Book Criticism: Preparing To Be A Help Meet (Debi Pearl)

Earlier this year, a friend of mine--also an egalitarian like me--offered to let me borrow a book by a staunch complementarian named Debi Pearl.  The book in question was called Preparing To Be A Help Meet.  She explained that I might find myself very amused by the contents of the book, and so I agreed to read it.  Seldom do I read a book that provokes outright laughter from me alongside the usual frustration!  As I read this book, I decided that I really wanted to place it under the microscope of reason and the Bible in order to intellectually dismember it.

I will not hold back; I will criticize the hell out of the book as logic and Scripture dictate.  I have no regard for hurt complementarian feelings or the fallacious traditions and preferences of other humans.  Truth and the pursuit of truth are too important, and the stakes too high, to tolerate irrational thinking, incorrect interpretation of the Bible, and the imposition of baseless traditions.

Sometimes different chapters have different authors, with many of them conveying some anecdote about a specific woman or man.  If I do not quote the actual words of the book during a reference to it, I will enclose the page numbers I am referring to in parentheses and I will specify as necessary which person is speaking through the text.

I also want to note that, for the sake of not creating a relatively enormous post, I will ignore some of the fallacies and errors of Debi Pearl in order to focus on some particular ones.


A Curious Heresy

One of my first criticisms pertains to something near the beginning.  Page 10 of the book literally says, "God wants, no, he NEEDS us to pray".  What!?  As the self-sufficient uncaused cause, God created the material world itself; nothing in reason, natural theology, or the Bible suggests in any way that God needs me to pray as if my prayers fuel him or enable him to enact his plans.  Not that I think Debi Pearl is knowledgable about reason, natural theology, or the Bible; if her book truly reflects her positions and beliefs, then she knows little of all three (though I do not know if she changed her worldview after its publication).


"God Told Me"

Then Debi claims that at age 13 she knew who she would marry, her eventual husband Michael Pearl, because God told her.  Oh, the many fallacies of claiming one has a private message received from God!  Only a few pages in and she has already committed both the anecdotal fallacy and the fallacy of appeal to emotion!  According to her, at some church youth retreat at age 13, she saw a 21 year old speaker and she just knew she would marry him (11-12).  I am not denying that she had a powerful experience of some type; I am saying that even if she did she would at most be able to know that it subjectively seemed to her as if God wanted her to marry Michael.

She writes that for a long time Michael Pearl "never had a clue that I believed he would be my husband.  He even laughingly told me of occasions when other girls approached him and told him that God wanted them to be his wife" (15).  Ironically, her own story shows the completely arbitrary and illogical basis someone has for ever believing in someone's claim that God told that person to marry someone.  Let's say that multiple girls tell me that God wants them to marry me, just as happened to Michael Pearl as described in the book.  Since I am not clairvoyant, a telepath, omniscient, or otherwise capable of verifying if someone's claimed warrant to marry me was from God, I would never be able to have a basis for believing any of them!


Love At First Sight

"For some, love comes softly; for others it is a matter of choosing wisely; and for others, still, it is a thunderous moment of love at first sight" (19), Debi claims.  Love is a commitment to someone's wellbeing and a great affection for them.  It is not the same as mere emotional infatuation or physical "attraction at first sight".  Attraction is not itself love, though it can lead to it.  All loving human relationships, like friendships, involve attraction of some type.  It is both incorrect and unhelpful to make too much of an initial attraction of some sort to someone of the opposite gender, as it may not even indicate romantic interest.  It can also be very damaging to confuse attraction for committed love.


Debi's Three Male Types

Debi divides all or at least most men into three categories, attempting to match them symbolically with members of the Trinity (popular Trinitarian theology is seriously flawed, so anything based on the popular representation of it is doomed to be logically absurd as well).  Prophet men, according to her, challenge the status quo and enjoy confrontation (41).  The wife of a prophet type is said to simply need to just go with "his flow" (43) because women do not get to have the same autonomy as men do according to her.  Priest men are easygoing and unwilling to get controversial (51-52), while King men are authoritative and need daily reverence from wives (60).  Oh, the things Debi writes about "King" husbands!  Just read this:


"A Kingly man does not want his wife involved in any project that prevents her from serving him" (60).


And this:


"In most marriages, the strife is not because the man is cruel or evil; it is because he expects obedience, honor, and reverence, and is not getting it.  Thus, he reacts badly" (62).


That's right--according to Debi "King" husbands expect and deserve to literally be served by their wives as if they are royalty of some sort.  Debi's idiocy extends itself further.  In the next section below I will more directly criticize her sexist teachings.


Outright Sexism

In explaining her three female types, Debi says the following:


"Remember, man was created in God's image and we in man's image, so we are one step removed from the original" (69).


Really?!  This blatantly disregards the first damn chapter of the Bible, where God creates humans, MALE AND FEMALE, in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27)!  The idea that women bear less of God's image than men is an absurd construct of sexist theologians.  Men and women both bear God's image, both have the same legal protection and rights according to Mosaic Law (see Exodus 21, for instance), and both have an equal standing before God in salvation (Galatians 3:28).  The Bible teaches these things.

The book also at times seems to support the idea that men have to pursue women and that women remain in God's will when they do not pursue men (33-34).  See this amusing excerpt:


"You will remember from 'The Kid's Story' that several girls approached Michael telling him they believed God had told them he was to be their husband.  He was not impressed or moved.  He knew God would have to speak to this first and foremost concerning this important decision" (34).


Alright, even if a complementarian reading of the Bible really was correct, nothing about the passages complementarians appeal to as evidence for their position say anything about women submitting to men they haven't even married yet!  Debi leaps further into arbitrary nonsense.  Where does the Bible ever say that one gender has to be the one that romantically pursues the other, before or after marriage?  It doesn't!  The idea that men have to be the ones to initiate dates, propose marriages, and initiate sexual invitations or acts is foreign to reason and Biblical revelation.  Even a "Biblical" complementarian model would not incorporate such additions.

A gender hierarchy that elevates one gender over the other does indeed have to involve some degree of sexism, which is discrimination against or oppression of one gender, often by the other.  And yet Debi does not seem concerned about the unbiblicality of this at all.  She instead seems quite content to advocate a position that actively limits the spiritual, skill-based, and intellectual productivity of married women:


"Some of you who have strong gifts might ask, 'Well, what about my God-given gifts and drives?  Are women just supposed to lay down their abilities and let the man do his thing, even when she may be more gifted and capable than the is?'  Yes!  That is exactly the way it is, and no, not at all.  The key is to recognize your natural type, not so you can take the lead, but so you can understand how it might weaken or aid your service to your first-in-command--your husband." (71-72)


So apparently, although God does not discriminate in giving talents to people, according to Debi humans are supposed to--are morally obligated to--discriminate by gender in a way that intentionally overlooks or neglects the natural abilities and gifts of women!  The idea that a dad gives his daughter away when she marries, a transfer of ownership from one man to another, is even mentioned without criticism (44).  Screw the worldview of Debi Pearl and the other contributors to this book.


The "Men Are Visual" Myth

On one page, Debi writes "men are visual beings" (114), as if current American social conditioning holds any objective intellectual weight.  Plus, women are visual too, and the Bible itself says so in very obvious ways; see an earlier post of mine which specifically addresses this for more details [2]!  She merely asserts this without offering any logical or Biblical support (because none exists to support the stereotype most people mean by this phrase).  Men are not as universally, desperately visual as society claims (I know sure as hell that I'm not at all this way), and female friends have commented to me on how women are very sexual and visual beings too and how our culture and the church do not represent the so-called "visuality" of men and women correctly.

When I call this a myth, I mean the way it is often presented is a myth.  Of course it is true that some men are visual in this way, just as it is true that some women are visual in this way.  The degree of this visuality varies from individual to individual, from nonexistent to very intense.  To single out one gender or the other as having greater innate visuality, one must ignore or sidestep the fact that different cultures have made conflicting claims about this matter and that one individual's nature reflects the nature of that individual, not everyone from that person's gender or the human species as a whole.  Besides, the Bible does not teach this, and experience can reveal that many men and women will outright disagree with claims about how "men are visual" or "women aren't visual" or about the sexual desire of men and women.

Complementarians often perpetuate these fallacies and stereotypes, buying into cultural conditioning.  It did not surprise me that Debi Pearl encouraged them too.  Did Debi use logic to challenge social expectations and beliefs?  Did she talk to an honest group of other women and men about this matter?  Did she consult the Bible here?  Doesn't seem like it!  Perhaps this asinine equivalent to intellectual sewage water of hers is what inspired her to write this theological garbage:


"A man has a propensity to sin with his body; a female's sins are more in attitude and words.  Sin is sin, and will be judged the same." (201)


First of all, if she is implying that men are more sexually immoral than women, not only did I somewhat address this already above, but who the hell are heterosexual men who commit acts of Biblically-defined sexual immorality committing the immoralities with?  Women, Debi.  Women.  Second of all, no, the Bible most definitely denies that all sins are equal, to be judged identically, and affirms the opposite.  John 19:11, Matthew 23:23, Ezekiel 16:51, and almost the whole of Mosaic Law all demonstrate that the Christian God does not view all sins as equal in their degrees of evil.  And logic proves that if certain things like slanderously destroying someone's reputation or torturing people in certain ways are wrong, then the greater the slander or illicit torture, the greater the moral offense.  Damn this unbiblical nonsense that gets accepted as objective Biblical teaching!


Support Of Modesty Teaching?

Debi eventually implicitly criticizes "sexy" wedding dresses (158-159).  There are multiple observations I have about this.  First of all, where the hell does the Bible condemn being or looking sexy?  And the Bible itself states in no unclear terms that the God it represents has revealed all moral information necessary to understand Christian morality and that adding to God's moral revelation is itself a moral error (Deuteronomy 4:2).  I have written extensively before on how both rationalism and the Bible teach theonomy, that morality is purely grounded in God's nature and that God must reveal that nature to humans.  Anything that does not conform to God's nature is at most a mere subjective moral preference with no authority whatsoever; the Bible itself vomits away the nonsense that irrational and tradition-based moral systems propose.

Feelings of and displays of "sexiness" are not sinful.  Sexual desires and excitement in and of themselves are either good or morally neutral things; God himself called his entire creation good (Genesis 1:31) and he instilled such desires into humans.  Besides, beauty, admiration of beauty, and the human body (even nudity) are not themselves sexual, although my culture and many of the Christians who reside in it do not admit this.  Besides, while something is either objectively sexy or not sexy (law of excluded middle), perceptions of what is sexy are totally subjective.  Debi Pearl's belief about wedding dresses, if true, would also likely necessitate modesty teachings, which contain numerous severe logical and Biblical problems [3].  They are totally irreconcilable to either reason or Scripture.


Conclusion

In one sense, I enjoyed reading Preparing To Be A Help Meet because it offered laughs, but then it terrified me both that some Christians have possibly accepted the contents of Debi's book as a reflection of Christian theology--and the way reality is--and that non-Christians might read it and mistake it for true Christianity.  I hope that the latter is not the case.  I have only highlighted and refuted a portion of what Debi writes, and yet I have addressed numerous errors.  It is time for Christians to, with the full force of reason and Biblical theology behind them, rebuke those like Debi Pearl for their heresies, legalism, and sexism.  I for one loathe the thought that people like Debi make money selling their twisted teachings to other like-minded ignorant minds.  Until rationalism and strictly Biblical theology reign in the church, ideas like the ones Debi presents here will not be ideologically purged as needed.


Preparing To Be A Help Meet.  Pearl, Debi.  No Greater Joy, 2010.  Print.


[1].  I have explore the logical errors of complementarianism and many of its byproducts in several places:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/why-ephesians-5-does-not-teach-rigid.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-poisonous-offspring-of.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/women-are-visual.html

[3].  I have written multiple posts on the danger and idiocy of modesty teachings.  See here for some examples:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-folly-of-modesty-part-2.html
C.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/bikinis-are-not-sinful.html