We don’t have to accept pastors demonizing little girls.
Recently, I was sent a clip by someone who attends Lake Pointe church and was concerned–I don’t go looking for these.
Josh Howerton, you may remember, is the same megachurch pastor who told women to “stand where he tells you to stand and do what he tells you to do” on HIS wedding night.
This megachurch pastor went viral again for a disturbing “joke” about “shady little girls in mini-skirts in church parking lots” being his enemy.
Little girls in mini-skirts in church parking lots?
— Sheila Gregoire--She Deserves Better is here! (@sheilagregoire) August 16, 2024
Here's Josh Howerton, telling the men in their congregations that if they see such a little girl, "run, Forrest, run--you are no match for that enemy."
Because apparently little girls are tempting. And they're your enemy. pic.twitter.com/AwAdUVgoYT
I’ve already spent a lot of time talking about why this message is so toxic and harmful to girls and women.
And Christa Brown and I talked about it yesterday on episode 257 of the Bare Marriage podcast! So I won’t repeat myself.
Today, I want to share with you an amazing poem about Josh Howerton and men like him.
This was sent to me by a reader, Julie Chupp, who had a lot to say about the jokes Josh makes at the expense of women.
But remember–like Josh always says–“it’s just a joke!”
Grateful to Julie:
If you go out of one of our campuses, get to your car and the literal physical devil — horns, tail and fangs — standing right there. You need to stand up and bow up and the Bible’s going, ‘Hey fight!’ But if you go out there and it’s like some shady little girl in a miniskirt, ‘Run, Forrest! Run! You are no match for this enemy!
HE SAYS GOOD THINGS
He says good things..
Laugh at the funny jokes!
Don’t you dare shudder over the crunch of tiny bones and fragile hearts. Don’t you dare picture razor blades and tender wrists, and escape from being more dangerous than the devil himself if you happen to wear the wrong outfit
(because maybe today, it wasn’t a mini skirt. It might just have been any skirt at all, and you just didn’t know it. )
Because how can the clay question the potter,
and God made you that way you know.
And the Holy Spirit told me to tell you to stop speaking.
Because your womanly voice is as dangerous as your skirt.
You are the scary bad threat.
Hush now;
I was enjoying his jokes.
( And don’t forget, I have the Holy Spirit, and you don’t. )
He says good things.
Stand where he tells you to stand. Do what He tells you to do. Wear what He tells you to wear. It’s his wedding night after all, and that’s funny! We like to laugh!
Lighten up! It’s just a joke!
And make sure you give him his crown, because he’s born with divine right to rule.
But it’s your job to make sure he does it well.
He says good things.
Because, don’t you know that,
“The first time a woman chose what to eat,
she doomed the entire human race?”
Come on, laugh,
you know he’s just joking!
Forget all the times we told you to stop laughing
Too loud, and too long and too often.
Your humor and joy are too much.”
But our jokes are really funny.
Laugh at those.
He says good things.
So he’s not really munching on lambs.
He doesn’t really mean any of it.
There’s no blood on the sanctuary floor. No lambs limping away from the church as fast as their shattered bodies and broken souls can carry them.
No reason for them to wander away from our Jesus.
We told them He’s a Good Shepherd.
Why won’t they believe us?
Stubborn, silly, foolish lambs.
What if the big bad wolf out there devours them?
When a joke means dismissing the abuse and harassment girls and women suffer through everyday, or when a joke adds to the abuse and harassment, we can no longer call it a joke.
We have to name it for what it is:
Toxic.
Like a maniac shooting
flaming arrows of death
is one who deceives their neighbor
and says, “I was only joking!”
What do you think of the poem? How does it make you feel? Anything stand out to you? Let’s talk in the comments!
Like many things of this nature, it would be funny IF it wasn’t true. Yes, there are some things we SHOULD NOT joke about.
The strongest part of the poem is where he tells women to give him his crown, because he has a divine right to rule, but if anything goes wrong, it’s the woman’s fault.
It’s saddening and maddening at the same time that so many subscribe to this, not to mention the pain and trauma it’s caused (and continues to cause)
This is really awesome. Was it sent to him? Was it posted anywhere he might see it? It is beautiful. What stands out to me is how it encompasses everything about the truth. The truth, just how Jesus would deliver it.
Josh Howerton has stated that he doesn’t care about anyone who doesn’t attend his church.
He has also publicly stated that when he plans sermons, preps sermons, and delivers sermons, he is thinking about the men, preaching to and for the men.
He has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t care.
And every Evangelical pastor who stays silent on this is complicit, in my opinion. I hold them all accountable for not holding him accountable. They want power and authority (and happily take our money) but refuse to use it when it matters.
Dropped something, Lisa: 🎤
🙌 yes Lisa!
And the Holy Spirit told me to tell you to stop speaking.
Because your womanly voice is as dangerous as your skirt.
So many men believe that the Holy Spirit can’t speak through a woman. Those lines stood out to me.
This is a wonderful comment. It makes me think. Think about this for a second. Many men and women believe that the Holy Spirit can’t speak through a woman. But they do believe that devil can speak through a woman. The argument does not hold weight. Does the devil not use both women and men to do battle with God? Apparently – Even the devil believes the Holy Spirit speaks through women, otherwise why would the devil bother using women to do his work?
Thank you. Here’s a personal story. I was driving home from a doctor’s appointment expecting my second daughter. I was at a two way stop connecting two service roads off a busy intersection close to a main highway. It was my turn to drive through the intersection, but as I was preparing to pull forward, I was told, “Stop.” I listened to the voice and stopped. The next second an 18 wheeler barreled through the intersection and would have plowed through my vehicle. I don’t think my daughter or I would have survived the impact if he had hit me. I am so thankful that I listened to the Holy Spirit. I believe that he saved both out lives.
Last month we celebrated my daughter’s 22nd birthday.
How amazing and wonderful to hear that. That same thing has happened to me twice in my life. No voice, just a feeling that I shouldn’t go yet, and a car ran a stoplight both times.
Glad that you’re all doing well
Thanks for sharing this with us. What a wonderful story of how God loves us😀
We joke in our family about how guardian angels had to go into overdrive with the invention of the automobile. So glad you and yours are safe and well looked after!
Wow, Phil. That is an incredible and powerful point.
I still just find it odd that this fellow thinks I can fight the actual prince of darkness, but that I can’t possibly contain my raw masculine energy around a child.
I know a lot of kids. Kids can be pretty insightful and fun to be around. People don’t tend to like people who harm the innocence of children.
Also what am I supposed to tape out Lucifer? He’s just gonna show up behind my house and throw hands? That doesn’t really sound all that cunning. Now getting people to victimize kids that sounds more like what he would want.
The scary thought occurs to me: What if Josh Howerton is projecting his own feelings of temptation onto other men? But let’s hope that’s not true.
That thought has definitely occurred to me.
The line that stood out most to me was “maybe today, it wasn’t a mini skirt. It might just have been any skirt at all, and you just didn’t know it”. So many years of my life spent trying to work out the right dress code that would make them leave me alone until I realised it didn’t exist.
This line stood out to me, too. The most conservative groups insist that a woman must wear a skirt. More moderate groups insist that a woman must look like a woman. But then, surprise! A female body wearing a skirt and looking like a woman causes overwhelming temptation to men, so you better stop being a temptress. But make sure you always look like a female body! *eyeroll*
I know that I really got into it with some guy on another Josh Howerton thread on here that said he wasn’t a fan of Howerton but that he felt a need to call those of us who protest to repentance for attacking and making such a big deal out so little.
He said things like, if we would just seek God and find peace these little things wouldn’t bother us so much. We didn’t need to go attacking a man of God.
That guy couldn’t understand that he was part of the problem. Minimizing abusive language doesn’t make that language less abusive and destructive.
Having an honest and, yes, angry response to the abuse and oppression is not sinful. Women’s (and men’s) anger with abuse is not sinful.
When a man abuses his position and his authority so bad, it must be called out.
Because sometimes the big bad wolf isn’t out there waiting to devour. Sometimes the wolf is in the church masquerading as a shepherd abusing the lambs and ewes in order to garner favor with the important target audience, the rams.
Very true. Anger itself is NOT sinful. Jesus Himself got angry at times.
What that individual has failed to see is that ‘little things’ like Howerton’s comments have promoted a church culture in which many men feel entitled to sexually abuse women and children and blame them for their own assaults. That is not a ‘little thing’. Neither is it the behaviour of a true ‘man of God’.
It’s the little foxes that spoil the vine.
From the poem:
“And the Holy Spirit told me to tell you to stop speaking.”
It’s hard for me to see that men like Josh Howerton believe that women are equal even just “spiritually,” the way they claim Galatians 3:28 “says.” (That is, they interpret that verse to mean that men and women are equal only before God, but not in our homes, in church, or in society at large.)
If women can actually, really, truly be believers, just as men can be believers, then do these men also believe that women get some kind of inferior, lesser Holy Spirit Junior rather than the full-blown Holy Spirit that men by necessity get?
Because if women don’t get the full-blown HS but only some partial or inferior version, then the theobros might have a leg to stand on that women should always defer to men. But if women get the same, full HS as men, then how does the HS indwelling the wife give up or give in to the HS in the husband? Are the theobros suggesting there’s some conflict between the Holy Spirit and the … Holy Spirit? 🤔
Is the wife’s “Holy Spirit” ALWAYS wrong if the husband’s “Holy Spirit” says something different?
Why are men so sure they’re always hearing the Holy Spirit and equally sure that women are not? Or is that just another way to say or even prove that women can’t really, truly ever be believers?
If men are supposed to be in spiritually mortal fear of little girls in miniskirts, how can those same men be sure they’re always hearing the Hply Spirit and not hearing, for example, the things floating around in their own psyches that the men really, REALLY want to believe? 🤔
“Is the wife’s “Holy Spirit” ALWAYS wrong if the husband’s “Holy Spirit” says something different?”
Checkmate.
My husband thought so. And that is why we are no longer together. The church needs to recognize that spiritual abuse of women by their husbands isn’t just a “mistake”. It is heresy.
Maybe women can upgrade to the “Platinum Level” Holy Spirit.
Oh, oh, I got it! I got it!
The FEMALE Holy Spirit is eternally subordinate to the MALE Holy Spirit!
🤣 🤣 🤣
🙄 🙄 🙄
That insight might just get you into Heaven! (If your husband prays for you, anyway)
It is true that we are to submit to God and resist the devil (James 4:7) and flee youthful lusts (2 Timothy 2:22).
And a man may be wise to flee like Joseph from Potiphar’s wife if he encounters a woman like the one described in Proverbs 7, who dresses like a prostitute with the intent to seduce a man to whom she is not married and talk him into coming to bed with her.
But we men must remember that Jesus said evil thoughts, sexual immorality, adultery, and lewdness come from a person’s heart (Mark 7:20-23) and we must run to Christ to enable us to put to death sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires.
A man who views a young woman primarily as a sexual temptation instead of a person made in God’s image or a sister in Christ (1 Timothy 5:2), is in danger of causing a little one to stumble and facing worse judgment than drowning by a millstone around his neck (Matthew 18:6).
Very well said. This is what Josh Howerton should have said, too!
Very well said!
And we are back to the question “What is in this leader’s heart?” That he uses ideas like this. Jokes like this etc.
From the heart the mouth speaks…it’s not outside, it’s within!
>> The scary thought occurs to me: What if Josh Howerton is projecting his own feelings of temptation onto other men?
Many people feel that when some say things like this, they very much ARE projecting their own feelings, etc.
>> Josh Howerton has stated that he doesn’t care about anyone who doesn’t attend his church.
So much for Jesus when He said “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations”
By way of comparison, my pastor quotes somebody who once said “Christianity is one of the few organizations in the world that primarily exists for the benefit of those who AREN’T members”.
This reminds me of a story told here on this board. A woman took her family to a church that was VERY insular. They didn’t actually forbid newcomers, but unless you were a lifelong member, the others completely ignored you.
So on point, especially about munching on the lambs😥😥😥
If the person being executed makes a joke, it’s gallows humor.
If a person in the crowd (i.e. one who is not being subject to the coming torment) makes a joke, it’s part of the execution.
He’s in the crowd, women are being executed.
The saddest part to me is that many of those shattered,beaten lambs aren’t limping away from the church but are going back to it every week.
Absolutely!
I don’t know if this has been brought into the conversation, but these attitudes lead to Christian men in leadership and in men’s groups to tell inappropriate jokes and call it “guy humor”. When that’s not called out, then men stay in their adolescent stage in their view of women. This hit home with me last week when my husband and I watched the movie Billy Madison. At the end I told him I would never watch that movie again and proceeded to tell him all the ways it depicted the woman as nothing more than an object for his pleasure. (Thanks to Bare Marriage for helping me articulate what I was feeling and why.) It struck me that when men in the church get together and banter about women this way it condones such attitudes and no wonder I’m feeling used.