Men Prefer Debt-Free Virgins Without Tattoos,<\/a>\u201d illustrated with a nice stock photo of some modest, wholesome blonde woman sitting in a field of dead grass.<\/p>\nThe article is frankly shocking; it\u2019s all about how good Christian women ought not to go to college or try to improve themselves, because they ought to be at home learning to cook for large families and learning the proper interpretation of the Bible from their fathers. This will keep them virgins and out of debt, which will make them more pleasing and interesting to men, thus making them good wives which is apparently the be-all and end-all of every woman\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n
People are up in arms about this. Men in particular are clamoring against it, objecting that they like women who actually know about something other than housework and the like. Everyone\u2019s got something to say.<\/p>\n
There is plenty that is alarming about this post, but there\u2019s one thing that I don\u2019t think has been adequately addressed.<\/p>\n
Since when is being a Christian woman about making yourself pleasing to men?<\/p>\n
Are we as Christians supposed to conform ourselves to men? Or are we supposed to conform ourselves to the Lord?<\/p>\n
I have often seen, in the school of Christian thought to which The Transformed Wife belongs, a sort of odd dichotomy whereby men are supposed to conform themselves to God instead of the world to be holy, but women are supposed to conform themselves to what men want. Maybe that\u2019s not the case in the literature directed at men\u2013 I\u2019m more familiar to the advice directed at women, after all. But I\u2019ve seen it. I\u2019ve seen it in Protestant and Catholic circles, so I can\u2019t blame it on Bible thumpers. For all kinds of Christian women, It\u2019s portrayed as our Christian duty to do whatever it takes to be a catch.<\/p>\n
This is basically the opposite of any example we\u2019ve been given in the Bible or the lives of the Saints, but they still say we\u2019re supposed to be a catch.<\/p>\n
Ladies: the Lord does not see you as a catch.<\/p>\n
The devil sees you as a catch. He\u2019d like to catch you and transform you into something other than you are. He\u2019ll do whatever it takes. Sometimes he uses bloggers like the Transformed Wife to make it seem a Christian duty to be, first and foremost, something other than a saint.<\/p>\n
The Lord, on the other hand, sees you the same way He sees men: His beloved, His bride (yes, all of us, male and female, are His\u00a0 brides), purchased through the merits of His Holy Passion although He could have paid any price He wanted, because He wanted you to know you are worth that much\u2013and because He wanted there to never be a place you could find yourself where He is not. He loves you that much, whether you\u2019re a modestly dressed blond model in a stock photo or any other sort of person.<\/p>\n
Christ wants to heal you of every wound and take you home to be with His Father. I can say for certain that\u2019s where you will end up if you follow Him. But what route will that journey take? That\u2019s different for everyone. In some fashion, it leads through the Valley of Shadow and ascends a terrible mountain named after a skull. Every saint carries her cross along that way. There will be glory beyond all telling along that way, and also plenty of horror. I\u2019m not going to say it will never be more than you can handle, because I haven\u2019t found that to be the case, but you can be certain that it will be worth it, Christ will be with you, and that Christ will win for you in the end.<\/p>\n
You may well find yourself a debt-free virgin. Christianity began with a virgin, after all. She was debt-free as far as we know, and obedient to the Torah so she had no tattoos. She was also poor, the only child of her parents in a culture that viewed wealth and a large number of sons as the most sure sign of Divine favor. She agreed to become pregnant out of obedience to the Lord, not men, and it almost cost her a good devout husband. But Saint Joseph was a just man; he also conformed himself to God rather than men, and obeyed the message of the angel.<\/p>\n
That virgin was not quiet. Her canticle was the Magnificat, that most inconvenient of hymns, that terrible proclamation that the Lord does not favor the things that men favor.\u00a0 That virgin did not go on to be a prosperous and useful mother of many children, at least not on earth. She gave birth to her only child while homeless in a strange town; then she and her husband became refugees and migrants to avoid the baby being murdered. She was present at the lynching of her only Son, a manual laborer who wandered the country with no place to lay His head, and she could not save Him. And that virgin is the holiest woman there will ever be. No demure and prosperous housewife with a gaggle of healthy children could ever match her holiness.<\/p>\n
\nThen we have the examples of the other saints, a motley crew and very few of them attractive. We have women who willingly endured being dismembered, suffocated, burned and fed to lions rather than allow themselves to be a catch for some man, because they had chosen to serve the Lord instead. Yes, they were virgins, but not so that they could get a husband. Quite the contrary. We have women who cut off their hair or did worse things to make themselves unattractive so men would leave them alone and they could keep serving the Lord. We have women who spent their lives caring for lepers and condemned prisoners, making themselves repulsive to choosy men; we have scholars, writers and lippy dames who called out Popes and worldly rulers; we have women who started out very attractive to men indeed, so attractive they had men every day, but they repented of it and went off to pray in the desert until sunburn had completely ruined their good looks.<\/p>\n
There are also wives and mothers in the Communion of Saints\u2013 lots of them, starting with the Blessed Virgin. Our Way of the Cross leads through a busy household with a husband and children to love and care for, and that is wonderful. I\u2019m a wife and mother, and by the mercy of Christ I hope to be a saint someday in spite of my unworthiness. I hope we all do. I pray that everyone reading this becomes a saint, whether you\u2019re a wife and mother, a wife who wants to be a mother, a brain surgeon, a wife and mother who\u2019s also a brain surgeon, a debt-free virgin, a college professor, nun, a man or any other sort of human being. If you are a human person, it is your vocation to become a saint through the mercy of God.<\/p>\n
But you can\u2019t be a saint if your first concern is being pleasing to men.<\/p>\n
None of us is called to conform ourselves to the desires of men.<\/p>\n
As Saint Paul stated and the Transformed Wife for some reason put on the banner of her blog, \u201cDo not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.<\/em>\u201d That which is Good and Acceptable and Perfect is Christ, the Son of God. You shall worship the Lord your God; Him will you serve, not men. Serve Him and do His will whether He calls you to go to college or go to a leper colony, to a convent or a suburb or to the ends of the earth. Don\u2019t serve the whims of men.<\/p>\nIn the course of serving Christ, you may well find yourself a debt-free virgin with no tattoos and very attractive to a certain kind of man. But you must not ever fall into the trap of believing that attracting men is your true vocation. If a marriage is part of your vocation, God will arrange that. You don\u2019t bother about it, and follow Christ. A man who doesn\u2019t want someone who is foremost a follower of Christ is not worthy to marry a follower of Christ.<\/p>\n
Men may well prefer debt-free virgins with no education and no tattoos, but who cares?<\/p>\n
(image via Pixabay)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 It seems like everyone is up in arms about \u201cThe Transformed Wife.\u201d For those of you who don\u2019t know, The Transformed Wife is Lori Alexander, some kind of allegedly Christian blogger I at first thought was a brilliant parody troll but it turns out she\u2019s serious. She wrote a blog post entitled \u201cMen Prefer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4268,5198,626,628,738,5192,824,1217,3759,3760,742,1763,650,651,744,3758,729,5,733,862,2940,10,756,481,2039,696,2933],"tags":[412,135,5983,319,979,5989,5980,2631,197,5992,514,826,5986,5977,3569,1722],"class_list":["post-5596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annunciation","category-chastity","category-christian-idenitity","category-conversion","category-crucifixion","category-culture","category-daily-saints","category-gospel","category-heaven","category-hell","category-heresy","category-idol","category-inter-religious-dialogue","category-interpretation-of-scripture","category-jesus","category-love","category-mary","category-meditation","category-mess","category-misogyny","category-monasticism","category-motherhood","category-mystery","category-personal-beliefs","category-public-face-of-catholicism","category-virtue","category-way-of-the-cross","tag-bible","tag-christ","tag-debt","tag-education","tag-father","tag-husband","tag-lori-alexander","tag-men","tag-mother","tag-pleasing","tag-saint","tag-saints","tag-tattoos","tag-the-transformed-wife","tag-wife","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n
Who Cares What Men Prefer?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" It seems like everyone is up in arms about "The Transformed Wife." For those of you who don't know, The Transformed Wife is Lori Alexander, some\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2018\/07\/who-cares-what-men-prefer\/\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2018\/07\/who-cares-what-men-prefer\/2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who Cares What Men Prefer?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" It seems like everyone is up in arms about "The Transformed Wife." For those of you who don't know, The Transformed Wife is Lori Alexander, some\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2018\/07\/who-cares-what-men-prefer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steel Magnificat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-07-17T20:33:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/files\/2018\/05\/virgin-mary-1907194_640-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mary Pezzulo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mary Pezzulo\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2018\/07\/who-cares-what-men-prefer\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2018\/07\/who-cares-what-men-prefer\/\",\"name\":\"Who Cares What Men Prefer?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-07-17T20:33:05+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-07-17T20:33:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/eefd606fd6f98b01cd46b38fcead458b\"},\"description\":\" It seems like everyone is up in arms about \\\"The Transformed Wife.\\\" For those of you who don't know, The Transformed Wife is Lori Alexander, some\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2018\/07\/who-cares-what-men-prefer\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/\",\"name\":\"Steel Magnificat\",\"description\":\"Everything is grace\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/eefd606fd6f98b01cd46b38fcead458b\",\"name\":\"Mary Pezzulo\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b65a50a237f24be80481c3e40cdc1c15?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b65a50a237f24be80481c3e40cdc1c15?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Mary Pezzulo\"},\"description\":\"Mary Pezzulo received her BA in English at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. 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