Don't Do It Just Like the World, but Expect Different Results

I was prompted to blog today by this post over at Dalrock.

Dalrock was asked some questions by a commenter named Rachel about how to help her daughters find husbands. Her inquiries concerned her daughters' behavior with young men and whether a Christian girl should "settle" in choosing a marriage partner. This mother obviously has concerns about her daughters being at risk for spinsterhood and she wants to avoid that. 

While Rachel didn't mention her husband, Dalrock said that she does have a husband. If that is the case, why is she not following his lead on this matter of marrying off the daughters? Why did Dalrock, who blogs specifically for Christian men, not direct her to seek wisdom from her husband? To his credit, Dalrock admitted that he has no experience in this area. But one thing I have learned from knowing God is that God empowers those whom He has put in authority and gives wisdom to those who ask, without upbraiding.

Unfortunately, Dalrock went on to offer advice on the behavior of young women in general. By doing this, he is consenting to the presupposition that single women should be on the hunt for their own husbands and that they are somehow qualified by their design to do this. It is saying, if only we can explain these things to women, they will behave exactly correctly and use good judgment and make right decisions. And yet we know, and Dalrock knows from his years in the manosphere that women, by their very design, do NOT make good decisions based on reason and sense.

Women are simply unqualified to decide who they should marry. It isn't a matter of intelligence or training. It isn't even a matter of godly character.

What should Dalrock have done instead? He should have appealed to men who have already had success with their daughters. He should have appealed to men who have spent years studying the Bible to see what God has said about marriage, about sex, and about avoiding fornication. Interestingly, in the comments, such a man appeared!

Most of the comments consist of complaining about how awful women are and how hopeless it is to think a man can get a good wife or that daughters can be raised to adulthood without rebelling and fornicating and choosing the world over Christ. And when a commenter suggests that dads can have fulfilling marriages and joyful daughters who look to dad to find them a husband by following the guidance of the Word, the other men pile on with shouts of "You'll go to jail!" "It can't be done!" "It's too hard!" "No one will like you!"

Yes. Daddy is not a popular guy. So what? Do you want your daughter to be a fornicator or a spinster? Do you want her to be a shrieking feminist? If not, take heart. God is good and He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

There are a LOT of comments, so hopefully this link will take you to where the good comments start.

Dreams of Our Daughters

At some point before our daughter was married, my husband was speaking with the father of a man who could have been a potential suitor. My husband was explaining to the father that our daughter had been prepared for marriage and that she was looking forward to becoming a wife and a mother. Then, as if the father had not heard a thing that was said he responded with, "That's all fine, but what are her dreams?"

Huh? What are her dreams? Did you just hear what my husband said? She wants to be a wife. She is looking forward to fulfilling the role for which she was created. Only women can be wives. Only women can be mothers. It is the most important thing she will ever do. She will impact the lives of countless thousands by becoming a wife.

I am somewhat confused as to why men would find it an attractive trait in a potential wife that she wants to be something other than a wife.

Perhaps I have been jaded by the lies I've been told by both the world AND the church. Actually, I KNOW I'm jaded by it. I am not going to pass along those lies to my daughters. It is depressing to think that they may embrace such lies after they leave my home, but they certainly won't hear them from me. And I will actively work to prepare them to resist untruth.

So you can imagine how refreshed I was to read this post at Chalcedon by Jenni Zimmerman. I hope you will click on the link and see what she has to say about their oldest daughter.

Like EVERY author I have read in my life, I don't agree with absolutely everything Jenni says. I don't even agree with everything I've ever written. So I will just say up front, in case anyone is wondering, I do not agree with this statement that she makes, and don't believe the Bible teaches or supports this view of wives:

 She is chief counselor to her husband, knowing the word of God alongside him, giving godly counsel when needed.

Raising daughters is difficult. I appreciate what the Zimmermans are doing with their daughters and I stand with them, encouraging them to stay the course. Perhaps it won't be long until their oldest daughter is married and putting all of her good training to use. 

BFF... or Not

I was recently reading Marriage God's Way. My husband asked me to read it so that we could discuss it before he would be giving some feedback to a friend who wanted his opinion on the book. I don't intend for this post to be a review of the book, although I am writing one. Here, I just want to address something that the author, Scott LaPierre, says on page 61,

...we forget that marriage should actually be the union of two best friends... Your spouse should be your best friend.

This sort of statement has always rubbed me the wrong way and I have never taken the time to really put my finger on why this bothers me. Sometimes I see a meme or something that says, "Share if your husband is your best friend" and I just cringe. What is with this modern obsession with friends and best friends?

The basis for my disgust with this notion is that a friendship is fundamentally a non-sexual relationship. Having sex with a friend transforms the relationship to something else entirely. We try to be clever and use terms like "friends with benefits," but the truth is that we don't have sex with friends. Having sex with a person means the person is a lover (in the case of fornicators) or a spouse, in the case of married people.

Different types of relationships have different titles, naturally. The woman who gave birth to me is my mother. The way we are related tends to set the parameters of the relationship. While not every parent/child relationship is identical (since no two people are exactly alike), every parent/child relationship has similar elements. For starters, I don't have sex with my mother or my father, pretty much by definition. Just as I don't have sex with my friends. Mothers and fathers are entitled to honor and there is an exalted status that goes with the parenthood relationship which is not enhanced by referring to them as my friends. But for some reason, in America, the culture gives exalted status to friendship over every other relationship, so that it isn't respectable to be a sister, brother or uncle unless that is qualified with ,"but I consider him a friend."

Not only do we want to have lots of friends and we want to lump every person related to us in any capacity into the group titled "friends." We also like to rate our friends. We have good friends, close friends, old friends and la creme' de la creme', the "best friend." This friend is sometimes referred to as the BFF (best friend forever). But there can only be one BEST friend, right? Otherwise it isn't the best. This is problematic.

Why is it problematic? you may ask. Because we are asking our friends to compete for the title. This is my friend, Jenny, and this is my friend, Mary, and THIS is my best friend, Rita! Now Rita gets to bask in her elevated title and the other gals get to feel inferior and plot how they can knock Rita from the pedestal to which she was exalted. Imagine if Jenny considered me to be her best friend, and I just stated that my best friend is Rita. This is not only confusion, it is cruel and pretty stupid.

Now, let us factor males and females into this mix. Let's say an unmarried woman by the name of Jane has male and female friends. Todd is one of her friends. Todd would like to be more than a friend to Jane, but so far, Jane doesn't seem to share this interest. Jane has declared that Maria is her BFF. According to Scott LaPierre, "marriage should actually be the union of two best friends" so does Jane marry her friend Maria? Of course not. Can Jane marry Todd? I mean, he isn't her best friend.

If Jane decides that Todd would be a good marriage partner, does she have to wait to marry him until Todd achieves BFF status with Jane? What if Todd and Jane become best friends and they don't want to marry? Are they forever forbidden from marrying other people unless they break up as BFFs?

I submit that "husband" is a superior relationship status to "best friend." It is superior in quality and fundamentally different in expression. The husband/wife relationship is, at its base, a sexual relationship. A one-flesh relationship. If I were to refer to my husband as my best friend, it would be a downgrade from the exalted status he holds in my life.

In our relationships with people, we should use care not to become conformed to this world, or to a particular culture. There is a biblical culture that transcends time and location. When God created marriage, He did not look around at the various existing relationships and say "A spouse is like a friend, but of the very best sort."  Instead, he created marriage to illustrate to us the relationship between Christ and the Church. It is valid in every corner of the globe and in every culture. While it might be comfortable for an American to say that his wife is his best friend, in other cultures that idea might be totally preposterous. It just doesn't compute. "A friend? Are you kidding? She's my WIFE!" Because the answers to "what is a friend?" and "who can be my friend" are not universal, we should not be proclaiming that in "marriage God's way" a spouse is a best friend. God did not say such a thing and the Bible doesn't endorse this idea.

Outside of marriage, Americans are equally careless in identifying, quantifying and rating friendships. We would do better to limit the use of friend and to use other more specific terms to define what other people are to us. For example, a person I have just met is more properly described as an acquaintance. In the same way, the men that I know are my husband's friends or the husbands of my friends. I try to never call men my friends. It is not appropriate for men and women to be in friendships as that relationship is thought of in America.

Between the same sex, as in friendships between women, it is wise to identify no particular woman as a best friend. I forbid my children from using this terminology. Among girls, it is almost dangerous because of the multiple ways they will hurt each other by classifying each other. It is ok to say that someone is a close friend, because I may have several women who fit that description. I can say from experience that these sorts of friendships are transitory because life is not static. A close friend to an unmarried woman may move from the inner circle when the woman marries, or when she has children. People change churches and move to other towns and their circles of friends are ever shifting. There is nothing wrong with this and no one should feel burdened to maintain a close friendship whose season in life has passed.

So there. I've said it. My husband is NOT my best friend. He is dearer to me than any other. We share a oneness that no other type of relationship can approach. He is not threatened by my relationships with my close friends, because the nature of my relationship with him and my relationships with my women friends are so completely different in quality. If I were to expect from him the things I look for from my friends, it would be wearisome to him. Likewise, he doesn't look to me for friendship. It doesn't mean we don't have fun together, or that we don't share common interests. We do. But those things do not define our relationship as husband and wife.

I think the author has a presupposition that everyone should have a best friend, and so it is understandable that such a thing might be seen to compete with or endanger the relationship between a husband and wife. Therefore, it would naturally follow (from the presupposition) that husbands and wives should be best friends. However, the Bible doesn't prescribe having a best friend, and it is a good practice for Christians to avoid such decisive relationships. Instead, just call a friend a friend and call a spouse a spouse.

Identity, Politics, and Culture

Society is one thing and civilization is another. Ants have societies. Bees have societies. They can't build civilizations.

Western civilization was built by white men of European decent. The United States of America was founded and built by white men of European decent. In the United States today, white men of European decent have completely different ideas about how what is left of our civilization should be run compared to the ideas held by nearly every other demographic. (White women, by a slim majority, still side with white men.)

What makes non-whites think that they are entitled to take over what is left of western civilization? Why should white men give up everything they have built and fought to keep just because non-whites and feminists are screeching at them? The principles and ideals of white men gave us what we have. What makes us think we can keep what we have or make progress toward a better future if the reins of power are turned over to people who have NOT built western civilization and who don't even espouse or understand the concepts of private property, liberty, Christianity, and self-government?

Keep shrieking about misogyny and racism. Keep trying to convince sane people that gender is fluid and more than binary. You will forever relegate yourself to the camp of the discivic. Those ideas don't build, they only destroy.

I'm not a Trump supporter. This election was just a snapshot of the state of identity politics in the Untied States right now. God is sovereign. He may choose to use the non-white demographic's political ideals (or lack thereof) to destroy and judge the USA. But if He does, that doesn't mean that God is on that side. He used Babylon to judge Israel; that wasn't God's endorsement of Babylon.

We can't expect to allow the demographics of the USA to continue to change while simultaneously expecting the USA to remain free. The non-white people want something else. They will turn the USA into the image of whatever they came here from. Even if they've been here for 2 or 3 generations.

Vox Day has more to say on his blog.

R.C. Sproul Jr. on the Evangelical Mind

My favorite quote from this article by R.C. Sproul, Jr. is this:

Their holy creed, their most sacred truth is that there is no truth. They may reign, but they are naked. And we are fools if we think we will gain a hearing by taking off our own clothes.

I also really like this one:

The danger, however, is that there is the thinnest and faintest of lines between wanting to do great things for the kingdom and wanting to be great in the kingdom. In like manner there is a rather thin line between wanting to think great thoughts and being thought great.

Dalrock on Boisterous Women

I'm just going to leave this right here.

Dalrock on Boisterous Women

Dalrock has rules for commenting that I don't have, so feel free to comment here, especially if you are a woman.

Finding a Spouse - WWJD?

Wouldn't it be great if we knew how God would find a bride for his Son?

Then, just to make sure we are understanding the picture correctly, and to give a hint of how we could do it, maybe God should give an example in the Bible of a godly man (maybe Abraham?) getting a bride for his son?

Naw. We should just invent stuff for ourselves. After all, if God wanted us to understand marriage better, He would have given us some direction.

Inside the Mind of a Political Liberal

Vox Day says that the mindset of a liberal is "entirely alien" to him. I have to admit that is my experience as well. After reading this article I have a bit more insight into an ideology built almost entirely on feelings without logical support.

Model Penal Code - From the Pit of Hell

Because of my support of theonomy, it should come as no surprise that I have an interest in how men form their legal codes. It is frustrating to me that most Americans (including most lawyers) have no real understanding of how the United States arrived at their current catastrophe consisting of federal and state law codes. Government education is so inadequate in teaching this that it hardly bears mentioning, but it is sad beyond measure that private schools and Christian schools don't do it any better.

A brief summary of the history of American law goes something like this:  The colonists brought the English Common Law with them when they settled here. The English Common Law draws much of its precepts from the abuses addressed by the Magna Carta as well as from what is often called "natural law" but was more directly drawn from the Ten Commandments. Law was not enshrined in the form of statutes until later. Instead, judges and juries applied the principles of the Common Law to cases, and if there were appeals, the opinions of the judges in those appeals became precedent for future cases, analyzing the specifics of the cases with the enduring principles of law.

Over time, individual colonies, and then states, began to collect their various ordinances and statutes into books. Legislatures became busy bees, drafting new laws as often as they met. This departure from the Common Law led to the birth of the idea that law evolves. Since law evolves, and man is constantly gaining new understanding of how men should relate, it becomes not only preferred, but necessary to revise the actions defined as criminal and punishments proscribed for their violations. Lawyers and legal scholars began to complain about the differences in laws from state to state. Not because there was something fundamentally wrong with creating new law (which there is) but because the legal elite wanted to be in charge of writing those laws, rather than leaving to mere legislators.

Enter The American Law Institute in 1923.  ALI formed a committee to write the document which would become the Model Penal Code. This document was intended, as the name suggests, to be a model for all of the states to adopt as their own state statutes, thereby creating a more uniform set of laws across the several states. It became the new Ten Commandments for a justice system seeking to rid itself of all relations to religion. The result was a separation of the justice system from all justice.

Unfortunately, this abomination is widely praised, endorsed and nearly worshiped by Christians. People will accept all manner of injustice in order to avoid the Law of God. "Any law but God's!" is their cry. While God's so-called people will give lip service to the Ten Commandments and assert that all modern law flows from God's law, they are incapable of showing any connection when challenged. One of the most common "arguments" I hear is that God's command for people to be held responsible for the damages to persons resulting from a fall from their roof is justification for every modern law from building codes, to speeding tickets, to laws against spitting on the sidewalk. I have heard people argue that the Cities of Refuge are justification for keeping criminals in prison.

Show me any positive reference to prisons in the Scriptures. Show me any place in the Law of God where punishment for a crime involves incarceration. You won't find it because that is an abomination. Holding men, created in the image of God, in a cage without access to other humans, to sunshine, to productive work is the very definition of inhumane. The Law of God doesn't even distinguish between what we call "criminal law" and what is called "tort law" or "civil law." There was no difference because justice is focused on restoration and reconciliation, not punishment, isolation and life-long labels.

The subject is vast and can't really be covered in a blog post, but I needed to get this off my chest. I see that the ALI is now working to re-write the Model Penal Code where it touches sexual assault because man's understanding of this issue has allegedly evolved again. No doubt this new revision will further erode fundamental rights of due process and purposely weigh the law against men in favor of women's perceptions of truth.

The Model Penal Code is anti-marriage, anti-family and anti-Christ. It is injustice codified. It is an idolatrous and godless generation that seeks to make man better by increasing the reach of laws. Submit yourself to the perfect law of liberty and you will have no need for any other. 

A Working Definition of Marriage

For several years now I have been continuing to study marriage. Primarily I want my understanding of it to be formed by what God has revealed in the Scriptures. God ordained and instituted marriage, so any definition or description that contradicts what He ordained must necessarily be incorrect.

In addition to the Scriptures, I have also looked at history, at culture, and into the writings of others on the subject. In order for a working definition of marriage to be accurate, it must be universal. I covered this in an earlier post, but I will repeat it here because it is important to my conclusion. A marriage must be a marriage in every time, in every country, in every culture, or else it isn't a marriage in any. An accurate definition of marriage can be held up to any putative marriage and everyone should be able to conclude whether the relationship we are examining IS or IS NOT a marriage. There should be no question. This would include the first marriage, of Adam and Eve, and the marriages of tribal people, modern western people, and even the marriages formed under the auspices of pagan religions.

I would also like to address the question, "Why does this matter?" It matters because God has said that the transgression of His Law is sin. As believers, we are to purify ourselves, we are to repent of sin and to walk in righteousness. In order to do that, we must be able to identify sin and righteousness. In addition, since God has declared that marriages are created as a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church, if we have an inaccurate view of marriage, we are lying about the gospel. God has said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." God regulates sexual activity and He has stated the only place that sexual relations are permitted is within marriage. All sexual relations outside of marriage violate His command. This means that we must know whether we are in a marriage or not, and in terms of dealing with sin in the church and the greater community, we must know if other people are in marriages or not.

So here it is, my working definition of marriage:

A life-long union between a man and woman which has been publicly declared and sexually consummated, and where the union is not otherwise prohibited by the Law of God.

It has 5 elements which can be compared to any alleged marriage to see if it is, in fact, a marriage. Firstly a marriage is to last for the entire life of either the husband or wife. In some marriage ceremonies we hear the words, "For as long as you both shall live." Marriages do not extend beyong the death of one of the parties, they don't last into heaven, but neither can they be temporary, ending before the death of one of the parties.

In the past it would have seemed silly to mention that one party to a marriage needs to be a man and one needs to be a woman, but recent history requires me to assert that if this second element is not present, there is no marriage. This is true because God specifically ordained the sexes for marriage at the time He instituted marriage and also because God has prohibited sexual relations between those of the same sex in His Law.

The third element is a public declaration. There is no such thing as a secret marriage. Violating a marriage can be a death penalty offense, so those who are married have a duty to the rest of the world to hold themselves out as married.

The fourth element is sexual consummation. Husbands and wives are not mere roommates, they are sexual partners. There is no such thing as a platonic marriage.  We also need the fifth element, where no marriage can exist contrary to the Law of God because God has specifically forbidden certain people from marrying each other, even if they meet all the elements, such as mothers and sons.

Some people would try to add other elements or place other types burdens on the simplicity of marriage, but that becomes problematic when questions start to be asked, such as, "Were Adam and Eve married?" "Are people who were forced into marriages really married?" "How can we determine if the people in our church who are living together and/or having sex are actually married?"

This simple definition of marriage also makes it easy to distinguish between a man and woman who are betrothed (covenanted to marry) and a man and woman who are married. 

The Measles - I'm Not Frightened

At some point we need to wake up to the fact that our government, in order to remain relevant and to make sure we understand how desperately we need it, is continually manufacturing fear. Terrorists! Ebola! Vampires! and now Measles! 

Don't believe the hype. Don't get frightened. The chance of someone dying from measles in the United States is something like .2% And that would require that a person actually contract measles. Currently there have been about 100 cases in the current outbreak. So that is 100 out of 350,000,000 people, right? Last year there were between 600 and 700 cases nationwide.

One of the most interesting things about this scare compared to past scares is the the thing itself is not even all that scary. If you happen to be the one poor soul who encounters a murderous terrorist or contracts ebola, you are in deep doo-doo. But even if, regardless of the narrow odds, you DO contract measles, it is not likely to change your life at all.

Take positive actions to keep yourself healthy and resistant to all infectious diseases, not just measles, by eating real food, keeping sugar to a minimum and making sure you have sufficient vitamin D.  No need to let fear cause you to inject poisons into your body (or the bodies of your children) under the false belief that it will make you safe. Life isn't safe. But we can make it safer. Wellness isn't something you put into your body, it is something your body gives you as a reward for treating it as the Designer intended.

Sexuality in Design vs. Churchianity

I've read a couple of strange articles on the web lately concerning Christian young women and chastity. One of them was by a woman lamenting that she had remained a (technical) virgin until marriage and the second was by a self-proclaimed Christian that had given up on chastity and decided that sex outside of marriage was not only ok, it was superior to chastity.

While both of these young women make ridiculous claims about both Christianity and sexuality, they also both are exposing something that I do believe is a genuine problem within the modern, western Church. That problem is a wrong, completely wrong view about human sexuality. And they both claim that they were taught this at church, which I believe. We are not excused from knowing and acting on the truth just because we were taught a falsehood at church, however. We, believers, have the Bible and Holy Spirit, so if we are ignorant, we are without excuse. As an older woman and as a mother, I would like to offer some counsel to younger woman about sexuality and God's design for it.

First, what is this wrong belief that is held by so many within churchianity? It is simply that sex is bad. Sex is icky. Sex is a necessary evil. Only bad girls want to have sex. Only men enjoy sex. Along with that goes the equally wrong belief that sexual desire is evidence of sin. It is time for Christians to acknowledge the obvious; all people are sexual beings. Sexuality is one of the characteristics that belongs to all people, particularly from the onset of puberty.

Why is it dangerous to ignore, or worse to deny, the sexuality of all humans? It causes us to do stupid things. It causes us to make bad decisions. It harms people. It destroys marriages. Pretty serious accusations, but I think I can defend them.

How does denying the sexuality of young men and women cause us to do stupid things? Primarily it causes us to push young women and men together while expecting them to behave as non-sexual beings. This is stupid. A better practice would be to embrace the sexuality of young people, to encourage them in it and to train them in how to use it properly while keeping men and women mostly separate. This is how most societies have dealt with sexuality throughout history and it has worked rather well. Men don't have women for friends. Men and women don't work together in offices or go on business trips together. They don't hang out together on the couches in the youth group meeting.

What we need to realize is that God actually designed women to respond in a sexual way to men. There are all sorts of hormones involved and possibly pheromones (although this has not yet been proven). There are certain frequencies of sound, certain smells, etc. that actually cause sexual arousal on varying levels in women. The same is true for men, of course, but I'm not talking about that here. The purpose is rather obvious, when a woman is given to a man to be his wife one of the first things that they are going to do is exercise their sexuality to the maximum by becoming one flesh. In order for that be pleasurable, as designed, both bodies must prepare physically for the act. These preparations are not limited to the time they spend in bed. Which is why it is stupid for men and women to be interacting closely outside of a marriage relationship. We don't WANT Susie getting all hot and bothered by Roger's arm brushing up against hers on the youth group couch. Susie may not want it and Roger may not want it, either. But we can't make it NOT happen. So the best thing to do is keep them apart.

As an American, I have always been curious about other cultures. Those people over on the other side of the world are so foreign to me, that it is sometimes impossible for me to reach any sort of understanding about what they are doing. I have made it a life-long practice to judge them for their primitive ways when the truth is, I have absolutely no context for analyzing what I was seeing. For example, I have seen photos or videos of groups of girls in other countries. I know they are not in America because of the dress of the girls. In some countries, those gals are really made up. They have jewelry or painted hair and brightly colored printed dresses, scarves or wraps of some sort. Sometimes they have their heads covered or even have veils on their faces. But what I notice is that they are not mixed with boys, and when boys pass by, or they are talking about a group of boys, the girls will giggle or laugh and blush and lift a veil across the lower face. These young women are very, very aware of their sexuality. And they seem to know that those boys in that group over there are going to become their future lovers and husbands. They are clearly excited about it, they seem to look forward to it without fear. But one thing is certain, they are kept absolutely apart from those young men until the time is right for all that sexuality to manifest itself.

In the past, I would have used my own experiences and attributed my own sort of feelings to those girls. I would have thought that they were like the group of wall flowers at a junior high dance, waiting and hoping that a boy would come ask them to dance. But the stakes for these girls is much higher than a dance. They are waiting for husbands. And they are not waiting in the sense of "I sure hope one of them picks me." They are waiting for the right time when the husband who has already been picked will be permitted to come get her. They wait with anticipation and with joy. Not with dread or fear.

How is this different from and really superior to the way we do it here? The typical church-raised girl in America will be doing very different things in her post-pubescent years. At the time when her sexuality is rising to its peak she will be thrown into mixed groups of other pubescent folk. She will be told to guard her own chastity and to suppress her sexuality. She will be told to "just be friends" with boys, the same as with girls. She will be forced to compete with her girl friends for the attentions of boys, because woe is the one who gets left behind in the marriage race. No one is making sure that she gets picked. No one is guarding her chastity for her. She will be permitted, like Jacob's daughter, Dinah, to go down to town to look around. She may or may not be warned that men will want to seduce her, but what good is a warning against the charms of a man? We are so incredibly stupid.

We will expect an American Christian young woman to carry on like this for a decade or more. From perhaps the age of 12 to the age of 20, 25 or even 30. We will expect her to date and spend time alone, in the dark, with men. But we don't want her to rush into marriage. Not when there are so many other important things she should be doing for Christ. Like getting her college education. Like getting settled in a career. Like setting up her own home. Like getting her first cat. Then when her best child-bearing years are behind her and she is losing the bloom of youth, we may permit her to entertain the idea of marriage, if there is a young man perfect enough for her.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that at the age of 28 she does find Mr. Perfect and he agrees to make her Mrs. Perfect. What does she have to look forward to now? Her sexuality is finally going to be let out of the bottle, but she has spent years and years beating it down. When it attempted to rise up, perhaps she gave in to fantasies or self-pleasuring, and then felt so much guilt for her in ability to contain. She shouldn't be having sexual desire outside of marriage! And she has learned to associate sexual desire with bad feelings, with guilty feelings. She is like Pavlov's dog. She thought an impure thought and WHAM! guilt. Now what happens when her husband approaches her? She recoils. It makes her feel dirty to accept, it makes her feel dirty to say, "That feels good.", so she doesn't. She let's him do what he needs to do, but she can't bring herself to enjoy it properly or to encourage him, so he feels rejected. Their marriage is not off to a good start.

Dear sisters, let us not so mistreat our own daughters. Let us not teach them to despise God's gifts. Let us not teach them to suppress their desires. Instead, let's encourage our husbands to find husbands for our daughters as soon as is practical. Don't make her wait until she has done X or Y or even Z. Don't reject suitors for being too immature. How mature was your husband at 19 or 20?

If they cannot contain, let them marry. So says Paul, and so say I.

And to any of you who do not enjoy the marriage bed to the fullest, contact me. I may be able to explain what you are doing wrong. Because you are definitely doing it wrong if it isn't fun.

Divorce is Bad... mmmm kay?

Divorce is a terrible thing. I'm talking about what is called "putting away" in the King James Bible. Under the Law, there is no provision for a woman to "put away" her husband. Putting away, in the law, refers to a man deciding to no longer treat his wife as a wife. He denies her food, shelter or the marriage bed. Under those circumstances, the man must grant his wife a bill of divorce so that she is then free to live on her own, to return to her father's house or to marry another man without being charged with adultery.

Modernly, both men and women put away their spouses and we commonly refer to this as divorce, based upon the legal implications. I'll repeat my opening statement here: Divorce is a terrible thing. Divorce is putting asunder what God has joined and Jesus warned us not to do it. Unfortunately, it is pretty common today. This wouldn't be so distressing to me except that it occurs within the church nearly as often as it does outside the church. My dear brethen, this ought not to be.

I've seen the statistic that two-thirds of divorces in the U.S. are initiated by the wife. I don't have any reason to dispute that fact. What is even more disgusting than the fact so many women are willing to openly blow up their families and cause harm to the their children because they are not haaaaaaaapppy is there are even more women who are looking for the chance to do the same. There are women, even Christian women, who are privately hoping their husbands will have an affair so they can have an excuse to divorce them. And some do even more than merely hope, they scheme and behave in ways that will encourage a husband to have an affair. For example, withholding sex with the hopes that their husbands will either divorce them or have an affair.

I won't go into detail about it but I encourage you to read what Dalrock wrote about it here.

Interestingly, right after I read Dalrock's post I was directed to this article at the Huffington Post titled 5 Reasons You Should Have Sex With Your Husband Every Night. It was a perfectly reasonable admonition written for women who really want to have happy husbands and good marriages. The comments were somewhat predictable. There were the feminists who objected to the idea of a woman trying to make a husband happy. There were the naysayers pointing out that men were supportive in the comments because men are predictably all about sex.  What was a bit surprising to me were the number of women who admitted in the comments that they don't want to have sex with their husbands and don't intend to do it, no matter if it makes him miserable. And one of them said something like, "I've told my husband he isn't going to get it here, so he should just go have an affair and then come tell me about it."

Apparently women, themselves, admit they withhold sex and want their husbands to have affairs. What she didn't admit, but which is to be assumed, is if her husband actually followed her advice, she would be filing for divorce faster than a rabbit running from hoe-wielding gardener, on her way to collecting cash and prizes. And, of course, her husband gets to be the bad guy.

I know of a woman who claims to be a Christian that went so far as to press charges against her husband for raping her. After he went to prison, she was able to quickly get her divorce and sole custody. Who can be against a woman whose ex-husband is a convicted rapist, right? Never mind that the alleged "victim" lived with him, shared a bed with him and didn't bother to move out after the first so-called rape. She stayed until "it" happened 3 times. So, since they are one flesh, I guess he also raped himself? What is marriage if it isn't de facto consent to a sexual relationship? But she just couldn't bring herself to divorce him when she had decided not to have sex with him anymore? She had to wait until she had deprived him and provoked him to the point that he did something not approved by the state? She had to destroy his life to get what she wanted? Apparently, yes, because otherwise SHE would be held morally responsible for the divorce in the eyes of the church. This way, she is the victim. Too bad he didn't just go have an affair. It would have turned out better for him.

Lest anyone would believe that I always assume the woman is responsible in a divorce, that is not the case. It is the case more often than not, but it isn't always the case. In the same manner, I believe that divorced women tend to be pariahs in the church, but I know that isn't true with all of them. A divorced woman is usually a danger to be avoided by a man looking for a wife, but sometimes she is a gem.

I wish the church would do more to discipline those who frivorce. (frivolous divorce) their spouses. I wish that Christians would be more outspoken about the damage divorce causes to children. I wish that people would direct their outrage at those who spread the disease of divorce in the church rather than at those who express their disgust with divorcers. I was accused of being mean for referring to the child of an unwed mother as a "bastard", but was the mother accused of being mean for bringing a child into the world who doesn't get to have a father living in his house? Her choice is ok, but me pointing out her choice is mean? Which of us does more damage to the child? When she starts caring about the welfare of her spawn, I may care also. Until she does, don't direct your attacks at me. I'm just a by-stander who will probably be asked to contribute to the care of said child because compassion.

In conclusion, God hates divorce. God does not like the perpetuation of bastardy. God intends for sex and procreation to occur within the context of marriage and He intends for the marriages to be life-long. That is God's program. Please get with the program or stop saying you are a disciple of Christ.

Keepers At Home

If those words sound familiar, you may be one who reads the Bible in the King James Version. Here is the passage from which it comes:

The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;
That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.    Titus 2:3-5

We shouldn't be confused into thinking that the admonition for women to be "keepers at home" means that women should not work. Of course women should work. Everyone should work; men, women and children. Working is part of God's design for us to be fruitful and to take dominion over the earth. The aged women don't teach the young women NOT to work, they teach them to be workers or keepers at home. Or at the homestead, or within the household, or to work within the goals and requirements of the household. 

Sometimes non-believers can explain it better. Here is a game-blogger who is concerned about the destruction of western civilization who is explaining why women working outside of the home are contributing to that decline: http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/the-working-womans-new-master/

Within the church we seem to be oblivious to what creates sexual attraction in women while secular observers are not afraid to state what they see and to take note of what to avoid when trying to prevent divorce and adultery. From the above linked blog post:

What we have today is that same working-woman hypergamy now directed to powerful men who are not her husband. The modern wife leaves the world of her husband every morning to submit to sexy male rulers presiding over the parallel world she inhabits during the day. She still has a boss, but it’s no longer her husband. The temptation for her to cheat, either bodily or in mind, must be great. The male equivalent would be as if dutiful husbands were catered to on the job by a steady stream of swimsuit models. Even the firmest virtue will bend to perpetual succulent vice. 

When I was first married, I was working at a law office. My boss was a male lawyer. I only continued working to finish up some projects in which my contributions were important to the clients, then I quit. But my husband had this to say about those days when I was still working, "This is not what I felt about you working for X (name of lawyer), but another form of it was the inherent betrayal of loyalty to me.  You were required to act in the best interest of your boss, over and above your duty to act in my best interest. Which is an unavoidable reality." I was only working two mornings per week, for a total of 8 hours, but even this small amount made our entire household subject to the needs of my boss and his schedule. As my husband noted, it is an unavoidable reality of employment. An employer really needs the commitment and loyalty of his staff to his goals and responsibilities. Even Jesus commented that no one can serve two masters. 

Without second-guessing what Paul had in mind when he wrote the letter to Titus, we can identify at least two very practical reasons why women should not be working outside of the home. The first is the temptation she will feel towards a man who is exhibiting alpha qualities and the second is that the woman is subjecting herself to a master who is not her husband, and therefore her husband has to become subordinate to her boss in terms of her time and efforts. Is any amount of income a fair trade-off for these threats to the marriage? 

When we look at the virtuous woman described in Proverbs 31, we don't see a woman who doesn't work. But we also don't see a woman who is the servant of another master, a master other than her husband. Her work originates in her husband's house and all of her work is for the enrichment and benefit of her husband's house. It isn't a separate, parallel world to the work of her husband. Her husband's heart safely trusts in her and her children will rise up and call her blessed.

To Court or Not to Court?

Court - The primary sense and application are not perfectly obvious. Most probably the word is from a verb which signifies to go round, to collect.  American Dictionary Of The English Language, Noah Webster, 1828

There are many English uses of the word "court" as both a noun and verb, and as a root word of such terms as "courtship" and "courtesan." I am particularly concerned in this blog post with the verb usage described by Noah Webster as:

In a general sense, to flatter; to endeavor to please by civilities and address; 2. To woo; to solicit for marriage.

This definition is adequate for my rejection of courting as a legitimate method for procuring a wife. At least when it comes to my sons and daughters. Selecting a spouse is too serious and important a matter to be reduced to flattery, solicitation and seduction. It is not enough for a young man to be able to woo and win the heart of a young woman. I'm sure there are thousands of men out there who could succeed at that task concerning my daughter. I believe it is in the nature of young women to be impressionable and to respond to such appeals from men. Even Eve, probably the purest and most intelligent woman who ever lived was wooed into a conversation with the serpent in the garden. His manner of address and civilities toward her were enough to overcome what should have been her hesitance to speak with him.

And why should a young man have to put all of his hopes for a good wife upon his success at being wily? Why should he be addressing himself at all to an impressionable young lady? If she falls for him, does that assure him she will be a good and faithful wife? If she doesn't fall for him, does that mean they shouldn't marry? We are talking about a woman who can't make a long term decision about hair style or shoes and we are putting it into her hands to decide whether she should or should not marry this man? What other good decisions has this young lady made? Is she the most qualified to make this very important decision? Do not men need to guard their hearts and be protected from heartbreak and rejection as much as women? Why should a man put it all out there with the potential to be stomped? How many men are willing to face the gauntlet of fickle female emotion? It is little wonder that many Christian young men are skipping this challenge and choosing to remain single.

If he should be successful in the wooing, he still has to face a myriad of other potential gate-closers. See my post here about that challenge.

Another usage of the word "court" contributes to my dislike of it as a method for finding a spouse. In nations that have a monarchy or aristocracy, the court refers to both the place of residence of a king or sovereign prince as well as the persons who compose the retinue or council of a king or emperor. (Thank you again, Mr. Webster) It came to include the social circle of the king/queen as well. Those who were in that circle could be said to be appearing "at court." Within this world of the court in Europe, including in Great Britain, the persons who appeared at court would engage in an immoral yet socially acceptable practice called courtship. This is where men of the aristocracy (the titled and privileged land-owning upper classes) would take both wives and mistresses from among the women at court. A woman at court, upon marriage, was expected to remain exclusive and faithful to her husband until she had born a son and heir to him. After that, she could engage in courtship activities and become the mistress of another, usually higher status, man. This practice still exists today in the English court. The current Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, the oldest son of Queen Elizabeth II has had many mistresses. After his marriage to Lady Diana Spencer he had two very prominent mistresses who were married to other men in the British aristocracy. Both of these women, Camilla Parker-Bowles and an Australian woman by the nickname of Kanga, took pauses in their relationships with the Prince while they bore children to their husbands, then resumed their affairs with Prince Charles.

My personal working definition of courtship is "a romantic/sexual relationship with a person to whom one is NOT married."

This definition describes the courtship practice of the British court as well as the practice of Christian dating which is also called courtship. I can already hear the argument, "But the Christians aren't having sex during courtship!" It doesn't matter to me. Romantic attraction IS sexual attraction and to stir up that sort of attachment is to stir up something which belongs exclusively to the realm of marriage. There is no practical or righteous reason to form romantic attachments outside of marriage. Romance belongs in sexual relationships, not platonic ones. To any given man all of the women he will meet will fall into one of two categories. Those categories are 1. Wife and 2. Not-the-Wife. If a woman is his wife, he should be free to engage her sexually and romantically. If a woman falls into the second category, Not-the-Wife, he MUST NOT engage her romantically or sexually. It doesn't matter if she is his mother, an elderly woman at church, the wife of his best friend or a single woman at the grocery store. All of those women fall into the same category. Would it be ok for the Pastor to place his hand on my leg while we sat next to each other in church? No? Why not? Because I am not his wife. Is it ok for a single young man to place his arm around a single young woman at church? No! Because she is not his wife. The Bible doesn't give any other categories such as "potential wife," "girl friend," "fiance'," etc. Therefore any practice which permits and encourages men to have romantic or sexual relations with women to whom they are not married is an immoral practice and I cannot support it.

In other countries the woman who serve as mistresses or concubines to the royalty are called courtesans, which comes from the same root word. A courtesan might be a paid prostitute or she might be accepting admission to the the world of the court as payment. In other cases she might be another member of the nobility.

I am advocating for parents to arrange marriages between their sons and daughters. Who has a deeper interest in the well-being, happiness and eternal soul of a person than his or her own father? Who in the family is most qualified to weigh the qualifications of a potential spouse in light of the character of his own son or daughter? A father can give a daughter in marriage thus relieving her of the burden of controlling and checking her own desires during a courtship. When the father gives her in marriage, she is completely free to give herself romantically and sexually to her husband without restraint. A son whose father finds him a wife is freed from the burden of supplicating to another father, or to multiple fathers to gain access to the opportunity to woo a daughter, only to suffer the humiliation of rejection. Once he is given a bride, he can be vulnerable to love her with his whole heart without fearing the pain of having his advances stopped by the woman, her parents, her pastor, her elders, her siblings or her girlfriends.

Another advantage to women having their fathers find them husbands is that they no longer have to live with the agonizing fear of "What if no one ever comes to court me?" "What if I don't get married?" Once her parents have determined that she will marry, they will make sure it happens. They don't have to sit at home waiting and hoping that Prince Charming will come, they can be out beating the bushes and looking for him. Perhaps we can end this shame of Christian women who want to marry but are still sitting at home waiting at the age of 30.

I'm going to repeat my working definition of courtship here and let the reader determine whether it is appropriate for Christians to support such a thing.

 A romantic/sexual relationship with a person to whom one is NOT married - Courtship

The Scientific Method Has Fallen Out Of Favor

Full disclosure -- I am not a scientist. I don't pretend to be a scientist and I don't play one on television. Some may describe me as an evangelical fundamentalist Bible-thumper and declare me to be, therefore, anti-science, but that is untrue: at least the "anti-science" part. I love science. I love discovery. I love how science has been used in the development of technologies that make my life better. I hate that under the guise of science certain entities have furthered their agendas and done damage to liberty, public and individual health and the reputation of true science. Of what do I speak, you ask? Vaccines.

If I have to hear one more accusation that I am brain-washed, that I only know one side of the debate or that I just don't "understand the science" I am going to scream. It is particularly irksome to hear these accusations from anyone who has never even read a single article, let alone an entire book, which questions the wisdom of vaccinations and cannot even reasonably state the objections against vaccines. These accusations almost always start with the straw man "I know you think vaccines cause autism, but this has been proven to be false." I have yet to tell a single person that I don't vaccinate my children because I am afraid the vaccines will give them autism. 

Besides being frustrated by the pro-vac crowd always telling me I'm ignorant and that my children live under a continual threat of death from the looming, evil chicken pox, I am also frustrated that almost no one in the anti-vac crowd confronts the underlying theory upon which the entire vaccine house-of-cards is built. I reject that theory and the vaccines that flow from it.

At the risk of having a bunch of scientists tell me I'm an ignoramus, I'm going to talk about the scientific method and why I admire it. I've taken several science classes in both high school and college. In most of those course I had to be able to demonstrate that I understand the basic concept of the method. It is called a method because it is a particular process, a series of steps, used to make discoveries. It isn't so much about proving things as it is about eliminating ideas that are not accurate. This is not how vaccine science works because the very foundation of this method is undermined. Using the scientific method any given hypothesis can be supported by testing or it can be eliminated  by testing. If the hypothesis is not tested (using the rules of the scientific method) or if testing is accepted as valid only when it validates the hypothesis, then whatever is being done is simply not science. It might be technical, it might involve scientific subjects, it might involve studies, but it is not science.

When a hypothesis is presented, a true scientist does not become so invested in the hypothesis being correct that he is unable to design or unwilling to use tests which will lead to the destruction of the hypothesis. For example, I will describe in very simple language the hypothesis behind why vaccines prevent disease. It goes something like this: In nature, if a person is exposed to a disease pathogen such as a bacteria (pertussis, for example) or a virus (chicken pox, for example), this exposure and subsequent disease process in the body cause the body to develop a resistance so that future exposure to the pathogen does not result in illness in that individual. The individual is said to be "immune." A vaccination is a process whereby the disease organism is introduced into the body in a manner that does not cause illness but stimulates the body to create the same or similar immune response as if it had contracted the illness, resulting in the individual becoming immune.

The hypothesis does not need to attempt to describe how the body creates an immune response or what the factors are within the body in order for the hypothesis to be tested. In the case of vaccines, another related hypothesis was developed which says, roughly, that the way the body exercises immunity is by creating antibodies which recognize and attack the disease organism if it should present itself to the body after the original exposure and that the existence of these antibodies is a legitimate test of immunity.  This hypothesis has already been disproved,  although support and belief in this hypothesis remains high within the pro-vac community.

The International Medical Council on Vaccination has posted an article this month dealing with the measles and the measles vaccine which shines a light on what happens when your hypothesis isn't testing out to be true and you persist in using it as a basis for dealing with disease. The information shared in this article has been around for over 50 years, that is, it is dealing with vaccine events that happened as far back as 1963 when the measles vaccine was first introduced in the United States. Reading this article just strengthened my suspicions that the whole vaccine theory is flawed.

My basic objection to the theory behind all vaccines is that the mechanism behind immunity is not fully understood by medical science nor can it be. As the above article points out, even children who have a disorder whereby they cannot produce antibodies are able to become immune to measles (and other diseases) by being naturally exposed to the virus and experiencing some level of illness from the disease, even though they did not produce antibodies against the virus that allegedly causes measles. Without knowing fully the cause of disease or the mechanism of immunity development, how can pharmaceutical companies justify creating and injecting potentially harmful chemicals and disease causing organisms into humans in the attempt to create immunity?  Additionally and also pointed out in the article is the fact that any immunity created through the use of vaccines does not mimic natural immunity and is short-lived at best and non-existent at worst. To date, not a single vaccine has been tested and shown to be as effective in creating immunity as natural exposure and none have been shown to create a life-long immunity as originally promised and as continues to be promised in the case of some vaccines.

Pro-vac folks tell me that double blind studies on humans would be unethical and that is why they are not done. But doesn't that make all humans test subjects who submit to the vaccine? In the case of measles vaccine, we see that a killed measles vaccine was introduced into the U.S. and was used for several years until it became obvious that it didn't work and was dangerous, or rather until another vaccine could be approved for use. That is the way of the vaccine market. Untested products are used on real human subjects until they are shown to be dangerous AND there is a replacement waiting in the wings. We saw the same thing with the live polio virus in the U.S. I was telling my doctor that I didn't want my children to have it because they would be shedding live polio virus for months and I was poo-pooed. 15 years later, it fell out of favor in the U.S. for that very reason, but not until a replacement was ready. If I knew about the dangers in the days before the internet, the medical community knew about it, too. But the agenda said to keep going regardless of what the science says.

So this is my beef, the theory behind vaccinations doesn't pass scientific muster. The hypothesis that injecting pathogenic organisms into humans causes an immune response that is similar to or identical to the natural immune response to actually contracting the disease is flawed. It has not been proven through scientific testing using the scientific method. There is no scientific evidence that vaccines reduce the rates of disease or the rates of death from disease.

This is enough for me. Even if I didn't have genuine concerns about the safety of injecting poisonous chemicals and dangerous disease organisms along with foreign proteins into human bodies and even if I didn't have genuine concerns about the damage these vaccines cause to the immune system and the contributions they make to auto-immune disorders, I wouldn't vaccinate my children because I have no confidence that they do any good whatsoever. Our bodies were not designed to learn to resist disease that enters our bodies by injection, which is not the normal path of infection with the possible exception of tetanus.

The theory behind vaccines also relies heavily on the questionable "germ theory" which states that exposure to pathogenic organisms is the primary mechanism behind disease rather than the theory that the state of the body, its health and vitality, determine whether a body will become diseased and the extent to which it will resist and recover from disease. There is also no consideration in the vaccine industry about whether there is any disease for which the risk of death is so low that the risks of the vaccine are greater than any benefit that could come from avoiding the disease. This is most obvious to those of us who grew up in an age where everyone we knew had the chicken pox with no apparent danger to life and limb. But as the above article documents, this was also true for measles at the time the vaccine was introduced. Not only did very, very few people die or even need to be hospitalized for measles, modern medicine had discovered very effective vitamin treatments which completely cured measles in a matter of days.

I am always open to discussion of this issue as long as there are no ad hominem attacks. I am not afraid of any facts. Scare tactics don't work on me, so keep those to yourself. There are so many more aspects of this issue that are not discussed. Please surprise me with an argument I haven't yet heard.

Does Physical Contact Lead to Sex?

This is the second in a two-part series addressing the claims of Lily Dunn that the Church taught her lies about sex. In my first post I agreed with two of her claims and gave my own solution for how the Church or her parents could have done it better. This time I'm going to disagree with her assertion that the Church (it is Churchianity really, not the orthodox teachings of the Church that come from Scripture) was wrong to teach her that "Any and all physical contact is like a gateway drug to sex."

I'm going to quote a paragraph here where she sums up her idea on this issue and sets up a straw man:

If you are committed to waiting until you’re married to have sex, there are many valid reasons to set boundaries on your physical relationship, but the fear of accidentally having sex shouldn’t be one of them.

The straw man in the above paragraph is the use of the word "accidentally." In her own analysis of the issue she accurately describes, I believe, the things she was being told. One of them was that kissing and petting become a "slippery slope" to more sexual activity, including intercourse. I am not sure why she would characterize this warning as her teachers saying that holding hands would lead to accidentally engaging in intercourse. I'm pretty sure, as a matter of fact I'm positive, that her teacher meant that a girl who engages in small sexual behaviors is more likely to choose to do more. Sex isn't something that happens to a woman, it is something she does. A dog bites a child. But a woman is a participant in sex. 

While Lily accuses her teachers of saying that "(g)irls don't care about sex" (Her point number 3), what they were very clearly saying in teaching her to avoid physical contact is that women care very much about sex. They care about it as much as men. At no point did she accuse her teachers of telling her to avoid physical contact because a man might misunderstand her willingness and thus force himself upon her. They were saying that when you want to bake bread, you first heat up the oven. If you have absolutely no intention of baking bread, why are you heating the oven?  I wonder if Lily expects her husband to preheat her oven before having sex with her? Does she not consider that when he is petting her and kissing her that he is hoping or wanting to move on to intercourse? This is not craziness and it is not a concept that only Christians believe. The difference between Christians and the world on this issue is not whether sexual contact begets more sexual contact, it is whether sexual contact between non-marrieds is appropriate. The world says it is ok, as long as the woman wants to do it, so naturally they aren't going to be saying, "don't hold hands" or "don't kiss."

This opens up her whole blog post to the criticism that while she may have believed the wrong things about sex, it was not because of what she was told but because of how she interpreted what she heard. Her teachers said that some sexual contact (physical touch) leads to more, she heard, "you might accidentally have sex." That is as ridiculous as it sounds, and it isn't what they said. She heard, "girls don't care about sex," but what they said was "you young women care about sex and will do it if you get aroused."

Here might be an appropriate place to discuss what IS a permitted amount of physical touch or romantic involvement between an unmarried man and woman. Lily certainly gave no guidelines as to what the Church should have taught her or whether the Scriptures address this issue. She seems to be saying that each woman should be free to decide that for herself because she knows herself and will make good decisions. Of course, all of history would be against that idea and all women, even old ones, need to have good boundaries to keep them from sin. We flee temptation, not revel in it to see how close we can come to sin without really doing it.

There is no Scripture saying how much physical contact non-marrieds can have. Perhaps the Word is arguing from its silence on the subject? After all, this is a very modern question. The answer to our ancestors was apparently obvious. I shall endeavor to address it by asking a question. What level of physical contact is acceptable between me, a married woman and a man who is not my husband? Would it be acceptable for me to sit in the back pew at church and hold hands with a man? Why not? What about kissing another man? What about letting him fondle me over my clothing? Put his arm around me while we walk on the beach? What is the reason that we cringe when we read those things? What is wrong with them? I am not talking about having sex with him, right?

Here is the answer. As far as we know from Scripture, romantic or sexual contact is only permitted between married people. A woman is to reserve her romantic and sexual behaviors (and they are the same thing) for her husband exclusively. If she is not married, she has no one upon whom she can bestow these behaviors. They are no more appropriate to shower upon on a man who is not her husband before she gets married than after she gets married. Sex is for married people, don't we all agree? It is wrong to include only intercourse in the definition of "sex". If so, fellatio is in the same category as hand holding. That is the "not sex" category. No serious person can say, "I can hold hands with this young man because the Bible doesn't prohibit it" unless she is also willing to say, "I can suck on the penis of this man because the Bible doesn't prohibit it." But then, maybe that is her argument to which I throw up my hands and say, "I get it, you won't have your behaviors restricted by anyone." The feminist imperative at work.

Churchianity's Teachings on Marital Sex

On facebook the other day I came across this blog post, 4 Lies The Church Taught Me About Sex , and it made me feel sad. Call me idealistic, but sex is wonderful and Christians should be enjoying it to a higher degree than any one else on the planet. Only Christians can immerse themselves fully, body, soul and spirit in what it means to be married, to be one flesh, to be living out the picture of eternal union with Christ. Amen?  I don't mean that every time a husband and wife come together it should turn into worship (that's pagan) or that it should be a transcendent spiritual episode, but simply that we should be absolutely free to abandon ourselves to the physical pleasure that is sex. It should be triumphant, not guilt ridden. So what went wrong?

I'm going to skip over her point number 1 completely for right now. I don't agree with her and I want to author another post addressing her complaint that she was taught "Any and all physical contact is like a gateway drug to sex."

So we move on to point number 2, "If you wait until you are married to have sex, God will reward you with mind-blowing sex and a magical wedding night." There is so much wrong with this idea, especially the part that follows "God will reward you." God (or nature) WILL reward you for keeping your sex life exclusive to your husband. In the same way that a woman who doesn't do this has the opposite of reward, which may manifest itself as guilt, regret, disease, emotional distress or some other negative issue.  But who or what would tell young women that marriage night sex is "mind-blowing" or "magical"? Assuming the authoress of this post was actually taught that and that she herself didn't teach it to herself, this is just irresponsible and downright cruel.

Here is the big rub for me. Truth. Truth. Truth. What do Christians and especially Churchians have against truth? What do we fear? Do we secretly believe that premarital sex is fun and exciting and that if we let young women know that they will all run off and start fornicating? So we feel compelled to build some sand castles in the sky for them about marital sex that will only come true if they abstain before? Nothing in the Christian walk is an incantation or spell. We don't do or say the right things and therefore obligate God to give us prizes. The reason that woman should reserve sex for marriage is because it is the only context in which God gives us permission to exercise that joy. It is obedience. The fact that there are consequences for not doing it is only secondary, because frankly, in a practical sense, there may very well be benefits that come from disobeying. Can premarital sex be fun? Of course. Can premarital sex give us a deep sense of bonding with a partner? Of course. Can premarital sex cause a partner to stay with us when he would have otherwise moved on? Of course. Do all of those benefits justify the transgression of God's law? Nope.

Now, to the credit of this young woman's teachers, she was told some accurate things about the first marital sex experience. She was told that honeymoon sex is not going to the best sex. She was told it might be uncomfortable. She was told it takes work. I think what was really lacking were the specifics, the mechanics. She claims that her body was "locked up tighter than Maid Marian's chastity belt." No one warned her about that. Or did they? Perhaps that is what her teachers were trying to convey with their veiled language about "not the best," "hard work," and "uncomfortable." But her teachers were too vague. I think the actual problem was not with her body or inexperience at all, but with her brain.

I believe that her problems on her wedding night actually stem from what she reveals about herself in her point number 4, "When you get married you will immediately be able to fully express yourself sexually without guilt or shame."  This should be true. This is a teaching, however, which can't come in as one sentence at a youth conference. Unfortunately, this truth is only going to true for a specific woman if she has not spent her childhood being taught that anything at all about sex acts is dirty, evil, gross, sinful, shameful, bad, naughty, etc. The shamefulness of sex is never based upon the act itself, which is neutral, but upon the context in which it occurs.

Examining the law of God we see that there are no prohibited sex acts. God never says, don't do this thing or that thing. In the New Testament Paul says that the marriage bed is undefiled. This was not a new teaching. He was giving us a commentary on the Old Testament teaching about sex, which is that it is always appropriate in marriage and whatever/however it occurs in marriage it is good and right. So what DOES God condemn in the area of sex? Not acts, but rather certain relationships. Regardless of how they do it, if a woman has sex with an animal they are both to be put to death. If a man has sex with another man, that is a shameful, sinful, dirty, naughty. Not because of the nature of the act, but because it is the wrong context for that act. A penis is a sex organ. It has other purposes, of course, but it is completely normal and within the design for it to be used for sex. It is not a perversion to use a penis for sex even though it is also used for urinating. Urinating is no more perverted than sex. But sex with a wife. It isn't the penis that sins in homosexual sodomy, it is the man.

A man is prohibited from having sex with his mother. Does that make sex bad? Does that make his penis evil? Nope. Sex is not shameful. Sex is not bad. Sex is not evil. Marriage is, at its very core a sexual relationship. Sex is what makes marriage different from other relationships. Anyone can cook for your husband or clean for him. Anyone can care for his children. But if anyone who does those things for him is not his wife, and she has sex with him, she sins. Not because of the act, but because of the context.

This is the same reason that Christian woman have hysterics about a woman breastfeeding her child in public. The use of the breast for feeding a child is perfectly normal use of the breast. The mother is not having sex with her child, she is feeding her. Breasts are multifunctional. They are sensual during sex, for sure. Even the Bible endorses enjoying a woman's breasts during sex. ALL of the uses for the breast are equally valid. Breasts are not evil. Women are not evil for having breasts. A breast that is exposed for the purpose of feeding a baby is not scandalous. This is an historical truth. But when we teach that sex is evil and shameful, we start piling on to that wrong teaching and we begin to teach that breasts are shameful, a penis is shameful, the vulva is shameful. We must not look at these shameful things or touch them, even on accident, or talk about them! If we do, we might be tempted to use them, and they are NAUGHTY!  Do we see how ridiculous that is?

I beg you, fellow Christian mothers, do not instill a sense of shame into your daughters (or sons, although they don't necessary buy into this delusion so easily) about sex! If anything, you should be getting them interested and excited about the day they get to let it all hang loose!  You will have to tell them that sex can be messy and they should not see that as disgusting. "It is sort of gross when your baby brother poops all over your lap, but don't ever associate that with your husband sharing his seed with you." Sorry to be so graphic, but there it is and her husband will thank you. A husband needs a wife to be not only "not grossed out", but he wants her to be welcoming and eager to take what he offers. She should look forward to it and desire it.

In her closing paragraph she says this:

If our reason for saving sex until marriage is because we believe it will make sex better or easier for us, we’re not only setting ourselves up for disappointment, but we’re missing the point entirely. 

 

And I couldn't agree more. There are good and right reasons for abstaining until marriage. But a young woman shouldn't be spending years and years "keeping their sex drives in check." Particularly when having that sex drive is seen as a sin itself. The apostle Paul said that if young people can't contain, let them marry. Let's teach our daughters that the presence of their sex drive is sign that they are ready for marriage and we will get Daddy to work finding a husband right away. 

 

Stop teaching your daughters that their body parts are naughty. Stop teaching them that sex is sinful. Tell them the truth. And if you don't know the truth, get your Bible out and actually read it. Stop listening to the lies of Churchianity, which has a form of godliness but denies the power thereof.

Sophie's Choice - Why Can't She Choose Her Own Husband?

I have been doing some more reading over at truelovedoesntwait.com. In this post, a young woman by the name of Sophie is arguing in the comments that she should not be prohibited from choosing her own husband. She claims that she isn't insisting on doing the choosing, but rather should simply have the veto if her father wants her to marry a man that she doesn't "like." In other words, as long as her father picks a man that she chooses, she will obey her father and marry him. That reminds me of a woman who obeys her husband in everything, as long as she agrees with him.

The heart of her issue, which she herself doesn't even realize, is that she is as solipsistic as the typical woman. She is the measure of all things. Absolutely no one, no man and not even God, are going to put any limits on her. They are not going to limit her sexuality, for sure. This is the essence of  feminism. A woman can do anything she pleases without limitation and without guidance and it is the duty of others, including her God-given authorities to embrace her choices and to finance them. I'm sure that Sophie would deny being a feminist, but she is believing and practicing the core principles of feminism, therefore she is a feminist, even if she would protest.

No one should miss this post over at Vox Day's Alpha Game Blog. It sums up the solipsism of women very concisely.  And why should women read this and understand it? Because if we don't understand the evil residing in our nature, we are bound to either excuse and dismiss it or outright embrace it. Don't be put off by the strong language. It won't hurt you.

What follows is my response to Sophie and the other commentors over at True Love Doesn't Wait. I wanted to save it here for future reference, you know, for that book I'm going to write someday. It deals with the arguments which say that betrothal is not a command or that any way of getting a wife is ok. On the contrary, I believe that betrothal or an outright purchase are the only ways of getting a wife that conform to what is taught about marriage in the Scriptures. I also wanted to point out that while I agree with much of  what Vaughn Ohlman (the writer/owner of True Love Doesn't Wait) says about betrothal, I also have very serious differences of opinion with him. I do not accept his definitions of either betrothal or marriage, for example, which are pretty big differences.  Ok, my comment follows:

I don't think that Sophie really does have (or that she should have) choices. I think the Bible shows us that a woman does not have the authority over her own sexuality. Her father is the guardian of it until she marries, and he decides to whom and when she will be given in marriage. Once she is married the authority and control over her sexuality passes to her husband.

While there is no single passage of Scripture where this is explained and set forth, it is revealed all throughout the Scriptures. Obviously Vaughn has already written two books on the subject, and even in those he wasn't able to cover every verse where these principles are either mentioned or implied. When we say "show me the verse....!" we are demanding something we don't demand of other principles. For example, where is the verse in the law of God which commands parents to feed and clothe their children? What? There is no such command? But we see parents doing it. Is that just cultural?

In the case of betrothal, we not only see that it is implied as the natural and normal way of doing things, we also see that God, in his law, gives remedies to fathers and husbands when other men, or even the daughter/wife herself decide to exercise their sexuality outside their authority. We see a law wherein a man who suspects his wife of being adulterous can have the priest test her for it. If she is guilty, either by admission or by failing the test, she ends up dead. There is no such test for husbands. A husband's sexuality is not under the control or authority of his wife. He has a duty to her sexually, but it is not exclusive to her. God calls this "just". Is that cultural?

But the real convincer for me came after I became reformed. When I came to understand that the grace of God is irresistible to me. The father chose me for Christ and neither Christ nor I have any choice in the matter. God, Himself, uses betrothal for His Son. And then He created the institution of marriage as a picture of the marriage of Christ and His bride. Every aspect of the marriage, including the betrothal is pictured in how men take wives. The way we do this speaks the gospel. When we ignore betrothal we lie. We are hiding the gospel. When Christians let women choose or not choose their husbands we are using a picture of marriage that lies about the gospel.

There is nothing about marriage from its institution in the Garden until today that is cultural. It was created for the purpose of illustrating the gospel. Not the other way around. God didn't look around the earth and try to find some earthly thing that would help him explain what He is doing, instead, He invented marriage and gave us marriage as an aid to our understanding. When we accept the analogy as created we see that election is from the beginning, we see that betrothal is from the beginning. It is a vital part of the message of the gospel and therefore should not be excluded from the manner in which God's people express marriage.

Perhaps Sophie believes that she chose Christ? Or that she at least had the option to reject Him if she didn't like him? The Scriptures don't teach this. We are to love the God who first loved us, not just say "no" if He doesn't get our motor running. In the same way, we are to love our husbands and if we don't, the older women can teach us how. We don't "marry the one we love", we "love the one we marry". Huge difference. We have no business loving men who are not our husbands.

Red Herring

As I began this post, I realized that I do not know the origin of the term "red herring". I shall detour to wikipedia, then return to finish this.

Ok. I'm better informed now and may continue without distraction. The subject of my writing today is PORN. By that I mean primarily images of nude women or images of people engaging in sex. There are pornographic magazines and, of course, the now ever ubiquitous internet porn.

It is my assertion (although I didn't come up with this on my own, my genius husband pointed it out to me)that someone, perhaps Satan, is using the issue of men (primarily, although not exclusively)viewing pornography to throw us off the trail of identifying other harmful and sinful habits and practices within the church.

For example, instead of focusing on the lusting going on within the congregation, and instead of being concerned about women clothed immodestly, we will just harp on pornography every week so we can sit smugly in our pews and say, "Well, at least I'm not doing that!"

In the American church today, a person would be tempted to think, based on the number of websites dedicated to eradicating it, that "viewing pornography" was the worst sin mentioned in the Bible, instead of one of many. Oh wait, it isn't mentioned at all.

What do we mean, anyway, when we say that a man is using porn or has a problem with porn? What is he actually DOING? Basically he is looking at naked women to whom he is not married. Is that sin? Is it always a sin to look at a nude woman who is not one's wife? What about doctors and other medical personnel? Don't they do the same act?

For a moment, let us turn our attention to Scripture. Matthew 5:28 says,

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

That is the verse most frequently given for why men should not view pornographic images. What I noticed about the verse is that it does not say anything about a nude woman. As a matter of fact, it is likely that Jesus was referring to a woman who was fully clothed. But it really doesn't matter, because the sin is not in the looking, it is in the lusting. It is a sin that happens within the heart of the man doing the looking. It is not what he sees or whom he sees that makes him a sinner, it is what he thinks about what he is seeing.

So, we don't condemn the doctor for looking at the nude woman because we assume he isn't lusting. Of course, we don't know his heart. And we don't condemn the man who uses the internet for reading the news, because we assume that he isn't looking at the female newscasters in order to lust after them. Again, we don't know his heart. But when a man is viewing pornographic images, we assume that he is looking at them in order to lust after them because there is really no other reason to be viewing them. Yes, yes, I know, some men read Playboy magazine for the articles.

To return to my original point, why do we focus so much on the object of a man's lust, rather than on the sin itself? Why is it so hideous for a man to lust after a nude woman and not such a big deal for him to lust after the youth pastor's wife? Of course they are both equally sinful. Although, in reality, lusting after women that are in one's acquaintance is much more likely to result in adultery, the destruction of marriages and the destruction of churches. Lusting after a woman whom one does not know and with whom one has no contact is not likely to evolve past lusting.

Again, why then the focus on porn? Simply because it reveals the sin. The man was a lustful sort before he dialed up those images. But we didn't know it because he can lust secretly. Thus, the devil would have us pour out our wrath on the man caught in his lust so that he (the devil) can continue his evil work in the lives of the women and men who don't have their sinful hearts on display.

All the psycho-babble about viewing pornography leading to more and more debauchery and to serious crimes like murder is just another means Satan uses to steer us away from much that is evil in ourselves. We do what God does not, which is to make one sin, like lusting, worse than all others. Or to say that lusting after nudes is more wicked than lusting after the clothed, which the Bible also does not say.

I don't condone viewing pornographic images. I'll come right out and say that I think men shouldn't do it. But I won't say things about it that the Bible doesn't say and then try to attach some superior holiness to my condemnation.