Marriage Doesn’t Wait For True Love

One of the interesting threads of discussion in Dalrock’s post From celibate boyfriend to celibate husband (true love doesn’t wait). has been the very issue that the post has covered:

The drive to teach abstinence in the church is really a drive for the delay of marriage.

Now wait a minute, how could that be? Isn’t teaching abstinence a good thing? Well it is. But it really is leading to something else, as evidenced by the number of (even Christian) women fornicating and the lack of rebuke from the average Christian pulpit.

As fads in Churchianity go, things get introduced and their memory comes and goes. There was a group called True Love Waits, which was created by the Southern Baptists in 1993 and has spread from there. Naturally, with all things Churchian, it was filled with lots of style and symbolism, but not much substance. Things such as purity rings, and purity balls, which end in pledges to abstinence. As this Huffington Post article describes them:

For those unfamiliar with the ritual, a purity ball is a religious ceremony in which fathers and daughters dress up in ball gown attire, spend a night of dinner and dancing together, and end the evening with a vow to abstain from sex until marriage.

While being a worldly article and standing against the Biblical idea of chastity, a linked article goes on to point out the strangeness of this concept:

It’s hard to know where to start with this: the notion of sex as “impurity,” the fact that it’s all daughters and no sons, the idea of dressing a preteen girl in something that looks awfully like a wedding dress.

Be sure to visit the linked site, as there are several pictures of participants of these purity balls (with limited copyright or I would have put one to this post). Creepy when you look at them, huh? Then as part of the ceremony, we get the pledge the daughters take:

“Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.”

So we get a ceremony that looks like marriage, and for the daughters, which ends with a pledge before God

Given the lust for the marriage ceremony that women have, this fits the bill. Then the pledge saves themselves for God alone. . .or rather each daughter’s Personal Jesus, and ends up with their own marriage purity ring. Such a commitment definitely fits the idea that most Christian women have that they are married to Jesus, and needs to have her perfect Personal Jesus as her husband.

That said, I searched “True Love Waits” and found the reading pretty interesting. It was sparse given that this particular Churchian fad has had such an amount of time to go away. One has to admit that they did a perfect job with the sloganeering. But quite inaccurate given the message that has been sent. After all:

I suppose that, among other things the title: ‘The Godly Young Man or Woman Does Not Have Sexual Relations Outside of Marriage’ was just not catchy enough.

Genesis 29:20 came up consistently in the search: “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.” In reading the entire story, we can typically see that the application of this Scripture is out of context. They are taking a single isolated Scripture verse and then fashioning a whole doctrine after it, which is inconsistent with the rest of Scripture.

It’s amazing how many different references to Genesis 29:20 I find. Basically put, whoever came up with that doctrine shopped, deciding to conform Scripture to their wishes instead of conforming themselves to Scripture. In other words, they are taking an exceptional case out of Scripture and turning it into the norm.

Granted, the majority of the writers that came up in the search got this verse right. The most interesting writer out in left field is this one. You can recognize the feminist tropes spread all throughout:

* “Jacob turned his head, took one fateful look, and it was without a doubt love at first sight.”
* “We get the idea that he was so fascinated by Rachel’s beauty, and so enchanted by her charm, that he failed to recognize her shortcomings or even to consider the will of God in his relationship with her.”
* [Jacob reminded the shepherds that grazing time was lost], “probably a ploy to get rid of them so he could talk to Rachel alone.”
* “Could he [Jacob] have been showing off just a little?”
* “But from the beginning we are a little dubious about the match. We know that a relationship based primarily on physical attraction rests on a shaky foundation.”
* “But when a man is enamored of a woman, he does not want to hear those things. He is going to have her, and nothing else matters.”
* “One great test of true love, therefore, is the ability to wait. Infatuation is usually in a hurry because it is self-centered. It says, “I feel good when I am with you, so I want to hurry up and get you to the altar before I lose you and lose these good feelings.” Love says, “Your happiness is what I want most of all, and I am willing to wait, if need be, to be sure this is what is best for you.”
* “Jacob could have accepted his marriage to Leah as the will of God for his life and learned to love her alone.”

There is much more that could be gleaned out of the piece, but the author clearly makes Jacob into the villain for not desiring Leah alone in the first place. This is because of the clear Churchian teaching that men are not to consider attraction when considering their wives. So it seems that, given Genesis 29:20 is used so much in connection with this phrase that:

The “True Love Waits” mantra is for men, not for women.

This can be easily seen in how the term is meant. “True love” in the sense it is meant, is really feeling and not action. In other words, instead of marriage being the proper place to experience romance and sex, we have romance becoming the proper place to experience marriage and sex.

So in the decision of marriage, men are supposed to wait until the women are ready for marriage – after all, true love waits, right? It really only comes down to the preferences of the woman’s personal Jesus.

True love waits until the man who meets her 643 point checklist comes along. After all, the perfect man God has just for that woman is out there.

Meanwhile, men are to sacrifice throughout all of this and wait until she is ready. After all, according to the Book of Oprah, her heart is to lead the marriage. So the message to men who are waiting:

True love waits until she’s established in her career.
True love waits until she’s had a ride on The Carousel, and rack up her n-count in a series of long-term relationships.
True love waits until she’s had the chance to travel.
True love waits until she’s had time to serve the Lord long-term.
True love waits until she’s had a “marriage” and a couple of children.

Then the women notice their prospects have dried up and cry to folks like Andrew Walker, Jon Lakin, and Albert Mohler, who then respond with growls and shouts to man up and marry those sluts, instead of seeing the situation for what it is.

These individuals have noticed the long period of waiting, and correctly call for early marriage, but miss the reason behind it, along with the sex doing the delaying. This is common, and to be expected.

If True Love Waits, then the third word indicates that the wait has to end sometime. These people are correctly seeing that the wait is too long. Until they can look in the mirror, and truly hear the message that “You are that man.”, they can talk all they want. But it still won’t make it happen, especially at the hands of these people. This makes such a pronouncement as this hot air, and consequently worthless. The proof in the pudding (so to speak) will be if these three men (and the others of the SBC) can repent of the wickedness they’ve perpetuated.

Society of Phineas – The Best of 2012

I’m not one to usually do round-up posts regularly (or at all), but with it being the end of 2012, it seemed fitting to dig into the vault that is the site stats and pull out what is the most viewed posts. While this blog hasn’t existed for all of 2012, it has existed in nine months of that time so it should be a good reflection. That said, here we go, along with some summaries and reflections:

1. Single Christian Men Don’t Seek Christian Wives (#2) (08-03-2012)

This post, along with #5 came on a week where I was itching to blog, but really didn’t have a topic on my mind, so I pulled out the most common search term at the time (as explained on post #5) and used it on Google myself. Then I pulled out some observations about relationships and what is pushing single Christian men away from marrying. They have continued with consistent views ever since.

This one focuses on the church environment and the fact that church officials can’t seem to get past their blaming of men to see the factors that are on them to deal with that push men away from dating in church.

2. So You Want To Become A Pastor? (08-15-2012)

It’s hard sometimes to gauge where interest comes from for views, but this one was obvious. Two days after posting my observations in research on what it takes to be a pastor, the post was linked from the Captain Capitalism blog. Subsequently there were a large number of referrals. I never got around on this one to thank him for the linkage in a decent amount of time before the post got buried, so consider this that thank you.

3. Why Young Men Don’t Marry (05-20-2012)

This one is older than #1 and #5, but consistently receives views for the same reason. In this one, I continue after dealing with Albert Mohler’s man-up rant to describe some of the real reasons that young men aren’t marrying within the church.

4. Single Christian Men Just Aren’t Buying What Is Sold (08-05-2012)

This was the first post after #1 and #5 which was the result of some thoughts to express, ultimately coming from that exercise and answering an article. It compares the conditions of the dating market in terms of an economic exchange, and points out that you have the unique condition of the sellers in the dating market blaming the buyers for not buying the product instead of working doing a better job of providing the product and selling it.

5. Single Christian Men Don’t Marry (#1) (08-02-2012)

The story behind this one was described in #1. This post describes some of the attitudes of the single women involved which were quoted in the articles that came up.

I conclude this post by thanking all of you who have read this blog and those of you who have supported this blog by linking to it in your blog rolls and link fest posts. I offer the prayer of the hope that 2013 will bring much glory to God and blessing to all of those involved.

Female-Oriented Pornography

I notice in a few circles that the drumbeat is getting louder with respect to female-oriented pornography. As I’ve written about in the past , female-oriented pornography (or pornography designed to cause sexual excitement in women) has more to do with the written word than the image. Webster’s dictionary even tells us this (emphasis mine):

Pornography noun:
1: the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement
2 : material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement

Unfortunately, we’ve had the mainstreaming and acceptance of female porn (in the form of books and movies) from both the secular and evangelical realms. Romance novels and rom-coms (or chick-flicks) have been tacitly accepted for a very long time, and even popularized from books into movies such as the Twilight series. 50 Shades of Grey even began as a Twilight fan-fiction. Unfortunately, it’s taken something as outwardly blatant as 50 Shades of Grey in order for people to even talk and realize that things such as books can be pornography too.

To give credit where credit is due (especially since the admonishing of women for sin in any Focus On The Family material is taboo since they believe that women don’t sin), Boundlessline.org ran an online article by Adam Holz which pointed out the truth of such matters:

Pornography, then, is not just a men’s issue. And though some might be tempted to dismiss or wink at a “naughty” story such as Fifty Shades of Gray because it trades in degrading words instead of degrading images, it’s potentially every bit as destructive in the lives of women who might be tempted to entertain E.L. James’ twisted sexual fantasies.

Of course, the redefining of it took hold right from the first comment on that blog entry (no it’s not porn it’s “erotica”). The tacit acceptance of the sins of women along with the lack of recognition of their responsibilities within the evangelical sphere is highly unfortunate. The demonstration that most evangelical leaders have no concept of the nature of women (especially their sin nature, and their sexual nature) to advise or preach in any matter regarding them is also incredibly disturbing.

Thankfully there are people who are pointing these things out, as well as the blatant hypocrisy that evangelical leaders are engaging in regarding the issue of pornography. Bettina Arndt writes:

There’s such giggly delight in the public display of women’s huge appetite for this latest girly porn.

Yet when men are caught looking at their favoured sexual material – pictures rather than words – that’s somehow very different. Men who use porn are disgusting, perverted, their filthy smut a danger to marriage and sure sign of an addled male brain.

The double-standard most certainly exists. While the use of porn is accepted and celebrated with women (it’s a best seller, popular enough for a trilogy of books AND a movie), it’s denigrated and demonized when it comes to men. We have already seen a ready example of this double-standard in R. Albert Mohler’s writings:

One further qualification must be added to this picture. Pornography is mainly, though not exclusively, a male phenomenon. That is to say, the users and consumers of pornography are overwhelmingly male–boys and men. . . The fact remains that many men pay a great deal of money and spend a great deal of time looking at and looking for pornographic images in order to arouse themselves sexually.

Bettina Arndt points out the double-standard as do others:

If men and women were the same, surely we would have the same capacity to be rational, moral beings, mature enough to handle our fantasy lives without distorting real-life goals and expectations.

But no, when it comes to sexual fantasy any notion of equality goes out the window, with men seen as incapable of making this type of differentiation while women remain uncorrupted by their own salacious, grossly unreal imaginary sexual world.

Stephen Harrington points out this double-standard as well:

“Mummy porn” is seen as fun, harmless, even liberating, and therefore exempt from critique or social judgement, whereas “daddy porn” is inherently “horrid” and “depraved”.

Evangelicals like Mohler are screaming to the rafters against the male-oriented porn, but are conspicuously silent on the female variety. They need to realize that women aren’t reading novels such as these “for the articles” (to parrot the common Playboy ploy) or watching the movie adaptations because it’s a nice storyline. So why are these evangelicals silent on such matters? Harrington concludes correctly that it’s a by-product of the feminist interests (again another proof of feminism in these evangelicals):

I suspect it has something to with the fact the 50 Shades trilogy clearly does not fit the narrative that . . . the porn industry is positioned as an engine of rape, violence towards women, and all-out misery.

Most significantly, these books are written by a woman, from a woman’s perspective and are extremely popular with everyday women. Which, of course, challenges the presumption that pornography is something done to women, never by them and/or for them.

These books . . . have also become enormously popular by nothing more than word-of-mouth. They have not been forced upon anyone, but have been actively sought out for reading pleasure by women all around the world, again challenging the idea that our sexuality is being hijacked by depraved corporate interests.

So what does it mean in the end? R. Albert Mohler and other evangelicals like him need to answer the following questions correctly or be seen as hypocritical and all their words rightfully dismissed. This will be a necessity for them to do such things and be seen as serious, and even openly repent in public in sack-cloth and ashes for the efforts they have made in the past against men when it comes to pornography, since the profitability of Fifty Shades of Grey and other fem-porn works and general acceptance of these things will only cause these things to grow in number:

1. Is pornography a male-only phenomenon or is it a person-oriented phenomenon (that means women do it too)? The only right answer is that all (men and women) participate and need to be admonished if pornography is sinful.

2. Is male-oriented pornography the only thing that’s sinful or is all pornography sinful? The only acceptable answers here are that either all of it is sinful or none of it is sinful. This writer holds that all of it is sinful. But those in power in Churchianity need to make this decision, and back it up.

3. Are they willing to stand forcefully in action on their answer in #2. This means in the case of Albert Mohler if he answers that all pornography is sinful, banning all female-oriented pornography (these novels, other romance novels including “Christian” ones, and rom-com movies) within the walls of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as well as directing the instructors to teach forcefully against it, AND preaching much more forcefully against the fem-porn than he ever did the male variety. If the fem-porn gets a pass, then that means the male-porn gets a pass, too, and the unbanning of these things need to occur within SBTS and openly preached FOR.

Anything less than accomplishing these things is hypocrisy from these people.

Why Young Men Don’t Marry

In part 1, the representative views of evangelical Churchianity relating to the entrance into marriage were described through the positions of R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It was described that he believes that neglecting to partake in marriage 2.0 at the earliest opportunity is a sin. This assessment is given with no Scriptural basis, and in fact has no valid basis in Scripture. He also uses this as an opportunity to rain down an anti-man feminist rant on young men, blaming his imagined sin upon them and following the standard operating procedure of Churchianity to the letter.

This post will explore the causes of his “modern crisis of marriage” that exists today. I agree with Dr. Mohler in this regard. At the rate things are going, marriage in any form as God designed it is in an eclipse. In fact, there are some commentators that are predicting the demise of marriage as a whole. This is correct in many respects. However, his assessments are completely incorrect regarding unmarried men (in parts, Camerin Courtney shows more wisdom and discernment than he does). As I am an unmarried man who isn’t hooked into the Evangelical Matrix and blind to what is going on, I’ll describe the causes as I see them within Churchianity as to why young men aren’t running head long into marriages. I can’t presume to speak for others in that position, but I’m sure this will resonate with them.

1. We observe the marriages around us as examples, find them wanting, and seek to not duplicate them.

As children we grow up with bad experiences with marriages. We see the way marriages are, good and bad, patterned through our parents. As the divorce culture has lasted into its third generation, broken families and broken homes are more common now than the exception. In growing up, we see all the fights, and how our fathers treated our mothers and how our mothers treated our fathers. For example, Camerin Courtney writes in her response:

We’re the first generation of the no-fault divorce. Many of today’s singles have lived with the consequences of young, perhaps-not-so-well-thought-through marriages of generations before. So of course many single people today are a bit gun-shy about entering an institution they saw, from a front row seat, fail.

We also see the marriages around us when we are growing up as well as those around us in adulthood that are provided to us as examples. We see how they don’t measure up to Biblical standards. We see how they are quickly abandoned for the smallest of reasons. We see the way these marriages are structured and function in public. We see the roles husbands undertake and the roles that wives undertake, and how they relate to one another. We also see what husbands get as the fruit of their marriages, both during the marriage and when it is dissolved, and know that the fruits of getting married are very poor for men. Camerin Courtney writes in her response:

Perhaps many of us are slower to marry not because we don’t take marriage seriously, but because we do take it seriously. Because we’ve seen and experienced the consequences of hasty unions, because we’ve seen the statistical evidence that older first-time marriages have a better chance for survival, because we take very seriously the words “til death do us part.” If anything, I think rushing to marry and preaching a gospel of marriage for marriage’s sake devalues it more than our generation’s hesitancy and seeming passivity.

2. We are educated about Marriage 2.0, how it works, and its pitfalls.

Given what we see in the marriages around us, we understand that something is wrong. This is especially true when the true Biblical script regarding marriage is honestly studied (Marriage 1.0). We have an unparalleled opportunity with the Internet and other factors to be able to learn about these things and see that marriage has been redefined from what it used to be, and see that it is redefined in a light that is very dangerous for men. We also know that these things are true, regardless of how perfect a husband or father you are – in fact, perfect is how the wife defines it depending on her mood each day (copied from White Raven’s excellent research on Elephants & Trees):

Fact #1: Over 50% of marriages now end in divorce.
Fact #2: Women file around 75% of all divorces.
Fact #3: During divorce women typically receive half of the marital assets regardless of the length of the marriage.
Fact #4: Women get primary custody of the kids over 90% of the time.
Fact #5: If she gets custody of the kids, you will be on the hook for child support at least until they turn eighteen. Sometimes you’re even required to put them through college.
Fact #6: Your child support payments are based on your income at the time of instatement; if you lose your job or take a pay cut your child support payments often do not change to reflect your new financial situation.
Fact #7: If you are unable to pay your child support for any reason, they can put you in jail.
Fact #8: The court doesn’t care about your visitation rights. If your ex doesn’t uphold her end of the agreement on her own, nobody is going to force her.
Fact #9: Many women claim physical or sexual abuse in order to keep your involvement after divorce to a minimum.
Fact #10: 1 out of 25 children are raised by a man who mistakenly believes that he is the father.
Fact #11: Even if you can prove that a child isn’t biologically yours, you will very likely still be required to pay child support in the event of divorce.

Given how the “institution of marriage” stacks up in today’s day and age, especially within the church, is it any wonder that men are refusing to marry, even swearing off marriage altogether? We see the Marriage 2.0 for what it is, a meat grinder. We are not fooled and no amount of shaming language will change that.

3. We see the women that are available and find them wanting.

One thing we as men learn very quickly that seek wisdom and discernment of whether to marry or not is how deficient the women today are of being suitable for marriage. Feminism has encouraged the affirmation of women above all standards, including Godly ones, for more than a generation. While it is exceeding rare to find a woman that is Godly in enough of a way for a God-affirming marriage to work, most all of the women available are not even remotely considerable. Gillis Tripplett writes of these women:

Many of today’s women have had sex with Tom, Dick, Harry, Skeet and Pimp Daddy. They are depressed, confused, angry at their ex’s, in need of crises counseling and have multiple children by multiple men. They are on Prozac, have had one or more abortions, crave therapy and are stressed out. They have chosen men who are jerks and have been dumped, played, pimped, tricked and dismissed. Now they are mad at God, bitter towards all men and are going off!

These women not only have bizarre beliefs about men, love, sex and matrimony, they also harbor alarming issues that make them unsuitable mates for any good man. Forget baggage, these females bring the entire store into a relationship or marriage. And it doesn’t matter if they attend church or not.

We can add other things as well: Prideful and arrogant, and their unrestrained hypergamy. Given that they haven’t been corrected for their sins by their parents growing up, or the church at large, they are feral women when it comes to spiritual and moral issues unrestrained by any and all things outside of themselves, especially God, or men. They are incapable of submitting to the leadership of anyone, especially a husband in Marriage 1.0. How can a woman like this even be a consideration for marriage before a discerning Godly man?

4. Poor evangelical teaching, instruction, and support.

As many evangelicals are, Dr. Mohler is either clueless or willfully ignoring these problems. In fact, he notices the results of the problems and answers predictably to placate Team Woman, encouraging the problems more and more. One definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting a different result. This is what Dr. Mohler and the evangelicals are continuing to do. Perhaps this is because they choose to listen to the young women only, perhaps this is because they are snowed in by their feminist world-view. In blaming the men, repeating these feminist shaming rants only acts as a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal sounded repeatedly. Men that have any sense whatsoever have tuned these people out long ago, reacting to what these shaming rants are. Mere noise.

In a lot of ways, evangelicals like Dr. Mohler and others are contributors to these problems. They do not sanction married couples for their faults they show within marriages, especially the predominant one from men, their uxoriousness. They do not endeavor to spotlight good examples of marriage and explain why they are good examples. They do not assure in their reckless promotion of marriage that those involved are mature and suitable enough for it. They do not admonish these women they speak of to practice chaste respectful behavior befitting a Godly wife. Unfortunately, for every Gillis Tripplett that exists, who does point out the problem from the man’s side, there’s 50 of the mold of Mark Driscoll, Kevin DeYoung, Bill Bennett, and others who just want to rant against the men for showing wisdom and discernment.

As some of the rants go, do we play video games instead of chasing women? Sure, but we do other things that are more profitable than partaking in Marriage 2.0. Are we lazy and self-centered? Mostly not. But those of us that desire to have marriage but realize these things are angry, justifiably so because this is all injustice. The one nice thing about the video games is at least most of us can win doing that, unlike partaking in Marriage 2.0.