Tag Archives: Different

Mentoring

Marriage advice from Christian philosopher William Lane Craig

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Here is a question of the week from Dr. Craig on “Marriage Advice”!

Here’s the question:

Dear Dr. Craig,

Marriage is in the foreseeable future, and I would like to ask you for any advice before it happens. Can we avoid any mistakes? Would it be helpful to meet with a pastor for premarital counseling? Are there any helpful tips you could give from a Christian perspective or from your own experience?

Thank you in advance!

Zareen

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.

I wonder if the married readers agree with him about the “waiting at least a year after marriage bafore having children”?

News

New PLOS study finds that men and women have major personality differences

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From Science Daily. (H/T Levin)

Excerpt:

Men and women have large differences in personality, according to a new study published Jan. 4 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

The existence of such differences, and their extent, has been a subject of much debate, but the authors of the new report, led by Marco Del Giudice of the University of Turin in Italy, describe a new method for measuring and analyzing personality differences that they argue is more accurate than previous methods.

The researchers used personality measurements from more than 10,000 people, approximately half men and half women. The personality test included 15 personality scales, including such traits as warmth, sensitivity, and perfectionism. When comparing men’s and women’s overall personality profiles, which take multiple traits into account, very large differences between the sexes became apparent, even though differences look much smaller when each trait is considered separately.

However, the study indicates that previous methods to measure such differences have been inadequate, both because they focused on one trait at a time and because they failed to correct for measurement error.

The authors conclude that the true extent of sex differences in human personality has therefore been consistently underestimated.

This has implications for many questions, not the least of which is gay marriage. If men and women are different, then children get the benefits of those differences, and they get the benefit of seeing the two sexes interact in a love relationship that’s about commitment and cooperation – not just lust and attraction.

I really appreciate it when my readers send me great articles like this that I can use, where we can all learn something about the way the world really is.

Mentoring

William Lane Craig explains how to have a great marriage

4 Comments

I just noticed that Bill’s latest question of the week is on “Marriage Advice”!

Here are the main pieces of advice:

  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

Well, I recommend clicking through to read this! It’s answer #120.

I command all you married readers to give me your honest assessment of his advice!

Is he as good at advice as he is at Christian scholarship and debate?

Further study