Magnus asks
I wonder what Dr. Hegstrom and the Davissons would say to a genuinely abused man: A man who has been denied sex for years, has been emotionally manipulated and threatened with divorce and financial ruin, and has had his children taken away to be raised by the mother and a replacement father on the other side of the country. Would they care? Would they have even an ounce of sympathy? Are are they so blinded with ideology that they are incapable of empathy and reason?
No need to wonder. They would say that since women are “responders”, everything she did was ultimately his fault and proof that he wasn’t following the instructions God wrote for him. If he weren’t doing something terribly wrong, she would not have done those things. He needs to admit his abuse and beg for her forgiveness. They would at the same time counsel her to forgive him when he repents.
I know this from Joel and Kathy’s book The Man of Her Dreams The Woman of His! See page 31 where Joel explains what Dr. Hegstrom taught him about women’s misbehavior when Joel attended Life Way International. This moment was Joel’s epiphany (all emphasis in quotes below is from the original):
A few more hours into the training, I repeated the question in another manner. “Can’t the woman be the problem? The man is not always the problem in marriage.” Of course I gestured toward my problem wife! This continued into the second day until Dr. Hegstrom finally had enough. He told me point blank that I was the problem in my marriage. He told me that Kathy was desperate to have a great marriage relationship for that is how God made her.
He continued saying that my issues had caused the problems in our marriage and that if I would get healed and change that I would have a most incredible wife. He emphatically stated that she might have some very minor issues that needed to be addressed but that she will deal with those on her own after I have dealt with mine.
Paul told me that God made Kathy a responder and that her problems were a reflection of her responding to my treatment of her. He said that when I grow up and lay my life down for my wife as Christ did for the church that I would be amazed at how wonderful a wife I have.
This was the beginning. A seed was planted…
This is very similar to the theology FotF and Dr. Clarke teach, where the wife is made by God to know what should be going on in the marriage and the husband needs only to put her in charge. In fact, Joel and Kathy spell this out more directly in their book. On page 36 in a frame box it says:
Men, here it is. Your wife wants a fabulous relationship with you. God made her that way.
On the same page Joel explains that this is the meaning of Genesis 3:16:
Your wife wants a fabulous and happy relationship with you. God made her that way. In Genesis God spoke to your wife concerning this desire that she would have for you.
Your desire shall be for your husband.
–Genesis 3:16She wants you baby, she wants you! However, what God created your wife to desire is a deep, meaningful, bonded, successful relationship with you.
On page 86 they explain in another framed box that the wife’s feelings are a marriage manual from God:
God has equipped every woman with a marriage manual in her heart, designed to instruct her husband in how to meet her unique needs.
On page 90 they explain that God has written His instructions for men in their wive’s hearts, and that only by doing what their wife feels is right can they know God’s will not just for the marriage, but God’s plan for the man himself:
It is very simple. When your wife’s marriage manual points out that you have violated her in some way, your job is to hear her heart and accept what it is that your personal marriage manual is saying to you. Your wife may not have a clue as to how to handle the household checkbook. She may not have a clue as how to run a lawnmower. What she does have is that unique marriage manual in her heart for your marriage which is given to her from God. The way that a man becomes the man that God has called him to be is to become the husband his wife needs him to be. The only way to become the husband our wife needs us to be is to read our personal marriage manual. How do read that marriage manual? We listen to her heart.
The logic is as plain as it is absurd: If you wish to serve God, submit to your wife’s emotions in all things.
I realize that this stuff is so flat out ridiculous that some will suspect I’m making this up. I urge you to check the book out for yourself using Google Books or the Amazon “look inside” feature to see that this is accurate (barring possible typographical errors). Keep in mind that Joel and Kathy are writing about what they learned in Life Way International from Dr. Hegstrom, and that FotF urges your pastor to send men accused of abuse to this same place to learn Life Way International’s theology of marriage.
Prior to researching for this series of posts I thought that Joel and Kathy were on the fringe, expressing a theology outside the modern Christian mainstream. In researching these posts I’ve been surprised to learn that they are:
- Even more absurd in their theology than I had previously understood. They take wife worship to a whole new level, far worse than I had ever seen before.
- Teaching a theology that is well within the modern Christian mainstream. This isn’t as far as I can tell taught as overtly as Joel and Kathy do (yet). However it is taught in a less obvious form on venues like the FotF radio program, as well in full strength behind closed doors at “marriage counseling” sessions endorsed by mainstream Christian organizations.
If anything bad happens in the marriage, it is 109% his fault, if anything good happens it is 100% to her credit. Tyranny.
“Desire” in Genesis 3:16 is the same word next used in Genesis 4:7 to describe how “sin would desire to drive Cain to jealous murder.” It is amazing to me that someone would derive the position that “desire” is necessarily pure (“she desires you!” As if that is a good thing–it is part of the curse!). A basic and egregious exegetical fail.
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“Your wife wants a fabulous relationship with you. God made her that way.”
Made that way, sure. Then this little thing happened to fakk that up. The Fall.
You know, when Rollo says that the FI has replaced the Holy Spirit in Churchianity, he ain’t just whistling Dixie.
To borrow some from St. Thomas Aquinas, these heretics have taken the law in the fomes of sin and have made it out to be the natural law. But only for women.
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@donalgraeme
Either that or they just discovered a replacement for the Bible. Who needs a dead book, when they have the Living Word of their wife’s heart, a manual written by God expressly for each man?
If you ever wondered why there are many religions that focus on goddess worship. Now you know.
You know this is right on. This is actual tyranny. This makes the wife the final authority.
Problem is that she is clueless about what is really causing her unhappiness. She despises you for your betaness but tells you that you need to be more beta to fix things. Then the more supplicating you become the more she despises you. The cycle continues unto absurdity and you end up in divorce.
Right now this is the story of my life.
they come so close to saying husbands should lead the marriage with the assertion that girls are “responders” but thanks to some mental gymnastics, husbands have to “listen to her heart” (take orders) in order to act. depressing.
I wonder how long before Joel and Kathy get a divorce.
And how long before Joel realizes Kathy is probably cheating on him.
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The logic is as plain as it is absurd: If you wish to serve God, submit to your wife’s emotions in all things.
I think of all the men are constantly told to be “wild at heart.” It seems to me that modern man’s heart is to follow modern woman’s heart. Just like Romeo’s heart followed Juliet’s heart. And we know how that turned out.
Since they have far more experience understanding the rules, living in the institution and seeing the problems inherent in the process, clearly the inmates should be in charge of the asylum
“Your wife wants a fabulous relationship with you. God made her that way.”
And by you, he doesn’t mean you as you are, just your wife’s idea of you and how she could picture you to be.
I have yet to see analysis of the point where the fully supplicated man comes up against the woman’s hypergamy. It confuses me that in fact I have seen couples where the man seems to follow the J and K path with vigor and the woman seems utterly smitten with him, over long priods of time.
I cannot reconcile this with the manosphere fundamental that a woman will bore with a supplicating male and jettison him or cheat to get her alpha sex. I have no opinion about this. I see truth (meaning real life examples, not meaning truth as a value judgement) on both extremes and neither extreme being a fringe number.
Its above my pay grade to peel this onion.
I used to believe what Hegstrom teaches–that, if there’s a problem in my marriage, it’s always my fault. I’ve come to realize that Mrs. Gamer has a serious cray-cray problem.
What she does have is that unique marriage manual in her heart for your marriage which is given to her from God.
Follow the FOTF hamster …
Any appeal to the scriptures that conflicts with a woman’s inner-manual is obviously twisting the scriptures for power and control, even if the meaning of the scripture seems clear. She has the true manual in her heart, a secret gnostic revelation from God, which makes her like a prophet only better because she is a woman. To doubt her possession of secret knowledge or to infer that she is not living in accordance with her inner manual is simply emotional abuse and patriarchal power tripping. Clearly men are disobeying God when they resist obeying her as she reveals what God has placed in her heart.
This line of reasoning makes an assault on the truth of scripture for the primacy of the woman. The man-shaming white knights have supplanted the scriptures with female emotional desire. Christ has been made into an imaginary creation of female desire. He is their perfect boyfriend who always makes them feel loved and never gets angry. When some of these idolaters actually study the word they find out Christ is not what they wanted and end up leaving the pretense of Christianity and accusing God of being the abuser. I wrote about an example here http://son-of-rechab.com/?p=37
Interesting, must be some serious cardio-terabytes involves as some women end up with a veritable library of congress (hmmm, there is a nice entendre buried in there….congress indeed) having multiple men’s manuals written there.
So a woman remarries, does the manual for the ex go to the cloud for some other woman to download when she marries the ex husband?
Makes my mind ache pondering all that.
Time to order more ammo and deuce gear. ha ha ha MGTOW there is a valid reason for it.
The appeal is all too tempting, frail and weak women, bad bad men, protecting the weak beeing a christian’s duty. What would they say to the men/husbands of Mary Magdalene, bathseba, or like .. you know … eve !
“Your wife wants a fabulous relationship with you. God made her that way.”
My wife wanted a fabulous relationship with the rich man she met at the gym. Who made her that way?
Oh that’s right — me. By being beta, or not listening to her heart, or not loving her as Christ loves the church, or not being a sadistic billionare….pick one I guess…
With this kind of “no fault” (for women) theology coupled with no fault divorce law, no marriage is ever settled or safe for men or children.
The destruction of this sacrament is almost total except for “extremist” Christian communities. Unless a man belongs to such a community, how could you ever with a good conscience counsel him to marry?
Whoa. I was just about to start coming out of my MGTOW phase. I still have a hard time believing Focus on the Family has endorsed the Duluth Model.
Let’s try the new Apostles Creed:
I believe…in Goddess Vagina almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, and in my Holy Spouse, my wife, who was…conceived in light, suffered under the patriarchy, was married, subjugated, and submitted. She rose above this problem one day after discovering Hegrstrom and now sits at the head of the table above her husband and even God Almighty from whence she will now judge both the Alphas and the Betas. I believe in the Holy Hamster, the communion of the herd, the destruction of white male privilege, and the Feminine Imperative everlasting……
Dalrock, this doctrine is obvious, blatant, in-your-face heresy. He is instructing women to rebel, to disobey their husbands, and tear away headship at the point of a gun. This is breathtaking! Further, this methodology will not work and will have the exact opposite effect. No woman can be attracted to a man who follows the Holy Hamster’s ever fluctuating feelings. The emotionally variable Hamster WANTS a steady rock and he steals that from women along with stealing all the power from men.
Finally, I think these “therapists” and “marriage counseling types” KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE DOING. THEY KNOW THIS METHODOLOGY WILL NOT WORK AND WILL MAKE THINGS WORSE- AND THEY DON’T CARE. There are MEN to crush. That appears to be the goal- to remedy past injustice don’t you know.
@ Empath
This is simple once you understand the dynamics of attractive versus unattractive. All of this is due to a woman’s perception of her man (attractive or unattractive):
1. If he’s attractive (or shall we say “alpha”) then he may be “emotionally unavailable” in which case they are going for counseling. When an alpha gets more “emotionally available” with his woman she becomes happier with him.
An emotionally unavailable attractive man would be said to be employing “dread game” so to speak. This dread in the woman is the root cause of her unhappiness, which means when the dread is eliminating she is smitten with him IF he is already attractive.
2. If he’s unattractive (or shall we say “beta”) then he may be not showing enough leadership and backbone in which case they are going for counseling. Doubling down on being more “emotionally available” and “supplicating” in this state will repulse her even more eventually leading to decreased unhappiness and divorce.
An unattractive man is straight forwardly unattractive due to myriads of potential factors (not showing leadership, not showing backbone, may have let himself go, supplicates to her feelings, etc.). Becoming more emotionally available and supplicating is doubling down on the root cause of her unhappiness which simply means she will become more unhappy and push for divorce or cheat.
Obviously, there are some men like #1 who are manly men and get stuff done at expense of time with their wives, but from what I’ve seen most that go for counseling are #2.
@Hawk:
You don’t, unless he’s done serious work on himself (firstly), and then in finding a wife.
I don’t remember which commenter brought it up many years ago, but it took the Catholic Church a long time to clean up the nunneries after they went full pagan in the post-WW2 era. We’re talking naked dances, may poles and the entire lot. This stuff isn’t new. In fact, it’s about the second oldest form of “religion” recorded in text.
There’s a reason the Lord calls Himself “Our Father”. It’s not for some cosmic gender-relations reasons. Goddess worship (I almost typed “whore-ship”, heh) always leads to the same place: whores, infanticide and depravity of all kinds. And you can see why with all of the “teachers” that Dalrock is discussing. Once you worship Women, you worship instability unleashed. We serve a God of Justice & Order. There are rules and goddess worship is always about the rules being whatever whim is felt.
Terrible way to run a business. Soul-ending way to run a life. Soul-cursing way to teach others. This is exactly what the “anti-christs” that the Apostle John talks about. They are many & legion. Be wary, good friends. We live in evil times.
@DS:
The #1’s existing is the reason they can get positive referrals. The #2’s have left the church or are ignored.
There’s also the issue that a good number of Women have little problem staying married for craven reasons. Especially once the sex is eliminated (with extreme prejudice), quite a number are content to live with a pleasant roommate. (I’ve talked with a woman before that was a “beard” for a gay man. They seemed to have a very pleasant relationship and it “worked” for both of their desires. Doesn’t mean it was a marriage though.)
The Catholic Church practically worships the virgin Mary.
Here’s another smoking gun:
http://shouldistayorshouldigo.net
&
http://shouldistayorshouldigo.net/chapter1.pdf
Anyone familiar with that one?
That book “Man of Her Dreams” is worth a skim just to see the world these people live in. They renewed their vows during a crusade of Charles and Frances Hunter, and on stage were
Rodney and Adonica Howard-Browne
Norvel Hayes
Marilyn and Wallace Hickey
Nick Pappas
Joan Hunter
Most of these names I’ve never heard, but a quick search shows them all to be in charismatic “deliverance” type ministries. Norvel Hayes Ministries is the umbrella for a New Life Bible Church, describing itself as “the ministerial hub of Norvel Hayes Ministries…currently directed by [Norvel’s daughter] Senior Pastor Zona Hayes-Morrow. As an institution, New Life Bible Church is a non-denominational Christian community with a strong emphasis on salvation, faith, love, deliverance, and the active demonstration of the Holy Spirit.”
Pictures of Rodney and Adonica Howard-Browne show them receiving their doctorates from a presumably related New Life University, an inbred theology school in Tampa (inbred meaning that all faculty and staff have degrees from the same). Rodney Howard-Browne is one ugly dude, too.
The name Sid Roth is not mentioned, but he is a Jewish mystic associated with a lot of these and who pushes or used to push them on a far-out radio program called Messianic Vision.
Joel Describes his adultery as a character flaw and the result of demonic deception, “some master scheme of the enemy to destroy our marriage….” Kathy tells of receiving dreams, visions, and “words”.
In the passage Dalrock quotes on p.31, Joel tells how “a number of times Kathy grew so frustrated that she would call Paul Hegstrom’s office in Colorado to receive counsel from him. In one of those conversations Paul told Kathy that she should start setting money aside in order to fund a temporary separation.”
Later, “Paul Hegstrom and a lady pastor that Kathy would confide in both told her that the time would have been shortened had she separated from me.”
“Listen to your wife, men! God gave her to you to help you grow up and become the man that He has called you to become!”
Wow. Don’t. Just don’t. I mean, I can’t even!
Thankfully, Google books cut me off after that.
Its as if Adam fell, and yet Eve remained sinless…but both were expelled from the Garden. Interesting exegesis.
@Empath
I suspect the wife remains smitten because she and her husband want to keep their very public and very lucrative ministry.
@ Dalrock, I had this very conversation with my wife last night. That “men are initiators and women are responders” and heard again the nonsense that “Jesus pursues us”. I’m actually forming the thoughts for a post on the subject.
I explained to her the power that pursuing gives to the pursued. How forcing the husband into this motivated buyer mode put the trump cards into the wife’s hands. She suggested that Jesus pursues us continually (parroting the Evangelical Feminist talking point).
I pointed out to her that when Jesus called the disciples He “initiated” and then they “responded” for following Him the rest of their lives. The ones who didn’t respond didn’t qualify. When Peter betrayed Jesus, Jesus initiated restoration by REQUIRING Peter to requalify himself: “Do you love me?” x3. After Peter “responded” appropriately Jesus told Peter what He wanted Peter to do: “Feed my sheep”. Jesus doesn’t pursue us, He doesn’t court us and hang around like a neglected puppy dog.
I’m thinking of a title for the post: The Power of Being Pursued: A Heresy of Boyfriend Jesus. I’ve been thinking about a series of boyfriend Jesus heresies.
Understanding the male/female dynamic has laid this false teaching bare. It’s a power play and a subtle lie rooted deep in modern Christian teaching.
I wonder if anyone has pointed out to these clowns that Genesis 3:16 is a CURSE?
I suspect the wife remains smitten because she and her husband want to keep their very public and very lucrative ministry.
This, exactly. I’m betting that, behind closed doors, these two have a marriage that is very similar to that of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
A special place in hell awaits all of these people pushing this destructive heresy.
Very simple, refer to the secular version of the Feminine Imperative’s field manual and do exactly what it suggests in a Christianish context – redefine what “abuse” is by prioritizing feminine needs above masculine needs.
Men ‘need’ sex:
http://therationalmale.com/2013/06/26/you-need-sex/
As a matter of fact they need it to the exception of sustenance:
http://metro.co.uk/2015/10/15/mens-brains-are-hardwired-to-prefer-getting-laid-to-eating-5440854/
But since this is the male of the species’ ubiquitous thumbscrew the FI and its churchy conditioned adherents classify it as an optional reward for desired behavior. If they were to suggest starving a man until he complied that would be ‘abuse’, but since the popular belief is that sex is not an actual ‘need’ then it’s not abuse to deny him it.
Popular Christian “advice” for couples is less about scripture and more about behaviorism and operant conditioning of men.
Have we not been here before? Satan told Eve that if she would just do as he said she would become like God, knowing good and evil. Adam foolishly followed to please his wife and they both got turfed out Eden. – Sounds like Satan is alive and well, talking to wives, telling them to listen to them and the wives would know everything. Foolish men following such a line of trash will get them expelled also.
switfoxmark2 @ 9:21 am:
“I wonder how long before Joel and Kathy get a divorce.”
If the Clintons are any indication, not soon enough for Joel to escape a mortal hell.
…
PokeSalad @ 10:43 am:
“Its as if Adam fell, and yet Eve remained sinless…but both were expelled from the Garden. Interesting exegesis.”
I’ve seen Churchians actually teach this. Eve was only deceived, you see. Adam was given the command and he disobeyed so everything sinful is the man’s fault. If a woman does wrong it’s only because a man allowed her to be deceived.
Romans 3:23, it ain’t.
Doesn’t Romans 3:23 say, “For all males have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”? Or something like that, I may have misquoted it slightly……..
“God made Kathy a responder and that her problems were a reflection of her responding to my treatment of her.”
“What she does have is that unique marriage manual in her heart for your marriage which is given to her from God.”
In other words:
According to FotF and the Davissons, women have no agency. Women have no responsibility to do or be anything. Women have no responsibility not to follow their emotions, and can in fact let their emotions take them wherever they will. Women have no responsibility to control their emotions. FotF and the Davissons believe women are unable to use their brains and rational thought and analysis to reach conclusions and to determine and direct their own life course.
You know what such people are called?
CHILDREN.
We do not give drivers licenses to children. We don’t let them make contracts, work jobs, or control their own financial affairs. They aren’t allowed to vote or get married.
The reason for this is that they haven’t learned to control their emotions and they lack sufficient maturity to conduct themselves within society without the supervision and oversight of responsible adults.
FotF and these other ministries are unwittingly contributing to the infantilization of women.
Did it ever occur to these misguided and blind teachers that even when the woman was totally sinless and perfect, she chose contrary to what God wanted for her. Isn’t it even possible that, now that she is in a fallen state, beset by a million sinful tendencies, she could choose to be contrary to who God made her to be?
“Your desire shall be for your husband.”
The correct translation of that is ” Your desire shall be to control your husband.”
Of course Genesis 3:17 has to be erased WHOLE cloth if we are to follow the marriage manual that God placed in the heart of women (even Eve).
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of the wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Some “marriage manual”.
I wonder if anyone has pointed out to these clowns that Genesis 3:16 is a CURSE?
I doubt that they’d care, or even listen to the correction. Remember: Scripture is only of any value to these people as long it upholds the FI or other convenient tenets of modernism (or can at least be effectively distorted into doing so).
I would not be the least bit surprised if, within the next decade, we witness the publication of a heavily redacted version of the Bible that eliminates many, if not most or all of the Scripture that either challenges or is irrelevant to the modern worldview (or that cannot be easily twisted to endorse it). It will be a runaway best seller, outpacing sales and distribution of all other versions. There also won’t be much of an outcry over its appearance either, at least not for long or with any force. How many people today are sufficiently knowledgeable of the Bible to detect the corruption (and how hard and for how long have so-called “true believers” fought against attacks by the culture in the recent past)?
I think it is about time that true Christians began to write books based on biblical relationships. We cannot afford to continue to cede the public square to these wolves in sheep’s clothing
As I said here a few days ago Bob Wallace, feminism appears to be the very curse of God.
@ thedeti, I don’t think there is any “unwitting” about it. Satan is shredding the Church and he is paying good money to anyone who will carry his propaganda.
Of course God is allowing it. Makes me think that this may be the time of the separation of the wheat and tares.
According to FotF and the Davissons, women have no agency. Women have no responsibility to do or be anything. Women have no responsibility not to follow their emotions, and can in fact let their emotions take them wherever they will.
…..except when they want an advantage from society, keep the kids, join any male-oriented profession, “have it all,” abort a child, or, say, go to Ranger School. Then it’s yogogrrrrrrlllllllll all the way.
Like actual children, women work the system to their benefit. They take the benefits whilst evading the responsibilities to the maximum extent possible.
I explained to her the power that pursuing gives to the pursued. … The Power of Being Pursued: A Heresy of Boyfriend Jesus.
I think the lie is more subtle. Jesus does pursue us, think of CS Lewis’ comments re: Hound of Heaven pursuing him. But when you think of how He does it: tragedy, impeding success, emptiness, depression pain, suffering, etc.,* that’s not at all what women want! It most certainly would be described as abuse by the Duluth Model.
So yeah, the Christ is a model for husbands…be careful with that.
*Think of all those biographies of well known Christians…or the thousands of episodes of ‘Unshackled’.
@HayeksGhost
I’m not aware of them formally endorsing it. Instead, they tell readers to make sure their marriage therapist is trained in “abuse, power and control”.
This screams Duluth Model, without them actually using the term, and every therapist would know what they are asking for. They also advise pastors to refer men to Hegstrom’s Life Way International for counseling. As I’ve pointed out, Life Way has a Power and Control wheel on their website, which is a modified version of the Duluth Power and Control wheel.
I don’t know if Kathy Davisson is cheating on Joel, but she displays little attraction or respect for him.
Here’s a video interview with the Davissons. Note Joel’s “hover hand” behind Kathy. He never moves it; as if he’s “mate guarding”. Looks forced and unnatural. Note also that Kathy seems at best indifferent to Joel’s hand behind her. She doesn’t look comfortable with it; and doesn’t naturally move close to him. There’s at least 4 or 5 inches between them.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=joel+kathy+davisson&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=6FCBC8548096CEBC50346FCBC8548096CEBC5034
@deti:
Most children over age 6 are more responsible than the theology of these people, vis a vis Women.
@Rollo:
Never forget the confluence of the “Rockstar sings pathetically sappy love song” and female vanity. A Man that gets up in front of others (and berates other Men) is still going to induce a certain amount of tingles. And the wife is going to get a lot of praise for being the wife of a Man that does that stuff. A little tingles + vanity + craven self-interest will keep the wives of most of the Men that do this inline. At least until the money stops flowing.
FotF and these other ministries are unwittingly contributing to the infantilization of women.
Y’know, I’m not entirely sure about the “unwittingly” part. As others have said on previous related threads, these heretical monsters know exactly what they are doing, which tells me that they have established a clear reason for why they are doing it. They know damned well that it’s heretical and unscriptural, so I doubt they’re doing it simply to give women power; that’s simply a tool, a means to an end (they know as well as we do that women cannot exercise power and that the inevitable result of any attempts to do so is chaos and destruction in all forms). There is a very, dark agenda hidden in all of this, one that matches up perfectly with the temporal reigning elites’ plans for the family.
Tl;dr version: beware of demons in angels’ clothing (by the taste of their bitter, poisonous herbs ye shall know them).
DrTorch, yes Jesus definitely does the male part by approaching us. Seeking us and saving us.
Then He warns us that if we would be His disciples to take up our crosses and follow Him. Take His yoke. Eat His flesh and drink His blood (have Him live in our place) which sent thousands of followers away because it was a “hard saying”. If we don’t follow him we aren’t going to make it.
Here’s another video. Note Joel’s unnatural arm position wrapped (not draped) around Kathy’s shoulder. Note her leaning away from him at the beginning of the video and his leaning into her.
Forced, contrived, unnatural.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=joel+kathy+davisson+video&qpvt=joel+kathy+davisson+video&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=C81AC2096EE91C909BCFC81AC2096EE91C909BCF
Joel needs to lose about 50 pounds and get a hair cut.
More “hover hand” from Joel, hand behind Kathy’s back. Kathy looks comfortable leaning toward Joel only when separated from him by the arm on her chair AND the arm on his chair.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=joel+kathy+davisson+video&qpvt=joel+kathy+davisson+video&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=B2C1480E495DC3848384B2C1480E495DC3848384
RE: videos
Yeesh. How unnatural can two people be? His hand crooked up behind her back….they act like total strangers on the same seat of a city bus.
So much off-kilter body language there……like a slow-motion train wreck.
A psych (Scott?) could make a nice doctoral thesis out of those two. 😀
@deti:
On the 2nd video, the picture of Joel & Kathy is kind of hilarious. She has the “I’d rather not be here” face going full bore. It’s truly sad anyone listens to them.
And just think you too can have an “OUTRAGEOUSLY HAPPY MARRIAGE” just like Joel and Kathy!!!!!
In that second video, Kathy is leaning away from Joel and doesn’t move toward him until he pulls her in and starts speaking.
I didn’t notice that until the second look I just gave it.
Just a point, I’d have a really hard time buying a refrigerator from Joel. He doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing.
This is all inevitable given the increasingly decadent rationales for how Christians claim to know the will of God.
At first, the Church was guided by “Apostolic Tradition” and “Scripture”. (And until the Apostles were old men, Scripture consisted of only the Old Testament.) It was not even a separate religion yet; not until after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70 did the Talmudic tradition of Judaism definitively repudiate Jesus as the promised Messiah. As the original Apostles were themselves martyred (save one), the teachings and practices that were handed down from the Apostles became the standard to be preserved through the Church by the hand-picked successors of the apostles.
Aside: this is the main reason Catholicism and Orthodoxy will not stop venerating (mind you, not worshipping) the Virgin Mary. They cannot unless they also are willing to repudiate some liturgies, prayers, and practices that are older than the New Testament. A Church that can’t trust the second generation of Christians certainly can’t trust anything that came after.
As Christianity comprehended the implications of a perfectly-rational Logos whose creation is also therefore rational, “Reason” was added as a gap-filler to supplement Scripture and Tradition in those areas where both were silent. This was the great achievement of the Middle Ages, integrating the logic of the Greeks with the faith of Christendom. Then the so-called Enlightenment came along, setting Reason at the head and calling it a correction to alleged errors, first of Tradition and eventually of Scripture.
Finally “Experience” was added sometime in the late 1800s as a fourth source of spiritual knowledge, conveniently subject to none of the previous constraints of authority, continuity, or logic. And it proved extraordinarily capable of supplanting Reason, Tradition, and Scripture equally effectively as needed in any particular situation. It is not a coincidence that the first protozoan examples of feminism emerged at the same point in history and in the same Christian bodies that adopted Experience as a spiritual teacher.
How desperately broken would a marriage have to be to accept advice from a couple whose own marriage appears to be a desert, judging from the subtle behaviors exhibited in their videos?
@craig, God is not a historical figure (IMO).
Of course Joel only lifts the part of Genesis 3:16 that he finds useful as is the practice of the Churchians. Here now is the entire verse:
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
That last sentence sure would have been a nuisance if had been included it wouldn’t it? Pesky booger it is.
While the meaning of the whole verse is plain to all who have ears, lets hear the less enlightened exegesis of poor old backward Matthew Henry:
“And he shall rule over thee. Not merely a prophecy of woman’s subjection, but an investiture of man with supremacy over the woman; or rather a confirmation and perpetuation of that authority which had been assigned to the man at the creation. Woman had been given him as an helpmeet (Genesis 2:18), and her relation to the man from the first was constituted one of dependence. It was the reversal of this Divinely-established order that had led to the fall (Genesis 3:17). Henceforth, therefore, woman was to be relegated to, and fixed in, her proper sphere of subordination. On account of her subjection to man’s authority a wife is described as the possessed or subjected one of a lord (Genesis 20:3; Deuteronomy 20:22), and a husband as the lord of a woman (Exodus 21:3).”
Wife as a subjected one of a Lord.. Ouch. Reversal of the divinely inspired order led to the Fall? Male domination not as part of the curse but the plan all along? Whew doggies. Bet they’d run Pastor Henry out of Colorado Springs on a rail today.
Yet the truth is hiding from the Churchians in plain sight. Almost as if by design, or by a Designer. Or a Deceiver.
@ Craig
They cannot unless they also are willing to repudiate some liturgies, prayers, and practices that are older than the New Testament.
Can you refer me to a source. I have taught early church history from translations of original sources and I do not know what you are referencing. Thanks!
GiL, I don’t think I claimed He was. Although it must be said that Jesus, Second Person of the Trinity, was incarnated at a particular place and time in history. He is not an archetype invented by man.
Unlike the saints that are with Him, Jesus, the Father and The Holy Spirit all operate in relationship with the Body of Christ. Jesus died in order to send us “the Comforter”, that is, the Holy Spirit. I don’t know how much comfort you attain from a text or a tradition or reason. Myself? I don’t find much.
“Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not the letter, but the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” 2 Cor 3:6
Insisting that the “new testament” is merely letter is a refutation of what Jesus Himself called it, “His blood”.
I know that the official doctrine of the Roman Catholics is that the venerate Mary but do not worship her. But when I was growing up in France, it seemed that that official doctrine wasn’t making its way down to the average Catholic in the pews very well. What I saw many Catholics doing was flat-out worship: the line between veneration and worship had been left far in the back. The Catholic church could stand to make its official doctrine a bit better known to its parishioners, at least in France.
Is it different in America? Does the average Catholic in the pews in the US have a decent grasp of Catholic doctrine? (I’m asking because, not being Catholic myself, I don’t have a very good way of knowing.)
@ Dash Riprock
As a former pastor in Colorado Springs myself, I cannot say what they might do to Mathew Henry. But I was deposed in large part because I had the temerity to agree with Mathew Henry’s understanding of Gen 3:16 and the audacity to preach 1 Peter 3 in the grammatical-historical context it was written. I was accused of having ” A low view of women” and a “Dismal doctrine of marriage”. Mathew Henry might have survived better than I did, because he by all accounts ruled his household better I do mine, but then the church wasn’t instructing his wife to defraud him, threaten to hit him over the head with a shovel and rebel against his household rule like they do today.
Dalrock,
I can’t believe you give joel and kathy any credit. I know you are warning off people, but it would be like others warning off Joel Olsteen. I think most of it is without saying…. I agree with you totally.
I would really ask you to look into the “true” teachers of the word and decipher the subtle wording they use. Example: John Macarthur. Many of his sermons are in writing on the same page. Millions of people watch him and listen to him. He is on cable and satellite TV, has written numerous books. He has one on submission and it is SO subtle that I had trouble putting my finger on it because it sounded so good. I read it 3 times before I caught it. There are many others and you have helped me tremendously a long with CC and DS. FoTF and FL etc are right there with John Macarthur.
There is also the Biblical Counseling Coalition. There is so much crap on there I can’t read it anymore.
Lou Priolo is very respected and trained under Jay Adams teachings on counseling.
I beg you to read/listen to John Macarthur’s sermons on marriage and roles.
May God continue to bless you with discernment.
Ah, Genesis 3:16… funny how they will ignore or repudiate the rule of wives by husbands, but will never, EVER do the same for the lifelong backbreaking work assigned to the men. I find that embracing the curses upon the fall of man ends up with us being happier -we are following the prescription that God gave to us, and thus He blesses us. To refuse or fight against the curse is to rebel against His order, and thus invite all manner of catastrophe. My wife is fully submissive and went through a great deal of pain in childbirth; she is the happiest woman I have ever met. I work my hands to the bone to provide for my family in addition to full time college, and I have never been more satisfied in my life. And death? With Christ as my Lord and Savior I have nothing to fear, so I shall prepare for my eventual death by leaving an inheritance for my children – yet more work, yet more joy.
I think I get it: every wife comes equipped with Ikea-style instructions. All you as a man has to do is put-it-together. If you screw-up the fault is yours and not the fault of Ikea and its incoherent drawings.
Ugggh.
craig says:
October 28, 2015 at 12:04 pm
Love that explanation. Are you Roman Catholic or Orthodox by chance?
I think I get it: every wife comes equipped with Ikea-style instructions. All you as a man has to do is put-it-together. If you screw-up the fault is yours and not the fault of Ikea and its incoherent drawings.
Suddenly sex-bots don’t look as unappealing.
@DrTorch:
They actually sound better. They come preassembled!
@deep strength
Your response to my dilemma about supplication meeting hypergamy doesnt solve the riddle. You insert more qualifying character aspects by which your solution holds. I don’t observe the scatter that I have in any way limited to whether the man was attractive to his wife or not and in fact have seen women suddenly be more attracted to the husband after he became a supplicant.
I’m not weighting my anecdotes as if they are significant points of reference. They aren’t. I mention them only because they muddy the view at the edges of the spectrum
They come preassembled!
But can you get into the HOV lane by having one in the car
@ Jeff
Jay Adams is the father of nouthetic counseling which is much better than modern psych methods, but still has shortcomings. In his books he is still very affected by blue pill thinking. For instance he writes in several of his books that nowhere in scripture is a wife commanded to love her husband and he uses this “fact” to dismiss her unloving behavior and coldness toward her husband. But the Bible does command older women to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and commands all Christians to love the brethren, love their neighbors, love their enemies so it is inconceivable that wives are not required to love their husbands. Suppressing the truth in unrighteousness indeed!
And that idea is her own Personal Jesus, of course.
craig @ 12:04 pm:
“A Church that can’t trust the second generation of Christians certainly can’t trust anything that came after.”
Ironically, this is what happened. The Epistles’ main purpose was putting out fires. The first couple generations of Christians allowed women as teachers, refused to work, were at turns legalist and sensationalist, tolerated false teachers, took God for granted, practiced (literal) idolatry and sorcery and indulged sexual perversions. The Corinthian church had to be ordered to kick Oedipus out and later ordered to accept his repentance. Paul constantly played whack-a-mole on false teachers, troublemakers, Judaizers and one time even Peter.
I don’t get people who think the first couple centuries were Christianity’s golden years.
And funny thing, that’s the trend straight through the Bible. One would think that if the Bible was the product of human effort, it would say nicer things about its special snowflakes.
@Deti (11:36 and 11:38): Those videos SCREAM dead bedrooms. Oh, My, God! Can you imagine the hoops that awful Beta must go through to get 3 minutes of Starfish submission?
Empath:
It is important to keep in mind (in my view) that manosphere concepts like hypergamy are stereotypes. That doesn’t mean they are not true or useful. Sure, some stereotypes lie and are mean spirited, but most stereotypes aren’t like that. Most of them are truth-bearers as long as you don’t treat them as categorical claims.
But they are stereotypes nonetheless, which is to say, not categorical.
The problem with the world view Dalrock is criticizing in the OP is that, even if some strange unnatural couple here and there “make it work” in some sense, they are still strange and unnatural; and it goes against nature and nature’s God to try to make the unnatural exception into the norm.
Must be one of those picture manuals, where there are six diagrams that miss about 60 % of the information needed to correctly install all parts…
oh, let me guess, no returns either!
It may help to just think about modernity as the normalization of the perverse in the pursuit of emancipated equality. Just because some people are ‘succeeding’ (at least for a time) in living perverse lives, that does not excuse attempting to make the perverse into the norm.
@bluepillprofessor “@Deti (11:36 and 11:38): Those videos SCREAM dead bedrooms. Oh, My, God! Can you imagine the hoops that awful Beta must go through to get 3 minutes of Starfish submission?”
When I was a teenager, I used to think that married people did not sell marriage very well. I knew some happily married couples and my parents have been married for over 30 years. But all the jokes about the “old ball and chain” and the women saying how they have to train their husbands just made marriage sound terrible. Not too long ago, a friend who had been married for over 30 years to her husband before he died responded to a news story that said Barack and Michelle really didn’t get along. She said, “Well of course they don’t. They’re married!” Ha ha. Nudge nudge. If being married was like pulling teeth every day, then why get married?
Maybe that’s what this Kathy woman and others like her think. “All I can hope for is to whip this lug head of a husband into shape.” Que rolling pin. Maybe that’s what they think marriage is and/or should be. Find a man to tolerate for a while.
Yet at the same time there are the outlandish expectations of marriage that include butterflies and unicorns and rainbows and magic touched on in previous threads.
Robin Munn October 28, 2015 at 12:29 pm
I’d say that there is at least 50% of those who are going to Church US Catholics (ie not the ones who say “yes I’m Catholic”, but don’t know what that means). Who are not into venerating or worshiping any of the saints. I’d bet there is another 25% who look at the saints with veneration and as examples of how to live our lives. And another 10% who are confusing the creature with the created. I know missing 15% that is because I think that ‘at least 50%’ is probably higher.
These are guesses mind you, based on observation. I’ve not seen studies.
Now as to the question of do the understand Catholic Doctrine. I won’t speak generally, but on this issue. And say, most do not, either not seeing why these people are considered Saints or the importance of them – this would be most of the Catholics in the US. Some are again confusing the creature for the Creator – and this would be a small minority and growing smaller each year as they die or are educated.
People (in general) are taught by a multitude of teachers, the first being their parents, then their schools, religious groups, service groups, social groups, etc. With the rejection of much of older Catholic teaching by the parents and just about all other sources decades ago in the US, there is very week knowledge being passed on to the Catholic of today about the details of his faith. Veneration of saints is something that comes from the parents more than from other sources.
The affect would be as if instead of an encyclopedia that was available in the past, only a thin book, barely more than a pamphlet is available today. It should be noted Catholic teachings are hardly the only thing affected this way. Our whole education establishment has similarly been gutted so that a Child of today will be lucky when he graduates High School to have the knowledge and skills his grandfather had by the 4th grade.
@Gunner Q:
A failure of many preachers is to read the Epistles and not realize they’re directed squarely at themselves. Most of Paul’s letters can be read as “God isn’t stupid, I put a lot of work into you, so STOP BEING FOOLISH!”. Romans is, obviously, a little different. It’s “I’m Paul, here’s who I am in Christ, and you all really need to cut the evil & stupid out of your life.”
One of my personal favorites is the Book of James. The book was not written to win friends. It’s a hard kick right in the Sin of the Jewish converts. But the wonderful thing about the texts is it never descends to stridency. It never falls into the trap that’s so very easy when you first start to understand the Truth. (That’s because the Lord is in control of his text.)
@Zippy & Empath:
Two things to add.
1) One of the classic issues with most people is that they’ll do something to “improve” whatever part of their lives 3-4 times. (Think of how many people you know that will try diets for a little while.) If the actual, major issue within the marriage was friction caused by fear from the Wife, then the process alone of “getting help” should de-escalate much of the tension. This should allow the more natural state to readdress itself.
2) Tying into the first point, the process of “facing up” to issues can have a lot of benefits for a relationship with much trouble. Obviously, the advice given by these people is evil, but very few are going to “follow the program” perfectly. The types of changes that they expect of a Man would take years to implement. So if a Man isn’t previously a wimp, it will take a long while to produce one. So that’s something very hard for someone else to notice. (And, by that point, they’re likely a statistic.)
Look at Joel here. As Casper found, up thread, he had an affair. At one time, he obviously didn’t come across as pathetic as he does now. The “process” takes time.
@Zippy
I consider them more generalizations than stereotypes and therefore a bit more grounded, but still not to be considered applicable at anecdotal levels. I get your point and agree. My point was not to see through stereotype colored glasses but rather more along the lines of what you concluded your response with. It is unnatural that certain pairs are a well completed set.
@empath:
I know of a couple. Guy is decent enough, but he really doesn’t want to think when he gets home from work. He’s married to a Woman that loves to be in control of her Husband when he’s around.
It sounds like it’s a horror story, but they seem to get along just great. Which goes to Zippy’s point.
Scott,
Can a man disrespect his wife then since I don’t believe the Scriptures have any command on that.
GiL,
I personally believe the man was more accountable as well, but you then have to take the follow-on principle: Men should be in doctrinal leadership roles, not women. I don’t see them acknowledging that as well. Lots of related implications as well.
FH, the diagrams are actually fairly accurate, but it is quite easy to miss details. That is based on my experience putting together a great many Ikea shelf units.
Craig,
Calling her the Virgin Marry, with caps, shows your error. She was only a virgin until Jesus was born. It is a root of a lot of female worship itself.
Empath:
Well, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call sports or oddballs ‘unnatural’ — Mother Nature is a bit of a mad scientist, in the words of the Prophet Cosmo Kramer — but they are by definition not the norm.
I’m reminded of a case some years ago where a pair of deaf lesbians were trying to deliberately breed a deaf child for themselves. It is one thing to accept ‘sports’ and handicaps produced accidentally by Mother Nature, and to be supportive of people as human beings in their unique situations with their unique deficits. Some folks just have to ‘settle in’ to their lot in life and deal with it, and there is dignity in doing so. But it is another thing entirely to excuse bad behavior, propagate falsehoods, attempt to turn objective deficits and handicaps into virtue, and deliberately breed and propagate disease.
I guess that is a roundabout way of saying that just because J&K’s relationship is retarded and they have (putatively) found a way to make that work for themselves, it doesn’t excuse attempting to make every relationship retarded or to make retarded relationships the norm.
@Looking Glass
Look at Joel here. As Casper found, up thread, he had an affair. At one time, he obviously didn’t come across as pathetic as he does now. The “process” takes time.
This is helpful because I would argue that maybe Joel was already that pathetic, he just wasn’t that supplicating, if I can de-link the two.
a pair of deaf lesbians
Kid or no kid they ended up with an 80’s band named after ’em…..that’s a better outcome
But can you get into the HOV lane by having one in the car
Yet another useful chore for a sexbot…..
@Empath
Do you mean they had sex frequently, or at least more frequently? That is the only evidence I would consider for proof of “more attractive” within a marriage. It’s hard to tell without the details. How many of those couples report more attraction from the wife because the husband has figured out how to tell when is a bad time to approach for sex, and then learned to limit himself to those episodes? Is such a supplicating husband saying “Now she never rejects me!” because he stopped asking except on every third full moon, and by that point she’s willing to be bedded by a goat?
However; most of the interactions women/wives have with men take place according to “Beta” behavior; even among those we call “Alpha”. Let’s use the 80/20 split of Beta/Alpha behavior just for simplicity: 80% of an Alpha’s communication and interaction with a woman is not Alpha; yet a woman will respond to it positively. Comfort does play a role in that it encourages a woman to drop her guard, and thus more receptive to a variety of activities; including sex.
People will want to explain away the obvious domination of Beta behavior by muddying the (already murky) waters of the Alpha/Beta dichotomy of attraction with the idea of Neutral interactions that are neither Alpha or Beta, but there are no Neutral actions. Whatever actions aren’t Alpha (which means attractive, or achievement) must be Beta (which means less than attractive, or not quite achievement).
So, yes, women can be lulled into comfort and then put to bed.
Yet another useful chore for a sexbot
Most will end up busted in the HOV lane anyway because they will have deployed the sex bot to lean down across the console.
My second paragraph (not counting my quotation of Empath) should begin:
“However; I agree with you. Most of the interactions…”
Empath,
I actually see it a lot more than what you are seeing. I also see men who have divorced their wives “without” excuse. They wouldn’t say why they were divorcing. Half of the time there is another woman (lack of sex), but in every case observing down the road you see hypergamy divorce or that the supplicating husband sort of lost it and divorced (IMO) due to the fact that he realized she made it so hard for him to live with himself and after the divorce he was a better man.
These women and some I came to know better show strong signs of sexual refusal and manipulation and control over the family in regards to child raising and decision making… Mommy knows best. Some of these women remain single and have a bitterness that my wife now stays away from them without any of my in put. The others have married down or are in the process of living/dating with lower status men. Only in 1 case did one marry “ok” in that he is a high earner and in a secular way a good citizen, but her previous was high earning ortho surgeon who she claims physical abuse, she is now a psychologist with a daughter claiming 2 date rapes and a son who had to be put in military HS because of his lack of self control. She is in total control over the family, and he is a supplicating husband. She was raised on a farm in the middle of no where so maybe she gives him sex and freedom.
Jonadab,
I know very well that Adams is sort of the father of nouthetic counseling. My wife and I went through it with a pastor. I believe it should work, but unfortunately it is up to the counselors interpretation of scripture, what is going on with each individual and the couple. Match this with the fact that most if not all counselors and pastors have been raised in a FI/feminist culture and you see where that goes. My pastor and I got into a very heated exchange and he was gracious enough to ask me what i wanted to cover with my unsubmissive disrespectful feminist wife. I told him headship…. he did not respond and never once brought it up. He did acknowledge her lack of submission and her disrespect. He also said 72 hours should be the max of time we should go without sex unless we are both in agreement for longer or neither is initiating.
The problem with that pastor was his own acknowledgement that when he counsels a couple he usually goes in with the thought that the wife is going to have righteous complaints and that the husband is usually to blame. It wasn’t in our case and he was more or less stumped in how to treat it. If you asked me it is because he is afraid to addressed headship for fear of losing his payment base within his church.
and by that point she’s willing to be bedded by a goat?
Replaced the soul patch with a goatee, This was the catalytic accelerator to the sexual frequency kerfuffle.
(AddFact: They were not farmers and shopped regularly at Partial Foods)
OK, getting serious now and committing to begin a re energized effort to close my HTML tags.
@empath:
No sense closing the door after the horse is out of the barn. 🙂
And on the sexbot in the HOV lane, I really hadn’t gone there, but you are, likely, correct about that. (Granted, a hoodie on the bot in the passenger seat would fool any cop.)
@ Empath
I don’t necessarily think that’s all of the answer.
The other “half” of the answer comes from the wives. A wife submitted and respectful to her husband will adore him regardless.
Looking Glass:
If I were to summarize your points 1&2, it is that even a somewhat poisonous placebo can sometimes catalyze someone to become more healthy. Taking any sort of action at all to improve a bad situation can often help, even if the action in itself is, as a matter of material cause, actually unhealthy.
I thought anecdotal passes as science? Weird, I’ll have to disregard all the global warming stuff….
Additionally,
It could also be as Zippy says if it’s true that the men are supplicating and the women are happy with that.
Some women who decide they want the “husband’s role” in the marriage will be happy being the “man” in the relationship.
The fact that they are “happy” in the particular situation does not make them righteous or following God’s commands.
I’ve often wondered if the “you will desire your husband” in Gen 3:16 is missing something in translations such that it means more along the lines of “you will desire your husband’s role” which makes the second bit “but he will have authority over you” make more sense.
@Zippy:
Terry Easterbrook, some years ago, that made a really strong argument built around actually marketing and selling an explicit placebo. The effect, on nearly all non-acute conditions, is massive and nearly as good as most medications. The saying “just do something!” has a lot of insight behind it.
If you work or know much about the Fitness world, you also know how much that effect applies to any fitness routine. You can sell practically anything and find a few people that benefit from it greatly. It’s sad and, more sadly, highly profitable for some people.
I thought anecdotal passes as science?
Thomas Dolby was singing about it 33 years ago, His lyrics were sarcasm, eye rolling stuff…..who knew he was on about solipsism and stuff?
@Empath
That makes perfect sense to me, and aligns with my long-held theory that–as products of a narcissistic society–women are prone for the stereotypes in their heads. In this case: Soul-patches and goatees are a kind of uniform; the first for poets/philosophers and the second for fratboys/cowboys. My guess is she wanted to have sex with the latter.
Or, as the old folks use to say: “Women love a man in uniform.”
And men love theater special effects, soul patch-goatee flexibility with adhesive that wont leave a mark. What type/label can we put on that Game? Its legit. My cousin knows a guy…..
@ ACThinker
Sort of, but not the way you’re thinking. The wording is used thrice in the OT. Both provide valuable insight into our understanding of women. First,
1. Gen 3:16c Yet your desire (teshûqâh) will be for (‘êl) your husband (‘ı̂ysh), And he (hû) will rule (mâshal) over you.”
Those are the only 5 words in parentheses. Hebrew doesn’t have many filler words like English does. In reality, it simply has 5 words: desire for husband, he rules
2. Gen 4:7 If you do well, [e]will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire (teshûqâh) is for you, but you must master (mâshal) it.
3. Song of Solomon 7:10 — The Union of Love — “I am my beloved’s, And his desire (teshûqâh) is for me. 11 “Come, my beloved, let us go out into the [l]country, Let us spend the night in the villages. 12 “Let us rise early and go to the vineyards; Let us see whether the vine has budded And its blossoms have opened, And whether the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love. 13 “The mandrakes have given forth fragrance; And over our doors are all choice fruits, Both new and old, Which I have saved up for you, my beloved.
This leads to two conclusions,
Obviously, the second is Gen 4 where sin desires mastery over Cain: this is the evil side of the Scripture where the desire is to usurp the husband’s authority/dominion. The fruit of disobedience and rebellion is sin.
The third is Song of Songs 7 where desire is used in the possessive account. Indeed, when a wife submits and respect her husband: she is HIS beloved. The desire generated through obedience leads to sex which is righteous.
I analyze it here, but that’s the gist of it.
https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/a-christian-understanding-of-attraction/
@Empath
Ha!
When I read the title of this post I thought you were really going to offer us some good info on God’s plan for every married man’s life. Instead this.
Damn depressing. It’s like the North Koreans not only win that wat, but have taken over all of American society. The Chinese in the POW camps were the most effective interrogators in history. And they have used those tactics in China since the Revolution. And now the leftists in America have learned from them and are doing the very same thing. Using the very same tactics.
Public shaming. Public confession. Self denigration. Public humiliation. Which is why we must now Accept and Amplify every false charge they level against us.
I am a racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobe, islamophobe, white privileged MAN.
Deal with it.
“What she does have is that unique marriage manual in her heart for your marriage which is given to her from God.
Supporting scriptures?
The way that a man becomes the man that God has called him to be is to become the husband his wife needs him to be.
Supporting scriptures?
The only way to become the husband our wife needs us to be is to read our personal marriage manual.
Supporting scriptures?
How do read that marriage manual? We listen to her heart.”
Supporting scriptures?
I have a scripture.
Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
So their advice is to “listen” to something that is desperately sick and deceitful for guidance. Even worse, it has been made abundantly clear that by “listen” they mean OBEY.
“God has equipped every woman with a marriage manual in her heart, designed to instruct her husband in how to meet her unique needs.”
It disturbs me that an entire generation of women may have been brought up to believe this and will bring this delusion with them into marriage. Like you said, this isn’t an extreme or fringe opinion. It is mainstream churchanity. And too many men are utterly clueless about it before they say “I do,” or they are told in pre-martial counseling this psychotic nonsense to prepare them for a life of constantly trying to meet inane expectations.
How can it get worse than this? How far can it go from here for churchianity without running into self-parody? The question is not rhetorical, though I wish it were.
If anything bad happens in the marriage, it is 109% his fault…
Where did the 1% go? Last I checked it was 110% the man’s fault.
“Your wife wants a fabulous relationship with you. God made her that way.”
And by you, he doesn’t mean you as you are, just your wife’s idea of you and how she could picture you to be.
And then when he becomes the wife’s idea of the perfect man, she despises him for it. It’s a win win if you are an enemy of God’s plan for marriage.
Maybe you should forward this to the NY times Dalrock.
“Unlike the saints that are with Him, Jesus, the Father and The Holy Spirit all operate in relationship with the Body of Christ. Jesus died in order to send us “the Comforter”, that is, the Holy Spirit. I don’t know how much comfort you attain from a text or a tradition or reason. Myself? I don’t find much.”
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” (John 14)
He. Not ‘the church’ and not ‘the Scripture’ and not any other text or tradition. He. Yet ‘Christians’ insist otherwise, choosing their own pastors and ministers and elders instead. And the OP well-illustrates what occurs when The Almighty People select their own leaders.
Yup! even Christians who pore over Scripture, who expect immanent rapture away from satan’s planet, rebuke and assure that the Spirit is whatever they and their chosen pastors have worked-out for themselves as doctrine. The Spirit is a discarnate, general, nebulous something something that wafts around the universe, or wait, the Spirit is the Body of Believers (i.e., themselves) or the Spirit is the bible. Or or or. Indeed, even Christians who maintain eschatological blogs and profess obedience to Jeshua will not accept stated doctrine, replacing it with whatever pleases them, and/or supports their chosen minister(s). Tell them different, get silenced.
Whatchoo gonna do when HE is gone? Invent some more doctrine?
@ Empath, maybe you are describing is those relationships where women have generally contended dispositions. Maybe, they have very sleepy hamsters. Maybe they actually respect their husbands for what they recognize as sacrifice. In short, maybe there are women who respond to less ideal leadership with grace and righteousness. I’m sure it’s the short end of the bell curve, but I imagine a certain number of them exist.
@ ACThinker, regarding the curse of Genesis 3:16. I agree, the man is cursed to toil in the Earth. The woman seems cursed to think that she can do it better.
Whew. A couple of long meetings and there are 30 posts since mine.
J-t-R, I don’t have a collection of references to send you at the moment. I was thinking primarily of the Divine Liturgy of St. James (and its successor liturgies attributed to Basil and Chrysostom), but an elevated attitude toward Mary is very old.
GiL, stop attributing things to me that I did not say. The New Testament is not “merely letter”, and I never implied otherwise.
Scott, thanks. Ironic that nobody commented on the whole point, which was finding the source of feminism back in 1800s Romanticism and the elevation of Experience. I’m neither Catholic nor Orthodox at present; I barely have any issues with “official” Catholic teaching, but Catholicism in practice is a different story (and Francis isn’t helping).
Gunner Q, the Epistles exist at all because of the basic need for someone who can say “this is correct and that is not” with genuine authority. The Apostles had that authority and used it; after they were gone, the people left in charge still had the task of agreeing what new writings should be acknowledged as also being Scripture, and doing so even while repelling Gnostic boarders who came with their own set of “spiritual” writings. (For a list, I would say ask any Unitarian Universalist except that their list by now probably includes “Dreams of My Father” too.) Not saying there ever was a “golden age”, just that it requires a certain amount of doublethink to believe that the primitive Church was mired in error and severed from apostolic authority but somehow correctly identified the Scriptures, correctly identified the errors of Gnosticism, and correctly insisted upon the doctrine of the Trinity against Arius. Eventually you start asking if they were (right, wrong) about that thing, why are they not (right, wrong) about this other thing too?
That God, what a joker! To give me this tremendous sex drive, then leave that chapter out of the manual in my wife’s heart! Hahahaha
I was poleaxed in a discussion in an oecumenical forum about 9 years ago when an evangelical participant, a lapsed lawyer then 47 years of age, insisted he had never encountered a case where a man ‘really loved’ his wife but was subject to divorce proceedings. By definition in this cretin’s mind, a man sued for divorce was asking for it. Again, this fellow was (and, I imagine, still is) a lawyer-turned-librarian, not a mental-health-tradesman. It took some effort on that thread to badger any of the (entirely male) participants to consider the possibility that men and women form a dyad and that women have personal agency worth observing and commenting on. I have the distinct impression that this mentality goes all the way to the bone in evangelical circles, and is not specific to these mental-health medicine show types.
@ Ray, He will never leave us nor forsake us. I don’t think He is going anywhere.
He get’s quiet when I’m being an idiot. He doesn’t go away.
I don’t know about GOD’s plan but its clear that the devils plan for every marriage is in full swing.
And it proved extraordinarily capable of supplanting Reason, Tradition, and Scripture equally effectively as needed in any particular situation.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8
You appeared to be making an appeal to “logos” while taking a cut at “rhema” to me craig, maybe I was mistaken?
craig @ 5:20 pm:
“…it requires a certain amount of doublethink to believe that the primitive Church was mired in error and severed from apostolic authority but somehow correctly identified the Scriptures, correctly identified the errors of Gnosticism, and correctly insisted upon the doctrine of the Trinity…”
Because Christ needs human help to keep his Church on the rails? He knows better than to rely upon the people whose disobedience required his sacrifice in the first place.
Peter denied Christ before Christ even left. Paul admitted it was only divine sabotage that kept him from arrogant pride. The Gospels record Christ’s inner circle of disciples being constantly mired in error and the Epistles record the early churches being constantly mired in error. Nobody got it right, not ever.
The first Christians were as badly flawed as the last Christians will be. That’s okay because Christianity only depends upon God… not even the apostles. 1 Cor. 3:4-7,21
“No need to wonder. They would say that since women are “responders”, everything she did was ultimately his fault and proof that he wasn’t following the instructions God wrote for him.”
BINGO! When I had stupidly submitted to marital counseling with one of the hireling shepherds (501c3/State Incorporated “pastor”) that unscripturally stabbed me in the back, those were his words almost VERBATIM!! He gave me the whole “women are ‘responders'” spiel. And then he tried to stick me with all the responsibility of a biblical husband even as he stripped any shred of my authority as a biblical husband, as he plunged the knife deeper and deeper, and smiled lovingly and condescendingly at me all the whole while.
[sarcasm begins]
If you guys read the scriptures well, you would have realized that it was all Adam’s fault that Eve ate the fruit. He should have been there to protect her from the serpent, and prevent her from being deceived. Adam also failed when God came into the garden afterwards. He should have stood up for Eve when God was placing a curse on her. Or at least ask God to punish only him instead for all the sins of his family. That is what a responsible husband do, you know.
Not to mention, God must have been mistaken to punish Eve, when it was all Adam’s fault. If Adam had done his job, Eve would never have been deceived. She was created to love God and be a “responder” to Adam, you see.
[sarcasm ends]
Here is the basic flaw in the whole “responder” theory. The Theory states that if a husband just loves his wife sufficiently in the same manner that Christ loves, then she would “naturally” respond to him with love and honor. This ignores the basic fact that Christ loved (and continues to love) perfectly, and yet billions still reject him. So, if billions can reject the perfect love of Christ, how is it possible that the imperfect love of a husband would “naturally” cause a wife to honor and love him back?
The whole premise ignores that women also are born with a fallen nature, and their “natural” response is the polar opposite of honoring and loving their husband for loving her properly. It takes a spiritual response to actually love a husband back who is loving his wife properly. But a wife who is walking in the flesh will “naturally” reject such a love, and instead of submitting will simply take control – to her own and her family’s detriment. That is exactly what someone with a fallen nature will do.
Women are born full of sin, just the same as men, and are just as susceptible to temptation as men. That their temptations tend to take different forms doesn’t make them less sinful. In fact, the Bible teaches that women are the weaker vessel, meaning that they are LESS able to resist temptation. After all, the Bible also teaches that Eve was deceived, but Adam saw through the deception. Putting your life in the hands of someone who is easily deceived is just insane. She is in no position to judge. She doesn’t even have the capacity to judge effectively or accurately.
But to switch gears, it would be nice to see a post that is actually about God’s plan for men – instead of a sarcastic post about what some are erroneously saying God’s plan is. For a while now, I have been frustrated with the whole direction of Men’s Ministry in the church which seems to be more about being a “good” father and husband (good being a very subjective term) instead of about finding God’s plan for your life, then embarking on the journey to fulfill your destiny in Christ – of which being a father and husband is important, but secondary to the overall purpose for your creation as a man.
I like the analogy of fruiting bodies in mold. By the time you see the green spot on the heel piece the mycelium is already ALL through the bread, it is this mycelium that generates the nutrition to create the visible fruiting body. Joel and Kathy are the obvious green spot, the false teaching that they represent is already all though Churchainity. If you know the morphology of the fruiting body you can identify what has corrupted the bread.
Maybe 15 years ago, before I started to know better, I read one of Gary Smalley’s books and he made the statement (I’m paraphrasing) that, barring childhood sexual abuse, all wives will treat their husbands well if the husbands love their wives well. Stupidly, I felt convicted and redoubled my efforts to love her well. After years of no improvement on her end, my conclusion was that my wife fell within the exception Smalley allowed for childhood sexual abuse (my wife’s experiences were so mild that they may not even qualify as sexual abuse, but I was giving her the benefit of the doubt). At the time, it didn’t occur to me that the entire statement was hogwash (and unbiblical). Additional hard experience (including her eventually bailing on the marriage) has demonstrated otherwise. The “women aren’t really fallen” meme has been around evangelicalism for a long time.
I caught my first wife in a lesbian affair. Was it my fault because I refused to become a woman to satisfy her needs?
I like how this part from Joel and Kathy’s book:
He continued saying that my issues had caused the problems in our marriage and that if I would get healed and change that I would have a most incredible wife.
is the same philosophy except with the genders reversed that Kathy implicitly shot down at 2:52 in the first video deti linked to above (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM9H0E2xI1c).
So let me get this straight. If a wife acts according to scripture by being quiet and submissive, things for which Kathy almost seems to show disdain in the video, then her husband will still not be an incredible husband, but if a husband acts according to scripture (or according to his wife’s marriage manual I guess), then his wife will automatically be an incredible wife?
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@Hank:
“Life” is always someone else’s problem to solve, according to the darkness in the human heart. It’s why the early Christian writers came to conclude that “Pride” (“overwhelming pride” is probably a better phrase in English) was the greatest sin. The idolatry of oneself.
Fake Christians that peddle poison always appeal and reinforce the listener’s Pride. Been going on since pretty much before “Christian” was coined as a word.
This enduring meme of “women can do no wrong” has actually been around for quite a while. Reading Dalrock’s analysis–and the many thoughtful responses here–brings to mind a strange conversation I had with a friend back in high school (and that was a long time ago). I don’t recall how we stumbled onto the topic of whether or not women fart, but he was convinced that they don’t, that only men fart. I argued that they most certainly do, and that I had been witness to it, but he refused to give in, saying he couldn’t imagine a woman doing that. The image he had of them was too pure to admit such unpleasantness as farting.
The likes of Dr. Hegstrom (what is he a “Dr.” of, anyway?) are no different from my female-flatulence-denying friend from 40+ years ago. This fairytale thinking has been around for a long time.
@Caspar Reyes,
“Most of these names I’ve never heard, but a quick search shows them all to be in charismatic “deliverance” type ministries.”
Charismatics and most evangelicals encourage “hearing from God, visions, dreams, etc.” so they are very susceptible to “following their heart or emotions” and being deceived to think it is the Holy Spirit talking directly to them.
One is tempted to describe modern Churchanity, charismatic or otherwise, with the term “morass”, but most husbands would say it’s actually less.
“The only way to become the husband our wife needs us to be is to read our personal marriage manual. How do read that marriage manual? We listen to her heart.”
Her heart has lost its fear of the Lord, and crowns herself as a goddess. But it looks like God’s judgement is starting to rain down on these feminist women with no virtue and love, as shown by the economy today. Women are finding it harder and harder to find a beta provider. They may always find an alpha to give them their tingles and lust satisfaction, but they will pay for it in the long run. This reminds me of Ezekiel 16:
“…When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness…Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded to royalty…But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it…Were your acts of harlotry a small matter that you have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire?…How degenerate is your heart!” says the Lord God, “seeing you do all these things, the deeds of a brazen harlot…”
Ezekiel 16:37-39 “I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved, and all those you hated; I will gather them from all around against you and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. And I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged; I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy. I will also give you into their hand, and they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places.”
I think this is what is slowly happening today where so many feminist women are being abused in the long term by all the players and alpha bad boys that they make love too. It is then they want the loser, virgin, beta, non-party guy to take care of them, but more and more of them are rejecting these women.
“The “women aren’t really fallen” meme has been around evangelicalism for a long time.”
If you say so. The unverified biographical information I have on Gary Smalley says he was born in 1940 and has been a public figure for about 35 years. I never heard of him myself.
Ransacking my memory for what was said and not said in table talk and in mass entertainment products, I do not think the notion that women have options and men have obligations was all that prevalent in 1970. To see men as comical figures ever needing direction by women was around and about at that time, and it may have been shortly after that the converse scenario ceased to be depicted in mass entertainment (though it was certainly a part of family life). My mother’s contemporaries and cohorts older were not in the habit of seeing other women as pristine, nor in the habit of asserting that no man should have a franchise to criticize a woman. Nor in the habit of thinking that fathers had no prerogratives regarding the care and education of their children. That came later.
Although I think he’s usually a crank, Leon Podles has had occasion to at least ponder the question of what kind of man goes into the clergy and what sort of issues clergymen of different stripes commonly have. It has been Podles’ thesis that the clergy is thickly populated with men who simply are not comfortable in their male skin, and that this affects their vocation and the direction of congregations in unsalutary ways.
Your spam filter is causing trouble.
[D: Thanks. Binned comment found and retrieved.]
This was my experience at church. Oh your “wife” has been having multiple affairs for your entire “marriage”? And she’s become highly abusive?
What did you do? You’re still in denial about your abuse!
That’s how they think at church. And they wonder why I resigned my position and left.
Gunner Q,
Paul never said God caused that demon to come. It just says someone/something caused it. I have been pondering that and suspect it may not have been what tradition teaches. Certainly fits with what James says about God not being the cause of such things.
I don’t recall how we stumbled onto the topic of whether or not women fart, but he was convinced that they don’t, that only men fart.
Q: Why don’t women fart?
A: Because they never shut up for long enough to build up the pressure needed to do it.
@Skid Rowe
Clearly you weren’t man enough to…
Sorry, what was the question?
Gamer’s plan for married man sex life: https://theasdgamer.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/married-men-keep-track-of-sex/
Was it in flagrante de licto?
Not too long ago they showed a video of Kirk Cameron at church where he said that exact same thing – not word for word, but definitely the same idea. Unfortunately, Kirk was not the least bit sarcastic when he said it.
The second video deti linked is so telling.
Kathy suffered (sic) under Joel for years, “quietly submitting,” like she was raised and the Bible says.
Thankfully, the feminists told her to stop that and to rebel. God, apparently, won’t actually answers prayers and it’s up to feminists to stop the “abuse.” How do they teach the women to subdue husbands? Notice, there’s no mention of prayer, referencing scripture. She gave him “doggie treats” when he was a good dog and neglect when he was a bad dog.
I also appreciated Joel admitting that his change of heart is due to his wife and not God. I’ll give him points for honesty. It certainly wasn’t God telling him to submit to his wife.
It is amazing how little they actually talk about God in the 13 minutes.
And then women wonder why Churches sit empty of men. Oh, my heart bleeds that these perfect women can’t find men to marry, oh it does!
“Paul never said God caused that demon to come.”
There’s no such thing as the devil doing something God doesn’t want him to do. This is a direct consequence of God’s omnipotence. Job gives us a remarkable picture of the foul creature asking God for permission to screw up Job’s life, and how the devil’s maltreatment of him only served to prove Job’s character.
Orthodox Christian basically means what Christians in the United States were doing 100 years ago, not what Ivan and Zorba were doing 100 years ago…
A.J.P.
Skid,
Just marry the other woman too and you will be all right, per some who post here.
Gunner Q,
I don’t find that argument to be sound theology. Adam and Eve’s fall was intended by that idea, since nothing happens without God’s permission, right? He clearly can tweak where he decides according to rules we cannot fully grok on this side of Eternity, but to blame Him for it all is just as irresponsible as giving women a free pass for their actions. The devil operates under the same constraints that govern this reality.
Why did the angel have to struggle to come to Daniel the second time? Was the struggle God’s will? Too deep to argue here, but most who hold the idea have not really thought through all the implications.
And then women wonder why Churches sit empty of men. Oh, my heart bleeds that these perfect women can’t find men to marry, oh it does!
I was having a conversation with a friend about why the government needs to bribe doctors to use electronic medical records. It turns out that the software is more pain than help.
I think same goes for many of these women. These “perfect” women are more pain than pleasure to be with, so the men kept away, for their own protection.
Coming to think of it, nature is self-healing, if only we allow it some time. The women that do not deserve to have kids end up not having any, and their toxic genes are purged form the collective gene pool..
Bee,
To a point. The Word of Faith movement (which has had a major influence on me and the core beliefs of which I find very proper) stresses the overarching reliability of the Word of God, the Scriptures. Many today have strayed more into feelings, especially in other related movements, such as those that might fall under The River categorization, but those are different and are just an example of humans being humans.
Remember that Methodists were all about strong commitment to things when they started, but have drifted far from that today to the point most would not be recognized by the founders. The same is true of any movement with humans in it. No pure standard is achievable forever.
A core challenge is acknowledging the supernatural and that it has an impact on our lives and realizing life is not this neat and tidy box all of us continual seek to define it as. It has many challenges and we must walk them out. Feelings have their place, as does a strict conformance to rules. Neither is a good standard on its own however.
====
I would ask those who believe Adam played no role in Eve’s sin how she could give the fruit to the man “with her” if he wasn’t “with her”? What is written implies, “right there” no some ways away.
@ ASD Gamer:
“flagrante de licto”
A cunning linguist you are.
Apologies to Yoda
I was having a conversation with a friend about why the government needs to bribe doctors to use electronic medical records. It turns out that the software is more pain than help.
It’s worse than bribing doctors, they are bribing hospitals with millions of dollars (each). More pain then help is an understatement, and the doctors hate it. In addition, waiting room time has already increased and the grand scheme is not even in full swing yet.
I was reminded by a Messianic Rabbi friend of mine that Genesis 3:16 is the foundation for all of Paul’s instructions to husbands and wives in Ephesians and Peter.
To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
Here is the exact text portion of an email he wrote to me.
The Your Excellency stuff is kinda creepy, but his sentiments are not unlike Dalrock when he insists They Aren’t Talking about Headship. These folks appear to flat out hate how God rolls, don’t they?
It’s only a matter of time. With all these different types of invented “abuses”, “breathing abuse” charge will soon be brought against men by their wives for breathing too much air at home.
Dalrock, They’ve gone full sellout. It was always implied but to this point it was never this overt. I’m in the process of finding a new church after being a prodigal for several years. Among the things I’m going to use a a criteria is that they create a men’s ministry that focuses on the self improvement aspects of the manosphere including a healthy dose of red pill philosophy but without the hedonism of the excesses of the PUAs. I also have no qualms of telling a woman that she is of no value to me whatsoever as a potential spouse and doing so unapologetically. I’ll simply point out that I’m content to be alone and that outcome would be far preferable to risking being shackled to a pregestional child support with no visitation IED waiting to detonate. I’d love to get married but for the most part I’m perfectly happy to tell them there’s no way in hell I’ll ever spend a penny on their company. Dating has largely gotten to be as convoluted as having to build a ship in the bottle while walking a tightrope and having the added insult of having to pay for the privilege. Most of these ladies’ company make for an inferior use of my time as compared to the prospect of xBox and frozen pizza.
It comes down to opportunity costs in economic parlance. They might be the best woman out there but they fail to realize that they are also competing with other uses of my time. I’m absolutely certain there are women out there worthy of marriage. The problem is I feel like I have to dig through a 55 gallon drum of horseshit to find a dollar coin and the simple fact is I’m just not sufficiently interested in dirtying myself adequately to find her. There are so many other things I can be doing with my time. In summary dating has gotten to feeling a lot like shopping at Big Lots.
There’s one hell of a market to be had for a church that embarks on the path I mention by offering serious mentorship like what you could get from the PUAs. That church would grew considerably by offering something other than the typical discipleship. No one is doing it. When I talk to a pastor I inevitably point them to your blog as well as MMSL. I wish I could get them to read Rollo’s site as well but I’m betting he’s a bit to much for them. You really ought to consider writing a book based on what you have written on here.
For all intents and purposes unless I can find a spouse from overseas. I’m done.
“And then women wonder why Churches sit empty of men. ”
I have not checked recently, but I did consult articles in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion about a dozen years ago, in part because of what Podles was writing (which was quite at a variance with my experience of parish life). At that time, rates of attendance hardly differed between men and women in the United States. The ratio of men to women was directly related to overall observance, so that attendance in countries with exceptionally low rates (e.g. Sweden) was about 2/3 female. That’s still not ’empty of men’ and its more integrated than most activities men and women engage in. It is true certain apostolates are all female. I was a member of a parish which was unable to recruit even one cantor from a congregation which had about 50 adult men in regular attendance (and plenty of acolytes, a ministry from which girls were debarred). The choirmaster dangled a promise of voice lessons to no avail. What is true is that services are run to appeal to a certain sort of sensibility, and it is not yours. The men in congregations put up with it.
“Orthodox Christian basically means what Christians in the United States were doing 100 years ago, not what Ivan and Zorba were doing 100 years ago…”
Doing in 1960. As for theological questions, I don’t think theological modernism took control of mainline protestant denominations until the 1920s.
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There’s one hell of a market to be had for a church that embarks on the path I mention by offering serious mentorship like what you could get from the PUAs. That church would grew considerably by offering something other than the typical discipleship. No one is doing it.
You can pretty well forget about any American Protestant church ever doing such a thing, especially an “evangelical” one. The reason? A toxic combination of lazy apathy, hostility, and an entrenched (one might even say “genetic,” in organizational terms) sense of duty to cater to the FI above all else. Where that last item is concerned, it is taken as a given that any congregations’ “Sisters in Christ,” pure and sinless creatures that they are, will have perfect husbands dropped into their laps by God the moment they decide they want them. If the less-than-worthy men can’t find wives, then, well, that’s because they’re filthy, sinful, vile, and undeserving of a godly wife and need to clean up their acts (which they can figure out how to do on their own, mind you; no need to waste precious mission resources on such unworthy creatures). Remember: Alpha = redeemed. Just become Alpha, your sins will be wiped clean, and you’ll have all the godly women you can stand throwing themselves at your feet.
As for the lazy apathy and hostility, the first part is self-explanatory; being a Christ follower and a faithful servant takes lots of conscious effort, sacrifice, and self-discipline. “Christians Lite” (a.k.a. churchians) ain’t inta that any more than are their unbelieving worldly counterparts.
The hostility, on the other hand, is a bit of a puzzle. The formation of healthy Christian families that are built on Scriptural foundations not only are not a priority of churchian corporations, but are anathema to them. Why this is so is one of modern life’s greatest mysteries. One explanation might be that the incorporated church sees the family in the same light that the government does: as competition for authority. A much more likely explanation is that being forced to consider and encourage what makes a morally and spiritually healthy Christian family and emcouraging the body in that direction will force churches to confront the ugly reality of how thoroughly co-opted by the culture they’ve become and how, far from being “the salt the earth,” they are nothing but sand that is indistinguishable from the flavor of the world.
Young men are increasingly simply walking away from the entanglement. 2016 is predicted will be the lowest marriage rate in U.S. history and it’s expected to continue trending lower.
HayeksGhost @ 1:51 pm:
“That church would grew considerably by offering something other than the typical discipleship. No one is doing it.”
They aren’t doing discipleship at all. Christ’s own example is to train your successors but the average pastor these days will work himself into an early grave before he shares the seat of power one time with a layman. Memo to clergy: discipleship requires delegation.
“Most of these ladies’ company make for an inferior use of my time as compared to the prospect of xBox and frozen pizza.”
Preach, brother MGTOW! We demand a better offer.
…
“As for the lazy apathy and hostility, the first part is self-explanatory; being a Christ follower and a faithful servant takes lots of conscious effort, sacrifice, and self-discipline. “Christians Lite” (a.k.a. churchians) ain’t inta that any more than are their unbelieving worldly counterparts.
A major component of church laity’s laziness is the tyranny of low expectations. Before I quit church, I kept looking for ways to volunteer and help out. Every single church had no use for me, a high-level technician and supervisor, except running the video projector, taking headcount as an usher or helping with children. Nothing convinced me I had no place in church like being told the church had no place for me.
Gunner Q says:
October 29, 2015 at 12:20 pm
“Paul never said God caused that demon to come.”
There’s no such thing as the devil doing something God doesn’t want him
to do. This is a direct consequence of God’s omnipotence. Job gives us a
remarkable picture of the foul creature asking God for permission to screw
up Job’s life, and how the devil’s maltreatment of him only served to prove
Job’s character.
There can be no rebellion, without an exercise of Free Will. The diabolical,
is the supernatural in rebellion against God. Sin, is humanity in rebellion.
The whole point about the devil being the devil, is about the devil doing what
God doesn’t want him to do. The basic paradox is this: God is omnipotent, but
respects our Free Will — God could crush out our Free Will to “save us” from
Sin and its wages, but in what sense then are we separate creatures of God’s,
if God subverts and subsumes our wills? If we are not our wealth or health, and
we are not our bodies, nor our thoughts, nor our feelings/emotions, nor are we
our experiences and memories, what else is there left, other than our will? And
if God subverted that (rather than calling out to us to exercise it with Wisdom &
Love, which is what following Christ implies, and what Salvation permits in spite
of otherwise Fallen Nature), in what meaningful sense would we exist at all?
So, I would conclude that there is only such a thing as the devil doing
something God doesn’t want him to do.
This requires me to interpret Job as a parable rather than as historic,
but I have no problem with that. Perhaps you would have a problem with that,
and that is fine. But to my eye rebellion (by devils or men) is precisely about
doing what God doesn’t want done.
A major component of church laity’s laziness is the tyranny of low expectations. Before I quit church, I kept looking for ways to volunteer and help out. Every single church had no use for me, a high-level technician and supervisor, except running the video projector, taking headcount as an usher or helping with children. Nothing convinced me I had no place in church like being told the church had no place for me.
More and more, America’s churches are coming to resemble the rest of America’s institutions today: oligarchies run by small groups of elites (often familial) in whom all power, authority, influence, and attention is vested. If you ain’t aparta the “inner circle,” you ain’ta parta nuthin’ except the auxiliary scutwork brigade – if you’re lucky enough to have your existence acknowledged at all.
YAC,
I said that, not Gunner Q.
You are full of bunk though. God doesn’t want sin and death, but it is a consequences of the choices we have made. You really don’t know God.
Boy, that’s the second time in a week I posted in the wrong post!
O/T–just always love Dalrock readers traffic.
https://morallycontextualizedromanceblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/how-should-fathers-respond-when-their-children-fight/
@Jonadab
Your blog comments are full of spam.
@ BradA (7:18 pm)
Yes, you are right — the quote looks misattributed. It’s because I still haven’t figured out how the HTML coding works at this website (as prior postings sadly attest), so my attempts at formatting the mark-up included HTML tags that this website suppresses (almost certainly, it is WordPress that is doing that, and Dalrock has no say in it whatsoever), with which I tried to indent those layers of quotes. For this post, I am not using any HTML at all, to see what happens this way.
If you look again at my post, you’ll see it is me quoting Gunner Q quoting you (and then his reply).
So, my apologies for the apparent misattribution; I’ll figure out the HTML rules here eventually.
OK, now for your other part: please re-read what I wrote. IIUC, what I wrote was “God doesn’t want sin and death, but it is a consequence of” how we exercise our Free Will. Basically, what you wrote, except you have the skill of precision, while I rambled (as in fact I’m doing here, sorry).
Your quote, then Gunner Q’s paragraph, then starting at “There can be no rebellion, …”, is my
reply _to him_. To summarize my reply: No Free Will, no capacity (I am arguing) for humanity to sin, nor for devils to rebel, i.e., be diabolical. I was in fact precisely arguing that sin and death do not come from God, not even the deaths of Job’s cattle and children.
And all that was said, in reply to what I understood to be GQ’s point (which, in turn, in fairness, I may have misunderstood — but that’s his to take up with me if and as he wishes).
As you will see, I hope, if you re-read my posting, with the suppressed HTML clarified.
I suspect you and I are actually in agreement, except that mistransmission and misreception have made that become non-obvious, alas.
Pax Christus Vobiscum. (ツ)
Hunh. The secret mix of herbs and spices is: use no HTML at all, at all. Who knew?
@Yet Another Commenter,
Your comment was very confusing and probably contradictory.
Compare this:
“There’s no such thing as the devil doing something God doesn’t want him to do.”
With this:
“So, I would conclude that there is only such a thing as the devil doing something God doesn’t want him to do.”
In any case, I am going to assume your former position, and respond accordingly.
There’s no such thing as the devil doing something God doesn’t want him to do.
Really? If that were so, then the Bible did not say so. The devil became the devil because he did what God did not want him to do, and he continues to do so even today. Scripture is clear that “God is not willing that any should perish”, but the devil has a different agenda, and he will succeed in deceiving multitudes to go to hell.
Job gives us a remarkable picture of the foul creature asking God for permission to screw up Job’s life
As he should. The devil cannot touch a righteous man without an explicit permission from God. Scriptures make that fact abundantly clear. The devil will not only obtain permission from God to affflict the righteous, the limit of his afflictions must also be explicitly obtained.
Proof:
1. The case of Job as you cited. God allowed the devil to afflict Job, but not to take his life.
2. The devil himself said so:
Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Job 1:10
The devil can only touch a righteous man WHEN he breaks the hedge of protection that God puts around him (e.g. through sin, unbelief, wrong association, etc)
…whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him…. Ecclesiastes 10:8
Note that devil clearely stated that he was free to roam up and down the earth, apparently without restriction (Job 1:6), but he needed permission to inflict harm on a specific person (Job in this case).
3. Pauline Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 10:13)
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
“Suffer”, as used in the passage, means “allow” or “peermit”. In other words, God will not permit the tempter to tempt you beyond your abilities. This means the tempter seeks permission.
However, this is not true of everyone else. The wicked does not have the protection of God to the same degree that the righteous has, so the devil has more leeeway in afflicting them. Even then, they are still God’s creature, and God’s ultimate responsibility, so the devil cannot simply do as as much as he would like to. But this does not mean he is not constantly violating God’s will. God “permits” him is not the same as God “wanting him” to do those things.
This requires me to interpret Job as a parable rather than as historic, but I have no problem with that.
Actually, many of us do. Job was a historical figure and not a parable. If anything, the Bible is always clear as to what it means. When it says “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job” (Job 1:1), we need to believe there was indeed a man by that name who once lived in the place specified.
Moreover, the man was quoted as a historical figure, and was as real as Noah and Daniel:
Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God. Ezek 14:14 (KJV)
The Apostle James mentioned Job as a historical example:
Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
Jam 5:11 (KJV)
Let us not make the Bible to say what it did not say.
Dave says:
October 29, 2015 at 7:56 pm
@Yet Another Commenter,
Your comment was very confusing and probably contradictory. […]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yep.
See my explanation in the subsequent posting, about chewed up HTML leading to miscommunication. I try to untangle it for everyone, there. Hope I succeeded. (ツ)
(Some HTML tags do work, I see now).
YAC,
Use “blockquote” and “/blockquote” with a less than symbol at the start and a greater than symbol at the end instead of the quote marks I have. Put that around any quoted content (or just use “i” or “b” to be simpler) and you should get better results.
Put two blank lines (perhaps one if everything else is right) between the quoted content and your own to make it stand out. Don’t intersperse your comments in quotes until you get that part working.
I suspect a large number of Catholics have a weak knowledge of church teaching. I think the Mass has a lot of commend about it, and I think evangelicals could learn a lot from traditional liturgy. But other than the Eucharist, there is no spiritual edification being delivered. Homilies are generally vapid. Attend a non-liturgical Protestant church and should expect to hear at least 30 minutes of Bible based teaching, plus potentially Sunday schools, plus a ton of encouragement to join Bible study groups, etc.
The bulk of my family is Catholic. I have attended various services. My impressions is that Catholics are catechized at a pretty early age, then there’s not much after that. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a seriously thick book that goes into all sorts of details. I bought a copy on Kindle not knowing how long it was. I hate really long ebooks. I only read a bit of the way through it, but the vast bulk of it I did read I’d say was spot on. I need to get a hardcopy to finish it off, which I want to do at some point.
The Catholics need to step up their game on spiritual and doctrinal instruction.
We shouldn’t get too dramatic about false teaching today. False teaching has plagued the church since its earliest day. Much of New Testament was written specifically to combat active heresies in various churches. Consider:
“But evil men and seducers [false teachers] shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” – 2 Timothy 3:13
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” – 2 Timothy 4:3-4
False teaching is probably normal and to be expected in the church, just as Christians should expect to be persecuted.
Joel and Kathy Davidson don’t bother me too much. I don’t know them apart from this blog, but I get the impression they are not part of the conservative Evangelical mainstream. I worry more about people who are. Focus on the Family probably enjoys a stellar reputation. Mark Driscoll was on the Gospel Coalition national board. It’s the people plugged into things like the Gospel Coalition axis, because they are viewed as defenders of orthodoxy, who are the greatest danger to men of faith when it comes to relationships. Honestly, if you are in one of these seeker oriented megachurches feasting on a diet of cotton candy, you are already dealing with much bigger problems than being blue pill.
” Your wife wants a fabulous relationship with you. God made her that way”.
Are Christian marriage counsellors like the Davissons, FotF, Drs Hegstrom and Clarke impervious to statistics?
Surely:
-1 in 6 children in the Western world are being raised by a father that is not the biological sire, knowingly and unknowingly on his part.
-a 45% divorce rate, 75% of which is initiated by wives on a no-fault basis
-Paternity fraud occurring at a rate of one child in 11 (9%)
-Over 1 million abortions per year in the US alone, with proportionally similar results in all Western countries
-Foetal Alcohol Syndrome being responsible for 50 000 brain-damaged children in the UK per year, 10 000 in Australia (imagine if men were the cause of such damage to children!)
-A prison population consisting 80+% of the products of single -parent (mother-led) families.
-these are all serious issues for which women are completely responsible. How can Christian counsellors not know, when it is their business to know the facts, also known as the truth?
Lastly, I’ll make an observation that pentecostal churches and ministries tend to be matriarchal. Pastors are often men, but they are very matriarchal in practice. They have long sanctioned female led ministry, and many of them often have guest female evangelist types preach. A classic example of the genre is Joyce Meyer. It sounds like the Davissons are in this mold too.
In Podles Church Impotent he noted the role of charismatic visions in women asserting authority in the church. I have extensive experience in the Pentecostal world and in people professing gifts of the spirit, and overwhelmingly it is women who claim visions from God and direction from God and who attempt to influence the behavior and decisions of others with charismatic insight, including influencing relationships. This goes straight to the heart of Dalrock’s post here: Pentecostalism is antinomian Inner Light on steroids in which women have a spiritual pipeline to direct instructions from God on relationships.
That last line is probably somewhat unfair in that there are many serious, orthodox pentecostals. The pentecostals are also some of the last people to talk about Jesus’s mission in terms of delivering us from bondage to sin – that is, actual repentance and life change. Nevertheless, this idea of direct prophetic insight is deeply flawed in my view, and the matriarchal streak I see in it is one way it manifests.
I should mention that I personally have had this stuff affect me. A woman who claimed prophetic insights from God said some things about me to a woman I was dating at the time. When it was told to me it actually did seem reasonably insightful at first. But I analyzed it and, like Dalrock picking apart one of Driscoll’s sermons, I saw how carefully constructed it was to convey the impression of insight without saying anything falsifiable. This woman was obviously no amateur at this. I also learned that she was very careful to calibrate her pronouncements depending on the level of receptivity of the people she was talking to. Meaning, in a cessationist leaning crowd, she’d avoid making overt claims that God told her anything, but would be very aggressive with people who were open to suggestion (or manipulation), as in the case of this girl.
Maybe I’m drawing sweeping conclusions from my own experiences, but like Dalrock coming to the conclusion that these counseling folks are deliberately distorting scripture, I suspect a significant portion of these pentecostal type things are outright frauds.
The idea that women have any sort of innate guide or Holy Spirit given insight into relationships is an extraordinarily dangerous and damaging idea.
OK, separately, a reply to the content at the end of Dave’s
post, by which I mean, specifically this post of his:
—-> Dave says: October 29, 2015 at 7:56 pm […]
First, Dave correctly quotes me (yac-yac):
This requires me to interpret Job as a parable rather than
as historic, but I have no problem with that.
Then, Dave takes me to task over that interpretation:
Actually, many of us do. (i.e., have a problem with that).
Dave states his basic claim (or, counterclaim), which of
course contrasts with mine:
Job was a historical figure and not a parable.
And then Dave proceeds to defend it …
[My replies to his arguments are bold, interpolated]:
Dave: If anything, the Bible is always clear as to what it
means.
yac-yac: Which is why all Christendom has always been
in full agreement about all of it, & 1054 never happened,
and the wide availability of Bibles after the printing press
came along only further solidified that great monolithic
consensus of Christian exegetic opinion to which you
allude, in a single-mindedness of undiluted consistency.
Dave: When it says “There was a man in the land of Uz,
whose name was Job” (Job 1:1), we need to believe
there was indeed a man by that name who once lived
in the place specified.
yac-yac: Respectfully, I disagree. The necessary
corollary to your line of reasoning is that every
parable told by Christ was in fact a literally true story.
For example, was the Prodigal Son an actual
historical figure (etc.)? The historicity of the
Prodigal son is irrelevant to the spiritually instructive
intent of that particular parable. The historicity of Job
is irrelevant to the spiritually instructive intent of that
particular Book. Note: I am not arguing that Job isn’t
canonical; I am not arguing it is not Divinely inspired;
and I am not arguing it isn’t fit for our instruction. I’m
arguing that Job not History, any more than Proverbs.
Dave: Moreover, the man was quoted as a historical
figure, […]
yac-yac: Respectfully, I disagree.
That’s you interpreting the verses you’ve cited (and
that follow), as meaning (or, more accurately, from
the premise), that he must have been being quoted
as a historical figure.
Let me re-examine your examples & interpolate your
interpretations with my contrasting interpretations of
the same scripture — interpretations which I hope you
will find have at least some merit.
Doesn’t mean I’m right and you’re wrong, mind, just
that you haven’t persuaded me at all.
Dave: […] and was as real as Noah & Daniel:
yac-yac: Except, that verse (in context) is a
hypothetical construction, and has the meaning
(in my understanding of it), that “even if men who had
the nobility of character of persons such as Noah,
Daniel and Job were in that city, it would not avail that
city.” Nothing in the plain meaning of the verse requires
Job to have been a historical figure like Noah & Daniel
were. Rather, what is required is that he be a character
(note the dual meaning of that word) of resolute faith in
God, exemplary in his commitment to God, despite
experiencing incredible, unremitting hardship.
Dave claims: The Apostle James mentioned Job as a
historical example:
Dave: Let us not make the Bible to say what it did not say.
yac-yac: OK, look: the Bible I just took off the shelf
[Living Bible, Tyndale, (c) 1971] prefaces James 5 —
admittedly, this is not the scripture, but the Tyndale
editors’ help to the readers — prefaces it with these
words: “Admonitions to be Patient and Faithful.”
So, I infer, I think quite reasonably, that this is James’
purpose here. And therefore, inevitably, James has to
allude to an exemplary, if not the exemplary — dare we
say, proverbial — do you see my point there? — instance
of patient faithfulness, which of course is Job.
And I have to concede that your interpretation here is
not without merit, as the verse prior is:
However, the TLB edition that I have open before me
goes on:
(more yac-yac:) So, James’ didactic purpose is to hold
out examples of patience in suffering, as models for us
all, and to this end James lists (i) the Lord’s prophets,
and (ii) Job.
You interpret this to mean Job is a specific instance of
one of those historical prophets. Fine. I disagree.
I interpret it to mean, “… consider as examples: the
Lord’s prophets. And here is another you are familiar
with: Job, the guy in that important, divinely-inspired
parable we’re all familiar with …”.
So, how does my take on this subvert James’ scriptural
purpose here? It no more does so, than does yours
stand critical to it. Job’s historicity is not relevant to it.
Nor have you established Job’s historicity in any way.
Rather, you have used your premise of Job’s historicity,
to inform your reading of these scriptures.
Which is a different thing entirely.
Pax Christus Vobiscum. (ツ)
@ BradA: Thanks very much for your helpfulness. I have just learned that express HTML ‘break’ (br) tags are consistently suppressed (see above). Live and learn.
@Dalrock new commenter here. I am getting married within the next year. My conventional Christian family insists that premarital counseling is “necessary.” What are your opinions on premarital counseling in general, and what are some things to look out for, good and bad? When did premarital counseling become a common thing anyway, and why?
Just put blank lines in YAC. Don’t worry about the break tag. I don’t in my posts and they usually show up OK.
Neguy, I have operated in some of the Gifts of the Spirit and have not hit the error you note, so you are a bit off applying that so widely. The Holy Spirit gave the gifts, not men.
Manipulation happens in all kinds of churches and I would be few Dalrock covers in the post would actively work with the Gifts of the Spirit as they tend to be part of those who deny such.
One other thing to keep in mind is that traditional Pentecostals are very different from Joyce Meyer and such. Some similarities, but I have been in both kinds of churches and they are very different places. Pentecostal churches also tend to focus on holiness to an extreme, often stretching and smothering things with a lot of rules. The churches you note with a charismatic bent tend to be much more laid back on many things, perhaps too much so at times.
I have not found that female ministers are as common as you claim in those circles. Far more male preachers. Those may or may not be strong leaders, but far more are still male. I haven’t seen enough traditional Pentecostal churches, but men were normally at least nominally in charge of those.
Also note that many groups considered others as heretical in Church history for no more than disagreeing with them. Many of the more popular figures, such as John Calvin, were quite hard on those who didn’t follow the same way.
Spike,
Some of the children in that category would be adopted as well. That would not have the same problems you note. (It would have its own challenges, but that is another issue.)
these are all serious issues for which women are completely responsible. How can Christian counsellors not know, when it is their business to know the facts, also known as the truth
Until the Church adopts nonpaid ministers, we’re only going to be whistling to the wind. As long as the preacher is financially dependent on the listeners, the preachers cannot dispense the truth.
Which is why all Christendom has always been in full agreement about all of it, & 1054 never happened, and the wide availability of Bibles after the printing press
came along only further solidified that great monolithic consensus of Christian exegetic opinion
You obviously are not married, or have not dealt with lots of people. You could be so clear in your words and your hearers could simply hear something else. The US Constitution is the basis for a million arguments since it was written. Does that mean it is not clear enough? I don’t think so.
If, unlike you, we all allow the Bible to mean what it explicitly says, without a predefined interpretation, we won’t need so many “interpretations”.
The Bible was not written for the highly educated. Indeed, Jesus and Paul confirmed that “not many nobles are called”. A kid could read the Bible and understand it, if only he reads, and allows it to mean exactly what it says.
Here you are; the very book of Job opened with a simple statement that “THERE WAS A MAN”. And what did you immediately say? “There was NO man”. That is exactly how NOT to read and understand the Bible. Believe it, don’t try to force it to say what you want. You will have much less confusion.
For example, was the Prodigal Son an actual historical figure
No he was not. Christ never gave him a name, location or other identifying characteristics. In all of His prables, Christ was very consistent.
BTW, the “parable” of Lazarus and the rich man was not a parable at all. Lazarus was a historical figure as well, just as Abraham was, and both appeared in the “parable”.
Except, that verse (in context) is a hypothetical construction, and has the meaning (in my understanding of it), that “even if men who had the nobility of character of persons such as Noah, Daniel and Job were in that city
You’re not making any sense at all. It takes more effort to change the clear meaning of the statement quoted in scripture than to simply believe it. What proof do you have to say that indeed the statement was hypothetical? None. You pulled that from thin air.
If you mean to believe the Bible, then read it AND BELIEVE IT. Stop giving it your own meanings.
The few comments above this one remind me of an argument on YouTube I had with a feminist. She claims that there is nothing wrong with being a virgin, and then turns around, and calls me a potential shooter/killer because I am an anti-feminist and a virgin. She calls me a potential Dylan Roof, telling me that he was racist, and that I need help.
What am I racist to? Feminism?????? Since when did feminism become a race????
She then claims that I am a potential murderer, and brings up Elliot Rodger. I tell her that feminists have murdered millions of people through abortions. She says that is a a straw-man argument, tries to excuse it by saying other people have murdered them too, and says there are pro-life feminists too.
She contradicts herself. She says that the murder of babies in a womb is a straw-man argument, and then, claims that there are pro-life feminists. So if babies within a woman’s womb are life, how is bringing it up as murder a straw-man argument ????
Also, a pro-life feminist is an oxymoron. There is an article on Jezebel website, written by feminists, that says that.
Dave says:
October 30, 2015 at 7:04 am
[…]
You obviously are not married, […]
LOL! I see what you did there! (ツ)
@neguy, BradA,
“One other thing to keep in mind is that traditional Pentecostals are very different from Joyce Meyer and such.”
I agree, I identify Joyce Meyer as a Charismatic and not a Pentecostal. I also identify Paula White and Christine Caine as Charismatics.
I think most Charismatic churches are matriarchal in leadership, even when lead by a male pastor. Many Charismatic churches have co-pastors who are husband and wife. Lakewood Church lists Victoria Osteen as co-pastor with her husband Joel.
Another example is J. Lee Grady who was recently Editor of Charisma magazine. He now heads up the Mordecai projecth which seeks to empower women. His speeches, available on youtube, reveal that he is a raging feminist white knight.
http://www.themordecaiproject.org/welcome/
@Commentating
Welcome. I think it would come down to the nature of the counseling. If the counseling is teaching biblical* marriage (no divorce, headship, submission, etc) then it would be a blessing to your marriage. However, if it is teaching the Book of Oprah with a Christian dust jacket, it would be detrimental. From this perspective, if you can choose the counseling you could make it much more likely to receive good advice while still honoring your family’s request.
On a related note, Scott wrote about the Oprafied teaching he ran into during premarital counseling and how he responded at the time here: https://morallycontextualizedromanceblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/how-do-we-politely-challenge-church-leaders/
*If you are Catholic substitute official RCC doctrine where I refer to biblical teaching.
What is true is that services are run to appeal to a certain sort of sensibility, and it is not yours. The men in congregations put up with it.
I used to. Now not so much. Although I struggle b/c having my son in church is important. Actually, having my son in a worthwhile church is important, and that’s what I’m struggling to find.
And as I’ve mentioned before, not a new issue (look at :44 sec mark)
Remember, this was from a Christian college in 1948.
Christian families that are built on Scriptural foundations not only are not a priority of churchian corporations, but are anathema to them. Why this is so is one of modern life’s greatest mysteries. One explanation might be that the incorporated church sees the family in the same light that the government does: as competition for authority.
That is certainly a big part of it for many. Particularly in “conservative” churches where the Pastor feels a need to display spiritual authority and righteousness (ironically he’s called to do that in his own home, and often fails. Yes, I’m thinking of you Charles Stanley, among others).
I also propose that evangelical leaders are imitating the hypergamy of their female influcencers, and that weak families come to them for titillating counsel and direction…strong families not as much.
I also propose that evangelical leaders are imitating the hypergamy of their female influcencers, and that weak families come to them for titillating counsel and direction…strong families not as much.
Yep. The first part of the first quoted sentence is an extension of “the truth hurts – the contents of the collection plate” conundrum. The second sentence is true as well. One might also make the assertion that strong families avoid churches with pastors that grovel and supplicate to the FI, as a healthy person would avoid a quarantine area for fear of becoming infected oneself.
Dave, you argue for the primacy of the Scriptures and also argue for the primacy of your experience. Which is really foremost?
Bee,
Joyce Meyer may have challenges, but Paula White was very self-focused when I listed to her show very briefly years ago. “Paula White Today” is repeated many times in her interstitials. Way too much “look at me” than I could handle at the time.
Grady had a book about how women should not be excluded from things for quite some time. Somewhat ironic that he got his start under a campus ministry that was relatively male led. (That ministry had its own flaws, but then so do most college students today.)
Pastors seem extremely prone to “self-selection bias”. Not many people call their pastor when they have the best day of their life, after all.
I haven’t listened to Joel Osteen enough to know how much he includes he trumpets his wife.
I have found that several in the Calvary Chapel movement are starting to push their wives on their radio shows lately. They supposedly focus on verse-by-verse exposition (in most cases at least), yet seem to twist when needed. (Such as the mutual submission error in understanding the verses.)
That gets me to label it as more of a modern US phenomenon rather than anything else. We are all inherently creatures of the culture we live in, however much we may seek to be otherwise.
When someone finally bother to stop to figure out what killed Mainline Protestantism, and why Catholic priests say mass before a parish of 7 old ladies, the reason, whether they see it or not, is going to be because God and religion were replaced by left wing politics and the FI.
I happened to click over to Charles Spuregon’s wikipedia entry the other day. I think this quote should go along with Mistral’s point.
“Assuredly the New Theology can do no good towards God or man; it, has no adaptation for it. If it were preached for a thousand years by all the most earnest men of the school, it would never renew a soul, nor overcome pride in a single human heart.”
That would be in the 1880s. It took them about 40 more years to really take over the Mainline Churches. From there it’s been downhill since.
In at least one of Joel Osteen’s sermons on TV, he mentions (paraphrasing him) that when God allows something to be taken from you, he plans to give you something better. He included marriage in this. He said that when one goes through divorce, God wants to give you a better partner.
Hmmmm. I am sure the “Christian” feminists love to hear that.
commentating @ 12:21 am:
“My conventional Christian family insists that premarital counseling is “necessary.” What are your opinions on premarital counseling in general, and what are some things to look out for, good and bad? When did premarital counseling become a common thing anyway, and why?”
Modern premarital counseling makes me nervous because I see it as part of the Baby Boomers’ obsession with education and credentialism (which answers your second question). Ask your family why they think you need counseling. Is it because they see specific potential issues or is it only because “it’s the thing to do”?
I personally would not want to start my marriage by acting like I need professional help.
In Let Go of the Ashes, Joel Osteen writes:
@Gunner Q:
From where I sit, I can see two general reasons it’s suggested.
1) Most that go through a lot of it tend to break up. There can’t be removed the subtle tinge of “someone else will say ‘no’, hopefully” to it.
2) “Proper” teaching effect. I’d argue this started back in the early 1900s with the rise of the “Corporate” Church structure. But the instinct to have a Pastor/Priest “teach them correctly” pretty much goes back into recorded history.
But never discount the reality that actual communication within the family is, for most, so bad these days that this type of suggestion/requirement becomes “the thing to do” since no one can transmit information honestly. Further, discussing marriage with adult children requires either honesty about your own marriage or massive amounts of denial of reality. (I’d be tempted to phrase it as a lack of mastery of oneself, which is probably where a lot of this comes from.)
One last point:
The problem with the current relationship dynamics (the inversion effect on Sex & Marriage), is that leading up to a wedding, a family is trying to producing vetting among the couple AFTER the physical bonding aspect has (usually) started. Relationships are hard to break off after both parties are invested. It’s very easy to break off if the first date goes terribly.
Regarding marriage counseling: a lot of ministers will not marry a couple they have not counseled. So it has become the thing to do if you want to get married in a church, even if one or both is a member.
“And as I’ve mentioned before, not a new issue (look at :44 sec mark)”
It shows the entire family present. It does refer to ‘mother and her family’. I’m not sure this demonstrates your point.
My references were to the musical dreck favored in suburban Catholic parishes (with piano accompaniment). Interestingly, Episcopal Churches had fairly dignified hymnody as recently as 20 years ago (and perhaps still), their wretched aspects aside.
The trouble you get with preaching is less pronounced than you find with mainline protestantism but still there: no beginning, middle, end, or discernable point. I’ve known a priest who was a good preacher. He did not write his sermons and homilies de novo. He kept a file for each Sunday of the liturgical year and updated it accordingly from his readings of Church Fathers. All of his preaching was quite stereotyped, beginning with a historical note on the time and place of the Gospel passage in question and concluding with admonishments for the week. Concise and instructive, and self-effacing. Most unusual.
Wow.
I would have walked out. With all due respect to our Christians (and I DO respect them) – the best person to take care of your marriage and your wife is YOU. I’m wondering exactly what the author expected? If you even need a marriage counsellor…you probably need a new wife.
No one can dispute the superiority of classical marriage and Christian family values. Any counsellor, Christian or otherwise, that tries to undermine those values isn’t worth the time of day.
…because God and religion were replaced by left wing politics and the FI.
I think that just “politics,” period, will suffice here. Temporal politics at both ends of the ideological spectrum have had an extremely corrosive and toxic effect on the church.
@jbro:
The whole premarital counseling thing is, IME, far and away one of the most chaotic and inconsistent practices of the modern church. In fact, I’ve never even seen two churches within the same denomination practice it the same way; some churches in the same denomination don’t even practice it at all.
I can’t speak for Catholicism or Orthodoxy, never having practiced either one, but Protestant churches are all over the map on this. It almost seems to be something that’s left up to individual pastors to do or not do at their own descretion; if they feel the need to do it, fine. If not, they don’t.
There may be many reasons for why so many pastors or trusted lay leaders don’t do pre-marital counseling, but my hunch is that either 1) most don’t, for whatever reasons, feel qualified to dispense marital advice (bizarre, given that any pastor or lay teacher who knows his Bible should be able to point to the relevant sections dealing with the topic and explain/discuss them in detail); 2) the Bible’s marital advice runs counter to the FI, making it a minefield church leaders prefer to avoid wading in; or 3) marriage and formation of solid Christian families has for so long been a non-priority for most churches that pre-marital counseling naturally isn’t on anyone’s priority list either.
I strongly suspect that all three apply in most churches.
It shows the entire family present. It does refer to ‘mother and her family’. I’m not sure this demonstrates your point.
Pretty clear that it’s mother who wants to be in church, and everyone else just complies. Contrast where father is the next scene. The point is made loud and clear.
“Ray, He will never leave us nor forsake us. I don’t think He is going anywhere.”
You’re right, he won’t forsake you. Christ assigned him to humanity forever. Christ left, he filled in, however inadequately. He leaves, Christ returns. King Jeshua will have to, or nothing will be left.
Leaving is not forsaking. This spirit assuredly is going somewhere, and in an immediate sense will be ‘out of the way’. Not everything of import takes place here.
“For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only there is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way.” (2 Thess. 2)
Without the ‘terror I send before you’ (Exodus) the world’s powers are no longer afraid to impose the fullness of their agenda. Well they’re not afraid for awhile. The tribes have not yet come out of Egypt, or Babylon. The past was only prologue.
We are comforted that God used his servants to inform us of the future, thousands of years in advance. Also we are re-assured because ultimately, it is God who allows this spirit to be ‘taken out of the way’, just as it is God who temporarily permits global rebellion.
Our Father loves us, always, and his chosen Son looks after us, always. Go forward in confidence of them. I do.
@Dave
This is a bit of a red herring, and reminds me of Milton Friedman’s memorable comments on “why we don’t need to throw the bums out”:
In other words, what Christians need to do is make it politically profitable for the “wrong” pastors to do the “right” things. If and when there is sufficient anti-feminist momentum in the culture, we will mysteriously see many wrong pastors return to teaching the right things (even though most will deny having ever taught the wrong things in the first place).
This statement goes double for women, who are particularly prone to the herd mentality.
If and when there is sufficient anti-feminist momentum in the culture, we will mysteriously see many wrong pastors return to teaching the right things
So, you’re suggesting that preachers will begin to influence the society positively once the society has begun to move in a positive direction?
PuffyJacket, Dave feels that removing paid status will solve the ideological problem. Many of us don’t see that connection. It also disagrees with Paul’s discussion that those ministering the Gospel full time have a right to expect support from those they minister to.
Dave,
Pastors will change when society changes. Some will change anyway, but the big shift will only happen when society shifts, since pastors are as much a part of society as anyone else.
Imagine a pastor with a job that starts preaching harsh truths. What is to keep the SJW types from pressuring his employer to fire him for those views? That returns the same financial pressure you claim would vanish.
It takes a conviction and a strong personality, not a specific funding method.
Pretty clear that it’s mother who wants to be in church, and everyone else just complies. Contrast where father is the next scene. The point is made loud and clear.
It is? They’re all sitting in the pew impassively. The father in the next scene is playing golf. Golf is an amusing pastime. Worship is not.
Pastors will change when society changes. Some will change anyway, but the big shift will only happen when society shifts, since pastors are as much a part of society as anyone else.
Life is lived socially, but ‘society’ is not a true agent. Society is not changing. People interacting with each other are changing and we comprehend that by studying the society they make with each other.
That aside, your statement acts to discredit clergy in every age as a class of people. (Which they may deserve), as it suggests they generate and transmit nothing, merely reflect the world around them. Among other things, that tends to ignore evolution in the quality of the clergy from age to age. (Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ has identified the first six decades of the 20th century as an era of unusually high quality in the Catholic Church).
In other words, what Christians need to do is make it politically profitable for the “wrong” pastors to do the “right” things.
Your dealings with politicians are contingent and partial. What the faithful need to do is persuade the wrong pastors to be the right pastors or to defect to chess or slave-trading.
@Dave
So, you’re suggesting that preachers will begin to influence the society positively once the society has begun to move in a positive direction?
Yes (sarcasm aside). My point isn’t that pastors do not influence society, but that the vast majority of influence is in the other direction. The impact of any individual number of preachers on the culture pales in comparison to the tidal wave that was the Sexual Revolution.
@BradA
100% agree.
@Art Deco
What the faithful need to do is persuade the wrong pastors to be the right pastors or to defect to chess or slave-trading.
I’m not sure how this is materially different from what I’m saying. The “wrong” pastor who is incentivized to preach the “right” thing becomes the “right” pastor.
That aside, your statement acts to discredit clergy in every age as a class of people. (Which they may deserve), as it suggests they generate and transmit nothing, merely reflect the world around them.
My point isn’t that the clergy have no impact whatsoever. What I’m saying is that you are merely pointing at a few trees and missing the entire forest.
@Neguy
There are also pentocostals who claim orthodoxy and sound biblical teaching that have women in leadership(lol). I am hard pressed so far to find one with all-male leadership as per the scriptures and sound biblical teaching so far.
Plus there is alot of craziness concerning gibberish which they call tongues that is not the tongues of the scriptures.
I could only stand a couple of minutes of footage, it was too tough to watch. If a man decides to marry in this generation, he better have God’s favor when choosing a bride.
After speaking with some men at work this afternoon about red pill topics, I’ve come to 2 realizations:
1. Most men agree are sympathetic of most Red Pill ideas.
2. It’s already too late for most men to lead their family because the stakes of frivorce are too high for them to get the courage to make the attempt at change.
Young men: DO NOT marry or impregnate a woman you are not willing to be the property of, because you will be.
So, you’re suggesting that preachers will begin to influence the society positively once the society has begun to move in a positive direction?
In a perverse way, this sort of makes sense, as it has ALWAYS been the church that has followed the culture, at least in the modern era. In other words, exactly backwards from the way Jesus commanded (“salt of Earth,” “in the world, but not of it,” “a light unto the world,” and all of that). So when seen in that light it would stand to reason that churchian pastors (and their congregations) would be reactive rather than proactive.
@Art Deco,
Why did we end up with the mess of the 1960s and on if those were such high quality? Color me quite skeptical.
@infowarrior,
And you personally know this how? I know it as a manifestation of the promise that rivers of living water will flow out of my belly, that it is part of being baptized in the Holy Spirit (as directly noted or implied in the cases of that in the Book of Acts, etc. Hard to claim something different for those of us with experience with what the Scriptures say in this area.
@feeriker:
So when seen in that light it would stand to reason that churchian pastors (and their congregations) would be reactive rather than proactive.
This was what I was trying to imply in the question; thank you for putting it so succinctly. Preachers who tailor their preachings along the popular trend are not preaching for Christ at all. They are, in principle, “seeking the glory that comes from below, and not the glory that comes from above” (John 5:44), and are therefore motivated by “the spirit of the world” (1 Corinthians 2:12).
It is a lot easier to be reactive rather than proactive. In other words, when people blend in, they are at least safe for a while, unlike when they stick out like sore thumbs and get themselves easily marked for punishment.
But Scriptures called us all not to blend in, but to stick out like the proverbial “sore thumbs”, our preachers taking the lead, as the shepherd of the flock:
And be not conformed to this world… Romans 12:2
…That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;
Philippians 2:15
The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.
1 Peter 5:1-4
Preachers should present Christianity in such a way that no one will be in doubt that it is in stark contrast to the world. We don’t need hirelings who only care about their next meal taking the lead for us in the body of Christ.
I wish God was clearer about His real plan for marriage.
He confused the issue by saying men have headship and women must submit.
It took thousands of years and real hard work to tease out that He really didn’t mean what seems so clearly stated in multiple books of the Bible.
Now that we’ve figured out black is white, we can get to work on that pesky abortion=murder thing. I’m sure God didn’t really mean it. Or, as someone infamously asked, “What did God really say?”
==========================
That’s an amazing wordplay the enemy pulled in the garden.
Did God actually say…
Did God really say, “wives, submit to your husbands?”
Well, yes. But when someone uses that phrasing, it’s mean to cloud your intellect by making you doubt clear meaning of words.
Thus, you have all this “Headship” actually means…some wordplay not really meaning headship’s clear meaning. Submission in some clever wordplay to get to a definition other than the clear meaning of huptasso.
I understand drilling down beyond English translations so we can recognize, for example, the different meanings of “love” (agape, eros, phillos, etc), but that’s not what the enemy intended. He intended to make the clear…cloudy. Open to interpretation. Secret meanings…
Not much more I can say about premarital counseling. I have done a little–mostly when I was an intern nouthetic counselor.
Several have pointed out that one common troupe is that couples who go through it are less likely to divorce, and this is true. Its the primary reason the Catholic church usually cites for requiring “marriage encounter” groups before marriage + individual counseling.
But is not likely that premarital counseling adds a magic ingredient to marital success that was unknown before the advent of self-help everything and therapy.
My guess is it introduces an unaccounted for confound that is best described as “people who go to marriage counseling are likely to be the kind of people who are going to try really hard anyway.”
Even if the advice they get there is horrible and unbiblical.
I’m not sure how this is materially different from what I’m saying. The “wrong” pastor who is incentivized to preach the “right” thing becomes the “right” pastor.
I dunno. Somehow, I think honest men are better than poseurs. I can put up with poseur politicians as long as they’re not injuring the commonweal. Poseur clergy, no.
Why did we end up with the mess of the 1960s and on if those were such high quality? Color me quite skeptical.
Because Catholic parish clergy are not the only vector influencing culture or social relations, and the better clergy were seriously demoralized by what was going on around them.
“Why did we end up with the mess of the 1960s and on if those were such high quality? Color me quite skeptical.”
Different generations have different gifts and achieve different things. The sacred work of the first part of the century came to fruition in the secular achievements of the latter. That fruit now rots, enriching the soil for new seeds to take spiritual root.
I believe Dal’s ministry to be an early shoot. Keep an eye out for others in need of your protection from those who would rip them up by the roots.
“In a perverse way, this sort of makes sense, as it has ALWAYS been the church that has followed the culture, at least in the modern era.”
No, not the True Church. Be not deceived. There were many good men, full of the Spirit, who did great work mid-century to heal the damage done by the early modern. We forget just how bad that low, dishonest decade of the 1930s was.
These bad days too shall pass. Keep an eye out in your communities for men like Dalrock. Honor them and the culture will follow. No one of any account is satisfied with the culture as it now is.
Good to see you back, Art Deco.
Des,
I was commenting on the idea that 1900-1960 was a really good time in the RC church. It certainly doesn’t seem that way from my view.
“I was commenting on the idea that 1900-1960 was a really good time in the RC church. It certainly doesn’t seem that way from my view.”
Given the evil they had to contend with in that period, it is remarkable they survived at all.
@Scott6584
>For a while now, I have been frustrated with the whole direction of Men’s Ministry in the church which seems to be more about being a “good” father and husband (good being a very subjective term) instead of about finding God’s plan for your life, then embarking on the journey to fulfill your destiny in Christ – of which being a father and husband is important, but secondary to the overall purpose for your creation as a man.
1 cor 7:17-35: Your plan is to live for God, whatever your situation. Being married is worse (see the passage), but you can serve as either married or unmarried, slave or free.
Matt 28:18-20: Your mission is to make disciples of all nations. This is not the same as, “everyone is to be a missionary”. Some will lead the initial converts to Christ, while others will water the new plant to growth and maturity (1 Cor 3:5-8). The goal is disciples from all nations: Where can you serve God in this goal, right now?
My mission will not be the same as yours, so stop comparing or feeling inadequate ’cause I look better than you do. Rom 12:3-8, 1 Pet 4:10-11.
My mission, my highest priorities, the highest commands from God are, in this order:
1) Love God with whole heart, soul and mind
2) Love others as you love yourself.
Matt 22:34-34. Note that #2 is subordinate to #1. Note also that #2 does not say: Love others, and treat yourself like you are worthless. But rather, “as you love yourself”. So if someone tells you that you must marry a certain woman who has refused to make herself worthy of marriage, ask if this shows love or hatred to yourself. And if hatred, does it make sense to think that this is how your should treat others? If not, then refuse to accept that you “must” treat yourself this way. Note that being compelled is different than choosing to freely give something (2 Cor 9:6-11). I think giving something freely should be a repeated, continuing series of one-time events however. Some pastor demanding that you give a life-time commitment, or even a 10-year commitment, to a marriage or a ministry is, in my view, unbiblical.
feministhater
And then women wonder why Churches sit empty of men. Oh, my heart bleeds that these perfect women can’t find men to marry, oh it does!
What makes you think these women actually want husbands? In the churches where I was, I noticed only three *Possible* indications of interest toward me. And yes, the women may pipe up and suggest that this is because I suck. Well, I suppose that is possible. I have only my own life experiences, so those are the ones from which I draw.
Dave said:
>These “perfect” women are more pain than pleasure to be with, so the men kept away, for their own protection.
+1
A “Christian” woman, who genuinely will submit to Scripture, will have no problem attracting marital attention. Assuming she has not squandered her youth and prime fertile years. Unfortunately, asking a woman to stop wearing men’s clothing, to stop cutting her hair shorter than a “long” length*, to be self-controlled, to be silent and loving is apparently unacceptable. Too bad these people do not have a Bible they could read…
* 1 Cor 11 does not actually quantify how long is “long”, other than being long enough to “be her glory”.
BradA said:
>[…] stresses the overarching reliability of the Word of God, the Scriptures. Many today have strayed more into feelings
This is so important. Perhaps a year ago Dalrock had a post discussing the differences in how people view “truth”. Many, primarily men, view truth as based on external facts or on God.
Many others, primarily women, view truth as subjective, based upon their own internal, changing feelings.
>I would ask those who believe Adam played no role in Eve’s sin how she could give the fruit to the man “with her” if he wasn’t “with her”?
Just to muddy up the waters further, here is my opinion. 🙂
Eve did NOT sin. JDG or GunnerQ (I think?) pointed out that the Scriptures show that without Law, there is no sin that counted against you. (Romans 4:15 and Romans 5:13)
My OPINION is that God gave a command to Adam. And only to Adam. There is no record of God speaking to Eve on this topic.
Adam then, as a good husband, repeated the warning to Eve, as he failed to understand that the command was only given to him. Adam even went further, also as a husband with good intentions, and told Eve to not even touch the tree. He wanted to keep her away from harm.
You will note that, when speaking to the serpent, Eve incorrectly says that God said not to touch the tree. Did she lie? Or perhaps, if my suspicion above is correct, she simply failed to understand that Adam’s instruction to her was half from God, and half an addition from her loving husband.
So, since only Adam was commanded, only Adam showed disobedience. Thus only Adam sinned.
Evidence? The Scriptures that say, Just as sin entered the world through one man (Adam) … so life entered by one man (Jesus) (Rom 5:12-21).
The above is part of my understanding of imputed unrighteousness and imputed righteousness. We are in sin because we are represented by Adam — his unrighteousness is imputed to us. And some of us then have salvation, after accepting Jesus as Lord/master/king (Rom 10:1-13) because we are then represented by Jesus — his righteousness is imputed to us.
@HayeksGhost
>For all intents and purposes unless I can find a spouse from overseas. I’m done.
As some have pointed out recently, having a foreign bride is no guarantee. However, according to the US government, only 20% of marriages with a foreign bride lead to divorce, while 50% with a local bride do.
If you do not have debts, GO! Once you become a slave to debt, you cannot put your life on hold for 3 months while you seek to find a bride in another land.
Gee, if only God had warned us to not become borrowers of money………
@YAC and BradA
>The basic paradox is this: God is omnipotent, but
>respects our Free Will — God could crush out our Free Will
>You are full of bunk though. God doesn’t want sin and death
Just to be difficult, I think you are both full of bunk 🙂
a) YAC is correct that God respects our free will. How else to explain 2 Peter 3:8-9, which shows that God wants something BUT DOES NOT GET IT?
8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
We know that not everyone comes to repentance, per Matt 7:13-14:
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
… and yet God wants repentance for all. Only explanation is that God allows what he does not want. This does not mean that God causes sin (James 1:13-15), just that God, within limits, allows it.
The limits of the evil that God allows are shown in Job chapter 1. So on that point, YAC’s claim that Job must not historical is bunk.
There. De-bunked 🙂 🙂 🙂
Okay, and I see Dave beat me to it, and with the same passages, although not the references, so I’ll post this anyway. Kudos to Dave however 🙂
@commentating
re good premarital counseling: I would demand that the “counselor”:
A) give a set of references for you to read from the Bible. The reference only should be given; if he attempts to give his “summary” or “explanation”, cover your ears and be obvious that you will not listen to his words. If he wants to know why, give him this list of references: Isaiah 55:7-9, Proverbs 16:25, Proverbs 3:5-7, 1 Cor 1:18-25 (in particular verse 25), 1 Cor 3:18-20, Matt 23, Matt 15:1-9.
B) After giving his list of references that he thinks will help you understand God’s plan for marriage, demand he shut up. Feel free to word it more PC if you feel appropriate. The point is that he should not be polluting and degrading God’s wisdom by trying to add his own. (1 Cor 1:25 again). If you both (husband and wife) do things God’s way, that would be best. (Prov 16:25 again, plus all the others above.)
If Dalrock allows (and tells me how), I can post an exercise I gave to a group at church. It asks you to come up with answers of your own for questions about what you think (or have been taught) is important in marriage, then asks you to read a dozen passages of Scripture, with you then challenged to prove, from the Scriptures, whether your various answers are shown to be true or false by God. I think that is the best counseling you can receive.
Of course, of the 10 or so “Christian” women to whom I gave the exercise, I am aware of only one (partly) doing the exercise. Disappointing, although not surprising.
Gunner Q said, “I personally would not want to start my marriage by acting like I need professional help.” I would agree with that. Going through Scriptures, with an eye to seeing what pre-existing views the groom and bride each have that are found to be in Scripture and found to have no basis in Scripture would be VERY beneficial however.
And I think Scott’s statement at October 31, 2015 at 7:23 am is important.
Dave said:
>As long as the preacher is financially dependent on the listeners, the preachers cannot dispense the truth.
I fail to understand why this idea of “vested interested” is so difficult to understand. People respond that Paul said that those who work for the gospel should make their living from it. Which is true. What is ALSO true, is that the same guy that the Holy Spirit inspired to write those words, also was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write that he (Paul) gave the example of working, even while in ministry (2 Thes 3:10-12) and did not take anything! I figure that pastors-for-pay should only be able to do so 50% of the time. As in, follow both. Both accept pay for ministry work, and refuse to be paid for being religious. Maybe 3 months paid, 3 months self-supporting as Paul modeled.
A man who gets paid only half the time is more likely to be the kind of minister described in 1 Pet 5:1-4. Plus, as someone mentioned up-thread, he would be forced to allow others to also lead/serve, instead of having a desire for all the power for himself (1 Pet 5:1-4 again).
These church folk have poor reading skills. After eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is not an apple, that word is not in the Bible, the apple is native to Europe. God punished Adam and Eve. Eve would have children with painful labors, and she would hold that against Adam. Adam and men will crush their heads (make them lose control), and Eve and women will strike their heels (as in hitting a weak spot).
People respond that Paul said that those who work for the gospel should make their living from it. Which is true. What is ALSO true, is that the same guy that the Holy Spirit inspired to write those words, also was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write that he (Paul) gave the example of working, even while in ministry (2 Thes 3:10-12) and did not take anything!
The fact that all of the disciples and early apostles –and Jesus Himself– also had a trade or profession in which they were experienced or qualified should also be duly noted.
Is it better to stay in a loveless marriage for the sake of your children? (…)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=985520
Men threatened by smarter women? Really?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=985549
> Adam and men will crush their heads (make them lose control), and Eve and women will strike their heels (as in hitting a weak spot).
LOLwut. That passage is directed to the Serpent, and it’s entirely literal: Serpents will attack people by biting them, and humans will kill serpents by striking their heads off in return.
@Dale:
Just to muddy up the waters further, here is my opinion. 🙂
Eve did NOT sin…..
You really did muddle up the waters!
Eve sinned, and you proved it. Scriptures did as well:
1. Even if we were to assume that God never directly commanded Eve to abstain from eating from the forbidden tree (your claim), her husband instructed her not to (again, your claim); by her disobedience to her husband, she sinned. This is similar in principle to Paul’s admonition to be “obedient to magistrates”, etc, because they carry God’s delegated authority.
2. God clearly punished Eve for her sin, even before He punished Adam. This is not in dispute. The Judge of all the earth cannot be unjust in punishing the innocent.
3. Apostle Paul said “the woman, being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Timothy 2:14). According to the dictionary, “transgression” means “an act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense”. We must therefore ask: whose law did Eve break? It could not have been her husband’s law, to incur such a harsh punishment. Moreover, Eve readily admitted that she violated God’s law when confronted by God.
We must therefore conclude that Eve sinned. She not only disobeyed God’s direct order, she became a temptress to her husband.
Hi Dalrock, thanks for your post. I just got done dealing with a woman on an IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist) forum I administer on Facebook who was peddling this Life Way International line through and through. I eventually just kicked her out of the group, since I’m not big on trying to “reason” with SJWs (which is what this brand of feminism is trying to introduce into Christian circles).
Came across an interesting book that sheds light from a cultural and political historical points how dastardly forces have been working to break down all we value. Paul Kengor’s new book “Takedown,” From Communist to Progressives, how the Left Has Sabotaged Marriage and The Family.
I haven’t purchased the book yet, but I’ve been listening to him on CSPAN BOOKTV while I clean. Going to order it latter today.
@practicallyperfect2: And odds are, he’ll spend the whole book without naming the people actually responsible: the Synagogue of Satan.
Is it better to stay in a loveless marriage for the sake of your children?
If your marriage is loveless then it’s past time to obey the Lord and start loving your spouse.
Titus 2:3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
Men threatened by smarter women? Really?
Turned off by “smarter” women more likely.
Dalrock –
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the UK website Mumsnet?
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/2498353-So-what-are-the-chances-of-meeting-a-life-partner-at-45?pg=1&order=
The above thread is a common theme.
Dale,
Jesus stated that He always did the will of the Father. He also said
I think I will go with His words over yours. Nice clear dividing line he gave us. Though if you want to apply Job, note that Job ended up with twice what he started with in a very short time. Not the outcome most trumpet. (People also mistakenly claim God gave Satan the right to attack Job. That is not true based on what is written, only based on our traditions. Nothing says God gave any permission. God merely noted what was true, with additional constraints God placed on the situation. Job was only held responsible for what he knew, and thus did not sin in his words (at the start at least, God chastised him later) because of that.
Knowing the entirety of the Scriptures is necessary. And realizing God has let us live in a sinful world (for a time) with some things not working out exactly as we said.
You make my point for me. How am I wrong?
You do take Paul out of context later in your post. He specifically notes that a “worker is worthy of his hire” and does not state the 50% principle you pulled out of thin air. Two situations do not mean one is 1/2 the time and the other is 1/2 the time. Different circumstances lead to different situations, not some overarching principle being made up here.
I already noted how a preacher working a “real job” (your and Dave’s claim) all or part time would still be subject to the same pressures. You have not addressed that at all. Somehow work magically makes and keeps him doctrinally pure?
feeriker,
And that proves exactly what? Jesus had to support Himself for a good chunk of 30 years before His public ministry. Of course He had skills. We find no reference to Him doing carpenter work after the time He started His public ministry, so your point is not supported.
=====
On Eve sinning: She touched the tree when she thought that was prohibited. That would be the sin right there as she was going against what she thought God’s command was. It was all downhill from there. I do agree that the consequences of sin are not as clear prior to the Law, per the Scriptures, but consequences still existed.
@PP2:
Paul Kengor’s new book “Takedown,” From Communist to Progressives, how the Left Has Sabotaged Marriage and The Family.
If Kengor thinks that it’s only the Left that has been working on sabotaging marriage and the family, then he’s starting from a flawed premise that brings the rest of the book into question. The Right has been an avid and equal partner with the Left in destroying godly institutions, both willfully and, far more often, through their craven and cowardly refusal to push back on the Left’s destructive insanity. There is equal blame to dole out for all sides in this travesty.
I Don’t Support Feminism If It Means Murdering All Men
http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/i-dont-support-feminism-if-it-means-murdering-all–37301
I Don’t Support Feminism If It Means Murdering All Men
There is a female feminist blogger out there that suggested in her writings the elimination of 90% of the male population. She doesn’t want to murder all men either.
But only the unattractive ones!
@Dave
>You really did muddle up the waters!
>Eve sinned…
Yeah, I was thinking about this today. The passages in Romans re there being no sin without law indicate that Eve was, in fact, given law (or a command). It still is confusing to me why she understood the command wrong however. (She thought she was not allowed to touch it.) So I still suspect Adam was involved in re-telling the information, somehow, with some miscommunication along the way.
>The Judge of all the earth cannot be unjust in punishing the innocent.
Yes; you are correct. (Since men are supposedly incapable of admitting to being wrong, I won’t word it the other way hah hah.)
@BradA
> Somehow work magically makes and keeps him doctrinally pure?
Yes and no.
No, a second job is not magic.
It does however, allow and force a few things, which have been mentioned before.
1) He has outside financial support. As others are fond of saying, he also “has opportunities”. As a result, he will be more free to tell you, “Too bad, you are wrong because the Bible says ….”. He will not feel such a need to kiss up to the members (i.e. donors) of the group. He will hopefully have much less fear for his livelihood.
2) He is forced to share leadership, since he cannot do it all himself. If he is a control-freak, he won’t take kindly to being told to leave for a few months while Johnny replacement takes his turn in the pulpit and in leadership. I.e. 1 Pet 5:1-4, which I mentioned before.
3) Working outside means he has a boss (likely). Thus he has to submit to someone else, and suffer not being top dog for awhile. Again, the control-freak won’t like it. And the guy headed into sin that way will have the opportunity to be humbled, thus becoming a better servant.
And the 50-50 was just a suggestion. No hard-and-fast rule intented. Yes, each situation is different. My point is that we should accept all of Scripture on a topic, rather than taking just the ones I like. As pointed out above, all the apostles had another profession. “Doctor of religious studies” does not seem to be their trade.
> You have not addressed that at all.
See above.
Most/all people who work several years in academia develop ivory-tower syndrome. Why are some surprised that religious professionals are susceptible to the same?
Safe to stop being a man?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=985566
Ok, so this is how it is? Catering to a shrew and her continuously evolving shifting sands of “feeeeeelings”? This is how it is for western-style feminists, perhaps. They’ll embrace this dogma for sure. I’m sticking to my Brazilian girl, who knows nothing of any of this. Women wonder why they can’t get their boyfriends to “commit” and subject themselves to all this? The advice columns are full of this stuff, it’s their purpose explaining why the men are bad, the women good. A smart man realizes he’s trapped the minute he says “I do”. And so they don’t, Is it any wonder? The philosophy put forth by these nut cakes is a road map to hell for a married man in the Christian life. Any woman that embraces this stuff needs to remain alone and especially, childless.
Dale,
Paul noted that it was his right to expect payment for being the minister. That undermines your entire argument. He did not out of choice, not out of some generic obligation.
You did not address the pressure for him speaking the wrong things that could be brought on his employer. Saying “see above” doesn’t address that case.
My point would be that anyone is subject to pressure to say the right thing, especially in today’s society. Changing the source of the money does not fix that.
Few pastors do it all now as well, and those who do because they want to do so have control issues that no job situation will fix. Remember that volunteers are required for your “let others step up” idea. Getting people to step up is harder than you realize. Even having such a need would not enforce it. A church would be more likely to go out of existence in many cases.
I am curious how long you have been an adult Christian and seeing leadership issues in churches? Are you just acting based on one or two bad experiences you had or read others having?
Dalrock, have you ever read the book Boy Meets Girl (published 2000 and 2005) by Joshua Harris? I did, and I give it 2 out of 5 stars. I agree with the book that one should be as sexually pure for their spouse as possible. However, there is a lot of garbage in the book that ruins it. To summarize it one sentence: It is bad luck (or sin) to see the bride before the wedding, but divorce and remarriage is excusable. In fact, I have read on Amazon reviews that the new edition of this book omits at least two of his poster couples in the original publication that are now divorced.
Here is a funny, and familiar for most of us, story from Chapter 4. David and Claire are good friends who have known each other for some time. However, when David proposed to her parents and to Claire about pursuing a courting/relationship with her. When Claire learned of David’s desire for her, Claire broke into tears of shock and upset. Quote: “Claire was upset. Throwing herself down on the couch, she pounded the arm with both fists and yelled hysterically, “No! No! No! He’s messing everything up! I’ve never thought of him like that. I’m not interested in him! Oh, he’s messing it up!” (End Quote) Claire liked another guy named Neil, who liked her back too. It also says that Claire imagined herself married to different guys, but never to David. After finally admitting to David that she did not like him, healing their friendship, David was confused. David had a good job, he felt mature enough, emotionally and spiritually, and the people around him thought he was ready. David talks to his pastor. The pastor accuses David of making marriage an idol, becoming bitter and angry of Claire’s lack of interest, and putting marriage before God. Claire’s relationship with Neil lasted for about 2 years, but suddenly broke off. The author gives no explanation for it. The author just says God was bringing Claire’s relationship to an end. A few months later, after her break up with Neil, Claire finds herself attracted to David, and soon they get together. Quote: “She began to notice his servant’s heart, his humility, and his leadership…Before it had always been , here’s the guy I want, but this time I thought, “Here’s a man I could follow.
I notice Joshua Harris shares much of a feminist perspective, and that women are holy angels that can do no wrong. If they do wrong, a man had something to do with it. He says men have a lot to learn about communication with their woman. He also says, quote: “We men should assume the responsibility of initiating meaningful communications in our relationships. Don’t just plan activities; plan conversations.” (End quote) He has a chapter titled: “If boys would be men, would girls be ladies?” To quote Harris: “In our chauvinistic culture, in which women are often belittled and abused, this fact needs to be clearly stated. God made women totally equal to men in personhood, dignity, and worth. They are no less important or valuable to God.” He also says to thank women when they allow you to lead them.
He also says something of Don’t give up on us. We need your support. We need your prayers. I know so many men has abused their Biblical roles.
On a side note, Harris mentions a couple that had been married for 40 years that never really had any conflicts. The widow says, “I used to boast to friends about how well my husband and I got along, but now I see that part of the reason we got along was because we never fought- and the reason we never fought was because we never really talked.” Harris says, our goal should not be to avoid conflict, but to learn to walk through it and resolve it in a way that honors God.
I don’t understand Harris on this. The couple stayed married till death for 40 years…is there something wrong with this. Isn’t this what God wants? What am I missing here? It almost seems as if Harris can’t stand marriages that have little to no conflict.
I’ll post more from the book later.
Those who tear Harris apart never details the wonderful existing system (dating) he was trying to replace.
A courtship/arranged marriage situation is very hard to enforce in today’s society. Any marriage is hard to maintain in today’s society for that matter, and that is the core problem.
My wife and I are both convinced that God arranged our marriage, but it had many of the red flags that can be seen in these forums (she was older than I and closer to 30 that was ideal among other things).
It is far easier to tear something down than to build up a positive alternative. I would still argue that submission to a positive father would be far better than the alternatives, but I don’t see it being maintained today in most communities.
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Dale,
I was in a home church for over a year. Your theory is sound, but in reality it comes out flawed due to the fact that we as humans are fallible and when you have women in authority over their husband it does nothing to alleviate the obvious
@Dalrock
In past articles you have mentioned that you expected some sort of rolling back of the worst legal abuses family courts inflict upon men.
All this article confirms for me is that there will be NO rolling back of the worst abuses of our legal system perpetrates upon men.
Men who had the misfortune to marry a rebellious woman; or perhaps just the ‘misfortune to marry’.
None, nada, zilch.
I simply see no compelling evidence that any of this will get anything other than worse for the average male.
BradA:
>I am curious how long you have been an adult Christian and seeing leadership issues in churches?
Actually, your focus on my adult life is short-sighted 🙂 In my childhood, the church my family went to for … maybe 6 year?… had strong leadership. At least visibly on Sunday morning.
The elders were, at least on Sunday, expected to live out obedience to Titus 1:5-9. Perhaps that was not a stated demand, but I nevertheless saw it lived out, at least to my young eyes. Men lived self-controlled; there was no (visible) drunkenness or obesity. They wore men’s clothing if on stage. There was respect shown to the pastor.
Women similarly wore women’s clothing on stage, not pants. They were not permitted to be elders.
The elders served communion, which I think was a good way to show a servant attitude (1 Pet 3).
At least in my little world, children were expected to obey they parents. I did not hear any messages suggesting a woman should be free to do any role, or be in authority in her home.
Excluding my current church, which is non-Engish, in my adult life I have seen:
– obese pastors (See self-control in Titus 1:5-9)
– pastors or elders who either have no control over their family (see Titus 1), or who themselves refuse to accept that any Scriptural commands apply to his darling wife or children and thus he fails to train them (cross-dressing, placing female desires over Scripture such as divorce, obesity, etc.)
– pastors or elders who speak about their wife training him, just as this post addressed. Certainly, a wise man is willing to take advice (Prov 13:10). But kissing the ass of your wife by suggesting she is more spiritual than he, and that he needs training from her, or permission from her, goes against passages such as Col 3:18-21, 1 Tim 2, Eph 5, etc.
– blunt willingness to address actual and made-up sins in men’s lives, but for women either “non-judgmental” groups focused on healing of her emotional wounds (e.g. post-abortion) or a deliberate choice to ignore their open sin.
As for your suggestion that it is hard to get volunteers:
a) I have not been to your church, so cannot comment for you.
b) Yes, many pastors have trouble finding men.
c) And b is because they refuse to accept the men in front of them. Last English church I went to had a group of men, training to be pastors. The paid, professional pastor told me that none of them were appropriate to serve. Sorry I cannot remember the exact wording, but it was basically that. I am not exaggerating. I wish I had thought to ask him “why?” Are none of the men acceptable because you refuse to accept any of them due to your own pride? Or because you are such a poor, worthless teacher, that even after a year of training with you, they still are not appropriate?
I really cannot see how a group of guys can still all be worthless after a year of training and opportunities. But I was not in the group, so maybe the pastor could claim he really did have the bottom of the barrel. Funny that Jesus did not seem to have problems, assuming the person had the right attitudes. He even had a tax collector! hah hah
@gargoylevirgin01,
I am familiar with the Courtship movement which Joshua Harris advocates. I was an active member of a courtship church from age 20 to mid 30’s. The courtship movement encourages delayed marriage which I no longer agree with. I think it is a bug, not a feature. I think courtship and early marriage can be mixed together. But, when you have pastors that think no one can get married until they are “spiritually mature” and no longer “worshipping marriage” that encourages long delays.
I agree with BradA that dating without parental input is not a better system.
I met my wife and courted her at the courtship church. We were in our late 30’s when we got married, first marriage for both of us. I now think young marriage is a much better idea than years of waiting. It is hard to have more than one or two kids when you wait as long as we did. Also better to have frequent sexual release in marriage instead of years of self control.
Courtship encourages pedestalization – you spend years waiting for the perfect time and the perfect one.
Here is a good essay on early marriage:
http://truelovedoesntwait.com/the-path-to-marriage/young-marriage/true-love-doesnt-wait/
http://truelovedoesntwait.com/the-path-to-marriage/young-marriage/i-will-the-younger-women-marry/
Dalrock had a post about purity balls for Dads and daughter and how that discourages young marriage.
Dale,
So you base your views on a church with an insecure pastor? Not a good sample size.
It does also clarify that God’s Word is not foremost for you, but rather the traditions of men. I cannot find anything that indicates Jesus wore a pants. “Men’s clothing” is a very cultural term, as is “women’s clothing” for that matter. I can see no Scriptural support for the argument that women are not allowed to wear jeans, as one example.
This does not mean that some clothes may not have some merit, but elevating them to the level of Scripture is in error.
I am still looking for your explanation of how a pastor would be safe from having his day job targeted based on what he says from the pulpit. Lots of human reasons, but nothing covering how you magical situation is so much better than what is Written.
JDG
There is a female feminist blogger out there that suggested in her writings the elimination of 90% of the male population. She doesn’t want to murder all men either.
Radical feminist Mary Daly has her followers, to be sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly
“Culling” 90% of the men would be counterproductive, because women tend to find a full 20% of men attractive (80:20) rule. However, as we see in the feminized K-12 and university systems, it isn’t necessary to kill men when betaizing them enough that they become invisible to women will suffice. Besides, for AF-BB or AF-BC to work, there must be sufficient betas to catch women as they step off of the carousel.
You assume rational thought AR!
Dalrock had a post about purity balls for Dads and daughter and how that discourages young marriage.
More discouraging would be the high attrition rates of couples who marry young. The prospective attrition rate is inversely associated with the age at first marriage (though I believe I’ve seen contentions that the marginal improvement in attrition rates dissipates entirely past a certain point and that delay past age 25 does not benefit marital durability; the CDC data I’ve been looking at just separates brides into three categories (under 20, 20-24.9, 25.0+, so cannot say from that).
@AR
A society where all beta men have been culled would last all of 5 minutes, at best.
The present-day system of beta slavitude and forced subsidization is actually the far preferable scenario for feminists, even if they are too dumb to comprehend this.
@Bee, I loved those essays on young women marrying. Wow! I really enjoyed them. “True love doesn’t wait. It gets married.” Amen!!!!
All of the women that were serious about getting married that I knew, have gotten married by now, even ones who were overweight or had minor disabilities found husbands to suit them. But then I have many friends that just kept waiting for the perfect man who was usually some dream imagination in their heads. They are getting into their 30’s now, and not really happy… realizing there are far less available men than there were in their 20’s. It’s sad, but a lot of it has to do with them either not being serious enough about getting married young, or that they are still holding out for someone that doesn’t exist.
But those courtship books by Josh Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl) really did do I think more damage than actually help people.
@Dragonfly:
Foolishness does that. So it’s not surprising.
Off Topic:
In keeping with good blog decorum, I don’t want to derail the current thread, so I’m posting this here, on a dead one. I think some of you guys might enjoy this story. True or not, I don’t know.
https://v5k2c2.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/cuck-life/
It seems even the “beta bucks” nice guys are increasingly getting sick of their role as doormats. Good for them.
Regards,
Boxer
Brad, you appear to be bipolar or something.
>This does not mean that some clothes may not have some merit, but elevating them to the level of Scripture is in error.
This indicates you think the view of certain clothes being inappropriate is not in Scripture.
>“Men’s clothing” is a very cultural term, as is “women’s clothing” for that matter.
This indicates you know of Deut 22:5, showing you do know it is in Scripture.
Try to be consistent. Changing from one sentence to the next is classic for weak-minded people, or those knowingly being deceitful.
Yes, what is appropriate in each culture changes. But the principle, and command, remain. If a person asks, “What can I wear as a man, that no woman would wear?”, there are self-evident answers. Unless the person is stupid or stubborn. Same for a woman.
Similarly your question about Jesus wearing 21st century clothing is ridiculous. He would have worn what was appropriate for men to wear in that culture. I neither know nor care what the styles from 2000 years ago were, but am sure there were differences, otherwise it would have been impossible for people to obey God, which is not possible (1 Cor 10:12-13).
I think you are currently unwilling to display the requirements to be in this discussion. So I will leave to field to you.
Dragonfly,
What exact damage did they do that the modern dating system had not already wrought? I would bet that every one of early courting marriages ended because those involved went the way of the world and not God’s way. Nothing will keep someone who does that pure, even after marriage.
@Dragonfly
I read one of those articles also, and it got me thinking even more.
I think it is too late for me to get a wife. In fact, I think it was too late for me back in high school. I remember that was told also by students back in high school that if I waited till college to get a girlfriend, get laid, etc., it would be too late. They said all the girls would already be taken. Ironically, there was some truth to what they were saying, based on what I have studied in the dating market these past few years.
I was also discouraged from getting girlfriend/wife back in high school because I came from a broken family. My parents divorced right before I entered high school. I am sure you can imagine the intense fighting between the parents before and after the divorce. During the high school years, I had to put up with the post-divorce fighting, along with shaming and scolding from teachers as I mentioned before on this blog. Not to mention I had a physically sick dad and two mentally sick (autism spectrum disorders) siblings. (Don’t want to go into too much detail.)
In college, I felt sick to my stomach for at least during freshman year. I felt outcast, rejected, and drained by that high school, my parents, and so on. I had suicidal thoughts. I did a good job covering it up usually putting a smile on my face and other things. The only behavior I did, that I am aware of, was not showering for a few days. I thought there was no point to.
Here is an interesting story during college freshman year. I had two roommates who were partied a lot, at least once every two weeks. They would bring girls over from inside and outside of the dorm. In fact, they would bring alcohol despite being underage. One time, during a party, a girl who was drinking, not sure how much, claimed that she wanted to get in bed with me. I turned it down, thinking she was playing some of the bs mind games that girls would play with me in high school. I knew I was ugly from having an unhealthy body mass index. If I remember correctly, this girl was at least average looking if not higher, though a below average looking woman would probably be playing the same game with me. I said No. I felt really sick, not to mention my body stunk a little. She seemed shocked but didn’t seem to feel rejected. She responds: “Don’t worry. No one is going to touch you!”
As I mentioned before on this blog, as the college years passed, I began to feel better about myself, lost some weight, you get the point.
I am going to be 27 in a few months, and I think it is too late for me. I refuse to settle for a used up single mother who is only looking for a beta provider.
Oh my Gargolyevirgin01, I’m so deeply sorry.
Reading your comment about what you went through with your family and in high school actually made me feel like crying. I’m so sorry.
It’s not too late for you at all. Don’t ever think that. If you stay around in these parts of the internet, you’ll see that most of the bloggers agree that men actually shouldn’t get married until they’re at least 30. This is due to a variety of factors, but a lot of it comes down to maximizing your own potential before having it derailed by taking on a wife before you’re ready financially or even emotionally. It’s harder for you to stay “in frame” if you aren’t even confident enough in your own self and accomplishments to HAVE a frame that a woman (wife) will enter. I’m not the right person to ask about this, maybe another male commenter will guide you here, but since I have a younger brother about your age that I’ve watched my husband mentor (and apply Rollo’s teachings), your “goal” right now should be self-improvement, self-focus on doing what YOU want to do for God and in your life. You come first in your life, not finding a wife.
You’re only 27, and just coming out of something horrible that you had no control over. Start reading Rollo’s series on Preventive Medicine, begin on the journey of understanding what happened to you, accepting it, but also being inspired to not be defined by it. You are so much more than the labels that you believe you deserve.
Oh! just read you’re only 26 right now… so right at almost my brother’s age. You have so much time, and again, you’re just coming out of something traumatic and JUST being able to make sense of it. You’re actually about to embark on a journey of rebuilding who you are – who God wants you to be.
gargoylevrigin01
I read your comment man. 27 is not too late at all. Stay hard man just go to the gym pump iron and get your finances in order and find some good hobbies. I enjoy shooting. Shot clay pigeons for the first time 3 years ago. I started shooting pistols many years ago. I’m 50 now and will be breaking out the Ar-15’s and going on my first Texas hawg hunt. (I hope I can handle the field dressing) Overall stay physically capable and strong you will greatly appreciate it when you get into your 30’s and 40’s.
Learn some game and get as much red pill as possible and speak and live it. It is a masculine way to carry yourself and people find it attractive. Your story is a hard one but it is not your identity. That is what you make of yourself daily. Just let it be something you know. If you want a wife you are going to have to go get one. That mean making eye contact and speaking out loud. God is not going to shit you a bride. I can give you much advice on puling ass seeing how I’m a proper married gentlemen and have been out of circulation for nearly 20 years.
Game is your friend. It is good for day to day life buying cars, getting work done on the house, any human interaction. Once people see you are not some PC fairy You will get respect and may find yourself getting to lunches and parties and introduced to friends daughters and nieces. If you are a white guy don’t apologize to anybody for it and if black don’t ever play the victim of shit. Red pill is good for controlling that and men like that are always masculine. Don’t go over board and be a tampon, once again red pill will let you know.
when you start getting regular ass don’t ever cum inside a chick without a condom or just pull out. (that is what the wife and I do when ever we do) Don’t let some chick your business once you start running them it gets pretty easy and you will find out women are a lot more of a hassle than actual pleasure.
Self improvement for confidence building is a good starting point. Only concern yourself with things that strengthen you physically, mentally, financially, emotionally, and spiritually to allow you to confidently handle things on your own even beyond the limitations you may think you have now. As long as you are breathing air it is not t6oo late for you. Have fun and enjoy your freedom you’re single.
gargoylevirgin1
Here is a funny, and familiar for most of us, story from Chapter 4. David and Claire are good friends who have known each other for some time. However, when David proposed to her parents and to Claire about pursuing a courting/relationship with her. When Claire learned of David’s desire for her, Claire broke into tears of shock and upset. Quote: “Claire was upset. Throwing herself down on the couch, she pounded the arm with both fists and yelled hysterically, “No! No! No! He’s messing everything up! I’ve never thought of him like that. I’m not interested in him! Oh, he’s messing it up!” (End Quote) Claire liked another guy named Neil, who liked her back too. It also says that Claire imagined herself married to different guys, but never to David. After finally admitting to David that she did not like him, healing their friendship, David was confused. David had a good job, he felt mature enough, emotionally and spiritually, and the people around him thought he was ready. David talks to his pastor. The pastor accuses David of making marriage an idol, becoming bitter and angry of Claire’s lack of interest, and putting marriage before God. Claire’s relationship with Neil lasted for about 2 years, but suddenly broke off. The author gives no explanation for it. The author just says God was bringing Claire’s relationship to an end. A few months later, after her break up with Neil, Claire finds herself attracted to David, and soon they get together. Quote: “She began to notice his servant’s heart, his humility, and his leadership…Before it had always been , here’s the guy I want, but this time I thought, “Here’s a man I could follow.
Yeah, I remember that part of the book. I never understood why she threw such a temper tantrum over something so benign. If wasn’t interested, couldn’t she just calmly say so and then move on? Anyway, if what you read on Amazon is true, I wonder if the above story is still in the book, meaning I wonder if that couple is still together.
@ gargoylevrigin01 says:
November 3, 2015 at 9:10 pm
“I am going to be 27 in a few months, and I think it is too late for me.”
You gotta be freaking kidding me.
@gargoylevrigin01 says:
I am sorry to break it to you, but your problem is not that you came from a broken home (millions of American kids are just like you); you are/were overweight (Google the picture of NJ Governor so you can see that morbid obesity does not stop anyone who is determined); or that your body “stunk a little” (mine does, too; that is why I take showers and use perfume); or that you have a million other imperfections (welcome to the club of every person on the planet, including everyone here). And if you think that being a virgin at 27 is some big thing, it is not. I was a virgin until I got married at age 26. And, no, I was not overweight or otherwise ugly in any way whatsoever. I was a very promising medical graduate. I became a Christian at age 14 and I was properly taught that you don’t have sex until you are married. There are also several women on this site–in their 30s even–who are virgins. Personally, I know several grown women, right here in the US, who are virgins as well.
Your real problem is your “woe is me” attitude. You have a very unhealthy attitude towards yourself and that is the BIG problem. You seem to revel in seeing yourself as a victim of your circumstances. Over the years, you have probably gotten accustomed to people sympathizing with you about how you’ve had it so tough in life, and how you have passed through horrible experiences that no one else has passed through. I say absolute hogwash. Everyone one of us has our battle scars to show that it’s not been picnics since were born.
As of now, even if God were to send you the most beautiful woman to be your wife, you will reject her, because you have not even accepted yourself. Heck, you rejected a woman who actually wanted to sleep with you, even when you made no efforts to win her consent!
You will have to stop this defeatist attitude, and begin to think right, so that things can start getting right for you. I would have recommended the Bible to you, but then, that is a very big book. For now, I suggest you go get a copy of “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. Read it a hundred times if you have to. When you are done, then sit down with the Bible, and learn how wonderfully uniquely God has made you. It will help you to develop a positive outlook on life.
@Dave
Nobody sympathized with me over the years. I never mentioned anything about my life at home to anyone at high school or in college. I have read through the whole Bible. Just because I believe it is too late for me for a wife does not mean I have no other positive outlooks on life.
I don’t have a “woe is me” attitude. This is the first place I have really talked about my background.
I am well aware everyone has battle scars.
“Heck, you rejected a woman who actually wanted to sleep with you, even when you made no efforts to win her consent!”
I am supposed to sleep with her with no commitment????? What are you a PUA Dave???? Yeah, at least, I am trying to obey God unlike you since you sound like you would have slept with her and anybody else.
I think you need to get off your high horse Dave.
You know, if you’d posted your comment at Rollo’s secular site, you would have received more compassion from the atheist men there. Quite a few of them have been through almost exactly what you’ve been through, but have never talked about it before to anyone until they got to Rollo’s site, and never received compassion before about what life handed them – they hadn’t until recently, even realized what they’d really been through and how much it harmed their psyche.
If you still have your faith after what you’ve been through, you’re well ahead of the game… most of the men there that have been through what you have have turned against God.
Again, try searching through Rollo’s Preventive Medicine series, it’s for younger men like you in their 20’s or even 30’s.
@Dave
If I really had a woe is me attitude, I would have thought that God is never going to send me wife. I would have used it as an excuse to sleep with that girl I mentioned. Did you not read my whole comment? She was drinking. I am not sure how drunk it was.
Next time think before you write instead of just going on an emotional outburst “oh you have a victimhood complex.”
@gargoylevrigin01,
You can deny a “woe is me” approach to life all you want, but when you wrote this:
Just because I believe it is too late for me for a wife…
You are affirming otherwise. You either become a victim of your circumstances, or you impose your will upon your circumstances the way the Creator intended, so that you can get your earthly needs met. Your choice.
I am supposed to sleep with her with no commitment????? What are you a PUA Dave???? Yeah, at least, I am trying to obey God unlike you since you sound like you would have slept with her and anybody else.
Maybe you should re-read my original post. I was also a virgin until my wedding night, so that should tell you something. I was not advocating fornication, but at the same time did not agree with your reason for not having sex with the woman.
FYI: there are many women right here in America who are looking for good men, so stop with the fatalistic belief that at age 27, your balls are all shriveled and you have become this hideous monster which no woman wants. Yeah, tell me who is really on a high pile of self-defeating beliefs now. Your biggest obstacle is your very, very negative thinking, and you’ve done it so long it has become a pattern of life for you. Until you change your thinking however, you will never be able to change your life, brother. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. One of the major reasons why God got 40 authors to write the Bible over thousands of years, and preserved it through the Centuries, is to help us to think properly. As long as our thoughts are far from His thoughts, we cannot fulfill His purposes on the earth. If we think defeat, we will attract defeat to ourselves. If we think ugliness, that is exactly what we will attract. According to your faith, so be it unto you. The mind is extremely powerful in creating our environments. Has it occurred to you that everything is created twice—first in your mind, then in your physical reality? Even the world was created twice–first in the mind of God, before it became a reality. When you keep creating defeat, singleness, powerlessness, etc, that is what your reality will be. One of the most important laws in the NT is for believers to “renew their minds”, so that they can begin to think like God, for out of the abundance of the heart the life flows.
James Allen wrote a bit about the power of thought http://jamesallen.wwwhubs.com/think.htm>here. Maybe you might want to take a look att the link.
Sorry the link was badly formed:
http://jamesallen.wwwhubs.com/think.htm
If you have time, read the comments on what the men went through with their home lives and their feelings or experiences toward their fathers especially, here, a lot of great personal stories. I talk about my own brother’s life experience with my dad, and then my husband becoming like a second father to him in the comment thread. It might be cathartic to read and maybe connect to something there with those men: http://therationalmale.com/2015/01/30/father-knows-best/
there are many women right here in America who are looking for good men,
And what will they do with those good men once they find them? Something like 37% of those women will frivorce the men they marry.
Around 97% of American women will have slept with other men before they finally do decide to marry. That only leaves around 3% of the population for a wise man to consider for marriage. Then he has to factor in whether or not a potential bride to be will submit to her husband, cook, clean, and actually function as his helper (as opposed to his competition). How many American women are willing to do that? Not many that I’ve seen.
And what will they do with those good men once they find them? Something like 37% of those women will frivorce the men they marry.
Well, hey, these women aren’t saying that they want to KEEP these “good men” they’re (supposedly) looking for. Think of a child that “just hasta have” the latest new toy, knowing, even if only subconsciously, that they’ll eventually get bored with it and either neglect it or throw it away. Remember: “good” men are boring and don’t induce ‘gina tingles.
You can be the accuser of the brothern all you want Dave, but I am not what you accuse me of.
Did I say there are no good women out there??????? No!!!!!!!!!
Don’t put words into my mouth. I am happy for those men who get those good women I dislike men like yourself who shame single men like me for not having a woman and accuse me of having a victimhood complex and accuse me of hating women.
“Maybe you should re-read my original post. I was also a virgin until my wedding night, so that should tell you something. I was not advocating fornication, but at the same time did not agree with your reason for not having sex with the woman.”
I don’t get this. Are you saying that by not having sex with the woman for the wrong reasons, it is as if I had sex with her in the first place??????????????? I did the right thing for the wrong reasons, so it is as if I sinned in the first place???????? boy oh boy, you just love being the accuser of the brothern, don’t you?
All I did was was write about my experiences in life and thought it might be useful talk for Dalrock to know about. All because I feel that it might be too late for me to get a wife, Dave attacks me with his man up rant. And then, he accuses me of turning down sex with the girl for the wrong reasons. Hmmm that rings alarms.
Dave, are you someone who is constantly finding faults with other people? Pastor John Hagee warns about such people. Especially if you are going to accuse me of turning down sex for the wrong reasons, and treat it as sin, there is something wrong with you.
I am done responding and trying to explain myself to you.
Dave, if you want to believe any guy can find a decent wife if he cares to, fine, but don’t suggest to a man he’s a quitter when he tried hard for a decade and failed. You’re twisting data to fit your theory and that would be foolish if we were talking about numbers, let alone people.
We can talk about your ridiculous statements later. “Everything is created first in your mind and then in physical reality”, hah.
@gargoylevirgin01,
“I am going to be 27 in a few months, and I think it is too late for me.”
It is not too late for you. I was in my later 30’s when I married my wife. We have been happily married for 22 years.
Mrs. Bee was the second woman I courted at the courtship church. The first woman I courted was when I was 33, she was also in her 30’s. She rejected me for the same reason that Claire rejected David; she felt no attraction, no interest towards me. Christian women are not attracted to devout, nice Christian guys. There needs to be more in order to spark attraction.
Most Christian women in the West do not believe in young marriage. Most of them want to wait until age 28 to 35 before getting married. The site I linked to earlier is considered radical because it advocates for young marriage. It is not a popular, well known site. I hope that changes going forward.
I would strongly dispute that, especially from a Christian perspective. One benefit of marriage is to morally fulfill the sex drive and waiting until 30 is idiotic in that context. It may fit with sites that have no problem with men being promiscuous, but it is idiocy anywhere that holds God’s Word in any esteem.
Do you have a source for this? I think you are a bit high. It is likely worse than it was when I married 27 years ago, but I don’t believe it is that much worse to where only 3% of women are virgins at marriage or even as adults.
Gargoyle,
I was 26 when I married years ago. You are not out of the park by any means. Follow the advice to tighten yourself up more now. It is also much easier to do when you are younger and don’t have to fight ingrained habits as much.
You do need to overcome your mental attitude now. You clearly do not see it. You are not a special snowflake. Many of us went through similar problems. I wasn’t overweight and looked relatively decent, but I was incredibly shy in many ways in high school and college and did not connect with women well because of that. Making past or even current problems an excuse for doing nothing now is idiotic.
You can go with the female affirmation of Dragonfly, but that will only make you “feel good.” It will not change a single think by itself. I suspect most of us, even those who don’t drink, would gladly sit down with you over a beer and agree you had a rough past, but the men would then say to get up and push forward, not make excuses for a lack of action now.
I bump heads with Dave (and pretty much everyone here) at times, but he looks quite accurate here. Instead of you figuring out how to fix the future you have taken an Eeyore attitude that nothing can be done and you are doomed.
You do need to fix that before even considering any marriage as you will undercut the marriage yourself with that attitude, even if you find a wife, and the end would be even worse. It is dangerous enough that you cannot afford self pity.
Or would you rather we just say?
Wow, it really does suck to be you. No hope in the future for you at all.
Is that really the better approach? Do you want to be treated like a man? If so, deal with it and yes, man up! Stay single if you wish, but quit wallowing in self pity!
Gunnerq,
I am not convinced he tried all that hard to find a wife. It looks more like he waited for one to be dropped in his lap. He is free to remain single and even follow a MGTOW path, but quit whining about it and complaining when people respond to his posts on the topic. You may not like all the reactions you get, but you will get them if you post your story in a public place. Growing up involves dealing with that.
Greghost,
I am still not compelled to hunt, but I want to start using the firearms I have acquired over the past bit. Definitely want to be fully comfortable with those. I have few qualms against hunting Bambi, but it is not compelling.
I am going to be 27 in a few months, and I think it is too late for me.
Not just late, but 20-30 years too late. In that time frame, women of this country have debased marriage so utterly and so thoroughly, that no man should enter such a lopsided and disgusting contract ever, if he has even one ounce of self-respect. Lets be 100% clear on this point.
Seeing as you are a Christian, this puts you in an unfortunate bind. Understanding that women have debased marriage so thoroughly means understanding that fornication is by far and away the safer bet. Most men of your generation have already figured this out, particularly PUAs. Perhaps a “third” way would be to consider expatriation and marriage in a foreign country, as this seems to be the only reliable way to find “good” women who have not debased marriage.
Basically your options downright suck, and this will not change anytime soon. Lying to you about this fact will not help you. Accepting what you can change (which may be little), and not wasting time on what you can’t change (the quality of American women and state of marriage in this country) will help you immensely.
@Dragonfly,
Glad you liked those essays.
It distresses me to see that most churches in the West have abandoned the strategy of church growth through encouraging young Christians to marry young and to have large families.
Two positive exceptions are the Amish (yes they are Christians) and the Quiverfull movement.
Have you read much about Susanna Wesley, the mother of John & Charles Wesley? She is a good example of a Christian wife and mother. She had 19 children and she set up a regular schedule where she quizzed each child individually about their practice of Christian disciplines.
She and her children caused a LOT of growth for the Kingdom of God.
Bee, our church is not perfect, but I do believe they push younger marriage. I mentioned the fact “we” (referring to the Christian church as a whole) pushed marriage off until people were older to the pastor’s wife one day and she strongly disagreed. I have only been there a few months and she would know better than I would at this point, but I have not seen anything disputing what she said.
@BradA,
Wow, that is great! I am glad to hear of churches encouraging young marriage.
One thing I can’t figure out, and this seems like as good of a place to mention this as any, is why overweight women and or older women tend to find me attractive. I understand that women in those demographics are simply typically going to have to try harder to get a man than their younger and more beautiful counter-parts, but does that mean even those women who show interest in me don’t actually find me attractive but are simply desperate for a man?
However, these women really do seem attracted to me. For instance, this one (overweight) woman in her mid-20s who worked for my family’s business showed overt interest in me, especially after seeing some pictures that a mutual acquaintance of ours took of me. Currently, there’s an even younger overweight girl in my town showing much more subtle interest in me, and she is a “good girl” so to speak, but I’m just not experiencing any attraction for her.
When I was doing the online dating site thing last year, I also tended to get interest from older and overweight women with some telling me I was cute or handsome. Older female friends tell me the same thing, but if this is true, then whey do the women I’m interested in not feel the same way or at least some of them? I mean, their eyes can’t really be that much different can they? Besides, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has actually been disproven to a certain extent, hasn’t it? That is, I remember reading something about beauty standards actually being fairly consistent and objective across cultures.
BradA, why don’t you just admit that a single male virgin should never say that he is one otherwise he is an Eeyore?????? He should do whatever he can to hide it.
A single male virgin in your eyes is someone who does nothing with his life. Just admit it.
Too bad if a single male virgin minds his own business people will try to sniff him out and shame him from my experience.
I am not going to deny that saying it was too late for me to get a wife at 27 was not a positive thing to say. However, the clock is ticking, and if I want a biological offspring without a high risk of Down Syndrome or autism, I am not going to wait until til the mid to late 30s to do it.
“Wow, it really does suck to be you. No hope in the future for you at all.”
You think I care about DragonFly’s female validation??????
YOU THINK THAT IS WHAT I WANT PEOPLE TELLING ME!?!? YOU THINK THAT I BELIEVE THAT I HAVE NO FUTURE??????????…in general or with a wife?????? Are you saying that a wife is what makes a future for me????????? Because my original comment here was about finding possible wife, not a future.
I am sorry but you and the others here are delusional.
I hope you can take insults and false accusations as well as you can throw them.
You want to know what my “delusional” view is of you and many of you men here as I finally see. Most of you are ex PUAs who are now married, and you try to justify your past sexual immoral behavior by shaming single virgin men. And no, I am not jealous of how many women you banged. By the way, just because one is a PUA, it does not mean he is not a virgin.
I would rather go to my grave a virgin than bang 100 women with no love behind it.
I can see my presence on Dalrock’s blog makes you uncomfortable and disgusted. I bet you are thinking that I am a potential Elliot Rodger right, just like the feminists and PUAs, who brag about how many women sexual partners they have banged. I will stop commenting on Dalrock’s blog and be gone for good.
Hey Dalrock, if you feel the same way about me, feel free to erase my comments and block me. I am not coming back anyway.
@Bee “Have you read much about Susanna Wesley, the mother of John & Charles Wesley? She is a good example of a Christian wife and mother. She had 19 children and she set up a regular schedule where she quizzed each child individually about their practice of Christian disciplines.”
Yes, I have!! I love the habits she created with praying and teaching her children, and the amazing faithfulness she displayed in face of being married to someone like Nabal. Her example of Godly duty and endurance puts probably all modern women to shame! I’ve always loved her story.
@gargoylevirgin01….
Your experience reminds me a lot of some of the men at Rollo’s site – Sun Wukong, Rugby’s, Jeremy’s, and probably even more. There was a young man (I think your age actually) that posted about many of the same things you did (Softek), however he even had it worse as he’d actually tried to commit suicide several times and had lived many years in a mental institution. He actually had a much worse situation obviously, but he didn’t receive the shaming that you are getting here at all, he was welcomed in to that blog community, taught how to better himself (which it sounds like you already have done), and he is now doing great, even has a girlfriend if I remember right and is much happier than he ever was. Again, I’m pretty sure he’s only 26.
I wouldn’t let one or two contentious commentators keep you from reading or commenting.
gargoylevirgin01, are you really leaving so easily? As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’m a mid-30s virgin, but I’ve never gotten the impression that anyone cares or is uncomfortable with that. Besides, it would be pretty is easy to not be a virgin anymore if one is so inclined, but I’m just not inclined outside of marriage, because I figure if a woman is willing to compromise on sexual morality that she’d also be willing to compromise on being a submissive and selfless wife in a marriage, and those are just the practicalities. There’s also the fact that sex outside of marriage is sin and that engaging in that sin would contribute to the non-chastity of women, especially since I hate the fact that not only are so many of today’s women unchaste but that they’re quite open about it.
As a side note, from what I’ve read, the chances of having a child with a deformity may be slightly higher for an older father than for a younger one, but the chances are still low, and the medical community is still divided on the older father issue, anyway. Also, a younger woman’s body can actually help compensate for abnormalities in an older man’s sperm, which makes the “age-appropriate” argument so many feminists like to tout kind of funny and backwards to the biological truth. It’s actually less gross for an older man to be with a younger woman than it is for an older man to be with an older woman if you’re looking at it from the perspective of the effects on the offspring.
@gargoylevirgin01
27 years old is not too late to find a suitable wife.
Other than that: If you have any notions of changing your luck with women, my suggestion is for you to listen to the men here, ignore the women, and above all don’t get your panties into a twist.
You picked the name “gargoylevirgin01”. It screams “woe is me”, and so you might as well have chosen Eeyore. Whatever we say online will be colored by the handles we choose.
You write like a girl. Maybe you’re a girl in troll-mode, or maybe it is because you were raised by your mother. I don’t know. What I do know is that men who talk like women either get friend-zoned by women, or women call them “creepy”.
A propensity to get your panties twisted is also a girl thing. It would have been better to have written, “Hey Dave and Brad: Fuck off.” That’s how men do it. They don’t have a caps lock and question mark meltdown.
Likewise, you would have done well to tell Dragonfly to scram after she came to your pity party. We can tell she saw you as an Eeyore because she said she wanted to cry. But you didn’t get bent out of shape about Dragonfly’s condescension. You gave her a lengthy response of more sad stories. So, yeah, it seems you care about female validation.
@Hank Flanders
The most likely explanation is that they believe you’re just unattractive enough to settle for them.
The most likely explanation is that they believe you’re just unattractive enough to settle for them.
BOOM!
I can see my presence on Dalrock’s blog makes you uncomfortable and disgusted. I bet you are thinking that I am a potential Elliot Rodger right, just like the feminists and PUAs, who brag about how many women sexual partners they have banged. I will stop commenting on Dalrock’s blog and be gone for good.
Hey Dalrock, if you feel the same way about me, feel free to erase my comments and block me. I am not coming back anyway.
whaaaaa whaaaa whaaaaaa meanies wont validate me whaaaaaa whaaaaaaa….
Toughen up, buttercup. It’s a mean old world out there.
Cane Caldo
The most likely explanation is that they believe you’re just unattractive enough to settle for them.
Haha, yeah, maybe so.
@ gargoylevirgin01 says:
November 4, 2015 at 12:46 pm
“I am not going to deny that saying it was too late for me to get a wife at 27 was not a positive thing to say. However, the clock is ticking, and if I want a biological offspring without a high risk of Down Syndrome or autism, I am not going to wait until til the mid to late 30s to do it.”
Seriously, dude, take a breath. You’re 26. I was 28 when my wife and I married. She was 22. The first thing you need to change is your defeatist’s mentality. The second thing you need to change is…
“You think I care about DragonFly’s female validation??????”
Yes, actually. Your writing oozes and reeks of desperate craving for female validation. If you don’t actually desperately crave female validation, then you need to at least be aware that is the impression you give others. Desperation isn’t attractive, so if you’d like to attract a wife, you’ll need to change the way you present yourself to others.
Cane gave you good advice. You may find his advice painful to internalize, but good advice often is painful.
You don’t need anyone to join your pity party. Pity parties may feel good at first, but they’re self destructive, and those who join them assist in your destruction. Remember:
Proverbs 27:6 Wounds from a friend can be trusted,
but an enemy multiplies kisses.
Stop chasing after kisses. Discipline yourself to change that which needs to change. It’s painful, but worth the effort. It’s also a life long process. We don’t arrive until we arrive in Glory.
That was the first thing that came to my mind.
Gargoyl
You need to hang around and get hard. Cane was on the money. Just ignore the negatives. but do learn from them that the sissy stuff is bad for you and not a path to personal well being. The reaction here that upset you is a normal reaction from the public at large. It will grossly dampen your social success. So don’t do it and move on to being hard. Self improvement is cool so enjoy the journey and pass it on to a young man one day walking in your shoes.
@Hank Flanders
When I was recently in San Fran a string of hookers try to snag me. They weren’t ugly. Mrs. Caldo said they were looking for a sugar-daddy, but I thought to myself, “Boy, I must now officially appear at least somewhat pathetic.”
BTW I was 30 when I married to a 24 year old. Now have 3 children and still married to the same chick. Stop that negative shit.
Some of us are not ideal specimens any more, nor were we even when younger, but frame and how you carry yourself is far more important in men in many cases. That is why making a mental shift is so important. Even writing here has helped me personally adjust my thoughts and writing in other locations.
Greyghost, the world has changed a shit-ton since you were 30, particularly in the realm of SMP.
If anyone wants a brutally honest primer on how young men view young women today, Google PMAFT’s site for “it’s no surprise that young men are getting fed up with women”. Read through the comments from young men. Understand that this is our next generation of men coming up through the system, and allow that to sink in.
The most likely explanation is that they believe you’re just unattractive enough to settle for them.
Funny stuff, but remember that every woman from about a 3 or 4 on up nowadays believes she is entitled to both Alpha attention and commitment.
Around 97% of American women will have slept with other men before they finally do decide to marry.
Do you have a source for this? I think you are a bit high.
Here you go Brad:
“About 3% of Americans wait until marriage to have sex (successfully)”
http://waitingtillmarriage.org/4-cool-statistics-about-abstinence-in-the-usa/
Here is another one with 95% by age 30. The 97% number is by age 40 (or was it 42).
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-19-premarital-sex_x.htm
I really need to keep those links handy. It took me almost 30 seconds to find them on google, and no one wants to accept that fact the the USA has become a nation of whores and whore mongers.
I’m telling you guys, this country IS NOT the optimum place to find a suitable bride. In fact, suitable brides are probably going to be in short supply no matter where you look in a few years.
One thing I can’t figure out, and this seems like as good of a place to mention this as any, is why overweight women and or older women tend to find me attractive.
I’m no expert but I suspect it is because they think you are in their SMV / MMV. They probably don’t think in those terms mind you, but it amounts to the same thing.
As I grow older I have observed that the women that notice me tend to be older and less attractive then they were in my relatively younger years.
I’m telling you guys, this country IS NOT the optimum place to find a suitable bride. In fact, suitable brides are probably going to be in short supply no matter where you look in a few years.
Understatement of the year.
Funny stuff, but remember that every woman from about a 3 or 4 on up nowadays believes she is entitled to both Alpha attention and commitment.
Another pattern I’ve noticed is this tendency for princesses to to have an inflated view of their own relationship value.
It’s not even so bad that women have had sex outside of marriage as much as they plan to continue doing so. In my experience, the virgins are not the unicorns. I know or have met plenty of women who were probably virgins when they got married. Instead, the unicorns are the women who have had sex in the past but plan to abstain going forward. In fact, I don’t know if I even know any women for whom this circumstance applies.
@JDG
Yep. Some might even go so far as to say it’s a “bubble”.
oops…forgot to put an end tag after the first “have.”
In my experience, the virgins are not the unicorns.
No they are not, especially when you consider that they are being raised in a post Christian, thoroughly feminist society. That’s what makes the 3% number even more disheartening.
Instead, the unicorns are the women who have had sex in the past but plan to abstain going forward.
IMO a unicorn would be a woman who is filled with the Holy Spirit, sold out for Jesus, and is obedient and faithful to her husband. IMO she is much more likely (than not) to have been raised properly by her parents, to have a great relationship with her father, and has remained chaste until her father has given her to her husband (or is still a virgin).
Even this unicorn will not be perfect and will have flaws inherent to the female sex. The theoretical upside is that the unicorn will have been trained up in the way she should go, and / or learned to deal with her flaws by trusting God enough to obey his teachings rather than following the impulses of the flesh or the ways of the world.
Puffyjacket
I’ve noticed and it is a good thing. I encourage that talk myself.
Somebody has got to do the heavy lifting for western civilization.
A question I do have for some of the Christian commenters here:
At what point would you recognize marriage today as having become so utterly debased and legally fraught with risk, that you recommend all young men avoid the institution in its entirety?
a) If we haven’t yet crossed that line, how bad would things have to get before this would happen?
b) If you are never willing to recommend that young men avoid marriage altogether (no matter what), how is this materially different from “man up and marry those sluts”?
Puffyjacket
Well my answer is MGTOW/family using surrogacy for children to avoid the divorce thing and avoid the feminist imperative thing. The gay guys are doing it just fine so why not straight Christian men. I can almost guarantee that the behavior of women will change when men walk away from them and have there own families without them. Wait until the government sees the character of the children and productivity of family men return to society. I can also guarantee 10k single dads cannot and will not duplicate the destruct 10k single moms bring to society.
At what point would you recognize marriage today as having become so utterly debased and legally fraught with risk, that you recommend all young men avoid the institution in its entirety?
I currently do this, (even with my own son).
The exception is if he wants to have a sacramental (Catholic or Orthodox) wedding with no state license. There are a number of Orthodox clergy already doing this.
@PJ
Never. But I would never approach marriage, a man, or a woman the way you have with your question.
First of all, if a man is going to have sex a woman, then he is in the the “debased and legally fraught situation” whether he marries her or not. Our elites understand how to rope men so the financial burden is child support, and not alimony.
Secondly, my yes/no marriage advice would be towards a specific man about a specific woman. A man doesn’t have to take up the burden of reforming the entire practice of marriage in a country. He just has to love his wife, so he’d damned-well better make a good choice.
Marriage was made by God. It exists whether or not societies attempt to debase it.
There are a number of Orthodox clergy already doing this.
A Protestant movement has started also.
JDG,
I do not have the time for hours of validation, but I am still extremely suspect of the validity of the claimed numbers. Lots of claims, but how do they know that? Perhaps it is right, but I remain skeptical.
It looks like the base is a government document, but that is far from a guarantee of accuracy. I believe a moon landing happened, but the fact it is the official government line makes me skeptical even so. Government has been shown to lie far too many times lately.
I also believe in the general principle of a Christian remnant even in a corrupt society. Yes, many may have gone the ways of their culture, but many do not.
How many are counted in that bin?
It also does not say whether it was an engaged couple that couldn’t wait or someone sleeping around. The former is not good, but changes the issue over someone who has been with someone else prior to marriage.
I would be interested to see Dalrock’s comments on this if it is so indisputable.
I do not have the time for hours of validation, but I am still extremely suspect of the validity of the claimed numbers. Lots of claims, but how do they know that? Perhaps it is right, but I remain skeptical.
You asked for sources, I gave you sources. Then you want to refute the sources with: “How do they know that?” and “It looks like the base is a government document.”
Your entitled to your opinion, but please don’t expect me to be persuaded with only your opinion.
As far as I can tell, things really are that bad.
I said I did not believe the 3% number. I still do not.
I said I did not believe the 3% number. I still do not.
And I do. 3% sounds about right to me.
Hank
>I’m a mid-30s virgin… I figure if a woman is willing to compromise on sexual morality that she’d also be willing to compromise on being a submissive and selfless wife in a marriage, and those are just the practicalities.
Well done Hank. Think what our churches would be like if all people had the self-control, self-respect and forward thinking that you (apparently) demonstrate.
But we each have our own, unique weaknesses.
@gargoylevirgin01
I also regularly became discouraged. I would look around, see no opportunities to pursue marriage with a good woman who was open to me, and give up. Then after 6 months or a year, I would try again, and again eventually come to the same result.
Go to Ukraine, or any similar country that is too poor to afford the foolishness of feminism.
I have heard great things about Mexico, as many areas are too poor for a woman to frivolously divorce her husband, and there (supposedly) are no government programs to enable women who abandon their families. I’m not attracted to Mexican women myself, but I know many men are.
If you have not traveled to a non-Western/feminist country, do yourself a massive favour, and take a vacation to one. Go to a local church and talk to the local people. Some (in church) will be materialistic, feminist, and otherwise deluded people. Others will have an adherence to Scripture that will seem strange/wonderful to you.
You can typically hire a translator for $15US per hour, so the research phase of your vacation will not have a significant cost. 200$ in research now could prevent the cost of a broken family later with a local girl.
@PuffyJacket
>At what point would you recognize marriage today as having become so utterly debased and legally fraught with risk, that you recommend all young men avoid the institution in its entirety?
Two answers.
a) I am already there. The Biblical laws for marriage are illegal in Canada. E.g. a man’s wealth is to go to his sons, and 0% to his ex-wife; even 0% to his widow (assuming he has a son; the son is expected to care for his mother). Death for adultery, etc. So “marriage”, as in “Biblical marriage” or “Godly marriage”, is not legal. If I actually advocated for the death penalty for adulterers and adulteresses, I might be guilty of breaking our hate-speech laws.
Some will pipe up and say they have a Biblical marriage in their own life. And this is fine, as long as the police do not find out about it and the wife does not change her mind. I have known… I think 3 young women, that I would trust to live a lifetime without pulling the trigger. Certainly others would as well, but their characters make it less certain. And many of the elderly women seem to have great characters; contentedness, loyalty to their husbands and God, etc.
b) I still advice marriage if he needs it, because we are not creatures solely of logic. Despite the logic of answer “a” above, we have emotional and sexual desires (1 Cor 7:1-9). Yes, marriage is incredibly dangerous. But what is a guy to do? If it is illegal or dangerous to eat, people will still do it.
This contradiction partly explains the foolish behaviour you see everywhere.
@Scott
>The exception is if he wants to have a sacramental (Catholic or Orthodox) wedding with no state license. There are a number of Orthodox clergy already doing this.
In Canada, after 2 or 3 years (?) of a couple presenting themselves as married, the various provinces will treat them as married. Including divorce rights. So this, here at least, is only a delaying action, and not a permanent solution.
I read part of a new B.C. law about a year ago that referred to “the unmarried spouse”. They simply deem you to be a spouse, with or without clergy or license.
Re: Percentage of women having sex before marriage
At least one or both of the pages linked by JDG above claim to use the NSFG survey data, so I researched the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth 2002 data (the latest full results?), based on the responses of women aged 15-44 at the time.
Here is what I understand (but I am not a statistical genius):
– Based on Table 104, 12% of women have never had sexual intercourse with a male
In other words, only 88% of women have ever had sex, and thus it is impossible for 97% of women to have had sex before marriage!
The following are other data items I thought might be of interest:
– Based on Table 42, 13% of women who married from 1995-2002 had their first sexual intercourse in the “same month as marriage or after”. That is, they were virgins (or very close) at marriage.
– Based on Table 44, about 19% of women 25-44 have had 10 or more male sexual partners. The carousel is spinning fast.
– Based on Table 50, 17% of women will be married by age 20, 51% by 25, 73% by 30, and 82% by 35. Most women will get married, and most do it before they hit the wall.
– Based on Table 104, about 3% of women have never had sexual intercourse with a male, but have had sexual contact with a male “I did not have sexual relations with that man”?
– Based on Table 104, about 13% had their first sexual intercourse before age 15, about 40% at age 15-17, and about 18% at age 18-19. That is, more than 53% had sex before 18, and more than 71% had sex before the age of 20. Life is short! You go girl!
I expect this data is quite disheartening to those single men who want to marry a virgin, and those parents who want their children to marry a virgin. I urge you to have faith, for “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), but also to ask God for wisdom to know the actions you should take.
– Based on Table 104, about 3% of women have never had sexual intercourse with a male, but have had sexual contact with a male “I did not have sexual relations with that man”?
As far as you can tell, is this 3% taken from the 12% you refer to in bold font (subtracting from the 88%) or added to it?
@Cane
Fair enough. My main point of disagreement is here:
First of all, if a man is going to have sex a woman, then he is in the the “debased and legally fraught situation” whether he marries her or not. Our elites understand how to rope men so the financial burden is child support, and not alimony.
Men face a terrible legal environment regardless of which direction they turn. But marriage adds layers of legal risk above and beyond having children. Having children adds layers of legal risk above the long-term girlfriend. The long-term girlfriend adds layers of legal risk above the pump and dump. There are massive differences in legal risk depending on the category, with marriage followed by children being far and away the worst-case scenario (typically going hand-in-hand).
If one chooses to have sex in this country, easily the risk minimizing approach is game and pump and dump. Most young men already implicitly understand this, which is why marriage rates will continue to plummet. Don’t even let them live with you, because as Dale mentioned, the State can confer “marriage-like” rights to women that leads to alimony or worse.
@Scott/JDG
The exception is if he wants to have a sacramental (Catholic or Orthodox) wedding with no state license. There are a number of Orthodox clergy already doing this.
See Dale’s comments on certain provinces in Canada that have already stepped in to assign “marriage-like” rights to women, even where there is no “state license”. I don’t understand the legal situation as well in the U.S., but you can bet there will inevitably be a push to do the same (if this is not being done already).
OKRickety says:
November 4, 2015 at 9:51 pm
I’m looking at table 104 from the study you linked but I’m not seeing your 88% number. Could you show me what I’m missing?
88% have had “sexual intercourse with a male” (defined as vaginal intercourse). Another 3% have not had “sexual intercourse” but have had “sexual contact with a male” (defined as oral sex or anal sex). So, the 3% is added to 88% to give a total of 91% who have had “sexual contact with a male”.
I calculated it from the data in Table 104. (7,371 [“never had sexual intercourse”] / 61,561 [“Total”] = 12%, thus 88% have “had sexual intercourse”).
However, this calculation is verified in Table 32 which quite clearly states 88.0% in the first line (and also shows 71.3% “never-married women” have “had sexual intercourse”).
I should mention that the “Wait til marriage” site did not link to the study you linked to. Their source links are below:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17236611
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_20.pdf
I have to admit that this cdc link has me a bit baffled.
It turns out that the USA Today article I linked refers to a study called “The National Survey of Family Growth” which asked about 40,000 people ages 15-44 about their sexual behavior and traced the trends in premarital sex back to the 1950s. This is a different study than the cdc study you sited.
Here is a quote from the USA Today page:
“Of those interviewed in 2002, 95% reported they had had premarital sex; 93% said they did so by age 30.”
I did a search for “The National Survey of Family Growth” and found this report (which I believe was used in the “Wait til Marriage” article):
Trends in premarital sex in the United States, 1954–2003
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/
That article gives the 3% number for folks who waited for marriage to have intercourse between 1994 and 2003.
@JDG,
I just noticed that Table 32 shows that 98.4% of “all women” and 90.3% of “never-married women” have had sexual intercourse by the age of 45 (the percentage increases with age, of course).
Coincidentally, I just realized that my statement
is illogical. Supposing 88% of all women married, it would be possible that 100% of these women had premarital sex.
However, that is a very unlikely scenario. Regardless, as I said earlier,
With 13% being virgins, that leaves 87% of new brides as non-virgin, not 97% as was claimed in the web pages you linked.
So far, I have refrained from pointing out that these numbers are based on answers provided by women. Given that reality, what is the “confidence level” of this study? 😉
Anecdotally, I could believe 97%, because not long ago I was with about a dozen Christian men and one asked how many of us had sex with our wives before marriage, and I was the only one who hadn’t.
Coincidentally, I just realized that my statement
In other words, only 88% of women have ever had sex, and thus it is impossible for 97% of women to have had sex before marriage!
is illogical. Supposing 88% of all women married, it would be possible that 100% of these women had premarital sex.
I think I knew what you meant. Still, now I’m wondering if I should re-think Brad’s point about not trusting government studies. I already have a hard time trusting the government with just about everything else. I think the 71% number is way to low and appears to be in direct contradiction to the NCBI numbers.
So far, I have refrained from pointing out that these numbers are based on answers provided by women. Given that reality, what is the “confidence level” of this study?
I’ve heard estimates as high as x 3, but who knows.
With 13% being virgins, that leaves 87% of new brides as non-virgin, not 97% as was claimed in the web pages you linked.
And also not 71% as claimed in table 32 or summed up from table 104. Methinks something is amiss with that survey.
@JDG,
Look at Page 1 of the PDF I linked and you will see it is the 2002 data for the National Survey of Family Growth with CDC at the bottom of the page. This is the data that the web pages claim to be using. As you pointed out, the CDC link from the Wait Til Marriage site is baffling. That’s because it’s not related to the article, so are you comfortable with anything he wrote? Are you comfortable with the quality of work done in USA Today?
This Survey has had several “cycles”. I am only looking at one (the latest) of the “cycles”. The report you mention is looking for trends by looking at all of the “cycles”. I don’t think I can access all of them, nor do I have the motivation to drill further into it.
Why are you striving so hard for “97%”? Regardless of what someone else has written, do you see the 97% claim substantiated in the data? I don’t, and I suspect incompetence, lack of research, accepting others’ statements as true without checking, or even ulterior motives as how this number was reached and why it is being disseminated.
I only got involved in this discussion because I questioned the accuracy of the 97%. Having researched it, I think it is incorrect and the data shows 87% (which is still egregiously high). If I’m wrong, I will gladly retract my statements (I think I already showed that by pointing out my error when I recognized it). However, if I’m right, then I hope others will benefit from my efforts.
@JDG,
The biggest problem with government studies is not the quality of the data, but the quality of the analysis which will depend on what is wanted by those in higher positions, and the resulting decisions that are made and spun to the media who quite happily parrot out the party line.
That reminds me of a joke about interviewing to find the Chief Financial Officer for a major company. As part of the process, each candidate was asked to provide the answer to a difficult problem involving many numbers and considerable calculation. Who got the job? The one who asked “What do you want the answer to be?”
@JDG:
I’m no expert but I suspect it is because they think you are in their SMV / MMV. They probably don’t think in those terms mind you, but it amounts to the same thing.
Women are generally poor judges of their SMVs/MMVs. If anything, their views are skewed by their experiences and the experiences of those close to them. A 5 who has been used for ONS by a 9 Alpha in the past might think her SMV/MMV is actually 9. Whereas a virginial 8 wwho has never been in a meaningful relationship before might think she is worth a 5. Women are generally audacious these days. Their impudence is grating.
@PuffyJacket:
At what point would you recognize marriage today as having become so utterly debased and legally fraught with risk, that you recommend all young men avoid the institution in its entirety?
You asked the wrong question, and you profered the wrong solution.
Male-femal relationships have always been debased in society. Marital fraud, promiscuity, polygamy, divorce, prostitution, etc, etc have been with the human race since the Fall. So, again, the question you asked was unnecessary.
The solution is not to abstain from marriage altogether. That would be defeatist.
On a personal level, I think Cane Caldo got it right: each man will have to do everything within his own power to have a great marriage.
At the society level, I think the right question would be “How and why did the society get to this stage?” Until there is a satisfactory answer to that question, you cannot advocate any meaningful solution.
What I have noticed though, is that Christians keep withdrawing from different aspects of society, rather than standing and fighting. They withdrew from politics and allowed the unbelievers to take over, and make ungodly policies. No they are withdrawing from marriage. I wonder what else they will withdraw from next.
@Dave
You asked the wrong question, and you preferred the wrong solution.
We’re probably on the same page in that we both believe Marriage 1.0 is the bedrock of civilization. But I don’t see how we can return to Marriage 1.0 without millions of men first walking away from marriage 2.0.
If this is the wrong solution, I would like to know what the “right” one is (barring violent revolution).
@JDG,
I suspect that the USA Today article statistical statements are provided by the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization that studies reproductive and sexual health. It was originally part of Planned Parenthood, so you can imagine their general perspective. Maybe they skewed their interpretation accordingly? As I understand the article and Guttmacher’s report on Trends in Premarital Sex, it was written because of the then-current question of funding abstinence-until-marriage programs. So, if those programs are defunded, there’s a better chance of getting more money for our buddies’ programs?
The USA Today article states:
This is a fine example of cherrypicking. The first sentence pertains to all men and women, the second switches to women “born in the 1940s”, and the last moves to a different set of data and the median age at first marriage. Tell the media the “soundbites” you want to highlight, wrap it up nicely, tell them what it means, and let them spread the message.
Note that “premarital sex” refers to sex before first marriage and includes those who never marry (silly me, I did not really think of the latter situation, because I tend to think everyone will marry).
Returning to the NSFG 2002 data, Table 32 shows 91.6% of never-married women have had sex before age 30. In Table 42, the highest rate of premarital sex before first marriage is 87.8% for marriages in 1990-1994. I will approximate this as about 90% of women have had premarital sexual intercourse. Adding the 3% who have had premarital anal or oral sex but not vaginal sex, this would give 93% which is close to the numbers stated.
Question for thought: How many “Christian” women live in the USA, and how many have voluntarily lived sexually chaste lives?
JDG,
Of course it did, you posted it. I merely noted my skepticism.
Lots of holes to pick with that as OKR notes.
You would still need to split out the couples that had sex while engaged and heading to marriage to assert this shows “all women are slutty” as sleeping with your fiancee is not the same as sleeping with all the hot guys. It is still not a good idea, but I know from experience how easy it would be to fall into. My wife and I avoided it, but easily could have and I can see the merit of chaperoning even engaged couples in spite of the idea most would have against that.
You need to step back and look first at the motivation of those doing the survey, the exact wording (including questions before that) of the survey question and the audience surveyed. Lots of room for error there. How many truly strong Christians did they survey? How many really had a qualm about premarital sex? How many lied? The last is impossible to know, but easy to see since being a virgin has been so vilified today.
Perhaps it is valid, but those studies still do not prove it.
As you pointed out, the CDC link from the Wait Til Marriage site is baffling. That’s because it’s not related to the article, so are you comfortable with anything he wrote? Are you comfortable with the quality of work done in USA Today?
I haven’t decided who to trust as of yet. A mistaken link isn’t the end of the story, but it does raise a flag.
Why are you striving so hard for “97%”? Regardless of what someone else has written, do you see the 97% claim substantiated in the data?
No I can’t say that I do, but looking at the data myself isn’t conclusive either (71% vs 87%) as pointed out above. Perhaps I don’t no how to properly interpret what was collected, or perhaps the people at the ncbi and / or cbc have their own agenda. I can’t say. Maybe my bias leans towards the folks who are supporting abstinence before marriage.
I only got involved in this discussion because I questioned the accuracy of the 97%. Having researched it, I think it is incorrect and the data shows 87% (which is still egregiously high). If I’m wrong, I will gladly retract my statements (I think I already showed that by pointing out my error when I recognized it). However, if I’m right, then I hope others will benefit from my efforts.
I for one appreciate the effort you put into interpreting the data. You have my thanks.
If I sound skeptical, it is only because I am trying to get at the truth of the matter and nothing personal is meant. You have made some very good points and have given me good reason to re-think my position, However, even if the number really were 71% (of this I remain skeptical) it would be way too high.
Lots of room for error there. How many truly strong Christians did they survey? How many really had a qualm about premarital sex? How many lied? The last is impossible to know, but easy to see since being a virgin has been so vilified today.
Whether or not the surveyed were strong Christians should only matter to the degree that strong Christians are represented in the population as a whole. Then they would need to represent every social group accurately as well. One would think that out of 61,000 people they would get close to an accurate representation (though not necessarily ie: urban vs suburban vs rural), but certainly not if there was a specific agenda in mind.
Regarding those who lie, it is my understanding that women tend to report fewer sexual encounters then actually occurred, not the other way around.
The USA Today article states:
Of those interviewed in 2002, 95% reported they had had premarital sex; 93% said they did so by age 30. Among women born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 did. At the same time, people are waiting longer to marry; 2005 data show median age at first marriage is just over 25 for women and 27 for men.
This is a fine example of cherrypicking. The first sentence pertains to all men and women, the second switches to women “born in the 1940s”, and the last moves to a different set of data and the median age at first marriage. Tell the media the “soundbites” you want to highlight, wrap it up nicely, tell them what it means, and let them spread the message.
Indeed. All good points.
Returning to the NSFG 2002 data, Table 32 shows 91.6% of never-married women have had sex before age 30. In Table 42, the highest rate of premarital sex before first marriage is 87.8% for marriages in 1990-1994.
Hence the difference in the final numbers (never married fornication’s before 30 vs fornication between 1990-1994). It would appear that it may be impossible to arrive at an actual accurate number.
I will approximate this as about 90% of women have had premarital sexual intercourse. Adding the 3% who have had premarital anal or oral sex but not vaginal sex, this would give 93% which is close to the numbers stated.
It makes sense to me. Thank you again for the time you put into this.
Brad – I here by retract my statement that 97% of women have given it up before marriage and say instead that 93% have played the harlot (give or take).
Even at 50% the marriage market is devastated for sensible men. I suspect the “Christian” pool is not much better (by “Christian” I do not mean those genuinely following Christ – there may not be a true Scotsman, but one can tell a tree by it’s fruits).
Except that that would be the same group more likely to seek a chaste mate.
It is probably not worth worrying about much more though, as it wouldn’t shock me if the number was well over 75% even if it didn’t hit or come close to 97%. Still far too high and makes the attempt to find a chaste woman more challenging than many may realize.
Though I wonder if we really catch how many fail to get sex today. What about the young men who are invisible to women until they get older, among others? Open question. No answer expected.
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