Tag Archives: Career

News

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig offers marriage advice

2 Comments

This post is a 3 in one: one lecture, one question and answer, and another lecture – all on different topics. My friend Neil S. requested this so I’m posting it.

I got this lecture from the Reasonable Faith web site.

Dr. William Lane Craig is the top living Christian apologist and debater in the world today, and has 2 Masters degrees and 2 Ph.Ds. He also has scores of academic publications including books from Oxford University Press, etc.

The MP3 file is here. (14.5 Mb, about 41 minutes)

Topics:

  • the stresses of ministry on marriages
  • the Christian position on divorce
  • balancing marriage with academic pursuits
  • the importance of marrying the right person
  • Dr. Craig’s politically incorrect advice for choosing a spouse
  • Advice for men: Marry someone who believes in you and who supports you in your calling
  • Advice for women: Be the kind of person who can commit to being a helper and supporter
  • Advice for men: Beware of the career woman who will put their career over supporting you in your calling
  • Advice for women: Be careful about marrying if you think that your goals are more important than your husband’s goals
  • Advice: Don’t try to find the right person for you but instead focus on learning about marriage and preparing for marriage
  • Advice: Flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, love and peace
  • Advice: God intends for sex to be within the bounds of marriage, so you need to guard yourself against unchastity
  • Advice for men: be careful what images and movies you see with the goal of keeping your chastity
  • Advice: your highest responsibility after your relationship with God is your spouse, and your studies are third
  • Advice: it’s better to drop classes or give up your graduate studies entirely rather than destroy your marriage
  • Advice for women: understand that you have to work at the marriage in order to help your man finish his studies
  • Advice: set aside a period of the day for communicating and bonding with your spouse
  • Advice: cultivate the ability to talk with your spouse on a personal level, and maintain eye contact
  • Advice for men: do not break eye contact with your wife, and also hold her hand when communicating
  • Advice: do not be embarrassed to seek out a marriage counselor, but make it a good counselor
  • Advice:  don’t just be doing stuff for your mate, but also be vulnerable and transparent with your mate
  • How your relationship with your wife helps you with your relationship with God
  • How do you handle the rebellion of children without being overbearing and authoritarian?

There is a period of Q&A at the end. There is another piece of advice that comes out in the Q&A for women: take an interest in your spouse’s work even if you don’t care about it, and ask him about it every day and try to understand it. Go to the man’s workplace and see what he does. Go to his presentations. Get involved in the man’s ministry and help him in practical ways. Another piece of advice is to not paper over the differences – it’s good to argue, because it means that problems are being confronted and worked through. Husbands should have a good male friend to talk to, and wives should have a good female friend to talk to.

I like how Dr. Craig has thought about how to have a successful marriage, how to choose the right woman, and how to love his wife. I like how he calls out men on the chastity thing. I think that chastity is more important for men than for women, because it’s the men who take the lead in choosing and pursuing the right woman for their plan.

Secondly, here is my previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for married couples, where he gives 5 points of advice for married couples.

Here are the main pieces of advice Dr. Craig gives:

  1. Resolve that there will be no divorce
  2. Delay having children
  3. Confront problems honestly
  4. Seek marital counseling
  5. Take steps to build intimacy in your relationship

And here’s the controversial one (#2):

2. Delay having children. The first years of marriage are difficult enough on their own without introducing the complication of children. Once children come, the wife’s attention is necessarily diverted, and huge stresses come upon you both. Spend the first several years of marriage getting to know each other, working through your issues, having fun together, and enjoying that intimate love relationship between just the two of you. Jan and I waited ten years before having our first child Charity, which allowed me the finish graduate school, get our feet on the ground financially, establish some roots, and enjoy and build our love relationship until we were really ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. The qualifier here is that if the wife desperately wants children now, then the husband should accede to her wish to become a mother, rather than withhold that from her. Her verdict should be decisive. But if you both can agree to wait, things will probably be much easier.

Third and finally, here is a previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for choosing a good spouse, with illustrations from his own marriage.

For example, Bill’s first story about Jan occurs early after their marriage while he is working on his first Masters degree at Trinity:

And it was also at that time that I began to see what an invaluable asset the Lord had given me in Jan. I remember I came home from classes one day, and found her at the kitchen table with all the catalogs and schedules and papers spread out in front of her and she said, “look! I’ve figured out how you can get two Masters degrees at the same time that it would normally take to get one! All you have to do is take overloads every semester, go to all full-time summer school and do all these other things, and you can do two MAs in the time it takes to do one!”

And I thought, whoa! Are you sure you really want to make the commitment it takes to do this kind of thing? And she said, “Yeah! Go for it!” And it was then I began to see that God had given me a very special woman who was my supporter – my cheerleader – and who really believed in me. And as long as she believed in me, that gave me the confidence to dream bigger dreams, and to take on challenges that I had never thought of before.

If you want to hear another Christian husband talk about how his wife supports him, listen to this lecture called “Giants in the Land” with Dr. Walter Bradley. It’s actually my favorite lecture. I also really like his testimony lecture. If you’re looking for guidance, these are some of the people I would recommend.

News

To marry and have children, it’s important to make a realistic plan

Leave a comment

This is a guest post by Mathetes entitled “The Road That Was Taken”.  You can find his last post here.

The Daily Mail is the gift that keeps on giving. And usually the gifts are a witness to the outcomes of bad choices. Previously, we discussed how to live your worst life. Unfortunately, some people serve as stark examples. Enter Megan, and her story that is told in “It’s NOT my fault that I missed the chance to become a mother”.

The story is familiar: a gal lamenting that she has no man or children. But in a world where women have the ability to define and achieve any of their goals, where does this lament come from?

Playing with her nieces one day, Megan burst into tears because “I couldn’t bring myself to articulate the truth — that, at the age of 38, I realised I’d probably never watch my own child doing somersaults on a summer’s day.”

But how did this come about for someone with children as a goal?

“I wasn’t childless for medical reasons, or out of choice. The right man had just never come along.

As a writer living in London, with a fulfilling career and a great social life, I was a doting aunt to Harry, Jack, Emily and Freya.”

This sounds so strange. In a world where women are go-getters, here we have a lady who just sat around waiting for a man to mysteriously “come along”. I don’t believe the incongruence struck her – she has a career in which she is fulfilled, but she probably didn’t devote as much time to finding her man as she did to getting her career in order.

We come to the problem a little later on:

“I’d just assumed I’d address the subject of having children when I met the right partner with whom to confront it later in life. But I never did.”

Wintery often states that it’s important to have a plan for your life. This unfortunate lass didn’t have one, and the result is typical.

Or maybe she did have a plan. Because a plan is a restricted range of choices that is meant to lead you to a particular goal. So how did Megan’s choices influence her life? We read:

“I lived with a long-term boyfriend throughout my 20s, but we were young, and parenthood seemed a long way away. In my early 30s, I entered into a relationship that was so unstable, I knew we would never have children. He was a commitment-phobic poet, and while my friends urged me to finish the relationship and find one in which children might be an option, I didn’t long for a family enough to give him up. At 35, I finally accepted that we were never going to work out. Other relationships came and went, but none turned into something more permanent.”

So here was Megan’s plan:

  • Step 1: Live with boyfriend throughout her 20’s
  • Step 2: Enter an unstable relationship in her early 30’s, where she knew she’d never have children
  • Step 3: After a few year break up with a man who was unsuitable material for a husband

So Megan’s goal was to find a mate and have kids. And her plan was constructed to achieve the exact opposite result.

Maybe after her mid-30’s Megan figured this out. With age comes wisdom, so they say. So what did Megan set about to do:

“I began to think more about having children when I was in my late 30s, but didn’t start sizing up potential fathers on first dates because I didn’t want to rush into having children with someone I wasn’t certain about. “

So let’s add another step.

  • Step 4: Date men but don’t evaluate them for spousal quality

Though Megan made some bad choices, she does see what’s necessary for a child, and she should be commended for this:

“Nor did I want to become a single parent by choice. I’d seen how hard it was to bring up children even with a partner, thanks to my sisters, and I’d witnessed at first hand the struggles of a close friend who had unexpectedly become a single parent.

I just didn’t think I could tough it out by myself. I wanted to share parenting, and never dreamed of becoming ‘accidentally’ pregnant. I wasn’t going to trick anyone, or short-change myself.”

This is to be commended, and I mean this in all seriousness.

But getting back to her choices, Megan was warned:

“A friend who had been ambivalent about children until she was 39, and became a mother at 41, warned me that I would go through a grieving process if I didn’t become a mother. I laughed it off, but my friend was right.”

And here we read the unfortunate result when dreams and aspirations collide with the harsh wall of reality.

“… it dawned on me that I was fast approaching 40 — the age at which it seemed that if I hadn’t had my own child, I probably never would. My feelings of panic grew.”

“Feelings of resentment began to build inside me when, in the space of a year, five of my closest girlfriends told me they were pregnant. I felt happy for them, and increasingly sad for myself.“

“I tried to hide my feelings. I bought baby gifts and picked up newborns with a smile fixed on my face, even as my heart sank when I thought of the children I might never have.”

“Panic flooded over me every time I read a celebrity talking about how their little Petula/Tommy/Isabella was the best thing that had ever happened to them.”

“More and more, I felt weighed down by all the judgments — some proffered, some unspoken — about single and childless women. From being too picky to be satisfied by a partner, to just too career-orientated and selfish, the judgments are endless. In my experience, they’re generally inaccurate, too.“

This is an object lesson in the internal psychic dissonance that takes place when one’s goals collide with their choices.

Perhaps enlightenment at this stage is the best that can be hoped for. Mature adults come to accept that the choices they’ve made have resulted in the position they are in. Thus, we are able reflect and see where we went wrong and how to grow from this. Perhaps Megan will take responsibility for her choices and her current situation.

Not entirely.

“When I analysed the reasons why they and I were in this position, I came to one conclusion: bad luck, bad choices or bad timing. Not selfishness.”

Her choices she can control. But luck and timing? Perhaps, but not as likely, given her focus on career and relationships. And her choices? Doesn’t that imply that she is choosing?

And why blame luck or timing at all?

The reason for this is simple: it’s very hard to realize that you are responsible for your position. This isn’t a hard rule, but you usually got where you’re at because you followed your own path.

And she’s not alone. Other women share her plight:

“‘One of them is that more and more women are childless through circumstance. They are grieving for something few people acknowledge they have the right to grieve for, and many of them don’t even realise that’s what’s happening to them.

‘Some of them are losing some of the most powerful and productive years of their lives as they get stuck in their grief.’

I know what you’re thinking. Now, at last, maybe Megan realizes the way out. She can decide to make sure she dates in the right way. That she won’t waste time on things that take away from her goal. Even if she can’t have kids, she should still be able to find a mate and adopt. So there are possibilities for her.

The question is: where does she go from here?

And the answer is:

Morocco!

“I was determined not to lose some of the best years of my life in this way. I’d written eight books, had a life full of friends and family, and yet I felt like a failure. I had to do something.

So I did. I bought a plane ticket to Marrakesh in Morocco — a place I’d visited just once for a long weekend.”

“If I wasn’t going to have the rhythms and responsibilities of parenthood, I could make the most of my freedom.”

Megan is educated and has a successful career. She’s enjoying her freedom. But there’s still her life-long goal of having children.  How do these diverging paths reconcile with each other?

And here we come to the end. The need to rationalize, and downplay what others have, so that one’s situation is more palatable.

“I’d spent months thinking that motherhood was the answer, but I now began to realise that it wasn’t an instant passport to growth. Just look at the one-track minds some mothers have about their children.”

“You have to be open to change, and that’s possible with or without being a mother. Each side of the coin loses and gains.”

“For all I’d envied about the lives of mothers I knew, they’d envied what I had — freedom, time and the ability to nurture other relationships in a way I never would if I was a parent.”

“More importantly, I realised I wasn’t childless. I had my sisters’ children, my godchildren and a gaggle of girlfriends who were all generous with theirs.”

“For now I am splitting my time between England and Morocco, enjoying the best of both worlds. I no longer feel weighed down in England, just happy to visit.

“And while our lives might be different to the ones we envisaged when we were young, they are just as complete.”

And so Megan’s rationalization takes us full circle. Megan actually is a mother. She is completely free. She can do what she wants with her life. Her friends with children envy her. She is more open than her friends, who have one-track minds. And she, of course, realizes that motherhood was never the answer. It wasn’t a passport to growth. Her life is complete.

As I walked the halls of my work a few months ago I found a notice on a door that showed someone in an uncomfortable situation. The caption said: Sometimes the purpose of someone’s life is to be a lesson to others.

Megan, of course, may never be able to grapple with the repercussions of the feminist lies she bought into. She followed them, despite consciously knowing her choices were not leading her to the life she wanted.

But we can observe and know how to act. Let her story be a lesson to you if you are contemplating her path. Find out what you want, and live with this in mind.

News

How do prostitutes stay in business in an era of hook-up sex?

39 Comments

WARNING: This is one of those posts that feminists and egalitarians should just not read. Stay away from this post, it will offend you. Also, if you read it, then know that when I talk about “women”, it is a shorthand way of saying “women who accept the tenets of third-wave gender feminism”. I don’t mean all women, I mean third-wave gender feminists. If you are a married woman, or if you are a chaste single woman who is prepared to care for and support her future husband, then I don’t mean you.

From Stuart Schneiderman, a reversal of expectations.

The sexual revolution pushed by feminists encouraged women to abandon traditional female goals (marriage and children) and traditional men (provider, protector, moral and spiritual leader) and to instead prefer anonymous hook-up sex fueled by binge-drinking – so that they can pursue careers.

He writes:

Here’s a question for the behavioral economists: How do prostitutes stay in business?

With the sexual revolution and the hookup culture and young women making love like porn stars, how can a hooker make a living?

If you are charging money for something that people can get for free, eventually it will impact your business.

In the old days nice girls didn’t. Without specifying what nice girls wouldn’t do, men who wanted “it” sought out prostitutes.

Nowadays, there is precious little that nice girls don’t do. Thanks to a certain social movement nice girls are liberated. They will do just about anything, and will refuse to allow a man to pay for them.

Many of them won’t even want to see him in the morning.

Free love has come to mean giving it away for free. No one knows how prevalent the practice is, but nice girls are marrying later and are avoiding encumbering alliances. If we assume that they are sexually active during their twenties, then clearly they have crowded the market in non-committal sex.

Young women who are out making their way in the world today will avoid relationships, but they will happily engage in all kinds of sexual gymnastics… They do not want to be tied down, just yet. (At least not in the metaphorical sense.) No man’s man’s emotional demands will get in the way of their career advancement.

[…]The marketplace being what it is, prostitutes have now adapted. They continue to offer something that nice girls no longer offer, but it isn’t kinky sex. It is emotional attachment: love, romance and a maybe even a relationship, with a little sex on the side.

Nowadays it’s called the girlfriend experience. It’s the ultimate in sex work, considerably more difficult and better paid than common fellatio.

Strange as it seems, if you are a young man today you often have to pay a woman to act like she’s your girlfriend.

Even the term “escort” which is commonly taken to be a euphemism for prostitute, has traditionally referred to a woman who would accompany a man to a social or cultural event. She was a stand-in girlfriend.

In the old days prostitutes used to know how to do things that nice girls had never even heard of. Today, prostitutes know how to do things that nice girls do not know how to do: that is to conduct relationships.

Young women today are proficient at being sex kittens. Many of them become expert in the art of dating. Fewer know how to conduct a relationship with a man.

I grew up with a non-Christian mother who was very distant and focused on her career, wealth and health. So, I always expected a lot more from women in terms of affection, attention and approval. I knew perfectly well that what I wanted in a woman was someone to be involved with my education, career and hobbies, and most important of all, with my Christian faith. That is what I missed growing up as a visible minority in a predominantly white city. That’s probably one of several reasons why I am chaste. Sex is not the primary thing that I am looking for from a woman. Instead, I want to be the traditional man who is needed as a provider, protector and moral/spiritual leader, and who gets affection, attention and approval for fulfilling those roles (and only those roles).

There were a lot of times when I was growing up when it would have been easy for me, having hit six figures of net worth at age 26, to focus on getting sex in the quickest way possible. All I would have had to do was to stop being an open and authentic Christian. If I had stopped talking about objective morality and exclusive theological claims, and just made no demands on any women to grow into the roles of wife and mother, it would have been easy. But that would not scratch the itch that I have. I get a lot of joy from seeing a woman learn about my plan and my goals. I enjoy providing her with books, debates and lectures to learn about the things that I care about. I enjoy protecting her from lies and labor by building up her knowledge and character and performing acts of service for her. I enjoy leading her – through study and persuasion – to grow in her understanding of moral, theological and apologetic issues. And I enjoy when a woman makes an effort to be a supportive helper and a companion. Nothing is better than seeing a woman accept your goals as her own, preparing to achieve those goals and then achieving them. I would rather be a leader – that’s what men really want.

Women today use sex as a way of pacifying men who want them to grow into the roles of wife and mother. They want to focus on their careers, on playing the field and on having a good time. Marriage is something they fall back on much later, when they are in their 30s. In order to get marriage-minded men to pay attention to them during their 20s without having to commit, women offer men sex. Men take the sex, and they stop trying to perform the traditional male roles, especially the role of being the moral and spiritual leader. And it’s a very easy thing to see. Just take a typical woman and ask her to read “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” and “Stupid Things Parents Do To Mess Up Their Kids“, or similar books. They won’t do it, because they have been taught by third-wave feminism to be selfish and to avoid caring about others in relationships. But you can have all the recreational sex with them that you want (especially after they get drunk, so that they don’t feel responsible) as long as you are good-looking and fun. They have been told that they must always be having a good time, and to not prepare to care for men or children. They think that they can live happily ever after by pursuing their own happiness at every moment.

Everyone complains that men are no longer interested in marriage, but the truth is that there are very few marriage-capable women left to marry. Most women today are just not ready for marriage, because they are often neither chaste nor supportive. Men and women have to be chaste, because it is a guarantee that you offer to your spouse that you can be faithful. So, marriage-minded men are being forced to choose between selfish, promiscuous feminists and prostitutes. That’s no choice at all. And that’s why men who start out with noble aims of life-long married love and self-sacrificial commitment quickly learn to settle for recreational sex from a series of temporary partners – and sometimes very temporary partners in the case of hook-ups on college campuses.  Marriage is just not there for us to achieve anymore, because most women haven’t made the right decisions that will allow them to be supportive and faithful to their husbands. They aren’t ready to step into the roles of wife and mother.