The Real Housewives of…

The prophets have a few choice words for these females:

OK, I used to have a housewife. Yes, she did work outside of the home for many years, but she was also and primarily a very wonderful and loving housewife and mother. She would still be a terrific housewife today, were it not for the fact that she recently passed away. She was a superstar in every way.

And yet she never made it onto any reality television programs. Nor would she wanted to have done so. I refer of course to those ubiquitous and utterly deplorable shows that start with the words, “The Real Housewives of…”. It seems that just about every major city in the West now has their own version of the show, and Australia has not been exempt from this.

For those in the know, one well-known scene from one of these shows featuring an irate woman in a big fight has been turned into a massively successful meme, including with her arguing with Smudge the cat. It is a classic. You can see this instantly recognisable meme of Taylor Armstrong of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills everywhere, including here with this background story: https://www.businessinsider.com/woman-yelling-at-cat-meme-taylor-amstrong-real-housewives-smudge-2019-12

It is easy enough to stumble upon these shows, even when you are just flicking through the channels, hoping to find a possible desert island of sanity amidst the wasteland that is public television. These shows are everywhere and they are horrid. If you have not seen any of them, they really are all the same. It appears that each show MUST come with the same standard formula.

Indeed, it seems they must feature arrogant and narcissistic women who are always drinking, always arguing, always wasting money, always jet-setting around the world, always fighting, always partying, always screaming, always shopping, and always having cosmetic surgeries (fake lips, fake boobs, etc).

If such shows do not feature all these components, and in every episode, then we obviously are not dealing with “real housewives”! And if they are married, it seems that for many of them they are on their second, third, or fourth husband. All in all, they are not exactly great role models. They are not exactly the kind of women girls can look up to and emulate.

If a person was ever looking for a reason to loathe modern western culture and the secular woke capitalist domination of everything, including entertainment, this should do it. Yes I realise that the phrase “reality TV show” is a misnomer – an oxymoron in fact. They are anything but real – they can be as fake and staged as you can get.

But the producers will milk all the arguing and drinking and debauchery and hubris and melodrama and bare flesh for all its worth. Sadly, the masses seem to love it. If there was ever a reason to give up on the West and pronounce it to be fully and irretrievably down the gurgler, these shows and their legions of fans would do the trick.

The world is going to hell real fast, and the masses are blissfully unaware of this. Nor do they care. They have all the bread and circuses they want, so that is all that matters. With brainless diversions, prime-time sleaze and smut, and brain-rotting ‘entertainment’ streamed into our homes 24/7, we have the perfect recipe for killing a culture.

Spiritual considerations

If you think that I am some sort of connoisseur of these shows, you are mistaken. As mentioned, it is nearly impossible NOT to stumble upon them when surfing the channels. And no, I do not normally write about such things either. But there is a reason for why I have penned this piece today.

In my morning reading of Scripture, I came upon one of a number of key prophetic passages which are directly aimed at women. With the Ancient Near East being such a male-dominated and strongly patriarchal culture, one might be surprised at this. But not only do we have prophetic words delivered specifically to women, we also have female prophets! As to the latter, consider these:

Miriam – Exodus 15:20
Deborah – Judges 4:4
Hulda – 2 Chronicles 34:22
An unnamed prophetess – Isaiah 8:3
Anna – Luke 2:36
Four daughters – Acts 21:9

As to the former, the main such passages are these: Isaiah 3:16-4:6; Isaiah 32:9-14; Jeremiah 44:15-30; Ezekiel 13:17-?19; and Amos 4:1-2. And if you think this is just Old Testament stuff, we get a similar sort of word being given in 1 Peter 3:1-7.

The text I read this morning was from Amos. The first verse and a half say this:

“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan,
    who are on the mountain of Samaria,
who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
    who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’
The Lord God has sworn by his holiness
    that, behold, the days are coming upon you,
when they shall take you away…”

Consider also Isaiah 3:16-17:

The Lord says,
    “The women of Zion are haughty,
walking along with outstretched necks,
    flirting with their eyes,
strutting along with swaying hips,
    with ornaments jingling on their ankles.
Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion;
    the Lord will make their scalps bald.”

If you have ever seen any these dreadful reality TV shows, you cannot help but think of these prophetic words delivered against these sorts of women. And yes, I am sure Amos and the others did not have in mind the real housewives of Beverley Hills or Miami when they made their denunciations. But one can certainly apply these warnings in such modern contexts.

And sure, all these women (and any husbands, boyfriends, children involved, etc.), certainly do need our prayers big time. They massively need the Lord. Talk about an utterly wasted life and a dead-end lifestyle. Sorry gals, but being stinking rich, having non-stop parties, drinking gallons of champagne, arguing with your ‘friends’, shopping till you drop, and so on, are NOT the reasons why we were created.

It is clear from the prophetic word that unless these women repent and allow God to turn their lives around, their future does not look very bright. Indeed, it is wanton and wasteful lifestyles like this that bring on the judgment of God. Just ask Amos and the other prophets.

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