Tag Archives: Blame

Mentoring

Are churches preparing women to choose real men for husbands?

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First, I want every one to take a look at this verse on providing for a family  in context: (1 Tim 5:3-8)

 3 Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need.

4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

5 The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help.

6 But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.

7 Give the people these instructions, so that no one may be open to blame.

8 Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

And these verses on charity in evangelism: (Phil 4:10-19)

10 I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. 

11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

 14 Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. 

15 Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; 

16 for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. 

17 Not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account. 

18 I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. 

19 And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

Now I want to talk about a very disturbing trend that I see in the church. I see a lot of women who are not prepared to choose men who are going to fill this provider role. Men have a role, straight from the Bible, to provide for their wife and children, and to donate to support evangelistic efforts. And providing is not predicated on how a man makes a woman feel. Providing is based on the things such as:

  • working for money before you are legally able to work for money
  • working summer jobs during high school and college
  • working during college or doing college degrees while working full-time
  • doing consulting work or running your own business from home in the evenings
  • studying science, technology, engineering and math (no exceptions!)
  • not drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes – no addictions of any kind
  • not spending money on hair, tattoos, clothes, shoes or flashy junk
  • own your own car, and keep it well-maintained
  • own your own pet, and keep it healthy and well-trained
  • pay your rent or mortgage payments on time
  • carry no debt, borrow no money
  • avoid depending on government welfare or student loans
  • not taking sick days, not getting sick at all
  • purchasing resources for others, especially things like apologetics books, to build them up
  • giving charity to solid Christian speakers and funding apologetics events (William Lane Craig debates)
  • making investments in stocks or real estate
  • maxing out 401K contributions and Roth IRAs
  • taking women out on dates, driving them in the man’s own car, and paying for everything
  • spending money to help the pro-life and pro-marriage causes (Morse, Klusendorf)

And I think you have to give bonus marks for getting up early, although I can’t do that. I know someone who does, though – the hardest working software engineer I know.

Women should not prefer young men who are studying political science, psychology, English, education, grievance studies, and other non-quantitative subjects which do not equip a man to provide enough salary and savings to run a Christian life plan (homeschooling or private Christian schools or both). What ends up happening is that there is a lot of fighting over money, especially with women who don’t have savings of their own before marrying. Without money, the children will likely get pushed into public school and they influenced by secularism and leftism.

What to do? Pick a man with a proven record of taking his responsibilities to study and earn seriously.

Here are some of the top earning careers:

Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary – Full List
STARTING MEDIAN PAY MID-CAREER MEDIAN PAY
Petroleum Engineering $97,900 $155,000
Chemical Engineering $64,500 $109,000
Electrical Engineering (EE) $61,300 $103,000
Materials Science & Engineering $60,400 $103,000
Aerospace Engineering $60,700 $102,000
Computer Engineering (CE) $61,800 $101,000
Physics $49,800 $101,000
Applied Mathematics $52,600 $98,600
Computer Science (CS) $56,600 $97,900
Nuclear Engineering $65,100 $97,800
Biomedical Engineering (BME) $53,800 $97,800
Economics $47,300 $94,700
Mechanical Engineering (ME) $58,400 $94,500
Statistics $49,000 $93,800
Industrial Engineering (IE) $57,400 $93,100
Civil Engineering (CE) $53,100 $90,200
Mathematics $47,000 $89,900
Environmental Engineering $51,700 $88,600
Management Information Systems (MIS) $51,000 $88,200
Software Engineering $54,900 $87,800

I think that marrying someone who is not in one of these careers makes no sense at all, especially in light of a global recession.

And just to be clear, this is an area I struggle in myself. I am great at working for money, and saving it and investing it. But I say a lot of controversial things and a lawsuit would not be good for my fortune. I should be spending more time on evenings and weekends keeping my skills up, and that’s what I’m going to be doing on my vacation. But I think the standard stands regardless of my own abilities to meet it. It is the standard.

Money is an important part of the Christian life. The Bible says that if a man does not work, neither shall he eat. We have a tradition on what men are supposed to do in Christianity. Men are supposed to take care of business, and women are supposed to prefer men with proven records of taking care of business. Being handsome and fun is nowhere in the Bible as a qualification for men to be good husbands and fathers. But earning money and providing for others in the community is a non-negotiable requirement. It’s as required as the obligation to not marry a non-Christian man.

Women who are serious about Christianity will prefer men who meet the specifications laid out in the Bible. And this has to have been demonstrated over the course of years – a pattern of studying hard things, working multiple jobs, spending little, saving much and supporting family and evangelism.  To me, a woman who prefers a man who has no record of providing is a woman who has been influenced by feminism. She rejects the traditional roles of men and insists on a man who is has no authority to lead because he does not have the provider role. That’s what’s really going on here. Men who earn have authority to lead and hold a woman accountable when she misbehaves, and some women hate being led and being held accountable. (By being held accountable I mean disagreeing with the woman, canceling optional goodies, etc.)

I think we have a major problem in this society, and in the church, where we think that women are above criticism. We think that anything they feel like doing is a good idea. We think that their complete lack of rational thought and lack of planning in relationships is somehow “romantic”. We think that women who embrace spontaneity and ignorance of statistical data are “free spirits”. Is it any wonder that the out-of-wedlock birth rate is 42%, the divorce rate for first time marriages is 45%, and women are shacking up with unqualified men instead of getting married?

This is all – all – caused by the fact that women have no idea what men are for, and they deliberately prefer non-judgmental, non-theologically-exclusive, non-rational, tolerant, intuitive, wusses instead of men who give them hard books to read and who hold them accountable when they misbehave. Women today think it is a bad thing when a man holds her accountable when she disrespects him in public, but think it is a good thing to date a man who asks his parents to borrow the car keys before taking her out. Huh? I had a current year car with only 7500 miles on it at age 17 – because I was working two jobs in high school, and part-time IT/desktop publishing in my own business on the side.

Women who are interested in testing a man’s abilities can use my checklist for finding authentic Christian women. Those questions work on men too.

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Commentary

Thomas Sowell explains why third-world countries are so poor

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Thomas Sowell

Mary sent me this article from TownHall.com.

Excerpt:

The idea that the rich have gotten rich by making the poor poor has been an ideological theme that has played well in Third World countries, to explain why they lag so far behind the West.

[…]There is obviously something there with very deep emotional appeal. Moreover, because nothing is easier to find than sins among human beings, there will never be a lack of evil deeds to make that explanation seem plausible.

Because the Western culture has been ascendant in the world in recent centuries, the image of rich white people and poor non-white people has made a deep impression, whether in theories of racial superiority– which were big among “progressives” in the early 20th century– or in theories of exploitation among “progressives” later on.

In a wider view of history, however, it becomes clear that, for centuries before the European ascendancy, Europe lagged far behind China in many achievements. Since neither of them changed much genetically between those times and the later rise of Europe, it is hard to reconcile this role reversal with racial theories.

More important, the Chinese were not to blame for Europe’s problems– which would not be solved until the Europeans themselves finally got their own act together, instead of blaming others. If they had listened to people like Jeremiah Wright, Europe might still be in the Dark Ages.

It is hard to reconcile “exploitation” theories with the facts. While there have been conquered peoples made poorer by their conquerors, especially by Spanish conquerors in the Western Hemisphere, in general most poor countries were poor for reasons that existed before the conquerors arrived. Some Third World countries are poorer today than they were when they were ruled by Western countries, generations ago.

It’s sad, because when I talk to many people from other countries, like Mexico and Greece, they blame the United States for their own bad decisions, instead of imitating United States policies. Maybe if Mexico and Greece stopped blaming others and started trying to imitate the best countries, then they would be more like Chile. A few decades ago, Chile made a decision to re-make their economy to be more American than America. And the result is that they are seeing record economic growth. Prosperity has nothing to do with skin color – just with policies. Chile embraced good economic policies and now they are much richer than before. The main thing to do is to make sure that you have economists in charge, not community organizers. Canada has an economist in charge, and they just scored DOUBLE the GDP growth of the United States. Knowledge matters.

Videos

Stephen C. Meyer explains why rational systems of morality require God

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Dr. Stephen C. Meyer
Dr. Stephen C. Meyer

About the speaker:

Stephen C. Meyer is director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC) and a founder both of the intelligent design movement and of the CSC, intelligent design’s primary intellectual and scientific headquarters. Dr. Meyer is a Cambridge University-trained philosopher of science, the author of peer-reviewed publications in technical, scientific, philosophical and other books and journals. His signal contribution to ID theory is given most fully in Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, published by HarperOne in June 2009.

[…]Graduating from Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, in 1981 with a degree in physics and earth science, he later became a geophysicist with Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) in Dallas, Texas. From 1981 to 1985, he worked for ARCO in digital signal processing and seismic survey interpretation. As a Rotary International Scholar, he received his training in the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University, earning a PhD in 1991. His thesis offered a methodological interpretation of origin-of-life research.

[…]Prior to the publication of Signature in the Cell, the piece of writing for which Meyer was best known was an August 2004 review essay in the Smithsonian Institution-affiliated peer-reviewed biology journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The article laid out the evidential case for intelligent design, that certain features of living organisms–such as the miniature machines and complex circuits within cells–are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection.

[…]Meyer’s many other publications include a contribution to, and the editing of, the peer-reviewed volume Darwinism, Design and Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2004) and the innovative textbook Explore Evolution (Hill House Publishers, 2007).

Meyer has been widely featured in media appearance on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, PBS, and the BBC. In 2008, he appeared with Ben Stein in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.  He’s also featured prominently in two other science documentaries, Icons of Evolution and Unlocking The Mystery of Life.

Part 1 of 4: (15 minutes)

Part 2 of 4: (15 minutes)

Part 3 of 4: (15 minutes)

Part 4 of 4: (15 minutes)

It starts out simple, and then gets more complex.