Tag Archives: Marriage

Celebrating Parenthood

Posted on August 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

Meet my one year old daughter, Amara.

This little girl is absolutely full of joy.  From head to toe, it’s all happiness.  She has her “moments,” for sure–mostly after bathtime and around bedtime; she hates it when we take her out of the bath–but it’s uncanny how she can light up a room.  Has never met a stranger, and always seems to have something to “say.”  She has an incredibly gentle spirit and a crazy intense side, and is 100% a social butterfly.  She has a habit of grabbing facial parts and twisting–hard.  She has a mean fishhook.  Watching her sleep is the cutest thing.

I love it all.

Ever since she came around, life has, of course, been quite different for me and my wife.  Typically what you hear along those lines in our culture is that life is “over” once you have kids.  Trade in the sports car for the minivan.  Trade in late night raging parties with playdates and soccer games.  Trade sleeping in with waking up in the middle of the night to change a soiled diaper.

Like I said, life is over….dread it.

You know, though?  That hasn’t been my experience.  Once Amara came around, my life really took off.  Fatherhood didn’t “end” my life; in a lot of ways, June 7, 2011 is when things really began to get good.

Don’t get me wrong, the particulars I mentioned above are still there–well, minus the minivan part and soccer part, and I never really was a raging partyer to begin with.  All I’m saying is that the hardships are still there, but in a sense, I kinda enjoy them.  Oh, I complain with halfway-witty Facebook status updates too, just like everyone else, in an attempt to make my life seem sooo hard and me sooo heroic, but really, when the chips are down, it ain’t that bad.  The stuff I gave up in exchange for the responsibilities of parenthood didn’t suit me that well in the first place anyway.

Take, for example, the late night feedings and diaper changes.  There was an initial adjustment period where it just sucked, yes.  But now, in a strange sort of way, I look forward to it.  I get to bond with my daughter in the quiet of the night when she actually sits still for a few minutes.  Then I go back to bed.  It’s kind of nice.  Unless she wakes up an hour or half an hour before I’m supposed to get up…then I’m a bit perturbed…but you get my overall point, right?

So sure, I gave up some freedoms, like the freedom to come and go as I please and not be beholden to someone else’s schedule (I actually gave that freedom up when I got married, well before Amara came along).  It can be a chore to balance schedules and all that.  Now, I need to be home at a certain hour, which is much earlier than before, and this has put somewhat of a cramp on my work life and social life.

But I don’t mind the exchange.  I think I actually came out well ahead.  I gave up some “freedoms” in exchange for responsibilities, but the responsibilities have added a texture, depth, and meaning to my life that the freedoms just couldn’t offer.  Fatherhood kills your ability to “do what you want,” but that is actually a good thing.  Responsibilities add depth to your life, they do not take away depth.  Were I to be faced with the choice a million times, a million times I’d make the same exchange.

I’m living this right now, for both my wife and daughter are out of the country visiting family (due to cost, I could not come along for the ride).  So in a sense, I’m living the single life again, and it ain’t all that grand.  Yes, it is kind of nice to have the freedom of schedule again, and I have plenty of friends and service opportunities to fill up the time, but I’d much, much rather be with my wife and daughter.

Nothing beats coming home after a hard day at work and seeing the look on my daughter’s face as I walk through the door.  Nothing beats coming home after a stressful day to have my wife hug me when I see her.  Nothing beats the comedy of sitting at the dinner table and watching Amara try to throw away the food she doesn’t like, and nothing beats discussing the events of the day with my wife over a meal.

I realize this isn’t everyone’s experience.  Amara is just an easy going kid, and I harbor no illusions that that is because of my fathering skills.  We have just been blessed with a kid that is easier on her parents than most children.  Perhaps things will be different when child #2 comes along.

I also realize that many parents and singles will read this and might feel hurt because this ignites their longing for something different. I urge you to not take it that way because that is definitely not my intention.

I write this post because whether it be out of fear of hurting someone or because focusing on the hard stuff makes us seem so much more heroic, children get a bad rap these days.  This is one guy’s experience, and I put it out there in an attempt to bring a small amount of balance.  Sitcoms, pop mythology, movies, pseudo witty e-card memes, and well meaning parents on Facebook (including yours truly!) seem to focus on the hard parts and perpetuate the “your life is over once you have kids” view.

Example: whenever I post something on Facebook about parenting, whether good or bad, there’s always some shlub–usually several shlubs–who come along and say, “wait til they turn X.  Then it reallllllllly gets difficult!”  The X age is usually an age said parent has already passed with his kids.  It usually comes off as a condescending “ahahahahhh (deep, James Earl Jones laugh)….you know nothing, little one (pat on the head from above).”  Come to think of it, I think I’ve been that shlub a time or two, and I don’t even have a kid in the X age range.

Can we simply put that impulse to the side for a moment and celebrate the little things?

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You Hope They Serve Beer in Hell?

Posted on October 10, 2011 | 1 Comment

I asked the students to raise up their free reading books.  I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell the title said.  By some guy named Tucker Max.  Hmmm, interesting, I thought.  Curious metaphor.  If the author does believe in hell, I said, he is tragically misinformed about it.  He probably doesn’t.

Over the past few years I’ve encountered the book frequently because many of my students were reading the book for free reading time.   Every student has told me that it’s a good read, so I left it at that, content, ignorantly so, in the knowledge that they were at least enjoying reading.  I had no clue what was actually in the book, nor did I know who Tucker Max is.

After recently reading The New Dating Game, an article by Charlotte Allen about the hookup culture, and doing a little snooping around,  I am no longer confident in my ignorance.

Turns out, the book is basically about Tucker Max and his, umm, “adventures,” mostly involving the opposite sex and certain bedtime activities.

So given the content of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, I was right: Tucker Max doesn’t believe in hell…well, he is still misinformed about hell, though in a different way.  But I digress.

I’ve seen the book around enough that I decided to address it in class.  Time to pick that fight.  Yes, risky. But I’m like that.  Still, I approached this cautiously, by asking some questions after I saw a student reading the book in class:

  • What ideas are advocated in the book, about the good life, happiness, “liberation,” etc?  For those that had trouble with this, I simplified it: fill in the blank–according to Tucker Max, the good life/happiness means _____________.  According to Tucker Max, “liberation/freedom” for a woman means _______________.
  • Are these ideas true and worthy of embracing?
  • For those that saw no point in the discussion:  why is thinking about a book in this way important?  If you don’t pause to think about what you imbibe for entertainment purposes, who is really controlling the puppet strings?
  • Who, really, does this hurt?

“Why go there?” you ask.  Simple: first, its not like I came looking for any of this.  Students brought the book into my class, and lit brought into my class needs to be addressed.  I could just censor the book with no explanation, but the “nothing to see here” line without explanation probably wouldn’t help.

Secondly, the hookup culture is alarmingly common currently.  Peruse the nightlife in any college town or any urban area for that matter, and you’ll find scores of twenty, thirty, and even forty somethings of both genders prowling for a hookup.  There’s even a new genre of literature that frequently pops up on best seller lists: Pick-up-Artist lit.  The male equivalent of chick lit, it actually has a practical application: its goal is to coach men on how to get any chick into bed.  There was even a reality show on VH1 that ran for a few years based off this lit, called, somewhat obviously, “The Pickup Artist.”

It gets better.  I recently read of an incident at Yale where a frat surrounded a sorrority and shouted, “no means yes! Yes means anal!”

I simply ask, “Should our culture be concerned about this?”  Yes, of course.

“But reading a trashy book by Tucker Max and laughing at his adventures is one thing, but boys shouting their mysogyny at the top of their lungs is another.  The two have nothing to do with each other.” you say.

False.  The two are intimately connected by a culture at large that winks at and even encourages the type of behavior in both scenarios.  For one, winking at the Tucker Maxes of the world as having “innocent fun” makes possible the sinister chant of the Yale frat boy.  For another, recall the quote: “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”  How do you sow your thoughts?  Easy: what you imbibe for entertainment.

Thirdly, why should we be shocked at the Yale boys?  It is exactly the destiny that we as a culture have wrought. With a thousand “small” things like the Tucker Max book, we pave the way.  “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst…We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”  We are a hyper-sexualized culture, and this comes through in countless ways.

Events like the “Yale boys incident” are the culmination of a culture that adopts an attitude about sex that says its merely a bodily function to be enjoyed, no commitment necessary.  Its the culmination of a culture that adopts a ”boys will be boys” attitude regarding hookups and taking advantage of inebriated girls, who are often all too willing themselves.  It is the culmination of a culture that teaches its girls that true “sexual liberation” means giving into one’s worst instincts, and “equality” means the “freedom” to act like a manboy at his absolute lowest.  It is the culmination of a culture that insists right and wrong are merely relative personal choices, and one man’s personal choice to do what he thinks is cool is just as good as the next person’s choice.  It’s the culmination of a culture that thinks the young cannot resist their urges, so we might as well teach them how to be “responsible” with those urges (once the first lesson is taught, the second is a forgotten afterthought, however. Anyone ever try on the novel thought that we should actually expect the young to keep it in their pants until marriage?), and its the culmination of a culture that says that there is no objective purpose to life and there is no greater cause than the self.

Is it any wonder that adolescents flock to sex to escape their boredom?  This is simply the modernist-sexual-revolution rooster coming home to roost.  Forgive the pun.

Some might dismiss this, saying that every generation is wild, and this is merely the old generation putting down the new.  They are only partly right. Every young generation has its daliances, but one big difference here is the degree…this seems to be “youth gone wild” on steroids.

Spending your teens sneaking out at night going steady with your heart throb, or going out on the town swing dancing and having a few drinks underage is one thing….spending not only your teens, but your twenties and thirties having a split personality where you are a professional during the day, but a raging drunk at night who opens her legs for the hottest looking anonymous alpha male or a male who prowls around looking for one of these gals is a horse of a dif’rent color.  Sure, I guess there were some like this back then–we’ve all heard the Fitzgerald-like stories–but the numbers now are of much greater proportion.

You might also balk at me including women in my assessment of blame, but there’s plenty of blame to go around, and some honest soul searching is in order for both genders.

For society at large, for winking at the Tucker Maxes of the world and believing that this is merely a temporary stage with few long-term hangovers.

For the men (dare I call them men?) who have foolishly equated manhood with being a pick up artist.  For the dads who’ve left their sons vulnerable to such a lie because they have either been absent or have passively let the culture teach the boys what manhood is.  For the male friends that laugh at their buddy’s stories of adventures, as if treating a woman like she’s a condom to be discarded when done with is even remotely ok (“what if that was your daughter?” is a question I always feel like asking, and often do.)

For the women who’ve bought into the rather warped view of liberation of Radical Feminism that I mentioned above…yep, for some academics, today’s “liberated woman” is what they’ve been shooting for.  This is simply what you get when you try to remove the stigma of being promiscuous.  If you doubt that’s the message of many on the college campus, just check out Yale’s “Sex Week.”  There’s many a college sponsoring similar activities.  Read something by Naomi Wolf.  She’s got lots of little gems for you.

While there may be a student group or two in the mix advocating for chastity, the overwhelming message is clear, and the aforementioned student group is usually seen as kind of an oddity.  Definitely not a group worthy of praise.

An aside: it’s ironic, you know.  You’d think that they’d advocate for equality by telling men to knock it off, instead of telling women to “go ahead.”  Perhaps that’s just me.

There are plenty of “health centers” on college campuses designed to help students avoid things like STD’s when it comes to their sexual choices, whatever those choices are.  But where are the centers on campuses designed to help the many who want to live chastely, but who feel pressured by a hypersexualized culture to give in?

Back on topic, here. To a society that insists this is a harmless temporary stage: what, I’m supposed to believe that you can spend your 20′s and part of your 30′s sleeping around, then suddenly flip a switch when you’re 35 and become an honorable husband/wife and father/mother?  Such a thought is the height of stupidity.

Purposely delaying marriage to later in life is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  I can understand when people say that most in their 20′s simply aren’t mature enough, but the common solution to that–”have fun now.  Marriage is a drag.  You can get married later” strikes me as an odd way to bring someone to greater maturity.  Protracted adolescence protracts the problem.

“Consent” is as far as this society is willing to go when it comes to moral instruction.  That is a tragically low bar.

To a culture that has nothing to offer the young in terms of objective meaning, purpose, and a solid metaphysical ground in which to put down roots: this is really the bottom line.  When the self is number one, the empty self is what results.

To the pickup artists: you’re a tool.  When you die, your only legacy will be a list of women you’ve slept with, and a list of boys who you have taught to do the same.  Perhaps a VH1 show.  That’s it.  What an utter worthless and banal life.

Even if the fun lasts past the morning, you have gained an orgasm, but lost the source of your strength.  You have traded a life well lived for a subjective feeling that’s here today, gone tomorrow.  You have no ability to self restrain, and you are sowing habits that erode your ability to sacrifice for a greater good.  Plus, when your own daughter or sister falls for one of these predators, just remember: you had it coming.  You reap what you sow.

To the passive, feminized dads and the absent fathers (whether in body and/or mind/emotion): you matter.  You can put a stop to this.  Don’t leave it up to your wife.  She is willing and able, but shouldn’t have to do it without you.  You must bear the majority of the burden and duty to lead your son into manhood and give your daughter the male attention she craves.  If you don’t know what a man is, learn.  It is never too late to grab an older male mentor who has character you respect, sit at his feet and learn.  Engage your family.  Sit them down at the dinner table every night, eat a meal with them, and talk to them.  Monday Night Football can wait.  If you remain passive, they won’t get it from mom…they will get it from Lil’ Wayne, guys like Tucker Max, or the first predatory alpha male to take them under their wings.  The ball is in your hands; you must run to the goal line.

To the ladies: I guess saying “falling for” isn’t the right word, as if it was akin to “tripping,” because many of the women who engage in the hookup scene actively throw themselves at these guys.  Check out the following summary of a girl who recently slept with Tucker Max (she posted the story online):

Next to her story she posted a photograph of her with Max that she had a friend take at the bar. The photo shows a rosy-cheeked strawberry blonde who, although no Scarlett Johansson, is no Ugly Betty either (her C-cup bustline, much in evidence both underneath and spilling over her strapless top, doesn’t hurt). She is also grinning from ear to ear, her smile as wide as a cantaloupe slice. Max, mugging for the camera, has his arm draped proprietarily, if not exactly affectionately, around her shoulder as she leans into his chest. No disapproving peers, either. When Courtney left her apartment to meet Max at the bar, her roommates called after her, “Make sure to bring him back.” She and Max rode off to the inn “with everyone at the bar waving and giving the thumbs up.”

Remember: you teach people how to treat you, and you teach the culture how to treat your future daughters.  Admittedly, most who get caught up in the hookup culture don’t actively start out that way, but they do end up there by a thousand small steps.  Sow a thought, reap a habit…by now you know the rest.  My daughter and your future daughter will have to live in the world you help to create.  Therefore mind your thoughts and actions.

And lest I leave anyone out, to me: I remember some years ago being so desperate that I actually flirted with buying the e-book of one of these pick up artist fools. How stupid!  Those guys’ confidence was paper-thin.  Why did I even think of going for that?

And: this is a sober warning to me to love my own daughter by spending time with her.  That is how kids spell “love.”  T-I-M-E.  That is, afterall, how I reacted to the “New Dating Game” article above: I put the article down, and played with my daughter.  It all reminded me of the Chris Rock line: “fellas, if your daughter grows up to be a stripper….you failed.”

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The Effects of Cohabitation on Children

Posted on October 2, 2011 | 1 Comment

Brad Wilcox of Univ. of Virginia was recently interviewed in the Wa Po about the effects of cohabitation on children.  Interesting interview.  The title says it all: “Why Cohabitation is Worse than Divorce for Kids.” Like I tell my students all the time who ask about my life as a father, I recommend it…but get married first.  That helps.

I’ve found from rubbing shoulders with people out in the world that very few people actually think through decisions like this.  Raw desire and convenience are often the forces driving the decisional bus (“convenience” defined in a very narrow sense…really, given the stats, cohabitation isn’t at all convenient in any robust way).  The ‘ol analogy between choosing a mate and test driving a car is often all that’s needed to justify cohabitation, despite that fact that if the significant other paused to think about it, s/he wouldn’t really appreciate being compared to an Audi or Honda.

I know this subject is politically incorrect, and it will hurt the feelings of some because it suggests their lifestyle choices are wrong and/or unwise.  Oh well.  Truth is truth, and, however untasteful, we do people a disservice if we shield them from it in the name of protecting emotions.  And even on the emotional plane, such a shielding just might be counterproductive in the long run.

To somewhat ironically paraphrase feminist Naomi Wolf on a slightly different topic, to insist that the truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy.

HT: Wintery Knight

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I Don’t Want to get Married Now; I Just Wanna Have Fun

Posted on April 28, 2011 | 1 Comment

….one of my buddies said that one, or something closely approximating it, the other day.  We were working out with a few other guys, and the topic somehow got on marriage.  Being a young guy in his early 20′s (23, I think), he expressed that he just wanted to chill out for a while.  This sentiment is incredibly common, I’ve found, both inside and outside Christian circles.

Now, those of you who know me can probably predict how I responded.  Even though I married in my 30′s (well, 2 days before my 30th birthday), I’m a big fan of not waiting around.  Being marriage minded but not meeting your wife until later is one thing; purposely putting it off simply because you don’t want that responsibility (“I just want to have fun”) when you’re young is another.

I mentioned a few things about data (23-27 seems to be a sweet spot for first marriages, satisfaction-wise), and briefly noted that there’s a downside to purposely marrying late, but I have a feeling it fell on deaf ears.  He just kinda nodded blankly, muttered a few “oh…yeah’s” and walked off, acting busy.

That all got me thinking later: why am I a big fan of marriage, and why am I such a campaigner about not putting it off?  I mean, geez, I coulda just smiled and nodded “yeah, have fun while you can” and engaged in typical gym-guy talk.  Why’d I feel compelled to say something?

The first reason are the studies and data I’ve seen, but I’d be lying if I said that was the main thing.  That does give justification to my views, IMO, but I have the feeling that the real culprits are more personal–though, I argue, still completely valid–reasons.

Sure, the whole “having fun, relishing independence” thing is an advantage of singleness.  Go where you want, do what you want, when you want to do it, blah blah blah.  I get it, I get it.  But it’s almost as if that’s become a mindless mantra among the young and single.  So many just say it as a knee jerk reaction against the word “marriage,” seems to me without thinking about it much.  Yeah, the independence that comes with singleness is an advantage of sorts, but you gotta ask a further question: “in comparison to what?”  If the other side is, really, greener, then it doesn’t mean much to blather on about how independence and fun is great.

So this begs a further question: is marriage really the greener of two pastures?  If you’re married to a shrew, I guess not…but that doesn’t mean that singleness is better on the whole; it just means you were stupid because you married a shrew.   While sometimes life really does throw you a curve ball, more often than not these shrew-ish characteristics are evident before the alter beckons…you’re just blind to them.

Some, despite this caveat, will still insist that singleness is better, and they’ll marshall the Apostle Paul in support.  While I can’t go into the details of his thought on marriage now, I will say I don’t think those who use Paul’s thought in that manner are really seeing the big picture of his thought on marriage accurately.

I will die on the following hill, though: singleness is better only if you a) assume your own personal happiness is the goal of life, and b) assume a very superficial definition of “happiness.”

Let me explain.

When happiness is seen as a subjective feeling that you get, and when life is looked at through the lens of your own personal happiness, then all sorts of things–most of them quite sheisty–are “greater goods.”  That affair, cheating on that exam to get ahead, lying to get that job, etc..but while you gain a whole world of warm fuzzies, you forfeit your soul.

That’s not the point of life, and that’s not what happiness is.  The definition of happiness that is currently en vogue–the “subjective feeling” definition–is a modern invention of the last 40-50 years or so.  It’s no coincidence that depression and all sorts of psychological ailments have skyrocketed in the same time span.  The ancients (Aristotle, Moses, all those guys) had a better take on it.  They saw happiness not as a subjective feeling, but as a well-ordered, integrated life of character…life well lived.  In other words, they saw it as wisdom and knowledge applied to actual life.

Similarly, the writer’s of the Westminster Catechism were onto something when they declared that the chief end of life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  They saw the point of life as others-centered, not as “my-own-subjective-happiness” centered (though the two coincide in a way in their declaration).  The two chief commandments uttered by Jesus in Matthew 23 is another way of stating that.

When examined with this lens, then it’s a no-brainer.  Marriage is the better of the two (excepting those who forego marriage purposefully as a life calling in order to serve God…this is something worthy of the highest honor.  The overwhelming majority of those in their 20′s who put off marriage temporarily do not have this in mind.).  Yes, there are moments when you want to tear your hair out.  Yes, there are moments when you have to put what you want to do  (ie, hang out with the guys at the local watering hole) to the side and attend to the “honey-do” list.  Yes, there are moments when you gotta put the video game controller down and go serve your wife.

I could go on, though you get the point.  But…therein lies the rub.  Therein lies the reason why marriage is better than protracted singleness: you pledge yourself and intimately bind yourself to a worthy, meaningful, and eternally consequential duty, a duty that, if attended to, is incredibly satisfying in the robust definition of happiness…to love another person as yourself.  It is an incredible responsibility, and that is good.  That responsibility brings about, not the thin version of happiness–though it does at times–but the thick version.

Have you ever attended to a very tough, ardous, and heavy task, and felt incredibly satisfied at the end of it, like building a house or starting a business?  Perhaps you were cursing yourself while in the midst of it, but at the end, the satisfaction you felt made it all worthwhile precisely because you gave all you had towards meeting a high goal.  That is analagous to marriage.  It is hard work…and that’s good.  You give yourself…all of yourself…towards shaping and raising up the character of a man/woman you love deeply, and the joy of that responsibility overshadows any temporary loss of subjective happiness.

That brings true happiness and true joy.  Of course, you don’t need to be married to do that.  You can “die to self” and serve others any time.  However, it happens in marriage in an incredibly intense, intimate, and unique way.  And again, that’s good.

You get that?  Responsibility is good.

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Perpetually Single

Posted on October 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Bashing the Church is all the rage these days, especially from folks within (or who, in some instances, claim to be within) the Church itself.  I’m not a big fan of this trend, partly because it’s a trend.   It’s hip.  It’s cool.  And let’s face it, it’s kind of easy.  It’s incredibly easy to sit back, point the finger at whatever you think you see is wrong in the church, and just be bitter about it.  Grumbling takes little horsepower.  Much more difficult to actually positively spur the Church on to greater love and good deeds (kinda like the fellas who wrote Why we Love the Church did in that book).  I admit I’m a partaker…I just think so much of the critique is no critique at all, but bitter grumbling, and it’s not helpful.

So there’s the caveat to this post.

The other night I was having a conversation with a close friend of mine who is going through a rough time in his life.  Without getting into many of the specifics, he is feeling burned by some of his past experience in the church, and is reacting in rather self destructive ways.  He’ll be the first to admit that the buck stops with him, however I can’t deny that he’s been sold a false bill of goods by some well meaning people in the church.  I’ve actually had quite a few friends go through the same thing recently, and all of them have this one thing in common: their struggle deals with marriage, dating, and singleness.

He made a really good point in the middle of our conversation, one that could pass as grumbling, but at the same time it’s an accurate critique.

“The ‘singles groups’ in churches teach people to be perpetually single,” he said.

I think he’s on to something.

In far too many singles groups, there is no one from the outside, say an older man for the guys or older woman for the gals, exhorting them to be proactively seeking a spouse (which is ok, you know..even good!).  The same could be said about finding a career, though not nearly to the same extent.  Virtually no one is even teaching them how to move towards marriage.  The result is a bunch of people in the same age group reinforcing the same single lifestyle and habits.

You might not think that’s a big deal.  Go ask my friend (as previously mentioned, there are actually more than one in this exact position), though, and he’ll tell you about his struggles after banking for so long on advice from his fellow single peers.   He sorely wishes he had an older man in his life saying, “hey, get off your duff.  Get a job.  Get married.  Church service and ministry are good, but you need to get up and get going…now.”

Now, I’m down with the whole “content in your singleness” mantra.  I’ve seen some go to the opposite extreme and make marriage, sex, and relationships an idol, and I’ve seen them get burned as a result.  After you’ve pursued your idol fo so many years withou success at attaining it, the bitterness that results from that is often worse than all the downsides of singleness put together.  Better to look to Christ for your self worth than a relationship.  Still, though, I think that slogan is over-used as a knee jerk reaction.  Encouraging a single person to actively seek a spouse is entirely appropriate and good.  You can be “content in your singleness” and actively seek at the same time.

I hasten to add that celibacy is a high calling deserving of honor for those that choose it.  These people devote their all to the Lord in a lifetime of service as a single person.  If someone can do that and not be lonely and bitter from it, they deserve praise and honor of the highest degree.  For the rest of us, though, marriage is our calling, and it’s unwise to passively prolong the singleness period.   It’s one thing to be proactive but not meet success; it’s another thing entirely to be passive about it and just wait around, letting the best years for getting married roll by.

Singles groups are doing no one a favor by leaving their attendees uncounseled when it comes to actually moving towards marriage.

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Maiwwage

Posted on September 14, 2010 | 1 Comment

Wintery Knight tipped me off to the following exerpt from a blog on marriage:

Couples in crisis often reach the point where they decide they are just two poorly matched people. This precedes the decision to leave the relationship and go in search of that “right person.” Unfortunately, the odds of a successful marriage go down for each attempt at a new marriage. Psychiatrist and author of The Secrets of Happily Married Men and The Secrets of Happily Married Women and The Secrets of Happy Families, Scott Haltzman, MD, says in truth, they are correct; we all married the wrong person.

…

“My basic philosophy is we have to start with the premise when we choose our partner that we aren’t choosing with all the knowledge and information about them,” says Dr. Haltzman. “However, outside of the extreme scenarios of domestic violence, chronic substance abuse, or the inability to remain sexually faithful—which are good arguments for marrying the wrong person on a huge scale, and where it is unhealthy or unsafe to remain married—we need to say, ‘This is the person I chose, and I need to find a way to develop a sense of closeness with this person for who he or she really is and not how I fantasize them to be.’”

That choice to work on the relationship can lead to a more profound, meaningful experience together. Dr. Haltzman offers the following tips to help us reconnect or improve our bond:

◦Respect your mate for his/her positive qualities, even when they have some important negative ones.

◦Be the right person, instead of looking for the right person.

◦Be a loving person, instead of waiting to get love.

◦Be considerate instead of waiting to receive consideration.

To underscore the last couple of points, Dr. Haltzman says many people will put only so much effort into a relationship, then say, “I’ve done enough.” But very few of us will do that with our children. “Instead, we say despite their flaws, we wouldn’t want anyone else; yet, our kids can be much more of a pain in the ass than our spouses.”

Finally, he advises, “Have the attitude that this is the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with, so you must find a way to make it work instead of always looking for the back door.”

Doug Geivett, one of my former professors, comments:

Fourth, we should commit to having a successful marriage, and let go any idealistic notion of being married to just the right person and having a perfect marriage.

Fifth, we should welcome a different conception of the values and rewards of marriage than what is so widely assumed today.

Right on.  He goes on to point out that this does not mean you shouldn’t get married nor does it mean that your marriage to the wrong person can’t succeed or that any person is a good person to marry.

This is a good antidote to the “soulmateism”–the belief that there’s “the one” out there especially made for you and that it is your destiny to meet and wed–that is the spirit of the age today.  IMO, soulmateism is a bunch of bunk.  Dropping that view, as well as dropping the “I’ll ‘settle down’ get married someday later in life after I’ve ‘had my fun’ and made my career” attitude currently en vogue today will make for a generally better life.

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Reason to Pause

Posted on March 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

“Christians get divorced at a rate equal to non-Christians.”

Ever hear that one?  If you’ve ever gone to church for any length of time, especially a more hip and “modern” church, you’ve probably heard that said again and again and again.  If you have Christian friends, you’ve probably heard it repeated ad nauseum on Facebook and Twitter.  Strange thing: I’ve never heard any non-Christian talk about it…only Christians (well, I take that back…one gay man brought it up in a discussion on Facebook.  Link below.). 

It is common knowledge amongst believers nowadays.  The thing is that the research it’s based on is kinda shoddy.  I’ve blogged about it before, and the other day I ran into another one who has analyzed that often-quoted stat.  Brad Wright is a sociologist professor at the University of Connecticut, and he evaluates the research that birthed that stat on his blog in a whole series.  It is all well worth a read.

The main flaw he points out is that Barna, the research group that published the stat (it was soon therafter picked up by Ron Sider in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, which Wright also reviews in the series), erroneously compared Christians to Christians in their anaylsis.  That is, they only counted evangelicals as Christians, while all other groups they collapsed into one category: all Catholics, Mainline Protestants, etc, were grouped with atheists and agnostics.  Perhaps many of the Catholics et al were not Christians, but no doubt some were.  If they wanted to compare evangelicals to, perhaps, Mainline Protestants and/or Catholics, that would have been interesting, but to lump them into one category with those of other religions and those of no religion was sloppy…this is especially so given that Barna labeled the latter group “non-Christians.”

Wright also analyzes other data outside of the Barna Group and suggests that we should question the conventional wisdom.  He also shows how frequent church attendance correlates strongly with a low divorce rate.  For example, when it comes to Evangelicals alone, in the data, frequent attendance makes an almost 20% difference.  While he is careful to note that there might be other causal explanations other than Christianity lowering divorce rates (afterall, correlation does not mean causation), at the very least his analysis is a strong reminder to be discerning in what we accept.

Should we now pat ourselves on the back and comfort ourselves that “it’s not as bad as we think?”  Well, no.  Exhortations to greater holiness are always a pressing concern for the faithful.  What should we take away from this, then?  A few things:

For one, no matter the righteousness of one’s cause, we must remember a greater duty: a duty to the truth.  It might be mighty persuasive to our fellow Christ-followers if we toss out an alarming stat.  Such is the way of sensational news.  However, we are first and foremost people of the truth.  Our Lord was the Way, the Truth, and the Light. We need to reflect that, and this includes what we use to convince others to do better in their devotion.  Simple as that.

Relatedly, even if the stat/data/evidence/persuasive support is useful, we should pause and do the necessary work to discern the details behind the scenes.  This applies to Wright as well, by the way.   Perhaps he’s missing something somewhere.  Actually, there are a few things about his analysis that smell off to me.  For instance, that data he cites marks only professed belief, not actual.  The former isn’t exactly 100% accurate.  Secondly, the frequent church attendance marker says nothing about the theological content of said church.  While attendees are separated by Evangelical/Mainline/Catholic markers, this is far from sufficient.  There are churches out there that call themselves Evangelical (or at least they are categorized by others as Evangelical) that have the theological consistency of a frightened bat.  Jesus wouldn’t recognize those folks even if they wore t-shirts picturing His face with the word “hope” under it.

Perhaps the markers above are the best sociologists have.  If so, they can’t be faulted I reckon, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t shortcomings of the research.

You might be tempted to dismiss what I said above about the need to not cite useful stats that aren’t exactly truthful.  Maybe your experience convinces you.  Perhaps you think that there’s no harm in it, and there is actually much good that could come out of shocking our fellow Christians into obedience.  “That’s simply what it takes these days.  If we didn’t do that, no one would listen,” you reason.

Call this the “by any means necessary”  approach.  This leads to a third lesson: when we take that approach, we lose credibility.  To paraphrase C.S Lewis, when we shoot for truth, we get both persuasiveness and the truth.  When we shoot for only persuasiveness and disregard the pure truth, we get neither.  It’s one of those “boy who cries wolf” things.  Speaking personally, when I’m interacting with someone who has not been discerning in the past, I tend not to trust them, even if their cause is just.  I’ve always got a thought lingering in the back of my mind: what are they not telling me?  I now have this attitude towards anyone who has used the common stat Wright takes to task.  While there will always be quite a few folks in the pews and in our circle of friends that will buy what we’re selling no matter what, I’m willing to bet there are many, especially non-Christians, who aren’t as easily convinced.  If you give them a reason to withdraw trust, they will.

Wright puts it well:

Obviously we would like both useful and accuracy, but if we had to let one go, which would it be?

I can understand why people want to emphasize the useful. Why not use statistics, as well as anything else we can find, to advance the Kingdom?

And yet… if we’re not 100% accurate in our creation or use of research, then that starts to eat away at the credibility of our work.

Here’s an example of how this might play out. Suppose an author is concerned about Christians having some moral problem. S/he then finds all the statistics consistent with this “problem” hypothesis, ignoring ones that might contradict it. The end result: A skewed presentation of who the world works, but a presentation designed to get Christians to do the right thing.

I suppose this issue revolves around questions of the ends justifying the means. I would even say that some of the egregious misuse of statistics about Christianity are done with the best of intentions. Me, I want to go wherever the data lead me, though I realize that I have my own biases and limitations that can get into the way. Ultimately, if it is truth we’re after, cutting corners on our means of getting there isn’t going to help.

Perhaps your attitude is that of one commenter on Wright’s blog: Christians should always assume the worst and apologize, so we should embrace the conventional wisdom, even if it’s not 100% true.
I don’t know about that.  It might lead someone to being walked on more, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to more respect.  I learned that from one of my past relationships.  I was frequently apologizing to her, even when the accusations were trumped up.  She finally got tired of it and told me to shut up.  She soon broke up with me.  Might the same dynamic apply in Christians’ relationship to the world?

I have found that Christians often latch onto bad news about the church and run with it.  I even do this from time to time.  It’s almost like the self-flagellation featured in The DaVinci Code.  We think it brings purification.  We are so apt to do this that we seldom pause to question the news that we recieve.   In the rush, we tend to trust well-known Christian sources (such as Barna) whose information might be sensational, but isn’t subject to the normal academic peer review process (which has its own shortcomings, I admit).  Sometimes we get egg on our faces from this habit.

Think: can you really see Jesus endorsing the “by any means necessary” approach?  Do you think He EVER fudged just a little bit to get more followers?

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