Women and Children First

Outside of Christ, manliness was expressed by the Chinese ambassador in response to the news that when the Titanic sunk, the men went down with the ship giving the lifeboats to the women and children. He said that if the Titanic had been Chinese, the men would have taken the lifeboats and let the women and children stay behind. It would have been men first, children second, and women last of all. That sentiment is almost universal outside of Christ. On the other hand, the men of the Titanic in 1912 still lived under the cultural influence of a conscience created by Christians and expressed with pride fifty years earlier in the “Birkenhead Drill” as the Law of the Sea: “women and children first”. Real manhood as mandated by God established patriarchy responsibility. Men are providers for the family, protectors for the family, and will give their last drop blood to preserve the lives of the “weaker vessels”. In 1852, the HMS Birkenhead sank quickly off the coast of South Africa as lifeboats carried the women and children, their husbands standing in military formation on deck, waiting for the lifeboats to be safely out of reach of any swimmers that might survive. Their manly sacrifice was discussed on the Titanic as another generation of men struggled to live up to that ideal of heroic manhood. The sixteen year-old cabin boys all died like men. The richest man on board, John Jacob Astor, gave his seat on the life boat to a third class washer woman.

David told Solomon, “be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man.” The apostle Paul wrote the Corinthians, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”(1 Cor. 16:13) Paul was not saying “be human” but rather “be manly!”

Let me ask you to turn off your TV and put away your girly magazine for a moment and answer me one question. Would you give up your life for a third-class washer woman?

May 5, 1912, when they had a funeral for John Jacob Astor, there was a parade across town with Margaret Sanger and John Dewey where there was a howl of protest against the “women and children first” law of chivalry. The founders of Planned Parenthood and public education in America declared that there should have been equality of the sexes on the Titanic. With the leadership of such unbelievers, manhood began to die in the 1920’s. In the 1960’s women were devalued and reduced to objects of desire. Today, men hide behind their women when danger threatens.