Marriage appears to be a dying institution that fewer couples are choosing. Year after year, couples who marry are increasingly becoming a unique group compared to their peers. A recently published study suggests that perhaps, more than ever before, marriage is becoming a relationship status tightly tied to a dwindling religious sub-population in the United States. While some may look at these findings and feel mostly apathetic at the potential death of an institution, there are many important reasons gleaned from recent social science research to be concerned about these trends.
Basically, more young adults and such don’t believe in marriage. Probably bad examples from their parents. Increasingly it’s looking like prolonged singlehood and cohabitation are the primary selections. Marriage is being more confined to middle class-upper class and increasingly religious.
Basically, for Christians this is actually a good thing and likely not a bad thing. The primary caveat is that we are able to model good marriages and families to our secular counterparts.
Clearly, though, this is part of the issue as probably most Christian Churches are not teaching God’s roles and responsibilities and generally catering to the culture which are some of the reasons why divorce is only somewhat lower than the secular counterparts.
There is opportunity for the Church, but they need to teach the Bible on this.
The author is seemingly not a Christian, but he does have a wide reach according to his website.
From my work with more than five thousand couples over the past 18+ years, I am convinced 50% of marriage misery would be eliminated if couples just had a shared calendar.
Overall, these are just superficial things. If the underlying dynamic and foundation of the marriage is cracked, then addressing superficial things like this are just merely going to prolong the explosion/implosion of the marriage.
I would bust on him if he were a Christian and was giving this advice without even talking about the Bible, but it’s not the case with IFStudies that all the posters are Christian. Nevertheless, this is the type of crappy thing out there that makes it seem like you’re doing something to help your marriage, but isn’t actually going to solve the underlying problems in the long run.
Despite a prominent Christian presence, hookup culture is undoubtedly alive at the university. Most respondents were surprised by the casual boldness with which their peers discuss sex. They mentioned that many young men attend parties where “the whole goal is to get laid” and later banter competitively about their sexual exploits.
However, this behavior is not restricted to males. One sophomore described her first day in the dining hall freshman year where a group of girls “started comparing how many boys they’d slept with in high school.” Meanwhile, one senior recounted walking past a male dorm room and hearing one young lady proudly proclaim, “I’m the last one who had sex!” For an institution that claims to uphold the value of waiting for marriage, surely these stories are cause for concern.
In my own interviews, when I asked why students hook up, I consistently heard, “it’s the college experience,” confirming the precedence of the “party pathway” even at this Christian university. This disjunction between evangelical belief and behavior is consistent with David Ayers’ IFS findings on evangelical young adults’ sexual behavior before marriage, which showed that 51% of evangelical 18-22 year olds who attend church weekly have had premarital sex, and about 56% of young men and 54% of young women who say that their religious beliefs are “very important” have had premarital sex.
Sexual permissiveness is prevalent, even among Evangelical young adults, a finding that was confirmed in my interviews with Evangelical university students. In fact, I heard several stories about students partying, hooking up, and then going to church together the next morning. Whether this attendance was motivated by contrition, or a sense of self-justification, these students embody the sentiment expressed by one junior male: “socially speaking, the ideal Christian male at [this university] is both a partier and a churchgoer.”
To those of you concerned that your children are going to university, even Christian ones, is basically sending them off to be sexually immoral this should not surprise you. Lori Alexander was generally on the mark on that front on Christian virgins and advising them not attending college.
However, that said this generally agrees with the data on Christian virgins that I have looked at in the past which is probably around 30-40% of women in the 20-24ish age around are still virgins. So there is hope if you were holding out, but you probably need to be in the top 40% of men within the Church (which is not actually super hard perhaps?).
Overall, I think if you’re sending your kids to college then them living at home tends to be the best option if possible. Definitely having them still engaged with Church and likely Christian groups on campus. It’s more likely to be the case that they will flee sexual immorality with more Christians around them than surrounding themselves with worldly friends who want to have sex and party.
The relationship frustrations of women like these are rooted in a broader problem: They do not have a ready pool of good young men to date, partly because many of our nation’s young men are floundering as they make the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. This problem is visible in our schools, colleges and universities, and today’s marketplace. Young men are increasingly less likely than women to enroll in college and less likely than women to apply themselves even if they land in college; a growing number of them are also idle or underemployed as they move through their 20s.
Our “young men problem” is rooted in a range of factors — the rise of electronic opiates, which distract young men from education and work and have come to replace traditional avenues of social relations; the absence of models of pro-social masculinity that furnish norms for male engagement in school, work, and relationships as they move into adulthood; a culture that discounts commitment; and biological differences in rates of male and female maturation.
But a new report from the Institute for Family Studies, “Life Without Father,” suggests that another issue is in play. Too many boys have grown up in homes without engaged or present fathers, which has left them especially unprepared to navigate school, work, and relationships successfully.
Brad Wilcox’s latest boomer treatise on where have all the good men gone… when the problems are systemic. 60%+ of college and graduate students are female.
Waiting for the “conservative” articles that state the obvious:
Schools are biased toward women
Stop trying to push womens’ achievements to college and graduate school and push more men instead.
Tell women stop being masculine and be more feminine.
Tell women that they have to have something to offer men.
Of course, the latter are already being told men, but no responsibility is ever placed on the women.
It’s always interesting to see how concepts talked about here are starting to make it out to the wider world of popular culture.
Basically, the whole video talks about the ways in which the current brand of feminism is misogynistic.
In other words, the brand of feminism that pushes women to be more like men are themselves deeming women and femininity inferior. If all women have to act like men then being a woman or mother or stay at home mom/homemaker is a bad thing. If that’s a bad thing, they are actually trashing women and deeming being a woman inferior to men.
It’s ironic but the things done in the name of “empowerment of women” are actually degrading to women.
This is seen most clearly in the push for women to be able to choose sex work. This so-called empowerment is simply degrading to women, and virtually any woman who does that can tell you the consequences are not worth it on their personal lives.
But we already knew all of this because rebellion against God is choosing sin and the negative consequences thereof. It’s perhaps a revelation from God that at least some of secular culture is now recognizing this fact, just as Roosh and other PUA who had player burnout has led them to seek God. There’s only so far you can go into a life of emptiness before you hit rock bottom.
This is a side topic from the Divorce Part 8 Actual Final where I mention I tend to find the Catholic position on divorce the most Biblically consistent. Although that is the case, there are some pros and cons of this position.
First, we need to distinguish marriage as God created it.
God created marriage (Gen 1-3).
Marriage, per Jesus & thus God, was intended as one man and one woman with no divorce ever (Matt 19, Mark 10)
I think we all agree that covenants in general, at least in the Bible, require full admission of the terms of such a covenant and vows to sustain it. This is true for all covenants in the Bible such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Mosaic Law, Believers in Christ, etc.
Non-believers are going through the motion of “marriage ceremony” of whatever culture they are in but they clearly don’t believe in the specific covenant of marriage that God created. Non-believers have no objective moral grounding because they don’t believe in God and thus only believe in a subjective good and evil. Therefore, they cannot assent to the terms of God’s conditions on marriage.
Thus, we have the possibility of distinguishing God’s covenant of marriage to what both the Catholic and Orthodox term as “natural marriage.” This natural marriage is a general following of God’s principles without actual belief and is generally facilitated by how God created us. For instance, God created men and women to be attracted to thing in the opposite sex that fulfills the creation mandate which I covered in my series on attraction. PSALM+masculine and beauty+LAMPS generally help fulfill dominion and procreation, and it’s clear both unbelievers and believers tend to follow this consciously or unconsciously.
It generally follows, I think, that one must make a distinction between a believer’s marriage and non-believers marriage because one is affirming and establishing a covenant between a man and woman with God as a witness whereas the other is just conforming inadvertently to God’s original Creation.
Now to elaborate a bit more.
I think we all agree that covenants in general, at least in the Bible, require full admission of the terms of such a covenant and vows to sustain it. This is true for all covenants in the Bible such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Mosaic Law, Believers in Christ, etc.
Based on Jesus’ statement on “What God has put together, let no man separate” I believe that most Christians would agree that an actual established covenant marriage between Christians is indissoluble if affirming the following things.
1. All parties are Christian and believe in God through faith in Jesus
2. All parties know the what marriage is and entails and their Biblical roles and responsibilities
3. All parties vow to uphold that and know the permanence of marriage.
This type of marriage cannot be annulled or divorced and thus one would fall into perpetual adultery if they divorced and remarried.
Non-believers are going through the motion of “marriage ceremony” of whatever culture they are in but they clearly don’t believe in the specific covenant of marriage that God created. Non-believers have no objective moral grounding because they don’t believe in God and thus only believe in a subjective good and evil. Therefore, they cannot assent to the terms of God’s conditions on marriage
Sacramental/covenental marriage is somewhat ad hoc, but the other position that the Prots use seems to be less internally consistent.
For instance, unbelievers can partake in “marriage,” sure. But since unbelievers have no objective moral grounding they can also redefine “marriage” to be whatever they want. True Christians all affirm that there is no such thing under God as gay marriage. But oddly if two unbelievers who were a man and woman got married they would generally be considered “married” by most Christians. Sure, they are “married” but they definitely did not enter into that marriage as a covenant with God.
So how can it be the same as a believer’s marriage?
Sacramental/covenant marriage seems to make the best of things. It’s not perfect by any means, but there needs to be a way to distinguish between (I) a covenant marriage in the eyes of God as God intended and (II) one of unbelievers who don’t believe in God and/or possibly also disagree with His definition of marriage.
Unbelievers are married due to God’s natural creation that generally drives them to be married. However, they are not the same as one who has affirmed the sacrament/covenant of marriage and assented to all of God’s terms and conditions.
Thus, we have the possibility of distinguishing God’s covenant of marriage to what both the Catholic and Orthodox term as “natural marriage.” This natural marriage is a general following of God’s principles without actual belief and is generally facilitated by how God created us.
Distinguishing between sacramental/covenant marriage and a natural marriage tends to open up a few cans of worms. The issue then is 3 fold:
What do we do with a supposed 2 believer marriage where 1 person becomes supposedly apostate and possibly treated as an unbeliever?
What do we do with a believer and unbeliever marriage where only the believer assents to the 3 above things?
What do we do with unbeliever marriages who obviously do not consent to the 3 things above?
Let’s explore these.
What do we do with 2 believers where one has supposedly become apostate?
There’s 2 different interpretations of this.
The first is that the marriage is dissoluble. Both Christians agreed to that and it’s binding.
The second is that the believer turned believer is to be treated in respect to Matthew 18 and should be expelled normally (them leaving also works). This then tends to fall under the camp of #2 where it suddenly becomes a marriage of a believer with a believer to a believer with an unbeliever.
Based on my divorce article, I fall into camp 1 for many different reasons. Not going to elaborate on that here.
The second point obviously opens up another can of worms in that it bleeds into the next section since the believer turned unbeliever now makes the marriage fall under a different category even if they affirmed the permanence of marriage before.
What do we do with a believer and unbeliever marriage where only the believer assents to the covenant?
Again, there is 2 different interpretations of this, but now I can also consider a 3rd.
1 Corinthians 7:12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Here’s the 3 different options.
The believer is not enslaved is to the covenant of marriage. This seems slightly implausible to me because of the Greek wording for “douluo” servant/slave is not the same as the other wording that refers to the marriage bond earlier in the passage and elsewhere in the NT which is “deo” – to bind together which is reminiscent of Genesis 2 ‘a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave (dabaq Hebrew and translated as deo in Greek) to his wife and they shall be on flesh’ Even later in the passage Paul affirms this wording distinction later in the passage.
1 Corinthians 7:39 A wife is bound (deo) as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. 40 But in my opinion she is happier if she remains as she is; and I think that I also have the Spirit of God.
The believer is not enslaved to the roles and responsibilities of the marriage anymore. In other words, if the wife leaves then the husband is not required to perform the duties of the husband such as being a protector, provider, headship, and so on. Based on the evidence in my article and some mentioned above, I’ve always considered this point to be most likely which is why generally think it falls in line with the verses prior “stay single or reconcile”
In discussion with another brother on RPC, I am potentially considering that it’s possible that the 2nd is the ideal and the 1st point is not ideal but may not be sin either. For instance, in this specific case Paul states “To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord)” which means this is Paul speaking from his wisdom here and it’s not specifically a command of the Lord. Obviously, the ideal is being like God and Israel where God may have divorced Israel but made a way back for them like the Samaritans & our Ministry of Reconciliation in 2 Cor 5.
Prior to the passage of believers married to believers the command is from the Lord:
1 Cor 7:10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
I still have not decided between point 2 and 3, and I’m still mulling it over.
However, there is a post hoc slippery slope.
A believer-believer marriage which has affirmed God’s standard of permanent marriage can now be altered for annulment or divorce because the “believer” you were with is now an “unbeliever.” Now that this is not a believer-believer marriage but a believer-unbeliever marriage, the believer has some sort of carte blache to which they can choose to stay single or reconcile or choose to be remarried.
This is clearly not what God intends.
I suppose the former point is more reasonable if a Church council decides whether a marriage can be annulled or not and not the spouse(s) in question because of the biased nature of the situation. A council would provide a more objective ruling in theory. This is more in line with the lawsuits among believers passage rather than having them in the world versus the Church. However, the fact of the matter is if that a supposed believer becomes an unbeliever then they aren’t going to go to the Church anyway and rather have the state rule on it, especially since 70%+ divorces are by women (90% among college educated) and they get an advantage (e.g. cash and prizes) by divorce raping their husbands.
I believe US Catholics make up 5% of the worldwide Catholics but have 50% of worldwide annulments. This does not necessarily make this wrong just like because some men abuse headship authority does not make headship bad. But it does at least call into question the poor state of the Church today.
What do we do with unbeliever marriages who obviously do not consent to covenant marriage?
It’s obvious that the 2 unbelievers do not believe in the covenant/sacrament… so do we treat it the same as indissoluble? Or should we just say it is sin for them to divorce but not perpetual adultery?
The former seems more reasonable to me at least given that the Law of Moses allowed divorce for hardness of heart which is what unbelievers have. Not saying that unbelievers are subject to the Law of Moses or anything like that, but the underlying principle is the same. They are clearly in sin, but since they do not know of the permanence of marriage they are not in perpetual sin as they have not assented to such a covenant. Hence, it probably should not be counted as perpetual adultery.
Other thoughts
Orthodox sacramental/covenant marriage is interesting scenario. For those of you not in the know, only the first marriage is considered a happy occasion, but a second and third final marriage are somber affairs done in penitence.
I’m not sure where the the 2nd and 3rd times come from (maybe my Orthodox readers know?), but my guess would be similar to Peter denying Christ 3 times but receiving redemption in the end. Since both Catholic and Orthodox believe Peter is the “rock” upon which the Church is built then that would make sense as it potentially embodies the Christ-Church marriage.
To my estimation this can potentially solve two issues:
Men and women are more likely to sexually sin more single than married. This is especially true if an innocent party is divorced or abandoned. It would be difficult on them sexually.
Another obvious solution is that children tend to do better with a father and mother, although this can have its cons with previous spouse(s) being involved heavily in their lives.
This has some decent reasoning behind it even if it does not strictly adhere to “what God has put together let no man separate.”
The Protestant assumption that all marriages are the same (believer-believer, believer-unbeliever, unbeliever-unbeliever) seems to be logically inconsistent because no unbelievers will apply Biblical standards to their marriages much less agree to God’s covenant of marriage in the the first place.
It also makes ruling on divorce much harder because we know it’s a sin, but one cannot necessarily rule on the permanence aspect which is what God intended. One could claim that “What God has put together let no man separate” that although God says don’t do it that man can separate. Usually this is argued in the context of the Law of Moses specifying conditions for separation/divorce (which Jesus also calls hardness of heart… so I find that line of thinking dubious) and that man only separating is a sin. But this gets into more muddled waters given the covenant nature of believers marriages.
For example, those that claim it is just a sin and that adultery breaks the covenant point to God divorcing Israel, but they conveniently omit that although Judah committed adultery with idols and foreign nations too God merely separates and reconciles with her. Additionally, they omit the fact that although Israel is divorced, God makes a way through Jesus to be reconciled. Both cases reconciliation is the answer with God, and clearly adultery does not break that bond if the innocent party does not want a divorce.
In any case, divorce in Protestant Churches has just become a free for all, much like my analogy that Protestants are in the time of the book of Judges where “there was no king in Israel and everyone did what is right in their own eyes” — There is nothing new under the sun Christian denominations. I’ve probably studied more about divorce than 99% of Protestant pastors which is probably not a good thing, especially since many went to theology/divinity schools. But the quality of students these schools are pumping out is severely compromised by the culture anyway, so that’s not a surprise.
At the end of the day, however, I suppose earthly rulings on such things are merely best attempts to follow God’s design. God knows everyone’s hearts and knows if they are trying to follow Him or trying to please their own desires. I know — at least for me and my study into such matters — I will follow the permanence line of marriage and live that out by my convictions. Whether someone comes to a different conclusion or not is ultimately between them and God, but I leave my analysis here to hopefully convince people to the path which I find most consistent with Scripture.
53 Then each of them went home, 8:1 while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
Figured I’d throw it up real quick. Apparently Scott just found out about it recently though:
“Wow man. I went to look that up and you are right. Depending on where you line you line up on the text criticism spectrum, it really doesn’t belong in the Bible. And the implications are pretty far reaching. A major (and really bizarre) passage is found in there that we base a big part of our understanding of what it means to be a hypocrite is in that section.”
I’m of the other opinion. Even though it’s not in John 7-8 in the majority of the oldest texts, it consistently in a few different places in the various gospels (namely, Luke as one). This means it’s likely a legitimate story about Jesus, but the scribes didn’t know where to put it and eventually it settled in John 7-8. Other Church fathers reference it as early as around mid 100s AD, and that’s before most of the early manuscripts which are usually 200s or later.
The major point issue is not the story itself which is consistent with Jesus’ character but modern interpretations of the story.
For instance, we know that the modern interpretations of various verses are warped:
Eph 5:21 “Submit yourselves to one another in reverence of Christ” – Egalitarian drama
Eph 5 “Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the Church” while leaving out the purpose is sanctification and not about not making her feel bad.
Matthew 7 “Don’t judge lest you be judged” … and ignoring the context of hypocrisy and other passages which state Christians are supposed to call each other out.
Matthew 5 “…anyone who looks at a woman/wife with lust (actually covetousness) commits adultery in his heart” while 1 Cor 7 says that if a single man and single woman want to do things with each other they should marry and it’s not sin. It’s only coveting something that is another man’s that is adultery in the heart.
For pericope adulterae — “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is clearly aimed at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus in his words. If they truly cared about the adultery in the Law, they would have brought the woman AND the man caught to be stoned. But here they only brought the woman, so it’s clear they’re targeting Jesus on purpose.
Modern interpreters treat this passage much like Matthew 7 “Don’t judge lest you be judged”, but the full context is don’t be a hypocrite and remove the plank from your own eye before you judge. Not that you shouldn’t judge at all. They also ignore Matthew 18, 1 Cor 5, and other places in the Scriptures where it says explicitly to call out other Christians who are caught in sin to repent. Jesus is consistent by telling her to “go and sin no more” or in other words repent and change your ways.
I don’t see a problem as long as it’s interpreted correctly, but it is an easily warped verse.
As an aside, most Pharisee traps against Jesus pitted Jewish Law against Roman Law such as “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?” In this case, only the Romans had the ability to execute people. The Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus to say to stone her (e.g. “stone her” – break Roman law and accuse him to the Romans) or break Jewish law (“don’t stone her” and then they can call Him a blasphemer and not listen to Him anymore).
Overall, like I said I think this story is consistent with Jesus’ character, but it’s easily warped into an unintended meaning by modern “Christians.” However, I don’t mind not using it as an example if people think it’s questionable, especially because Jesus character can be established through other passages of the Bible just the same.
I also do not believe that this verse is any major determining factor in women being painted as angels that can do no wrong much like the culture suggests. If someone (“Christian” or not) already has that position, it’s because they believe it despite what the Bible says. Those in the ‘sphere, on my blog, or Jack’s, or any others suggesting that it has caused any havoc in Churches are probably wrong.
What is true, however, is that the Ephesians 5 passage is easily warped (e.g. “love your wives” instead of “love your wives for the purpose of sanctification”) and is likely 1000x more destructive on current Christian homes than pericope adulterae.
Somewhat off topic given the current trends, but haven’t posted in a while and wrote this a while back. Have maybe 1-2 more on this topic, before we head back into the current discussions.
At the bottom line, it seems like your position results in the Mosaic Law permitting sin. Something to the effect of, “Yes, Moses allowed this sin. But Jesus, who raised the bar, doesn’t allow it.” This comes out clearly in your third point. I think the first and fourth points beg the question, so I’m only going to address the second and third points you listed.
Second point: I understand your point. If hardness of heart is sin, and divorce always involves hardness of heart, then isn’t divorce always sin? Of course, I would say that one or both of the premises is wrong, but I will admit that I need to study this more.
Third point: This appears to contain the critical assumptions of your position. This idea that Jesus was “raising the bar” has major theological problems. The Mosaic Law had already been declared perfect by OT prophets (Ps. 19:7), not to mention that obedience to it could produce life (Deut. 6:25). Jesus declared that he would perfectly fulfill the Mosaic Law (Matt. 5:17-20) . Your position seems to result in a new law: “Christ’s Version of the Mosaic Law”, which is superior to Mosaic Law. Even then, its unclear why the inferior Mosaic Law would permit sin.
…
This is the standard type of response I’ve come to expect from you. When I point out a contradiction or a problem, you wave your hands, beg the question, perform semantic gymnastics, and/or copy-and-paste another word bomb. Nevertheless, you write with such confidence that I’m sure it impresses the undiscerning mind. Notable examples would include your position on vows, Christ’s “ability” to contradict the Mosaic Law, marriage can be “annulled” but this isn’t a real divorce.
This position uses torturous logic to eventually get to the wrong conclusion. One can cherry pick examples of OT Scriptures to try to justify an OT stance on divorce, but when one looks at the whole picture the positions become even more stark as one is clearly wrong.
Your position: Jesus agrees with Shammai Pharisees in Matthew 19 that you can divorce for adultery with the exception clause. Not only that, according to Mike Winger’s position which you seem to accept has even more exceptions for divorce than even the Pharisees such as abandonment, abuse, etc.
My position: Jesus is right in showing that Mosaic law won’t pass away (for the Jews), but raises the standards in His “New Testament/Covenant” for Christians. For instance, Matthew 5-7 sermon on the mount… (“You have heard it said don’t commit adultery (10 commandments)… but I tell you… anyone who looks with covetous/lust on [another man’s wife] has committed adultery with her in his heart”). Clearly raising the bar here. Same with His statement on the beginning in Matthew 19 on divorce: “What God has put together let no man separate.”
My position is not even a contradiction unless you intend that Jesus wants to hold Christians to the standards of the Jewish law which Paul says is wrong. Moreover, what’s more likely? Jesus lowers the bar or raises the bar when establishing the New Covenant? The clear theme throughout the NT is Jesus raises the bar.
If you still think my position has all of those flaws that you say, I just can’t see how your think your position is more logically sound. Jesus agreeing with the Pharisees and lowering the bar for divorce for Christians? Really?
RE: marriage can be “annulled” but this isn’t a real divorce and vows
Literally examples of this in the Bible. Deut 22 – marriage is annuled because of no blood on the sheet means the wife is not a virgin. Matthew 1 – Joseph wants to put away Mary secretly because he is a righteous man and she is pregnant not by him. Her pregnancy annuls the betrothal marriage contract. Also referring to John 8 where the Pharisees quip that Jesus is a “son of porneia (fornication)” which ties back into Matthew 19 exception.
Same with examples of vows. Jesus cautions us because of the seriousness of them and to just let our yes be yes and no be no. You think your vows you said before God and man can be broken because of what someone else did? I don’t think mine can. There’s no Biblical support for the opposite either.
I don’t know how you think these Biblical instances are an example of “wave your hands, beg the question, perform semantic gymnastics, and/or copy-and-paste another word bomb” but ok.
The problem seems to be that people get so entrenched in their position of pro-divorce that everything turns into a justification for that. This particular man has an unrepentant narcissistic wife who is divorced, so I definitely understand how that turns into that. I would never wish that on anyone.
However, it’s very easy to reconcile the supposed problematic portions of my position with Scripture, but it’s impossible to do that with the opposite position. Yes, the Mosaic Law can be ‘perfect’ and ‘obedience to it can give life’ for the Jews. But clearly Jesus communicates to us in the NT that His New Covenant is fulfilling the Old and giving us a New Covenant that teaches us to “be perfect like our heavenly father is perfect.” Moses permitted divorce in the OT for hardness of heart. That doesn’t mean it was good. It was merely permitted as “not sin.” But hardness of heart to Jesus is clearly not a good thing and not something we should strive for as it’s always negatively talked about in the Bible.
Moreover, clinging to the Mosaic Law version of divorce leads someone in the exact wrong direction of “what God has put together let no man separate.” The said debater brings up Mike Winger’s video which my new post on divorce covered. Winger comes to the conclusion that Jesus agrees with the Shammai position on divorce for adultery, but when you watch further into the video he adds in more exceptions than even the Pharisees for abandonment, abuse, and so on.
Not only in this position does Jesus not raise the bar, but according to Winger clearly Jesus has a lower bar for divorce than even the Pharisees now. Torturous logic. Scripture now means the opposite of what it has previously said.
Now, obviously, I have stated that this is my conclusion based on studying the Scriptures in-depth. If you’re in a faith tradition that allows annulments or divorce with wise counsel then more power to you. No divorce seems to be the most accurate position, with possible exceptions for annulments given that a covenant marriage must be established. That’s why I think the Catholic position on marriage seems to be the most faithful to the Scripture.
However, at the end of the day you don’t have to justify your position to me, but you will answer to God.
Complementarians
To tie everything back to the title, this is the same type of logic that complementarians use to deny husbands headship authority.
Like the pro-divorce people they say no divorce is good. Look at what Jesus said! “What God has put together let no man separate.” Oh wait. But now if we read further we have an exception where divorce could be acceptable. How do we pick out Scriptures that fit this position? Also, let’s ignore the context of Mark 10, Luke 16, Romans 7, 1 Cor 7, and others not permitting any divorce and hone in on this exception. Let’s also ignore Joseph and Mary (Matt 1), Deut 22 (annulments), and the Pharisees calling Jesus a “son of fornication/porneia” (John 8) which provide strong context into the exception clause.
Likewise, complementarians pay lip service to headship. Headship is good they say. But then they use torturous feminist exceptions and passages taken out of context to deny that husbands should have authority over wives creating a neutered version that makes the husband into a sock puppet.
Headship is good. But clearly abuse is bad. Since abuse is bad, we can’t be having husbands have authoritative headship. Preaching that husbands should have authoritative headship would clearly create too many tyrant husbands (…when we see the exact opposite in real life. Too many husbands are wimpy cowards).
Mutual submission. Husbands should be submitting to their wife’s decisions too while ignoring how authority works.
Husbands and wives are of equal worth and value before God but different roles…. but oops now their roles are the same because we’re partners in marriage! We work as a team! We’re all in this together, equally. Women can do anything men can do!
Husbands love your wives and if they aren’t feeling loved you need to do more to make her feel loved. Ignoring the fact that Christ’s love is for the purpose of sanctification which is to lead, teach, train, disciple, and correct a wife toward righteousness.
Now Scripture is reduced to something that is totally the opposite of what is written.
Eventually you get some twisted form of slavery where the husband has all the responsibility with no authority. Then they wonder why a wives have a hard time respecting their husbands or don’t want to have sex with him. It’s because YOU neutered the husband. What wife will get the hots for a neutered husband?
Yes, the husband is reduced to the status of a neutered dog who exists to make his “owner” feel happy.
Complementarians, like the egalitarians, twisted Scripture to fit the spirit of the age instead of standing on the hard truths of what God has said. At least the egalitarians were more honest about warping it and bowing to the culture.
Complementarians are the New Pharisees – blind guides leading the blind.
One of the bigger confusions about Deti’s and Rowena’s points seems to be the distinction between sexual attraction and sexual arousal.
SMV = 8-10 “The Have’s”
Only 8-10’s (men very high in good looks and athletic ability – a part of LAMPS) can elicit the raw visceral sexual attraction that Scott and Thedeti are referring to.
For 8-10’s, the Tingle button is permanently ON. These men are ALWAYS sexually attractive to women. And to practically ALL women. Even though they may not show it, respond to it, or express interest (because that would be a pay off.)
In this case, Rowena and Thedeti AGREE.
SMV = 5-7 “It depends on maybe’s”
There is no sexual attraction but there is no sexual repulsion either. However, sexual attraction or sexual repulsion can be generated if the context changes.
So in this case, Rowena and Thedeti DISAGREE.
For men in the 5-7 category, the question is how to change and/or control the context. The contextual factors of attraction will be covered in the next section.
SMV ≤ 4 “The Have Not’s”
For men below 5, the Tingle button is permanently OFF. This includes the morbidly obese, profoundly ugly, etc. These men are sexually REPULSIVE. This is not the zone of a lack of sexual attraction, it is the zone of sexual REPULSION, meaning, “No way will I ever let this person touch me!” Nothing can change this.
In general, I find this system to a solid one. Most Sub5 / Have Nots can usually get themselves at least to Normie / Maybe range if they become muscular and fit and generally clean up as opposed to be more grungy and unkempt. There’s not that many truly unfortunate people out there, so for all intents and purposes we’ll skip that for now.
Deti seems to be describing something different than just sexual attraction which generally would be defined as sexual arousal.
This is where I want to focus effort. Here’s the main point: With these men and women’s interactions with them, what is generated in women is not “sexual attraction”. It’s not any kind of “attraction”. The only kind of “attraction” that there is or that matters is SEXUAL attraction.
It’s not arousal or desire. It’s utility and exploitation. It’s that the woman sees an opportunity to use, exploit, and take advantage of a man for whatever it is she wants from him (usually indicia of commitment and access to resources). She’s not attracted to him. She does not really want him. She wants him to commit to her so she has unfettered access to his resources into perpetuity even after she has decided that staying with him is no longer advantageous to her.
I used to believe that the S, A, and M of PSALM generated real sexual attraction. I don’t believe they do now. Of course, looks generates real, actual sexual attraction. I believe P (power) can generate real sexual attraction if it is combined with looks, but not alone and not when combined with anything else.
The only thing other than being 8-10 as Rowena describes it that generates sexual attraction, temporarily, is Game/charisma/whatever it’s called now. (Hey, guys- remember Game?) Game can generate some attraction in some women, for a while.
The point is that the only thing that lasts is being an 8-10 (in her eyes, anyway). That’s what works. That’s Scott/Mychael. That’s SAM/Elspeth (“he was the most beautiful man I had ever laid eyes on” “He has a beautiful visage”). Nothing else lasts. Nothing else works.
My comment as follows with some expounding after that.
I think what you’re getting at here is the difference between attraction and sexual arousal.
Women generally won’t date or marry someone they aren’t at least somewhat attracted to (PSALM + masculinity) unless they are going for the status of married (which there are some). However, attraction does not always lead to sexual arousal.
Expressed dominance is what usually leads to arousal. An already attractive man (e.g. PSALM + masculinity) applies a dominant frame and actions in a sexual situation. For instance, hunky, muscular romance novel lookalike pushes the women up against the wall and kisses her deeply. Then picks her up and throws her on the bed and has his way with her. Conversational dominance/flirting/charisma is another way.
I’d say most 5-7s don’t develop that kind of frame unless they read about it here or PUA forums or whatever. While they may be somewhat or maybe even reasonably attractive to some women (and may even marry said women), they aren’t able to give women tingles that the expressed sexual dominance does.
I think I differ from you a bit here in I think that even average men can attract a woman and then be dominant enough toward her to generate tingles.
The thing is with men sexual attraction and sexual arousal aren’t all to different.
Sexual attraction for a man is seeing a beautiful or pretty woman, especially in feminine clothing, demeanor, long hair, etc.
Sexual arousal for a man is seeing a beautiful or pretty woman in less clothes and/or acting sexy, seductive, and enthusiastic about having sex with him. In other words, he finds her attractive and his nether regions start to act on it.
Men’s sexual attraction and sexual arousal are pretty simple, but yet most women won’t do the former latter unless she is attracted to the man. The Madonna/whore complex where a man’s wife is the former and he seeks out other women for the latter, but I don’t think it’s that prevalent. It’s usually based on some weird notion that the wife shouldn’t be there for his sexual arousal and that she’s supposed to be “pure.” Some type of gnosticism probably.
For women this differs from men.
Sexual attraction for a woman is seeing a man with PSALM + masculinity traits. These traits are expressed in varying degrees and usually having at least an extreme of 1 trait guarantees that at least some women will be interested. For instance, with power such men such as the president of the US or mob boss or any other people who can wield lots of authority (ostensibly with threat of violence) over others is attractive to women. Status/fame you see ugly celebrities with women. Money you see ugly billionaires with women. Athleticism you see ugly professional sports athletes with women. Obviously, all things being equal women want all of the categories maximized, but you can get away with being sub par in some if you’re good to excellent in others.
Sexual arousal for a woman is seeing a man with said traits act sexually dominant toward her. Generally, a woman with a man with Chad looks will want him to have her babies. This is the most straight forward. The other traits, though, are not necessarily connected. A man must display said traits toward her in a sexual way. For instance, there’s successful business men who are SIMPs with their wives. Anthony Bourdain was basically SIMPing Asia Argento and couldn’t stand to see her with someone else before he committed suicide. Little wonder why she was constantly on again/off again. He was famous, wealthy, and not even bad looking… but his behavior was repulsive toward a relationship. Same with Will and Jada Smith where she constantly wants the open relationship and acts on it. There’s no shortage of celebrities who easily get with women, but always have failed relationships or marriages because they put their woman on a pedestal. Whereas there are men like Leonardo DiCaprio, Paul Walker, and others who seem to know they are the man and know how to act as a man with women. They’re usually the one to dump a woman rather than the reverse.
To go a bit further on women’s sexual arousal it’s what makes her nether regions wet and start to feel tingly. Hence, the common term tingles.
Womens’ pornography — romance novels and romance porn — proves the point as well. 50 shades of gray and so on. The man is attractive with the PSALM+masculinity traits like looks, muscles, and always very powerful or successful… but he has the added component of actually acting on it toward the woman he wants and takes/ravishes the woman. Sometimes even despite her ‘weakhearted’ protests which muddles the water even more for men.
Womens’ turn offs seem to be stronger than men given that their hypergamy ensures that they are more selective. An example of this is if husband could be arguing with his wife and then if his wife wanted to have sex he’d be up for it. However, if a wife was arguing with her husband it’s unlikely or just rare that she will want to have sex with him after it. Thus, overall navigating sexuality tends to be more difficult for men than it is for women. No shortage of women nitpicking their way through men much more than men nitpick women.
Normies / Maybe’s generally are at least somewhat attractive to women to where they can get dates and marriage, but I think largely (unless their wife is a virgin) they tend to have trouble generating sexual arousal. Being dominant in a relationship and also in the bedroom are not traits that are taught. Even if a man is the leader and masculine it seems to be rarer that he would also be sexually dominant as well unless he actually has taken the time to research this or experiment.
In general, Christian men seem to have it worse:
Misinterpretations of Matthew 5 where Jesus said ‘if you look lustfully a woman you have committed adultery with her in your heart’ still reign supreme. It should be ‘covetous’ as it is a reference to the 10 commandments & same word is translated as covet in Romans. The passage is not talking about expressing sexual desire of a single man toward a single woman (e.g. 1 Cor 7 – if you burn with passion they should marry) which is actually a good thing if it promotes sex in marriage.
Churches are beta factories pumping out nice guys that don’t lead relationships and by extension are definitely not sexually dominant in the bedroom.
The Church tying itself to chivalry (Queen-Knight inverted role) instead of Biblical headship. This makes the man/husband a slave to his wife’s whims and feelings.
Most men think women like romantic sex whereas most women actually like fast/rough and potentially rougher sex. The idea of romance is tied with Christ-Church in a multitude of ways (not just chivalry). For women fast and rough dominant sex with an attractive man is romantic. See: women’s porn examples.
Dominance for Christian men often feels wrong both in leading a relationship and also in the bedroom. It seems that most of the men who never got the memo are the ones who came to Christ later after having lived a life of debauchery and fornication. While this is not a good thing, what is worse is the Church neutering the non-fornicating husbands in their marriages.
Personally, these were two separate things for me to learn as a “Normie / Maybe” range man. Yes, the manosphere helped, but I had to experience and learn from them myself. I think most Christian men don’t know that they should be leading.. or at least actually leading in a Biblical manner. And most definitely don’t know the dominance during sex part. Surprise, surprise, the more dominant I got during sex the more my wife liked it. Now it’s just my natural frame, but it definitely felt unnatural before that.
Now clearly most of what this blog talks about is sexual attraction and not sexual arousal namely because most Christian men need help getting dates first. But discussing sexual arousal definitely needs to be talked about as well, and I can plan some more posts on that.
I think these things are achievable for most men (e.g. most Normies / Maybe’s which most men fall into) excluding Chads, but it’s definitely a process. I think this would probably work best in a discipleship-type environment where older men can explain to younger men and newly married what masculine headship/leadership looks both in a marriage and in the bedroom.
Let me conclude by saying that one does not have to have sexual attraction and sexual arousal maximized to have a successful and sanctified marriage either. A lot of husbands and wives have been happy and holy throughout history without any focus on these things. Much of that has to do with instilling loyalty, commitment to vows, and fleeing outside temptations. But having sexual attraction and sexual arousal does seem to enrich the marriage by making the bond stronger if the descriptions of those men and women who have strong sexual attraction and arousal for each other are any indicator. It also makes it more likely that they will be more willing to do the Biblical roles and responsibilities, but they still have the choice to disobey God which can happen.
Gonna go through my main points and elaborate on them a bit more.
I’m one of the ones who initially pointed out that Game does not produce sanctification. One cannot rely on attraction to produce sanctification either. One must deliberately do it. E.g. Be the head, love her for the purpose of sanctification, etc.
Generally speaking, attraction can assist in sanctification in that a it’s more likely a wife will not be as contentious or rebellious if a husband is more attractive. In this way, a good analogy for sexual attraction is that it’s like influence.
For instance, an attractive man has “influence” in asking a woman out on a date that she is more likely to respond affirmatively. Attractive men and women generally get more social benefit of the doubt and tend to benefit more from raises, social situations, and other positive interactions from said influence.
This is the reason why men in the Christian manosphere can sometimes turn the marriages around. Once they start acting like the head, leading, and generally being more masculine they start to become more attractive to their wives. This is generally met with more compliance if not outright respect and submission. Yes, there are some exceptions such as if the wife already checked out and is heading toward divorce. However, the general trend is the wife was just unhappy her husband wasn’t doing what the man is supposed to do in the relationship then it usually turns out better. Some resistance can be met (e.g. overcoming fitness tests) to generally prove to her it’s not fake and/or if there are ingrained inverted role relationship habits that need to be broken.
Compare this to the overweight nice guy husband who defers to his wife on everything. He has little attractiveness (e.g. little to no influence) over his wife. Therefore his relative ‘bids’ or requests such as initiating sex or attempting to make decisions or lead the family are generally met with contentiousness and disrespect. If this pattern of behavior has been going on years possibly scorn or disgust.
I’m advocating that men should consider increasing their attractiveness if they want a wife and are having trouble getting dates. This includes any man not just men on the cusp. A chunk of this is by actually doing what the Bible says anyway.
I’m not advocating attraction is “all that.” But it helps. Most men and women can’t get a date from the opposite sex if they don’t find them at least somewhat attractive. At least get your foot in the door.
Both of these tend to fall in this category.
For the most part, there’s no reason to not work on attractiveness as everyone stands to benefit from it. All men and all women can benefit from more influence in life especially in regard to the social interaction, even if it’s not being more attractive for a potential spouse. You’re more likely to be taken seriously when talking with others, preaching the gospel, and taking the initiative to do things if you look are attractive. For instance, you’re confident, dress well, and are fit and muscular versus look like you’re overweight/obese, unkempt, and generally crawled out of a dumpster.
The only reason why you might not want to work on it anymore is the value of time. If a man or woman is already say an 8-10 in the looks range, it’s not likely that they’re going to benefit from improving their looks much compared to the time they could use to do other things. However, any man or woman going from 3 to 5 or 5 to 7 definitely ups their positive interaction rates in the dating game.
I’m advocating that Church communities help improve men’s status and other factors that can help relative hypergamy and affirm men and women flee sexual temptation.
The brief summary is that men were held in high respect for who they are and what they do. Men generally had more well paying jobs. Men were expected to be leaders in their family and the Church and general civic life. The Church and community pushed for these things, and the Church should be pushing for strong masculine men in their own Churches. Likewise, teaching men and women to flee sexual immorality (promiscuous women & bad boys).
Attraction / influence can be used either positively or negatively and obviously one of the ways it’s used negatively is temptation for sin such as premarital sex, frigidity, and other such things.
And to review on what we know about sexual attractiveness to women via PSALM + masculinity:
Godliness is not attractive.
But godly activities expressed in a certain way (PSALM + masculinity) are attractive.
Godliness by itself is not attractive. It has the capacity to be so if expressed in a certain way.
Another example. Prayer at home [edit: by yourself] is not attractive. Prayer in a group where you’re leading it? Some. Prayer at a Christian conference? Yeah. It’s the leadership and status associated with the context that makes it attractive.
If we again use the analogy that attraction is influence, we can see that we can see that positions of power, status, athleticism, looks, money, and masculine traits all have that type of influence on women. They want to be around them more, and also want to be with them. Prayer by itself means nothing in regard to attraction.
clarification: In regard to the prayer by yourself instance, leading your wife in prayer, Bible study, and other spiritual disciplines can be attractive as the context is being the head/leading her. However, a wife simply knowing that you’re praying a lot by yourself is not attractive in itself.
The same is true of the difference of attractive man giving a woman flowers being romantic versus the unattractive man giving a woman flower being a creep.
Same thing for godly activities. A woman’s nice guy friend can pray for her and she isn’t attracted to him, but if her attractive friend will pray for her and it’s romantic and sweet. In the same way, if an unattractive woman prays for a man he’ll just tell her thanks. If an attractive single woman offers to pray for the same man he’ll probably get a bit excited and think that she may be interested in him.
Godly activities are contextually attractive only if they are expressed through the various PSALM + masculine traits or a woman already thinks a man is attractive.
In other words, to quote Deti: “women want a loving, kind, good-with-children, patient man who is already attractive.” However, they usually won’t tell you the underlined part, and most of them won’t even know what their attraction triggers are in the first place.
This is what our churches are telling men: That women are basically good, they’re better than men are, women are not depraved, and women are “attracted” to “Good Men”. Since women are so good, then when a man is faced with problems in a relationship with a woman, then it must be entirely the man’s fault. He has to “make concessions” and “do what it takes” to keep her.
Then they tell you, “Well, if it doesn’t work, you might get divorced. This is war. Some men die in battle. Oh well, guys, if your marriages fail, too bad so sad, you’re just unlucky, you’ll just have to suffer and die. We’ll carefully and assiduously ignore that any children you had will suffer too, but they’re just collateral damage. It was probably your fault anyway.”
No.
Guys, I’ve already done this. I’ve done everything men like Kristor and Roebuck told me to do. I was good, kind, nice. I got the education. I got the career. I made the money. I did the work. I went to church. I treated everyone well. I was virtuous, good, and kind. I asked permission. I stayed inside the lines.
I was a stellar man, by the world’s standards, and also by God’s. But it was all an effort in the flesh. I thought that if I fit the image of an ideal man, then I should have the concomitant rewards. But it just doesn’t work that way.
What did I get for all that effort?
I ended up in a very unhappy marriage to a headstrong and rebellious woman. Now, I’m just trying to save my own life and that of my children’s.
The slight error he makes is based in the difference between actual Biblical Christianity and western Christianity.
Commenter info identifies this as well.
What is is considered Good has departed from what God actually considers Good.
For example, the conception that Jesus didn’t have “Game” as part of the repertoire of Righteousness. The son of God was sinless and the Perfect Man:
My reply:
Agreed with info.
Jesus despite having “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” per Isaiah 53 exuded masculine traits (e.g. confidence, assertiveness, independence, leadership, etc.) and charisma such that dozens of men and women wanted to follow him for life (e.g. the disciples and women) and thousands of people gathered to hear him regularly.
When talking with and advising men the thing I find that most differs with “modern western Christianity” and “Biblical Christianity” is the misinterpretation of Ephesians 5 that I’ve continually harped on my blog.
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
Biblical Christianity is headship for the purpose of sanctification. Being the anti-Adam (who listened to his wife to eat the fruit instead of sanctifying her) much like Jesus’ purpose for the Church is salvation and sanctification. This is also correction and rebuke as evidenced in Revelation 2-3 where Jesus provides a rebuke for the Churches or they have no part of Him.
Modern western Christianity twists this Christ’s love to mean care the most about your wife’s feelings. For instance, if she’s “feeling unloved” you must do all you can to sacrifice to make her feel better because Christ’s love was sacrificial. It sounds good, but then you realize that actually trying to make someone feel better is just being a slave to their feelings. This leads to an inverted role relationship where the woman’s feelings are the head and a husband is merely submitting their every whim as a supplicating wimp.
Wives may not like being corrected or taught, but they will respect it even if they don’t like it or try to rebel. Supplicating to her feelings inevitably leads to more unhappiness and almost always some sort of desire for divorce or adultery. No woman respects a supplicating wimp nor listens to him either.
Biblical Christianity is GOOD and actually doing it has some components of attraction. But western Christianity has gotten things twisted because of notions of chivalry, marrying feminism with the Bible, pastoral blind spots and other things of these natures which leads to not only no attraction but worse marital outcomes.
The distorted Western Christianity take on “love” is a disaster for respect, attraction, and marital outcomes. However, the Biblical headship may or may not get the right marital outcome if a wife is dead set on rebelliousness, but it will at least keep some components of attraction and respect.
This is why your average men in the Christian manosphere who actually starting taking headship seriously sometimes turn their marriages around, whereas Christian marriage counseling is a sham and never works. The only exception it seems to work in and only occasionally at that is where a husband is already attractive (e.g. pastor) who is so consumed with his ministry that he neglects/abandons headship of his wife. Then when he actually starts being the head to her again she feels more loved, but it’s only the case because he was attractive before (e.g. has the status of pastor, leader of congregation, was so driven/ambitious by his mission for God).
The major problem with this becomes quite clear which is the aforementioned pastor blind spot. The pastor thinks that his situation is the same as any average man. Thus, he tells husbands to focus on their wives and their marriage will improve. After all, it did for him. But this advice is ignorant of the true reality that the pastor is already attractive and his specific circumstance is actually being neglectful of being a head to his wife. The common man’s issue is often not being attractive in the first place. Yes, this in part may be due to abdicating headship as well, but it usually is also with letting himself go (obesity) and otherwise already supplicating to his wife (e.g. she’s my better half, wears the pants, makes the decisions, etc.) which the pastor was not doing. Your average man doubling down on trying to satisfy her feelings of unhappiness only leads to more unhappiness.
I believe type of experience, along Christians believing chivalry is good and incorporating feminist influences into Scripture, are probably the largest reasons why the Ephesians 5 passage gets misinterpreted. To the detriment of all Christians: husbands as the perpetual supplicators instead of leaders and wives in a more unhappy situation to choose to rebel and divorce.
Classic case of the blind leading the blind into a pit.
Objective attraction measures would probably be what we could call in-built from Creation. These seem to include:
Muscle and V-shape for women, and waist to hip ratio in women for men
Masculinity and masculine traits and femininity and feminine traits – polarity of the sexes
PSALM traits for women, and beauty for men. Includes things like facial and body symmetry.
Leadership/headship for women, and respect/submissiveness for men.
Possibly some others, though to varying degrees. For instance, “intelligence” can sometimes be an attractor for women, but it’s not actually intelligence they’re attracted to but usually the display of intelligence morphs into some type of dominance in a social situation or knowing how to solve a problem with competence, excellence, etc).
I would say most subjective measures seem to be variations off of these certain traits, and that men seem to have more variance than women in this regard. For instance,
Different men prefer different color hair such as blond, brunette, black
Different men seem to also have more variance in fetishes such as feet and such.
Men and women can have race preferences. Race preferences also vary from culture to culture, though across the world women tend to find white men the most attractive because of the relative dominance of western civilization. Men are more varied in this regard too.
Different cultures view skin color differently — usually lighter skin color is preferable since it means someone is relatively wealthier and they don’t have to work outside in the sun all day. Contrast this to most Western cultures now where a tan seems to be a bit more attractive.
Weight seems to be one that is variable according to culture. Mild/plump women figures used to be the most attractive before the 20th century due to wealth allowing those who are rich to eat more, but now what tends to be the most attractive seems to be low body fat with at least some muscle for women. Muscular men have always been in regardless.
Additionally, you go to a porn site and you name it there’s a category for it. Mostly for males, although there has been a stark rise in female porn usage too. There’s even an informal study that looked at sexual fetishes versus social acceptability.
As you can see in this study (although might be a bit hard to read because of the blurriness), generally male fetishes vary widely including things like foot fetish, latex, exhibitionism, and such and then go all the way into disgusting ones like necrophilia, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. I highly encourage you to not look up the ones you don’t know that are > 5 on the taboo scale.
Virtually all female fetishes are actually small in variability and revolve around male dominance. All of the ones listed include: females submitting, spanking, males dominating, masochism, asphyxiation/choking, heavy bondage, sadism, rapeplay, piercing/cutting.
I think Jack errs a bit in using his own experience for saying that “You Breed What You Feed” and using his own example.
After dating several Asian women and then being married to one for a while, I now find Asian women to be more attractive than white women. Part of this is because of Western women’s slide into disrespect, depravity, and obesity over the past 20 years, but part of it is because I have had many more positive interactions and good memories with Asian women than I ever had with white women.
These days, I don’t find white women attractive at all any more. I can recognize that they are beautiful, but I can’t take them seriously because they don’t arouse me or move me.
While that is true to some extent especially in regard to polarity of the sexes (masculine-feminine dynamic), it’s also true that there seems to be less variability in female attraction. I think Jack is right in that his attraction toward white women seemed to wane the more he got respect from asian women, but this is not necessarily an indicator of attraction toward asian women but a specific turn off toward western women. After he was more turned off by western women because of lack of respect and such, then his brain probably patterned stronger because of positive reinforcement. The brain is particularly good at patterning positive and negative reinforcement. Same with porn, dopamine, and desensitization.
The male brain in particular seems to be able to — for lack of a better word — fetishize certain traits in women based on experiences. I recall being generally attracted to most different body types of women in high school, but when I got into working out in college my preferences started to change toward more athletic-type build women. I can go back and see what women I have been previously attracted to in high school and college via FB pictures and it’s definitely not the same as it is now.
Additionally, most men go through a similar phase in regard to filtering better with turn offs. When men are inexperienced with women they tend to tolerate a woman’s BS a lot more because of general sexual thirst. However, as a man gets older and more experienced, even if the woman is more beautiful or hotter, he may not engage with her because her attitude and disrespect toward him is too annoying and not worth the hassle. However, this is not attraction based but learning to implement a correct “turn off filter” so that beauty isn’t as blinding anymore.
Going back to attraction it seems that the less variability in female attraction is clearly shown through the oft-used example of female porn which is virtually always focused on the handsome, rich, muscular, confident, assertive, leader. If there’s any variation it’s usually just in the role of the man. For instance, the man could be a wealthy businessman, an adventurer, a savior or hero, or even other “taboo” but dominant toward women non-humans like vampires or werewolves (looking at you, Twilight). You get the beastial nature which is animalistic-like dominance like the female fetishes indicate.
There is also some variability in polarity though mostly from the men’s side. Cuckolding, male submitting, pegging, and other fetishes for men that are growing in popularity with the rise of more female dominance in culture. The corresponding dominatrix is definitely less common.
The main variance in women’s attraction seems to be a relatively “narrow” window of the already mentioned categories. For instance, these are different physiques that have different responses from women.
Warning following image has some NSFW physiques for some.
Most women prefer the the athletic, but less prefer ottermode, built, builtfat and bearmode. They wouldn’t kick the latter ones out of bed either though.
Some women prefer builtfat, bear, ottermode, built, and occasionally bodybuilder over fit/muscular.
It also depends the relative physique of the woman as well. Even most skinny woman will prefer men to be at least ottermode or athletic up to built and more, just like most women will prefer 6ft men even if they are only 5’0″ themselves.
Likewise, the more muscular a woman’s physique from athletics or hitting the gym their relative hypergamy also kicks in to want a man more muscular than them.
Somewhat similar to small variance in facial genetics or some small preferences in things like hair and eye color (dark hair and dark eye color part of the “tall dark and handsome” versus say a nordic country look).
Since these are generally fall within a small variance range, the best thing to do is focus on the thing you can actually change socially and within certain communities.
What the Church can do about it
In any case, attraction and sexual arousal are generally not negotiable. People like what they like, although there is some variability in how some are influenced due to wider culture. Men also seem to have more variability than women in sexual attraction, and let’s also not get turn offs confused with attraction either. But as a whole most men and women generally follow most objective measures of attraction.
The position of man and husband were held with nearly universal respect for what men do.
Most jobs, especially those which required a lot of expertise hands on or otherwise, were held only by men. By extension, most of those jobs were higher paid.
Men in general were more masculine
Lack of obesity. The comparative lack of obesity in the past, male and female 1-3s in the past would be rated higher than the 1-3s of today.
Obviously, women would need to do their part too in some of these like cultivating femininity and not being obese.
In regard to PSALMs and masculinity these are ways to encourage these types of things within the Church:
Power/status – equip men for leadership positions in the Church and in the broader community. If it’s not the vocational calling like pastor and occasionally other paid positions like worship leader, men should still be leading the Bible studies and other ministry opportunities within the Church ideally. Learning how to lead men and women helps with relationships obviously.
Athleticism/Looks – have lifting and other sports related groups in the Church, encourage the men to dress well, good grooming, and healthy lifestyles. Obviously, these are things women can be encouraged too to avoid obesity as well.
Money – Encourage men to go into well paying trades or if college/university to go into higher paying fields like STEM/finance
Masculinity – obviously, raise masculine men with masculine traits and show them how Jesus was a strong masculine leader who didn’t bend to societal or religious Pharisaical pressures. Expect them to be able to shared their faith effectively and get them experience leading groups within the Church.
Help them to maximize the attractive traits while equipping them to be leaders in their Churches and communities.
These are things that can be implemented in various Churches and the wider community, as well as teaching men and women that some of their feelings/desires in the opposite sex are flirting with disaster. It’s easy to be enticed by the “bad boy” and the “promiscuous woman” or in the equivalent Biblical terms the “sexual forbidden fruit,” but we should vigilant to look for someone who we are attracted to but has good character, morals, and wants to grow in the Biblical roles and responsibilities with us in marriage.
Preparing young men and women for that is critical, and it needs to be followed through. Others have commented that even if you prepare young men and women for Biblical roles and responsibilities in marriage, but then send them off to college/university fornication factories and discourage relatively early marriage compared to society then you’re really sabotaging your own teachings. It is does not appear that men and women were created to have sex drives for 15+ years until late 20s/early 30s to marry because sexual temptation is too much. Maybe marriage in late teens right now can be a bit much for some parents, but at least early 20s and family oriented individuals should have a solid handle on general trajectory for quality men and women
The fulfillment of sexual authority that a husband or wife has over their spouse is an ideal for the married person to strive after. Done well, this should usher in sanctification and God’s glory in the marriage. To some, it will come naturally. To most, they will have to make a diligent effort to be obedient to God in order to attain a state of sanctification. Too many will neglect this marital duty altogether, and reap the bitter consequences thereof.
Sexual authority is an interesting term. Don’t love it as it’s not intuitive, but I think the concept is sound.
One thing I think most men don’t get with “sexual authority” is that it’s harder to learn. The “not about the nail” tends to be a fundamental misunderstanding of men to grasp how to be dominant toward women in a way that increases sexual desire.
We know that men can increase their sexual attractiveness through various traits such as PSALM (power, status, athleticism, looks, money) as well as headship/leadership and masculinity. This is the first step — be attractive. However, seduction of a wife is based on dominating her both physically and mentally and making her feel like the object of desire (of an attractive man).
If we think back to most women’s porn (50 shades of gray, etc.) it’s the handsome, muscular, confident, rich, assertive leader who selects that “one woman to make her feel special” and then dominates her life. That’s the fantasy. Yet to get from fantasy to reality requires skills that most men aren’t taught (and will never be taught) and tend to be more obscure in nature. Improving attractive traits has been well covered by the ‘sphere and other places, but seduction itself tends to be harder to teach and thus not as well taught as sexual attraction.
I’d say the hardest part about seduction that I think most men will never be able to truly grasp is being socially dominant over women. Women from a young age basically are taught to be pros at verbally sparring, backstabbing, socially manipulating things, and so on, so it’s any wonder why women always run circles around men in the verbal dominance circle. Yet to truly seduce a woman you need to dominate her mind.
Fortunately, the masculine shortcut at this is physical dominance which is much easier to display, which is why packing on the muscle and working out is a must. A man must be able to pick up his wife and softly or roughly man handle her. The literal sweep her off her feet to kiss her. Pin her against a wall and take a kiss and end it abruptly. Leave her wanting more. These types of things can get you most of the way there by increasing the polarity of the masculine-feminine dynamic especially in the bedroom.
But back to the nail on the head, getting into arguments is by nature not leading or being the head, so these things will inevitably be turnoffs. Most men can’t win with the verbal spar of words, so by proxy we have a situation where the husband gets dominated by his wife in an argument. Not only did he fail to lead but he got crushed in the war of words which her hypergamy hates. Big sexual attraction turn off. Only way to win is not to play that game in the first place.
Maybe I can elaborate more in another post if people want more discussion on this.
It’s too easy to blame everything on feminism
So instead of quarrelling about which came first, the chicken or the egg, eventually, we’re going to have to stop ascribing such overwhelming power to Feminism in the abstract, and start picking apart the tacks and threads that hold it all together. In practice, we should start engaging in some brinkmanship with those who are limited by their need of a rhetorical catharsis and those who presume Feminism will continue to be the overriding norm to which all others have to bow.
Largely, I think this goes back to my 4 areas of responsibility in marriage.
Men have a responsibility for their own actions
Men have a responsibility for how they influence their wives
Women have a responsibility for their own actions
Women have a responsibility for how they influence their husbands
In the case of feminism, let’s say the “woman” in this scenario represents that. Yes, that woman/feminism has a negative influence on the man, but the man still has a responsibility for his own actions and how he influences others. So all in all I don’t see anything wrong with subscribing some blame to “sin,” but that blame should not absolve anyone from continuing to do what is right in their lives.
Headship authority takes work
I found the comments to be the most instructive.
RPA –
The answer to your questions about how a patriarch would handle certain situations actually starts with mindset, and that mindset is highly offensive to modern sensibilities. It’s part of what men used to express in male only spaces, but now is what we must think but not say out loud, but I’m feeling good because it’s Friday stateside, so here it goes … in writing.
Every husband needs to understand that in order to do his job as a husband he must think of his wife as the most responsible teenager in the household. When a husband thinks of his wife as his equal in authority bad outcomes abound, very similar to when a child is treated like an equal instead of setting boundaries for them and holding them to the standards you set.
Your traffic violation hypothetical is close to reality for me, except instead of violations the issue is accidents. Mrs. Apostle has had an accident in every car she’s ever had over the past 25 years and has even wrecked 2 of mine. In total she’s been involved in 8 accidents, 3 of which totaled vehicles, 2 others came very very close to being total losses and has resulted in over 100k in liability because 2 of the other drivers were injured.
So what was I to do with my wife’s abysmal driving? To start, we had a month-long argument 2 years ago over who was going to be the driver of the more expensive car. I held my ground and used the insurance money from her wreck to get myself the newer vehicle and gave her the older one I’d been driving, which she then wrecked. We lucked out and found a well maintained 10 year old Toyota for her for under $10k. That’s the limit I’m willing to risk on her driving and I’ve placed strict limits on phone use and other areas of driving that she needs to improve on. Her main issues are focus and attention, which is what I’ve tried to make her correct.
Time will tell if she complies, but if she messes up again she’ll be in a purely functional junker that we can send to the scrap yard if anything goes wrong. The other implications are that she is working extra cases to cover the increased insurance costs and she is not allowed to drive my Tundra or Land Cruiser.
My wife is a middle aged woman with 2 graduate degrees who finished with a 4.0 GPA. She is highly capable of focus and attention to detail when she chooses to put her mind to a task. She merely has to feel like attentive driving is very important to her, which, based on her history, means it is up to me to make her feel that attentive driving is important. Hence, my mindset that she’s the most responsible teenager in my household. Thinking otherwise puts my family at risk.
(There are other quite applicable examples of how this mindset applies, but the driving is the easiest example to give.)
Deti –
The mindset is one of husband being the “responsible” one, setting boundaries, and then holding to them. If the husband has made a decision and set a boundary, then he needs to keep to them.
Not to steal RPA’s thunder, so I’m going to put this under here.
Mrs. deti is a capable, efficient, hard worker who can think rationally when she wants to. Her one area of irresponsibility is her emotions. She is highly emotionally overreactive. Her negative emotions run out of control. She can be overcome with fear, anger, rage, or despair. She has routinely injured her relationships with others with her emotional overreactions, worst of all me.
When this is pointed out to her, she does better. But this is one of her weaknesses and faults. This is one area she struggles in. The only things that seem to improve it are her constant mindfulness and being reminded by me of boundaries I’ve set for her in her treatment of me and our son. Those boundaries have to be constantly manned and defended.
RPB –
Not to steal deti’s thunder, Mrs. Boomer’s area is spending money, not in a reckless spendthrift way, but in a “Hubby’s got the budget, not my area of responsibility” kind of way. When she goes out of town for an errand or two, it seems she can’t just make one or two stops to get stuff, but three or four. And when she has her 78 year old, dementia addled mother that lives with us, it seems to always have to include a food stop along the way. We recently got a puppy, so extra stops to get stuff for the pup, are the “errands du jour.”
She knows I’m on top of the budget, and that I’ll “figure it all out,” but try as I may, I haven’t been able to get her to be more aware exactly WHAT the effect is on our budget. For example, last month I budgeted $500 for the pets, because we had vet expenses. When all was said and done for the month, we’d spent $800 on the pets. The extra three hundred had to be shifted from another area of the budget, or come out of savings. Fortunately, I had no car maintenance in July, so that line item on the budget compensated for the pet’s over spending.
I’m not super complaining here because I’m sure some guys have wives who MINDLESSLY spend money, i.e. with no relation to the family budget at all, aka budget busters; my wife just seems to think, “We need this, or the pup needs this”, so hubby over there will just have to figure it out.
She used to do this with her spending money line item in the budget, however after about two or three months of me, the Patriarch, showing her proof that she busted her spending money budget every single month, she finally got that under control. The point is, I had to show her this until she finally got it; got it like in, “Oh yeah, I see it now. Okay, I’ll watch it closely.” She did for about six months, then I noticed it starting to creep back in, so back on went my Patriarchal hat and she’s reigning it back in, but not at first without a bit of a snarky attitude about it. I gave her the old “Patriarchal stare” when she snarked at me, and she got the message.
Here’s the thing gents, my wife’s not real bad about her spending, she’s actually, from the stories I’ve heard other men tell, fairly mild with her spending habits… BUT she’s still a female, and it’s my job, as that d@mmed, ass-holish Patriarch to reign her in on it, for the good of our family. She benefits too when the monthly budget is adhered to. When we come in under budget for the month, it’s extra money for savings, or something that we/she may want to get.
Just as a final aside, I help people with their personal or family budgets because I’m pretty good at it. I’m just starting to help a guy on my men’s team who has problems with his family’s monthly budget making ends meet. In our first meeting, I asked him, “Who handles the family budget?” Do I even have to tell you what the answer was to that question? LOL! His wife of course! He makes the money (her too, both have jobs), and she handles all of it. He doesn’t even see his family budget because, “Mama’s got it.” Step one buddy, time to get your “Patriarchal hat” out of storage and get back in the family budget game, besides just handing over the moolah to mama to manage.
All of these anecdotes are particularly instructive namely because the Church wants nothing to do with them.
If we look back through the Scriptures, we see the Jesus:Church::husbands:wives analogy as is oft stated. However, Jesus was readily there to correct, teach, rebuke, and chasten the disciples when they started to go off course. Of course, it’s right there in the Scriptures – Husbands are to love their wives like Christ love the Church for the purpose of sanctification.
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
Whether feminist infiltration or not, the Church does a crap job at this. Egalitarians deny husbandly authority while complementarians try to neuter authority and everything in between. Hence, marriage for men becomes more like “loving your wife as she is” and not using your authority to be her head to teach, correct, and help her be more like Christ.
I get it. Most men are never taught this. Even if they learn it it’s like RPA, deti, and RPB above where they had to come to the “Christian manosphere” for actual Biblical teaching. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth that your marriage could flounder and often be on the brink of destruction for so long because we had not been taught the right things.
Each man who wants to be married or will get married should be taught that he is responsible for being her head and teaching his wife what he wants his household to look like and to be a responsible steward with it. This is a basic minimum, and I would tell any man to dump a woman who doesn’t agree. If she’s rebellious to him being her head before marriage he should run away. The proverbs are clear about contentious and rebellious women in marriage. You don’t want that headache.
If we actually had these things taught in our Churches and to our Christian sons and daughters then the expectations would be there, and we would not be surprised or have a bad taste left in our mouths. It’s like the Church often lying or omitting or just not knowing anything about sexual attractiveness. It’s bitter because we feel like we’ve been living a lie for our whole lives.
Obviously, a wife who is respectful and submissive even when it is difficult is much easier to trust than one who is disrespectful and rebellious. But there are many different steps that it takes to get there. For instance,
A wife who is disrespectful and rebellious according to her own whims
A wife who knows what is right but can be disrespectful and rebellious when things get tough for her
A wife who knows what is right but has developed greater self control and perseverance but sometimes slips up when things are tough
A wife who knows what is right and it’s rare that she’s disrespectful and rebellious
There can be many in between with these circumstances like how she responds to teaching, correction, or rebuke for good or for evil. You could probably make another whole list or expand this one to 8-9 bullet points with these.
However, the point is that if you and your wife are a Christian and actively wanting to obey God and His Biblical roles and responsibilities, the sanctification process will be gradual over time in most cases and it is a process. This process is cultivated step by step and large jumps though they can happen tend to be unlikely since unlearning ingrained sinfulness is difficult.
If you have a wife at 1-2 but wants to be more godly it take time to get her to 3-4. But you must be vigilant and persistent about being the head of your family and taking responsibility to say “no” (when Adam didn’t) and teach, correct, and train her in righteousness. Even when the world and especially the Church says you are not doing the right thing.
Finally, circling back to the headline of the post: Headship is an extension of the life you built when single.
Building headship (of one) in your own life and taking the steps to master verbal sparring / flirting and all such manner of leadership skills and setting your expectations for marriage right are preparation for marriage. This continues when you get a girlfriend, engaged and married. They all build into each other and take work and practice. Like any new skills they are hard work at first, but once you build the habits of them they become easier and simpler. Hopefully, if you’re reading this you are not surprised by them, but know they are expected by the Bible and you should strive to do them if you want to be married or you are married.
Christianity and masculinity 