Originally posted on Facebook on Tuesday, October 12, 2021.

I don't know about #BelieveWomen, but I do listen and it makes me both sad and angry that women walk around in fear of being attacked or sexually assaulted. When I consider that women I love are subjected to this; my wife, mom, my sweet nieces, friends and sisters in Christ, my anger is multiplied by orders of magnitude. It's become something I am constantly aware of.

Just this morning, I arrived at the gym when it was still dark. As I pulled into a parking space, there was a young woman sitting in her car with the door ajar and her foot on the ground. It appeared as though she was still getting things together to carry them inside. When I drove up and she noticed that I was a man, she put both feet back inside the car and closed her door.

I understood the gesture right away. It was so brief and fluid that you would have missed it if you weren't paying attention or if you didn't care. I purposefully avoided any sudden movement that could be interpreted as aggression. I left my truck running with the interior lights on and the brake lights depressed to indicate that I wasn't getting out immediately. Shortly thereafter, she got out of her car and I was careful to stay put until she hurriedly made it all the way into the gym.

It is heartbreaking that this is the world she and other women live in, one where THEY KNOW THEY ARE NOT SAFE. A world that I, as a man, have contributed to by participating in a system of value that reduces people, women especially, to things to be used for our personal satisfaction and pleasure. I participate in this system whenever I look upon a woman and by reducing her existence to whatever physical attribute has caught my attention at the moment, taking the liberty to give myself visual access to her body with complete disregard for her as a person and lewdly imagining how I want to consume, use and discard her for my momentary enjoyment as though she were some worthless, disposable toy. All of this happens in a mere moment and with just a look. And every time it happens, it adds to the great swell of violence, lewdness and insecurity that women live in.

I repent!

"Lord, I deeply regret my contribution to the danger and insecurity that women suffer, the harm I have done and the separation I have caused between women and the truth of what You created them to be. Please give me Your heart that I may believe about them what You say. Help me, Lord, to see women as You see them: as co-rulers of the earth, co-creators, co-heirs, the other half of the same whole, fellow vessels through whom precious gifts from God flows. I ask these things to further the work of my elder brother, your Son, Jesus Christ to reconcile all creation, including women, to You. Amen."

The real solution to the problem of violence against women will take much more than tactics, it requires a change of heart and a whole new system of belief and value.

Men, we must be born again.