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.

Advice From a Seasoned Home Schooling Mother

I have always disliked the term "home school" because it contains the word "school". We do not now, nor have we ever, attempted to set up a school in our home. We don't attempt to school our children. For the past 24 years we have been educating them. It isn't semantics, educating and schooling are not the same thing. I used "home schooling mother" in my title because people understand that I mean my children don't attend school. They are educated at home.

Looking back at over two decades of educating my own children, it is almost difficult for me to remember those first days. Education at home is now as natural and normal for us as indoor plumbing. We have long ago ceased to marvel that we are doing something so amazing and novel. But I do remember some things about getting started. I remember my commitment. I was never the type to say, "We'll try this for a year and if it doesn't work out, we'll do something else with the children." No, I was committed to at least a complete high-school level education right at home. I also remember that I sought out the wisdom of those I respected who were already doing it. That was definitely something I did right. Support was something I thought I needed, so I sought it out and found it.

During a recent visit with a friend from back in the day, when we were both starting out in home education and our oldest children were very young, I expressed my reasons for no longer being involved in a home school support group. The group of which the two of us (my friend and I) had been a part was specifically formed as a support group for the parents. It offered little or nothing in the way of activities for the children. We met once per month at a church building that had a gymnasium and the children were permitted to play, supervised, while the adults (primarily mothers) met to discuss challenges, compare curricula and encourage one another. Once per year we held a meeting in the evening so that working fathers could attend the meetings. But all of the current home school groups I know of are all about the children. They either have co-op classes or offer enrichment activities or are geared toward providing opportunities for the children to socialize with other children. This last goal is directly opposed to some of my reasons for not sending my children to school. The parents tend to have everything under control. They get advice from the internet and curricula from the internet. They look at me like a strange dinosaur rather than a resource. These women have nothing to offer me and they don't feel I have anything to offer them. So I don't waste our family's time or resources to cavort with other home schoolers just to say that we do it. If something isn't contributing to our goals as a family, we probably don't have time for it.

My solipsism, however, continues to tell me that I must have something to offer on the basis of all of my experience as a home educator. So I will give my unsolicited advice. My target audience is the parent who isn't already surrounded by experienced home educators and still has those nagging fears and unanswered questions about whether or not they should keep their children at home. I offer this as encouragement as much as advice.

1. You can't ruin your child in a year.  This is sort of a motto with me. No matter how badly you mess up the first year of home education, your child will NOT be ruined. It is likely that your child will not be harmed in the slightest. You don't have to commit for life, like I did, you can just say to yourself, "We will try this for one year, and then at the end of that year, we will evaluate what happened and where we want to go from there." Even if your child doesn't finish a single lesson in math, or doesn't advance one bit in reading, it doesn't mean that all of you haven't learned things. There is nothing that a child is supposed to learn at age 5 that can't also be learned at age 6 instead. There are no rules for when things need to be taught. Children are resilient. It will be o.k.  This is even more true of older children, even high school aged children, because they are even more capable of making up lost time. We all know people that have graduated from high school a year early by simply doubling up on classes. It can be done.

2. Focus on character building first and academics second.  If your children are not obedient, if you don't like your children, if you can't even get them to take out the garbage or feed the dog, don't even think about trying to force them to do school work. You will be setting yourself up for serious conflict. It is hard enough when you have a great relationship with a joyfully obedient child to always get through a difficult math lesson without tears. Not having well-behaved children is NOT a reason to avoid home education, but rather a sign that you need it more than ever. If you don't know how to go about training your children in righteousness, seek help. There are some great resources out there, including books. And don't be afraid to get tips from older folks in your church who have adult children you think have turned out well. Despite being controversial, I don't think there is a better book for restoring order in the home than Michael and Debi Pearl's To Train Up A Child. If you don't enjoy the company of your children, it is your fault. If you don't enjoy them, then probably no one else does either and you aren't doing your job. You owe it to them, and yourself, to rectify the situation. The home should be a place where family members live together in harmony. Make that happen first, then turn your attention to book learnin'. A special note here about starting home education with children who are older, you might need an entire year just to get used to living that way. You may need time to get to know one another, to create chore schedules and organize the home so that it functions well having lots of people in it all day long, every day. Don't be afraid to take as much time as it takes to deal with this first.

3. Develop your own home educating philosophy and set goals in line with that philosophy.  Families choose home education for many different reasons. Don't pattern your home education after a family that has different goals. There are many styles and flavors of programs, curricula, methods, and you want to find one that matches the way you think and believe. This means that you will have to do a little bit of research. What is classical learning? What is unschooling? What is the Charlotte Mason method? What are unit studies? Do we want to accelerate their education? Do I want to teach all of my children together or have separate products and programs for all of them? Do we want them to be prepared to go off to college, or do we have other ideas for what they will do after high school? In the alternative, you can just purchase a packaged curriculum or some workbooks, or just go light on academics the first year while you form you own philosophies and goals.In any case, don't be surprised if whatever you choose to do the first year is not what you choose to do in subsequent years. It happens to all of us.

If you take my advice, at the very least you should end your first year of home education saying, "That was fun. That was exciting. We learned a lot."

They Grow So Fast

I was prompted by an incident in my kitchen this morning to remind myself why I do what I do. Why do I clean the house? Why do I prepare meals? Why do I train the children in righteousness?

Of course, I do those things because it is my duty to do them, but isn't there something in it for me? Yes. I get to enjoy my family.  So I remind myself that a clean, organized home is not the goal, it is a means for making a comfortable place to be with my family.

I must not forget to enjoy my family! I enjoy my oldest daughter more now, when I rarely see her, than I did when she lived at home. That is partly because she was not necessarily easy or fun to be around, but I'm sure much of that was my fault because I didn't make it a priority to enjoy her company. If I had, perhaps I would have done things differently.

So today I recommit my efforts to love and be delighted with the presence of my children who are still living at home and with my husband.  There will be plenty of time for an orderly quiet home when they are gone.

Gate or Bridge?

I am continually surprised and gratified when I learn something new that allows me to further refine what I believe to be the proper mode of getting couples married:  betrothal.

Much gratitude is sent the way of Vaughn Ohlman over at True Love Doesn't Wait for his description of courtships's gate versus betrothal's bridge. While there is much, much more to be gleaned from this article, this particular aspect really stood out to me.

In courtship, much ballyhooed by the conservative Christian community as THE way for Christian young people to pursue marriage, we typically see a young man setting his sights on a particular girl and then he becomes the initiator, running the gauntlet to first getting permission to court and hopefully, if none of the gates shut him out, marry the girl. What do I mean by gates? These are the numerous people who can, at any time, deem that the boy or girl is not worthy, or for some other (or no other) reason decide that the marriage is not to be and cut off the courtship. The first gates that a young man encounters are his own parents. Because his parents are gates, and not bridges, the best they can do is allow him to pass through. They can't help him and they can certainly hinder him. If they shut, the courtship is over before it begins. If they remain open, he doesn't get the girl, he has to pass through the next set of gates, IF they will open to him. Those gates are the girl's parents. Then there is the girl herself and perhaps a pastor or some elders thrown in there as well.

The reasons for a gate to close are unknowable to the young man. They will be arbitrary and perhaps even capricious. And they can be closed retroactively, too! After the young man has been granted permission to pass! Is it any wonder that young men don't want to try this? Is it any wonder that Christian young men are arriving at 30 years old still unmarried?

How does betrothal differ? Because in a betrothal, the father of the groom is dealing with the father of the bride. They are acting as a bridge so the marriage can positively move forward. They don't stand there gaping as if to say, "Pass if you dare." Once there is a betrothal, there will be a marriage. There are not multiple gates and no chance for a young man to get the gate slammed on him. There is no gamble for the young man really.

I hope you will go over and read the entire article. It was especially painful for me to read how a young man's own parents can be the ones closing gates for the most insignificant of reasons and without scriptural support for their actions. The problem with gates is that they are continually looking for reasons to close. Their job is to restrict access. Otherwise they wouldn't be gates. But we shouldn't be looking for reasons to deny marriage to our sons and daughters. Marriage is something that fathers should be actively pursuing. May we be faithful.

Sexual Desire - Evil? or Reason to Marry?

Ever the student of the biblical manner in which men and women should become husbands and wives, I sometimes speak with other parents about what they are doing in this area and why. It has come to my attention that there are fathers who will absolutely exclude as potential husbands for their daughters any young men who have viewed porn. Even once.

Being sometimes emotional, my first thought was that these men are apparently not all that concerned about whether their daughters marry at all, since they have rather off-handedly excluded a huge number of young Christian men from the pool. And what, exactly, would be the explanation for this exclusion? How is it a worse sin to lust after a woman who is clothed than to lust after one who is not clothed? I mean, don't these men realize that any young men asking to marry their daughters have likely lusted, in their hearts, after those young women? Personally, I would say that is a good reason to pursue marrying, rather than not. As Douglas Wilson so aptly describes in his book Her Hand In Marriage when a young man comes courting, what he is really asking is to have a sexual relationship with your daughter.

And I have found another blogger who agrees with me and is not afraid to use the Bible to make his point! In this 3 part series on pornography, you may be lead to think of lusting in a different way than you have been taught to previously by some worldly screeching from the pulpit. Please take the time to read these and comment here and there.

Combating Pornography I - To Avoid Fornication

Pornography II - The Married Man

Pornography III - Hear, Oh My Son, the Instruction of a Father

Argumentation by Shallow Emotions

Athol Kay is a Game blogger, but he focuses on using Game within marriage. He isn't a Christian. I can appreciate a lot of what he says. This eye-opening post contains descriptions of tactics used by husbands and wives to get their own way within marriage. The tactics are used by other people in other circumstances as well, but his point is how they are used in marriage.

After reading this, I find I disagree with his label of a tactic frequently used by women which he calls "Deep Emotion."  The reason I disagree is that what he is describing is not deep, but rather shallow.

Just like the violent people, highly emotionally sensitive people are quite cooperative and delightful when you’re giving them what they want. But if they aren’t getting what they want and especially if they are losing a debate with you, that’s when the entire frame of the debate changes into a maelstrom of emotion, accusations, gunnysacking, DARVO and all-purpose accusations of your inappropriate behavior and abuse.

Deepness implies that it goes far and that it encompasses well-thought-out connections and rational reasoning. What I'm hearing in this post sounds more like caterwauling, irrational whining and emotional blackmail. "Do what I want or I won't love you anymore!"

Even though I am a woman, I prefer the Rational Talk version of dealing with problems. I don't know how I got this way, whether I was hard-wired to think that way or whether it is the result of my experiences in life. My daughters have not inherited this trait, so I don't believe it is genetic.

When it comes to emotions, I tend to think of myself as deeply emotional and sensitive, but not highly emotive. I can feel things without putting it all on display for others in order to manipulate them. This is often mistaken for being cold, when in reality I'm just not seeing how emotions can change or fix anything, so it is more sensible to keep the deep emotions to myself and employ reason to solve problems.

In parenting, the "Deep Emotion" style of argument coming from older children is one of the greatest dangers mothers and fathers will face. It can tempt them to give in to demands and to parent by fear. That is, to fear the loss of a relationship, or love or friendship of a child more than they fear losing their principles and forsaking their duty to do what is best for the children.

Fellow parents, recognize "Deep Emotion" for what it is whether it is coming from your children, your spouse, the women at church, your mother, or anyone else.

Is There a Right Way to Give Birth?

I'm not sure if there is a word to describe the religious philosophy whereby a person believes that some aspects of life on earth are spiritual and others are physical. In other words, some choices that we make are of no eternal significance and therefore there is no need to consult the law-word of God in making such decisions. It doesn't matter one way or the other, God doesn't care, and the Bible could give us no guidance in that area. It is a type of dualism, I suppose, crossing over into gnosticism, the belief that God just isn't concerned or involved in the physical world.

I don't hold to the gnostic worldview, although I would never try to define the proper amount of reflection and deliberation that should go into which color to paint the bathroom versus whether or not the family should make a move to another country. To me, my faith, my beliefs and my submission to God require that I not make a mockery of truth by living as if I don't really believe the things I claim.

What does this have to do with childbirth? As a creationist, one who believes that God created the universe and mankind in particular with purpose and with a specific design, I cannot look at things like childbirth as being some flawed, random process. I don't look at modern medical doctors as being experts on design or wellness, because all of their training is directed at disease and dysfunction. What causes a healthy women who becomes pregnant to immediately turn herself over to an expert on disease? How does this mesh with the belief that a woman's body and the normal physiological functions of her body are designed by God?

Obviously, because of the fall, a pregnant body can become a diseased body. The normal physiological function of giving birth can be interrupted or obstructed in some way. But those cases are abnormal. Statistically, they are rare. Like breathing, like digestions, like elimination, birth happens. We don't go to the hospital to have bowel movements unless a problem presents. We don't keep oxygen tanks and defibrillators in our homes "just in case." To make regular visits to a man (or woman) who views you as diseased and a disaster just waiting to happen is asking for trouble.  Why don't we all go down to our local imaging center and get CT scans of our entire bodies every year? First, because it is expensive and second because we know that if we look hard enough, we will find something. And nothing will be gained from that process. We know that if something is truly wrong, we will develop symptoms and seek expert advice at that point.

So trusting childbirth is trusting God. It is trusting His design. Trust is revealed in behaviors and choices. Just as faith is revealed by works. Just saying that you trust God is not trusting God. If everything you do while pregnant and giving birth is a display of not trusting God, then you probably don't trust.

Perhaps you didn't see this coming, but now I'm going to talk about patriarchy and a man who rules his house well. God has placed men in the primary position of authority and protection over his wife/wives and children, including unborn children. How much research does the average husband do before turning over the care of his family to a medical doctor during pregnancy? How does their risk of injury or death change by entrusting them to hospital care? Does he enjoy sex with his wife? Does he want his wife to continue to enjoy sex with him? Does he know how often his wife's doctor mutilates the genitals of his patients in the process of what he would call a "natural" birth? Does he know that having a c-section increases his wife's chances of dying by 10 times? Does he know that use of pitocin to induce or augment labor increases the chances of a c-section? Does he know that in some hospitals, nearly 100% of birthing women get pitocin? Does he know that epidural anesthesia increases the risk of having a c-section? Does he know that if he takes his wife to the hospital for birth that he is relinquishing their rights to make decisions about what happens? Sure, they have the so-called right to informed consent, but any disagreement with doctors or hospitals can result in a call to CPS, which can result in court-ordered surgery and/or loss of custody. Don't believe me. Do your own research.

If you buy the hospital ticket, you will get the hospital ride.

If God designed women to give birth and God says that children are a blessing and the man is happy who has his quiver full of them, then why do we have an epidemic of c-sections, hysterectomies, organ prolapse, incontinent, frigid women and families who are wiped out by medical bills? It isn't because childbirth is dangerous. It is because we don't think the decisions about where and how to give birth are faith-based decisions and we trust the medical/drug industry more than we trust the Creator. Womb to the tomb, they direct our destiny.