But God also created two human beings on that same day.  He created them in his image, with the capacity to do such amazing things as selectively breed animals.  Sometimes this breeding was purely for utilitarian purposes, but at other times for purposes that can only be described as artistic, bringing out certain features that appear beautiful. 

Our family has had several dogs over the years, but I think Monty is the best.  He’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, presently about 8 months old.  He’s smart and easily trained.  Monty is loving, sociable, playful, and always eager to please.  But even more than that, the other day I was admiring him and the thought occurred to me:  this dog is a work of art.  But if that’s the case, who is the artist?
You might be tempted, as I was, to answer with God.  After all, didn’t God create all the animals?  If dogs are animals, then God must have created dogs too.  That answer might make sense for anyone who believes what the Bible says about creation.  But things are actually not that simple.  Let me explain how God didn’t create dogs, yet is still ultimately responsible for their existence.
When God created “the beasts of the earth” on the sixth day, there were no Cavalier King Charles Spaniels among them.  In fact, there were no Cocker Spaniels, English Springer Spaniels, or any spaniels at all.  There were no German Shepherds, Labradors, or any other dog breed we’re familiar with today.  When God created the land animals at the beginning, he created a pair of four-legged creatures which are the ancestors of all the dogs we know today.
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In the cultural battles of our day, conservatives always seem to lose. Some say progressives win because of their superior funding, organizational prowess, and cultural dominance. Others say conservatives lose because we are disorganized, factious, and lack an activist spirit. Perhaps they’re right on both counts. But that’s not why we lose. We lose because we have a much more difficult position to defend. We cannot go on thinking the left is acting in good faith for a good purpose, when in reality, conservatives and progressives are completely different projects with different goals and definitions of victory.

Roger Scruton once observed, “Good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.” Take the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France, for example. It took 183 years to build but was almost completely destroyed by fire in a matter of hours in 2019. This is a fitting metaphor for the modern West, which was carefully built to sustain our civilization for generations, but is now crumbling after decades of relentless attack by a progressive ideology hell-bent on destroying it.
Progressivism is a demon-possessed ideology that seeks to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The progressive disease has also infected evangelical Christianity, poisoning its bloodstream and spreading the contagion through trusted and once-conservative media outlets and educational institutions.
Conservative Christians, contending for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), are being assaulted on multiple fronts by openly hostile secular progressives in government, business, news media, and Hollywood, not to mention apostate progressive pastors who claim to represent “the way of Jesus.” 
As Christian schools are overrun by tenured leftist professors and publishers sell cloaked leftist propaganda to unsuspecting conservatives, naive Christians convince themselves that “this too shall pass.” If they keep their heads down, silent and compliant, they’ll leave us alone.
Unfortunately, this is not possible. Sooner or later, conservatives must rediscover our fighting spirit and realize that we cannot play nice with progressives. They do not want to peacefully “coexist” with conservatives. They want to destroy us. Ordinary Christianity is the last major obstacle in their path.
Conservatism Operates Within Reality
Conservatism is only as good as the thing being conserved. In our day, what most needs conserving is nothing less than reality itself. Reality is conservative, and the more one accepts it as such the more conservative one will become. The progressive left is a reality-denying cope for those who would alter reality to match the idealized fictions of their minds.
This puts them at odds with God himself, for God is the ultimate reality. As Joe Rigney recently wrote, “The first imperative is to love the indicative.” We must accept reality as it is, as God made it. Daniel, describing God to Nebuchadnezzar, said, 
He changes times and seasons; 
he removes kings and sets up kings; 
he gives wisdom to the wise 
and knowledge to those who have understanding; 
he reveals deep and hidden things; 
he knows what is in the darkness, 
and the light dwells with him (Dan 2:21-22). 
This is reality. God made the world, set it on its foundations, made springs gush forth, and caused grass to grow. Finally, he entrusted it to the stewardship of man to subdue and exercise dominion (Gen 1:28-29). He orders the world such that it sustains life. God provides for all man’s needs through the ordinary means of discipline, skill, and work.
God also establishes limits, hierarchies and inequalities, and requires man to live within these constraints. These are not the result of the fall, but built-in manifestations of God’s wisdom in creation. Every restriction or inequality is an opportunity to trust God and work within the boundaries he put in place.
This is the world as it truly is, the world as God made it, that which is revealed in God’s word and observed in God’s world, a reality that must be respected for any society to thrive. Conservatism is a worldview of giving, receiving, and blessing. It dignifies work as a legitimate expression of Christian service, and dignifies man by beckoning him to discover the wonders hidden within creation. Such is the glory of God to conceal a thing, and such is the glory of kings to search it out (Prov 25:2).
Any kind of political or social conservatism that does not acknowledge God as the ultimate reality will inevitably fail. Christians are conservative not merely because we admire the constitution or love tradition, but rather for the sake of the transcendent, eternal reality upon which those things stand.
In other words, Christians aren’t merely conserving a nostalgic political worldview, but rather the application of Christian truth to all of life, including our society. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). Paul said, “God” commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Christ is “highly exalted” and has been given the “name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11).
This is the worldview that built Western society. To be sure, not all of our founding fathers were regenerate Christians, but they did draw upon centuries of Bible-saturated political theology and wisdom. In short, we’re not merely conserving something political, but convictional: we’re fighting to conserve and rebuild a once-respected Christian heritage that is now under siege by a demonic ideology of pagan progressivism. 
The progressive project is not a matter of alternate policy preferences in pursuit of a shared, common vision for society. Progressivism is a political and cultural attack directed squarely at Christianity itself. It is more than a political ideology, it is a rebellion against nature, nature’s God, and an attack on all who worship him.
The Sin of “Equalatry”
Contrary to what we’ve been told, human differences inevitably produce inequalities–divinely established natural hierarchies hard-wired into creation for his glory and our good. While some inequalities can be exploited for sinful gain, a virtuous society organizes them into a productive division of labor that benefits everyone. The most fundamental, inescapable human difference is sexual: God made us male and female from the beginning (Matt 19:4). The inequalities between men and women are a divinely designed gift for the harmonious joining of the sexes in mutual love and the creation of new life. Similarly, other human inequalities are positively presented in scripture as gifts for the edification of the church.
The left cannot accept this fact. Their sin is “equalatry,” which is making equality into an idol. The sin of equalatry is what Murray Rothbard once called a “revolt against nature,” rooted in envy and resentment towards those with superior skills, intelligence, beauty, or accomplishments. It regards all inequality as oppression and all hierarchy as tyranny. Since it bears a superficial resemblance to fairness, a biblical virtue, equalatry makes the left’s demands for “social justice” feel virtuous to Christians. But since the left defines justice as the elimination of all inequality, exceptionalism must not be tolerated.
The left subverts reality through media “narratives” that reward grievance. A man’s feelings of envy are merely a byproduct of his oppression. All inequalities are “privileges,” unjustly acquired. Their propaganda campaign that relentlessly categorizes the whole human experience as an epic struggle between oppressive villains and oppressed victims slowly brainwashes ordinary people into vicious cycles of self-righteous indignance or self-loathing guilt.
Deep down, people intuitively know that society cannot function without the basic virtues of hard work, competence, and honesty, yet they are gaslit into affirming the opposite.  They gradually find themselves nodding along with the guilt-inducing narrative that they are oppressors whose sins can only be absolved by yielding to the irrational demands of the state, BLM activists, and the rainbow mafia. Over time, the propaganda wears them down. One can only resist for so long.
The left regards our Christian heritage as a blight that spawned injustices that can only be remedied by tearing it all down and rebuilding anew. Captivated by the social Darwinist “myth of progress,” humanity must break free from the antiquated shackles of Christianity and march towards their vision of an eschatological, secular utopia.
As Thomas Sowell once said, we have “reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today.” Americans have now reached peak efficiency in our ability to manufacture victims at warp speed through a malicious parade of patriarchs, homophobes, and white supremacists. It doesn’t matter that their thinking is irrational, because they have already determined that rational thought is yet another tool of oppression.
Progressives arrogantly believe reality itself can be bent to their wishes. With enough funding and power, they can refashion the world any way they choose. With enough medical technology, they can overcome the dreaded gender binary. They act with high-handed moral certitude, believing they possess sufficient wisdom to save our planet, end hunger, correct injustice, house the homeless, eliminate suffering, maximize erotic pleasure, turn men into women—you name it. This is delusional, of course, but they can’t see it because their worldview is predicated upon a carefully curated denial of reality.
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In our age of rapid, digital communication, “fake news” is as common as ever. As we’ve seen, disinformation regarding complementarianism abounds, whether those arguments are theological, historical, or moral. May we not be fooled by such claims. Rather, let us be like Bereans, testing to see if these things are so.

Donald Trump made the idea of “fake news” famous. Some reports say he used the term around 2,000 times during his tenure as president of the United States. According to Trump, news outlets proliferated lies and sowed false information to tear him down and hinder his work.
Fake news or disinformation is nothing new, however. For years, it has been used by governments to spread false ideas and promote narratives as well as by military units to mislead the enemy with false tactics. This disinformation served their purposes and aimed to help them win elections and war(s).
This spread of disinformation is not limited to government and military tactics. Sadly, it is a regular occurrence in the world of theology as well. Whether perpetuated ignorantly or purposefully and willfully, this disinformation poses great danger to the church today. Where do we see such “fake news”? Oftentimes, it comes in the form of an argument against a position that has been unfairly represented. For a recent example, see Randy Davis’s recent criticism of the Law Amendment in the Southern Baptist Convention. As Denny Burk helpfully points out, two out of Davis’s three objections are based on arguments that simply aren’t true.
What I’m concerned about here is not Donald Trump nor the Law Amendment in particular, but rather the spread of disinformation as it relates to complementarianism more broadly—the nature and roles of men and women. And this information doesn’t come merely from the outside of the camp. Instead, disinformation about complementarity is pasted on Twitter, promoted on Facebook, and spread via blog posts and magazine articles at an increasingly high rate from outside and inside the complementarian camp.
I can think of several categories of disinformation when it comes to complementarity: theological disinformation, historical disinformation, and moral disinformation. I’m sure others could add more. In this article, I will examine claims from each of these categories, demonstrating how they all fail to accurately describe the complementarian argument.
Theological Disinformation
Theologically, we have false ideas about complementarianism making their way around the internet, into books and articles, and into personal conversations. Two wrongheaded and unfounded biblical and pastoral-theological errors seem common.
First, some argue that complementarianism is built on a handful of passages. This narrative aims to convince readers that the theological position is built on shaky foundations. And, it suggests by contrast that egalitarianism is more faithful to the grand sweep of Scripture. For example, Jennifer Bradshaw writes, “Complementarians base their theology on a few passages in Genesis and select verses from some New Testament epistles.”[1] Well, to borrow from our ex-President: “fake news!”
Now, this brief article isn’t the place to outline all the passages complementarians use to build their theological house. Instead, If you want proof that the complementarity position is built with lots of biblical bricks, read the various iterations of Eikon, the theological journal from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Notice the dozens of theological arguments, exegetical insights, and massive volume of biblical-theological thinking that’s at the bottom of complementarity. Or, pick up Rediscovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Wayne Grudem and John Piper. You don’t have to agree with them to acknowledge that the authors in that book lean into the whole Bible to make their case. Simply turn to the Scripture index. It runs over seven pages and lists dozens and dozens of passages from both the Old and New Testaments. Are there key passages in this debate? Sure. But admitting there are key passages is a far cry from relying on or basing a theological position “on a few passages.”
Second, some want to make it seem as though complementarians are simply interested in barring women from ministry in the church overall. That is, some egalitarians erroneously say complementarians believe that only men should have ministries of any type in a local congregation. Consider Jennifer Bradshaw again. When she outlines the basic components of the complementarian position, it doesn’t take long for her to go off course. Here is what she writes:
Simply defined, complementarianism argues the following points (claiming, of course, that these are the “Biblical” view):

that men and women were created in God’s image, equal in worth, but that they were created for different roles;
that men are the leaders (or heads) in the home and the church and women are helpers to men, created to raise children and tend to the home; and
that leadership roles in churches, especially the office of senior pastor, are prohibited for women—women are not gifted or meant for leadership in the Church.[2]

She starts strong. As a complementarian, I agree with point 1. Point 2 states some true things, though her agenda starts to bleed through (raise children and tend the home are reductionistic. Yet, the rhetoric is meant to score an emotional point, it seems). Point 3, however, is either disingenuous or simply ignorant. She uses the broad idea of “leadership roles in the churches” to suggest complementarians bar women from any form of church leadership. When she does this, she specifically broadens the prohibition of female leadership beyond the bounds of the “senior pastor.” According to her view, complementarians bar women from “leadership in the Church” (a broad concept) that is “especially” applied narrowly to the “senior pastor” position. So, no leadership in the church at all…including senior pastorates. Well, again, fake news.
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