4.13.2006

Wing-Nut Of The Week

As much as I’ve enjoyed plumbing the depths of America’s great PR machine, lately I’ve been feeling the need for a change. So I’m testing out a new Friday Feature* -- Wing-Nut Of The Week. If there’s one thing this great nation of ours has in spades, it’s the crazies -- unshaven crank addicts holed up in rural cabins with 800-page manifestos and stockpiles of semi-automatic weapons … elderly ladies with tinfoil hats and weird ramblings about the Apocalypse … Tom Cruise. I’m guessing the challenge each week will be picking just one.

So, without further ado, on to this week’s winner. Congratulations, Debi Pearl, you’re the Barrelhouse Wing-Nut of the Week!

Regular readers of Ann Landers, Abigail Van Buren, or Carolyn Hax will find nothing new in this letter to Ms. Pearl, an “advice columnist” for No Greater Joy Ministries. A woman writes in because she’s concerned about her married friend. Her friend's husband is verbally and possibly even physically abusive, has had multiple affairs and uses their child to “manipulate situations and hurt the mother.” Her question: what should her friend do? A part of her, of course (the sane, rational part), would like a divorce. But she’s having doubts.

Ann Landers (or whoever actually writes that column these days) would simply pull out file folder #47, “Getting Rid of Your No-Good Man,” do some cutting and pasting and call it a day. But not our Debi! Because, you see, “The Scripture makes it very clear how God feels about divorce, He hates it, it is an Old Testament passage, but God has not changed His mind.” (Wacky punctuation hers, not mine.)

So, that’s the advice: stay with the abusive husband, unless you want a good smiting. But the situation’s not completely hopeless. According to Debi, God occasionally strikes men dead if they’re evil, so the wife might try that route -- pray for some lightning storms or maybe a plague of locusts. In the meantime, just ask God to “take you to a place of sweet loving kindness in the midst of your turmoil.”

Apparently, getting smacked around hurts much less if you just close your eyes and go to your happy place.

Oh, but there’s more. Of course there’s more. Debi says the woman can win her husband over by showing him what a sweet, submissive wife she can be:


He will hear and see her cheerful countenance. He will notice her willingness to help and forgive. He will see her giving up her rights and not taking offense when he knows he has wronged her. He will see she honors him, obeys him, treats him with respect, and serves him with a non-rebellious, non-resistant attitude. He will see her spirit is not raging outwardly in emotional fits or inwardly in silent brooding of hurt, but her spirit is quiet, restful, and peaceful. He will see she doesn't puff up and talk incessantly in criticism of him—or others. He trusts her. He knows she is not going to discuss him with her pastor or friend. He sees she is wise with what little money he gives her.


Did you see how casually she tossed in that last point? Not only should you ladies take whatever abuse your husband sees fit to dish out, you should also be grateful for whatever small scraps of his hard-earned money he budgets for your silly little woman-needs.

And just in case you think this is simply an isolated incident, here’s another choice letter from Debi. The writer is understandably tired after mothering eight children -- four of them in the past two years. Her body is “worn out” and she dreads “coming together” with her husband. But this Fertile Myrtle doesn’t want to use birth control, instead relying on “God’s plan,” which is apparently for her to shoot out baby after baby until her body falls apart, and she and her husband are financially and emotionally destitute. Her husband wishes she’d just get a damn diaphragm already.

Debi’s advice?


The Bible clearly teaches that your husband is your head. He has the rule over you. You are to submit to him, obey him, honor him, and never usurp authority over him. I fear you have not submitted, not obeyed, and not honored. … The Bible does not state that it is sin to use natural means to space your children, but it does state it is sin not to obey your husband. He should have the final say in birth control, unless he would employ a method that would abort a fertilized egg. It is your duty to trust God to direct your man.
Got a question for Debi? Sure you do. You can write to her at ngj@nogreaterjoy.org.



*Yes, I know it’s still Thursday night, but that’s close enough.

3 comments:

kylos said...

holy crap! what a load of holy crap!

never heard of debi. anyone ever see proof that she exists? i bet it's an old southern white guy getting off on telling women around the country to obey the lord and their men.

TMC said...

Must have been nice to post on Thursday night while the rest of Iowa City had no power.


also, I like Debi's advice. And if you don't, it probably means you hate God.

Mike Ingram said...

Maybe I should stop making fun of the Crazy Christians, since about an hour after I posted this, a couple tornadoes ripped through Iowa City. As I was huddled in my basement with several of my wacky neighbors, I kept thinking "Oh shit, those fundamentalist jerks have been right all along. I'm about to get smited like a motherfucker."

I mean, that is what God does to the disbelieving, right? New Orleans was a hotbed of sinful activity, and -- bam! -- hurricane. Johnson County, IA, was pretty much the only blue dot in Iowa's sea of election-day red, and -- bam! -- tornadoes.

Although a hurricane also trashed my hometown of Pensacola, and those people love God (and W) almost as much as they love Nascar and Yosemite Sam mudflaps.

So it's hard to say, really -- maybe God's aim is just getting worse in his old age. Just to be safe, though, next week's Wing-Nut will be some loopy satanist, or maybe John Kerry.