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Take your time with this one, Neighbor.
It's longer and heavier today, but necessarily so.
I don't take your time or attention for granted.
So why does any of this Genesis 3 talk even matter?
To me? To you? Today?
Because this dehumanizing ideology is still being sermonized as gospel truth,
still paraded as orthodoxy,
and still weaponized to turn women's obedience to God into obedience to men.
And I know what that costs—
because I lived it.
These teachings have a literal, generational, and international, body count.
And I almost became one of them.
It started when they drew me into, and then kept me trapped in,
a marriage that slowly suffocated my soul—
manufacturing guilt over natural strengths and complementary differences,
while minimizing actual problems.
I was taught that only he was God-ordained to lead from the front,
even though I also had the vision, instincts, and skills.
The teachings turned our different personalities into a source of shame rather than strength,
while real issues of spousal neglect and outright abuse were dismissed as trials to endure.
I felt like a disgrace that we weren't conforming to these “God-given” roles,
while the unhealed wounds we both carried were never named as real, serious problems.
Instead, our trauma responses were spiritualized,
then held up as evidence of failure to comply with God's divine design for marriage.
This created the very shame, in Jesus name,
that we were told he had come to rescue us from.
Then, they had me torn apart in what was supposed to be
a mission-aligned cross-cultural partnership,
where my ideas, instincts and intelligence could have helped our work be self-sustainable—
but I was pinned between male church elders on my side of the ocean,
and a male partner on the other.
So instead, I squeezed myself small, drained my bank account,
and gave up my personal agency to honor their "leadership".
Because we all knew that men were divinely tasked to exercise authority over women.
So, I resigned myself to the belief that male deference,
self-abandonment and soul torment were the price of birthing vision.
I had bought into the "patriarchal exchange"—
the illusion that surrendering my personhood to "good men" will garner their protection from "bad men."
Already a survivor of more than my fair share of abusive men,
I'd faced them alone and had never been offered protection from a man before—
so the implied promise was irresistible.
But cruelest irony came when the "protection" I was promised,
became the very system that disarmed me,
then placed me directly in the crosshairs of predation.
These teachings eventually handed me over to a "father-figure"
who intended to traffic me and was actively grooming me for it under the guise of "spiritual fathering"
and "missional opportunities."
He believed that as my spiritual father and male authority, I belonged to him.
He said I couldn't get access to his protection—
without also submitting to his leadership.
That my resistance to him was rebellion not against him, but against God.
He said that being told "no" by me was an act of aggression against him.
And he claimed divine authorization to act on God's behalf to prevent me from "usurping male authority."
When I was finally executing my escape plan,
he tried to murder me.
And in the end,
my communities blamed… me.
Which is exactly how the system is designed to work.
The ideology creates the conditions, provides the language,
grooms women for compliance,
demonizes their internal locus of control,
and then when it produces its predictable fruit,
it already has built-in excuses:
the woman must have misunderstood, was probably deceived,
brought it on herself, and pushed him to it.
What that "father-figure" said to me plainly weren't foreign concepts,
I was already living according to these beliefs in my relationships with other men.
I'd been taught this doctrine everywhere—
in church communities, bestselling books,
by mentors, pastors and biblical counselors.
After his attempt on my life, and my community's response—
God knows the shame I was drowning in,
feeling like a stupid fool who couldn't get anything right,
and contaminated everyone I came in contact with.
I nosedived from self-abandonment to full-blown self-negation.
I questioned not just my choices,
but my very right to exist in this skin,
with this story.
Crippling anxiety, excruciating scrupulosity, paralyzing fear,
existential terror, and a grief so deep I lost the will to live,
hounded me relentlessly.
That I'm still here,
and sane enough to tell about it,
defies natural logic.
I get it—my story sounds so extreme,
it's tempting to dismiss it as an outlier.
To believe I must be especially naive, unlucky or unstable.
To assume I just got swept up with the wrong men,
or that I fundamentally misunderstood—
or foolishly misapplied—
otherwise "solid, orthodox theology."
Plenty of people do.
I did.
Because it’s comforting to believe that bad things only happen to “other people”—
people who must have done something wrong to bring it on themselves.
We cling to that illusion of safety like a lifejacket:
"If I just follow the rules, I won’t be the one who drowns."
But that's how the system survives:
by casting survivors like me as rare, cautionary tales,
while ignoring what the common ingredients are.
It's easier to believe I'm the exception.
Easier to question my discernment than confront your theology.
Easier to assume I got it wrong,
than to face the possibility that it's working exactly as designed.
But these outcomes happened because of my faith-driven adherence to "the rules,"
not in spite of it.
These weren't random tragedies;
they were the natural result of this 'solidly orthodox theology.'
So when people say this interpretation of Genesis is God's good decree for a woman's own good—
now you know someone, personally, who was nearly destroyed by it.
Me.
Of course, I carried my own vulnerabilities,
unhealed trauma and blind spots into these relationships and situations...
who among us doesn't?
But instead of helping to heal my wounds,
or protect my vulnerabilities and blind spots,
this system of belief demonized and exploited them.
Carried to its logical end,
my experiences were the predictable fruit of theology wrapped in God-ordained male supremacy,
and narrated as the holiness of the divine order.
If followed faithfully, and applied consistently,
tell me what else this theology can possibly produce?
It's oppressive on its face.
The cruel irony is that my discernment was working perfectly.
I sensed danger, felt the crushing of my soul,
and endured the utter injustice, but narrated it as sanctification.
I'd been trained to see my intuition as "fleshly female deception,"
and to crucify my instincts in the name of submission.
I'd been conditioned to doubt my lived experience—
taught that my feelings lie,
and that apart from this framework,
my lens was too flawed to interpret my own reality.
My conscience had been bound—
not to 'God's truth', but to a particular interpretation of it
that anchored patriarchy as being divinely decreed.
I couldn't trust my own moral intuition because I'd been taught
it was inherently corrupted by my femaleness.
Certainly, predators worked hard to deceive me about their intentions—
but "fellow believers" had already fooled me into ignoring my God-given discernment about those intentions.
You might wonder how someone who had been raised to be a "freethinker" in an atheistic home,
ended up trapped in this system as an adult.
Because when I married into a Christian community at 24,
I wasn't actually "discipled into Christ",
but into a culture that rebranded misogyny in Jesus' name.
Those voices are still shaping beliefs and practices today:
Jerry Falwell Sr.: "Most of the problems in the world today can be traced back to the fact that women don't know their place."
John MacArthur: "Women are by nature more gullible and easier to deceive than men… That's not a criticism—that's just a fact."
John Piper: "Men are to be the leaders in their homes, the church, and (to varying degrees) society, while women are to hold subordinate roles in those spheres."
Doug Phillips: "A daughter is her father's responsibility until she becomes her husband's. She is never meant to be independent or autonomous."
Tony Evans: "A woman's greatest glory is not in her independence, but in her ability to help her husband succeed and make him look good."
Doug Wilson: "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." And here's the most devastating part, to me:
This system survives not because men built it—
but because women internalize it, and enforce it.
Against each other. And themselves.
Elisabeth Elliot: Women must accept "divinely ordered hierarchy" and male authority.
Joni Eareckson Tada: "The woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman. We are the crown of creation only insofar as we complete what is lacking in our men."
Lori Alexander: "Women are easily deceived… This is why God doesn't want women teaching men."
Debi Pearl: Women should focus on making their husbands "successful, happy, and confident."
Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth: "We are called as women to affirm and encourage men as they seek to express godly masculinity, and to honor and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and the church." It's the perfect trap:
Follow our teachings and get harmed?
Proof you're "easily deceived."
Resist our teachings?
Proof you're rebellious.
Heads they win, tails you lose.
Let me say it plain...
This isn't just dry or inconsequential theology.
It's a victim grooming manual—
designed to gut your discernment, shame your instincts, and spiritualize your silence,
then points to the resulting damage as proof that you are what they said you were.
And this ideology isn't just "in the church."
It's alive in our homes, courtrooms, classrooms, policies, and government—
being used right now to justify grave injustice in the name of "divine order."
Its fingerprints are on laws, sermons, headlines,
and in the voice of your very own inner critic.
You've probably felt it:
That gnawing guilt for speaking up.
The fear of saying no.
The shame of setting a boundary.
Maybe you've even called those feelings "conviction" for your rebellious inclinations.
But what if that "rebellion" isn't sin?
What if it's your nervous system crying out for relief?
What if it's clarity?
What if it's righteous rage?
What if it's the image of God in you,
refusing to keep up the charade of self-suppression?
Many churches are bleeding out credibility—and women.
But it's not because we walked away from God.
It's because we were forced to choose between the real God and male idolatry masquerading as faithfulness.
And we chose well.
Because when your belief system teaches:
✅ Men = inherently trustworthy, uniquely qualified as leaders,
and wielders of "tie-breaking" power
⛔ Women = inherently deceptive, easily deceived,
a constant threat to divinely decreed male control, and in need of lifelong male oversight
You can't NOT build a system that:
❌ Produces and protects abusers
❌ Produces and blames victims
❌ Discredits women
❌ Rewards silence
❌ Destroys discernment
❌ Spiritualizes control
❌ Rebrands abuse as love
❌ Weaponizes God against your neighbor
These aren't glitches in an otherwise decent system.
They're features that are hardwired into the blueprint.
But this isn't God's blueprint.
And as you've seen over these past few weeks,
the story they claim it's anchored in,
tells quite the opposite tale.
And if you're struggling to believe otherwise:
I see you.
I hear you.
And also,
you'd be wise—faithful, even—
to walk away from the god of that blueprint.
Because that god was made in man's image,
and leads to death.
The real God isn't demanding your silence—
but rather, is inviting you to restore your sight and use your voice.
Neighboring well—especially now—
means seeing beyond your own safety.
Just because an ideology spared you
doesn’t mean it hasn’t destroyed your neighbor.
Neighboring involves listening with humility.
It means honoring the lived reality of others—
even when it threatens your comfort
or unsettles your certainty.
It means saying:
If it harmed you,
that's enough for me to care.
Even if it benefited me,
I want to know how it hurt you.
Because that’s how we neighbor—
not just with truth, but with mercy.
Not just with courage, but with connection.
That's what this series has been about:
Understanding how to neighbor women impacted by these systems—
maybe including yourself—
by learning their context and unlearning the lies that have kept us all compliant, confused, and complicit.
Neighboring Intelligence starts there:
With the nerve to see clearly.
With the no-nonsense posture to question what's been handed down.
With the kind of nurture and mercy that burns clean through the lies.
With you in this,
Camille
ps.
Having fought my own way out of this captivity,
I know how isolating the journey can feel.
If you're already in motion toward your own exodus—
done mistaking your cage for your calling,
and ready to find out what faithful looks like on the other side,
without fear of "getting it wrong"—you don't have to do it alone.
If that’s you, hit reply and let’s talk.
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