in our hearts that divide us from following the gracious, fair, and respectful behaviors to the other sex.

How do we turn away from the Curse Mindset to the Kingdom Mindset? The answer is Love. Do not see the other sex as your enemy or your ruler, but as your compliment. As soon as you feel any resentment to the other sex for the wrongdoing they are committing, remind yourself that they are simply caught up in the Great Distraction. Show pity for them instead of bitterness. Don't get caught up in the Great Distraction yourself. Remove from your life those who are caught up in the Domination Mindset if they are unwilling to consider the Partnership mindset. Let your focus be on those who don't seek to trigger others by asking abrasive questions that feed into the Great Distraction. While you can build up your resistance to being triggered by mishandled words through recognizing they are simply the part of the Great Distraction, you can also help by not using these words and replacing them with the right words. Refuse to engage with anyone as long as they insist on using inflammatory language. Persist in speaking the Kingdom's Love Language so that this is what people are hearing more than the Enemy's language.

When speaking to others to help spread the Partnership Mindset, avoid using these mishandled words:

- Replace the word submission with the word trust...

- Authority with responsibility...

- Equality with respect...

To stop fueling the Great Distraction, change these mindsets:

- Turn from hierarchy to servant minded leadership...

- Patriarchy to fatherhood...

- Matriarchy to motherhood...

- Dominance to protection and autonomy...

- Competition for power to unity...

- Blame to forgiveness...

- Suspicion to empathy...

- Selfishness to Kingdom service...

I envision us all as warriors, both men and women with unique responsibilities, who are standing together to spread the Kingdom Light in unity. Men as individuals can serve the Kingdom, and women as individuals can serve the Kingdom, but men and women united in marriage and love can crush this Great Distraction and send the enemy crawling back to his den. They can create a holy offspring that will carry the Messiah's light to all the lost and hungering in the world.

Next time you are scrolling on your Facebook feed, put on your "Great Distraction" detective glasses, and see how many posts you can mark and deflect.

- The Pondering Painter