As you may have heard, Joshua Harris of “I kissed dating goodbye” fame is divorcing his wife. Quote from the Instagram post.
My heart is full of gratitude. I wish you could see all the messages people sent me after the announcement of my divorce. They are expressions of love though they are saddened or even strongly disapprove of the decision.
I am learning that no group has the market cornered on grace. This week I’ve received grace from Christians, atheists, evangelicals, exvangelicals, straight people, LGBTQ people, and everyone in-between. Of course there have also been strong words of rebuke from religious people. While not always pleasant, I know they are seeking to love me. (There have also been spiteful, hateful comments that angered and hurt me.)
The information that was left out of our announcement is that I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is “deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away.” By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.
Martin Luther said that the entire life of believers should be repentance. There’s beauty in that sentiment regardless of your view of God. I have lived in repentance for the past several years—repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting to name a few. But I specifically want to add to this list now: to the LGBTQ+ community, I want to say that I am sorry for the views that I taught in my books and as a pastor regarding sexuality. I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church, and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry. I hope you can forgive me.
To my Christians friends, I am grateful for your prayers. Don’t take it personally if I don’t immediately return calls. I can’t join in your mourning. I don’t view this moment negatively. I feel very much alive, and awake, and surprisingly hopeful. I believe with my sister Julian that, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
I am not too surprised here given I briefly looked at his work again a couple years ago when analyzing his book and his own statements about it again. He stepped down as a lead pastor a few years ago if I remember correctly to focus on his own social media company. It seemed to go in a secular direction too.
The writing was probably on the wall then, but it just took the “courage” to “divorce his wife” for it to finally come out.
I think the ironic thing is that his book and the criticism he got from it played at least somewhat of a role in having him departing from the faith. I’ve seen this with some other high profile pastors who seem to lock onto a supposed “right way” to do things and when it turns out to be unwise, bad or harmful advice they often self-flagellate or blame God instead of admitting their error and repenting. If they get in a cycle of the former, they can go down the road of apostasy.
The most common example that we see is a pastor taking their own advice of “servant leadership” to try work and work and work to placate their wife’s feelings or emotions instead of being the head as God commands… and that can lead them down the road of divorce. Then they wonder where God was when they thought they were doing what God wanted, even though they were only doing their own idea of what God said rather than what He actually commands.
My last post Lysa’s divorce (and thankfully reconciliation) has tons of comments mainly from my criticism of her actions (and his actions too obviously), but this is a man so it’s pretty easy to just agree and blame him.
Christianity and masculinity 
Coming Out soon: “I Kissed Marriage & Jesus Christ Goodbye, and Steve Hello”.
I never read his book, but I met plenty of nuts who did. Stay safe folks, just read the Bible and disregard all the other morality books that are supposed to add to it. In the end you’ll be judged by God, and not some other author, so ignore the doctrines of men and certainly women, and stick to repeated study of God’s inerrant Word. There is plenty of stuff in the Bible that we still aren’t following, pray that the Holy Spirit would reveal it to you, in God’s word.
The book wasn’t all bad, and it’s completely foolish to think that all the counsel in books is not needed, that we just read the Bible. God gave us the church to help us grow, happy I got Deepstrength’s book and gave a bunch of copies away.
Wow!
I wonder what made him abandon his faith? Everyone has difficulties in life, but it is just madness to give up on the Lord.
Lance Roberts,
I wasn’t saying that we couldn’t learn things from other books. But if it ain’t in the Bible, you can likely do without it.
2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
And I’m not the foolish one who gave this deconstructed unbeliever’s book a read, when you could have rather been wisely reading God’s inerrant word instead.
Joshua Harris is likely already out spending some fool’s money on lubricant for his anus. But it ain’t my money in his pocket, Lance. From the sounds of things, Joshua Harris got butt-hexed and the Lord has now given him over to that utter depravity.
Many churchians have read many churchian books, but never made it all the way through the Bible even once. We should all endeavor to know God’s word inside and out, so that we might not sin against God ignorantly.
It’s pretty common for people to walk away from religion when they are getting divorced. It’s not smart, but it’s not uncommon either. Some of these people come back and some don’t. For some people it’s kind of a last straw in a longer series of issues in which they have slowly backed away from this or that teaching of the church, where the unbiblical divorce is really the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. I think there are a good number of people in the pews on any given Sunday who are one life crisis away from walking away from the church to be honest — they have already walked away on so many other issues while technically remaining there, that it’s really just one crisis that could push them away completely.
Expect to see much more of this in the years ahead. Our culture is becoming very incompatible with Christianity (at least of the traditional morality kind) because it is requiring people to openly “affirm” things that violate Christian moral teaching in a very basic way. People are going to be forced to show their cards, one way or the other — and a lot of people right now are holding the cards close and keeping their heads down. I expect we will see some combo of people just apostatizing, people trying to salvage some vestige of an outward faith by forming “affirming” evangelical communities and/or people moving to mainline LGBT affirming churches. But remaining ambiguously silent on the issue in public is not going to be permitted for very much longer.
I suspect that a less-than-dazzling “personal life” played a part in their split too. It’s fairly obvious that Joshua is a hardcore genophobe.
I bet Shannon goes wild in the years to come.
Let me guess….in the late 1990’s every single one of you was against his book, and “warned” everyone. I read it probably a decade ago when church leaders, and bible-study teachers were moving away from it and playing the game of “well, he had some good points” but “men just don’t want to step up” and “the real way to meet a great christian woman or man is to just come to church”
I wasn’t a Christian in the late 1990’s but every Christian I knew at work, through my greater social circle all had their nose in it, and agreed with it. Protestant and Catholic alike. Pastors lauded him as a young man who was gonna “bring the millennial” generation back to Jesus (and the first wave of them is now pushing forty, and we still hear DAILY in christian circles on how we have to “reach” this generation by being authentic and revelent, and reach out to them……usually it means wearing hipster clothing, and having tattoos to relate to them).
Everyone is yelling all over the sphere “well, that’s what he got for marrying a fornicator” but when many of these same were “fornicating” well, that was “different”
He got a lot of hatred within five to seven years after that book from many christians because they followed his advice and it didn’t work out. Many christian men were still single (most). Many men were now trapped in a marriage that was indeed bad. Many men believed they were betrayed to follow this method while the “unholy” and “unrepentent” in church were rewarded with a wife….and it indirectly “upped” the ante for women shutting a ton of men out who “they” had deemed as unworthy / not ready to be a father or husband in an UMC christian sense of the word. He ended up probably black-pilling a lot of young / adult men at that time in the church, and I would imagine more than a few women. His book did more harm than good. Everyone looking back now……21 years later probably can agree on that.
I understand where he’s at, becuse I am there now. For diffrerent reasons obviously……maybe he and his wife can reconcile. I hope his children are gonna be okay, and maybe “everyone else” should just take a back seat right now and reflect on their own lives where they have “fallen short” of the glory of god.
He wasn’t too far off on courtship in his first book, but he came at the topic from a blue pilled, and ill informed perspective. That makes all the difference.
I think it was PJ media that said josh had a formulaic approach when it came to churchian topics. I agree with their observation.
This news was completely and wholly expected, given the content of his two books. Anyone with any drop of discernment would have seen this coming. Notably, his second book got many revisions due to the divorces his poster couples underwent after they were published. While I grieve the waywardness from God, Harris’ hearkening to the Personal Jesus has led to a very expected result. His falling away from faith resulted in putting his trust in men and himself, as a super-majority of those that claim Christianity do. It is well noting that Harris didn’t even follow his own advice in IKDG, much less look into Scripture for his answers. There is no good end for anyone that does that, as a lot will be rudely awakened to sometime in the future.
>I bet Shannon goes wild in the years to come.
She already went wild before she married Harris, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she had some extra-curriculars while married to Harris. As I noted in my review of the other book, Harris ending up fulfilling every one of the standard blue-pill tropes regarding Shannon to the letter, including the “man-up and marry that thot” one. I don’t think any of the articles or anything would tell us, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Shannon forced the divorce because she was bored and unhaaaaaapy.
Funny how a lot of this red-pill stuff (though a lot who claim that are really blue-pill) has a way of proving itself right.
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Harris was a published phenom / cultural leader at the age of 21 and de facto leader of a megachurch at 30. “Too much too soon” is surely a factor.
Earlier this year I watched part of “Master and Commander” and was struck by how teenaged boys in the Royal Navy were given command of men older than them. How is it a 14 year old boy is in charge of a gun crew? Then I recalled that in the 18th century, children of the aristocracy were raised towards their adult roles beginning very early. So if one starts at the age of 5 training a boy in how to take orders, then how to give them, then what it means to do one’s duty regardless of situation…and the result is a 14 year old who can tell 30 year old men what to do with utter assurance of command, even under enemy fire on a ship that is danger of sinking.
We don’t do that anymore. Instead we have fads, and fashions, and celebrity preachers. Harris isn’t the first or the last to follow the trajectory that leads to burnout, by being given too much authority before he’s ready for it.
As a rule, I regard divorce as a sad thing. This one is not the exception.
Given Churchians and how they are affected by culture, is divorce inevitable?
@ Don Quixote
One could possibly insinuate that he knew about Jesus but never really knew Him.
I would say that about myself growing up and only a few years after college did I really come to know who Jesus was and what He did for me. I knew a lot about the Bible before that and was a regular participant in Church when younger too and served a lot.
@ lastmod / jason
Please do not change your name anymore.
Nope. I remember reading it a few months after it came out (parents got it). I wasn’t really interested in dating/courtship at the time but I remember thinking they were some good ideas.
But then when you try to apply those ideals later on they didn’t really work. So the backlash started after that.
I do believe he has/had good intentions with the book, but good intentions don’t add up to good or godly advice.
A loss of faith? Happens to the best………my mother lost hers after my older brother was born. You couldn’t say a word about gods grace and “love” to her for the next thirty five years or so.
And mine right now is lost….perhaps is not to the extreme or measures of Josh Harris….but I have been questioning much of late, and I’m not getting answers, just more lies. Prayer goes unheeded, unheard, and unreplied to. I had a very strong prayer life for a decade….(hours a night)…someone I trusted in the faith from my salvation army days told me by email a few weeks back “well….you were asking for the wrong things, you have to ask for the right things in prayer”
When I pushed for him to clarify…I got the usual “just trust god, and he has this amazing plan for your life”
eye roll
It makes me now wonder what else is “wrong” or what I have been doing wrong as a christian. More “just trust god, he has this amazing plan for yopur life”
Life is WAY over halfway done now……….begining to really believe the cosmic joke thing, open and blantant sin rewarded. I went camping last weekend and felt better than being in fellowship and “forsaking the gathering” doesn’t matter at this point……what matters evidently is everything I don’t have. If I wanted to be stuck in jr high and reminded of this constantly I suppose I could go to church
seventiesjason,
The churches are apostate, and impotent. You are right, it is like being stuck in Jr. High. So don’t Go. Commune with God while you are camping. God has refused to give me most of my prayer requests for the last couple of decades also, but that doesn’t give me any right to give up faith and deny my creator just because His plan for me involves suffering, defeat, and rejection. No, it isn’t an “amazing plan”, from my selfish and temporal perspective, but I have to have the faith and trust in God that He will use it for my eternal good. If you are trusting in man/church to be decent to you, you will be disappointed and become disillusioned. Pray that God will give you his peace. Christ isn’t in the churches, He’s in the Bible. Seek Him there, and patiently accept what He brings upon you.
Ecclesiasticus(Sirach) 2:1 My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation. 2 Set thy heart aright, and constantly endure, and make not haste in time of trouble. 3 Cleave unto him, and depart not away, that thou mayest be increased at thy last end. 4 Whatsoever is brought upon thee take cheerfully, and be patient when thou art changed to a low estate. 5 For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.
Jason —
There is what is going on in your life, as critical for you as that is, on the one hand, and then there is the longer term issue of God/Christ/afterlife.
You need to be able to separate the two of them. This life is a valley of tears. That is clear. But as Job represents, there is an attitude of faithfulness amongst the garbage that life throws at all of us that is what actually gives us life — not as a form of obedience per se, but as a form of life, of living in gratefulness for what we have and not in anger for what we lack.
Prayers are always answered. However, they are often not answered by what we have asked for being granted. God knows us, and what we actually need, and he gives us that — we may not want it, and we may not think it is an answer to the prayer, but it is.
In general, find a church that fits (the Army probably will be toxic for you now it seems in light of the conversations you have reported), and be a very heads down, focused on the future Christian. That will do you more good than endlessly cursing all the inevitably hypocritical Christians you come across.
And whatever you do, avoid Sharkly and his heresy.
the longer i live, the more questions i have than answers. i don’t understand why, i don’t understand prolonged pain, i don’t understand prolonged suffering, i don’t understand unimaginable tragedy, i don’t understand blown up marriages and innocent children being caught up in them, i don’t understand starvation and rampant disease, i don’t understand how evil gets such a huge and seemingly endless platform.
and … while i believe in it … i don’t understand prayer, either. there were those who were close to me who said that if anyone could pray their husband to God, it was me. but he still chose his destructive path. he still left. he still did terrible things to our girls that they’re still recovering from to this day and will continue to recover from for many years. and then he died – essentially b/c he refused to call for help. so if he had not left, and we were still married, i would have been able to call for help, and he would still be alive. (i know … our days are numbered before one comes to be … )
so i’ve struggled a lot with prayer since then. i still pray, i’m just very cautious. i’m much more willing to pray specifically for others than myself. i don’t want to set myself up to be let down, and i think we can do that with prayer. sometimes i think we can give ourselves a false hope with prayer.
in the end, i’ve had to choose what i believe, and within choosing to believe God, i’ve had to accept a lot is true that i don’t understand simply b/c it’s in the bible. and i really do not understand a lot … and i really do have more questions than answers.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in [c]hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall [d]fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness [e]shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
Psalm 139:7-12
sometimes we walk thru hell on this earth … it’s nice to know that, even if we can’t feel or see it to be true, God is there.
” I bet Shannon goes wild in the years to come. ”
They all do.
She obviously wasn’t submitting in the marriage- it lead to divorce. How is she to act now that she is out of the marriage?
” Prayers are always answered. However, they are often not answered by what we have asked for being granted. God knows us, and what we actually need, and he gives us that — we may not want it, and we may not think it is an answer to the prayer, but it is. ”
False gospel identified. Ja 4:3.
And whatever you do, avoid Novaseeker and his heresy.
False gospel identified. Ja 4:3.
And whatever you do, avoid Novaseeker and his heresy.
You obviously understand nothing. Good day.
Deep Strength says:
July 27, 2019 at 10:23 pm
I heard he [Joshua Harris] was a pastor in a mega-church. I have never been a regular attendee in a mega church but I know enough to never want to be in a mega-church. It would be an unbearable situation to be married to a shrew and be a pastor at the same time in a feminised church environment.
I read IKDG around 2010, and our kids (who were 14 and 15 at the time) also read it. One of them took it to heart.
It wasn’t long after that -and totally unrelated to Harris- for me to start questioning and rejecting formulas supposedly based on Scripture. Ultimately, we realized that they were akin to the law; possibly profitable as training wheels but not able to deliver true Christian liberty.
For all the flak Harris is getting, I have much more respect for his position than I do of those along the lines of the late Rachel Held Evans and Co. It is more honorable to concede that your sincerely held beliefs are not consistent with traditional, orthodox Christianity and walk away than to try and browbeat the faithful while twisting the Bible (or toss out whole portions) to make it more “inclusive” of any and all lifestyle and sexual choices.
Ben Zobrist is an MLB player for the Chicago Cubs. His wife, Juliana Zobrist, is a professional singer and contemporary Christian musician. They’ve been married 14 years. He’s a professional athlete at the top of his game. She’s young, thin, very attractive, and has something of a career of her own, though he is much more famous and accomplished than she is. They have 3 young children. They presented the epitome of a modest, faithful Christian marriage.
Over the summer it came out that the Zobrists are divorcing. On the same day, Ben filed for legal separation in Tennessee. She filed for divorce in Cook County. A Tennessee daily reported,
“Ben Zobrist’s filing contends that his wife “has been guilty of inappropriate marital conduct which render further cohabitation impossible,” though the article didn’t elaborate.
“Husband is unsure if the marriage can be salvaged,” the filing says
Translation: She cheated on him.
Also, remember Jenny Erikson’s divorce from her husband.
Christianity is not an inoculation against marital strife or divorce.
The Psalmist Asaph almost departed from God for similar reasons.
Read Psalm 73 to see how it ends.
I too have had my doubts. My wife is sometimes verbally abusive despite all my years of prayer and endurance. I have had to come to terms with the fact that God’s will is for me to live with this trial, and that I will never have a wife that I can trust.
Is this as good as it gets? If this is Christian marriage – what’s the point?
My son has a chronic illness. 20 years old and incapacitated. Is God good?
People fall away because they expect that God will reward them with a nice life, and when things get really rough, they throw in the towel.
I wrote about this on my blog a couple of days ago. I’m thankful that his book came out after my teenager years. I was old enough to eat the proverbial meat and throw away the bones when I read his books.
Don Quixote
I heard he [Joshua Harris] was a pastor in a mega-church.
Search engines can be useful for finding web pages about people.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Joshua_Harris_(pastor)
Deti – Christianity is not an inoculation against marital strife or divorce.
truth. you could have stopped with Christianity is not an inoculation against …
– – –
Daniel – Is this as good as it gets? If this is Christian marriage – what’s the point?
My son has a chronic illness. 20 years old and incapacitated. Is God good?
People fall away because they expect that God will reward them with a nice life, and when things get really rough, they throw in the towel.
yes.
I had similar thoughts after seeing that photo of him with his wife in the New York Post. He couldn’t button his shirt any tighter if he tried.
Going way back in time, let’s not forget Amy Grant who divorced her husband Gary Chapman in 1999 and then married Vince Gill in 2000. The “Queen of Christian Pop” still remains very popular.
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” My wife is sometimes verbally abusive despite all my years of prayer and endurance.”
All wives are “verbally abusive”. These are called shit tests. It’s perfectly normal and you have to buck up, Buttercup, and learn to laugh them off. The more that you take them seriously, the worse the shit tests get.
“I will never have a wife that I can trust. “
…what?…you mean women aren’t men with tits?…let me clue you in to something…women wear makeup and falsies and high heels (to make their legs more shapely) and wigs, etc….Deception, thy name is Woman…you have believed the Blue Pill propaganda instead of paying attention to women’s behavior…if you assume that women are deceptive by nature, you have the cheat codes to relationships with women…it’s hopeless, but not serious…
I’m sorry to hear about your son…that is a heavy burden…
Hadn’t really expected to use this point here, as it stems from a discussion I was having about Communism with someone, but nothing is new under the Sun. So it applies here as well. I do have some sympathy for Harris, in this regard. Aside from a very small number of the readers of his book, no one actually ever believed it. You see this in any ideological movement of any kind. There’s a small (under 5%) group that truly believes whatever they’ve been told and will preach it to others, but the vast majority will only use whatever is said as cover for their own desires.
So what Harris actually wrote barely mattered. It was simply cover for the evil desires of whose who would be open to a way to rationalize their behavior. This makes the praise he got genuine but misplaced. The inevitable disillusion follows, as it does with any “intellectual” that gets a popular following, as what they’re being praised for is not their ideas, thoughts or insights but the fact that those “insights” allowed people to rationalization their internal desires and provided them valuable cover. Calling it a “Vanity Trap” might be the most accurate term for the process, but it’s quite real and predictable.
In that regard, I do have sympathy for Harris. He likely started into this with good, if utterly ignorant, intentions, but how you respond to what comes next revels the character of the Man. Which simply means he is vain and foolish, so nothing should be shocking. He ran away rather than understand his error and correct it, a fairly clear sign he was never suited for any sort of leadership position. The “Vanity Trap” response cycle dictates that the one in the trap will be so bought into all of the praise that they have to reject the “movement” or the people involved but never their own ideas. (It’s a version of “I’m not the wrong, the World is wrong!” that you see sometimes.) For Harris, it appears to have been a longer process than others, as he eased himself out rather than blowing it all up, but you can expect the chemical dependency and plenty of other debauchery to follow. If this looks a lot like what happens to famous people, that’s because it’s the same physiological effect that follows.
This is exactly on point. The guy couldn’t even follow his own advice. I think he recanted IKDG, his marriage, and Christianity because repenting of his hypocrisy was untenable.
I disagree. It helped my wife and I out and we followed some of the principles laid out in the book. I don’t regret any of the things we did (or didn’t do). I think it’s important that we both agreed with the book. It’s not enough that one of us wants to do it.
Wisdom and formulae are often mutually exclusive. When I read IKDG, I applied the concepts as wisdom, not as a formulaic plan. I do the same thing with scripture and any other advice book. I also don’t blame the book for the failures of the reader.
I think what stands out the most to me is his admittance of a fear-based approach to life at that point in time. I feel like IKDG and a lot of the churchian ‘relationship’ books written after that suffer from that same disease. A lot of Christians are single because they’re so averse to making mistakes (I don’t mean sin in this case), so they err too much on the side of caution and end up not making a move at all. In reality mistakes can often be the best way to learn.
Truth be told I feel like churchian culture does this in a LOT of areas, not just dating/courtship.
Coastal, that is some excellent analysis. Churchian “men” are so afraid of doing something wrong because they want to be “good” men that they fail to be good at being men.
and what is good at “being “men” mean? I have met many men in church who are accomplished in their careers, are respected in ther community, and many have I would suppose okay marriages. I agree that realtionship books in the evangelical sense have never been good…..and I even read a couple of them from the 1970’s. Met plenty of single men when I was a christian and church-goer who were involved, had decent jobs, solid educations and were well rounded enough.
Men don’t get promotions or move up who don’t “take risks” or are “risk averse” and plenty of men in the secular world are just as stuck relationship wise (single and dateless) as their fellow men who are in church……morseso if truth be told because many churches have few / fewer men.
“being men” is a broad brush stroke term. does it mean being a bully? Does it mean he’s ruffian? Does it mean he’s cultured and clean? Does he have to look and behave a certain way? Homophobia is rampant in black male culture, overt machismo is near defying levels in Latin culture and plenty of these men are single and dateless in these groups. Are these men not “being men” or are they too much?
Or is it again just being able to get a girl to get naked and horizontal with you?
A klne worker at Chrysler in 1962 wasn’t chianging the world. He worked hard, found a girlfriend and married her. This man wasn’t an inventor, or even the smartest guy in the class, nor was he irresponsible and a dullard.
I don’t have to “be” a man not does any man in church culture because they are already “born” a man. The problem lies with everyone telling us what are men are supposed to be instead of them actually defining it on terms through experience, life and hard work.
Traits that are spat on, and kicked down by femimists. By church culture. By fellow men. By the man-o-sphere. Men really don’t know how to make their own decisions and that especially is in the areas of concerning women.
I am now 49, and I have seen more men waste more time by telling men how they are supposed to be, behave, think, act and cloak it under some sort of “evolutionary” thing, and yet if it inate and evolutionary we wouldn’t have to be told.
The church has failed big time. Agreed. But “being men” is really a cheap statement made to sound “so simple” but the solutions to this always involve “getting women to like you”
If that is a measure of manhood or “being men” I certainly have no need for it, and hence why its going to get much worse before it gets better
“It is well noting that Harris didn’t even follow his own advice in IKDG, much less look into Scripture for his answers.”
Again, I always got the impression that one of his motivations for writing the book, however subconscious, was to drag others down in his social ineptitude and sexual repression. Sounds like he succeeded.
My parents raised me in Protestant churches, and I continue to attend a Protestant Church. I think the Roman Catholic method has been superior to IKDG and the many other permutations Protestants use, and the worldly systems most Protestants adopt and follow.
My understanding of the Roman Catholic method is:
1. That full time Church Service (priests and nuns) and a secular job were both equal and worthy vocations
2. Young men and women should seek and discern if they have the gift of singleness, and if they do not they should get married and make many Roman Catholic babies.
Several Roman Catholic commenters in the manosphere have indicated that many Roman Catholic priests have recently drifted away from teaching this method.
The Roman Catholic method openly acknowledged that hormonal/sexual urges were natural and indicated that a young person should get married and begin making babies. When Paige Patterson tried to openly discuss that young people have such urges and men are visual oriented, he was humiliated, stripped of some retirement benefits, and sent out to pasture. Way to go Protestant leaders, now even less chance that natural urges will be discussed openly with young people!
Minor point, but I do not agree with the teaching that sex is only for procreation.
The Christian men I’ve known have experienced nuclear rejection (and I mean NUCLEAR) from Christian women. The old saying, “once burned twice shy” is true. It makes you wary of the same thing happening again and doubly cautious. It’s not that they haven’t tried; they gave up.
Jason, lots of men are terrible at being men because they are trying hard to be like women. Women are touted as the greatest thing since sliced bread, which encourages men to be more like women. But it’s propaganda and men need to resist the propaganda.
Part of being a man is enforcing your boundaries without getting bent out of shape. I do it in a humorous way and people often like me because of it. Women read me on their radar as masculine, and so do men. I get tested by both men and women and it’s Ok. I expect it and it doesn’t surprise me and I do well at passing the tests. If you get angry when you are tested, people read that as immaturity.
One time in particular, a man tested me by pinching my neck, which was painful and irritating. I responded by slowly moving my hand up his back to his neck, at which point he stopped and grinned at me. I demonstrated self-control and humor and won his respect. His son is Special Forces and it’s not that easy to win respect from a man like that.
There are lots of people who are better than I am at passing tests, but I do Ok.
I got a nuclear rejection from the woman I would eventually marry. A bunch of nurses in her unit were flirting with me and we were running around the unit at the hospital chasing each other and having fun. My future wife thought that that behavior was inappropriate. When I went over to talk with my future wife, I didn’t get a word out before she backturned me in front of everyone. That was a nuclear rejection. My face showed amused puzzlement, which was a nuclear display of value and strong frame and the other nurses didn’t stop flirting with me. My future wife eventually chatted with me at parties and asked me out. That is what it takes to be good at being a man. Maintain a strong frame in the face of nuclear testing.
S being a man means maintaining a strong frame in the face of nuclear testing…and a woman turning her back to you is a “nuclear sh*t test”
So much for the men on the beaches of Omaha, Valley Forge, and Iwo Jima…..
You just demonstrated my point. To most men, “being men” means getting a woman to like you. Who’s being played again???
“Who’s being played again???”
You, if you’re trying to be more vulnerable, sweet, true to your emotions, and a good cook.
Men who fought in past wars excelled in maintaining strong frames…men like Washington, Patton, etc….not so much the metrosexuals today who are trying to be “good women”.
Jason, you really are quite silly and pathetic. Not good at being a man. Not only would women not be attracted to you, but men wouldn’t follow you. By contrast, not only do women hit on me, but men follow me.
The idea of the “good man” or “real man” stems from traditional feminism. A “good man” or “real man” is simply one who does what he is told by the women in his life – his mother and then his wife. The Christian Church has a way of reinforcing this typical bond of woman as goddess and man as worthless slave to her every wish (he has to do this for the sin of not being a suitable “bride of Christ”, hence being born a man) – after all before the State stepped into marriages to enforce female superiority, the Church is what enforced that (and in fact created it).
Tradition is rather nasty at blinding people to what is going on, but so much is implicitly accepted.
Generally, the measure of a “real man” or “good man” is the amount of approval he receives from women, and generally society and the Church reinforces this lesson – in fact, “churched” men are far more beta than non-churched types for this reason. I described the general dynamic between men and women as enforced by IDKG type teachings here.
Now the man that actually worships and serves God alone (Commandment I/II) will as Game-types show a strong frame and not care. And women will respond to that as they should, but that’s not the message and what is enforced. As I explained there, women are made holy in the sight of the men for dating (women being on par with God in traditional feminism), which extends into marriage. Unfortunately, messages warping the proper places and value of men and women from parents, church, and wider society that have been delivered over decades can’t be deprogrammed without a lot of effort – first the man seeing a glimmer of red pill and knowing it’s wrong and still almost automatically giving women deference or even outright respect.
Simply put, a real man in the sight of God knows who he is, whose he is, and acts in faith as a result of things. A real man is independent of women, including his wife. A real man doesn’t fall into the sin of Adam.
Now being a “real man” stems from traditional feminism too? By whom? Women? By what right or standard? When? On Dalrock’s take on courtly love from the 1100’s and before when the “Legend of King Arthur” was first spoke in ancient times around a campfire???? Or was it when Tennyson penned it in the Victorian era……or could we discuss when countless poets over the untold ages from the dawn of man til now ever wrote a love song, poem, or sonnet…..somehow this was tied to femimism. Sounds just as outrageous when I sat in grad school ( a real STEM polytechnic) and was told “actually women invented the world wide web……from the looms of the medieval age, endless choices and directions…it set the blueprint of how the web is structured today”
I yelled “what a crock”
For those of you who live by such a strict code of being “the real man in the room” must have very, very tiring, cold, and boring lives. For real. It’s easy to posture in a forum like this and tell us all otherwise.
This is all so stupid. Men trying to hairsplit between “real men” and “good men” and “nice men” and “Frame” and “Game” and “IOIs” and “chumps” and every other term, phrase, and acroynym and linking it all up to so some code of medieval warfare in the 1100’s and thus washing your hands by it with “well, THOSE men back then dropped the ball and ruined women, and the world…but me, well, I’m a leader. I’m so immune to this.”
Doubt that Washington and Patton “debated the merits of being a real man or the only man in the room” when the going got tough. I’ve read Washington’s journals at Valley Forge. He wept. He struggled with the conditions his men were facing. He had fear. He had dread…..and he missed his wife. Dearly. We should now put a man like that in the “simp corner” forever
In today’s happy-go-lucky world, he would have told a joke, busted out Rollo’s book, and inspired everyone to just follow him because he had Frame.
Still forgetting that all of this nonsense still defers to the approval of “women liking me” in our modern age.
‘When Washington got wind of Conway’s self-important letter to Congress, he wrote to Richard Henry Lee protesting any appointment of Conway. “General Conway’s merit, then, as an Officer, and his importance in this Army, exist more in his own imagination than in reality: For it is a maxim with him, to leave no service of his own untold, nor to want any thing which is to be obtained by importunity…”‘
http://www.ushistory.org/march/other/cabal.htm
dry humor in response to a test when Conway tried to bypass Washington to get a promotion
Jason, you have believed a lot of Blue Pill fiction about how the world works–about men like Washington and Patton. Game is essential when dealing with men. You need to be able to read people and test people and know how to defend yourself and how to show your value without actually promoting yourself by bragging. “48 Laws of Power” is useful if you want to learn game. That book states that self-control is the first principle of game.
So Washington when he wrote in his journal was “blue pilled fiction” about how the world works. All Game is to 99% of the men who preach it:
Disagree with me, and I’ll name-call you and treat you like a bratty little sister.
Billions of print spent on “how to be a leader” and “rules of power” and “how to be effective” in the world with men, women, and anyone else for that matter.”
Washington wasn’t that great as a president. He put a whiskey tax that was higher than the levy- taxes the Crown had put on us which had caused the Revolution in the first place….and his brother was brewing his own rye with exemptions from this tax and was granted a ton of land in western PA.
He wasn’t a bad general…..and tough decisions had to be made, as they always are in war. No man here is a general, and no man here has ever sent a man to the front lines to die for “national interests” (oil, oil, oil, oil….more oil…….and oil)
@Jason the troll
“So Washington when he wrote in his journal was “blue pilled fiction” about how the world works. “
What are you on about?
“All Game is to 99% of the men who preach it:
Disagree with me, and I’ll name-call you and treat you like a bratty little sister.”
Straw man.
“Washington wasn’t that great as a president.”
Did you forget that he was your original example of how to be a man?
I’m not going down any more rabbit trails.
no, you mentioned that Washington and Patton were real men
This is your quote, and you brought this up. You’re more of a prize horses ass than I though
“Men who fought in past wars excelled in maintaining strong frames…men like Washington, Patton, etc….”
On Patton. Beat and slapped the soldiers who actually did the dirty work in fighting the Nazis, and then always was there when the press was to “talk tough” (foul language) to get press and the glory. If he had lived into the 1950’s……Ike would have fired him
If you bother to read “48 Laws of Power”, you will find that the author pulls examples of game from history…in fact, the book is mostly a collection of examples of game from history.
It was Washington’s strong public (did I say “public”) frame that kept his army together when they wintered at Valley Forge. Washington wept in private, but publicly Washington showed great confidence (a strong frame). Was Washington a hypocrite? No, he was a strong leader.
Patton was an actor and an innovator. He was attacked not infrequently because he went to the front lines to observe. Patton’s chief innovation was close air support with his columns so that the column commander could call up HQ and get air support when he needed it. Patton was far and away the best general of WW2. Generals are needed for making good decisions, not toughness, except the emotional toughness needed to send men out to fight and die.
You are as silly as ever.
Jason, I’d like a source for Washington’s journal from Valley Forge.
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Now another piece of the puzzle shows up:
https://thetransformedwife.com/shannon-harris-kissed-biblical-womanhood-goodbye/