When I first pointed out the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s discomfort with headship and submission, a discomfort which goes back to their founding document, Sunshine Mary explained:
Understand that when Christianity Today (the most influential publication in American evangelicalism) wants the conservative, complementarian, anti-feminist point of view, they ask CBMW for a statement. CBMW is seen as radically anti-feminist by virtually all evangelicals. That should tell you something right there.
However, if you read a bit of their site it becomes very clear that they are essentially a Boundless clone*, except with extra Driscoll. That is, they are very much about modern Christian culture, but where Boundless has Stanton teaching that God made women to lead men, CBMW replaces this with a special emphasis on hammering Christian men.
For a sense of what Boundless with extra Driscoll looks like, CBMW promotes dating as a gift from God, similar to marriage, and tells young men they have biblical obligations which don’t actually exist in the Bible. On the most popular article on the site, Pastor Jason Dees explains:
Dating doesn’t exist to have someone that you can hang out with or “make out” with on the side, dating is designed for the pursuit of marriage.
I’m not against dating, but suggesting that it is something given to us by God as His designed path to marriage, and not (in the form we know it) a very modern invention is extremely problematic. In part two of the series, Pastor Dees reinforces this view of dating as a gift from God (emphasis mine):
If you are trying to find ultimate fulfillment in dating and marriage you never will. God designed you to find fulfillment in him above all else. Dating and marriage are great gifts, but they are not able to give you the ultimate fulfillment that you desire, only God can do that.
In part one of the series Pastor Dees explains that Ephesians 5 applies not just in marriage, but from the moment a man asks a woman out on a date:
RULE NUMBER THREE: Always return your date home “more holy” than she was when you picked her up.
This rule really applies more to men than it does to women, and it is something that my college buddies and I used to tell each other whenever we took a girl out. Ultimately people date in order to pursue marriage (see rule #2) so then our dating should be a reflection of marriage. The call of men in scripture (Ephesians 5) is to wash our women with God’s Word so that she might be holy and without blemish. Is that your goal when you take a girl out? To help sanctify her? That is what God desires of you every time you go out with a girl (men) and women that is what you should desire when a guy takes you out.
Keep in mind that the CBMW isn’t comfortable with headship and submission within marriage, yet they are quite eager to cherry pick parts of it and apply them outside of marriage. However, this sense of moral certainty about (invented) biblical obligations for men vanishes when the topic is (actual) biblical restrictions on women. Not only is the CBMW ambivalent on headship and submission, but they are even skittish when it comes to less controversial subjects like the prohibition against women as pastors. In Don’t Be Sidelined by the Gender Debate, Trillia Newbell writes (emphasis mine):
I realize my experience may not be shared by all women. Perhaps you have not been able to serve for various reasons. Maybe you desire to serve as a pastor and chafe against passages such as 1 Timothy 2:12, where the apostle Paul says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.”
No matter your interpretation of this much-debated passage, Scripture also teaches us that if God has put you in a church, he wants you to serve.
…
The debate over gender roles can distract women from serving with all their might in the church. It’s tempting to focus on one aspect of church involvement closed to women rather than rejoice over the hundreds of ways we can and should be serving. If I am not a pastor, does that mean my service means less?
Here the CBMW openly acknowledges that a large part of the women reading are in rebellion against clear biblical instruction. Instead of urging them to repent, it tells them to find other positions of leadership and influence within the church. The whole focus is on how “debated” clear instructions of the Bible are, instead of addressing the rebellion at the root of this “debate”.
This sense of hammering men on the one hand and getting skittish about what the Bible actually says about the roles of men and women (the organization’s specialty) isn’t just in one or two articles, but pervades their writing. As I referenced above, this goes back to their very founding. You can also see this in what is their fifth most popular post, Summaries of the Egalitarian and Complementarian Positions. Understand that this isn’t an explanation of why biblical roles are correct and modern egalitarian views are incorrect. It is a summary of why some people prefer one view, and others prefer another. There is no introduction or conclusion explaining the importance of following what the Bible clearly says over the rebellious desires of feminists. In fact, there is no introduction or conclusion at all. The first half is the case for egalitarianism, with a laughably weak rebuttal, and the second half is the case for complementarianism, also with a rebuttal. For example, in the section explaining egalitarianism it trots out the canard that the Greek word Paul used for “head” didn’t mean leader, it only meant “source”. This has been thoroughly debunked by a member of CBMW’s own board, but it is presented as winning (or at least ending) the debate:
D. Objection: When Paul says that the man (1 Cor. 11:3) or husband (Eph. 5:23) is the head of the woman, doesn’t he mean that the man has the position of authority and responsibility over the woman?
Response: No, and this can be shown by looking at the word translated as “head” (Gr.: kephale). This term is widely used in Greek literature outside of the NT to mean “source” (as with the “head” of a river). Therefore, what this means, then, is that woman owes her existence to the fact that man was created first and, in his incomplete state, God made from him the woman. The woman, then, is “sourced” in man. As such, this word does not suggest, as many think, that man is has some rightful authority over woman.
Only much later, at the very bottom of the long even handed post, is it pointed out that this claim is bogus. At any rate, for an organization founded on a central idea to be so completely uncomfortable with boldly arguing for that very idea is bizarre. An analogy would be an organization founded to support heterosexual marriage against the drive for acceptance of gay marriage, which instead of clearly making the case for heterosexual marriage and explaining why those who want gay marriage are wrong, would publish a lengthy treatise on the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, being careful not to be seen as biased on the issue. With friends like the CBMW, biblical marriage needs no enemies.
Ultimately though this is really an indictment of modern Christian culture far more than it is about the men and women of the CBMW. Sunshine Mary is right when she says that the CBMW is seen as radically anti-feminist by virtually all evangelicals. This is because being vocally conflicted about biblical marriage roles is the far end of the spectrum here. While the CBMW is afraid of its own shadow when discussing its namesake issue, by not being either overtly hostile or silent on biblical teaching on men and women it is truly radical in modern Christian culture.
*The similarity to Boundless isn’t an accident, as the CBMW hired Steve and Candice Watters, the husband and wife who created Boundless, to lead the family section of CBMW.
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I posted on the topic of submission in Eph. 5:21ff recently and destroyed arguments from the text requiring men to lead.
https://theasdgamer.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/submission-you-gotta-be-kidding/
Ahahaha!! Now where have I heard that before?
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Meaning, I showed that using the text to require men to lead is eisegetic.
Rollo, you’re not a nice guy if you don’t return your date home “more holy” than she was when you pick her up. You must be nice, nice, nice. Incel, incel, incel.
Ultimately though this is really an indictment of modern Christian culture far more than it is about the men and women of the CBMW.
This is the exact problem we face today. We need a massive, ongoing grassroots effort to push this in many places, just like those pushing other things have had.
Why is it always up to the man? What does he get out of this? They never explain that part. Anyway, if you screwed most women sideways on the first date, you would probably be sending them back holier than the night before..
It seems that for modern Christianity, the man is the head of the women, like a bumper is at the front of a car.
I’m fed up with these ‘Christians’ trying to conform to the world— in order to gain power and status over the flock.
REally. Enough.
Always remember when reading christian publications, political correctness is almost a guarantee of their sin. The fear of man brings a snare… This Red-Flag always comes in handy
It seems that for modern Christianity, the man is the head of the women, like a bumper is at the front of a car.
Very appropriate analogy.
Wayne Grudem carried the banner against the egalitarian take over with his excellent take down of the feminist arguments for women in leadership. It was he who wrote the exhaustive and well researched book “Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth” and spearheaded the study on the word head (κεφαλή) in koine greek where he demonstrated that there are no instances in ancient writings where the word is used to mean “source”.
Here is a copy of the study where his team surveys 2,336 examples of κεφαλή:
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/tj/kephale_grudem.pdf
Here is a link to a pdf version of “Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth” where he tears apart virtually every known argument for egalitarianism in the church:
http://www.friendsofsabbath.org/Further_Research/Male-Female%20Roles/evangelical_feminism.pdf
I don’t know what’s up with the other board members at CBMW, as it would appear that their writings are contradicting his.
[D: Thanks. The first link is the same paper I linked to in the OP, and he is the board member I referenced.]
To me, this is the money quote form the article:
This is because being vocally conflicted about biblical marriage roles is the far end of the spectrum here.
This reminds me of the most closed-minded person I know. Not surprisingly, he’s a liberal atheist. To him, Barack Obama is a centrist and Arnold Schwarzenegger an ultraconservative. There simply is no room on his spectrum for an actual centrist, and certainly not a conservative: they are beyond the pale in his view. And of course, nobody is liberal enough for him to use the word “liberal” as a description.
That’s where we are with “Christian Marriage Ministries” of various types: the spectrum ranges from “Pretty Feminist” to “Completely Feminist.” Meanwhile we’re supposed to pretend that the range is “Radically Anti-Feminist” to “Open to Differing Good-Faith Interpretations.” They cannot even say the obvious: only husbands may lead in marriages, and wives are to submit. To declare “women-as-pastors” as requiring further explanation is silly, too. Although people disagree, the people who favor them are simply wrong. If you say 2+5=7 and I say that 2+5=3.14159, there in, indeed, a “controversy,” but that doesn’t mean that anyone should take my position seriously. Likewise with anyone who feels the need to “balance” the assertion that husbands are to lead and wives are to submit by giving equal (or even any) consideration to egalitarian nonsense.
Modern Christians take the worldview we have now and try to fit it into what the BIble is saying…instead of taking the what the Bible says and putting it out into the world.
[D: Thanks. The first link is the same paper I linked to in the OP, and he is the board member I referenced.]
Apologies! I followed the link to Mr. Grudem first thing, and that is what brought me to digging up those links.
Lyn87 quotes Dalrock and points to this as the money quote:
This is because being vocally conflicted about biblical marriage roles is the far end of the spectrum here.
Agreed. This is how tiny the Overton window now is, even within Christian circles. It’s why over at my site I am having to thread the needle so delicately. I post every article Mychael and I write on our family Facebook page to crickets, almost unanimously.
Sumbission is the one thing you can almost guarantee you will be hammered on by your “conservative” Christian friends, every time. It is also related to why those same people hear the word “courtship” and start throwing virtual food at me through their computers.
Really, the only thing that will end this feminist imperative nonsense where so-called Christians are trying to leave room for women not being submissive to her husband’s authority, is what we are increasingly seeing, men opting out. The more and more alpha men or even beta-bux men whom women DO want to marry (if for no other reason than financial provisioning) that are choosing NOT to do so, the more society will have to take a man’s desire for a submissive and obedient wife, seriously. I mean they can shame single, hard-working men as “selfish boys” all they want, but single Christian men have largely turned a deaf ear to the likes of Driscoll and others. Government is now FORCED to use its authority to force men to “man up” by taxing them of their resources to provide for women whom they are not providing for of their own free will (aka the Affordable Care Act.) Expect more of this from government. There is ZERO CHANCE that government will ever take men’s desires for submissive wives and lifetime marriage, seriously. They can’t because women vote and would rather eat apples than submit.
You seem to be promoted arranged marriage in the last few days here. I was raised a secular Jew with lots of Christian friends. One of them was a Greek Orthodox who’s parents hired me to wash dishes in their restaurant when I was 15. His grandparents had immigrated from Greek just after their arranged marriage. When I met them they had been married 60 years and I thought what a great example. I soon found out not. They had a very long miserable marriage. There was also active outreach from a local Orthodox Jewish synagogue in our neighborhood seeking to convert us fallen secular Jews to orthodox Judaism and one way they did this was through arranged marriage. I was privy to several arranged orthodox Jewish marriages and what I saw was not good. Then there were the Pakistani and Indian guys at my recent work who had arranged marriages and once you saw them or got to know them you understood why they could not get a woman on their own merit. I’m not a horn dog player type and I generally lean socially and sexually conservative, as is evidenced by my comments here, but I am against arranged marriage basically because I have not seen even one decent example of such. From the outside we might think “life long marriage means good, stable marriage” but going by my experience, that’s the last thing it means.
Dear Scott & Mychal:
When you get “crickets” in response it should be taken as an encouraging sign. Wasn’t that long ago that you’d have been disowned from the average family as a misogynist and probable wife-beater, just for being brazen enough to vocalize some support for traditional values.
The people who are throwing virtual food are simply repressing their own latent desires for a functional life. Simply by existing, you all remind many other families/couples of their own shortcomings. Of course, it’s easier to attack you than to recognize the truth of the matter: that they’ve been lied to and are living an unnatural lifestyle, which at best is a sickening simulacrum of an authentic marriage.
If it gets too taxing for you, feel free to take a break from rubbing the feminists’ noses in their own vomit. Your best value right now is to raise up functional kids who can help rebuild society after this one collapses. The propaganda effort is probably fun, and useful, but won’t change much in the long run.
Regards,
Boxer
As the blogger who has benefitted the most from Dalrock’s supposed promotion of “arranged marriage” I call BS on this, Shem.
Nowhere, except in some very tiny segments of the manosphere are we calling for “arranged marriages.” Courtship, in all it’s forms has one major component–
INCREASED parental involvement. Not TOTAL control, or picking the spouse, or arranging the marriage, or betrothal.
The increase can only be measured from it’s current level of parental involvement (in todays dating culture) which is defacto zero involvement. You are arguing against a position that almost nobody made.
I think this JD Hunter guy couldn’t be more wrong in his “We’re Just ‘Talking'” article. He acknowledges how serious a responsibility dating is in the “The Rules for Biblical Dating” piece but thinks there’s something wrong with having a more casual period of simply getting to know someone before dating. In the “Talking” article, he states:
“This new phase of pre-dating called “talking” is like adolescence for relationships: an unnecessary stage in the relationship allowing young men to avoid taking responsibility and acting like men. It prevents the man from having to be clear about his intentions to pursue or end the relationship. If he wants to stop “talking,” he simply walks away, leaving behind a confused, and potentially wounded, young lady.”
Yeah, exactly! What’s the alternative? Are we supposed to go from being completely silent around women to having every single, female friend in mind for marriage? Also, the lady has the ability to simply walk away at anytime, too. Besides, there is no “relationship” yet. There’s just a casual friendship, which could possibly develop into more and possibly not.
*JD Gunter
“I’m not against dating, but suggesting that it is something given to us by God as His designed path to marriage, and not (in the form we know it) a very modern invention is extremely problematic. ”
I read that as arranged marriage being something given to us by God. Orthodox Jew say this all the time. Its the way of the Torah. So basically courtship is just dating with mom and dad meeting the date first?
No, because there is no specific designated path to marriage from the Bible. There are numerous examples of people finding spouses, and not one of them involves 15 year olds having totally unsupervised time together, no parental involvement, leading to multiple sexual partners by the time they are 30 and ready to “settle down.”
I for one would not mind at all to see a return to arranged marriages. It can’t be worse than what we have now, and what some people call a “very long miserable” marriage is still better than having a child’s life torn apart because mommy had too many previous “partners” to bond with daddy ect, ect…
I am equally supportive of the good ole patriarchal way where approval of the (male) head of household is required.
Hank Flanders, I found the article you were referring to, and I agree with his point. ‘Talking’ in his article is not mere casual conversation among friends, but sounds like a polite way of saying beta-orbiting: dating with no expectation of leading to something sexual.
Christians should not date for sex, sure. But if you’re not dating for sex and not dating for marriage, you shouldn’t be dating at all. A woman not seeking marriage should not expect, nor solicit, the kind of male companionship and support that properly belongs to marriage (or betrothal relationships clearly heading for marriage).
Shem do you support suffrage for women, the war against “gender-inequality” in the work place, egalitarian marriages, and VAWA?
“There are numerous examples of people finding spouses, and not one of them involves 15 year olds having totally unsupervised time together, no parental involvement, leading to multiple sexual partners by the time they are 30 and ready to “settle down.”
I’m not for that but I’m not for arranged marriage either. Still not clear on exactly what is meant by courtship though. If parents put down parameters on what type of boy a girl can bring home, such as “white” as someone else suggested before, then that’s running close to arranged dating at the very least.
If parents put down parameters on what type of boy a girl can bring home, such as “white” as someone else suggested before, then that’s running close to arranged dating at the very least.
So are you also opposed to parental authority over their children?
“Holier-Than-Thou” leads to Leftism and Leftist Singularity.
The Hindus have a saying: Man is good. Woman is good. Together they are bad.
Another Hindu saying: Woman is like fire. Man is like butter. They should be kept apart.
My point is that another option which is Biblically supported is to be celibate. In Hindu tradition this is very strong in the institution of Brahmacharya.
This is a lifestyle were boys practise strict celibacy before marriage at approx age of 25. But marriage is considered optional. Some stay Brahmacharis their whole life.
Shem,
You are coloring your view of an entire practice by the idiocy of a very few. Most likely it is the women in those marriages who chose to make their marriages miserable. A woman’s attitude about things can make or break a marriage.
The statement “ain’t nobody happy if momma ain’t happy” is definitely accurate, though we rarely put the proper blame on momma fixing her attitude and instead blame pappa or whoever else we can.
Sure, arranged marriages could be bad, but will you really argue that the modern system produces wonderful marriages? Marriage can be miserable however it comes about, as we clearly see. Open your eyes a bit and realize you are comparing the real against the ideal and nothing will ever live up to the ideal.
Scott, I would firmly advocate arranged marriages, though that doesn’t mean those involved would have no input. We are not talking of European royalty arranged marriages from centuries ago, for example. I suspect that even requiring the girl to pick the man has serious problems of its own, at least as an overarching general practice. The same would be true of the boy picking the girl the same way.
The current system has huge flaws that are being completely overlooked. Even courtship has risks if it is still drive by emotion and feelings at the base.
====
Scott, you have to have controversy on a site to have strong conversations. The discussions here go on so much because we content with each other. Are you sure that is the intent of your site?
These two comments are related, one from Craig, and one from Shem:
But if you’re not dating for sex and not dating for marriage, you shouldn’t be dating at all.
I’m not for that but I’m not for arranged marriage either. Still not clear on exactly what is meant by courtship though.
Where are the biblical or rational rules for what defines dating? What is the difference between “dating for marriage,” courtship, and just plain old dating? Where are the time honored traditions that underlie datings basic rituals?
We are waaaaay off in unchartered territory, like a boat with no oars at this point. The only thing I have suggested is that maybe, JUST MAYBE parents might want to start preparing their kids (of both sexes) for marriage and MAYBE they might want to exert some influence on how they make that decision.
“Christian” dating? Upon what grounds? Where is it written? It’s all totally subjective.
Scott, you have to have controversy on a site to have strong conversations. The discussions here go on so much because we content with each other. Are you sure that is the intent of your site?
The intent of my site is to get like-minded people who want to at least try to put their kids in the same building with each other. No arranged marriages, no guarantees. The debate is about how to accomplish so level of parental involvement. To stop endlessly debating what is wrong, and start moving toward sanity.
Scott,
I think they want you to DEFINE “courtship.” I would too, that term means absolutely nothing to me. To me “courtship” is just meaningless rhetoric.
I know what a “date” is. You go and pick her up, she picks you up, you meet at a public place (whatever) and you go “out” somewhere (dinner and a movie is typical), you get to know each other better, and you go home. That is a “date.” What exactly is “courtship” and why should it be done and how do you do it? How does “courtship” differ from a “date?” Be very specific and entirely objective (ie: a date you do this but never in courtship, but in courtship you do this but would never in a date.)
And don’t just say “….well in courtship, the parents get involved…” okay but in what WAY do they get involved? I had a co-worker of mine try to fix me up on a date with one of his two daughters (he brought both their pictures with him into work, let me pick the one I wanted) is that “courtship????” See what I mean. You need to better define it. You need to put your thoughts out there and allow them to come under critical inquiry.
I know what a “date” is. You go and pick her up, she picks you up, you meet at a public place (whatever) and you go “out” somewhere (dinner and a movie is typical), you get to know each other better, and you go home. That is a “date.” What exactly is “courtship” and why should it be done and how do you do it? How does “courtship” differ from a “date?” Be very specific and entirely objective (ie: a date you do this but never in courtship, but in courtship you do this but would never in a date.)
People will be waiting for a very long time for this from me.
I learned from Joshua Harris’ attempt that this kind of thing spins out of control very quickly and becomes a rigid set of rules, with splinter groups all telling the other “you’re doing it wrong.”
At mine and Mychaels site, we have put together a very rudimentary framework, and want to move it forward with conversation, educating children (and adult singles) and actually having people meet.
“So are you also opposed to parental authority over their children?”
Not at all. Not up until legal adult age. My point is Scott is saying courtship is not arranged but so far it sounds like it is. I’m still not clear then on what is meant by courtship.
“Sure, arranged marriages could be bad, but will you really argue that the modern system produces wonderful marriages?”
No but divorce gives us a way out. The arranged marriage couples I met either did not have that option or simply chose not to exercise it. I conceded that there are probably some very happy arranged couples out there. The dozen or so I’ve met over the years were not amongst them.
“The intent of my site is to get like-minded people who want to at least try to put their kids in the same building with each other.”
Is putting their kids in the same building with each other courtship?
The intent of my site is to get like-minded people who want to at least try to put their kids in the same building with each other. No arranged marriages, no guarantees. The debate is about how to accomplish so level of parental involvement. To stop endlessly debating what is wrong, and start moving toward sanity.
Scott – My son is only five, but I am all for working toward some kind of alternative to what we have now. I’m interested in participating with the folks at your site, but I’m not sure how or what I could contribute. My ideas include maximum parental involvement (Lord willing), and I believe the Bible supports this. Any bible based ideas are welcome as far as I am concerned, and I’m even considering taking him to the Philippines as there are so few qualified for marriage women here in the States.
Not at all. Not up until legal adult age. My point is Scott is saying courtship is not arranged but so far it sounds like it is.
This is why I don’t trust that you are reading and responding in good faith. You seem like you just want to fight.
Really? If a 19 year old college boy brings home an 18 year old recent HS grad, introduces her to us and they proceed with further courtship with the blessings of both sets of parents, what part of that meets the common definition of the word “arranged?”
That is all we ever talk about at my site.
No but divorce gives us a way out.
No Shem, it does not. Divorce only makes more and far worse problems than “Miserable marriages”. Divorce makes for miserable lives with out your spouse as opposed to with your spouse. The misery is from the people, not the marriage.
I’ll agree with Scott: to my mind, the talk about arranged marriages is an argument nobody is making. Other than the prime job of teaching your kids good values, I see parental involvement in their children’s dating-and-mating choices more as an exercise in shooing away bad matches rather than picking one person for the (adult) child to marry. The instilling of values is proactive, the parental screening is more reactive. (I speak not as a parent, but as a guy whose parents were pretty “hand’s off” for my brother and me when we were that age.)
Anyway, if little Susie brings a biker-boy around the parents tell her, “No.” If little Johnie brings home a harlot, the parents tell him, “No.” But they have to be ready to make it stick. If the kid ignores the advice and gets married anyway, they get no help if/when it all goes sideways. But we’re no longer a society that believes either in saying, “No,” or in imposing consequences for stupid decisions by family members (although the courts will readily impose consequences on males). I’ll admit that I dated a few “bad girls,” and although my parents never told me, “No” in so many words, they didn’t hide their misgivings. They also had confidence that I would not do anything stupid, though.
There’s a lot of talk about dating and “courtship” in Christian circles, and a lot of bad advice. I view “courtship” as a fad for the modern church. I’ve yet to see it work, and everyone I know who pushes it got together with his/her spouse by dating, not “courting.” I view it as an aspect of churchian helicopter parenting, with mom and dad hovering over their children’s dating lives, as if they had some sort of road-map to good marriage… making sure it’s all “safe.” If my parents had been in charge of selecting my wife for me, I would have been hosed. I would be probably be married to my last college girlfriend instead of my wife. As it was, I was in the military far from home and my family didn’t even meet my wife until two days before the wedding… and her parents wanted to stop it even then – to the point of cancelling the order for my ring. They would have had her marry the guy she dated before me, which would have been a disaster for both of them – although he looked like a much better match for her on paper from their perspective.
Is modern dating “ideal?” Probably not, but I’m not sure what should ideally replace it. Scott is correct that allowing hormonal teenagers and young adults endless opportunities to have sex is not working out well at all, but I think the widespread loss of values (and outright mockery of sexual restraint among the unmarried) is more of an issue than the opportunities themselves. I could have had sex with several of my girlfriends (and a couple of girls I just met), but I didn’t, because I knew it was wrong and chose not to. I think that if there’s no underlying internalized value set, almost any “system” is about as good as any other.
“There’s a lot of talk about dating and “courtship” in Christian circles, and a lot of bad advice. I view “courtship” as a fad for the modern church. I’ve yet to see it work, and everyone I know who pushes it got together with his/her spouse by dating, not “courting.” I view it as an aspect of churchian helicopter parenting, with mom and dad hovering over their children’s dating lives, as if they had some sort of road-map to good marriage… making sure it’s all “safe.”
You say you’ve yet to see it work. You know people who have courted? What exactly did they do that differentiated it from dating? Why didn’t it work for them?
Marriage itself is a gift from God. You read some of the stories in the Bible and it seemed how people got married was one was a Jew another was a Jew, if they said yes and had the family’s blessing, they were married. When I think arranged marriage, the parents make the decision for the kid and they don’t have a say in the process.
The whole dating dynamic to me seems to complicate a fairly simple, straight-forward process. It’s like getting some of the benefits of marriage without ever having to make that big step.
Shem, for an idea on what courtship looks like (or used to look like), look up a movie called “The Quiet Man” featuring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. You can find it on Amazon or Netflix.
Shem,
I’d say that around the early-mid 1990’s was when I noticed the modern “courtship” movement first sweeping through churches in the U.S.. Among my acquaintances and relatives there was a lot of enthusiasm about it – they viewed it as a way to steer their adolescent and young-adult children toward good matches. In my experience, the people who were most zealous about it were people who had screwed up when they were that age and – rather than just teaching their kids to avoid the same mistakes they only acknowledged in retrospect and offering counsel – they wanted the authority to prevent their kids from making the same mistakes by exercising direct control over them… a degree of control they would have rebelled against if their parents had tried to do that to them.
They figured that, since they were banging like bunnies behind their parent’s backs when they were young, the way to keep their kids from doing that was to never allow their children out of their sight, and exercising veto power over every interaction and set of circumstances. Most of them lost their enthusiasm once their kids were old enough to start seriously dating, as it’s largely unworkable: it’s a lot of work and the pool just doesn’t have many fish in it. The kids from those families didn’t turn out any better than other kids raised in the church (which is a very low place to set the bar, sadly). The couples with Christian values turned out alright anyway, which supports my point that if the values are not present, no “system” is going to fix the problem.
craig, I think we would agree that in addition to avoiding sex outside of marriage, guarding our hearts as is also the right thing to do. By “talking” and not jumping right into an exclusive (and possibly sexual) relationship, we are guarding our hearts, because we have no reason to feel entitled to that other person’s time and affections, and why should we? Unless two people have already agreed they’re going to get married, there is no commitment, anyway.
Simply calling something “dating” instead of “talking” doesn’t change the moral or legal rules associated with the relationship, but it can set up expectations and feelings that might, similarly to what you said, be more appropriate in a marriage or an engagement.
The idea that dating is a gift from God makes me want to grab this CBMW dweeb by his collar and headbutt him. I mean, how old is this guy? I’m sure he’s been around long enough to know that sexual immorality is central to the (relatively new) system of dating that he is referring to? I said this before lots of times, but I will say it again: Christians are wrong to think that they can import the world’s model of dating into the church, remove sexual immorality from the equation, and have it work. “Dating” is just a series of social conventions. “Wait until the third date to have sex with him” is as much a part of what we refer to as “dating” as “hold the door for her” and “pretend you’re not a bitch until at least 2 months after an exclusive relationship begins.” When you take sex out of it, the whole thing falls apart. Why would a guy spend tons of cash, time, and emotional resources exclusively on one girl who is not committed to him legally or physically? Guys in the world do it to get laid. Christians like this feminist quizzling at the CBMW seem to think that it’s simply “what men are supposed to do.” In other words, “what women tell us we are supposed to do.” If they told you that you need to spend 6 months salary on a ring instead of 2, would you do it? I bet the CBMW guy would not only do it, he would admonish guys who didn’t.
“…for an idea on what courtship looks like (or used to look like), look up a movie called “The Quiet Man” featuring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.”
It should be noted that fistfights with the bride’s brother are not strictly necessary to the process.
@Shem
I’m not sure I can help you there then, but I’ll elaborate for the sake of others if not yourself. Dating as we know it, especially as men like JD Gunther appear to know it, is a cocktail of traditions cherry picked from idealized versions of the flapper era and the 1950s. What “traditionalists” very often do with regard to dating is take this new fangled cocktail and try to impose 1920s customs on modern hookup culture, without asking young women to modify their expectations. This idea that what we know as dating comes from God is not only untrue, but very harmful. I’m not saying Christians can’t try to re-purpose this modern invention to utilize it in a search for a spouse, but that we should not lie about where it comes from. How you jump from this to arranged marriage is beyond me, especially if you actually read the comments I made on the posts at Courtship Pledge I pointed to.
But for the record, I do not advocate arranged marriage. For those who want to know my perspective on the topic of a woman looking for a spouse I would suggest this post as well as this one as places to start. I also have a tag on finding a spouse.
My advice to anybody with young kids would be:
(1) Don’t move or change schools after the eldest child is 10 years old — from that age they don’t necessarily make friends easily anymore, and with each school move, the child starts over at the bottom of the social pecking order. Don’t assume that because your children made suitable new friends quickly after past moves that your good fortune will continue. If your child doesn’t have a solid social circle in young adulthood, his choice of a spouse is likely to be much more random than it would have been otherwise.
(2) Sign the kids up for cotillion and other dance lessons; pay them to read etiquette books during the summer when they are out of school. The more they know, and the sooner in life that they know it, the easier it is for them to move in and out of various social groups as they age. The less you and your spouse socialize, the more your children will benefit from this. Encourage your child to date people with deep local roots in hopes that they will stay in the local area after marriage.
(3) From about age 13 or 14, why not have them read Dalrock? Some of the comments are awfully gritty, but better to know a little too much before marriage than to be completely blindsided. If I had spent a few weekends reading Dalrock in my early to mid teens, I would never have married my husband.
(4) By the time your kids are middle-aged, they will know why Aunt Susan and Uncle Fred got divorced — why not discuss it with them when they are teenagers so that they can avoid making the same mistakes that Susan and Fred made? Divorce and less-than-stellar marriages are now part of every extended family, so give your children concrete examples of what can go wrong. (e.g. Susan and Fred got married while they were both in graduate school, bought a fixer upper house, worked at part-time jobs to supplement their student loans and had a set of premature triplets and a serious car wreck all within a two-and-a-half-year time frame.)
(5) If your child has the brains to attend college, he has the brains to earn college credits before age 18. From age 10 or 12, kids can be taking ballroom dancing or Spanish or piano lessons at a junior college and getting credit for it. When they turn 18, they can be halfway done. Numerous home-schooled children are now college graduates before the age of 20, and have far less debt because they lived at home while enrolled.
(6) Make a list of minimum requirements that a suitor has to meet in order for you to pay for a wedding. I would start with “groom holds full-time job” and “bride/groom has no prior marriages or pre-existing children” and then go from there.
“Sign the kids up for cotillion and other dance lessons; pay them to read etiquette books during the summer when they are out of school. The more they know, and the sooner in life that they know it, the easier it is for them to move in and out of various social groups as they age.”
Cotillian and etiquette will make it easier for them to get picked on and bullied.
“If I had spent a few weekends reading Dalrock in my early to mid teens, I would never have married my husband.”
What?
This posting is an excellent example of how the word “complimentarian” has such a fuzzy meaning as to be nearly useless. Everything from White Knight full on pedestalization to egalitarian feminism can be crammed into the “complimentarian” box if someone is willing to torture words enough. When someone tells me now, either online or IRL, they are “complimentarian” that just means I will have to watch what they do to see what their words mean.
Why is this? Because we all swim in a sea of feminism, because we are surrounded by blank-slate feminist ideas even though they have been debunked time after time. Because people have unconsciously accepted some of the foolishness of the 20th century as normative.
CBMWS’s problem is the same as AVFM and the Good Mangina Project: any organization that is not explicitly anti-feminist will in time drift towards feminism, because that’s the sea we all are floating in.
Dear Laura:
Excellent advice, except for this here…
Kids at 13 and 14 should not really be exposed to the sorts of ideas we throw around, for the most part. Some may benefit, but I think many will simply get jaded and start hating on women before they even get a chance to know any. (It’s easy, as we all know, to hate women… Women are idiots, even though each of us knows a few awesome individual “womans” that defy the stereotype).
Rather than throwing young kids into the androsphere shark-tank, it’s better for the fathers of these kids to dispense some ideas gradually. There’s no need to be crass when doing so from father to child, and kids are more likely to absorb the information from a trusted source like dad, than from a bunch of foul mouthed old playas and divorcés like us in the comments.
I think that kids at 18-19 ought to be introduced to Dalrock and similar sites, and they’ll probably find the truths taught here very useful, but only after they have the philosophical and psychological groundwork to accept the generalities we discuss here.
Best,
Boxer
“I’m not sure I can help you there then, but I’ll elaborate for the sake of others if not yourself. Dating as we know it, especially as men like JD Gunther appear to know it, is a cocktail of traditions cherry picked from idealized versions of the flapper era and the 1950s. What “traditionalists” very often do with regard to dating is take this new fangled cocktail and try to impose 1920s customs on modern hookup culture, without asking young women to modify their expectations. This idea that what we know as dating comes from God is not only untrue, but very harmful. I’m not saying Christians can’t try to re-purpose this modern invention to utilize it in a search for a spouse, but that we should not lie about where it comes from. How you jump from this to arranged marriage is beyond me”
Thanks for clarifying Dalrock but the jump is clear to me. You don’t advocate dating. Yet courtship, if not just dating with more parental involvement, which the Christians you describe above seem to be indicating it is, then I can’t perceive what else it would mean.
Throwing kids into a room together, which Scott proposed, is what if not hoping they will get together and date? The dates may be chaperoned or mom and dad may have veto power (I hope not based on something as shallow as skin color as someone else suggested) or thumbs up power, but what will the kids be doing if not dating?
So basically if its not arranged then its dating with mom and dad keeping an eye out. I guess some want to call that courtship, but its dating.
Also curious is the use of “churchianity”. I told you I was raised secular Jew so while I think I might get the meaning of the term, I can’t be certain. Is it another word for “paulianity” which is what one of my Christian friends termed what he perceived Christianity today?
“Therefore, what this means, then, is that woman owes her existence to the fact that man was created first and, in his incomplete state, God made from him the woman.”
He defeats his own case here. If woman is made from man then she has only a subset of man’s potential. At theoretical best, she could be the exact same as Adam… but God used only one piece from Adam, didn’t He?
Notice how he resorted to Greek language to support his lie? By doing so, he’s both calling all English translations of the Bible unreliable and making an argument which can only be verified by another expert in ancient Greek.
This is an incredibly dishonest thing for a Protestant to do, making an explanation of Scripture that a lay Christian cannot be expected to fact-chect…. I daresay, IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE to fact-check. Catholic priests can do this because they’re held accountable by other experts; I speak now to Protestants.
We need to take our Church back and this is an excellent starting point. Call out every church leader who tries to use Greek language to make an argument. “I don’t know Koine Greek. Is there a reliable English translation you could refer to instead?” “When you use words from a language I don’t know, I can’t confirm what you say.” “Why do you refer to the original language when you’re the only person in this room who understands it?” “What your Greek Bible says isn’t what this English Bible says. Why is there a difference? Has this verse been constantly mistranslated for 2,000 years?”
Protestantism is made possible only by the easy availability of the Bible. Our Greek-speaking “leaders” are trying to undo that. Speak up every time!
Christians are wrong to think that they can import the world’s model of dating into the church, remove sexual immorality from the equation, and have it work.
Once again, I have to completely agree.
Throwing kids into a room together, which Scott proposed, is what if not hoping they will get together and date?
So basically if its not arranged then its dating with mom and dad keeping an eye out. I guess some want to call that courtship, but its dating.
You are either a very literal thinker or obtuse. There are many layers behind the idea of getting them in same room together, so I will spell it out. It starts with my meaning behind the term “like minded” when describing the parents. The idea is that since there are no close-knit, agrarian communities or aristocracy with built-in social functions where everyone is of the same faith tradition, what we have are the tattered bits and pieces of what we can read about and maybe have our great grandparents tell us about. This society has absolutely no cultural, racial, or racial homogeneity. We are 300 million people who are little nations unto ourselves because of how drenched in personal freedom we have become.
Ever see the movie “The Village?” In that film, they move to a secluded wildlife preserve, start wearing 18th century clothes, speak old English and build a small town. Everyone knows everyone. They all go to the same functions, the same church, the same town hall meetings. Courtships take place but the suitors pick each other.
We cannot go back to that, but we can try to figure what the active ingredient(s) were. I am using the term “courtship” very loosely, because there isn’t another word.
You seem to be hung up on a comment from a few posts ago where one dad listed as part of his criteria for his daughter “white.” In America, every racial group does this, but because of our politically correct sensibilities, whites are not allowed to. So be it. However, this man was doing what every race and culture has ever done-hoping that his grandchildren will essentially represent a cultural continuity and homogeneity with him. I doubt it was even a deal breaker for him. Most of us around here would probably titrate it as somewhere around the middle in terms of importance. Equally yoked (outward profession, involvement in local church, same denomination/faith tradition, same beliefs about divorce and roles) is probably the primary criterion. If my child meets a black Orthodox Christian who is everything else right down the line, I will be pleased.
The idea is that two families come together, not just two strangers who have sexual chemistry.
Dating is a brand new construct in the history of man. And everyone knows what it means. There is no “Christian” form of it. I have NEVER met someone who, when saying “I’m dating so and so” didn’t mean “we are having sex.” You know it, and I know it.
It did not exist prior to the 20th century. And recorded history is 10,000 years old.
Dating is NOT what I am talking about, and courtship has a million nuanced definitions that have evolved over the years, so it is the best available. The way I am using it is much more accurate than dating.
Should say “cultural, racial or religious homogeneity”
It should be noted that fistfights with the bride’s brother are not strictly necessary to the process.
Also please note that it isn’t always necessary to “beat the lovely lady” with “a good stick”, though you may often be tempted.
GunnerQ,
As a guy who has done a fair bit of teaching (understatement of the year to date), I have turned to the Greek more times than I can count. I use the best English translations (I’m a KJV man, but I’m happy to use others as well). I also go to the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible a lot for clarification. Usually there’s only one word or two that makes or breaks the point one is making, and Strong’s gives all the meanings from the original language (Hebrew for the OT and Greek for the NT), plus it lists every single time that word appears anywhere in scripture. Not only can you see every time the English word appears, but you can also see every time the Greek or Hebrew word appears. That is very useful for cutting through dishonest interpretations like the one you mentioned, since it gives you the full context of the word as appears throughout scripture.
Scott,
FWIW, I never used the phrase “we are dating” as a synonym for “we are having sex.” Although I have encountered the idea that people who had been dating exclusively for very long were probably having some fairly “advanced” physical intimacy.
Oh yeah,…
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/leaving-her-better-than-you-found-her-not-likely/
The Red Pill Pastor Dees, you’re doing it wrong.
FWIW, I never used the phrase “we are dating” as a synonym for “we are having sex.” Although I have encountered the idea that people who had been dating exclusively for very long were probably having some fairly “advanced” physical intimacy.
Interesting. I have had the exact opposite experience. I even had a girlfriend once while discussing past relationship tell me I was basically naieve if I didn’t get that.
Her: “There was this guy I dated for a while…”
Me: “Did you f**k him?”
Her: “What do you think dating means? I hope you get that. Dating is just a nice way of saying it. From now on, if I say I was dating someone, you can assume that. And everyone else means it that way too.”
Scott,
I think I’m about a decade older than you, which may explain the different connotations for the word “dating.” Or your girlfriend may have been trying to downplay her sluttiness by using a euphemism. Even sluts have little word-games they play to stay on the right side of the “good girl” line. Both are possible.
@Scott
This is why, since dating is from God, we need to go to the biblical definition. I don’t have my annotated Bible handy though, and I can’t recall what book this is in. But it is in the section that talks about going steady, getting pinned, and doing the Charleston.
Yes preach it brother! The sacrament of dating!
Scott – My son is only five, but I am all for working toward some kind of alternative to what we have now. I’m interested in participating with the folks at your site, but I’m not sure how or what I could contribute. My ideas include maximum parental involvement (Lord willing), and I believe the Bible supports this. Any bible based ideas are welcome as far as I am concerned, and I’m even considering taking him to the Philippines as there are so few qualified for marriage women here in the States.
I would be interested in a guest post from you if you are up to it.
We have purposely set the “rules” as very flexible, to include very high parental involvement all the way down to just mildly supervised. The main point that everyone kind of agrees on is that ZERO involvement is not working.
I had, at one time, envisioned adding a forums page, broken down by region. Families would need usernames/passwords. Then they could meet, offline at the pace they want to–exchange phone numbers, meet as public places, churches, whatever. “My Son is 22 and your daughter is 19? You guys are also Baptists? You live 40 miles from here? Your daughter is learning homemaking skills and how to be a helpmeet? Awesome! Maybe they can meet!” No pressure, no promises, just two families meeting.
That would be my dream If one couple met and married that way, I could die a happy death. But it has not occurred, or even come close.
The church used to recognize non sacremental common law marriages as marriage under the eyes of God and co equal to sacremantal marriage, particularly in converted pagan regions.
I wonder if the church will eventually recognize hook ups and cohabitation as marriage, particularly given the gravity they hold towards dating.
I wonder if the church will eventually recognize hook ups and cohabitation as marriage, particularly given the gravity they hold towards dating.
Excellent! They could offer convalidation certificates of “dating.”
John and Susie, having been boyfriend and girlfriend in the Presbyterian Church, USA and having converted to the Roman Rite, are herby considered a dating couple in the Roman Rite. Officiant: Fr. Smith.
But it is in the section that talks about going steady, getting pinned, and doing the Charleston.
Does “getting pinned” mean what I think it means?
JDG asks,
Does “getting pinned” mean what I think it means?
No, it just means you’re dating exclusively. It used to be a tradition that when a boy and girl decided to date each other and not other people, the boy would put his school pin on the girls’ sweater, which was a way to show that she was “taken.”
Scott says:
February 16, 2015 at 8:44 pm
I would love to help if I am able. I have some questions. Could you shoot me an email.
No, it just means you’re dating exclusively.
Thank you. That is actually a relief to hear.
JDG,
There were other ways to show the same “relationship status.” A girl wearing her boyfriend’s letter jacket (mine looked a lot like this with my varsity letter on the back) signified the same thing. At my college, seniors and juniors could let the girl wear his class ring on a chain around her neck (underclassmen didn’t have class rings).
“Getting pinned” is and old fashioned custom revolving around certain kinds of traditional “pins” a young man could earn from organizations that used to hold more weight. Some honor societies and fraternities gave them out to members, if you “earned a letter” for a letter jacket, not only did you get an actual letter-shaped patch to sew onto a jacket, you sometimes got a pin to explain what the letter was for.
The young man gives that pin to a girl to wear as a sort of “psudo-engagement ring”, in a “psudo-proposal”, indicating that they are “going steady”, as yet another social tier of not-really commitment even further below “engagement”, with no real responsibilities for the girl, other than sticking to the one guy (until she decides otherwise).
Alternatively, he might let her wear his letter jacket, which means he no longer has it to wear along with the rest of his team, and is thus an even larger status symbol for those ankle-length skirt wearing girls to wear, as they go to their sock-hops, and drink milk-shakes at the drive-in movies.
The only reason I know this is because I watched happy days well after it’s original run, and asked my elders what was going on on the TV.
Oops, formatting fail…
@JDG, Pinned ≠ Pegged
Heheh,..
Scott, dating means going out on dates. Sex is optional. I have taken a number of women out on dates without so much as a kiss. I also dated a girlfriend for months without it. Dalrock, I went to courtshippledge.com and it has these comments about courtship not being Biblical;
Von says:
February 15, 2015 at 7:26 pm
The idea of matchmaking is a start in the right direction, but a search of Scripture will show that the Biblical answer is for the parents, in particular the father, to find a spouse for their child.
And there is nothing Biblical about ‘courtship’.
Chris Nystrom says:
February 15, 2015 at 6:42 pm
In the Bible it appears that the marriages were arranged. If we want to please God and we do not care about culture, perhaps we should get back to the Biblical concept?
For a Christian ministry that advocates this see http://truelovedoesntwait.com/
To see how arranged marriage might work in our culture see the movie “Arranged (2007)”.
@Boxer
Ha! Maybe an “Abridged Dalrock for Young Readers”. Seriously, lots of parents don’t tell their children ANYTHING useful in regard to choosing a spouse. Better to be thrown into the Androsphere shark-tank than to find yourself in a shark-tank of a marriage.
I have to say that I think most of what entails dating in the past as well as the present is the giving and taking of privileges that rightfully belong to a married couple. The 1st date, the kiss goodnight, being pinned, not cheating, having sex, and most everything else involved with dating belongs to marriage IMO.
Can you really cheat on someone your not married to? Aren’t you both already cheating when you fornicate with each other without the life long commitment?
“What do you think dating means? I hope you get that. Dating is just a nice way of saying it. From now on, if I say I was dating someone, you can assume that. And everyone else means it that way too.”
I thought that was what hooking up meant. Or is dating the other code for that?
Ahh yes, and conveniently left out my response to those 2 (of about 200) posts suggesting arranged marriage:
http://courtshippledge.com/2015/02/is-courtship-biblical/
If anything, most of my readers are a little skittish about any involvement whatsoever. They tend to skew toward the “supervised dating” end of the spectrum.
You see, cherry picking two posts to make it seem like we are all bunch of dolts trying to force our kids to marry the one we chose is just dishonest.
For you whippersnappers (holy cow I’m feeling old), there was a whole ladder of relationship statuses with their own markers.
1) You could go on a date with someone with no expectation of anything more than a goodnight kiss. No “markers” would be given.
2) You could see each other more often, which was moving toward “going steady.” No “markers” here either.
3) You could “go steady” which meant that you agreed to not date other people. At this point the first “marker” would be given. It could be a pin, a letter jacket, or a ring worn on a chain around the neck – but not on a finger. If the relationship ended the girl was obligated to give it back.
4) You could become “engaged-to-be-engaged,” which might include more expensive items. No dates were set, but everyone understood that it was only a matter of time.
Up to this point, attempts at poaching by rival males was accepted, but the farther up the ladder, the more of a d-bag move it was.
5) You could become engaged, which means a diamond ring to be worn on the girl’s left ring finger. Now she’s no longer “up for grabs” except for a total jerk-wad who didn’t mind being shunned by polite society.
6) You got married, which adds a second ring to be worn on the same finger as the engagement ring.
In the case of my wife and I, we were both adults, and we progressed from “Hi, you must be…” to “I now pronounce you man and wife” so fast that we skipped the “markers” at stages 3 & 4. The first such item she got from me was an engagement ring (that I bought on sale). Her wedding ring was designed to be welded to that.
Scott writes,
John and Susie, having been boyfriend and girlfriend in the Presbyterian Church, USA and having converted to the Roman Rite, are herby considered a dating couple in the Roman Rite. Officiant: Fr. Smith.
My then-future wife and I only knew each other for two months when we got engaged. We went to her church right after that (I’d never been there before because I lived in a different city about an hour away), and she was going to introduce me to the pastor. She totally blanked out on my name.
“This is my fiance… uh… uh…” So I just introduced myself. I’m not sure what he thought of that, but it probably wasn’t anything good. I remind her of that once in a while.
I started off about to come to Shem’s defense on courtship v arranged marriage and then … As a third party reads it it comes across as all parties digging in followed by reductio ad semantics (I just made that up, not calling “firsts” though).
Scott’s site as I read with outsiders eyes, but the eyes of an outsider once close enough to several graduates of Dallas Theological seminary such that discussions here aren’t very foreign to me, the point of the site seems to keep with the spirit of several shared values often talked about here and in nearby places namely: that sex is a normal part of healthy adult male and female existence and sex is also a consuming drive and if licit access to sex isn’t prioritized in communities that value both chastity and monogamy then badness follows for the individuals, male and female, and necrosis follows for the community AND SO…
Parents…PARENTS in said communities had better start, and it is only a start, by (1) networking to find one another and (2) prioritizing the promotion of licit adult sexual relationships to the point of getting actively involved in cultivating the courtship among their young adult children.
Now…that: “courtship” or “arranged marriage”? Meh.
@Lyn87, that’s a funny story about your wife. Talk about moving fast …
Think Shem is getting too caught up in the semantics and wants everything spelled out right now this minute down to the last detail. Well, uh … Scott does a good job explaining we’re not there and why, we just know the current way isn’t working very well, but more discussion is definitely required.
Somewhere a synapse fired on taking in all this recent fuss about FSOG … anyone remember the movie A Boy And His Dog from the Harlan Ellison story of the same name? That part about the underground city where the guys are such dweebs they’ve gone sterile and the protagonist is kidnapped in order to breed with the women who turn out to be not his idea of a good time. Sorta like modern-day women looking past the beta boys in their midst to get some of that alpha stuff.
Seems to me that courtship is a middle ground between autonomous dating and arranged marriage then. I still think that no matter how much parents want to be involved, and they may want to go whole hog, there will still be certain girls and boys left out altogether and as men we know it skews more boys. So basically we all still need looks and social skills, and as males we need game and money in addition. So what happens to the girls without looks and social skills and what happens to the boys without looks, social skills, game and money?
I know what a “date” is. You go and pick her up, she picks you up, you meet at a public place (whatever) and you go “out” somewhere (dinner and a movie is typical), you get to know each other better, and you go home. That is a “date.” What exactly is “courtship” and why should it be done and how do you do it? How does “courtship” differ from a “date?” Be very specific and entirely objective (ie: a date you do this but never in courtship, but in courtship you do this but would never in a date.)
Yes, that is what I thought. Its just rhetoric. Courtship doesn’t really mean anything anymore.
Welp Scott, whether or not the rules make sense, I believe in rules. God sets up rules and we are given free will to follow them or not. But I believe in rules. I believe that if we just meander around in the rhetoric afraid to take a stand for anything, then we shouldn’t be surprised that the world is in the mess we are in.
Tell you what though Scott, I am so glad I didn’t listen to a word my parents said about what woman I should have married. They NEVER would have selected my wife, never, not in a million years. They liked her for me to date and all, thought she was a lovely woman when I brought her home to meet them, but she was too bright, she challenged them too much. Her intelligence intimidated them, they wanted me to marry a simpler girl. And I had several opportunities to marry the “simple” girl and I know that kind of marriage (for me) would have been a terrible house of cards. Getting married to my wife was one of the best decisions I made in my life (if not the best decision.) I know many of the men on this site can’t say that about their (ex)-wives and my heart goes out to them, it really does. But I thank God every night I did NOT listen to a word my parents said on this matter.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/02/16/photos-of-studio-54-uncover-the-degeneracy-behind-the-glitz/
Something is off with Shem, and I’m trusting my gut on this. Shem is gone.
“What’s Up With Sex Ed Types and Sex with Kids?”
http://theothermccain.com/2015/01/23/professional-perverts/
I’ll give you three guesses what is off with Shem and the first two don’t count.
I think something was off on Shem but I’m not sure exactly what that was…
Lyn87 says:
February 16, 2015 at 5:07 pm
“There’s a lot of talk about dating and “courtship” in Christian circles, and a lot of bad advice. I view “courtship” as a fad for the modern church. I’ve yet to see it work, and everyone I know who pushes it got together with his/her spouse by dating, not “courting.” ”
I met my wife through dating and I’ve seen courtship work. Obviously, some parents possess poor judgement, but it seems to me that as a general rule modern parents need to provide more guidance, not less. The extent of parental guidance these days seems to be to hand the kid a box of condoms.
JDG says:
February 16, 2015 at 4:10 pm
Shem do you support suffrage for women, the war against “gender-inequality” in the work place, egalitarian marriages, and VAWA? — This is a christian site – there is no problem with equal pay for equal work – Sufferage has its issues by the destruction of headship because women transfer headship to the government – egalitarian marriages still need one person to make the final decision so headship still applies – VAWA is a nightmare – not because honest people do need some protection in the satanic world but it is badly abusive to the innocent men as well – In a Godly relationship the woman is respected and treated as life’s partner – Feminism is satanic in nature so it is best to leave that alone – ( abortions, destruction of families, fornication views, headship issues, etc)
Other than the kitchen, where can unmarried or never to married woman serves? I stopped going a woman bible study class where they said Woman value in the eyes of God. I serves on the tech team at my church is that ok. ?
Good post, Dalrock. You have a seemingly limitless talent for noticing these extremely subtle errors from CHristian ministries that claim to advocate for biblical marriage and family. Most Christians, including pastors and lay leaders (who should know better) don’t see this. At all.
Good job, well done.
But that’s obviously not what he was talking about. (Dalrock, you made the right call on this one.) Yes, it’s possible to go on a date, maybe even a few dates, without having sex. But when you ask a woman about that guy she’s always with lately and she says, “Oh, that’s Jim, we’ve been dating for X weeks,” they’re having sex. Nowadays, “dating” in the sense of something ongoing and open-ended, includes sex. It’s what you call it when you’re sleeping with someone regularly, at least semi-exclusively, but you haven’t moved in together yet.
Incidentally, that’s something blue-pill guys have to learn: if that girl you really like tells you she’s still “dating” Harley McBadboy because of inertia or she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings or whatever, but implies that they’re not having sex because she’s a good church girl and fornication is wrong — they’re having sex. If they weren’t, Harley would have ended it if she didn’t beat him to it.
? I stopped going a woman bible study class where they said Woman have MORE value in the eyes of God. I serves on the tech team at my church is that ok. ?
Sorry my class believed that woman have more value in Gods eyes
@Renee Harris
Wow. Sadly I imagine the women’s bible study class isn’t uncommon in what it is teaching. As for serving generally, my point was that they didn’t call for repentance, and instead are trying to push unrepentant rebellious women into positions where they can do more damage. Given the core issue of CBMW, this is astounding. I don’t see any issue with you serving on the tech team.
Cail:
“But that’s obviously not what he was talking about. **** Yes, it’s possible to go on a date, maybe even a few dates, without having sex.”
Yeah, the progression and nomenclature have changed, in part because of mores, in part because of technology.
Now, a man and woman start by “talking”, i.e. that JD Gunter piece up above, “we’re just talking”. “Talking” is where the man and woman interact after initial in person meeting up through the first few sexless hangouts. Most of “talking” is done through texting, short phone calls, running into each other in public and talking in person, and “hanging out” in public and private. Most of the interaction is done through texting. It’s not serious, it’s very casual. There is no discussion of “where is this going” or “what am I to you”. There is no “Define The Relationship” or DTR talk, because there is no relationship – they’re just “talking”. If either of them try to get to a DTR talk, the other will usually end the “talking” very abruptly. There might not be physical escalation during the first hangout. If there is no physical escalation at the second or third hangout, or if physical escalation is rejected, then they stop “talking”.
If physical escalation gets mutual, they will usually move rapidly to full on P in V sex. (Bastiat Blogger, in a comment over at Just Four Guys, called it the “hang-hang-bang” model. Hang out once, then again. On the third hangout, if sex doesn’t happen, you stop “talking”.) It’s pretty rare, even among Christian women, that P in V isn’t an option. After P in V, they will decide if they want to “date”, or get more or less exclusive. So, as you said, when a couple announces that they are “dating”, they are almost certainly having sex. They might or might not be exclusive.
IBB-
I get your point(s), I really do. And I welcome you to continue making them at my site. Bet let me make this one last plea for my position before you decide it is no structured enough. I would have to go back and find some of the original posts on this topic, but I will briefly summarize:
In the early days of TCP we explored some of what would be the “active ingredients” of a new, red-pill certified courtship norm. And every time I came up with an idea, or list of “must haves,” I lost half my readers. And I would get emails stating “I was with you until you said X.”
So I have landed on this–If I come up with a list of 10 characteristics that encapsulate a decent courtship model, and two families come to my site, their kids meet and they end up using 7 of them to marry off their kids, I will consider it a success. I have no ego investment in making them do it exactly the way I think they should.
In the end, I am a pragmatist when it comes to effecting social change on a grand scale. I have philosphical reasons for being that way, but a comment here is not the place for it.
As for my own marriage, I am with you. I am abivalent about the situation, quite honestly. As a psychologist, I mean that in the most clinical sense of the term. I literally experience 2 different emotions toward the same target. On the one hand, I love my wife more than anything and I am totally devoted to her. On the other hand, the way we met, and all the history we had before meeting tells me we did it wrong, and neither of us deserve to be married. I have to live with that and try to explain it to my chilren.
Scott,
The debate is about how to accomplish so level of parental involvement. To stop endlessly debating what is wrong, and start moving toward sanity.
Have you been around the Internet long? Sites without a debate do not maintain an ongoing discussion. Great goal on your part, but it has to be more you (and others) communicating rather than a big discussion. That will mean you will often get the crickets you note since replies would just be saying the equivalent of “ditto” which adds little value.
I am not saying your desire is wrong, just noting you will only have a discussion over the long run if you have a debate and I sense you don’t really want too much of that. You want to solve a problem, which is different.
People will be waiting for a very long time for this from me.
Josh Harris showed that people will oppose any restraint. He had many good points that people totally ignore. Most fall in the “perfect vs. the real” aspect, but others just oppose any restraint of the modern system.
That said, you still have to have a target if you want to change things. That target can be refined and will be opposed, but it is necessary. People can’t march to an uncertain trumpet after all.
Incidentally, that’s something blue-pill guys have to learn: if that girl you really like tells you she’s still “dating” Harley McBadboy because of inertia or she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings or whatever, but implies that they’re not having sex because she’s a good church girl and fornication is wrong — they’re having sex. If they weren’t, Harley would have ended it if she didn’t beat him to it.
Yep. File this, along with the Law of Gravity, as one of the universe’s immutable truths.
Oscar writes,
I met my wife through dating and I’ve seen courtship work. Obviously, some parents possess poor judgement, but it seems to me that as a general rule modern parents need to provide more guidance, not less.
I agree with the sentiment, although I’m still a “courting skeptic.” That dovetails with two things that I wrote earlier in this thread: the people who favor “courting” found their own spouses through dating, and this, “I think that if there’s no underlying internalized value set, almost any “system” is about as good as any other.”
It’s not impossible for “courting” to work, because it’s not impossible for anything to work – I’m sure we’ve all known happily-married couples who met in bars – but there are things one can do to improve the odds. “Courting” lessens the chance of a catastrophically bad match (the parents can screen those out more easily than a hormone-addled young person), but also increases the chance for a sub-optimal match (far fewer candidates to consider).
To go back to my anecdotal experience: if my parents had insisted on “courting” for my brother and me, both of us would have married different people. In his case, he would have avoided a catastrophic failure by not marrying a whore – good for him. But they never would have met my wife at all, and I might well have ended up with a girl I dated in college – not so good for me. And while she would have been an acceptable match, I would have missed my ideal match. (I would almost certainly have a bunch of kids, though – once she got married she turned out to be very fertile, unlike my wife.)
Lyn87,
I’ve yet to see it work, and everyone I know who pushes it got together with his/her spouse by dating, not “courting.”
That would not be true if you consider you know me Lyn. I did not “date” my wife prior to marriage. I walked out (imperfectly) what I believed and God brought my wife and I together.
It has not been the ideal walk and we married much later than I would advocate now, but it did not involve traditional dating.
Though our connection on this site would not necessarily reach the required stage for your statement.
That said, I don’t follow the modern courtship movement much at all, so I don’t know all the details and underlying themes. I do know the modern system is broken and needs to be replaced. Dalrock correctly notes that the expectations of women are a significant problem no matter what and even courtship (or whatever) will not solve that by itself.
Arranged marriage would not work today for the big point that few parents really care about what is best for their children, but they certainly could. I bet most of you who think about arranged marriages only think about those of European royalty in the 1500s, where they were done for political reasons. A wise parent would try to find a spouse who was a good match, not just any match or the supposed disasters that Shem mentions.
Even those might have worked out better except that the women involved, and possibly the men, may felt it forced on them rather than as a part of receiving Godly parental input. Dalrock, you may want to consider the lack of respect for parents in the rejection of marriage arrangements by parents. Some truly are not worthy or such respect in that area, but others would seek to do the best job possible and would be unlikely to do any worse than the modern dating situation.
What is most likely to produce a solid marriage? The attitudes of those involved are the most important. That will always be shaky if it is merely based on temporary attraction. A spouse is inherently unattractive at times. You must have a deeper basis than that to maintain a marriage over the long run.
but also increases the chance for a sub-optimal match (far fewer candidates to consider).
I’m not sure about this part. I think “optimal match” is a construct that only exists in societies that have “true romace/one true love” based marriage. The math (expressed thusly: Population of the worlds opposite sex potential mates : my child) indicates to me that there are literally probably millions of people my kids could have a good, solid, loving marriage with.
Dear Peeps:
I didn’t get the sense that Shem was consciously trolling. He struck me as a sort of spergy guy who likes to endlessly deconstruct the mundane minutiae of the arguments.
The reality is that most “arranged marriages” in any culture take place with the married couple’s consent. Put two sixteen year olds together for any length of time. Provided the sexes are reversed and one or both doesn’t have some disgusting physical disability, the chances are excellent that the two will “fall in love” by the end of the day. If they don’t get married, they’ll be banging each other within the week. Just the way hormones work.
You can call this whatever you want. Arranged marriage or “courtship”. Either way it’s healthier and more conducive to social stability than the mess we’ve got today.
Boxer
l jess,
You might want to stop trying to engage Shem. Shem has been booted.
Boxer–by the way, I really liked your comment upthread, I just fell asleep before I could respond. Thanks for the encouragement. It didn’t go unnoticed.
Laura,
Why sacrifice your children to a flawed government school system. Many people, from a wide range of backgrounds, are realizing modern “education” is seriously flawed. It is a mistake to throw our children into that meat grinder and think we will get good results.
Lyn87,
The problem is that you are basically advocating dating for fun. It might have been bad for you, but it should be focused on getting married, not “testing things out” or whatever. The latter will result in sex (or beta orbiting) as one-on-one connections have that natural consequence.
Just because your path worked doesn’t mean it is necessarily the best path.
You can call this whatever you want. Arranged marriage or “courtship”. Either way it’s healthier and more conducive to social stability than the mess we’ve got today.
I ironically agree more with Boxer than the more “spiritual ones” posting on this thread. The modern system is very messed up and we often forget that when putting down alternatives. We don’t have something really good now we must protect!
thedeti
There might not be physical escalation during the first hangout. If there is no physical escalation at the second or third hangout, or if physical escalation is rejected, then they stop “talking”.
Haha, maybe this would explain why women keep abruptly ending the talking phase with me. Maybe I’m just not escalating fast enough for them.
If physical escalation gets mutual, they will usually move rapidly to full on P in V sex. (Bastiat Blogger, in a comment over at Just Four Guys, called it the “hang-hang-bang” model. Hang out once, then again. On the third hangout, if sex doesn’t happen, you stop “talking”.) It’s pretty rare, even among Christian women, that P in V isn’t an option. After P in V, they will decide if they want to “date”, or get more or less exclusive.
It became clear to me how true this was when I used OKcupid for a weeks and saw Christian woman after Christian woman list anywhere from six or more to as low as one as the amount of dates they expected before sex would take place in their relationships. These were often women who listed themselves as “Christian and very serious about it” and answered the religion questions as you’d expect believing Christian women to answer them, too. I’m just like, ‘Uh…do you not experience cognitive dissonance with these viewpoints?’
Now, I know profiles can be easily faked on there, but they can’t all be fake. It’s disheartening and somewhat incomprehensible to me how cavalier Christians, particularly Christian women, can be with sex.
As an aside, last Sunday I went to my Catholic church. At the end of mass, because it was Valentine Day’s weekend, the priest asked all married couples to come forth for a special blessing.
He actually cited Genesis, several times saying, “He made them male and female.”
I live in a liberal Southern California city. I thought it was noteworthy that he said, “He made them male and female,” despite the gay-friendly local culture.
He’s one of our Nigerian-born priests. As I’d said before, in my parish, priests born in the Third World are more theologically and culturally conservative than the American-born ones.
Scott,
I would never want to tell you how to run your site. Its your site. You are free to run your courtship pledge (whatever that is) anyway you want. Its fine. I just wanted to lockdown exactly what courtship was and how it differed that dating. Now that I know that you don’t really lock it down (it is intended to be vague because the prime directive is not to lose readers) that’s fine, I’m just not that interested in it for our family.
I acknowledge that my folks didn’t have a clue as to what I was supposed to do to find Miss right. They still don’t. Their choices and my choices are…. well…. we went into completely different directions. That is not to say that it was only this or that, but that their “courtship” advice (whatever that is) was deplorable, worse than useless. So you will understand why I would never suggest that young people listen to their parents advice on who to be involved with, in some cases they truly do NOT understand.
I think it really hard for young people who are marriage minded. Young men have totally unrealistic expectations in what they they feel they need (at a bare minimum) for a wife and young women are far too hypergamous nowadays to ever settle (even in marriage.) I see that with many of my own nieces and nephews who got married in the last five years. (In one such case, the girl is ready to bolt on her marriage to my nephew because she doesn’t have everything yet.) It is 50-50 if they are even going to be together or divorced, by Christmas. And because she CAN nuke the marriage (and collect whatever pitifully small amount of cash and prizes there is to collect from her former husband) theirs would just be another reason as to why men should be MGTOW!
There is no hard set rules for how things are done (dating vs courtship or whatever that is) and even if there were…. people would break them. But I think if there were at least some very structured parameters that marriage minded young people were to follow, then if they DID break them (and things weren’t successful for them) then the older people could direct them back to the rules and say to them “… its okay, just don’t break the rules THIS time.” But these functioning rules don’t exist.
I said “functioning” because what we have today is worse than having no rules at all, we have instructions on how men can use “game” (which is a version of Neuro-Linguistic-Programming) on women to get them to behave in a certain way and women have rules/instructions on how they can use NLP to “trick an alpha male into marrying” who would otherwise not be interested in her. And these NLP rules tend to be the rules that kids might follow nowadays. So for the boys (who don’t want to get married, just laid) it is speed seduction. And for the girls who are dangerous, hypergamous, debt ridden, single moms who want both financial provisioning AND the Sword of Damocles if they don’t get it, it is this…
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0446618799/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
Nom..nom….nom….nom!
Oui…oui…oui…oui!
Here’s a level-headed Christian critique of courtship:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pol3DddDw3w
Believe me, each girl was more holy once I left her apartment later that night.
@Dalrock re: February 17, 2015 at 12:12 am
“Something is off with Shem, and I’m trusting my gut on this. Shem is gone.”
and
@Boxer, re: Boxer re: February 17, 2015 at 9:47 am
I wholly appreciate the sense of one “going with gut” and I’ll contribute that my own gut said something was up, I was just reserving judgment because there’s more than one possibility. Dalrock’s site, Dalrock’s gut, Dalrock’s rules, but as to other possibilities I think Boxer names a few I’d add that arranged marriage is something that’s very important to orthodox Jewish communities – there’s an interesting article relevant to common discussion here on the subject here for those interested: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120918/ultra-orthodox-jews-panicked-over-shidduch-matchmaking-crisis.
Notice the use of the term “matchmaking” … you can imagine that a mind raised with the word “matchmaking” and where parents and community get involved in “matchmaking” and meanwhile the superculture is going on and people – especially adults – still meet each other and do something that could be called “courtship” – you can imagine how a sort of crisis of translation can occur. I can see someone coming from that angle and seeing Scott’s site as a sort of effort at primitive or proto-matchmaking in Christian communities and easily crisscrossing the words matchmaking, arranged marriage and courtship. Shem says he comes from a secular standpoint but one guesses this would be nearest frame of reference.
Otherwise – Scott – I think your effort is laudable. I think early American colonists were successful on these measures to the ends that they sought a means to allow their communities to thrive despite the cosmopolitan superculture they belonged to that sought to impose itself on them. I think it is laudable for communities to try to keep their ways, I think it’s laudable for Christian communities to realize there is more at stake than doctrinal quibbles and reach across Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant boundaries that have seemed impassable in the past, and I think it’s just a start what you are doing and I think you know that. Take a look at the matchmakers in Brooklyn though – they’ve been doing this awhile – I think there’s a lot that can be learned from them. One last bit, my $0.02: drop all references to HBD. Big loser. All liability, no asset. Think of it this way – even if it occasionally has a valid point, and I grant that is only on occasion – then it must be understood in the context that some taboos exist for highly valid reasons and different ways need to be found around those taboos, even if at 10X the cost of breaking the taboo.
Perhaps a middle ground between today’s free-for-all dating culture, and arranged marriages, is to eliminate no-fault divorce. If only one party wants a divorce, he or she must prove fault on the other’s part. Otherwise, no divorce.
If they leave anyway, then it’s abandonment. This means they leave without legal rights to marital assets, and no legal custody over the children.
I realize that a return to fault-based divorce is impossible in today’s America, even if it is a middle ground.
RPL,
That is what makes marriage, marriage 2.0. Pretty much every one of us at Dalrock’s has been arguing for this kind of change for years. I think the Constitution should be amended at the federal level removing unilateral divorce law from all 50 states. Its that important to me.
To me, there is no bigger reason to explain the ever falling marriage rate (in this country) than unilateral divorce law at the state level. It was designed to transfer headship from the husband to whoever loves their spouse the least. And what it really has done is destroy marriage by taking an increasing number of men OUT of the marriage marketplace. So women (who DO love marriage 2.0) are scrambling around for resources from government OR scrambling to trick men into a marriage that they don’t really want with books like “The Rules.”
‘It’s disheartening and somewhat incomprehensible to me how cavalier Christians, particularly Christian women, can be with sex.’
Well either they take the world mindset on sex or the Christian perspective. Women are prone to deception and in the matters of sex and their bodies they are being deceived like no other.
You got birth control pills, public school sex education, con men out there whispering sweet nothings in their ear, delayed marriage, focusing on career, etc.
The real issue between the sexes is how much we’ve been deceived into thinking what is going on now is normal and the ways back when were weird and archaic.
Believe me, each girl was more holy once I left her apartment later that night.
Holy or holey?
RPL,
The reason why returning only to fault-based-divorce is impossible in today’s America is because women vote and any congressional candidate that makes removal of unilateral divorce part of their platform could never be elected. His platform (no matter how reasonable) would be categorized as the center on the “War on Women.” Women might see their right to divorce their husbands unilaterally as something more imporant than their right to murder their own unborn. To women, they see unilateral divorce as “middle ground” because men can divorce their wives unilaterally too. So because men can do it, they figure its equal and “middle ground” so to speak. In reality, it is nothing of the kind. All unilateral divorce law has done is given men an unassailable reason never to marry. Of course that frank honesty is never mentioned by anyone other than pundits (political people who do NOT run for office) like Ann Coulter.
I’m sure those late night Bible studies with the gals really helped them out in the long run. Their future husbands will appreciate how you made them grow in holiness.
@God is Laughing –
I took it to as a reference to the old joke about how she sure was praying* a lot last night.
* If you count yelling, “Oh God!” as praying, that is.
@ earl
I think some of the problem is the time frame implied by dating culture. Most girls my age I know who’ve married had at least a year (sometimes two or three) of non-committed “dating” before the man proposed, then add on another year of the engagement period before the $30,000 wedding actually takes place. In my brother’s case, it was almost three years between meeting his wife and finally marrying her. Everyone accepts this time frame as normal.
I’m not saying the fault lies on one sex more than the other, but is it realistic to expect a couple in this situation to remain chaste for that period of time? How does a woman keep a man interested in her for that long without either offering sex herself, or allowing him to get sex elsewhere? Dating culture is antagonistic to Christian values, and the two cannot be resolved. You cannot maintain traditional morality in a system that is not designed to reinforce that morality.
I agree that a return to the way things used to be done would be better all around. However, the meaning of marriage itself has changed so much (from a relationship with sexual and economic benefits to husband and wife, and the ideal place to raise children, to one of purely emotional fulfillment) that it might not be possible to go back without undoing that, first. If you’re just looking for a man to provide for you and your children, a simple courting process suffices. If you’re looking for somebody to satisfy your every emotional need, then yes, years of dating is more likely required, to ensure every box on the checklist is ticked off.
Maybe the problem isn’t really the process for getting married that’s seen as outdated, but the purpose of marriage itself.
I come from a very religious family (my father is a Baptist preacher) and I remain someone with a lot respect for religion, religious people and their values, even though I myself am a nonbeliever (an atheist, to be specific).
One of the many reasons why I left the church was because it seemed senseless to remain in an institution that is so dead set on ignoring its own holy books. I never understood why it was necessary to get up early and put on your Sunday best to go hear the preacher rationalize away what is plainly written in the text. You don’t need a sermon for that. If I wanted to be a part of an institution that just changed to suit the times then I would do exactly what I did—leave the church.
In any case, continuing to point out the yawning gap between Christian culture and what is actually written in the Bible is good work—if only because you can suss out who is for real based on how they react. My unbelief notwithstanding, I would have no problems joining a church that was a strong and true buffer against feminism and other offshoots of postmodernism. From where I sit, God doesn’t have to exist to exert a positive influence on people and societies.
Keep up the good work, Dalrock.
cynthia,
Yes. And this conversation can’t be had either (outside the scope of religion) as the purpose “differs” from person to person. And because there is so many differences here, you really can’t begin to define the process of how one gets married. We aren’t honest with ourselves.
@Robin
Nah, sorry for the double entendre (a little). It wasn’t intended. CBMW is getting chewed up and spit out by Evangelical Feminism because they have abandoned Christ. This is wholly (holy, holey) fitting. You don’t want to be in the mouth of the EF’s, they have sharp teeth and bad attitudes (envy). Just don’t do it. Or you’ll wind up like the CBMW’s “emasculees”.
One last bit, my $0.02: drop all references to HBD. Big loser. All liability, no asset.
No offense, but this is exactly the problem I am describing. I mentioned HBD maybe twice in 2 years of posts and comments on TCP, and, for at least one person it is total deal breaker. No matter how much else is useful or good about the site.
I happen to disagree that the body of literature (which is growing rapidly) from reputable social scientists only occasionally gets it right so I probably won’t just drop it from my lexicon. How many otherwise engaged folks will just walk away because they think that makes me a “racist?” Who knows?
I disagree. “Government” is “forced” to do no such thing. It would stop tomorrow should men “man up” by giving up gynolatry, stop caving in to feminism, and cease electing feminists and front men for the feminist ideology to political office.
Also, the government stepping in as the polygynous anti-husband of loose females began first. This led to female seekers of the Welfare State teat pushing their men out of the home. (Female greed lured females into going along with the Welfare State’s ‘No Man In The House’ rule.) That, in its turn, led to the social and political indulgence of females who wanted babies without men–you see that in the substitution of “single mother” for the truthful term “unwed mother”. To keep up appearances, irresponsible loose females are allowed to hide their shameful behavior behind the skirts of honest widows.
When the State’s expense of pandering to so many women in sin grew large, the noisy man-blaming began. A nation of gynolators cannot put the blame for irresponsible female behavior where it belongs–it goes against their religion. Rather than give up their Welfare State addiction, voters and their politicians began to look for excuses for gouging money out of men, usually the very men that females had pushed out of their homes and the lives of their children. After a generation of getting comfortable with such contrary-to-Christian-faith government schemes, here we are.
Finally, to mention but one contra-Welfare State reform, if we gave custody of children to their father there would be less temptation to give custody of the poor to Caesar.
‘I’m not saying the fault lies on one sex more than the other, but is it realistic to expect a couple in this situation to remain chaste for that period of time?’
If you are talking human nature, no. If you are talking by the grace of God, yes. I think most people have a good enough idea of a person on whether or not to pursue marriage after about 6 months to a year. And if they are already having sex that timeframe is going to be delayed more because they are already getting one of the incentives while fogging their minds to the other things they need to look for.
‘How does a woman keep a man interested in her for that long without either offering sex herself, or allowing him to get sex elsewhere?’
If a man follows the Christian teachings about sex, he knows it’s reserved for marriage. Otherwise it’s fornication. Which isn’t good for either party. If all a woman has is sex to be interesting…then she isn’t interesting.
‘Dating culture is antagonistic to Christian values, and the two cannot be resolved. You cannot maintain traditional morality in a system that is not designed to reinforce that morality.’
No you can’t.
BradA writes to me:
The problem is that you are basically advocating dating for fun. It might have been bad for you, but it should be focused on getting married, not “testing things out” or whatever. The latter will result in sex (or beta orbiting) as one-on-one connections have that natural consequence.
Just because your path worked doesn’t mean it is necessarily the best path.
Given our history of agreement on most topics I will attribute this to misunderstanding rather than obtuseness. Allow me to further elucidate:
I don’t see dating for fun as the “problem” that you do. Interacting with members of the opposite sex is a good thing in its own right. Why shouldn’t people enjoy each other’s company and gain experience in how various members of the other sex think? As long as you’re not crossing the line into sexual sin, I don’t see a problem, and you won’t find one in scripture. You were a military officer just like I was: you know as well as I that there are functions where it is appropriate to take a date… a ball, for instance. Its not like I was going to dance with a chair when I could dance with a pretty, pleasant girl. You and Scott seem to be equating dating with P-in-V, which is a false equivalence. I dated about a dozen girls and women before I met my wife, and didn’t do that with any of them. The link that Chris Dagostino posted above is pretty good on that point: I’m with him about 80% (his statement that there are a lot more solid Christian women than men is… problematic. He suffers from the Women are Wonderful
EffectFallacy, but most of the rest is pretty good).Should dating be focused on marriage? I’ll go with that, but you and I mean different things by it. The dates I had before I met my wife were not all “headed for marriage” in the direct sense… but I learned useful lessons from those experiences. I learned what not to do, for starters, which means my wife didn’t have to suffer through all the stupid things I did before I learned not to do them. I took some hard knocks which made me both stronger and more savvy. I learned that female tears are not trump cards. I learned how to say, “No” and mean it, which is an important thing for a leader: whether a Captain or a husband. I can say that every dating experience I had focused on marriage – not necessarily to the girl I was dating at that moment, but toward teaching me what I needed to know as a husband.
Also, I never said my way was best. If you look at what I wrote you will see that I said that dating is probably not ideal (and certainly not in all cases), but that the thing that matters is Christian values. If they are present, the odds of success are high, and if they are not, it hardly matters which system is used – the odds are poor. It seems to me that focusing on the means is putting the cart before the horse. But given Christian values for all parties, finding the best spouse is usually a numbers game, and courtship (disclaimer: as I have seen it practiced and advocated), restricts the pool of potential matches to a degree that other methods do not. That’s not me – that’s just math.
Needless to say, doing away with “No-Fault Divorce,” restoring the presumption of paternal custody after divorce, removing government incentives for bastardy, and ending abortion-on-demand would go a long way toward creating the superstructure upon which all “systems” would work better… but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for any of that.
Micha,
Its not going to stop. Red pill people are outvoted.
Scott, re: “, and, for at least one person it is total deal breaker.” … which is why I gave exactly those $0.02.
Total dealbreaker. And will be for many, many more the first 30 seconds they understand what it is.
Bake that into your calculus, the go forward with your enterprise.
This would be my assesment of what the purpose of marriage is.
http://www.foryourmarriage.org/catholic-marriage/catholic-beliefs/meaning-and-purpose/
first 30 seconds they understand what it is.
I don’t get the innuendo. What is it, in your opinion?
Is Thomas Sowell a racist? He has been writing about this sutff since his 1994 book, “Race and Culture.”
Basically the whole concept of dating and courtship has been poisioned due to the fact that people are bringing pre-marital sex and the subsequent emotions with that into it. Rationalizing this away to make people feel better about these decisions isn’t making the problem go away. It is a sin and that’s the true issue here.
Scott,
Charles Murray got himself in trouble back in the 1980s when he wrote “The Bell Curve” because he touched on HBD. Whether or not Murray was right or wrong about everything was irrelevant, he was not permitted to discuss it. So when he wrote “Coming Apart” (to protect himself) he stuck with just non-hispanic white culture and showed how lifelong marriage simply ceased to exist in a significant portion of it (no college education), while in another significant portion (bachelor’s degree or higher), almost 98% of white people eventually marry and of that, almsot 80% stay married for life. Essencially, higher education has replaced religion as a form or divorce firewall, if you will (particularly for men.) I suppose that could be true of ANY racial ethnicity.
“RULE NUMBER THREE: Always return your date home “more holy” than she was when you picked her up.”
About 5 highly inappropriate innuendos leapt to mind based on this cringe inducing phrasing.
Try to imagine being a father, telling this to the young man taking out your daughter.”please be sure to return her more holey than you found her”
Not even George Lucas would write such dialogue. Our holiness comes not from men, but from God. And if it did come from men, the father must be a very poor figure indeed if a couple hours with a teenager transports his daughter to hitherto unknown heights of holiness.
Charles Murray got himself in trouble back in the 1980s when he wrote “The Bell Curve” because he touched on HBD. Whether or not Murray was right or wrong about everything was irrelevant, he was not permitted to discuss it. So when he wrote “Coming Apart” (to protect himself) he stuck with just non-hispanic white culture and showed how lifelong marriage simply ceased to exist in a significant portion of it (no college education), while in another significant portion (bachelor’s degree or higher), almost 98% of white people eventually marry and of that, almsot 80% stay married for life. Essencially, higher education has replaced religion as a form or divorce firewall, if you will (particularly for men.) I suppose that could be true of ANY racial ethnicity.
This stuff is fascinating to me and I find it bizarre that it is all off limits to even talk about.
In it’s simplist form, HBD means this to me:
I see a lifted 1986 Chevy Caprice classic with pearl paint, blacked out windows and 22″ spinners rolling down the road with super loud thumping bass booming out of it, why am I not allowed to make a guess as to the color of the driver?
@Lyn,
I know there are ways to compensate for not knowing Greek but that wasn’t my point. Churchian leaders who resort to esoteric arguments frequently do so to conceal unBiblical beliefs and, intentionally or not, undermine the confidence of other Christians in their ability to understand the Bible. There’s a place for using Greek in high-level discussions but not basic theology. Paraphrasing from the OP, this is what happened:
Question: “Your organization doesn’t seem to obey this part of the Bible. Why is that?”
Answer: “If you were smart enough to understand Koine Greek like me, you would know your Bible is wrong.”
Much later, another expert explains it’s Mr. Answer who is wrong… but that particular debate is dead and Mr. Question might have spent a lot of time accepting & unwittingly spreading a lie, not to mention wondering what other parts of his Bible are wrong, not to mention he might miss the rebuttal. All because Mr. Answer gave an explanation he KNEW could not be verified until later.
This is absolutely unacceptable. Should congregants walk around Church with reference textbooks handy at all times so they can cut through deliberate obfuscation? Or should the pastor limit himself to his church’s, society’s and nation’s common language so the laity can practice with the Bibles they have, not the annotated Vulgate texts they don’t?
This is an easy fight to win because it’s a very reasonable request. It also makes a good litmus test: if a pastor insists upon such deliberately hard-to-follow references then it’s a good bet he’s hiding disobedience to Christ.
Once everybody is speaking the same language, confronting false doctrine becomes much easier.
@Gunner Q
In this case the author is presenting an argument he presumably doesn’t agree with. I take issue with the presentation in the OP, but I don’t think we can criticize him for the Koine Greek reference. He isn’t the one making the argument, he is representing the argument of those who want to deny headship.
But the whole thing is a mess. No one would write this kind of even handed “summary” about an issue unless they are highly conflicted about it. You won’t see this attempt at even handedness from an organization which opposes abortion, gay marriage, etc.
Lyn87: “I don’t see dating for fun as the “problem” that you do. Interacting with members of the opposite sex is a good thing in its own right. … As long as you’re not crossing the line into sexual sin, … You and Scott seem to be equating dating with P-in-V, which is a false equivalence.”
I think you have an outdated, or perhaps regional, definition of the word “dating.” Here in Los Angeles, at least as far back as the 1980s, the term “dating” meant “sex,” even if not always realized on a first date.
Certainly, “dating” beyond a few times meant “having sex” with that person. Otherwise, if you were repeatedly socializing with a member of the opposite sex, without sex, then it would not be defined as dating, but rather as “just hanging out” and being “just friends.”
The word date meant sex. Which is what the phrase “hook up” has come to mean.
In the 1990s, I had a female friend who would call to “hook up” with me. She meant to just hang out as friends. But today, “hook up” also means sex.
It seems that as women grow ever looser, ever more words come to mean “sex.”
RPL-
Also from southern California. Your description is exactly my experience, all the way back to the 80’s.
The only exception, and I think you basically covered it has to do with the distinction between “a date” and “dating.”
The former usually refers to somewhere around the 1-3rd date, generally a new relationship. These are the dates where sex may or may not occur. But once you start saying “we are dating” it means sex. Has meant that for at least 30 years, everywhere I have been since.
RPL,
Dating did not always men s-x. Hooking up ALWAYS meant s-x.
@BradA
My children are grown now, and I pretty much spent myself into the poor house keeping them out of the public school system. I have no illusions about what goes on in the public schools, although I know young adults who did go through the public schools and who have turned out very well indeed. But they were raised in stable UMC two-parent families, while my children were at much higher risk because they were being raised in a single-parent home. Essentially, single parents can do a good job of raising kids, even if the kids are in the public schools BUT if & when things start to go sour, married parents are much more likely to be able to salvage the situation, while for single parents, the dreaded “downward spiral” nearly always kicks in.
@Scott:
I’m not sure what HBD issues you have discussed on your website, but I told BOTH of my kids to avoid dating outside their race/ethnic group, and to steer clear of foreigners. I don’t have a link, but a while back I saw a very impressive website run by an attorney who represents people whose children have been taken overseas in the course of a divorce. He had thumbnail sketches of the custody laws of numerous foreign countries. Even if you are very rich indeed, an overseas custody fight is the end of your world.
If you keep an eye on the papers, it is astounding how many foreigners use professional qualifications or family-owned businesses as fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes. And when you marry somebody who needs a green card, you never know how much of his love for you is based on your ability to provide the green card.
Go bold on your website and write about whatever interests you. Otherwise it isn’t worth your time. You will either find an audience or you won’t. Good luck!
Thanks, Laura. The funny thing, the part that interests me about HBD stuff, are the parts that are intuitive to everyone who can look around and observe the way the world works.
If it’s not useful for understanding human nature, I don’t pay much attention to it. But the way culture/race/georgraphy have interacted through the centuries is absoutely neccessary to understand where we are and where we are going. If you igonore it, it’s like trying to solve a math problem with too missing variables.
But “race is a social contruct” is one of the sacred cows of our time. The worst thing you can be called today is racist. The pressure to not notice obvious intra-group differences to serve the collective mindset is overwhelming.
@IBB
Hooking up is a deliberately ambiguous term. It can mean pretty much anything; talking, kissing, sex, whatever. I believe it was Anon Reader who pointed out that you can tell whether a sexual system is male or female oriented by the degree of ambiguity. Men favor very little ambiguity. This can be moral (Marriage) or immoral (prostitution, friend with benefits), but men consistently prefer unambiguous arrangements. Women prefer maximum ambiguity. Hooking Up is what women collectively drove the culture to once feminism put them in the driver’s seat. It is deliberately vague, and vagueness is the only defining feature. You can see the same thing in the definition of rape/consent. The push for ambiguity is fascinatingly consistent.
I grew up in a church that fell hard for the whole Josh Harris/New Attitude/Courtship scene.
Courtship was basically exclusive dating with lots of parental oversight, a specified end goal of marriage, and understanding there would be no premarital sex.
It was a reaction against the hookup culture where it was assumed that dating and fornication went hand in hand. Fathers would announce in church wirh much fanfare before the entire congregation when a young man started courting his daughter. I thought this unwise, as none of these seemed to go anywhere. I don’t know that courtship in particular was to blame, for whatever reason all the young people (except one couple) married people outside their home church.
I will say that the model is mostly irrelevant if being forced on unwilling people with poor values, and if the young people have the self control not to engage in premarital sex or divorce when they are unhappy, that almost any model, including dating, would work. (Or even no model at all – I am not sure how to describe what my wife and I did except that it was not hooking up nor courtship.) The framework mostly does some light lifting around the edges – it isn’t magically going to make up for 18 years if maleducation.
The length the model will be in place is at least as important as the model chosen.
The time of life you begin this process is also at least as important.
It is also important to not unfairly compare two models by assuming pre marital sex occurs in one but not the other. Trust me, pre marital sex can occur just fine under the courtship model as well.
Taking those three things into consideration, I believe a couple that dates for 6 months at age 18 and then marries is on a more likely path for success that a couple that enters a 3 year courtship period at age 30.
You shouldn’t.
Those who are quick to label you a racist for even discussing HBD (I wont, but I know of people who would) are people who refuse to have frank discussions about genetics. To do so, would allow someone (anyone) to be in a position to “compare” (scientifically) one person with another person, genetically. Now, you are similar discussions that the Nazis had in the 1930s. See where that leads you?
I know you are not a bigot Scott, but most people are not able to make that determination. They are told how to think (about you) and they are afraid to go against the mob in their “group think.”
Let me put my oar in the water on the difference between dating and courtship. The difference is all in the intent. Dating, as it exists in the modern era has the intent of being entertainment. Courtship has the intent of moving towards marriage from the very beginning. This does not mean that all courtships initiated will end in marriage, but the intent is to head in that direction.
I will give my experience as an example. I have been married since 2008 to a Filipina. She comes from a very traditional and patriarchal/matriarchal culture (hard for me to say as it seemed the men were nominally in charge, but women had most to do with screening me for marriage). I had gone to the Philippines on a scuba trip and, although I had seen many feminine and charming young ladies, I really hadn’t gotten past exchanging idle pleasantries with any of them. When I returned to the US I mentioned to my friends that were married to Filipinas that I was not able to meet any nice girls, and asked how they had. They told me that no properly raised young Filipina would have anything to do with a tourist, and that the only way to meet a proper young woman was to be introduced. They also told me that the only acceptable purpose of an introduction was to make progress towards marriage. The young women there were not interested in “dating” as is done in the west, but only in courtship with the intent of marriage. After reflection I decided to accept that cultural paradigm, and asked to be introduced to suitable young ladies. This was in mid-2006.
I was introduced to many very nice ladies, but one stood out as intelligent and interesting to talk to. At this point the only relationship was talking over the internet. Within the first few sentences we exchanged she made it clear that she was only interested in marriage, and that she was a virgin and would be on her wedding night. I was told if I didn’t like that I could leave now. Let me say that all those that say American men find women in Asia because they want a submissive woman, obviously don’t know any Asian women. I will say they have a more traditional view of the sex roles within marriage, and accept male headship as the norm. That does not mean they are a doormat. Gradually we went from talking every few days to talking every day. Then she insisted on a fixed schedule of twice every day; once when I got up an hour early before work and at her bedtime and then when she got up early and just before I went to bed. These sessions grew into talking about 2 hours a day. When we go to that point we decided to take the next step. At that point we both understood that no commitments had been entered into by either party. The next step was not dating; it was me meeting her family.
I flew to the Philippines and lived with her family for a week. During that time I was raked over the coals but her mother and every aunt she had in a 50 mile radius. There was nothing subtle about these interviews. They were starkly aimed at determining if I was marriage material. At the end of that time I was grudgingly given the go ahead for dating. Of course, as in the Godfather, it was under the supervision of her family, and all dates would be strictly chaperoned.
After returning to the US we continued to talk and arranged for a second visit. On this trip we had more chaperoned dates, but were allowed to travel to beach resorts and tourist sites; with her brother along for the ride. At the end of this trip we got engaged. By this time we had been talking to each other for two or more hours a day for about 9 months. It might seem to the American ear that since we had only been physically together for a few weeks that we were rushing things. But I think we knew each other better than most dating couples in the US that have been having sex for the same amount of time. How well do you really get to know someone by having sex versus by talking?
I sent in the visa paper work and ended up making two more trips to the Philippines before she came to the US and we married. During those trips we continued to have chaperones at all times. A co-worker asked me if I knew this woman well enough to marry her. I told him that I had been talking to her for over two hours a day for two years and asked him if he talked to his wife that much.
TL:DR The difference between dating and courtship under a traditional family structure is:
1)A formal introduction from mutual friends is required, no casual meeting in bars acceptable,
2)Talking is the first step, and is serious discussions about attitudes, experiences, family, and other factors that relate to marriage; not idle chit chat about celebrities and the latest movies or fashions,
3)Getting to know, and be known by, the family comes before dating. The family approves of the suitability for marriage before dating,
4)Dating is supervised by the family to restrict the hormonal drive of both parties to within acceptable boundaries. Dating is for the express purpose of the two of you determining if you are compatible for marriage, not a means of entertainment.
None of this implies that the marriage is arranged in any way. Believe me, if it had been up to her parents she would have been married to a local boy. The key difference is the intent and the seriousness of that intent.
Dewave–
I can’t find fault with anything you wrote there. I actually reveiwed the Joshua Harris book, and contacted him myself. He told me that the reason he distanced himself from the book was because of exactly the kind of runaway train that you describe it became.
I said in my review that if every teenager/college kid in America picked up his book and applied the principles in it to their marriage search, the need for the Courtship Pledge would cease to exist. Harris’ idea wasn’t prefect, but it was a radical departure from dating. If only it had not spun out of control they way it did.
It is why I am so committed to not having some strict set of rules that every participant MUST follow. I have boiled it down to a few main ingredients, and I want the courting couple and their parents work the rest of the details out for their situation. It really is that simple.
I share your ignorance and not-with-it-ness, Lyn87. The usual euphemisms I hear are “we are lovers” or “we are intimate”.
If I was in a crowd that confused “dating” with “having sex” then I’d stop hanging out with that crowd. I certainly would forbid my sons and daughters from socializing with such loose people.
When I was younger, “hooking up” was sex, “dating” was not, it was just doing activities together.
Now of course the sex goes without saying, and dating means “yes, we had sex, but it’s ok, we are dating after all, it isn’t like it was a one night stand!”
@Lyn87 says:
February 17, 2015 at 9:37 am
“’Courting’ lessens the chance of a catastrophically bad match (the parents can screen those out more easily than a hormone-addled young person), but also increases the chance for a sub-optimal match (far fewer candidates to consider).”
Like Scott, I’m not so sure than the latter is true. Maybe it is. I don’t know. And that’s part of the problem.
As Scott often points out, we used to have multiple cultural structures set up to make these things happen, depending on which sub-culture one belonged to. Those cultural structures no longer exist outside some very isolated sub-cultures, and nobody bothered to right down any instructions for us because it never occurred to them that we’d be in the mess in which we find ourselves today.
There is no Field Manual for any of this stuff.
I need to preface my next remarks by stating that I mean you no disrespect, Lyn. As an older brother in Christ and as a former senior officer, I can learn a lot from you. I’d love to buy you a beer some day.
However, in this case, you have no skin in the game, and that fact makes your comments less than helpful. For you, this is a theoretical, academic exercise. For me – with five girls and three boys still at home – this is a practical matter of utmost importance. I’m responsible for all those kids, and part of my responsibility is to influence them to choose a mate with whom they can build a family that brings glory to God. That is a monumental task. And as my oldest twins approach the time when they come of age, my sense of urgency increases.
I don’t care if people call it “courting” or “dating” or hopscotch. I just want to know how to best point my five girls and three boys in the right direction.
I don’t care if people call it “courting” or “dating” or hopscotch. I just want to know how to best point my five girls and three boys in the right direction.
Whats also interesting is that in the sociological literature, “courting” is a used as a general term to describe any and all mate selection strategies throughout history, of which dating is just one.
I have found that that the hang up on the word is causing as much trouble as anything else. However, I am not much for marketing, so http://www.datingisnotworkingsoletstrysomethingelse.com is not as catchy.
By the way, that is not a real website. Funny that it posted as a hyperlink.
I have to add that the reason courtship seems to work, and the young men and women are serious about marriage, is that in the Philippines is no divorce. There is no no-fault divorce, and there is no fault divorce. This means there is marriage 1.0. The fruits of marriage 1.0 are all around them and they look on it very favorably.
“I Kissed Dating Goodbye” was a 1997 book by a young pastor named Joshua Harris. It was intended as an “alternative” to dating, and as a criticism of hookup culture being imported into Christian culture. While it might have been well intentioned, it was interpreted and implemented in an exceedingly legalistic manner.
We had girls refusing to go on dates AT ALL, repelling any and every expression of male interest as demands for sex. Men were portrayed as wild eyed, sex crazed horndogs. Women wore purity rings and talked of “my boyfriend Jesus”. Women implementing the “system” demanded to know men’s intentions upon any interaction occurring.
The worst part of it was the “intentionality” part expected of men. It all made men appear exceedingly unattractive to the women they were trying to “court”. The man had to lay out all his intentions. He had to suppress his sexual urges, and/or expect a girl or her parents to suppress them. Any expression of sexuality (i.e., he is a man, she is a woman) was viewed as perverted, disgusting and evil. And the man was blamed for all of it.
l jess says:
February 17, 2015 at 6:35 am
This is a christian site – there is no problem with equal pay for equal work
Is there a problem with special quotas that result in less qualified women getting hired over men who are more qualified?
Is there a problem with women having lower requirements for job entries and promotions allowing them to take positions that men are better suited for? For a man to get the job or promotion he must score higher than a woman, is that what you mean by equal pay for equal work? I ask because that is what we get when we defend and promote the war against “gender-inequality”.
Do you really believe that the women in the Western world are giving equal work for their equal pay?
Since there are multiple definitions for some of the common phrases here, and we’ve started talking past each other because of it, I suggest we speak as men and just say what we mean for purposes of this thread:
“Dating” means to go out on dates.
“Courting” means family involvement in the the dating / mate-selection process significantly beyond the cultural norm in the U.S..
“Going steady” means mutually dating each other to the exclusion of others.
“Having sex” means having sex.
“Fornicating” means having sex outside of marriage.
None of these terms are synonyms for any of the others, although there can be overlap (i.e. couples who are dating or courting may also be committing fornication, with or without exclusivity, and fornicating is a subset of having sex).
Any objections to these definitions? Additions? If not, we can stop debating semantics and discuss the issues.
Scott, I think your attempt to establish a few key principles and let folks fill in the edges is the right approach.
One principle is parental involvement vs parental chaperones. I highly advise introducing your date to your family, and paying particular attention to what your brothers and sisters think. I am not sure what to think of the asking permission to date bit – it is not what I did, but there could be value in it.I never thought very much at all of the idea of parents overseeing the dates. The idea is to ensure no pre marital sex happens but this is of course an impossibility. If your kid is in school and/or employed and has a vehicle, it is almost impossible for parents to prevent the young folks from hooking up, should they so desire it.
The presence of parents at dates therefore is a symbolic and infantalizing gesture simply indicating the parents do not trust their kids, and to me seems to be an outgrowth of the helicopter parenting movement. Also there is value in knowing what the other person is like if it is just the two of you – people obviously behave differently with their parents around.
Renee Harris says:
February 17, 2015 at 7:22 am
I serves on the tech team at my church is that ok. ?
That depends. These days tech can mean any number of things. If you are donating your time then I suppose it doesn’t matter a whole lot.
If you were getting paid, and you are as good as one out of ten women that I work with in my “tech” field, then yes it’s okay. If your as good as the other nine, then no it’s not okay.
Renee Harris says:
February 17, 2015 at 8:41 am
Sorry my class believed that woman have more value in Gods eyes
This is not surprising to me. I have seen this idea prevail many times before. I’m so glad we finally got it out of our church.
I suppose now, looking back on it, the primary problem with IKDG was twofold. First, it was “dating” geared completely for women, to serve female interests. Second, it was interpreted as “Continue the dating part, but take all the sex and sexual tension out of it. Make the men responsible for the problems and failures; and give the women credit for the successes.”
If it’s a failure, it’s because he did something wrong, or he isn’t nice enough, or he’s not ready. If it’s working, it’s because she is receptive to a good-natured but hopelessly flawed man, whom she can fix and make into a decent husband.
What Harris and his supporters ignored is that when you have one man and one woman together on a date, there is and always will be sex and sexual tension. He is a man. She is a woman. He likes her, or he wouldn’t have asked her to go somewhere alone with him. His ultimate goal is to have sex with her, as soon as possible with as little outlay of resources as possible. She at least has a little interest, or she would (should) have declined his request. Unless she’s a complete moron, she knows he wants to have sex with her, or he wouldn’t be there.
And men aren’t responsible for all the failures, and women aren’t the cause of all successes.
That’s a great one-sentence description of traditional courtship. Nowadays some strange stuff gets brought into it by different groups. The biggest problem is that people try to make it fit together with delayed marriage. So instead of a guy courting one girl for 2 months when he’s 19, ending it amicably, courting another girl for six months during his 20th year, being engaged for six months, then marrying at 21-22; we get people trying to “court” for several years in their 20s, or using “courting” to mean, “And this time, I mean it.”
Stretching it out like that means most people won’t stay chaste the whole time, and those who do tend to get obsessive and vain about it. Sometimes it seems like “courting” becomes an end in itself for them, because the longer you delay marriage by dragging out the courtship, the more you get to prove what a good person you are by staying pure.
Courtship really only works with early marriage and putting marriage first, because an essential element of it is that you’re declaring by your offer to court (or your acceptance) your readiness to marry this person if it goes well — within the year or sooner, not “someday.” It makes no sense until that point, so if you’re not going to marry until 30, then you won’t be courting until 28-29 no matter what you call it, so you’re probably going to be “dating” for a decade leading up to that anyway.
“I don’t care if people call it “courting” or “dating” or hopscotch. I just want to know how to best point my five girls and three boys in the right direction.”
Presumably you have instructed them well.If you have taught them the truth, rather than churchianity, and made them aware of the vast differences between men and women, they will be far better equipped than most. Their potential relationships will work better if not founded upon false assumptions. Make sure they know the principles to screen out non suitable potentials. Make sure they are aware rationalizations they will likely make to convince themselves to make a bad decision.
One big thing is to try to make sure they know a large number of potentially suitable people – reduces chances of oneitis and increases overall success rate. This is partucularly hard in our fragmented, fast paced, globalised world, where people move frequently and no longer know their neighbors and may not be part of any social networks, not near relatives, family, etc. If there is no one in whom they are interested at your church (an extremely common occurrence) and workplace romances are ill advised, and you don’t know or interact with those who live near you…what then?
For your boys in particular, I believe the difficulty is going to lie in them meeting the right kind of woman, rather than in how to proceed once he has found her.
I suppose now, looking back on it, the primary problem with IKDG was twofold. First, it was “dating” geared completely for women, to serve female interests. Second, it was interpreted as “Continue the dating part, but take all the sex and sexual tension out of it. Make the men responsible for the problems and failures; and give the women credit for the successes.”
If it’s a failure, it’s because he did something wrong, or he isn’t nice enough, or he’s not ready. If it’s working, it’s because she is receptive to a good-natured but hopelessly flawed man, whom she can fix and make into a decent husband.
What Harris and his supporters ignored is that when you have one man and one woman together on a date, there is and always will be sex and sexual tension. He is a man. She is a woman. He likes her, or he wouldn’t have asked her to go somewhere alone with him. His ultimate goal is to have sex with her, as soon as possible with as little outlay of resources as possible. She at least has a little interest, or she would (should) have declined his request. Unless she’s a complete moron, she knows he wants to have sex with her, or he wouldn’t be there.
And men aren’t responsible for all the failures, and women aren’t the cause of all successes.
This is a pretty harsh assessment, and I will take your word for it to some degree. But in 1997, I was already married for 3 years so I had never heard of it until recently. I read the book cover to cover in one day last year, and then reviewed it on my site. And like I said, I was so interested, I contacted Joshua Harris myself.
What I got from it was a very non-rigid set of aspirational principles. The most salient point I understood him to mean was that dating, as it is understood by most people has no purpose other than to explore as many possible fun times with members of the opposite sex. There is no end game to dating, so neither party can expect anything from the other in final analysis. This resonated the most with me.
In my correspondence with him, he lamented all that stuff you mentioned. He never intended for it spin out of control like that. He was trying to introduce a very rough model of interaction with purpose. The focus was supposed to be “what can I do to make myself a better prospect” instead of “what kind of person is right for ME.”
Then he goes on to talk about how “intimacy is the reward for committment” which is also a totally unobjectionable statement in and of itself.
Most notably though, Harris was in high school when he has these ideas. He was an outlier in that regard. How many 16 year old boys think about things like that?
BradA says:
February 17, 2015 at 9:55 am
I agree with Brad in that I find little to none redeeming qualities in dating or what ever it’s called these days. I also disagree with the notion that kids will rebel because parents are strict with them.
In my wife’s home country parents are strict with their kids to a degree most Americans would consider abuse (phooey). Most of those kids have way more respect for their parents (and each other) than US kids do. The scriptures say, “Bad company ruins good morals.” I think this, lack of instruction, and lack of discipline has more to do with kids rebelling against parents than any degree of strictness.
It seems that any ambiguous term eventually comes to mean “sex.” Then a new ambiguous term must arise to replace it.
I think that, at one time, to say that “we were intimate” could mean having a frank, personal conversation. Not necessarily anything physical.
Likewise, to say that two people were “an item” was vague. It meant they were often together, but no one could be sure whether it was physical.
And not everyone used “hookup” to mean sex, at least not everyone I knew in the 1990s, even in L.A.
Oscar,
No offense taken. I’ve been very up-front about the fact that I have “no skin in this game.” That means I don’t have the “sense of urgency” that guys like you have, but I’m not sure that’s all bad. Planning is usually best done when the bullets are not flying around ones ears.
Having said that, I shot my sabot round already: the key is to instill Christian values, and beyond that it’s a matter of playing the numbers. If you instill Christian values (
includingespecially exercising discernment) deep enough that your kids will not screw up catastrophically (I imagine almost all of us screw up some), your kids will almost certainly avoid catastrophic failure in their marriages. If they haven’t made those values their own (and they have free will in that regard), it probably matters little whether they meet their future spouses in a church, in a bar, in school, or at work, Nor will it matter whether you meet them right before the wedding rehearsal (as my parents met my wife), or ten years prior, or you arranged the whole thing yourself.So… assuming your kids have internalized Christian values DEEP, all that remains is for them to be exposed to suitable potential mates and get to know them. Whatever means you/they use to accomplish that is up to you. I just have a bias for numbers, and if a small sample with a higher percentage of good prospects is available, and also a large sample with a lower percentage of good prospects is also available, I don’t see the point in ruling out either one preemptively. Each has both potential and danger.
An analogy: I was shooting pistols with my brother the other day. He’s not much of a “gun guy” and we were discussing calibers, weights, carry options, etc.. I told him that “Everything about firearms is a trade-off.” I look at this subject the same way – there are pluses and minuses to everything – except instilling and internalizing Christian values (that all to the good).
I haven’t read the book, but the parts of it I’ve heard discussed would probably be fine — among people who want to get married in the near future. The sort of “hyper-chastity” they get into, where some couples don’t even kiss until the wedding, might be doable with a short courtship and engagement, say 6 months or less total. But apply it to years-long relationships and it’s just not gonna fly — if they’re attracted to each other enough to honestly want to marry, they’re going to slip and sin unless they make an obsessive quest out of it.
So for a lot of girls, what started out as a system for marrying properly turned into a “Christian” excuse for delayed marriage: set the “purity” bar so high and put so many obstacles in the path that no man she’s attracted to will be able to cross it. And if some man heroically battles through all that, she can say, “What’s the hurry? Aren’t you man enough to stay pure for me a couple more years? WWJD?” In the meantime, as he agrees to wait, her attraction for him falls, falls, falls….
“we are lovers”
If you said this to me and my friends in the 80s, we would thought you were 900 years old.
Then there’s “seeing” someone. If you say, “I’m seeing her,” that too can mean having sex with her.
“Are you two seeing each other?” (i.e., Are you two an item? Are you dating?)
So many euphemisms for sex.
Cail-
Harris specifically mentions short (like months) courthip periods as the ideal in his book. The super extended periods of chastiy which developed were foreign to this important point.
Scott, Cail:
I think you’re both right on. Cail hits it with the notion that girls were using IKDG for dating, not courting. “Dating” here means endless choice, endless “relationships”, and celibate boyfriends with the woman in total control of every step and stage of the interaction. The girls had no intention of seeking marriage. They wanted to continue doing what they had been doing without the pressure of sex from “courters”, without the pressure of having to actually make decisions about their lives and a man in her life, and to put on the appearance of sexual morality while having sex with men who scoffed at traditional notions of “dating” and “courtship”.
Scott & thedeti,
Not necessarily. She has an alternative motive. She wants free dinner. She is not the least bit interested in having s-x with him (and that will NEVER happen in the “date” or “courtship” or whatever you want to call it.)
There have been countless instances on blogs where men have complained to anyone who wants to hear that they have found out (too late, after major $$$ are invested) that their “date” was actually “dating/courting” many different suitors (perhaps one a night, seven different ones a week) just so she didn’t have to cook or spend any money on food. She is (in a sense) a food-digger. On-line dating has made this highly possible for the most physically attractive of women who are willing to date on-line.
She could be having s-x with any one of her suitors (or none of them, or all of them) but the ultimate motivation is in her extracting resources (from him) in terms of money he spends on her buying her food. If she has no intention of taking things durther than dinner (ever) then she is not much more than a hired escort for which there will probably be no s-x.
Technically, this kind of “dating” (he picks her up, they go get dinner, he pays, they go to a movie, he pays, he drives her home, maybe they kiss but maybe not, she gets out of the car and enters her own home alone) is pretty much what all fathers EXPECT of any boys who would be interested in dating their 15,16, or 17 year old daughters. That is ALL the date should consist of, in effect, allowing their daughters to become food-diggers.
Ultimately, the only way to totally bless-out a food-digger is to insist (ahead of time) that the date will be “Dutch-treat” or that there would be no dinner (we’ll just sit in the park and talk about our future.) If those offers are made with constant refusal then the man will have saved himself some $$$.
Heh, or the kind of person whose next sentence might be an invitation to a key party. The SNL skit with Christopher Walken pretty much sums up how we felt about “lover”: “My lover has a fiery soul. I best chase her for she is my ride.”
This is the issue Scott, almost any black person who finds your site is decidedly NOT going to be driving a pearl painted Caprice Classic with blacked out windows and bass blaring from the speakers.
As one from a solidly MC family (UMC by Florida median income standards), I fully admit I cringe a little at the notion that despite the intelligence, resourcefulness, and just all around class my husband has displayed, that his children are automatically deemed inferior.
Because no matter how you crouch it, it takes some time to learn not to hear it that way. Thomas Sowell, whom I read and respect, is himself mostly a pariah in the minds of most black academics. Of course it will sound offensive coming from you.
IBS: “Technically, this kind of “dating” (he picks her up, they go get dinner, he pays, they go to a movie, he pays, he drives her home, maybe they kiss but maybe not, she gets out of the car and enters her own home alone) is pretty much what all fathers EXPECT of any boys who would be interested in dating their 15,16, or 17 year old daughters. “”
Yes, but some women still expect such behavior well into their 30s, and even their 40s, despite their having a career or a house (extracted from a previous husband).
Sad and pathetic, for our American society, that teenage “dating culture” extends well into middle age.
Scott, right. I guess what Harris showed is when you sell a multi-point plan to people, there’s nothing to stop them from taking point #2 alone, turning it upside down and inside out in a foreign context, and claiming it means exactly the opposite of what you intended.
@Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 1:52 pm
“I told BOTH of my kids to avoid dating outside their race/ethnic group, and to steer clear of foreigners.”
Why? Why not instruct them to eliminate people who fall outside of criteria based on things like faith, character, values and achievement (or potential) regardless of race?
For example, I’m a Christian man from a Christian family. I hold two engineering degrees. I’m a former A former active duty Army officer (still in the reserves), three-time combat veteran (including platoon leadership and company command) and current project manager for a major petroleum exploration/production company.
Are you saying my American-born wife chose poorly because I’m also a Central American immigrant to the US?
This is the issue Scott, almost any black person who finds your site is decidedly NOT going to be driving a pearl painted Caprice Classic with blacked out windows and bass blaring from the speakers.
As one from a solidly MC family (UMC by Florida median income standards), I fully admit I cringe a little at the notion that despite the intelligence, resourcefulness, and just all around class my husband has displayed, that his children are automatically deemed inferior.
Because no matter how you crouch it, it takes some time to learn not to hear it that way. Thomas Sowell, whom I read and respect, is himself mostly a pariah in the minds of most black academics. Of course it will sound offensive coming from you.
Absolutely. Your entire family strikes me as the Thomas Sowell/Condolezza Rice/insert name here type. To be honest with you, America has never had a consistent position vis a vis blacks, and it is an ugly situation now. This country has either enslaved or infantalized them. It’s why many who come from your perspective are now saying “stop helping us!!!”
I wish we lived next door to each other, I really do.
Heh, or the kind of person whose next sentence might be an invitation to a key party. The SNL skit with Christopher Walken pretty much sums up how we felt about “lover”: “My lover has a fiery soul. I best chase her for she is my ride.”
Yes!! Or the hot tub one with Will Ferrell. Where they draw out the word “luvah”
rpl,
When I was dating in mt 20s, most of the women I dated were in their late 20s to early to mid 30s. And yes, pretty much all of them expected me to be the “wallet” for our entertainment.
Women excuse this food-digger behavior with hypergamy. What she would be thinking is….. If you are dating/courting me, that means you want to have s-x with me, which means you have already qualified me, which means you need to spend gobs and gobs of money (on me) long before we even begin to talk about anything semi-perminant like marriage 2.0 because I need to qualify you as someone who has sufficient earning power as to keep me (and my children) in a lifestyle that I deem appropriate. That would justify this high school dating philosophy into her 20s, 30s, or even 40s.
The reverse is equally evil. He is great looking and she is a fat wilderbeast. Of course, he is never going to want to marry her (or even be seen in public with her) as his SMV is way higher than hers but he might be willing to f-ck her in private. Thus their relationship is not dating or courting, it is merely “hooking up” with her “putting out” in the hopes that someday he might qualify her as someone he actually introduces to his friends or family.
Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 1:52 pm
And when you marry somebody who needs a green card, you never know how much of his love for you is based on your ability to provide the green card.
This kind of “love” can be the case with anyone you marry from anywhere. The desire for a green card isn’t much different than the desire for a 6′ plus height partner with a six figure income. And IMO it’s very similar to desiring a 36 – 24 – 36 inch figure with a pretty face.
Marrying for “love” is a romantic farce IMO, especially in a country where most people love themselves more than their spouses. People need to LOVE the one they marry long after the “love” is gone.Three things come to mind:
1) Love is what a person does, it’s not something that happens to people (unless someone is acting on a choice they made to love).
2) Character counts a lot more than logistics and circumstances.
3) A person that needs you is more likely to stay with you (and also more likely to love you IMO).
This is an easy fight to win because it’s a very reasonable request. It also makes a good litmus test: if a pastor insists upon such deliberately hard-to-follow references then it’s a good bet he’s hiding disobedience to Christ.
Or that he’s hiding his ignorance of what the Scripture actually says, and this is the easiest way to do it with the lowest level of risk.
Scott says:
February 17, 2015 at 1:57 pm
But “race is a social contruct” is one of the sacred cows of our time. The worst thing you can be called today is racist.
I’ve been called a racist many times for disagreeing with our presidents policies. When I disagreed with Clinton’s I was just an idiot.
Apparently I am also a homophobic, sexist, bigot. It’s okay, I don’t mind. If you call yourself a Christian and actually believe what the Bible says, then you have to be a homophobic, sexist, racist, bigot.
@Elspeth
A lot of the time people talk generalities. Women tend to take things personally and apply those statements to themselves and the people they know, and often they won’t apply very well. This does not disprove the point.
From the high level, would you rather your daughter date a man from a group where 67% of children grew up in single-parent homes, or a group where 25% of them did (2013 black vs. non-Hispanic white single parent households)? Even if his own parents stayed together (which is less likely than the 33%, of course) the man from the first group will be likely to have been deeply affected by the attitudes and mores of the community he comes from, and will thus be likely to have internalized a lot of what led to that 67% number.
I didn’t marry a woman of my own race, so I certainly agree that there are many factors and that it shouldn’t be out of the question to marry outside one’s own race. But we’re not talking about your family or my family specifically. It’s unfortunate that your children will probably be affected in some ways by people’s feelings toward their racial group. But those feelings are, in many cases, well-grounded toward that group. We all need to keep an open mind as regards individuals, but as Sowell points out, we can (and all do) make reasonable inferences and assumptions until we have actual data.
People just want their kids to have the best odds of success, since there are no guarantees, and I’m pretty sure that’s the main thing they’re worried about.
That SNL skit I mentioned doesn’t appear to be on YouTube, but I think anyone can watch it here on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/watch/4135
And yes, it’s critical that you draw out the word “lover” as “lovvve-ah.”
Or the Kenny Rogers song, “daytime friends and night time lovers”
@Oscar
We lived in a BIG metropolitan area. There were THOUSANDS of college-educated Christian white guys from which to choose, so I saw little reason for them to look farther afield. The more of a shared background that you have, the easier that the marriage is to maintain.
When girls are teenagers, or in their very early 20s, they are likely to make excuses for someone of a different race, or someone raised in a foreign country (“in his culture, maybe that’s the way things are done . . . I’m not going to break off contact with him just because of one little thing.”) Every woman that I have ever known who married a Muslim ended up in a frightening situation. Before the wedding, they pooh-poohed every suggestion that they would be better off with someone from their own background, because Abdul is “completely Westernized.” Within two years, they were always sorry.
One of my cousins had a Jewish friend who was dating a Christian girl for TEN YEARS (age 18 to 28) when she finally decided that she could not wait any longer for his parents to get over the fact that she wasn’t Jewish. Luckily, both of them ended up making successful marriages with other people, but in the early 90s, she definitely waited until late in the day to get serious about finding someone who was truly willing and able to marry her.
All of the women that I have come across who have had a child with a black man have ended up raising the child alone. Maybe it was a “frivorce” in a few cases, but in most of the situations that I have seen up close, no marriage ever took place. The woman was left with an illegitimate black child, and had little chance of ever being able to marry anybody at that point.
I guess if I could name some people in my own circle who had successful multi-cultural/multi-racial marriages, I would be more open-minded about it. I have also noticed that people who very deliberately REFUSE to consider dating “their own people” always seem to have huge anger/bitterness/mommy issues/daddy issues, etc., and are bad candidates for marriage for that reason alone.
Nevertheless, I realize that there are plenty of people who have married somebody from the other side of the globe, and it has worked out great, and I wish them all the luck in the world.
Even if his own parents stayed together (which is less likely than the 33%, of course) the man from the first group will be likely to have been deeply affected by the attitudes and mores of the community he comes from, and will thus be likely to have internalized a lot of what led to that 67% number.
Actually Eidolon, my husband came from an intact family and his extended family (his mother was one of 10 kids from an intact family) that has a marital success rate better than any group except maybe UMC whites or Ahmish people. I came from an intact family but the rest of my stock? Meh.
I respect people’s concerns and decisions on things like this. Nobody owes me or our children anything, not even the benefit of the doubt. In fact if what I have witnessed of their interactions is any indication, we really don’t have a whole lot to worry about.
A couple of the girls will marry in, one or two will likely marry out. Whatever. It wasn’t about taking it personally, but about the desire to be assessed on merit. Not all people desire this, because not all have merit on which to rest. The distinction is usually discernible enough pretty quickly, and that was my point.
—thedeti
Two decades earlier the False Church of Girl Power (aka feminists) were trumpeting their “all men are rapists” dogma. This sounds like more of the same.
I can’t figure out how these females reconcile their “my boyfriend Jesus” infatuation with their irrational fear, suspicion, and loathing of young men created in God’s image. Seems depraved for a female who is pursuing the vocation of married life.
“Uh, I was just holding the door open for you. Being courteous, that’s all,” answered the bewildered young man.
I’m reminded of SNL skits with Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain as Coneheads jabbering about being “parental units”. But that was supposed to be funny, not a New Christian lifestyle.
Yet again there’s something shared with the False Church of Girl Power.
@Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 4:38 pm
Unsurprisingly, you’re avoiding the question. Every example you presented disqualified the individual AS AN INDIVIDUAL.
I’m asking why you would eliminate a qualified individual just because of his/her race.
I have also noticed that people who very deliberately REFUSE to consider dating “their own people” always seem to have huge anger/bitterness/mommy issues/daddy issues, etc., and are bad candidates for marriage for that reason alone.
I agree.
I was assuming those people who mentioned race for who they wanted their kids to marry meant that, all things being equal, they’d prefer it, probably for the reason I gave and because it’s more likely that the families will be able to understand each other (my wife’s and mine don’t).
I don’t think anyone should utterly disqualify people of other races, simply because I think God sometimes leads people of different races to be together. I certainly felt that that was the case for my wife and me. If they meant that, then I’d disagree with them.
“What Harris and his supporters ignored is that when you have one man and one woman together on a date, there is and always will be sex and sexual tension.”
I don’t hold it against him. He fell in the trap I’ve brought up repeatedly, how Church leaders can benefit heavily from feminism without realizing what’s going on. Distancing himself from that book is a positive sign; he didn’t just settle in to what could have been another “Driscoll” career.
Has anybody read his recent work? My curiosity is piqued. It’s unusual these days for a guy to choose integrity over fame and, looking back, that might have been what Harris did after the IKDG explosion.
…
“I don’t care if people call it “courting” or “dating” or hopscotch. I just want to know how to best point my five girls and three boys in the right direction.”
When dating, I resolved not to pursue any woman whose father wasn’t thrilled with me. That way, if she got unhaaapy and tried a frivorce then Daddy would get on her case and explain how I’m the best thing that will ever happen to her. She might leave me but I doubt she’d leave her entire family, too, and cash & prizes & disinheritance doesn’t sound so good. Meanwhile, I get in-laws whose company I enjoy.
Instilling such a point of view in your kids might be all you need to do.
@JDG
There are more problems with marrying a foreigner than just being used as a means to obtain a visa. The people that I have known who have married foreigners seem to have a lot of issues over (1) how much of the couple’s vacation time will be spent in the Old Country; (2) how much discretionary income will be spent on plane tickets to the Old Country; (3) how much money will be allocated to supporting the spouse’s impoverished relatives in the Old Country; (4) will the elderly parents in the Old Country be relocated to this country, and how much daily/weekly assistance will they need once they get here? Do they drive? Do they speak English? Will they be able to form a social network beyond their immediate family?; (5) are there dozens of extended family members back in the Old Country who dream of moving here, and how much will be done to assist them?; (6) will Granny come over here to be the live-in childcare for the couple’s children? The “in-law” issues for these families are often gigantic and completely unforeseen by the lovestruck U.S. bride or groom.
And these are just some of the problems that come up when the marriage is SUCCESSFUL and the foreigner married is a decent human being. When it turns out that the foreign bride or groom has a serious criminal record, a string of undisclosed prior marriages and undisclosed children, is significantly older than advertised, significantly less educated than advertised, etc., then you definitely run the risk of having your life destroyed.
Once again, I don’t fault anybody for falling in love with someone foreign born, but most people are happier if they marry somebody as “local” as possible. If, for example, both parties have easy access to their extended family, and the cost of going to Cousin Cindy’s wedding is $5 worth of gasoline, then a lot of problems are solved before they ever come up. If you were raised in Chicago, and think Chicago is the greatest city on earth, life will be simpler if you marry a fellow Chicagoan. When the Cubs have a bad day, your spouse will commiserate with you, etc.!!!
How so? Is the history of America one of Americans marrying outside their race and outside their culture? Or is this one of those ‘America is a land of immigrants’ arguments?
@Oscar
My children are female. It would NOT have been in their best interests to encourage them to begin dating relationships with men likely to be weeded out farther along in the dating process. And it wouldn’t have been in the young men’s best interests, either.
The more of a girl’s “prime selection years” she spends dating at random, the more likely she is to end up finishing out her twenties without a husband at all, or worse, married to someone incompatible. It’s better to recognize the seriousness of the task at hand right from the beginning, especially if you are female.
@Lyn87
I’ve left off the other terms in the list to keep this simple and because dating is the focus of one of my points in the OP. Dating doesn’t just mean going out on dates. Dating has a range of unspoken customs associated with it, and while everyone is sure they know what these are, they can vary widely. When “traditional” Christians use the term it means “men do stuff”, although exactly what isn’t always clear. For example, consider the CBMW article by JD Gunter We’re Just “Talking” that I referenced in a previous post (emphasis mine):
If you read carefully, you will see that there is a ton of unspoken cultural baggage in the way Gunter is using the term dating. It can’t just mean going out on dates, because the couple in question was clearly doing just that. To Gunter it means “defining the relationship”. The problem is, his idea of dating is likely no more defined than the “talking” phase he is so animated about, but if it is he doesn’t really explain what he means either way. He assumes that everyone knows what he has in mind. I think what he is mourning is the lack of the celibate boyfriend stage. If he meant getting engaged, he would have said that. He seems to want men to declare an attachment to women who aren’t showing any interest in such an attachment, because that’s what “biblical men” do. Cross reference this with the two articles by Pastor Dees I referenced in the post we are discussing and you will see that “dating” is a gift from God, with a God defined purpose. We end up with an undefined set of rules which are claimed to be coming from God, which very likely come from idealized notions of the relatively recent past (flapper era? old Happy Days reruns?). These are superimposed on modern hookup culture, which was driven by the female push for ambiguity, and are communicated as requiring a change only of men.
The thing is, it is very tempting to assume you know what each of these men means when they use these terms, but this is dangerous. Even more dangerous is what the young women reading, the ones living in hookup culture, are likely to read into the terms. This is what prompted my original query to Scott, regarding the woman at Vox’s site complaining that she was fabulous but men weren’t “approaching”. By approaching, does she mean no man she was interested in would engage her in a conversation, or does she mean no man showed up with much fanfare, a declaration of formal courtship, and an offer to provide her with an evening of expensive entertainment? There is a faux formality to all of this (it comes from God!), which when overlaid on the hookup culture creates additional arbitrary yet unclear obstacles for Christian men and women who are already going against the grain of the culture.
@TFH
Who are you to decide what is “un-American?”
Hi Dalrock
Off-topic,
Just wanted to make sure you saw this about Campus rapes, etc…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/campus-assault-rates-troublingly-low-indeed/article23023464/
Cheers,
BTW, love the blog and your work,
Lloyd
[D: Thank you.]
“That is a fundamentally un-American view.”
Is it? And do you think un-American is synonymous with ‘incorrect?’
Given that the American dating and marriage scene is in absolute chaos, perhaps some un-American views are required.
Most of them aren’t pursing the vocation of married life, at least not yet. That’s for someday, after getting a good education (need college to homeschool, ya know), maybe doing some missionary work, growing up, gaining financial independence, etc. So “boyfriend Jesus” fits that script perfectly, because what mortal man can compare to Him? By setting the bar for husband-worthiness at “Jesus,” she guarantees that no man will ever reach it, so she’ll always have a valid, righteous reason to put them off.
When she hits 35 still unmarried, she’ll be able to look you right in the face and claim no marriage-worthy man ever approached her, because they all fell well short. And you wouldn’t have wanted her to yoke herself to a sinner, would you? As a Daughter of the King, doesn’t she deserve the best?
There are more problems with marrying a foreigner than just being used as a means to obtain a visa.
And if you are a man living in a Western nation, there are many problems, with much more disastrous consequences than the ones you listed, that accompany marrying a Western woman.
Granted marrying a foreign woman in the US will not guarantee you avoid these, but the odds are greatly reduce, especially with serious vetting. And I will say this, I believe prayer has been one of the most significant factors in my own marriage.
Also, Just keeping in keeping with biblical criteria for a wife eliminates the majority of the female population for marriage in any Western country. In many other countries virtue is still honored and the women value it.
In addition to this, with my own eyes I have seen the difference in how men are treated by foreign woman as apposed to the locals. Many women here, even church women, have a noticeable disregard for men and a dislike for things masculine (excepting in the most attractive men of course). The women in my wife’s country still like men to actually be men, and they like men because they are men.
Once again, I don’t fault anybody for falling in love with someone foreign born, but most people are happier if they marry somebody as “local” as possible.
What does this: falling in love even mean? What happens when somebody “falls out of love”? I’ll bet it’s not pretty.
I should add to my last comment: that doesn’t mean she won’t ever sleep with any of these guys who don’t measure up to Boyfriend Jesus. Everyone makes mistakes, after all — sometimes over and over. But she won’t marry them, and having Jesus as her “boyfriend” gives her plenty of reason not to.
Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 5:17 pm
“My children are female. It would NOT have been in their best interests to encourage them to begin dating relationships with men likely to be weeded out farther along in the dating process. And it wouldn’t have been in the young men’s best interests, either.”
Again – and even less surprisingly – avoiding the question. Why would you eliminate A QUALIFIED INDIVIDUAL simply because of his race?
Again – and even less surprisingly – avoiding the question. Why would you eliminate A QUALIFIED INDIVIDUAL simply because of his race?
There are those who believe the races should remain “pure”. I know because my father is like that. It’s not that he hates other races, it’s that he believes none of them should mix. As I remember it a lot of people used to think this way, and much of my reading has shown me that this was a common belief world wide. It still is in many places.
I myself believe what I find in the Bible (that all Christians are children of Abraham by faith – Gal 3:7). For me, the Bible takes precedent over the teachings of men, so like you, I believe character triumphs over race (and a great many other things).
I swear I thank God for the Orthodox Church every day.
Since I married a woman of a different race, I’ve looked at the arguments against interracial marriage a bit. My feeling is similar to JDG’s, that there’s a lingering cultural attitude against it but that seems to be sort of ungrounded nowadays. In my experience people who feel that way don’t necessarily have a problem with people of other races.
I think it’s a visceral reaction in some people, not unlike the reaction I have to gay people kissing. Of course, some emotional/visceral reactions are correct, and some are incorrect. I think this reaction may be societally useful (allowing a particular culture to resist change from outside enough to continue to be itself) but not morally correct.
I moved from the north to the south, and have been very surprised and dismayed to discover that Christians around here seem to feel very uncomfortable with our interracial marriage. This seems to be the case in nearly all the churches we’ve tried here. My theory is that the cultural/visceral effect I mentioned above was felt by many Christians in the past, and they attempted to link it to their faith such that it was somehow sinful to marry someone of a different race. Now many still feel it and think of it as a moral/Christian thing when in fact it’s a mere feeling that passed down through their subculture and is not Christian at all. I’ve never been able to find any merit in any argument that interracial marriage is sinful, quite apart from how a person from India and a Chinese person are any more the same than I am with a black African.
@Oscar
If a person is not willing to date outside his race, then an individual of another race is NOT QUALIFIED.
Everybody “discriminates.” Some people insist on a certain height, a certain BMI, a certain education, a certain “look.” How is this worse than a Lutheran of Norwegian ancestry trying hard to find a spouse with a very similar background?
@JDG
I used the expression “falling in love” without even thinking about it. Upon reflection, I realize that I haven’t heard anyone else use the expression in the last 15 or 20 years. However, back in the olden days of my youth, the expression was used without irony.
@Laura
How did you end up a single parent? Where is the Father?
@infowarrior1
I was married for over 10 years when I was “frivorced” by my husband. He later married a second time, divorced again, married a third time, and then died suddenly of massive heart failure in his mid-fifties. By that point the children were in graduate school getting their feminist merit badges.
Oscar wrote (to Laura concerning qualifying potential spouses for her children):
Again – and even less surprisingly – avoiding the question. Why would you eliminate A QUALIFIED INDIVIDUAL simply because of his race?
http://www.cis.org/MailOrderBrides references a lower average divorce rate in international marriages (20% vs. about 50%). Food for thought.
A lot of this information seems to have just vanished quietly from the web – perhaps it doesn’t fit in very well with the push for laws like IMBRA.
http://www.returnofkings.com/4658/dont-believe-the-lies-about-foreign-brides.
@Ray Manta
Wow, that’s really interesting. There was a show called 90 day fiancee that was about that subject, and in at least one or two cases it seemed that it was probably going to work, but most of the others seemed doomed. But then that’s a self-selecting group of people foolish enough to show the whole process on TV. Pretty fascinating that mail-order brides are so likely to work out.
She’s just running her mouth. Men don’t and can’t frivorce by law.
Everybody “discriminates.”
Ain’t that the truth. That’s why I’m a homophobic, racist, sexist, bigoted, older white male who married a cute little Asian girl.
I discriminated against all those women (Church girls included) who thought that a man’s place was where his woman wanted him.
I discriminated against those women that thought a man should carry his fair share of domestic chores, and against those that despised the biblical teaching of wifely submission to her husband.
I discriminated against those women that thought college before marriage was a priority and against those that thought their previous sex lives were none of her future husbands business.
I discriminated against girls that couldn’t cook or clean or work a washing machine.
I discriminated against career women, baby mommies, and sexually empowered N>1 “you go” girls like they had the plague.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was discriminating against the caricature of the western woman.
Yep! Everybody discriminates.
However, back in the olden days of my youth, the expression was used without irony.
It was an illusion then as it is now.
By that point the children were in graduate school getting their feminist merit badges.
You have my sympathy. This totally sucks.
Guys, “frivorce” means “divorce for frivolous reasons.” It doesn’t have to involve cash and prizes, and men do it sometimes — not nearly as often as women, because of the aforementioned lack of cash and prizes — but let’s not pretend men never do.
@mikediver5 :awesome story, that really is. How has it been since the marriage ? Did you know enough about her that there has been no surprises since ?
Dalrock,
I see what you’re saying… I was trying to decrease the ambiguity in this conversation rather than increase it. There are several competing definitions for some pretty common words, and I figured the best way to sort it out was by calling things what they literally are. If I said that I dated my wife for two months before we got engaged, that does not mean that we were fornicating (we were not), yet some were saying that an admission of dating is synonymous with an admission of P-in-V. I and other disagreed (I still do). We have a perfectly good word for having sex outside of marriage: fornication, and since we all know what that means, I see little reason to use euphemisms, especially when those euphemisms are the same words we use for other things that we’re talking about.
As for the “just talking” thing: I agree, that couple is “dating” by any reasonable definition. It would be accurate to say that they are not “going steady,” or “dating each other exclusively” (if “going steady” is too “Happy Days”), but they are definitely dating each other. They are at Stage 1 of the list I posted up-thread here. The only thing “new” about this stage is that it now has a name. I suspect you’re also right about the writer bemoaning the fact that the guy isn’t signing up to be her celibate boyfriend. He seems to want young men to offer many of the things that husbands owe to wives with none of the benefits.
I’ll confess to being mystified by the “theology” of the stance that Gunter and others like him are taking: if a young women offers up the benefits of marriage (sex) without commitment she’s a slut (although I’m fairly certain he’d find a way to pin most of the blame on the guy anyway). But he has no problem urging young, unmarried men to offer the benefits of marriage (resources, devotion, exclusivity, and time) to young women who have exactly ZERO reciprocal obligations. My Bible seems to be missing that page.
@Cail, I have never seen a man frivorce, seen a ton of women do that because of “the problem that can’t be named”, she had to find herself under a body builder etc.
The very very few guys who I know that initiated separation and divorce generally couldn’t stand to be in the same room with their wives at all, either being disgusted by her physically or despised her personality. I can relate to both of those quite strongly indeed. In either case – you are looking at mental issues with the woman.
I’ve only met one man yet who came out of a divorce without having his ass well and truly handed to him financially. I’ve never met any that benefited. You hear of stories, the mythical a friend of a friend who did well out of it, but thats about it really. Generally women do extremely well.
@TFH
I got something like $850/month in child support (no alimony) for several years at a time when my ex-husband’s income was well over $100,000 per year. This was in the late 80s/early 90s. The money that I received in child support was far less than the legal bills that engulfed me. My ex fought very hard for several years to get sole custody of the children. After the first court case, he had close to 50% custody, but he kept fighting as a matter of principle to get 100% custody. He overplayed his hand, however, and was caught telling a massive lie to a court-appointed mediator. Realizing that the mediator had caught him, and would pass a very negative recommendation on to the judge, my ex suddenly settled out of court for every other weekend and every Wednesday night. He immediately informed me that he had no intention of seeing the children on Wednesdays. As part of the re-negotiated settlement, I gave up all child support, other than his contribution to the children’s education.
Approximately two years later he moved out of the country without informing the court, and discontinued paying the children’s school fees. After five years of almost no contact, my ex came back to the US and fought for custody again. When the judge gave him visitation rights instead of custody, and told him that he needed to stick with a visitation schedule for a while to “rebuild trust” because he hadn’t paid support, or sent birthday cards or Christmas gifts, or made phone calls, he got angry, withdrew his petition before the court had issued a child support order, and left the country again. He did ultimately pay some of the tuition for the younger child’s local private high school, but he never paid a nickel toward the elder child’s boarding school fees, and he did not pay their university expenses, either. The children had just turned five & three at the time of the initial separation — for the bulk of their childhood, I received NO child support or alimony at all.
I fully agree that our society is a mess, and that Marriage 2.0 is an abomination, but I do NOT agree that “women always win cash & prizes.” My ex was a classic “Dark Triad” personality, and when he told me he was divorcing me, he said that he was going to “make me a fair offer” and if I didn’t sign it, I would never see the children again. In fact, he wouldn’t make a firm offer in writing — it was just endless game playing with endless negotiations that ran up my legal bills without ever settling anything. The drama only ended when the children reached adulthood. A few years later, he was dead.
Under the current divorce protocols, the “bigger psychopath” can often go from one courtroom victory to the next, because perjury is seldom clear-cut enough to prosecute. If you don’t actually give a damn about the children, you can “go for broke” in the courtroom in a way that the more normal, risk-averse parent would never consider.
Cail
You just explained it for all, men don’t frivorce, women do.
The prize is the children, you won
Laura says:
Laura,
My children are grown now, and I pretty much spent myself into the poor house keeping them out of the public school system.
No need to spend that much to keep children out of the system. Doing it as a single parent is tough, but homeschooling can be quite cheap and more effective.
I made it through the government schools with a single parent. I turned out OK, but I still wouldn’t recommend my path for anyone.
They are very corrupt. Those beyond the core homeschooling movement are seeing that now and things are getting worse as more and more value their children over other things.
Your situation was tough, but that was more due to the single parenting than anything else. I have no idea the situation, but it caused most of the problems.
Laura said on February 17, 2015 @ 5:01PM:
Don’t take this the wrong way (well, heck, take it any way you want to for all I care), but your little rant about foreign wives is stock sour grape juice that is the typical spew of modern American women – and thus is not to be taken seriously by any American man. It’s akin to the expectation that we believe Chrysler when they rant about how dangerous and unreliable Toyota’s cars are.
Lyn87 and others,
Who says you have to have one-on-one dating to get to know someone of the opposite sex? That kind of situation is more likely to bring out the fake as each party only has to please a single person. What is wrong with learning about personality types in groups, especially since you can then see how someone reacts to others, not just the front they put on when you are there?
It doesn’t matter whether this fake front is devious or not, it will happen in the one-on-one peacock show we call dating.
Looking at it from a more philosophical view should expose it even more for the fraud that it is. It has only happened for a brief period of history, yet many think it is the way things must be. Why is that? That would be an open question for those of you who refuse to acknowledge its stupidity and huge danger.
This seems to be enshrining dating as a sacrament as much as the other things Dalrock noted in the OP.
@feeriker
I didn’t rant about “foreign wives.”
If you are talking about my post of 5:01 pm, it is written in a very modern gender-neutral manner. I listed concerns that would be well worth considering whether it was a man or a woman contemplating marrying a foreigner, and twice specified that the advice held for both men and women/ brides and grooms.
If anything, a middle-aged widow marrying a foreign man may have the most at risk, at least in terms of potential financial ruin, although a marriage that produces a child might potentially lead to loss of all contact, if the foreign spouse returns home and takes the child with her (or, less likely, with him.)
Laura,
I don’t care about this foreign brides discussion. I only have two questions for you. I will ask them of you, believe you, and never ask them of you again:
#1) Who initiated your divorce, you or your husband (or was it both of you that wanted out) and why (in other words, was their grounds for divorce?)
#2) If unilateral divorce law was NOT the law in your state the way it is now in all 50 states, would your divorce have been stopped by you because it would have been impossible for your husband to divorce you unilaterally?
BradA,
Again, you and I usually agree, so I’ll chose my words carefully…
For you to use terms such as “enshrining” and “sacrament” to describe the position I or anyone else has taken regarding dating is flirting with disingenuousness. Other than the guy at CNMW (whose position has been defended by exactly nobody here), nobody has suggested any such thing, and you know it.
What I and others have suggested is that, since there is no “Biblical Model” for finding a spouse, any “system” – whether it be dating, or courting, or arranged marriages, or a freaking lottery, has the potential for both good and bad outcomes. I’m sorry if I’m not drinking the “Courtship Kool-Aide,” but every single person I’ve ever known (in person) who favored it was a weak Christian with control issues, who didn’t think they did a good enough job instilling Christian values in their children to trust them not to screw up their lives without mommy and daddy picking their mates for them. Sorry, but there it is. I trust there are “courtship parents” who are not like that, but I saw that movement sweep through the church when it was new, and it wasn’t pretty.
Can “courting” work? As I wrote: sure it can. Just as dating can work. Just as arranged marriages can work. Just as any of those systems can produce horrible outcomes. It seems to me that the “courtship” parents I’ve known decided to trust in their “system” rather than trusting in God, or even the strength of the values they obviously believe they failed to pass to their own children. Look, I’m all for parental involvement in the process, and young adults ought to respect their elders and take their counsel into consideration, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go. I went slowly with one girlfriend, partly because I knew my mother didn’t trust her, and I put great store in my mother’s counsel and discernment. If you wish to go further with this, go ahead, but don’t pretend that those who disagree that “courting” is THE answer have make dating into a “sacrament,” when that more accurately describes the “courtship” movement.
@Laura
You had any luck remarrying? It’s worrying that your daughters currently have no positive male role model.
And the statistics for single motherhood is not all that good.
@Laura
”By that point the children were in graduate school getting their feminist merit badges.”
Now for all those years of deprogramming man hate and gender nonsense.
Lyn87 provides an excellent rebuttal, raising important points in the process…
It seems to me that parents have a window, probably starting around age 15, and ending around 17, at which point they can stealthily and carefully “arrange” a marriage without the “arranged” knowing of the “arrangement”… If you understand me.
A community of parents (Scott and Mychael’s proposed group being a great example) can easily “arrange” a series of weekend outings between the families of the “arranged” and simply let nature take its course. Two teenage kids, who are thrown together for any length of time, will likely be interested in each other (again, provided one of them isn’t noticeably disfigured, and they’re of opposite sexes). Such kids have a good chance of “falling in love.”
(Oh, what a mystery, however did it happen that Joey and Janie decided they liked one another? So odd how these things work!)
The families of such kids also have a good opportunity to bond, which is a good idea, since a marriage is, at least minimally, a mixture of the extended families. When Joey and Janie have kids, both sets of parents will be there, and you’ll all be seeing each other on holidays. Better get used to how the father of the bride farts in public and chews ice loudly at fancy restaurants and such.
Boxer
Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 6:47 pm
“If a person is not willing to date outside his race, then an individual of another race is NOT QUALIFIED.
Everybody ‘discriminates’. Some people insist on a certain height, a certain BMI, a certain education, a certain ‘look’. How is this worse than a Lutheran of Norwegian ancestry trying hard to find a spouse with a very similar background?”
I can’t tell if your obtuseness is a bug or a feature. Here’s the quote that prompted my question (the one you keep avoiding) in the first place.
Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 1:52 pm
“I told BOTH of my kids to avoid dating outside their race/ethnic group, and to steer clear of foreigners.”
I asked why not focus on faith, character, values and achievement, rather than race. You then went on to recount stories of the awful character of people outside your race and how… “When girls are teenagers, or in their very early 20s, they are likely to make excuses for someone of a different race, or someone raised in a foreign country”, as though a girl with such poor judgement wouldn’t make equally stupid excuses about a man of poor character of her own race.
You made no mention of simple aesthetic preference until just now, but instead tried to to make the case that people of races other than your own simply have poor character.
I then asked again, why eliminate candidates on the basis of race who have proven themselves in the areas of faith, character, values and achievement? Your response…
Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 5:17 pm
“My children are female. It would NOT have been in their best interests to encourage them to begin dating relationships with men LIKELY TO BE WEEDED OUT FARTHER ALONG IN THE DATING PROCESS. And it wouldn’t have been in the young men’s best interests, either.” [emphasis added]
Again, no mention of simple aesthetic preference, which would have eliminated the potential candidate before the dating process even began, as opposed to “farther along in the dating process”. Again, you attempt make the case that a person from a different race simply can’t live up to standards of character.
Then we get this gem.
Laura says:
February 17, 2015 at 7:10 pm
“I was married for over 10 years when I was ‘frivorced’ by my husband. He later married a second time, divorced again, married a third time, and then died suddenly of massive heart failure in his mid-fifties. By that point the children were in graduate school getting their feminist merit badges.”
You’re the poster child for poor judges of character!
JDG says:
February 17, 2015 at 6:29 pm
“There are those who believe the races should remain ‘pure’.”
Whatever that means, since…
1. The definition of “race” varies from culture to culture and over time, and…
2. There’s already been so much mixture among “races” (whatever that means here and now) over the millennia that it’s almost impossible to determine who is 100% anything.
Joing MENSA
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=946744
@IBB
(1) My husband wanted the divorce, and plotted and planned for at least a couple of months ahead of time. My brother-in-law suspected that my husband was planning to divorce me, but, unfortunately, did not tell me of his suspicions. I was completely blindsided.
My ex’s reasons were mainly financial. He was self-employed and had made a reasonable living, but he expected his income to rise very rapidly within the next year. As we had been married 10 1/2 years at the time of the legal separation, he knew that if he waited to divorce me until his income had increased significantly, that he would be at risk of long-term or even lifetime alimony. If he had been planning the divorce for quite some time, and had hired an attorney earlier, I’m sure that he would have filed BEFORE the ten-year mark. Also, he felt that if he was making a very high salary, and was unmarried, he would be able to date lots of tall blonds. This didn’t work out for him, but I do think that at the time he decided to divorce, he was counting on it.
We were fundamentally incompatible, and if we had known each other longer I never would have married him. He didn’t actually believe in monogamy, so it is hard to say what his true intentions were at the time we married. He did have some sexual orientation issues, but I was barely 19 when I married him, and it took me a long time to figure out what might be wrong. He had huge issues with handling money. The last year that we were married, his taxable income was about $60,000, and I was not working. At that same time, he had over $80,000 in CREDIT CARD DEBT. And on top of that we had a mortgage, car payments, etc.
The first five years we were married he was an Air Force officer. The final five years of the marriage, he had no external controls over his life, and was free to do whatever he liked. He loved the excitement of moving from place to place to place, and I hated the endless drudgery and expense of setting up housekeeping in a new place, knowing that he would soon tire of living there and want to move on. He was very proud of being perfectionistic and having very high standards, but looking back, he clearly had undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive issues. My ex-husband never experienced any stress at all about ANYTHING. One of the incidents that he was “famous” for when we first got married was that while he was in pilot training, he got called into the colonel’s office to get chewed out, and he fell asleep in the chair while the colonel was enumerating all of his faults and failures.
I had no plans to divorce him due to strongly-held religious beliefs, but looking back I know that I was struggling with depression and anxiety at that time (undiagnosed.) When he told me he was divorcing me, the first feelings that I had were fear and exhilaration. I knew that he was absolutely cold-blooded, so I was very scared of the divorce process, and fearful of being forced to live in a very expensive area without actually having the financial resources to do so. The exhilaration was from the idea of being free of someone who was very controlling, very high maintenance, incredibly selfish.
I had a million faults as a wife and mother, but I will say that months into the divorce process, it finally dawned on my ex that he wouldn’t be able to achieve the results that he wanted (he wanted to move to Europe with the older child, and have full custody of her, and leave the younger child behind with me.) At that point, he made a new and surprising offer: he would buy a brand new house in his own name in a nice neighborhood, and I would live in it with the two children, and he would pay the bills. He would live in Europe much of the time, but when he was in town, we would all be together as a family. It was implied that we would have a sexual relationship, but he did not make this explicit. In other words, he wanted a sort of Captain’s Paradise concubinage system, where HE would be single and free, but I wouldn’t. The marriage counselor (female) told me that my ex was deeply disturbed by the idea that I might remarry, and she thought that this showed sensitivity and caring on his part. She couldn’t see the Dog in the Manger aspect of it at all.
(2) I’m not sure that I am completely clear on what you are looking for with Question #2, but we lived in a no-fault state, and there was no way that I could have stopped the divorce. Once he started the ball rolling, there was really no way to halt the process, because all trust was gone. At the beginning of the process, he used the fact that we were moving to get me to sign off on closing bank accounts and selling our house, etc. After that kind of financial betrayal (on top of ten solid years of pathological lying, etc.) any offer that he would have made to me to discontinue the divorce would have been seen by me as a tactical ruse on his part.
@ Inforwarrior1
I was only 30 at the time of the separation, and I was 32 at the time the divorce became final. I had not “hit the wall” at that point, and probably could have re-married had it not been for the interminable custody issues, the fact that I went to graduate school full-time to get a feminist merit badge, my determination to relocate if the opportunity became available, and most of all, my sincere conviction that no man on earth would willingly marry somebody with an ex like MY EX! In hindsight, I probably should have tried to remarry, as a normal guy would have been good for me AND for the children, but I was just so shell-shocked by the divorce, and so unhappy after ten years of marriage to Mr. GlassHalfEmpty. (that’s for Deti!)
My children are grown, and both of them are very solid citizens. They were wonderful kids even as teenagers, and never caused any problems at all. I have been so richly blessed. Many children with far more favorable circumstances have gone completely off the rails, so I am eternally thankful. My divorce was an aberration in my extended family. There were lots of other male relatives and male in-laws who took a sincere interest in my children. Also, my children attended a small parochial school through the eighth grade, and the principal, who also taught the junior high level students, was a great guy with an absolute gift for working with that age group.
When my girls were growing up, I always reminded them that there were lots of great men in the family, and lots of happy marriages in the family as well. I never trashed men in general or marriage in general, so I don’t think that they will require any major de-programming.
I can’t believe the conversation of dating. People have to meet. How it is done is no matter. As long as you ain’t fucking before marriage I don’t think God really gives a **** . From arranged marriage to a swingers club you meet someone that can be a spouse and you marry and live a full productive life as a married couple. Good on you especially if your spouse outside of your presence brags on you. Don’t try to be so righteous.
I told BOTH of my kids to avoid dating outside their race/ethnic group, and to steer clear of foreigners.
Since in today’s America, Jesus would be considered a “foreigner”, obviously, if He were alive and looking for a wife, He would be unqualified to date your daughters, though both of them are “solid citizens” and really great Christians! See how parochial this view is?
America’s obsession with race is silly at best, and also very unproductive. There is, in reality, one race, and that is the human race. All the rest are details. While you, as a person, has a right to be attracted to whom you are attracted to, you really have no right to imbue your innocent daughters with this unhealthy view of life.
It has been said that America is never more segregated than on Sunday mornings, since that is when whites go to a “white church” and blacks go to a “black church”. It is this type of belief that perpetuates such unhealthy behavior. Racism is never genetic; it is always taught. To “avoid dating outside their race/ethnic group” actually means “don’t date blacks, Asians and Hispanics”, no matter how good and how Christ-like they might be. Really?
@Dave
Your condescending attitude oozes through your comment to Laura. Race/ethnic group is an indicator of culture and worldview. Would you argue that the black culture and worldview in the US is not significantly different than the UMC version? Take note, I didn’t say better or worse, only significantly different. Would you argue that the way an Ethiopian or Ukrainian looks at the world is not significantly different than your average white American? Would you imagine that these background beliefs and cultural differences about what is right and wrong, good and bad might result in conflict in a marriage? I would. It seems to be only common sense to direct your attention toward that part of the human race that has the greatest likelihood of having compatible beliefs when looking for a mate. Laura’s guidance to her children is a way to do this.
Are there exceptions to this rule? Well, of course because “not all people of other races are like that.” You’ve even been clever enough to point one out. However, I wouldn’t recommend my daughter count on finding another Jesus in her husband search.
Race is a proxy for culture, often. That is, there are distinct “cultures” (one can call them subcultures if you like) which exist among people of different racial groups, even in a multiracial country like the US. Usually it’s very hard to cross these cultural lines without issues arising as a result of having done that — either in the relationship itself or with the extended family. Compatibility is often an issue.
Among the elite class, things are, again, different. Although the elite class is overwhelmingly white, it is also the case that the non-whites in that elite class share more cultural characteristics with the white elites than either does with members of their own race who are non-elites. And also much more in common with each other than the non-elites of each race will often have in common, culturally. So it’s actually not terribly uncommon for non-white elites to be in mixed-race relationships with white elites today — they are culturally compatible even though they are of different races, because they share the same elite cultural worldview, values, priorities, characteristics and so on. The total number of such relationships is not large (the elite is still overwhelmingly white), but it isn’t uncommon to see one of the relatively few non-white elites together with a white elite in a relationship. These are then peddled by the same elite class as being “interracial relationships” which, while of course technically true, really sweeps under the rug the reality that there is a shared culture there which is not the case in other SES groups, where race is indeed acting as a cultural proxy in a way it does not do in this elite set.
Here when I am speaking of “elites” I mean people who are basically HYS or their equivalent.
greyghost,
I can’t believe the conversation of dating. People have to meet. How it is done is no matter.
So you only meet people you date?
Lyn87,
I was attempting to use similar wording to what Dalrock did in the OP. I am also focusing on the core idea that many think a one-on-one date between two people is the only way they can get to know each other. I find that to be a huge error, but it is very common.
Whatever you want to call it, couples were married for thousands of years without modern dating. Anything that claims it is vital and even necessary is incorrect. It is the way things are, kind of, but that doesn’t make it good.
Putting two individuals of the opposite sex together alone is a setup for failure no matter how pure the motives of those involved. That is the core problem.
You appear to have thrown the towel in on this area, such as when you say everyone you knew favoring something like the traditional approach was weak.
I would also strongly argue that your lack of raising children makes you proclamations of how to handle children a bit off. I would have “failed” in the eyes of many, because my children did not keep my values, but that doesn’t negate the value of those values. My children rejected what I tried to aim them at and society reinforced that rejection. That was the reason it didn’t work in their case, not some failure in avoiding casual dating as a recreational sport.
Please explain why the last sentence doesn’t explain your position’s core if you think it does not.
We may not be able to stop our children from smoking, but it would remain a worthwhile goal. The same is true here. Casual dating and remaining single for a long time are parts of a really bad plan.
I would argue that many of those pushing “courting” failed because they didn’t reinforce the other aspect of the equation, earlier solid marriages.
Hope this makes more sense.
I would note that I would probably but heads with many who actively claim to support courtship. I tend to challenge just about anyone and few like that.
What I read here shows the signs I saw in my brief brush with the traditional Christian homeschool movement. I despised many of their attempts to over control everything. That does not work well even though we need much more control than we have now. (It is a nuanced argument and I was often accused of over controlling our children.)
The fact they also played more to the feminine imperative was a huge part of the problem rather than just a focus on having connections aiming toward marriage, not just sport. You can’t make bad ideas good with a single good focus.
Boxer,
Such kids have a good chance of “falling in love.”
Isn’t this playing into the error of putting romance first that Dalrock notes?
I grew up thinking the proper Christian approach was to solely value people by their character, not their “race” or whatever. I am much less certain in that view today as I have continually found that many self segregate themselves by that same race and often defend the really poor behavior of those of their race.
I doubt Elspeth or here husband would fall into the justification camp, but I do wonder how much she would embrace things if one of her daughters brought home a white, hispanic or asian (potential) boyfriend. Perhaps they would be unique and embrace that, but it goes against my direct experience.
I also noted that some coworker friends I had in the past would always group with those who were similar to them, making me feel like I was more tagging along than a friend at large work social gatherings.
The root issue is that people normally associate with those they relate to and doing something that will put you outside that will cause challenges. It doesn’t make it wrong, but it definitely will make it challenging in many cases. No easy way around that.
@Novaseeker
Brilliant point. In my field there are lots of mixed couples, but both went to college, than graduate work, then to big time jobs. They all have a nanny or two. They all have similar aspirations for their 1-3 children. And the vast majority share the worldview of the elite with regards to a whole range of issues.
With regards to Laura, I take it as given that men and women are both fallen and so am not surprised when men blow up their marriages. The data says women do it more often, but out of every ten we would expect men would be the person breaking things up in three marriages. Thats a large group in a country with a high divorce rate. Single motherhood is a high risk group, but high risk does not mean 100% failure There will be lots of Moms that with family and the grace of God beat the odds.
Cultural norms change and how to respond as Christians is tricky. Someone mentioned Laura Ingalls went out on a ride with her much older future husband. That was in a culture where if Alanzo (?) had tried to be intimate the town would have ostracized/maimed/destroyed him. If Laura had been down for it she could be pregnant and the community would have shamed her. We live in a culture that says if they did not have sex they had bad chemistry and a bad time alone. The world asks our children, What is wrong with protecting your virtue and trying to be a virgin until marriage.
I once had a long talk with a Muslim friend. They have strict rules for when women can be alone with non-family members, as everyone knows. I think there is a tradeoff between building strong people who are internally deep and follow Christ of their own will vs the rigid rules that may result in less strength of personality but far less chastity violations. A sort of security/freedom spectrum. After talking to my friend I was not sure what the right way was. Letting pre-teens hang out is madness. But when does it stop being madness? We relax constraints just as hormones peak – usually the late teen years. Strength of character might take longer to develop than this and we see so many people who want to be good Christians slutting it up and ruining themselves as we try to follow cultural norms but with “extra discipline”.
Is “courting” the answer? No idea. But I think we need more parental involvement with realistic discussions about the temptations the young face than we do now.
Novaseeker and Eidolon appear to have the most sophisticated and nuanced grasp and ability to articulate how race/culture interact with each other that they actually do matter in mate selection. So I would just say, “yeah, what they said.
”
But this is probably the thing got me a little fired up here…
Oh, and the US census bureau has officially reclassified the people of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and North Africa as ‘white’ in the 2010 census.
If the government came to my ranch tomorrow and declared my horse to be a chicken, of what value would that declaration have to me? I would still feed him hay, and saddle him up to ride him.
My daughter shares exactly 12.5% of her genetic material with my half-brother. He has a very peculiar way of sitting on his back with his ankle crossed over his knee when watching TV or reading a book, etc. Yet before she ever met him, my daughter was doing this. She also has the same speech patterns, and several mannerisms he has.
Did you know that since the human genome project was completed, enormous advances in psychiatric medication trials has been made?
As recently as a 5 years ago, if I wanted one of my patients to be on an SSRI for depression, it usually went like this: The patient is placed on whatever favorite SSRI the medication provider likes. Say, Paxil. The patient then had to endure 2-4 weeks of possible side effects, and also had to wait to see if the medication was actually going to work on their particular symptom cluster. And that’s IF the patient was compliant with the medication regimen for the entire time. If it didn’t work, the provider just moves to the next medication in their arsenal, maybe Zoloft. And on it goes until we finally find a medication and dosage with the least amount side effects and greatest amount of efficacy.
Now I can order a blood test, and know exactly which medication will work, right out of the chute. Isn’t that amazing? And guess what?
If the blood test is too expensive for your insurance or whatever, all I need is a decent history, including your basic genetic background (including as much as you know about your race) and that provider can still pretty much hit the target.
And that’s JUST PSYCH meds. The same kind of research is yielding results for everything from blood pressure to thyroid medication.
Certain subgroups of native Americans and Asian Pacific Islanders don’t metabolize alcohol very well, and it can kill some of them. But I have to be very careful discussing this, because it reinforces the “drunk Indian” stereotype. But the drunk Indian stereotype is based on a scientific reality!
The separated at birth twin studies show tremendous and powerful evidence for a biological basis for behavior. Those are perfectly controlled studies of natures clones—monozygotic twins who have never met each other.
For my entire career, the conventional wisdom has been the diathesis-stress model for human development, but when we try to apply it evenly, you are called a bigot.
There was a thing once called American culture. I was a product of it. It included a love of freedom, rugged individualism, live and let live, private property, majority Christian, rule of law, controlled flight and trips to the moon, saving the world from Nazis, fascists, and communists. Mom, baseball, apple pie. But if a guy like me asks “I wonder if biology/genetics/race had ANYTHING to do with that” as IBB points out upthread, it’s just a hair away from gruesome experiments, gulags and concentration camps!!
My dad was imprisoned 3 separate times under communism for expressing the wrong ideas in front of the wrong people, so I am well aware of this risk.
But lets take this totally irrational fear seriously for just a second. How many people here have ever tried to get a human subjects experiment past an IRB? I have 3 times. It is grueling. If your experiment has even the slightest hint that a subject might possibly, maybe, JUST MAYBE experience discomfort you must erect and implement huge barriers to that discomfort in the form of risk mitigation. And they still might deny your proposal. None of that existed in communist countries or Nazi Germany.
My point is this—there are two position that are both provably absurd:
1. Race/biology/ethnicity accounts for ZERO percent of the variance between cultures.
2. Race/biology/ethnicity accounts for 100 percent of it.
I have no interest in either of those positions, nor have I have expressed either of them.
The implications that all of this has on how you screen out possible candidates for marriage go on into eternity. To deny that is foolish.
@ Laura
In other words, he wanted a sort of Captain’s Paradise concubinage system, where HE would be single and free, but I wouldn’t.
My wife suggested something similar, only no sex. (Her ability to stick to the “no sex” stipulation is highly dubious. She instigated for sex yesterday.) After I figured out that this all came from her massive insecurity due to Dread and was a nuclear loyalty test, I said “no thanks” to her suggestions. I could have had that Captain’s Paradise, but I have my vows to keep. And I have lots of hangups, like no married women and I don’t share. Related to my “no married women” hangup–married women have been showing me interest lately–dirty dancing, especially; one has been subtly chasing me for a year. The last one has been a hassle–she set me up to bond to her and I need to clear my head by avoiding her for a few months. That means changing my social circle for a bit. Yuk.
I obviously can’t talk about any of these things with Mrs. Gamer. Good thing my sister is my best friend.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood for something at some point in your life.” – Winston Churchill
Laura,
It means that if your state did NOT have unilateral divorce law (at that moment) and he had to “ask you” would you have told him “no?” Because that is what my Great-grandfather told my great-grandmother when she asked him for a divorce in the 1940s. No. You can’t have it. She tried to get it and couldn’t because she had no grounds. Loss of love and unhappiness was not good enough in a court of law the way it is today.
This is a very important question Laura.
As it happens Brad, people of all races already sit at our table and break bread on a regular basis. We would be fine and content with a godly son-in-law of whatever race. We’ve already had occasion to consider it and have discussed it.
Our life hasn’t been one that allows us to keep to our own kind. Not if we desired friendships with people of similar outlook on a broad range of issues.
I don’t see why everyone has such an issue with people liking their children and culture to reflect themselves, it’s what builds culture. I don’t like a multi-racial/multi-cultural country, it has no standards. I self segregate most of the time and enjoy the company of those that feel the same.
I don’t even think it’s about hate. Having looked at the history of my people, it is blatantly apparent that if I and my ancestors didn’t feel the way we do, we would not be here. We would not exist.
“Most notably though, Harris was in high school when he has these ideas. He was an outlier in that regard. How many 16 year old boys think about things like that?”
Very few, which should’ve been a major red flag. When I look for advice and guidance, I usually go to someone who’s a little older and been around the proverbial block.
As I said before, Harris was a socially inept, sexually repressed Pharisee who was also bitter about the fact that most of the women in his church were taller than he was. He wanted to drag others down with him, and he succeeded.
‘Sorry my class believed that woman have more value in Gods eyes’
So it’s going from equal in God’s eyes to now women having more value. Thanks feminism!
I think this is my last word on the matter, but I think clarification is in order. I myself made a very conscious decision that I would only date/marry within my own race when as a young woman I found myself presented with the issue. I have NO problem with people who make that choice.
As our life has progressed we have found daily lives, and by extension our children, outside the mainstream of positions and culture most commonly associated with black American life in the 21st century: economically, culturally, and politically.
That has demanded that we take the positoon that faith, character, andcommon culture as our children currently live, take precedence over race when they choose a mate. I don’t follow why this is complicated or even contentious except in the minds of people who believe it’s their business if someone marries outside of their race.
(Lets try this again with proper formatting.)
Chris,
As I said before, Harris was a socially inept, sexually repressed Pharisee who was also bitter about the fact that most of the women in his church were taller than he was. He wanted to drag others down with him, and he succeeded.
As you seem to be. Did you know him personally? Or do you just think the modern dating system has had such wonderful results? Do you believe that God can and does guide Christians in key decisions or do you have a purely materialistic view that we must do it all ourselves?
Those questions would all properly frame your harsh judgment of him.
Elspeth,
It isn’t. It makes perfect sense to me.
Elspeth,
Thanks for the note on your status in close friends. I have known some who are likely like that, but enough others who seemed close, but turned out to be away from it when I saw deeper. Nothing wrong either way in my view, I just find people tend to like similar people. It could be that some of my experience was in a large enough group that social class could also be a factor.
I would completely agree with you that a godly spouse is the most important initial factor, far outweighing any others. I would still say issues could arise, but a previous reply correctly noted that the MC/UMC values can take precedence for some.
@Oscar
I failed at marriage, and I openly acknowledge that fact.
I did discourage my daughters from dating across racial or national lines, because the people I have known who have married across racial/ethnic lines and/or national lines have ALL gotten divorced. I can’t think of a single exception. Maybe if there were some great examples of it working out in my own social circle, I would be more open-minded about this, but a 100% failure rate is pretty scary. I would do anything to help my daughters avoid going down the road that I travelled.
Aside from the notorious carousel, most girls only date a couple of dozen guys before they choose a husband, and many date far, far fewer. From my point of view, it makes sense to only accept dates from men you would actually consider marrying. I wouldn’t want my daughters to date men twenty years their senior, even though some marriages of that type work out well. The twenty-year age gap would be automatically disqualifying, so it wouldn’t matter if the Old Guy had great character. I wouldn’t want my daughter to date Australians, because if she married an Australian, I would seldom see her, and our lives would completely drift apart. And that would happen even if the Australian was a great guy in every respect. Lots of men only want to date blond women, or women with big boobs, and nobody expects them to spend time exploring the character of the girls that they have already disqualified.
I believe that you (Oscar) have married across national lines (but within the same basic ethnicity?) and that it has worked out well for you and so your experience has been different. I gave my daughters the advice to “stick with their own” when they were teenagers going off to college. Much later, my elder daughter did date a foreigner for a while, and I didn’t go burn a cross in his lawn. I have no way of enforcing my preferences. As far as preferences for appearance, I never said a word about that to either of my daughters. That’s very personal, and people like what they like.
Within the first few moments of meeting someone, you generally know their race/ethnicity and nationality. It can take a LONG time to form an opinion regarding someone else’s character, and even then there is a real possibility of a mistake. As a practical matter, I don’t see how our present-day dating practices could support any type of screening for character. As far as choosing guys on the basis of their achievements, we probably already have too many guys who can’t swim three laps claiming to be Navy Seals, so that won’t work either.
Do you have children, Oscar, and how old are they?
Elspeth, very well put.
It isn’t contentious for most. It is one of many screening tools people use, by their own prerogative in what they perceive as a numbers game. That’s why so many of them say “all things being equal” as a qualifier. Even those with the most strict positions on this and other sites seem to be saying the same thing, which amounts to preceisely what you are saying–“If my son/daugther finds a person of a different race who is in every other way perfect (values/faith/culture) than praise God!”
They have perfectly valid reasons for feeling that way.
BradA writes to me,
No explanation needed: that is the core of my position. To the degree that any child rejects the advice of his/her parents, it is probably one of three things, or a combination thereof: 1) the parents did not articulate their view well, 2) the parents were disappointing to the child in some fashion and the child then rebelled against his/her parents generally, or 3) the parents were simply wrong and the child figured it out on his/her own. I suspect in your case it was the second one, but that doesn’t mean it was your fault either… oftentimes outside influences can push a child toward rebelling against the rules (particularly Christian-based rules) their parents set. Ultimately the child has free will, though, as I stipulated up-thread. All you can do is your best, and I have little doubt that you did just that.
As for my lack of perspective… again, I have been very forthright about my lack of first-hand knowledge of parenting. What I do have experience with is dating, and seeing those close to me go through the same sorts of situations we’re discussing here – for good or ill. And as a Christian for nearly 50 years, a PK for 34 years, and having seen more churchian fads come and go than I care to admit, I probably have a breadth of experience well beyond those who have greater depth of experience as parents. You will notice that I have only spoken of “systemic generalities” rather than specific child-rearing techniques. That is intentional on my part: I won’t give parenting advice unless someone asks me for it, and even then I won’t go past scripture without stipulating that I’m probably not the person they should be asking.
Anyway, since we seem to be in agreement on the core of my position, I don’t think we’re all that far apart. My objection to any of this is that NO system is ideal: neither dating, nor courting, nor arranged marriages (however any of those are defined) is ideal. There is no one-size-fits-all Biblical model. If God had intended us to use one He would have told us what it is.
Since we’re both military officers, let me use a different analogy than I have used before. I was an OCS Instructor/TAC Officer for a couple of years, and at one point I was on a panel interviewing soldiers who wanted to join the program. One of the NCOs told us that he considers that officers who went through OCS were the best officers, because they knew what it was like to be enlisted, while ROTC and academy people didn’t. You and I both know that’s nonsense – we have both met plenty of good and bad officers who received their commissions from OCS, ROTC, academies, or by direct commission. Each has pluses and minuses. What he didn’t know was that officers who go through OCS after being NCOs are often unsuccessful in making the transition to the officer ranks precisely because they continue to self-identify as “troops” rather than as “leaders of troops.” But they do have other advantages that the other commissioning sources don’t. That’s true of all of them. That’s how I look at this: there can be good or bad outcomes no matter what system is used. The Bible instructs parents to teach their children the ways of God (I can point that out even as a non-parent since it’s in scripture). Beyond that… if the child internalizes godliness and is seeking a Godly marriage, the prognosis is good (no matter what system they use). Conversely, if the child has rejected God and seeks something other than Godly relationships, the prognosis is bad (again, no matter what system is used).
Laura,
I assume you are fairly new here. Realize that some here place almost all the blame on women, mostly because they cause so many of the problems we see today. A few of us actively acknowledge that men can cause problems as well, as your situation points to. Though I know I also have grown a bit more skeptical of women over time. I grew up thinking my father was completely at fault for my parents’ divorce.
I experienced some situations that came close to the same things they likely faced and I now realize that my mother had more responsibility (some due to her own upbringing) than she wanted to admit. That may make many take you more into account for your marriage situation than you feel.
I would note that my comment about the government schools is a general one and was not specifically targeted against you. The system is very broken and cannot be fixed, though discussing that is outside the scope of this blog.
I do see a bit of a conflicting message from you here. You speak of your daughters working through grad school on their feminist merit badges in one reply, yet you note you had input into their choices in others. Those seem at odds, beyond the normal “children will do what they want when they are on their own” aspect.
I know my wife was firmly in the “don’t marry until the late 20s” camp until fairly recently. She is only reluctantly changing now, but she has shifted her views anyway as I have discussed many of the topics we cover here and elsewhere with her. It is quite possible you still hold many views that are not as productive as you might think.
Just some food for thought.
This isn’t really a military thread, but man this is the truth:
What he didn’t know was that officers who go through OCS after being NCOs are often unsuccessful in making the transition to the officer ranks precisely because they continue to self-identify as “troops” rather than as “leaders of troops.”
Guilty as charged. I was an E-5 one day, and an 0-3 the next. Then I started my psychology internship with 4 other interns who were civilians a week earlier. I was a really crappy officer.
In fact, my supervisor, a retired 0-5 pulled me aside and told me so. He told me I was acting like an NCO. I actually burned a few bridges with my collegues before I pulled my head out of you know where and I think I am better now. But it is not a forgone conclusion that former enlisted make great officers. It can be a difficult transition.
Lyn87,
I only made 2 years of NROTC before I got cold feet (6 years seemed like forever at the time), so I technically only have 4 weeks of active duty and a formal discharge as a Seaman 3rd class from the US Naval Reserve (if I remember the form right). I never made it all the way and I suspect my choice of the Navy was not my best move. I ironically had applied for the Air Force Academy (not the Naval Academy), but did not get an appointment from John Glenn or any of the other sources at the time.
The “courtship movement” was a fad, but wouldn’t modern dating be just as much of a fad, if you take the longer view of things? Note how Dalrock pulled out the comparison to the Flapper era, IIRC.
Some of this is just a matter of people pulling at straws trying to keep things together. I know I was in that mode as my family blew up as all my children hit 17.
Our children never considered us as their parents, something I only realized later. Legal status and mental status are two very different things. We were completely unprepared for that aspect of adoption and I don’t believe anything would have changed it. It is impossible to change a child’s view in that case.
Our biggest challenge was that the very church leaders we looked to for support got manipulated by our children to accuse me as the bad guy. I was quite controlling as I had to be. The birth family had a VERY POOR history and standards in these areas. We kept them from having children before they left home and got them as educated as possible. That was the success, though it seems pretty lousy to me. Too easy for me to gripe on this, so I will leave it there. I am still walking this part out.
This does show me that the only way you can make any system of finding a spouse work is to have buy in from at least part of society and the children themselves. That is very difficult and may be impossible for most today.
Beyond that… if the child internalizes godliness and is seeking a Godly marriage, the prognosis is good (no matter what system they use).
This will override even bad methods, that is definitely true. It is fortunate for us, since we all make horrid choices at times. God redeems many things done by those who are committed to following Him.
I do see that internalization as missing though and it seems like far more teens are in church merely because that is their tribe, as Seth Godin writes about, rather than because of convictions. The modern church is doing a horrible job building those convictions. Bridging that gap will require the church doing something differently than what it is doing. Just reaching out in carnal ways is not the method to accomplish that, though some methods of building just such connections may seem carnal to those stuck in their own form of religion.
On the subject of race, this is very often a deeply personal issue, whether it is intended as such or not. Saying that you don’t want your children to date/marry X race tends to feel like a deep rejection if you are X. We should keep this in mind as we discuss the topic.
On the other hand, Thomas Sowell’s Race and Culture was referenced above. As I recall, one of the points he made in that book is that race is a means to “cheap” information in an uncertain world. He explained why a group might prefer to hire within their own race because it is easier to judge risk when you are part of the group. Trying to ascertain the character of someone outside your group is harder and more expensive.
In the case of marriage, one of the key risks is divorce. Divorce rates vary widely by race. I don’t have time at the moment to pull up the exact stats, but Black divorce rates are far higher than divorce rates for Whites. Hispanic divorce rates are roughly the same as Whites, but this is a deceptive stat which averages new immigrants and native born Hispanics. If you break it down you will find that first generation Hispanics divorce at rates lower than Asians (as I recall), and native born Hispanics divorce at rates higher than Blacks. This means Hispanics have both the highest and the lowest risks of divorce, once you separate this out.
If the divorce rates across races were the same, it would still be harder for Whites to evaluate the divorce risk of a Black or Hispanic than to evaluate a fellow White. But the divorce rates aren’t even close. For those who would pressure a White parent to try to evaluate suitors outside of their own race, are you prepared to help absorb the extra risk you are asking them to take on? Moreover, why would you want to push to create marriages where you know the families are less comfortable with the union?
Edit: I found the stats here. I was wrong, while native born Hispanics have the highest divorce rates of any ethnic group, foreign born Hispanics have a lower divorce rate than Whites but not Asians.
Yep. I like to point out that when my grandparents met, most people married someone from their small town or nearby, usually someone they knew from school, church, or family connections. In rural areas, that meant a pool of maybe 100 people of the opposite sex in their age range. Yet most of them managed to find someone, because A) they (especially the girls) wanted to, and B) there were organized dances and things to provide the opportunity.
Parents were paying attention, so they saw daughter Betty making eyes at young Jim from next door when he came over to help with the barn-raising, so they invited him over a few more times, maybe gave a small nudge to get things rolling, and presto! Turns out their perfect match was right next door; what a stroke of luck!
@IBB
OK, I understand the question now.
If I had had the power to stop my ex from divorcing me, I would have, because our financial situation was terrible, but expected to improve significantly in the immediate future. He would have been determined to leave, however, and he would have made life hell-on-earth for me. I would have tried to delay the inevitable, but eventually he would have simply moved out of the country and discontinued all support, even if had meant a permanent separation from his children.
Even under the “old rules” of Marriage 1.0, it was possible for one person to simply walk away from the marriage and cause a permanent separation, and there was always a small percentage of people who did that. My uncle had a brother who went out and bought a car load of groceries, brought them home while his wife and children were out of the house, and then disappeared forever. The family hired private detectives, etc., but never found him again.
My ex emphasized to me at the time of the separation that “you know that I don’t care about every little jot and tittle of the law.” He was a law unto himself throughout his life, and just did not feel constrained by any set of rules. In the five years that he was an Air Force officer, he had 2 Article 15s, and one lesser screw-up where he was fined. At one point, he was facing potential time at Leavenworth. He was never stressed out about any of it at all, and always slept like a baby. It was all just part of his fascinating life. He was probably dishonorably discharged, but claimed otherwise and would never show me the paperwork.
I’m not trying to dodge your question — I certainly DID feel a sense of relief when I knew that the marriage was over, even though I would not have moved to end it myself. A situation like mine would have played out somewhat differently under Marriage 1.0, but my ex could not have been constrained by any set of rules or laws, and even under the old rules, he certainly could have bullied me into agreeing to the divorce.
The really extreme divorce cases will never go away, no matter how the laws are written. Divorce reform would help society in general, but lots of individuals are still going to be dealing with impossible personal situations.
Fair enough Laura. Thank you for answering.
BradA,
You make a good point about dating being a “fad.” I completely agree, although I would add that something like “dating” was an historical inevitability given other cultural factors. I think that’s what Dalrock was saying when he noted that CBMW was treating dating as if it was scriptural, when it clearly is not. But while dating is a fad, I see the modern “courtship” movement as specifically a churchian fad.
You comparison to homeschooling was apt. As I have noted before, I taught in two different Christian schools during a break in my military service. Homeschooling CAN produce excellent outcomes, but it can also create huge problems. What we saw was a lot was parents homeschooling until about 6th Grade, then realizing they didn’t have the means of going beyond that, so they enrolled their kids with us. Those kids tended to know some subjects very well (whatever their parents stressed), but often lacked the broader knowledge of the other students. Kids taught by their parents were also prone to fall back on “My mom says this…” when in fact their mom might not have had the slightest idea what she was talking about. So the “separate” aspect of it was itself problematic. I have seen the same sort of mindset among hard-core members of the courtship movement: whether naive or pharisaical, “We’re doing this the only right way” won’t win many friends, especially if one has no scripture to back it up.
Shouldn’t everyone here ask how marriage was done in the first few centuries after Christ? From my understanding, the attachment of marriage and the church was very weak. It was done more at the community level. Thus if a couple shacked up or “fornicated” multiple times, they would be considered married regardless, much like the definition of “common law” marriage.
If this is all wrong, someone please correct me and provide a good source of 1st and 2nd Century marriage rituals in the Christian world.
Laura,
FWIW, you husband (TWO Article 15’s as an officer! Yikes!) probably was not dishonorably discharged. That’s normally reserved for pretty serious offenses. If he was allowed to leave in order to avoid more serious trouble (like going to Leavenworth), he may have been given a general discharge instead. Bad… but not nearly as bad as a DD, which follows you around for the rest of your life life casing all sorts of serious problems.
Also, it’s possible that one of his Article 15’s never got beyond the squadron level. Sometimes commanders keep such things in an internal file so they have a ready-made paper trial if there are further problems.
This might give a pretty good representation…marriage in Roman times.
http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-marriage.html
Then there’s this part to it:
‘There are records of many Romans proclaiming that there was nothing worse than marriage, and that, were it not for the necessity to produce children, no one would ever get married. A rich wife was a tyrant and a poor one would spend all your money. So the only Romans who married were those who could not avoid it, men burdened with the responsibility of continuing the family line or those who decided to found one.’
They weren’t so different, them and us.
Dalrock,
I love working as a Computer Scientist. I especially love working in the field of Business Intelligence within the realm of Information Technology. I love that because I love data. I am data pig, greedy for data. I really like to look at the data and dig deeper into why things are the way they are.
When you are analyzing/querying data as a Computer Scientist, the jargon we tend to use when we write our “pseudo-code” to define the query involves a lot of If-Then-Elses (ie: if this then this thing, else that thing) thank kind of thing. And I like to study marital data among the races. I think you are leaving out the most important data element when discussing divorce. What is the education level of the husband and two married people as a couple before they get divorced? Fortunately (or unfortunately) that seems to be the biggest indicator that I have found in predicting the overall likelihood of whether or not the marriage is doomed to fail, far bigger than the racial data.
Its kind of something like this….
IF husband & wife both have bachelor’s degrees or higher AND both are white or asian THEN divorce risk = 6%
ELSE IF husband & wife both have bachelor’s degrees or higher AND one is white or asian but not the other THEN divorce risk = 8%
ELSE IF husband & wife both have bachelor’s degrees or higher AND both are black or hispanic THEN divorce risk = 9%
ELSE IF husband (but not wife) has a bachelor’s degree or higher AND both are are white or asian THEN divorce risk = 14%
ELSE IF husband (but not wife) has a bachelor’s degree or higher AND one is white or asian but not the other THEN divorce risk = 26%
ELSE IF husband (but not wife) has a bachelor’s degree or higher AND both are black or hispanic THEN divorce risk = 28%
ELSE IF husband dose NOT have at least a bachelor’s degree AND both are asian THEN divorce risk = 34%
ELSE IF husband dose NOT have at least a bachelor’s degree AND both are white THEN divorce risk = 44%
ELSE IF husband dose NOT have at least a bachelor’s degree AND one is white or asian but not the other THEN divorce risk = 54%
ELSE IF husband dose NOT have at least a bachelor’s degree AND both are black or hispanic THEN divorce risk = 64%
ELSE IF husband is high school drop out then divorce risk = 90% regardless of race….
…that kind of thing.
Of course those are not the exact numbers but they are probably close. You can refine the data even further adding in more If-Then-Elses (like what you did with the first generation thinging in Hispanic culture.) But you get the idea. The single biggest factor to avoid frivorce tends to be education and (if at all possible) make sure both husband and wife have at least graduated college with a BA.
@ Phillyastro
One of the letters of St. Ignatius (circa 109 AD) indicates that a couple looking to marry needed to get the permission of the local Bishop.
@earl – Good piece on Roman marriage. Although, I was thinking about early Christianized Germanic marriage. I know that many leaders like Charlemagne and Clothar practiced polygamy, more or less, as baptized Christians.
re. Minesweeper says:
February 17, 2015 at 8:02 pm
We are at the 7 year point and things have actually improved over the initial honeymoon phase. I believe we are more “in love” now because we have learned each other’s needs and personality quirks better. We have worn off a lot of the rough edges. Love is not something you fall into, it is an action you take every day. That being said, I will say that some of the issues raised here about international marriages are valid; to a degree.
First let me address the typical concerns that were expressed to me and have been consistent over at least the past 50 years. I know this because one of my friends had married a Filipina in 1968 when he was stationed at Clark Air Force Base in Angeles City Philippines, and people basically said the same to him then as they were saying to me. They are still married and are now living in the Philippines in retirement. The basic set of concerns was:
1) They are only in it to get a green card and will dump you once they get a permanent residency (male or female).
2) If female, she will gain 30 pounds as soon as you marry her.
3) If female, she will quickly adopt the westernized woman attitudes, and you will be no better off than if you had married a local woman.
4) You will be supporting their whole family (male or female).
My friend married in 1968 still gets a laugh about number one. His comment is that she is certainly putting in her time to get that green card. Interestingly enough, it is now he that is benefiting from her Philippines citizenship, as he has a green card and permanent residency status in the Philippines. My wife is a US citizen now, and has been for about 4 years. She has an aunt and a cousin that live in other suburbs of the same metro area where we live. The aunt has lived here for many years and is about to retire back to the Philippines. Her cousin is married to a Filipino man that came to the US on an H1B visa many years ago and both of them are US citizens now. A study based on the 2010 census shows that the lifetime divorce rate for Filipina women that marry white (not my issue but that was the study’s findings) American men was slightly less than 20%. My wife is as dead set against divorce as humanly possible. It is not an option in the Philippines, and our marriage is registered in the Philippines, so she is married for life. She has told me that even if I commit adultery she will not divorce me. However, she will make certain that it would be physically impossible for me to do it again. I plan on not challenging this assertion.
At the seven year point my wife is the same weight as the day we married. This is about 10 pounds more than when we met, but in my opinion (the only one that matters) she looks better now. However, someone did put on weight. I have gained about 50 pounds of contentment, and my loving spouse has pointed out that I really should try to be slimmer. She is of course correct. It is a work in progress. I have worked and am currently working with Filipinas in their 50s who are still slim, stylish, classy, and attractive. I have few worries about my wife gaining a lot of weight; she has too much pride for that.
I have seen very few Filipinas in the US who have become westernized/feminist harridans. I am not saying it doesn’t happen, just that is rarer than most assume. The Filipino culture and family structure is very strong in handing down virtues. My wife’s biggest adjustment in coming to the US was the absence of servants. She called her mother and complained bitterly that she was expected to do Yaya (maid) work. Why do people assume that every foreign bride comes from a dirt poor family? My wife had never cooked, cleaned, or done laundry because they had servants for that. My mother in law replied to my wife’s complaints with, “You are married now; get off your ass, roll up your sleeves, and get to work.” I respected my mother in law before I was married to her daughter, but have grown to appreciate her much more since. All of my wife’s friends are other Filipinas. There is a much larger Filipino community than I knew of before marrying one. The Filipino-American community has a very low opinion of western women and their attitudes, which serves to reinforce the values my wife brought here with her. We also have a television service for programming from the Philippines via the internet. This is about like 1950s US Ozzie and Harriet TV. All this has kept the cultural contamination to a minimum. My experience doesn’t mean that this is not a valid concern. I have seen some (a significant fraction but not most) Filipinas that come here get too American for their own good.
Number 4 has some validity. I have never given her family any handouts, but have given hands up. My wife’s father had been a college professor, and then a politician, while her mother was a stay at home mother (which almost 100% of Filipina mothers are if they are not abjectly poor). Her father had died of a heart attack the same year that my prior wife had died. Her mother was raising her kids on his pension benefits. The rest of her extended family is quite well to do; they are mostly doctors, lawyers, teachers, and accountants. Her oldest brother needed help with the upfront costs to apply for an overseas job that would greatly increase his income, and allow him to give a decent life to his wife and two sons. We gave that help. Her youngest brother was on a 100% scholarship to college that didn’t cover living expenses. We helped with those, and had to also pay for the last year when the scholarship was lost due to a change in politics in their hometown. The monthly expense was not too burdensome. He has offered to pay us back as he is now a working professional making what is good money in the Philippines. I told him to pay us back by helping out his mother. When my mother in law’s house was destroyed in a typhoon her youngest brother and we split the cost of the down payment on a new house, and the youngest brother is paying the monthly costs on his own. None of this is way off base for me. I come from a very large and tight knit Irish family. This is the same type of help I have given and received within my family. I have a friend that is from the more typical totally atomized American family that doesn’t understand why anyone would help any family member either family by marriage or by blood. I don’t share that attitude, so I have no problem with helping her family. That is what family is supposed to do. But I will tell everyone here what I tell guys who come to me contemplating marrying a Filipina, you don’t marry just the girl, but her entire family, so get to know them well before you marry.
Other concern listed above, but not addressed by me, are the language barrier and religious differences. English is the second official language of the Philippines. All major newspapers and national political discourse is in English. There are over 32 separate and distinct native languages used in the Philippines; English is the only one common to everyone. Any educated Filipino is fluent in English, and even the street beggars speak passable English. This means all my wife’s extended family speak excellent English This means they can all communicate effectively with me; this is both good and bad. The issue of religious differences is a non-issue for us. The first, and most important, question her family asked was, “Are you Catholic?” If the answer had been “no” there would have been no second question. I think these issues are more important than race or nationality. These commonalities are the firm basis for a marriage.
You can check my stats Dalrock, but I am more than certain interracial marriages where the wife is black have the lowest divorce rates; period. And yes, that is taking into account the small (albeit increasing) numbers of such marriages.
It is actually quite a contentious and aggravating thing that black male relationship writers harp on for various reasons.
[D: Very interesting. Thanks!]
Turns out obe of the editors at TC where there was represented a plurality of such marriages, covered it once:
https://traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/why-black-women-stay-put/
bradford says:
February 18, 2015 at 6:40 am
@Dave
Your condescending attitude oozes through your comment to Laura.
I did not mean to be condescending and, frankly, I don’t think any of my comments was condescending in any way. As Christians, we are expected to have no worldview except that of the Bible. Culture should play a secondary, or even a tertiary role. When we continue to promote veiled racism as Christians, it is proof that we are not as conformed to the Word as we should, and someone needs to call us out on it.
I don’t know, but maybe it is a coincidence: a cursory look at Scripture shows that one of the best examples of godly men in the whole of the OT was a man married to a foreigner. Yep, his name was Joseph, who married Asenath, an Egyptian woman (Genesis 41:45 ). They had a great family life. Joseph went on to fulfill his calling in God’s Kingdom, unhindered by his foreign wife.
Also, one of the best examples of a godly wife was married to foreigners, twice. Yes, Ruth, a non-Jew married a Jew, and was so devoted to her husband’s family that she abandoned her own country to take care of her mother in law. And that was after she became a widow at a young age! She later became the grandma to king David, who became the best human king that Israel ever had (Ruth 1; 4:22). Even Moses was probably not married to a Jew, because Jethro, Zipporah’s father, was probably not a Jew, though he was a priest in Midian.
While none of these examples means nothing as far as who one chooses as a spouse, it is always wrong to teach our kids any worldview that does not have a biblical basis. I say this as a Christian. We should emphasize character, and conformity to Scripture to our kids in their search for a spouse, rather than a devotion to culture and a worldview that has little to do with righteousness.
As far as God is concerned, there is really no difference between Americans and non-Americans, whites or blacks, Hispanics or Asians. If no one understood this, we who profess to be Christians should.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28).
Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. (Colossians 3:11).
For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? (1 Corinthians 4:7)
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. (Romans 12:3)
In heaven, there is no special place for Americans, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Jews or Gentiles. We all live together in the same vicinity, forever!
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
(Revelation 7:9).
So, those whose goal is to be with Christ throughout eternity better start getting used to other Christians who happen to be from other races now, including those who are foreigners in America.
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
(Romans 15:7)
And, with all due respect to Laura, has it occurred to her that, although she was married to a white American man who was born and bred in the US, she still ended up being treated badly by him? If anything, that should at least have let her understood that it is character and Christlikeness that matters, not the color of your skin, or your exotic accent.
The fact is, you can’t tell where two people will meet, and decide to marry each other. If both are Christians and are determined to honor God with their lives and family, we should encourage them, not sow the seed of racism into their lives
Thanks, Dalrock for correcting my html notation in the previous post.
Sounds like an early shepherding movement Donal!
It is funny how all of us need restraint in one or more areas, yet continuously chafe at it. Those in the perfect environment (The Garden of Eden) still couldn’t live with a single constraint.
Lyn87,
Yes, the breakdown of local connections probably means something different will have to ultimately come. The modern mold of being driven by emotions is not sustainable either.
Nice quote Earl had from Rome. Marriage problems will always be with us.
IBB,
I’m intrigued by your thinking, but I’m confused about how classifications are made, since people can change categories. For example, I’m half Euro-white and half Hispanic, although my upbringing was “culturally white” – for lack of a better term. My wife is as white as they come – Upper Mid-Western, Scandinavian ancestry. We both grew up in the U.S..
When we got married I had a bachelor’s degree and was a young military officer. She was an au pair with a high school diploma. After several years she got her bachelor’s and then I got my master’s to increase my chances of promotion to Lieutenant Colonel (which I got). A couple of years later she got her master’s as well… which is where we are now. What category do we fit into? The one we were in when we met? The one we’re in now? One of the ones in between? Or do we switch categories when our circumstances change? Does my biological ethnicity (White/Hispanic) take precedence over my “cultural ethnicity” (WASP) for purposes of categorization?
Elspeth,
I’d be very curious to see the education statistics on this piece of data. I’ll assume that your point is spot on, I’d argue in these cases the husband (who would not be black) would have at least a bachelor’s degree and his wife with a BA or maybe even an MA probably close to…. 90% of the time, maybe even 95%. It would be real high with such low divorce rates.
Did God create different races of people? Do you think that God may have had a reason? Christianity only survived because it had a cultural identity in the countries which took it as their religion. You confuse some idea of ‘racism’ which is never even mentioned in the Bible, and then say that protecting ones own ethnicity and culture is not Biblical…. Get off your high horse!
I have no idea Lyn. I’d have to run the query but I don’t have access to that kind of data here. I would only be speculating and say your risk of frivorce is probably pretty low (like 5 or 6% tops.) Reason why education is soooo important in suppressing frivorce is the likelihood of you replacing your first spouse with the next one with even greater education and greater lifetime earnings. What are you giving up in the frivorce is the question? Do you really want to divorce your medical doctor husband because you caught your best friend from high school rubbing his crotch at a party when both were drunk and he wasn’t screaming at her or even telling you? Or would you just be bullsh-t with him and let him know that (in the future) he should have told you immediately but learn to forgive him because you’ll never get another doctor? That kind of thing.
Christianity only survived because it had a cultural identity in the countries which took it as their religion.
No, it didn’t. Christianity survived because God willed it, and He does so by always preserving a remnant; calling missionaries, evangelists, and preachers; and working in the hearts of men. Culture is a tool He can use toward that end, but culture is not destiny for either Christianity nor individuals.
Dalrock gets it exactly right, again. Followed by an excellent mathematical summary of this line of thinking (IBB). Elspeth disputes some of the data, and I think this important.
A single item test like this (same race/different race of the couple) is what we would call in my field a “down and dirty” screening measure. In statistical and psychometric terminology, it has high sensitivity, but low specificity. It will catch MOST of the risk of a failed marriage, but will also yield a high number of false positives.
Once a week in my clinic, we have “Mental Status Exam day.” In the Army, if you are being kicked out (or “chaptered”) you have to be evaluated by a mental health provider first. The referral question(s) are 1. Is he able to understand right from wrong? 2. Is he retarded? 3. Is he psychotic 4. Does he have PTSD? 5. What is the likelihood he will walk out of here and go blow his commander away?
We have about 15 minutes to do these evaluations.
Any provider worth their salt will incorporate a “down and dirty” screening, to include static risk factors (age, race, sex, previous attempts, etc) and current state variables (suicidal ideations, mood, etc). If I leave any of the main ones out, and there is a bad outcome, I might as well have just handed them a bottle of scotch and a revolver and told them “go home, your situation is hopeless” because how the root cause analysis will shake it down. I will lose my license.
Elspeth applies the same (or very similar) calculus to her daughters situation and concludes:
That has demanded that we take the positon that faith, character, and common culture as our children currently live, take precedence over race when they choose a mate.
How could she conclude otherwise?
I don’t use the word “hate” much but let me use it here—I HATE HATE HATE that Elspeth, a Christian sister must make this choice for her family. There is plenty of blame to go around as why that situation has occurred.
The best I can do is have my website be reflective of her (and the one other black female poster I have) values.
The Courtship Pledge is for parents and singles of the red-pill variety to come together and not just lick our wounds, but strategize the next phase of the fight—making godly marriage work in this f-d up situation.
The secularists has match. The Christian “conservatives” have Christian Mingle. My site is the alternative to those two.
That’s all I got.
Lyn, do you really think God doesn’t work through nations and their culture? Do you think that Christians would have stopped the Muslim invasions of France and other European countries; or push them back out of Spain, if they didn’t have a national identity? It’s a common bond that they don’t share with others. A nation is not land, it’s the people.
This is an area where I have to disagree with pretty much all the world. Multiracial and multicultural societies just don’t work, as soon as a country descends into the multicult experiment, the entire framework of that country cracks and infighting breaks out, which makes that country weak. A country doesn’t last long with that sort of weakness.
It shows right on this blog, instead of debating the point at hand, we have now delved into debating a topic that would not exist is mono-cultural and mono-racial society.
Why does everyone always push against whites in this scenario though, start to push India, China and Japan to accept their ethnic destruction instead. See how well that goes down.
Dave: “Even Moses was probably not married to a Jew, because Jethro, Zipporah’s father, was probably not a Jew, though he was a priest in Midian.”
Didn’t Moses have at least two wives? A Midianite and a Cushite? My Catholic study Bible suggests that Moses’ first wife had likely died, which is why he married a Cushite (to Miriam’s displeasure.)
@BradA
My views on marriage have certainly evolved over the years, and my attitudes toward female education have also altered somewhat.
I know that some here on this site favor teenage marriages and no tertiary education for females, and I strongly disagree with those views.
At this point, if I were raising daughters today, I would probably have them attend parochial school or home school until the end of eighth grade, and then start junior college, as high school no longer appears to be a productive use of time for the brighter kids. I would urge them to consider nursing, which not only pays well when you work full time, but offers good pay when you just pick up a shift here and there. It is about the only “female” job that offers the possibility of well-paid part-time work.
It has surprised me to learn that many men on this site do not consider the wife’s education (and implied earning ability) to be a plus, even when they want the wife to work full-time.
That is, it’s why Moses married again, to someone who happened to be a Cushite.
Laura,
I am NOT one of those.
A nation is not land, it’s the people.
This is true. Right now “America” is a currency, and a sort-of functioning infrastructure that exists on a particular land mass. It barely meets the definition of “nation” anymore.
I do get the feeling this is by design though. I think the divide and conquer crowd won. A white, Orthodox Christian, Army Major, father of 3 (soon to be 4), psychologist, part time cowboy, living on my little ranch in Texas has nothing in common with a black, female, vegan, lesbian, Stanford professor of gender studies living with her life partner in San Francisco.
But we are both called “Americans.”
IBB,
My bad… I didn’t convey my question very well. I wasn’t trying to get an estimate of my personal divorce “odds” – I know they are a tiny fraction of 1%. As I wrote last week in a different thread: I would be less surprised by an alien spaceship landing in my driveway than by a process-server handing me divorce papers.
The intent of my question was more philosophical and I was just using my situation to illustrate it… for categories to be useful they have to be defined. That requires a “mark-on-the-wall” that sets one’s category, unless we stipulate that one can switch categories. The second half of my question about ethnicity also concerns categories – lots of people have different cultural and biological ethnicities (as I do). As was noted above, WM/BF couples have very low divorce risk, but that may well be due to the fact that the women in those pairings come from a UMC culture rather than a “baby-momma” culture.
I would posit that “cultural ethnicity” trumps “biological ethnicity” for calculating divorce risk.
@IBB
I saw the same set of statistics that Elspeth referenced, probably within the last 120 days. The lowest divorce rate = black wife with white husband.
character and Christlikeness that matters, not the color of your skin, or your exotic accent.
Sometimes I have to go back over things to find stuff like this. This is a false dichotomy, that no one, not even Laura with her very hard-line stance has argued.
Keep your eye on the ball. There is no right answer to this conundrum and reasonable people can differ.
Oh I’m sure it it. And I would be willing to bet that if you investigate the data here very deeply, you will see that close to 90% maybe even 95% of these marital combinations are UUMC to upper class with a great deal of higher education between the two of them. My brother-in-law is a white medical doctor and he kind of “dating” a black woman. She is also a medical doctor. Their odds of getting divorced if they got married? I’d say about… zero.
feministhater,
I certainly do not discount the importance of culture – I said that the existence of the God’s church does not, not ever did, depend upon it. As for pushing the Muslims out of Europe by force of arms… I know a thing or two about that, since I have a Master’s of Military History. To attribute victory in that seven-century struggle to “national identity” is an enormous oversimplification. Given that the era of the modern nation-state as we understand the term is generally considered to have begun with the Peace of Westphalia starting in 1648, attributing Charles Martels’ victory at Tours in October, 732 – or the completion of the Reconquista in 1492 – seems more than a bit of a stretch.
I’m actually one of those who thinks culture is very important, though. I won’t go into detail about I did in the military, but believe me, we spent a lot of time thinking about culture. I know enough that I would be very hesitant to pair off outside my culture… far more hesitant than I would be to pair off outside my ethnicity with someone from the same culture, in fact.
Yes, yes indeed.
A lot of people read those books written by that PhD raisin farmer from Selma California.
We should emphasize character, and conformity to Scripture to our kids in their search for a spouse, rather than a devotion to culture and a worldview that has little to do with righteousness.
As far as God is concerned, there is really no difference between Americans and non-Americans, whites or blacks, Hispanics or Asians. If no one understood this, we who profess to be Christians should.
The thing is that people have their criteria for selecting mates, and much of it is not strictly conformity to scripture and character — attraction is also necessary. This is the case for Christians as well. It’s like saying to a Christian man or woman: “it’s their character that counts, not how they look”. That’s a recipe for a lot of unmarried people, because people choose mates based on attraction — for Christians this is the same, it’s just that in addition to attraction and chemistry, there has to be other elements in place (character, Christian lifestyle etc). Attraction is not negotiable, and the importance of it should not be minimized (doing so has led to lots of misery among single Christians who are devout yet not attractive enough to find a spouse in this culture, even among Christians). And race plays into that with many people of *all* races — it isn’t racism, it’s just preferences in appearance.
Off-topic: here’s an excellent description of the Female Imperative in action in 1945, described by a German war veteran:
In the Harskamp (after the war) we had two boys, one 15, and his brother 16 who had joined the Landstorm Nederland. One day for whatever reason, all the guards were gone, and they just walked out of the gate. For a day we (the prisoners) guarded ourselves 😀 😀 Could not have gone anywhere, anyway, still dressed in uniform. Two days later their mother brought them back, because she did not want any trouble at home, where her daughter was “going” with a Canadian.
forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=155074&p=1351692#p1351587
In other words, this woman abandoned her two sons to their fate in a Rhineland POW camp – a fate that equaled probable starvation, abuse, illness and death – because she hoped that’ll make it easier for her to marry her daughter off to the Canadian grunt that was fucking her.
nova,
The most physically attractive Christian woman I have ever been involved with…. welp…. she wanted to marry me and I. Just. Couldn’t. Do it!
She was extremely lovely to look at, very easy on the eyes. I’m not going to say a 10 or even a 9, but an 8.5 for sure, at least all of an 8.5 maybe even a little higher. Pretty face and a nice body. Not perfect, very very nice, very much the looker….
…and she was f-cking brain dead.
My parents wanted me to marry her. They wanted me to marry her and make her their daughter in law specifically because they knew that she would do whatever I told her to do AND she needed saving (and they knew it.) Her previous boyfriends were all destroyers, all bad energy. And I could have maybe saved her if she became my wife. And that attraction was there, believe me. That wasnt the problem. I just realized that (10 years into the marriage) what could the two of us possibly have to talk about? Would I eventually get tired of always having to explain everything to her all the time and her still never understanding it?
We didn’t share any common interests. She was big on music and fashion and makeup and shopping and her bo-b job. I was not (and that is putting it bluntly.)
So attraction… errrr, might be a little more negotiable than first glance (at least for me it was.)
RULE NUMBER THREE: Always return your date home “more holy” than she was when you picked her up.
I’m picking up a strong flavor of “man up and marry that slut” here. As if a retired carousel rider can make up for all her one-night-stands and first-date bangs by making Beta Bux wait to put a ring on it. “Hey honey, if we go out twice a week for another year before we have sex, I’ll bring my average dates-until-sex up to three dates!”
Sure, but you didn’t marry a woman you were not attracted to, right? Obviously I wasn’t saying “everyone wants to marry a 10 otherwise they wont marry”, but rather that unattractive people have a hard time marrying regardless of their “character”, and even in Christian settings. Suggesting that race doesn’t matter at all, when its tied to attraction in many people, is not useful or helpful advice for the large number of Christian single people.
Fair enough Nova, and I get your point.
@Newdist
There is nothing wrong with reminding Christians that they should remain chaste until marriage. What is wrong with the above is it adds a burden on the man to work in a Bible lesson while also trying to accomplish the goal of finding and attracting a wife, on every single date. They like to make up biblical sounding stuff, but get very uncomfortable with what is actually biblical. This, and not a call to chastity, is the fundamental problem.
So attraction… errrr, might be a little more negotiable than first glance (at least for me it was.)
I think what the phrase “attraction is not negotiable” means for purposes of this discussion is this: Attraction is not negotiable, and although it is necessary, it is not sufficient.
The thing is that people have their criteria for selecting mates, and much of it is not strictly conformity to scripture and character — attraction is also necessary.
Sure. Scripture recognizes that. People should marry whoever they find attractive provided they are both Christians (1 Corinthians 7:39, paraphrased). But it is a disservice to our kids to plant a seed of racism in them as they begin their search for a spouse, or before. We need to remember that it is not really our choice, but theirs. We can guide them, and be there to address their questions. But telling them outright who not to date, based on ethnicity and country of origin, is a bit too far.
plant a seed of racism
Pretty strong words. Who are you charging with this? Who is planting seeds of racism? Anyone here?
A female friend recently told me about a colleague of mine who has been after her. Both of them met are my friends on Facebook, and they met through my profile. My female friend said that the guy told her he was single, had no kids, and would like her to his girlfriend.
So, this female friend of mine called, and wanted to find out about my colleague. I felt very sad, because the guy was not only married, but had a kid as well, and I told her as such.
But there was more to the story. The guy was actually interested in another woman. He dated her for many years, throughout our training years. From all indications, the two loved each other, and wanted to get married. They even got engaged.
For some reason, the guy’s mother did not like the girl for her son, and she did everything in her power to break up their relationship. She even went so far as to swear that the two would only be married “over her dead body”. She is one of those powerful matriarchs who wield great influence over their grown kids.
Unfortunately, my colleague broke up with the girl he really wanted to marry, and ended up marrying another woman who was in his mother’s good books. But he did not love his new wife, though he married her to please his controlling mother. He then had to fill up his lonely times scouting for “friends” on Facebook, and lying to them that he was single and childless.
The thing is, either they are racist or they are not. Calling them racist if they aren’t is inaccurate and unkind. But if they are racist, why push them to encourage an interracial marriage? I don’t get the desire to increase the number of mixed race marriages where at least one set of in laws is racist.
Does that mean before you bring her back home, take her to the hospital for a surgery?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenorrhaphy
They actually do that stuff in Japan.
Good point, D.
I am just wanting to know who the racists on the Dalrock site are, so I can steer clear of them.
But I am being purposely obtuse. I believe this person is actually contributing to a much larger problem than “racism.” Namely, the problem of overusing the term and ultimately rendering it meaningless.
Then when the real racists, come, people will yawn and roll their eyes.
Dave, your colleague is a sociopath. His mommy scared off his True Love. His mommy made him marry someone he didn’t love. And now he is forced to tell lies and commit adultery, and all because of mommy!
Scott, Dalrock —
Yes, but the point is that isn’t “racist” to be attracted to people of your own race more than to people of other races. If that is “racist”, then almost everyone is a racist.
Nova-
Yep.
I admit, I am on a personal crusade to take back the meaning of the word. It is an ugly word that used to have teeth. It means absolutely nothing now.
I will leave it at that and stop crusading on Dalrocks site 🙂
@IBB
Divorce rates by education are in the same paper I linked to above. But you are assuming that education is the overriding difference, and that any difference picked up by race is a reflection of this. This isn’t a bad hypothesis, but from what I can find it isn’t accurate. According to this study at least, education doesn’t reduce divorce rates for Black women the way it does for White women:
At any rate, you are also ignoring the part I mentioned about it being harder for someone to evaluate a person outside of their race. You and I live in a world where college degrees dramatically lower divorce risk. It would be understandable for us to assume this applied to Blacks as well. But it appears it doesn’t.
Scott,
How else do you interpret the charge to a young adult: “Don’t date or marry anyone who does not physically look like you, or speak like you”? That alone disqualifies every single person mentioned in the Bible, including the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. How does a Christian defend that worldview?
Lyn,
My wife has a Doctorate and since getting it hasn’t worked a day in 20 years. I have her 125k student loan to pay. We are encouraging our straight A daughter with academic scholarship to her choice (including poison ivy league schools) to learn how to do payroll and taxes as something she can do from home with kids.
She (by the Grace of God) decided to go local community college until she decides. She finds it very easy and I am trying to talk her into accounting or financial stuff as she could do this from home when she is married to help if needed.
She is finding it very difficult to even be around christian boys. There are a couple of guys I think are suitable. Most 20+ still live with mom and dad (even the youth pastor) and my son has no respect for them, and neither does my daughter. Youth pastor who the younger men are suppose to respect lives in mom’s basement and doesn’t have a job?
I do want my soon to be 19 yr old daughter to find someone now, but beta boys are every where.
Attraction is not negotiable, but it is far more flexible than most acknowledge.
Most guys have a fairly low bar for that and can accept anything over that bar. I suspect the bar has been raised too much for women, but they could also adjust if they decided to do so.
Most guys might like the supermodel, but aren’t fixated on that.
“Don’t date or marry anyone who does not physically look like you, or speak like you”?
Is this a direct quote from someone on here? Or a paraphrase with your own additional dramatic moral interpretation?
Jeff, your daughter is the exception. Why should young Christian men improve themselves for the modern crop, in general? At least that is most likely what you are seeing. You may want to consider that in your efforts. She may also want to look a bit older as an exact age match may not be all it is cracked up to be.
I would recommend not forcing her into an area she is not already prone to. Learning basic finance is good, forcing into that field is not. She could do many different things from the home if that was the desire.
Is she ready to marry next year? If not, what incentive would men have to make themselves appealing to her? If she is, then is she associating in places such men might be? Is she showing herself off.
Dave,
Your coworker is a basket case. He needs to realize he made a commitment, whether he likes it now or not. I doubt he will though.
Jeff,
That’s bad. My wife’s degree was instrumental (maybe vital) in her getting her current job, and my degrees have paid for themselves many times over. I suspect the advice you’re giving to your daughter with regard to her education is solid. I grew up in an Ivy-League town and worked at the college as an after-school job… and I have a nephew-in-law with a STEM PhD from Yale. What they teach at those places is worse then useless, except for the technical subjects, which tend to be excellent. The social/cultural environment is pure poison in either case, though.
Also, I would question my pastor about allowing a young unmarried, unemployed man who lives with his parents to fill any kind of role with the word “pastor” in it. He is simply not qualified on multiple grounds per Titus Chapter 1 and 1 Timothy Chapter 3.
Dalrock,
Exactly, it doesn’t. Because I would argue that her higher education does not suppress the possibility of divorce if her husband doesn’t also have that higher education. If you look at the If-Then-Elses I listed above, I was really only looking at the factors when they BOTH have higher education OR only the husband does. If a black woman has a PhD and we have no idea what kind of education her husband has, we don’t have sufficient data to determine the likelihood of frivorce given my listed If-Then-Elses above….
All the data you have provided indicates (mathematically) is that white women (when they have a bachelors degree or above) are safer for uneducated men (of any race) to marry if the ultimate goal is avoiding frivorce.
Now given what Elspeth said (that black women marrying white men have the lowest divorce rate) I think this might dovetail nicely with what you and I both were saying provided we know the education level of the white men marrying them. I would argue that near 100% of white men that marry black women, have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Personally, I know of very few inter-racial marriages, and only a couple where it was a white man and black woman. In both instances, the husband (and the wife both) had higher education.
“Don’t date or marry anyone who does not physically look like you, or speak like you”
All of us will do that, to a large extent. We want to feel comfortable and would not be the way we were if we were not already somewhat comfortable being that way. Similar socio-economic classes act in similar ways.
Elspeth,
Is your husband black? I always assume he was, but some replies here make me wonder if that was an incorrect assumption. You don’t have to answer, I just realized I made an assumption that might not be valid.
Dave @ 12:13 pm:
“As Christians, we are expected to have no worldview except that of the Bible.”
The Bible does not promote a worldview, which consists of perceptions and traditions rather than truth/lie decisions. The classic example of a worldview is whether a cup is half-full or half-empty; both choices are true.
“In heaven, there is no special place for Americans, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Jews or Gentiles. We all live together in the same vicinity, forever!”
Y’know, I actually think the opposite. Is a God so creative as ours going to create a bland heaven-culture with all individual and group distinctions erased, or will humanity be as varied as now yet loyal? Is there really only one single, narrow road to obeying God? Is every single one of us going to be a carpenter because we’re fully “like Jesus”?
And what about Judgment Day? We focus on not being condemned–good–but what about rewards? Are there no rewards for the sacrifices of celibacy, of putting others first, of keeping good cheer through all the hardships of life? Does God see a long life of voluntary suffering for His sake as no more respectable than a mass murderer repenting from the electric chair?
I predict that post-Judgment humanity will be far, far more diverse and segregated than it is now. Those of us who have served God WILL be rewarded; Hitler-confessing-at-the-last-second will gain heaven but only as a refugee. We aren’t told what the reward will be but it surely won’t be mere currency. Most likely, those of us who’ve struggled to control ourselves will be given exceptionally powerful new bodies; those who wearied ourselves helping others, authority as God’s administrators; those of us who worshiped God by studying His creation, access to new realities not everybody will be permitted to explore; and so on.
And based on those individual differences, along with different personalities and who knows what else, we’ll naturally prefer the company of some groups of people over others.
The point of life on Earth, post-salvation, is to become who we want to be for eternity. Looking at people’s behavior today, no way will that result in a Vanilla humanity. We’ll still be diverse, only then in the ways that truly matter.
I’m just going to leave this turd floating in the punch bowl.
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/rob.bell.tells.oprah.winfrey.church.acceptance.of.gay.marriage.inevitable/48389.htm
anonymous_ng-
From the article you linked:
“I think culture is already there and the Church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense…”
Those pesky letters from 2000 years ago!
Scott wrote:
[A white, Orthodox Christian, Army Major, father of 3 (soon to be 4), psychologist, part time cowboy, living on my little ranch in Texas has nothing in common with a black, female, vegan, lesbian, Stanford professor of gender studies living with her life partner in San Francisco.
But we are both called “Americans.”]
That’s not really any different than the folks who raise up the objection to a May/December relationship claiming they’ll have nothing in common. Some how I’m going to have more in common with a liberal Jewess that’s my age who grew up in Manhattan, NY than I am with a conservative Christian half my age who grew up in Manhattan KS? Unlikely.
Anonymous_ng-
Forgive my ignorance. I tried reading your comment about 100 times and I can’t figure out what “May/December relationship” means. Can you use a different analogy?
Never mind. I looked it up.
I definitely see your point, but my original comment was in the context of what constitutes a national identity, not strong marriage partners.
I think it’s apples/oranges in that sense. Of course a way younger spouse with whom you share a common cultural connection (all other things being equal) is better than a same age spouse who is culturally, morally, religiously, etc different from you) I would assent to that.
A May/December relationship is where one party (usually the female) is much younger than the other (usually the male). She’s “May” and he’s “December.”
We were typing at the same time…
The thing about “higher education” is that I think it really does matter the higher you go. A BA is now common among secretaries where I work. They have average marriage stats — they get divorced, remarry (or don’t). They don’t have the same marriage stats as the lawyers, who have very low divorce rates, but also have more than a BA. A BA is becoming more like a HS degree in these things. Lots of people with BAs are not really great marriage material, just as they are not great career material.
@ anonymous_ng
Thanks for this link, which dovetails nicely with my comment from above. This is just more evidence to my core assumption: that the Church now exists only to ratify whatever the latest secular movements are. With that being the case, what difference does it make whether you go to church or not? What is the difference between the inside of the church and the outside?
Scott, I guess what came to mind is how commonality is seen as a virtue or a vice depending on the conversation.
@ Dalrock, IBB, etc.
It would be better to say that certain attitudes lead to certain behaviors. Heart -> attitudes -> behaviors. Behaviors (college) are not necessarily a predictor of future outcomes because they do not necessarily take into account the attitudes of individuals. For example, on a generalized basis the black community as a whole tends to be of lower socioeconomic status. We don’t even need to argue about why. This means that it is more likely that college education for those in the black community will be subsidized by the state and/or affirmative action quotas will be met.
While financial subsidization and affirmation action is not indicative of prevailing attitudes, what is more important is the values that the children (from 0-18) were raised upon. As in the black community as a whole there is rampant divorce and out of wedlock births and that’s most of what black children know. There is some element of what you’ve experienced and the friends you have and the attitudes they carry are more likely to influence you toward certain outcomes more than the behavior of obtaining a college degree. Their attitude toward marital success is probably not that high seeing as how most people they know who experienced marital failure did alright, and the ones who didn’t were able to live on welfare.
Prevailing attitudes that children pick up from their parents and culture in their childhood will tend to stick with them unless they are focused on and forcibly removed. Things most take for granted such as the disney princess mentality on girls we know in the manosphere has a detrimental impact on expectations that women have going into dating/courtship and/or marriage.
I analyzed attitudes in a different light in the context of EAPs here:
https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/your-attitude-tells-me-everything-i-need-to-know/
Indeed, I would expect college education to be more of a subset of socioeconomic status in the grant scheme of things. And socioeconomic status is probably another subset of the attitudes that marital failure is OK, and a lack of two parents including fatherlessness is fine and unneeded. In fact, I think at the core almost everything will stems back to fatherlessness.
This is why Jesus introduces God’s primary identity in the NT as Father God and the primary attribute as Love. The Father’s Love.
There’s no middle ground with black chicks, at least in North America.
There’s a majority which were raised by “empowered single wimminz” (i.e. generational welfare skanks). These black chicks are not worth a shit. You can hear them from a mile away, they’re loud as a Metallica concert, disrespectful, and even the ones that look good (most let themselves go in an awful way) are skanky as hell.
There’s a large minority (many of these are immigrants, and the homegrown ones tend to come from the American South) who are quiet, sweet, incredibly feminine, and annoyingly modest. Probably TMI, but of all the times I’ve been refused sex without a ring and a date, the majority were these hawt black chicks.
I respect the racist and nationalist bros on this site. I think if a man is looking for a good wife, though, he would do worse than to judge on family background rather than race. Lots of these black women want nothing more than to be stay at home mothers, keep house and be a good wife to her man. Lots of them value their chastity also. It’s old fashioned maybe, but useful if you want a “marriage material” woman.
Boxer
How far is this statement:
I told BOTH of my kids to avoid dating outside their race/ethnic group, and to steer clear of foreigners.
Different from this:
Don’t date or marry anyone who does not physically look like you, or speak like you?
If I have added a little drama, I promise you it’s not by a lot. But from my understanding of the English language, the two statements are pretty close.
Sad and pathetic, for our American society, that teenage “dating culture” extends well into middle age.
Precisely why there is no equivalent adult terms for “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”. It’s all juvenile behaviors extended into adulthood.
Dave-
The difference between “avoid dating” and “don’t date” is not subtle, especially in light of the reams of qualifying comments Laura has written over the last few days.
Deep Strength,
That was my grandfather on my mother’s side (God rest his soul.)
I believe that my grandfather might have been born a bastard. I don’t know for sure and I guess I don’t want to know. I have no interest in his geneology. My grandfather talked to me of his father but never in the context that his father was married to his mother (only in the context that my great-grandfather served our country in the Spanish-American war.) It was later (we are talking years later) years after my grandfather passed when I started to find out (from his oldest nephew whom I still speak with) the real stories about his childhood, and it was dark and terrifying.
Imagine living in a trailer park in the 1930s with various “daddy-uncles” paying visit to your mom? Imagine living in a trailer park where the trailer is set on fire and a sister (maybe pregnant out of wedlock) dies because she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette in the trailer? Imagine looking around and all you see is illegitimacy and depression (and not just during the Great Depression?) In someways, World War II saved my grandfather as he was able to enlist in the Navy and was stationed thousands of miles away from the trailer park where he most certainly did not want to be. And while in the Navy, he met my grandmother. And they got married. And he only returned once, 11 years after he was married and his daughters (one of which is my mother) properly insulated from that nightmare.
World War II “focused and forcibly removed” (your words) my grandfather from that vicious cycle of rot. I like the term you used. And he didn’t want to be part of that. And I will always admire the man for that, (for the things he did NOT say.) I suppose for people who are not “focused and forcibly removed” from the damage, they don’t have any personal experiences to reflect upon to expect better of themselves. And we don’t really talk about that in this country.
If I have added a little drama, I promise you it’s not by a lot. But from my understanding of the English language, the two statements are pretty close.
Your promise is as worthless as your English language skills. You have been slow to listen and quick to accuse in a way that goes far beyond what was said. These things do not suddenly become permissible because you’re fighting “racism”.
You make out “racism” to be impermissible from Scripture, when God Himself practices a form of racism/nationalism. Salvation is first for the Jews, then the Gentiles. The Jews were instructed to be holy as a nation, which involved legal barriers to avoid intermarriage and the subsequent adoption of the culture of the nations around them. That you could overlook this to condemn “avoid dating X” is a shallow and wrong understanding of Scripture.
If you have genuine good intentions, I’d suggest you apologize to the one you unfairly attacked.
@Dalrock,
“There is nothing wrong with reminding Christians that they should remain chaste until marriage. ”
I agree, and I wasn’t advocating premarital sex.
However, and maybe I’m reading something into RULE NUMBER THREE that isn’t there, but are the words “unlike the other men she’s dated” implied in it?
Also, “holy” is being used as a synonym for “chaste” here, but it doesn’t make sense. You can’t make a woman more chaste. You should choose to behave chastely with her, and she should resolve to abandon her previous unchaste ways, but that won’t undo what she’s done in the past.
@mikediver5 – glad to hear it mate ! Thanks for your words of advice. 20 years too late in my experience !
Did God create different races of people? Do you think that God may have had a reason?
God obviously did, but I do not pretend to know His reasons for doing so. Do you? At least, this much we know: God does not value any race above another. All have been condemned to unbelief so that he might have mercy upon all.
Christianity only survived because it had a cultural identity in the countries which took it as their religion.
Not true. On the contrary. Christianity tends to decline and its effects watered down once it embraces the cultural identities of the recipient countries. America is a case in point. This great country used to send out missionaries to other countries. Today, due to the permeating effects of feminism and associated ideologies, American Christianity has become a joke all over the world. Countries now make specific requests not to have American missionaries. Also, as many people on this site will readily admit, American culture has not strengthened Christianity, but turned it into a less desirable form (often derisively called “Churchianity”).
You confuse some idea of ‘racism’ which is never even mentioned in the Bible,…
Sure, racism was not mentioned in the Bible. So is smoking weed. Even Jesus never preached against homosexuality. But what do we conclude from all these? That just because some issues current in our world were not mentioned in Scripture means the Bible has nothing to say about them? I don’t think so.
You see, the Bible was never written to address every specific issue in our world. It was written to establish principles that we could live by. For instance, Jesus was said to have been “tempted at all points, yet without sin”. The fact is, Jesus never sat for a school examination, so he could not have been tempted to cheat. He never got married, had kids or supported a family, so he could never have experienced what it meant to strive everyday to put food on the table for his family.But in principle, He experienced every challenge and temptations which everyone else experiences..
and then say that protecting ones own ethnicity and culture is not Biblical…. Get off your high horse!
Well, go ahead, show me the part of the Bible that mandates you, as Christian, to protect your culture and ethnicity.
Everywhere I look, I see mandates to Christians to “fight for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3); to “go into all the world to preach the gospel to the unsaved (Mark 16:15); to “walk worthy of being Christians”(Ephesians 4:1).
I never saw a single verse of Scripture which says Christians are to save their ethnicities and culture. Again, not that the Bible is against it per se. I just never saw it.
You make out “racism” to be impermissible from Scripture, when God Himself practices a form of racism/nationalism.
Really? I hope you’re not conflating OT practices with NT realities. In Christ Jesus, no race is above or more desirable to God compared to another. And that includes the Jews. The Bible made this very clear.
In the NT, Christians were never commanded to keep to their own race when choosing a spouse. Compatibility in faith was the one thing Scripture would not compromise on, not race. Of course, each person has every freedom to select whoever appealed to them, provided they were Christians first and foremost (1 Corinthians 7:39). But that is individual preference, not a biblical command.
2 Corinthians (emphasis mine):
6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
6:15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
If you have genuine good intentions, I’d suggest you apologize to the one you unfairly attacked.
I have no problems apologizing to her or to anyone who might feel offended. I never really intended to attack anyone. If my responses came out as an attack I sincerely apologize. But my views are unchanged and I’d be lying if I wrote otherwise: the idea that a Christian could be rightly taught to disqualify potential suitors based solely on the colors of their skins and the fact that they were not born in the United States, is, in my opinion, contrary to the Spirit of Christ, and is indefensible by Scripture. Why, that would disqualify Jesus Christ Himself as a suitor to any female Christians in this country.
I cannot apologize for holding that view.
@Dave
Genesis Chapter 24
“And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house … I will make thee swear … that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell: … But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.
…
And the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and sware to him concerning that matter.”
@Dave
Once again you bring Jesus as the potential suitor into the discussion. Marrying Jesus is not an option, an imperfect man is the only option. However, just to respond directly to your example, you are right I would recommend my daughter not consider a man who had come out of 1st century Jewish culture as a potential mate. I think there would be a high probability of compatibility issues in such a match.
You say yourself that there is no scriptural command concerning racial/ethnic background requirement for marriage in the NT (the OT is full of these strictures as SirHamster pointed out). So how is it contrary to the Spirit of Christ to be discerning and attentive to cultural compatibility when selecting a mate? The term “contrary to the Spirit of God” sounds like you believe it is somehow sinful to consider anything other than whether a suitor is a Christian or not. This is ludicrous.
God did not really “create” different races, at least not in the sense that He simultaneously placed people of differing skin colors all around the world in one parallel act of creation. We all descend from Adam, or more correctly, Noah and his wife, and races sprung up naturally from there as people dispersed around the globe and their genetic makeup skewed in a certain direction through adaptaion to climates, etc. and through intermarriage where certain traits would have become inbred and dominant as small groups of people migrated and intermarried. Microevelution, if you will, through genetic adaptation to prevailing local conditions and breeding stock.
I agree with Dave: opposition to intermarriage among races is silly if it is being based on genetics/skin color. I can understand cultural objections if the worldviews are too polarized, but shared faith can sometimes overcome these differences and shared faith in Christ is not just assumed in the NT, it is commanded. Skin color alone is no determinant of equal or unequal yoking. All that said, I think mixed cultural marriages can be faced with more difficulties if not understood and accepted up front that one side may have to adapt more than the other. And, I think our “American” culture has increasingly become one not to emulate, but to shun when it comes to desirable qualities in a female thinking and behavior.
I’ve dated tons of black chicks, and occasionally I got the message from the family that I wasn’t really welcome. Guess what? I lived with it. Families have the right to express irrational disapproval of someone. (Lots of white chicks’ parents hate me too, go figure).
More often, chick’s parents would let it be known that I should convert to Christianity/Islam/whatever if I was going to be hanging around all the time. A really hot immigrant girl (Muslim) once told me that I should make a show of going to the Mormon church, just for show, so her father would quit hassling her. Muslims seem cool in practice with other religions, but they draw the line at agnostic types who express skepticism against god.
There’s no way to lecture someone on who they should or should not accept into their families. It’s their families, and they can figure such stuff out for themselves. If white folks want their kids to date other white folks, we can think it’s quaint and silly, but we can’t really declare it morally wrong.
Boxer
Since we’re talking about “race” –
My lily-white country-folk in-laws didn’t think too much of their baby girl marrying a half-breed, college-educated spic like me. As I noted earlier in this very thread, they tried to get the whole thing called off right before the wedding. They even cancelled the order for my ring because the guy they wanted her to marry told them that I threatened to beat him up if he came to the wedding (I did no such thing – anyway, he was 7 inches taller and probably 50 pounds heavier than I was, although he was intimidated by me for some reason). They didn’t disclose that little fact until a few minutes before the ceremony, so I had to borrow a ring from my brother-in-law. He has much larger hands than I do, so it was like having a gold hula-hoop on my finger. I had to keep my fist clenched to keep it from sliding off and onto the floor. I handed it back to him in the receiving line.
They eventually got over it, but it was rough sledding for a while. In retrospect, I find it oddly amusing.
This is quite a old problem. Moses wife was dark skinned.
Miriam complained about it and turned leperous and had to be quarintinned for a week – go figure.
FWIW,
Etymologically, the word “Caucasian” (a synonym for “white” today) was coined in 1795 by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who considered the Caucasus Mountain region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to be the ancestral home of the “white race.” (A German obsessed with race… who could have seen that coming?)
TFH,
It’s a fairly amusing story in retrospect, but I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed. I may give more details tomorrow, as they may further the discussion here.
Those of you who claim the OT has lots of commands against marriage outside your “race” need to pony up some examples that are outside the Jewish people. They were a special called people and thus the focus was on purity. I have seen nothing indicating God commanded that of anyone else.
Note too that while Abraham may have focused on his own family (something that would not work well today since we have decayed much more and such inbreeding is very dangerous), Jacob seemed to have no problem with his own sons doing the same. Context is very important here.
Really? I hope you’re not conflating OT practices with NT realities. In Christ Jesus, no race is above or more desirable to God compared to another. And that includes the Jews. The Bible made this very clear.
God acts objectively racist in both the OT and the NT. Are you this ignorant of the Bible?
OT: Jewish people chosen by God.
NT: “Jesus answered, `I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.'”
Now, salvation is not dependent on race, but the claim that all forms of racism are forbidden by the Bible is based on completely ignoring what God did, is doing, and will do, primarily regarding Israel.
In the NT, Christians were never commanded to keep to their own race when choosing a spouse.
And they are never commanded to be color-blind or politically correct in their choice of spouse. You’re using extra-Biblical principles as a basis for rebuking others on a topic where the Bible is silent. Misrepresenting that standard as Biblical is wrong.
I have no problems apologizing to her or to anyone who might feel offended. I never really intended to attack anyone. If my responses came out as an attack I sincerely apologize.
“If … ” is not an apology. I’m seeing a pattern with your posts. Uncharitably interpreting others’ words, empty promises, and fake apologies. There’s no ownership of your own words – which makes the appeals to the Bible that much more grating.
My point would be that, while I don’t see anything morally wrong with interracial marriages (being in one myself) I also don’t think it’s a moral requirement to be equally open to marriage with people of any race. Some people may have little attachment to their racial group, while others may feel very attached to it, and people may have different feelings about different racial groups. I don’t see any reason why a person shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate in their relationship choices based on race, if they can discriminate based on hair color, eye color, height, weight, and a thousand other things that typically have less impact on how well two people and their families can relate to each other.
I would say that if you ask God for a good spouse, and He wants to give you one who’s not the same race as you, race would be a silly reason to reject His gift. But that’s a very specific situation, and it’d be hard to say for sure that someone had done that. And, of course, we reject His gifts all the time for all kinds of reasons, so there’s nothing uniquely bad about it.
I’d also say that Jesus felt affection for His own nation, as pointed out above. Many people seem to be down on national or ethnic pride (at least for white people) ostensibly because universal charity is better. That’s true, but we should make sure we’ve reached one level before we deride it for not being as high as another level; love for one’s country or one’s people is a far better thing than individual selfishness, as long as it isn’t taken to the extreme of hating others for not being of that group. There seems to be a prevalent feeling today that (white) people are bad if they feel any group kinship or love for the group that they come from, just because some people who felt a lot of that feeling did bad things. That doesn’t make the feeling itself evil. We should be as open to others as we can, but group kinship is a mostly positive phenomenon.
Short version: I’d understand just fine if a black family strongly preferred that their kids marry other black people. Would you tell them they were racist for feeling that way? I certainly wouldn’t.
Eidolon is one of those unique individuals. Able to step outside of their own situation (interracial marriage) and make disimpassioned, morally clear observations about it.
You have once again articulated my position perfectly.
The race and mating stuff is interesting. For my own children I really don’t think about race as a qualifier. I would be open to anyone who had the right characteristics. But many people have made good points.
That being said, it seems on this board whites have the most angst about whether or not they tell their children to marry of their own race. Most Asians and middle easterners I know would never even consider marrying outside their race, and would think giving it any consideration was madness. That may change among their children growing up in the more cosmopolitan US. But while many whites wring their hands about whether or not they should consider race, most others have no problem making it a major criteria.
D–if readers would like to continue this conversation, I have this up now:
http://courtshippledge.com/2015/02/does-racial-preference-have-a-legitimate-role-in-your-search/
Eidolon,
Short version: I’d understand just fine if a black family strongly preferred that their kids marry other black people. Would you tell them they were racist for feeling that way? I certainly wouldn’t.
Minority groups are allowed to think things like that today. Others are considered racist for even noting it. That is a big logical flaw we face.
BradA,
Exactly. You have to love arguments that a white person is racist if he even thinks about doing something that practically every person in Asia does every day.
Chinese, for example, are not shy about saying that they like or dislike a particular race. Black folks have a bit of a hard time in China, because they don’t feel bad about saying that they like lighter skin tones and dislike darker ones. But while I don’t think their attitude is great, I think it’s better to just say it than to force everyone to pretend that they have no opinion about anything. And apparently it’s okay because you never hear people complaining about how racist Asia is.
Okay… awake and rested now. TFH made a few comments about my earlier anecdote which I will now address for illustration purposes.
TL/DR: this is long and deals with my experiences as a ‘half-breed” college boy marrying into a rural white farming family. Skip it if you find that boring or irrelevant.
As is often the case, TFH cuts through the fog to get to the essence.
(A quick aside: You have a real gift for this, TFH. God will use use if you let Him. Romans 11:29 says, “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” He’s given you a real talent for insight: how you use it is subject to your free will, but God gives all of us different gifts and talents for His use. [End of sermon.])
1- My experience is a little different, but that may because of when and where I grew up. Inter-racial acceptance has changed over time. For example, when “I Love Lucy” came out in 1951, it was considered fairly “edgy” for a Cubano to marry a White woman. By the time the last episode ran in 1960 it was more mainstream, and today Hispanics are considered “somewhat” (but not completely) white in many places in the U.S…. especially light-skinned ones like me. It was during that decade that my White father married my Latina mother, causing much consternation in his New England-based family. I don’t think my paternal grandmother ever fully accepted it. I spent my early childhood in San Antonio, and we had “colored” friends (that’s what they were called then). At the time the city had a “Black” section, a “Mexican” section, and a “White” section, and everyone knew where the boundaries were. I never caught any crap about it, but I was pretty young. Years later when I was in college (up North), my best friend was a Black guy, and I caught crap about that then. In fact, one of my White friends told me that I’d be more popular if I, “Dumped the nigger.” I don’t remember what my exact response was, but it wasn’t very polite. If that was the price of being more popular, I was unwilling to pay it… nor did I even want to be thought well of by people who thought like that. OTOH, my Black friend was a bit of a charmer and was able to snag White chicks (better than me – I was kind of a geek), although a lot of girls would never date a black guy – even a smart guy with excellent prospects like him.
2 – I agree… it is certainly reasonable for parents to embrace a mixed-race marriage if the other person has higher status (or for any other reason). But when it comes to rejecting a person just for being of a different “race”… I’m far from convinced about the wisdom of that. I understand in-group preferences a little, but being a “half-breed” myself I don’t have the same affinity for my “race” that others may have. I’m very WASP-y in the cultural sense (seriously, who else uses words like “etymologically” like I did up-thread?), and I’m a big fan of Western Civilization, but I think one of the strengths of Western Civ is its ability to be embraced by people of any ethnicity. I’ll go so far as to say that it stands at the pinnacle of human political arrangements: personal liberty… the Rule of Law… that is how men were meant to live, and I don’t have to be a “White boy” to get that. Also, I have more in common with many of the black officers I served with than people from Eastern cultures, Southern cultures, African cultures, or even some European sub-cultures, no matter what their DNA or skin color. By the same token, I don’t find Black women particularly attractive normally (exceptions exist: such as Zelma Davis when she was dolled up in this video). That’s not because I have anything against Black people, but that I have no control over what I find attractive.
3 – As for the guy my in-laws wanted my wife to marry, it was more complex than just “race,” although that was a big part of it. His family was wealthy by their standards, while I was a working class kid who “made good.” Both of us had good prospects, so that wasn’t really an issue. Also, he was local and they knew him and his family, whereas I was an outsider who didn’t grow up in their rural enclave. They were worried that I would take her away (which I did), while they assumed he would keep her local (which he would not have done either). Most of the Mexicans they encountered were transient laborers, and they were always causing trouble by getting drunk-and-rowdy and knocking up the local girls before moving on, so they figured that I was both a drug-dealer and a womanizer, despite the fact that I had an absurdly high security clearance, and if I even spat on the sidewalk it would have been noticed… and I was on the board at my church.
4 – As for the intimidation factor: I’m sure you are correct. Although he’s a lot bigger than me, he’s always been “soft,” for lack of a better term. Don’t get me wrong… I got to know him a bit and he’s not a bad guy, but he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to pick up a rifle and go to war. I don’t know – I’m about five years older than he is, and that might have had something to do with it as well.
And apparently it’s okay because you never hear people complaining about how racist Asia is.
I think that’s just “white man’s burden” stuff. We’re sophisticated whites, so we expect ourselves to behave better than those primitive Goo- … erm, I mean, Asians.
‘Irangeles’
Hey, a new one! And it fits! Thank you, TFH, it’s going in my collection with Sodom Francisco and the others.
I lived a few years in the deep south during my youth. I met at work several high quality, feminine, chaste, and intelligent young single black women. When i approached these women I was immediately shut down. They told me in no uncertain terms that they would never cross the color line. Interracial dating was not acceptable to most blacks, or to most whites, in the south at that time. Now that was a long time ago and things may be different now.
As an interesting aside, my parents married in WWII. They had grown up in the same church parish where I was raised, and had known each other since kindergarten. When they married it was a great scandal. You see, my father was from the Irish neighborhood, and my mother was from the German neighborhood. And even worse, my mother’s father was an immigrant. Both were as white as snow, but to those of those times they were of such different ethnic backgrounds as to be unsuitable for marriage.
I am in a mixed race marriage as I am married to an Asian woman. In my youth, in the same metro area we currently live in, this would have been totally beyond the pale. Now it is not even considered as a mixed marriage, as to most people around here these days Asians are white. I worked with a very nice Cambodian/Thai (mixed race in her mind) woman who was married to a black man. He got a good job offer in Atlanta and they moved there. Before they left she asked me how her mixed race marriage would be percieved in the south as she knew I had lived in the south for many years. I started out telling her that she might have some rough sledding as the acceptance of mixed race couples in the south is not nearly as great as it is up here in the frozen north (today it is a wind chill of 41 below zero). Then I had a sudden realization and changed my story. I told her she had nothing to worry about as in the south they would not consider her marraiage as a mixed marriage as she would not be considered as white down there. It had not occured to me until then that in my mind she was a white woman married to a black man. In the south she would be a dark skinned Asian, equivalent to a black, woman married to a black man; so no problem.
“How else do you interpret the charge to a young adult: “Don’t date or marry anyone who does not physically look like you, or speak like you”? That alone disqualifies every single person mentioned in the Bible, including the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. How does a Christian defend that worldview?”
Dave, every single one of your posts in this thread has been wrong from top to bottom, absolutely oozing self righteousness, and full of indications you are arguing in bad faith. This post, however, is beyond parody.
Why on earth do you think criteria for marriage need to be ones that would let Jesus through? You are aware that he never married, correct? What possible justification do you have for asserting that standards for marriage need to let ling dead Biblical characters through? There is no Biblical support for this idea whatsoever.
Just saying I want my kid to marry someone of Christian rather than Jewish religion eliminates every single person in the old Testament. Surely you don’t think this is an objectionable standard?
Maybe I want my wife to not marry adulterers, liars, murderers, or polygamists. I have just ruled out pretty much all the old testament kings and patriarchs. Do you think these are bad standards?
Suppose my criteria is that the person never claims to be god. That would disqualify Jesus. Are you saying this is a bad standard and we should in fact encourage people to marry the anti-christ and false prophets?
Or perhaps my standard is that my son marry a woman. Oh dear, Jesus seems to have been disqualified again. Is that a bad standard?
Or perhaps I insist my daughter marry someone who has never been convicted of a crime – Jesus is disqualified again! Yet surely you do not disagree with this standard?
Or maybe I insist she marry someone who provides a home and holds down a steady job – Jesus is disqualified again.
You are holding some flagrantly anti-biblical and frankly heretical views : Jesus did not come to earth to show the type of man women should marry – he came to earth to save us from our sins.
“That’s not really any different than the folks who raise up the objection to a May/December relationship claiming they’ll have nothing in common”
That is a ridiculous argument that is clearly wrong and has nothing in common with the other argument.
Obviously myself currently and myself 10 years ago have a great deal in common. Almost everthing, in fact! Age differences have nothing directly to do with whether or not people have things in common : different language, culture, values, etc do. Attempting to equate the two is a false equivalence.
If you are interested in race as far as a sermon:
foodforyoursoul.net current sermon series latest (feb 15) sermon. James 2 (I think) this is our pastor.
I am not promoting him, he just has an excellent point that would resonate with Scott
” But my views are unchanged and I’d be lying if I wrote otherwise: the idea that a Christian could be rightly taught to disqualify potential suitors based solely on the colors of their skins and the fact that they were not born in the United States, is, in my opinion, contrary to the Spirit of Christ, and is indefensible by Scripture. Why, that would disqualify Jesus Christ Himself as a suitor to any female Christians in this country.
I cannot apologize for holding that view.”
You should apologize, as it is stupid, wrong, and unbiblical. You should also apologize for falsely accusing people of being racists – or are you not following those parts of the bible that tell you not to bear false witness or wrongly pass judgement? At this point I think it is clear you are either a troll or a heretic.
Christians can disqualify potential suitors for a whole host of reasons. I disqualified any woman that was the wrong height, shape, weight, eye color, hair color. Why should all the former be fine but skin color magically be verboten? We find attractive what we find attractive. There is no moral issue here. A man attacted to short round irish redheads cannot plausibly be accused of hating tall brunettes or harboring racism against Asians and blacks and vikings. To attempt to falsely accuse him of such things, as you are doing, is a grave sin. The man does not rule out these other people because he thinks God hates them, so your sputteringly indignant claims to the contrary are quite beside the point.
Insisting that your child marry someone with similarity is not only NOT biblical, it is explicitly called for in the bible – “do not be unequally yoked”
Insisting your kid marry someone who speaks the same language is a no-brainer. This does not mean you think God hates people who speak only Italian. insisting your kid marry someone with the same set of values is also a no brainer – in practice this will tend to exclude people outside the US who don’t share our view of representative government with limited powers, this does not mean you hate or think God does not value, people who live outside the US. Heck, I would go further to disqualify the vast majority of people in the US as being too far away to help with aged relatives, not having the right education or career , etc. Do you think it is unchristian to disqualify potential suitors who live more than 2 hours drive away? Do you think that by doing so I am claiming God values all those people less?
It is a numbers and probabilities game. Do you reproach car insurance companies that charge young men more by claiming God doesn’t value the young less than the old, men less than women, etc? Do you launch stern lectures that God values all people equally, etc etc?
Your fundamental mistake is assuming if God does not prefer A to B, Christians cannot prefer A to B without sinning. This is an unbiblical position that fallls afoul of the command to not add to God’s word. It is also such a self evidently idiotic position to take that I cannot believe you are arguing in good faith and are instead trying to cause drama by falsely accusing people of being racists, as you have done repeatedly.
“So ‘race’ in America is weird. The definitions keep changing. The only constant is that black has always been black. Everything else is open to the political agenda of the time…”
It seems like “white” status tends to be conferred on any group that acts mostly like the majority (at least in public), hence Asians for many purposes are considered white (i.e. affirmative action explicitly discriminates against them in many cases). Italians, Irish and Germans were all considered different than white Americans when they first immigrated in large numbers, but when their behavior patterns became nearly indistinguishable from the majority, they stopped being thought of as separate.
“Minorities” who add “diversity” are mostly people who don’t act like the main group. Thus you’ll have people saying that adding more black staff is increasing “diversity” but rarely say so about Asians (unless you’re talking about the British “Asians” which means Middle Eastern muslims). “Diversity” means making sure there are people there that wouldn’t be there if they weren’t “diverse.” Asians generally succeed on their own like white people do and thus don’t count.
The frustrating thing about the black/white divide is that if black culture didn’t keep itself intentionally separate (egged on by foolish leftists), it would probably eventually dovetail with white culture as Italian, German, Irish, Polish etc. did and the distinctions would die away.
@dewave
You and I appear to be the only ones on here who would disqualify the Geographically Undesirable who live more than two hours away. In the 10 1/2 years I was married, I never got to spend a single Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, July 4th, etc., with my own family, because “it costs as much to visit your family as to go to Europe.” My ex and I were both WASPS from roughly similar social backgrounds, but we ended up living in his old hometown, about 2000 miles from mine. I visited my father a few months before he died (lung cancer) and my husband was angry that I insisted on going back for the funeral (you were just there!)
The typical Churchian 18 to 21 year old thinks that if you have Jesus in your heart, then every other difference between the bride and groom pales into insignificance. The younger brides are not just less mature, they are hopelessly idealistic.
Personally, I think that acceptance of multiculturalism and diversity may have peaked sometime between 1995 and 2000, but I don’t have any hard evidence.
Laura says:
February 18, 2015 at 10:50 am
“I believe that you (Oscar) have married across national lines (but within the same basic ethnicity?) and that it has worked out well for you and so your experience has been different.”
If Hispanic and American of German descent are the same basic ethnicity (whatever that means), then yes.
“Do you have children, Oscar, and how old are they?”
I have eight children, five girls and three boys, ranging in ages from 15 to almost 1. Five are adopted from Ethiopia, and three are biological.
Laura says:
February 19, 2015 at 3:54 pm
@dewave
“You and I appear to be the only ones on here who would disqualify the Geographically Undesirable who live more than two hours away. In the 10 1/2 years I was married, I never got to spend a single Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, July 4th, etc., with my own family, because “it costs as much to visit your family as to go to Europe.” My ex and I were both WASPS from roughly similar social backgrounds, but we ended up living in his old hometown, about 2000 miles from mine. I visited my father a few months before he died (lung cancer) and my husband was angry that I insisted on going back for the funeral (you were just there!)”
Obviously, the problem is not that you married a man whose home town was 2000 miles from yours. The problem is that you’re a poor judge of character, and therefore married a man of poor character.
I suppose one could indeed claim that divorce ipso facto proves both spouses were poor judges of character. I am not sure what utility it serves, however.
TFH says:
February 18, 2015 at 2:10 am
“Oscar,
1. The definition of “race” varies from culture to culture and over time, and…
YES. Especially in America. Anyone who has any doubt that Irish people were not considered ‘white’ a century ago, and Italians as late as the 1950s, (when, ironically, a lot of Hispanics actually were considered white, especially in Hollywood) doesn’t know how much America has changed, and how much race has moved around (with the only constant is that black has always been black).”
Anyone who doubts the meaninglessness of the word “race” should travel to Afghanistan and explain to a Pashtun tribesman that he and the Hazara belong to the same “race” because they’re both Asian.
The explaining party, unfortunately, probably won’t learn a thing, since he/she is unlikely to survive the experience.
@SirHamster says:
February 19, 2015 at 2:06 am
“God acts objectively racist in both the OT and the NT. Are you this ignorant of the Bible?
OT: Jewish people chosen by God.
NT: “Jesus answered, `I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’”
Now, salvation is not dependent on race, but the claim that all forms of racism are forbidden by the Bible is based on completely ignoring what God did, is doing, and will do, primarily regarding Israel.”
You gotta love it when people use their millimeter-deep knowledge of the scriptures to justify their beliefs.
I suppose one could indeed claim that divorce ipso facto proves both spouses were poor judges of character. I am not sure what utility it serves, however.
It strongly hints that at least one of them was a poor judge of character. As for the utility of pointing that out: it has a great deal of utility…
It serves as a warning to others.
____________________
TFH,
I’m under the impression that there’s not a lot of “Conquistador” blood on my mother’s side… just a bunch of peasant dirt-farmer boys from extreme Northern Mexico who were taken across the border by their Madre to keep them from being press-ganged into service with Pancho Villa’s army (ah, the benefits of patriarchy: being forced to serve as cannon-fodder…). But I probably am more “mixed” than a lot of people. As you’re no-doubt aware, we’re all mixtures of all sorts of things if we go back far enough, especially since the definitions of “race” changes so often. Essentially, every human being on the planet is a more-or-less distant cousin to every other one.
This report by a team of geneticists concluded that everyone on Earth shares at least one ancestor with everyone else as recently as 1400 B.C.. Women may lie about paternity, but DNA doesn’t. Given margins of error and geographical dispersion, that dovetails fairly nicely with the idea of eight people stepping out of an arc in SW Asia around 1000 years prior to that. Just saying.
@TFH
Likewise in Texas. Our new Governor is married to a Hispanic woman and it isn’t an issue.
Dalrock I not sure where this comment goes since you don’t have a page about MGTOW. But I went to the blog site- Sarah daughter- here is the link: http://sarahsdaughterblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/mgtows-are-losers-part-iii.html
She is talking about MGTOW guys being losers. I don’t consider myself MGTOW in the traditional sense cause I don’t hate females nor shun relationships nor hate marriage- I am single cause I like being single. My ideal is the Apostle Paul. Besides i’m in my 40’s and just have never met the right person and once you make it to my age I just don’t’ have the sex drive I did and i’m just comfortable with my simple lifestyle. I had some ladies interested in the past but i just didn’t feel the same way about them that they felt for me. Now at 49 I just want to keep it simple and every time I ever tried to get involved with a woman the drama begins so I just prefer to keep to myself. I have friends and people I enjoy being around but I really hate dating and always have- even as a teen. If I really wanted a date or a woman I wouldn’t have a problem getting one cause I’m actually nice looking and in shape and pleasant to be around. Anyway- my point is I can identify with MGTOW guys in a lot of ways. I was searching online and found the above mentioned article and I read the comments by not only the OP but some of her readers. I really despise how people take the word of God out of context for their own ideology. And what gets me is how the OP is such a coward- she won’t allow for legitimate debate. I tried to post the following comment but she deleted it. I will post my comments below. Guys take a gander at her site and the comments as well as mine and tell me what you think.
I must remind you of how people in the 1800’s used to take scripture verses like Colossians 4:2 where Paul talks about slave and master relationships and doesn’t condemn slavery- and used them to justify slavery. There are many reasons Paul didn’t condemn slavery, but it doesn’t justify slavery at all. I think adults should take care of themselves. I am not obligated to marry and take care of a woman- if your an adult you should take care of yourself like the Proverbs 31 lady. Men are not your financial slaves- your personal ATM machine!
If God thought slavery was o.k. he would have let his people stay slaves in Egypt , but he didn’t. Anyway my point is that people and times change and many things that were acceptable in the past are not acceptable now. Besides many verses are taken out of the context of the times people lived in. Like the Apostle Paul tells women they aren’t allowed to teach or even speak in church yet now we have women preachers!
Well I guess you don’t want to go back to those days now do you? No voting and no women preachers no speaking in churches and no working outside the home? LOL So how come it is o.k. for women to change and do things not previously allowed and yet only men are subjected to the same old standards as eons ago. You like to cherry pick what you want to believe or not believe. I smell some hypocrisy cooking here!
Those comments got deleted- I wonder why? LOL
TFH,
Interesting. Given all the genes from diverse sources bouncing around inside me, it’s a good thing I’m not a SJW. I am both oppressor and oppressed… benefiting from my ancestors practicing imperialism and hindered by my ancestors being subjected to colonization. Does my victim-hood trump my privilege or does my privilege trump my victim-hood? I’m so confused.
Oh well… I’m left-handed, and since left-handers (sinister in languages that derive from Latin – that’s how long MY people have been oppressed) have no power, and powerless people can only be victims and never at fault… I guess that tips the scales toward “victim.”
Shouldn’t you right-handed, cis-male scumbags be sending me checks or something?
__________
On a half-serious note, I may use that. The Latin word for “left” actually is sinistra, and it is objectively true that lefties have been persecuted throughout history. It is also true that practically everything is made to be used by right-handed people. It is also true that lefties have a shorter life expectancy than righties (maybe because everything is made to be used by righties, including dangerous things like power tools). And we all know that a claim of victim-hood absolves one of all faults and personal responsibilities…
I think I may be onto something here.
Dear Fellas,
Interesting convo…
It’s easy to answer this. Just go over to Tumblr or Twitter and ask around. If you’re a man, and not dreadfully ashamed of it, then you’re a scumbag. Black, White or other doesn’t matter.
That goes for gay men too. Ask Jack Donovan, Milo Yiannopolous, etc. if they get any breaks. They don’t. Unless you’re one of the grovelling little half-men, who seems to be waiting around for the gender-reassignment surgery, you’re a piece of shit, and the social justice faggots want you dead.
I have lots of relatives in Mexico (my grandmother was a Mexican, in fact… she was neighbours with Mitt Romney’s dad in the colony there). They’re overwhelmingly blond(e) like Mormons everywhere else, and they don’t breed out much.
It doesn’t matter too much. Right near where I live there are tons of flaxen haired, pure white people who live like animals and behave like total assholes. There are neighbourhoods in Idaho and Oregon full of poor white kids who never knew their dads, and were raised by typical skank-ho single moms on welfare. Many of the young men of these communities are, right now, terrorizing law abiding citizens. The race fetishists who think that white people make better family members are encouraged to visit some of these mobile home parks and section 8 apartment complexes to choose their next daughter/son in law. lol
Regards,
Boxer
SirHamster says:
February 19, 2015 at 2:06 am
God acts objectively racist in both the OT and the NT. Are you this ignorant of the Bible?
OT: Jewish people chosen by God.
NT: “Jesus answered, `I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’”
I literally laughed out loud. No, you are not trying to charge God, the Creator of the Universe, the thrice holy God of the whole earth, with racism. Citing the fact that Jesus had a limited scope in his earthly ministry as evidence of racism shows how much you know of God’s words. I will not even respond further to this charge.
“If … ” is not an apology. I’m seeing a pattern with your posts. Uncharitably interpreting others’ words, empty promises, and fake apologies.
I was not apologizing. Maybe you should re-read my ealier post. I stated in effect that I stood with what I wrote and would not apologize for it. However, my intention was not to attack anyone, including the person I replied to. I don’t know what pattern of my posts you’re referring to. I never made any promises to anyone on the site (or at least I can’t remember making any promises). Are you sure you’re not confusing me with someone else?
You’re using extra-Biblical principles as a basis for rebuking others on a topic where the Bible is silent.
Actually, the Bible is not silent about racism. It clearly and unapologetically stated that there is no race that is superior to another. God saw every race as sinners, provided the same salvation to all races, and is preparing the same future for all races. Please, spend a little more time in the word, and get conformed to its teachings. Let the word renew your mind, brother. God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26).
As far as Christ is concerned, there is no Jew or Gentile. No American or African. No Asian or Hispanics. Christ died for all, and provided the same salvation for all. We pray in the same name and to the same God. The Bible clearly rebuked the Jews who thought they were somehow special, and despised others.
Yes, the Jews were given the task of preserving the Scriptures for us, and to bring the Messiah into the world. But they still needed the same salvation that we all need. And, America is a Gentile country, just like most other countries in the world.
And just to be clear: racism is evil and unbecoming and indefensible for a followr of Jesus Christ. And once we use the Bible to justify racism, we can use it to justify almost every other evil under the sun, as it has been done in the past. No true Christian who has the love of God in their heart will defend racism, or promote it. And, charging God or Jesus with the sin of racism is ridiculous, if not blasphemous.
———————————————————–
You should apologize, as it is stupid, wrong, and unbiblical.
I am waiting for the appropriate passages of the Bible disputing what I wrote. If you could convince me with Scripture that I was wrong, I will apologize. If not, sorry, no luck.
You should also apologize for falsely accusing people of being racists – or are you not following those parts of the bible that tell you not to bear false witness or wrongly pass judgement? At this point I think it is clear you are either a troll or a heretic.
I did not falsely acuse anyone. I expressed an opinion which you clearly disagreed with. I am neither a troll nor a heretic. Again, I’d love to see the relevant passages of Scripture which support your arguments, and condemned mine. Just because you have a belief system does not make it biblical. Or right. I could call you a heretic or a troll as well, but I declined.
Insisting that your child marry someone with similarity is not only NOT biblical, it is explicitly called for in the bible – “do not be unequally yoked”
Really? By that argument, tall people should only marry tall spouses then, and that would, in your words, be “biblical” and explicitly commanded in the Bible. You will have to try harder though; I am not buying it. Try not to make the Bible say what it did not say: the command not to be “unequally yoked” has nothing to do with race, but with matters of faith: Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. As a matter of fact, it is the only nonnegotiable requirement given in the NT when looking for a spouse.
Do you think it is unchristian to disqualify potential suitors who live more than 2 hours drive away? Do you think that by doing so I am claiming God values all those people less?
Apples and oranges. By its very definition, racism cannot be compared to the disqualification of people who live too far away. Look, you can go ahead and exclude everyone on the planet. That is your choice. It does not necessarily mean it is wise, godly or biblical. And here is something I alluded to earlier: If you could exclude those who live 2 hours away due to “personal preference”, why can’t you exclude them from fellowship altogether, and attend your “White church” on Sunday mornings, as others attend their ethnic churches? But of course, you’ll go evangelize them every once in a while, though you’ll be careful to let them know that “they” are excluded from fellowshipping at your church, anyway. Personal preference, you see. No wonder American churches have not experienced a true, heaven-sent revival in over a hundred years. It’s all full of all justifications to do what is “personally preferred”. Even preachers do preach racism from the pulpit, though they carefully disguise it as “personal preference” of course. Who are we deceiving?
It is OK if you don’t agree with me. But this much is clear: until American Christians find a way to do away with the ugliness of racism in their hearts and in their churches, they will never experience God’s visitation. God is not a respecter of persons.
Gee, Dave, I’m sure those thriving churches in South America, Africa and China would totally share your views on race. Otherwise God wouldn’t be close with them, right? Do you have any idea if they view things remotely like you say, or is this another “people are bad if they don’t do X — what’s that, hardly anyone in the world does X? I mean white people are bad if they don’t do X” kind of thing? Do you know if people in the early church viewed things this way? Were they bad Christians if they didn’t?
Look, being accepting of people is fine, it’s good. But when you’re talking about marriage and what people look for in a spouse, there are so many things to consider, and arbitrarily roping off some doesn’t make any sense. By your definition it’s more acceptable to discriminate based on eye color, hair style, wardrobe, height, weight, bone structure, eye shape, and a bunch of other comparatively trivial things, but race is excluded because no race is better than another? Who’s saying different? Everyone’s equally valuable in the eyes of God; aren’t I violating that just as much if I say I don’t want any women over 200 pounds? Dismissing any group of people is just as bad, by that standard.
Saying “I don’t like X” is not the same as saying “X is bad.” It’s unreasonable to act like people are saying that another race is inferior simply because they don’t want to marry someone of that race. It could be that I don’t tend to get along with a certain group, so avoiding it is just good policy for everyone, and doesn’t say anything about me or about them.
I criticized a pastor once for this attitude of “everyone in the church is racist…except for me, of course.” Having feelings about racial groups is not racism; preferring one thing to another is not hatred of the thing not preferred; and you ought to be much more careful (and have some real evidence) when making nasty accusations against our brothers.
I literally laughed out loud. No, you are not trying to charge God, the Creator of the Universe, the thrice holy God of the whole earth, with racism. Citing the fact that Jesus had a limited scope in his earthly ministry as evidence of racism shows how much you know of God’s words. I will not even respond further to this charge.
Do you not know what racism is? It’s discrimination based on race. If you want a stricter definition, you could add on, “preferential treatment based on race.” (action, vs. mental categorization)
Has God done either of those? Yes. (and it’s not wrong)
To say God is racist is not an accusation, it is an observation. That you think racism means more than that is your own faulty definition.
I was not apologizing. […]
I know. Which makes your “I have no problem apologizing” sentence before it so much tripe, and thus dishonest. You’re pretending you care about how others respond to your words.
Multiple posters in this thread have pointed out that you have gone too far in things you have said- and your response is to say you have no problem apologizing even as you willfully avoid offering an apology. I wasn’t kidding when I said you should apologize to demonstrate genuine good intentions.
Again, you have a pattern in your posting behavior, and that is that you don’t take your own words seriously – why should anyone else take you seriously, then?
Actually, the Bible is not silent about racism. It clearly and unapologetically stated that there is no race that is superior to another.
Racism does not mean “racial superiority”. If I give preferential treatment to black people, and worse treatment to some other race, I don’t have to have any opinion on racial superiority to be considered racist. I have discriminated on the basis of race, and thus have acted racistly. Racial “superiority” is a subset of racism, but is not the entirety of it.
Consider what Paul thought: “What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way! […]”
Does that sound racially neutral? How about this? “First to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”
God saw every race as sinners, provided the same salvation to all races, and is preparing the same future for all races.
No one is disagreeing with this. Though I don’t think each race has the exact same future; based on what I recall from Revelations, the Jews are going to face some extra special tribulation until they finally acknowledge Jesus as Lord.
And just to be clear: racism is evil and unbecoming and indefensible for a followr of Jesus Christ.
Mistreating a Brother in Christ because he is of a different race is not wrong because it’s Racist, it’s wrong because it is Unloving. There are no commands to “not be racist”; but there are commands to love.
But when we recognize the underlying standard, then we also recognize that Racism is not the only way to be Unloving. Being unkind to others based on a faulty reading of their ideas, and being quick to accuse is also Unloving.
That is why you were asked to apologize. You’re not being asked to apologize for your opinion on racism and whether Christians should interracially marry. You’re being asked to apologize for mishandling other people’s words and being uncharitable in your interpretation of their thoughts.
Remember when you promised you weren’t adding too much drama in your paraphrase? The first post of yours that I responded to? Your promise was a lie. Race/ethnicity is more than skin color, and nationality is more than an accent. To get it that wrong, and to willfully avoid apologizing for it, is dishonest. Are you going to change that?
“Actually, the Bible is not silent about racism”
correct. In the old testament clear distinctions are made based on ethnicity.
” unapologetically stated that there is no race that is superior to another. ”
Moving the goalposts. That is not the definition.
“As far as Christ is concerned, there is no Jew or Gentile. No American or African. No Asian or Hispanics”
That same verse says there is no male or female. Do you think someone who limits their potential spouses to only a single gender is guilty of sexism? If your answer is no, this verse clearly doesn’t mean what you think it does.
“I did not falsely acuse anyone.”
Liar. Your very first post in this thread was attacking Laura for being a racist and for promoting “veiled racism”. I am sure this tactic has worked for you elsewhere, and you expected everyone to shriek and cower and run from the bad words. Instead you got immediate pushback and people calling you out on your sin, so now you are trying to deny you ever accused anyone of racism.
“By its very definition, racism cannot be compared to the disqualification of people who live too far away.”
Another attempt to shift definitions. You have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt you are arguing in bad faith. You need to prove that disqualifying suitors based on skin color is any more wrong than based on hair color or distance. These disqualifications are not based on hatred or any sense of superiority. You are, once AGAIN falsely accusing people of racism.
I also notice, like the typical dishonest troll, that you failed to answer AT ALL the repeated takedowns of your attempt to claim that any criteria that would disqualify Jesus is somehow sinful.
“If you could exclude those who live 2 hours away due to “personal preference”, why can’t you exclude them from fellowship altogether”
Are you saying it is wrong to exclude people who live too far away?
“until American Christians find a way to do away with the ugliness of racism in their hearts and in their churches, they will never experience God’s visitation”
This part of your post is both painfully provincial and wholly unbiblical. America is the least racist place on earth, so I have no idea why you are calling out the American church on this in particular. Why do you think American Christians are somehow separated from Chinese Christians in this requirement of yours? I thought you said God was not a respecter of persons? You also seem to believe Christians are able to become free of sin in this life. No Christian, American or otherwise, will ever be able to do away with the sin in their hearts, racial or otherwise. You claim that racism is a uniquely bad sin – where is your scriptural support for this? What precisely do you mean by “experience God’s visitation”? You are aware all believers have already been visited by the holy spirit, surely?
Come now, be specific : you keep talking about racism. Exactly who in this thread are you accusing of advocating racist views?
And if the answer is no one, then you admit you brought it up just to troll people.
Dave’s behaviour in this thread follows the dishonest troll playbook precisely.
1) Skim until offended. Check. His very first post is attacking a single sentence pulled out of context from Laura’s post.
2) Disqualify! Check.Went immediately for calling her a racist.
3) When challenged, move the goalposts and change definitions. Check. He has done this in every post. Notice how he tried to shift the topic under disscussion from Laura saying to avoid dating someone from another country so some imaginary (racist) command not to date anyone who doesn’t look just like you! In actuality you may not wish to date foreigners even of your own ethnicity, for any variety of reasons.
4) Introduce new lines of attack to muddy the waters. Check.Note that when people pointed out not dating foreigners was hardly racism, he introduced the new laughable claim that any criteria that would exclude Jesus as a potential suitor was a sin.
5) when called on this, abruptly abandon new line of attack and return to initial attack, hoping enough time has passed to hide your dishonesty. check.Note how Dave, despite repeatedly bringing up the “Jesus as a suitor argument” abruptly and inexplicably drops it once a couple people exhaustively debunk it. No admission he may have been wrong, none of these apologies he is professing to be only too ready to hand out. Just a sudden abrupt switch back to calling people racists.
Dave is a wolf in sheeps clothing.
He has not apologized for calling people racists.
He has not admitted his false attempt to claim the Bible prohibits any suitor criteria that would disqualify Jesus
He has not given scriptural support for his claim that if God does not prefer one thing to another, God’s people cannot do so eithet.
He has not supported his claim that it is ok to disqualify a suitor over hair color but skin color disqualification can only be evil racism!
From the start he has argued in bad faith, throwing in enough “correct” jargon to try to fit in. I really do recommend rereading his posts in quick succession. They are a very good blueprint of how trolls typically operate.
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dewave,
Excellent points!
OK, folks, looks like I unintentionally ruffled some feathers here.
1. I stated that asking our kids not to date or marry someone because of their country of origin, race or ethnicity, sounds racist to me; you guys say no, it does not.
2. While you all claim to be Christians, you have called me names again and again (heretic, troll, wolf in sheep’s clothing, etc, etc), because you disagreed with what I wrote. I never called any of you names. Looks like it is those name callers that should be apologizing, not me. But, frankly, I don’t hold any of your name callings against you. Apology not necessary; I simply mentioned it to point out the obvious.
3. You guys say that not only has your God been racist, He is still racist and will continue to be. It is obvious that we are not serving the same God. Mine is not racist, has never been and will never be. That is not the God I have known since my childhood. And, certainly, that is not the God of the Bible. God does not deal with people, not according to the colors of their skins, but “according to their works”.
4. This discussion sheds significant amount of light on the hopelessness of race relations in America generally, and among American Christians in particular. Why, if God Himself is racist, why can’t we all? “Be ye followers of God, as dear children”, the holy book says.
5. But I am curious though. If indeed racism is such a desirable attribute as it has been argued by some of you, since God Himself is supposedly racist, why should I be apologizing for calling out someone that they are acting like their God? Why call me names? Would you have asked me to apologize if I called you a kind, loving and faithful person—–all attributes of God? I don’t think so. We all know that racism is evil, and that is why we do not want to be associated with the attribute. Again, charging the Godhead with racism is scandalous, and demonstrates a lack of knowledge of God.
Look, we may justify anything that we want to justify before men, but that does not make it acceptable to God in any way. The Bible has been previously used to justify even slavery and maltreatment of fellow human beings, so no surprise now.
It all goes back to the same attitude of insurbordination to the clear, unequivocal word of God, and justification of the unjustifiable, using the Scriptures. The unrepentant, slutty “Christians” do it: “Yeah, I got knocked up out of wedlock because there are no good men available; God said not to judge, so stop judging me!”. The misguided preacher does it: “All you young men must hurry up and marry these single moms, because Jesus’ mother was a sigle mom too”. The frivorcing “Christian wife” does it: “I am seeking a divorce because my husband has departed from being a good husband, and the bible says if the unbelieving depart, let them depart”. And of course the Christian father does it as well, albeit in a different way.
But the Bible will not conform to your culture or mine; it will not bow before some closely held beliefs, no matter how popular they are. On the contrary, we will either conform to its teachings, or we pay a heavy price. The Gospel becomes a savor of death unto death if it is not embraced as a savor of life unto life (2 Corinthians 2:16). We can decide to fall upon Christ, and be broken in repentance, or we can wait until He falls upon us in judgement, grinding us into powder (Matthew 21:44 ). Our choice.
I am out of this thread. It is hopeless to continue the discussion. But, if anything, could I make a request—-shall we stop the name calling a bit, or at least tone it down? I believe we can disagree without being disagreeable. Thank you.
“I am out of this thread. It is hopeless to continue the discussion. But, if anything, could I make a request—-shall we stop the name calling a bit, or at least tone it down?”
Perfect! The troll cycle is now complete. Last night I predicted this would be Dave’s response, and it was! The troll starts out attacking attacking attacking – note how Dave’s very first post was calling people racists, then quickly descended into questioning people’s faith, saying they don’t know God, etc.
But then, at long last, after people have laboriously chronicled every dishonest step of his troll campaign, despite being the instigator and starting the personal attacks, he falls back on an air of wounded innocence and complains that people are being mean and calling him names and no true Christian would act that way.
Note how he STILL refuses to address any of the points people have made and questions directly asked of him!. He hasn’t identified these racists he is addressing or supported any of his claims in any way, or addressed any of the many, many refutations of his false claims. Note how he attempts to open up several new lines of attack (with a dash of false equivalence and guilt by association thrown in) without even the most cursory attempt to address peoples responses to his previous ones. I particularly liked how he simultaneously denied calling people racists then explained why it was ok for him to have done so. Talk about the kitchen sink approach! This sequence of posts need to be framed for posterity as perfectly exemplifying the troll playbook.
Dave was, from first to last, a dishonest conniving troll. Go back to the outer darkness from whence you came. We will pray for your soul.
@dewave
I can’t stop laughing! Dave’s Christianity is so much higher and purer than anybody else’s. We just “claim” to be Christians — Dave’s the Real Deal!
The best part of Dave’s final post is the very first line:
“OK, folks, looks like I unintentionally ruffled some feathers here”
Classic start to a non-apologic apology.
Should be “non-apologetic”
@dewave
I’ll just leave it here:
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/women-as-the-drivers-of-between-culture-distance/
Dave @ 5:42 am:
“3. You guys say that not only has your God been racist, He is still racist and will continue to be. It is obvious that we are not serving the same God.”
It is more likely, Dave, that you’ve been taught by the world to hate hate hate racism in all its forms with no allowance for the fact that racial differences are real. Even if racial differences were not real, it’s no sin to prefer the company of people who are most similar to us.
Relax. Be more tolerant. It’s okay to be a genetically superior person. Don’t be smug about it but don’t be ashamed, either. Just be grateful for God’s gifts to you and make use of your natural talents as best you can. Not only is this why God gave you those talents in the first place, it’ll save you a lot of mental gymnastics, like trying to ignore God’s continued, overt favoritism for Jews or wondering about the disparities in the Parables of the Talents and of the Workers.
And if, in the process, a person realize he is a much inferior person to those around him, he shouldn’t be upset by it. God will not hold it against him. He should use what he has and be grateful for the supports from his betters. This is part of why God made women so inferior to men, so women can appreciate us and we can be their heroes. In better times, anyway.
Dave was, from first to last, a dishonest conniving troll. Go back to the outer darkness from whence you came. We will pray for your soul.
Wao. Just wao. I hope you do realize that the expression “outer darkness” refers to eternal damnation (Matthew 25:30; Matthew 22:13). Honestly, I am speechless. Do you really wish that upon a fellow Christian brother? Really?
@Dave
In Matthew 25:30, (the parable of the talents) you got it wrong. Completely wrong. ALL were “servants of the master.” ALL were given gifts by the master. When the master returned (like a thief in the night) one of the SERVANTS was found to have been guilty of not using the talent he had been given.
ALL were Christians (servants of the master). There are two uses in the NT of the term “outer darkness” but they have completely different meanings. This parable followed the parable of the 10 virgins who were invited to the wedding feast. Most Christians think the 10 virgins represent the church and believe they are the bride of Christ. This is wrong. They all had oil in their lamps (Holy Spirit) and all their lamps were burning and producing light. However, the wise virgins had an extra filling of oil (c.f. Ephesians 5:18) It begs the question that if Christians receive the Holy Spirit when they’re saved, why are Christians commanded to be “filled with the Holy Spirit.”
The five wise virgins had “purchased” their extra filling of the Holy Spirit while the foolish had not. Now, notice the critical point: the foolish virgins had the time to be filled with the Holy Spirit (now equal to the wise virgins) but were not allowed into the wedding feast. The five wise virgins were allowed entrance to the joy of their master, just like the two faithful servants in the parable of the talents. Note that ALL were servants of the master, but all did not receive the same reward.
In this case, the term “outer darkness” doesn’t mean what you think it means. Picture a large, lit pavilion for a wedding feast. Inside it’s brightly lit so the wedding party can see and be served. Nearby is the inner darkness where one can see from the light of the pavilion. This space might be occupied by lesser persons who did not make the “A-list” to be included with the master. Beyond that is the outer darkness. Those assigned to the outer darkness cannot enter, partake of the food, drink and companionship, but they can see into the pavilion knowing they are denied access. The wise virgins did all they could when they could and were obedient. The foolish virgins and the “wicked” slave did not. Christ is just and He honors His faithful and true servants. Study the epistles of Christ and you will see that warning over and over again (c.f. Revelation 1-3)
I don’t have time to go into the “I don’t know you” statement, but there are two words in Greek that are translated as “to know.” One is objective, the other is subjective. Guess which one Jesus used in the parable of the 10 virgins?
There are two uses in the NT of the term “outer darkness” but they have completely different meanings.
That should have been “There are two phrases used in the NT that are both translated as “outer darkness” but they have completely different meanings.”
Sorry bout that…
@Dave
In Matthew 25:30, (the parable of the talents) you got it wrong. Completely wrong. ALL were “servants of the master.” ALL were given gifts by the master. When the master returned (like a thief in the night) one of the SERVANTS was found to have been guilty of not using the talent he had been given.
Apparently, you are trying to suggest that Christians, servants of the Master, could not ever lose their salvation, and be eternally lost? If this is your point, then you got it wrong. Christians do get lost–eternally. Apostle Paul made it clear that it is possible to fall back from following the Lord, and end up being lost:
Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul. (Hebrews 10:38, 39).
Jesus warned His disciples to make every effort to escape being lost:
Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” He said to them, strive to enter in at the narrow gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.Luke 13:23, 24
Apostle Peter said falling away was possible:
Therefore, brothers and sisters, use more effort to make God’s calling and choosing of you secure. If you keep doing this, you will never fall away.
2 Peter 1:10
And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
1 Peter 4:18
As per the passage you referred to, it might be better that you read it a bit further, and you will discover that the said servant was described by his Master as being “wicked and slothful” (v. 26), and “unprofitable” (v. 30). God does not reward such people with eternal bliss.
The expression, “weeping and gnashing of teeth” appeared six times in the NT. (Matthew 13:42; Luke 13:28; Matthew 8:12; Matthew 24:51; Matthew 25:30; Matthew 22:13). In at least four of those places, it clearly referred to eternal damnation. Three times the expression was used together with “outer darkness”. Uniformly, those thrown into outer darkness were the “worthless slaves”, “unprofitable servants”, “the hypocrites”, etc. and their experiences were similar:
1. They were separated from their Master without any hope of subsequent fellowship
2. They were appointed a place among the lowest elements in society
3. They experienced significant pain and anguish, causing them to weep and to gnash their teeth.
I don’t know what you were driving at, but it is uncharitable to wish any of these on a fellow believer in Jesus.
And, no, I was not wrong, unless you can offer a convincing explanation using the Scriptures, to show that anyone cast into “outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth”, subsequently had fellowship with God and enjoyed His presence. And, yes, these passages referred to eternal damnation. All six of them. What else would they refer to?
Picture a large, lit pavilion for a wedding feast. Inside it’s brightly lit so the wedding party can see and be served. Nearby is the inner darkness where one can see from the light of the pavilion. This space might be occupied by lesser persons who did not make the “A-list” to be included with the master. Beyond that is the outer darkness. Those assigned to the outer darkness cannot enter, partake of the food, drink and companionship, but they can see into the pavilion knowing they are denied access.
So, you’re saying these guests were weeping and gnashing their teeth from the comfort of the outer pavilion, eh? I hope you’re not making stuff up here? Where did it say that the virgins were cast into outer darkness, or that they gnashed their teeth in agony? If the oil represented the Holy Spirit, how come the virgins went “away” from the groom to go “buy” it? And where in scripture was it ever said that you must be full of the Holy Spirit before you can be saved?
Fact is, the parable of the virgins was one thing. The parable of the servants was quite another, though both were told to illustrate the Kingdom. Each parable was complete in itself, and you cannot take a portion of one to add to the other.
One of the servants was unfaithful. His Master thought he was actually wicked, for not only losing the opportunity to increase the wealth of his master, but for being a bad example to others, and a stumbling block to them.
Christ warned His disciples to be always ready (Luke 12:40; 21:36). The foolish virgins ignored this warning, to their eternal regret.
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