Professor Mentu was kind enough to link my entire Reframing Christian Marriage series in his post:
I should warn you in advance that his language can be a touch rough at times. More importantly, for those who are uncomfortable with actual biblical marriage, suffer from an addiction to grooms, and/or lack the courage to hold your own church leadership accountable, you will feel an irresistible urge to attack the messenger. Don’t worry, this is only natural. After all, if only men like Professor Mentu were to change their ways the fact that your pastor would pass out if anyone showed him what the Bible actually says about marriage and divorce would become irrelevant. If after reading such churchian heresy you feel the need to repent, say 10 Man up and marry those sluts! and watch the movie Courageous while weeping in front of your family and you will be forgiven.
For those who crave additional penance, be sure to buy and read the books from Joel and Kathy Davisson as Bskillet has expertly taken out in his God Save My Hamster series:
- God Save My Hamster
- God Save My Hamster, Part 2: God Loves Frivolous Divorce
- God Save My Hamster, Part 3: Hamster Is Lord
Don’t miss Empathologicalism’s take on Joel and Kathy:
So when I rebel against God it is his fault because he is not loving me or leading me properly?
CHECKMATE, Christian girl adulteress.
Christian women apparently have no agency, are automatons. If they rely on being responsive, Ive asked Joel Davisson directly, then what of a single women who is promiscuous? Who is she responding to? From where does her sin originate?
Crickets
Empath,
Have they ever offered any scriptural citation for the concept of women as “responders”? They seem to base their entire theology of marriage on this one point.
Yes of course, 1 Peter and the “live with the wives in understanding”, combined with they lay out the gospel and point out that Jesus went first, that Jesus choose unilaterally to go and die, THEN the church was cool with that.
That’s really about as much as they offer, truly, 1mmdeep, 1 mile wide.
From these 2 things they get that a man MUST listen to the wife’s heart, then scrifice accordingly, never bothering with the fact that it seems the leader here is the wifes heart. Which means the emotional whims of her ever in flux fickle feelings.
They have of course as CMDN states the whole God Hates Divorce explanation too, that that is all written to men.
But on responders, its very narrowly that Jesus chose to die first, he went first and she (church) responds.
From the article, the money quote:
I wish I learned game before I got married…
My wife signed us up for an upcoming Bible study on marriage. I’m looking forward to what is going to be on there. My pastor though has talked about the whole “submit” portion in the Bible and I was surprised just how frank he was on it. Made me respect him more….
In any case, I think I’ll take notes and let you know how the Bible study goes.
Thanks Empath.
@ Ashur
Checkmate, indeed.
Their story is that Joel wasn’t leading Kathy properly, so he had a bunch of affairs. Sounds like Game to me. A man might wonder if the whole ministry is set-up to provide Joel with a harem.
@empath
I’m suprised he didn’t say that it would be her father she was responding to if she were single. They might actually have at least a little basis for saying that with the links between fathers and early promiscuity in females, as opposed to just the other pure crap they are spewing.
Off-topic, but… news flash, intellectual types grasp the obvious (in time for it to be lost):
“Ancient ‘Sexual Revolution’ Laid Foundation for Modern Family,” by Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience.com via Yahoo! News, 29 May 2012
http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-sexual-revolution-laid-foundation-modern-family-143101540.html
“When women started to choose good providers over manly alpha males, they created the idea of the ‘couple,’ new research indicates.
The ‘modern family’ is characterized by monogamy and long-term partnership, a phenomenon that replaced relative promiscuity with plenty of competition between males over mates. …”
Civilization… we’ll miss that when it’s gone.
Anti….there is no mileage in accusing the father, mileage for their ministry I mean. They are happy to just wait until she marries, then she takes on that most revered status…..CUSTOMER
I suppose the customer wouldn’t be happy if they told her she had a good chance of turning her daughters into sluts if she divorces their father..
Much simpler than that anti-, for them and those like them, future sluts = future customers.
Thanks for the linkage, sir. The “Dalrock bump” is always an honor.
Hey Dalrock, is your material on “reframing Christian marriages” copyrighted, or can I just use it for Bible class material?
[D: You have my permission to use it for your Bible class.]
“When women started to choose good providers over manly alpha males, they created the idea of the ‘couple,’ new research indicates.
The change happened, but it almost certainly had nothing to do with whom the females were choosing. What changed was something among the men — it was more of a pact among men than it was females choosing, because females didn’t have much choice as a practical matter. The “earlier” model which featured a lot of sexual competition among men wasn’t a case of the females choosing, either, but rather of the larger and stronger males monopolizing the females by means of excluding other males through violence or threats of violence. It had nothing really to do with female choice. It’s fascinating how even ancient history gets recast in the ideological tint of feminism.
Large scale agriculture began about 10,000 years ago. This led to larger villages and small towns in which the unattached males became sufficiently numerous enough to become more difficult to bring under control than they were in smaller tribes. This led to the rise of marriage as a social institution that harnessed the beta male’s energy and also suppressed to some extent the hypergamous instinct of women for the good of society. This led further to the finding that those groups that got better economic input/output from a greater segment of men had advantages in technology and warfare over the hunter gatherers.
Just an abstract of a Cliff’s Notes version…
Like I said: Civilization– we’ll miss that when it’s gone.
I think that the article is talking about the idea that the current levels of sexual dimorphism in humans were reached ~500k to 2m years ago (or even further back than that), and that this drift away from what was previously a greater level of dimorphism to a lower level of dimorphism reflected a similar sexual shift away from polygyny and towards some form of monogamy. It’s controversial, because as I understand it the evidence is mixed when it comes to our species history of dimorphism, and there are some counterexamples in other species (i.e., cases where the species is not quite dimorphic but monogamous). In any case, the article is talking about these things rather than the agricultural revolution, which was much more recent.
On the topic of Joel and Kathy, check out the video of them being interviewed on Lifetime on their homepage in fullscreen. Their body language says it all. She is sitting as far away from him as possible on the couch and looks like she is trying to get away from his hand which is on her back.
You can also see that there is a clear SMV mismatch there. I’m not saying Kathy is a great beauty or anything, but she’s higher on the SMV scale than Joel is. As Athol Kay points out (and in this I very much agree with him), the higher SMV spouse has the power to control the other spouse if the other spouse wishes to stay married (a more common scenario is that the higher SMV spouse leaves or cheats or both). Kathy is in control here, no question, because, among other things, she outranks Joel SMV-wise (personality issues aside, as she clearly has a controlling personality that most men would not find attractive).
I say that about SMV in my comment right under their picture on my post. The video is indeed telling, the fake peck kisses, scripted….
Ken Nair is their guru, the man who taught them all they know. See him on their home page as well. Oddly in the years Ive known of them Ive done very little investigation of Nair beyond reading the flap of his book online or something. I think his angle is abuse from which he derives essentially the JK program.
Yea, ken Nair, here his wife gives an example of how she saw her husbands brother say something top him that “should have bothered him” but didnt, she then says its her job to get her husband to feel the way SHE felt he should feel. She equated that to chaos in the emotional state of the family….that her husb was not reacting to his own brother the way she would have him react.
Seems trivial, but its profound that degree of emotional control and self perceived emotional superiority and discernment. Women falling for this want to have a husband as emotionally messed up as she is.
Thats JK, the wife is a mess, he better be not just a mess, but HER mess
Empath,
Some time ago, i recall reading suggestions that continuing the trend with women cast as responders, ie having no moral agency, would lead them right out of christianity, and more of them into patriarchal nonchristian religions. Cannot now find the reference, though.
My understanding is that christianity was integral to giving women property rights, at least partially on the basis they were culpable. For feminism to abandon that position sounds like a poor tactical move. If women are not moral agents, why do they have property rights, or the right to enter into legally binding contracts of any sort?
Yuck, I’ve read these two fairly extensively but that video has him giving off clingy, creepy stalker vibe. Is a woman supposed to respond to that with something other than running away screaming. Forget oxytocin, I think a husband like that is more likely to be boosting her adrenaline.
@ Empath,
Concerning the video: It hurts my spirit when my wife treats me like an emotional cripple.
Christianity is a matriarchal religion that puts most responsibilities on men and less on women. That was OK up until the pill and abortion, because up until then men inflicted pregnancy on women and women needed protection. women were the weaker part.
After the pill the situation has become inverted and it is now men that need reproductive protection. Unfortunately Christianity cannot accommodate this tremendous shift in power dynamic. It would require a total rewriting of the central theme in Christianity where the earthly father’s position is taken over by the godly father and the earthly father is made superfluous.
Marriage in the Christian sense is not relevant today as it protects the stronger part (the wife) and not the weaker part (the husband).
Christianity is a matriarchal religion that puts most responsibilities on men and less on women.
Do you mean in its current state, or from its inception?
continuing the trend with women cast as responders, ie having no moral agency, would lead them right out of christianity, and more of them into patriarchal nonchristian religions. Cannot now find the reference, though.
—————————————————————–
This is where it gets messed up. They create a wife with no moral agency, BUT, she is somehow also fit to unilaterally decide if the man is meeting Gods standards of being a Godly man, and she can then manipulate him into doing it correctly. So….one wonders, agency or not
There is a spirit of confusion all over that Joel and Kathy video you posted, Dalrock. I felt drunk when I was listening to Kathy talk. You are right about the body language, what a sham.
Emp:
“This is where it gets messed up. They create a wife with no moral agency, BUT, she is somehow also fit to unilaterally decide if the man is meeting Gods standards of being a Godly man, and she can then manipulate him into doing it correctly. So….one wonders, agency or not”
The hamster spins in a circle and catches its tail in its mouth.
After reading through all this I’m beginning to understand how truly hopeless homosexual Christians must feel in reconciling their spiritual beliefs with their approved sexual options.
I say that from a heterosexual context because, were I a single, devoutly Christian Man, and this was the sexual market place the church had popularly established, and I was aware of it, I’d never marry. There’s simply no assurances of fidelity.
So my options are to commit my life to celibacy (dubious at best) or else live single in sexual sin for the rest of my life and pray that my salvation is enough to forgive my circumstances. All of this I’m sure is a fairly similar conflict that homosexuals must endure. It would seem to me a more tenable lifestyle for a Christian man not to marry (or even hold aspirations of long term companionship) and simply pray for forgiveness when he indulges in sexual sin.
After reading through all this I’m beginning to understand how truly hopeless homosexual Christians must feel in reconciling their spiritual beliefs with their approved sexual options.
Exactly: Homosexuals are not snowflakes with problems and circumstances unknown to the rest of the human condition.
Assurance of fidelity is a very hard thing to come by. Our best chance is to have a network around us of like-minded people. It starts with your spouse, but it doesn’t end there.
So I looked at the Joel and Kath interview. Had they met each other before the interview?
I haven’t seen such bad body language since I last watched the McCann’s (if you know that saintly pair).
Rollo,
Therein lies the profoundness of the corruption of modern Christians on the topic of sexual morality. That which should be pure is now nearly indistinguishable from that which is corrupt. The true tragedy being that the biblical model of marriage was/is simple, sound, moral, and beneficial, but it has been traded for something exactly the opposite.
“The true tragedy being that the biblical model of marriage was/is simple, sound, moral, and beneficial, but it has been traded for something exactly the opposite.”
Maybe I, as one whose marriage got sideswiped a year ago and is in the shop for an overhaul, a tune up and repairs, shouldn’t even weigh in on this. But true to form, I will anyway.
When I was a young single man, and spending my time with other young singles, most of the people I hung out with viewed marriage as something that was really complicated. Things to do, problems to work out, issues and hangups to work through, disagreements on where to live, who will work, who will stay home, how many kids to have. What about my school, my career, her career, my family, her family, I don’t like her Uncle Louie, my sisters don’t like her, and on and on.
And then we complicated it further.
First there’s the “how many” talk. Who did you have sex with, who did I have sex with, how many partners have you had, tell me all the gory details of the previous “love of your life”.
This is followed by the “take him/her for a test drive”. The silent questions are: is his d**k big enough, are her tits bigger/better/more perky than the last one, do I like her body, does she smell “down there”, is she better in bed than the others. Are you comparing me to the others? How many others? Am I comparing you to “my” others? How many? Was your previous love a stupid redneck country girl? Was he a dumbass? Was she a stuckup city girl bitch? Was he a douchebag?
Is he/she telling me the truth about all this? How do I know this is the truth, or half the truth, or there is more to it?
There was a minority of men and women who seemed to pursue marriage — real biblical marriage — fervently. They married early, and most stayed married. These were people who were N = 1 or 2, perhaps 3 at the most. They were not conflicted and didn’t have to ask all the questions set out above. You see, they distilled it all down to one simple question:
Am I head over heels in love with him/her?
If the answer is “no”, there was no sex and no marriage.
If the answer was “yes”, then talk of marriage was on the table.
It did not matter where they were in their lives. If they were in college, they found a way to make it work. If they were out of college, they married as soon as practical. He was usually two to five years older than she.
And they seemed, well, happy. Content. Satisfied. With themselves and each other. They had no doubts, no lingering questions about whether he was the right one or whether she was being honest. They had no problems about who was going to do what. No issues about whether they had “missed out” on anything. No unplanned pregnancies, no antibiotics prescriptions, no unsavory pictures showing up in text messages or emails, no batshit crazy ex girlfriends coming out of the woodwork. Just them. The two of them.
Their lives were simple. I don’t mean their lives were easy. I just mean they were not complicated with issues like comparisons to exes, STDs, or “fun times” he or she “missed out” on. Their marriages were on solid ground. They were mutually beneficial. Each knew their place, their roles, their functions, and their futures.
Simple, sound, moral, beneficial.
On moral agency again. . . It’s all about choice, apparently, except when it doesn’t suit the script of women as victim.
Feminists have always banged on about a woman’s right to choose. To have sex, work, marry, have the kids/affair/divorce/child support payments etc.
Casting women as responders first and foremost implies they make few choices for themselves, only from what the heartless oppressive patriarchy allows them.
These two positions seem contradictory. Either women are culpable and make choices, or they are not, and do not.
Oh well, if it gets too hard, just blame the judeo christian tradition, reject the system that incubated the industrial revolution and line up to share an alpha:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343954/100-000-Islam-converts-living-UK-White-women-keen-embrace-Muslim-faith.html
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/14/200617.html
http://hillanews.com/?p=279
Gosh, in reading the “About Us” section of Joel and Kathy’s blog, it seems as if Joel has somehow inadvertently misplaced his testicles.
On the other hand, they taught me a new word – “spiritual abuse”. After dinner this evening my husband made a sarcastic comment to me and I said, “Hey! I feel very spiritually abused by you right now!”. He nearly fell down laughing; it was a real mood-lightener. Thanks Joel and Kathy!
@Cane Caldo
I mean that christianity always have been a pro-mother and anti-father religion. The first thing that happened was that fatherhood was outsourced to an imaginary god in heaven as virgin mary was impregnated by the holy spirit. This made fathers redundant ideologically and as the means of production became more effective fathers have become redundant even materially. The whole theme of a godly abstract father in heaven, the illegitimate conception of virgin Mary and the cuckolded Joseph doing his plights without getting any honor is nothing but the very first anticipation of the welfare society in which we now live.
Even when we look into 1. Corint 7 we se that women are allowed more freedom than men. A man is newer allowed to divorce his wife, whereas a woman is allowed provided that she will never marry again.
Christianity has always been on the side of women’s reproductive rights and will always side with women. To Christians men are nothing but disposable targets of exploitation by women and men have no right of existence beyond what women can gain from them.
@ Sunshine,
Joel’s testicles are very much absent as relates to dealing with his wife. But he’s downright agressive when dealing with men and for that matter even women, who dare to express disagreement with their views. Check out the blog of a friend who got into it with Joel, some directly and some in a thread on CF about them.
http://janelbrubaker.com/?cat=17
The best summation of Joel that I’ve heard is that he, by his own admission used to abuse Kathy. Whether real abuse or the “almost anything I don’t like is abuse” variety I’m not sure. But whatever, he never stopped being an abuser he just shifted targets, from his wife to men (and women) who disagree with him.
@Brendan 1:20 pm
I’m sure they will actually start to claim that it was women who truly built civilization by demanding male investment in return for sex.
@Chaz345 – Gosh, I followed the link you posted…that is messed up! I think the mystery is solved as to whether they are just ignorant or truly evil.
@christiankp
I don’t think you’ve thought this through. How does the one religion with one God, who is known as Father, and no goddesses, or celestial females of any sort, get to be the misandrist religion?
And you’re simply wrong about 1 Corinthians 7. Both men and women are instructed not to divorce. The instruction for her not to remarry was to all. It was an instruction for the male members of the church to leave her alone, and for the whole church to not approve of her remarriage.
FWIW, I made a series of videos addressing the Joel and Kathy Davisson book (the first one). You might find it adds to this discussion.
Sorry. Here’s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAssOfBalaam?feature=watch
What a horrible trap for men is found in such ideas: if the woman considers herself unhaaapy, it’s a no-fault ejection seat just waiting to go off.. any time.. and ItsAllYourFault. Nobody likes to feel bad or guilty, but if you’re a woman being selfish, cruel, lazy, lustful, or demanding an endless rerun of courtship, you really MUST feel bad, and guilty– it’s part of how God keeps you from wrecking yourself, your husband, your kids, and your marriage. Heaven is the place of eternal joys, and God the infinite good that fulfills and perfects us– it is rank idolatry to expect such things from a fellow sinner & creature, even if in love an through the beloved we may glimpse God or heaven. “O Lord, you have created us for thyself, and our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in thee.” (St. Augustine of Hippo)