Tag Archives: Marriage

Commentary

Tim Tebow chose his girlfriend for looks not character

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The glasses don't make you any smarter, Tim Te-fool
The glasses don’t make you any smarter, Tim T-Bonehead

UPDATE: Report from TMZ says they never dated, but that Tebow did “show interest” in her, and so this post still works somewhat.

Everyone likes to pick on me because they say that I always blame women for their poor choices, when everything is really the fault of men. Well, that’s not true. I love to blame men when it really is the man’s fault. And we have a case now where it really IS the man’s fault, and you’ll never guess how all the Christian feminists are responding to me blaming the man.

Let’s see the story, first, which is very important. It’s from the UK Daily Mail.

It says:

Tim Tebow has made a vow to stay chaste until marriage.

But it seems as if Olivia Culpo just couldn’t wait.

The 23-year-old former Miss Universe has broken up with the hunky 28-year-old former professional American footballer due to his choice to stay abstinent according to a recent report.

Two points about this.

First, it’s very improbable (but not impossible) that a Miss Universe is going to have Christian character enough to step into the roles of Christian wife and Christian mother. If her entire life is spent traveling around, putting on make-up and prancing up and down a stage, that’s not going break her narcissistic, emotional spirit enough for her to orient herself in a Christian direction. Newsflash, T-Bonehead: just because a woman claims to be a Christian doesn’t make her a Christian.

Second, if you want to marry a real Christian women, I recommend looking for women whose lives show a consistent, multi-year record of studying apologetics and engaging for conservative causes in the public square. And again, it’s just safer to prefer women with STEM degrees. Women with STEM degrees have the emotivism and narcissism drummed out of them. STEM graduates know that no amount of intuition and wishing will make a program compile and run and generate correct output.

The general point here is that men are stupid – especially when they are young and don’t realize how important it is for them to choose wisely, when it comes to a bride. They imagine that because a woman is good looking, that must mean that she has a good Christian worldview – a worldview that includes a commitment to studying apologetics, and integrating Christianity with economics, politics, etc. Guess what, stupid men? Unless she has read people like Lee Strobel and J. Warner Wallace, she doesn’t know whether her Christian faith is true or not. Unless she has read people like Thomas Sowell and Jay Richards, she has no idea how her Christian faith integrates with economics or politics. Unless she has read people like Scott Klusendorf and Ryan Anderson, she isn’t really pro-life or pro-marriage – not beyond the level of feelings, she is not.You can’t sing your way to a Christian worldview, Te-Beau. Somebody needs to hand T-Bonehead my list of courting questions. I can guarantee you that Miss Universe would not be able to answer any of them.

Pretty girls are always used to getting attention from men for free, they never have to do anything they don’t feel like doing – and that is the exact opposite of what you need in a wife and mother of your children. Women who are less focused on their appearance actually have to care about helping and supporting a man in his plan to change the world with his marriage and family. So, they busy themselves before marriage getting STEM degrees, staying chaste, working with kids to practice, stay out of debt, building up a nest egg, and trying to make the society as Christian-friendly as possible through apologetics, activism, charity and political activism. She wants the world to be a safe place for a man to marry and raise a family in, and she wants to communicate to him through her serious decision-making that she will be a help to him, and not a loose cannon on deck.

Now I was going to tell you what all my good female friends on Facebook said, and here it is: all but one of them split the blame between Tebow and his girlfriend. They actually thought she was to blame in part!!!! That’s ridiculous. Only one of them thought that he was entirely to blame and she is probably the smartest one. It goes without saying that she is studying computer science.

There is no shortcut to an effective Christian woman who takes the Bible seriously when making decisions about things like chastity. A marriage-minded man has to check her worldview and past actions, just like you check an job applicant’s education and resume. Nobody hires a candidate to do a job based on attractiveness – not if the job is important. The job of a woman is not to make you feel good or to impress your friends with her looks. The job of a woman is wife and mother, and that is just as dependent on education and resume as any other job. If a man is serious about getting a partner who will help help to actually accomplish something for God, he needs to do his thinking with his mind, not with his eyes.

News

What difference does the doctrine of humans being in “the image of God” make?

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Here’s an article from the leftist The Week about how Christianity transformed our view of the value of children. (H/T Trina)

It says:

We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn’t exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, the idea of children.

Today, it is simply taken for granted that the innocence and vulnerability of children makes them beings of particular value, and entitled to particular care. We also romanticize children — their beauty, their joy, their liveliness. Our culture encourages us to let ourselves fall prey to our gooey feelings whenever we look at baby pictures. What could be more natural?

In fact, this view of children is a historical oddity. If you disagree, just go back to the view of children that prevailed in Europe’s ancient pagan world.

As the historian O.M. Bakke points out in his invaluable book When Children Became People, in ancient Greece and Rome, children were considered nonpersons.

Here’s how children were viewed before Christianity:

One of the most notorious ancient practices that Christianity rebelled against was the frequent practice of expositio, basically the abandonment of unwanted infants.

[…]Another notorious practice in the ancient world was the sexual exploitation of children. It is sometimes pointed to paganism’s greater tolerance (though by no means full acceptance) of homosexuality than Christianity as evidence for its higher moral virtue. But this is to look at a very different world through distorting lenses. The key thing to understand about sexuality in the pagan world is the ever-present notion of concentric circles of worth. The ancient world did not have fewer taboos, it had different ones. Namely, most sexual acts were permissible, as long as they involved a person of higher status being active against or dominating a person of lower status. This meant that, according to all the evidence we have, the sexual abuse of children (particularly boys) was rife.

[…]According to our sources, most abandoned children died — but some were “rescued,” almost inevitably into slavery. And the most profitable way for a small child slave to earn money was as a sex slave. Brothels specializing in child sex slaves, particularly boys, were established, legal, and thriving businesses in ancient Rome. One source reports that sex with castrated boys was regarded as a particular delicacy, and that foundlings were castrated as infants for that purpose.

Of course, the rich didn’t have to bother with brothels — they had all the rights to abuse their slaves (and even their children) as they pleased. And, again, this was perfectly licit. When Suetonius condemns Tiberius because he “taught children of the most tender years, whom he called his little fishes, to play between his legs while he was in his bath” and “those who had not yet been weaned, but were strong and hearty, he set at fellatio,” he is not writing with shock and horror; instead, he is essentially mocking the emperor for his lack of self-restraint and enjoying too much of a good thing.

This is the world into which Christianity came, condemning abortion and infanticide as loudly and as early as it could.

Here are a couple of stories that contrast the Christian view of children as made in the image of God with the secular leftist view that children, unborn and born, are basically just machines made out of meat.

First one from the Washington Times is on a wealthy Democrat donor named Jeffrey Epstein:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is incensed that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has been tied to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who’s also at the heart of an investigation into Prince Andrew’s alleged sexual dalliances with a minor, the New York Post reported.

[…]Court documents related to a suit filed by Virginia Roberts, who allegesMr. Epstein paid her $15,000 to have sex with the prince, also included several references to Mr. Clinton. The documents from 2011 show thatMr. Epstein had 21 different email and telephone numbers for Mr. Clinton and an aide in his directory.

The court documents also show Mr. Clinton “frequently flew” with Mr. Epstein on his private plane between 2002 and 2005. The court documents say that Mr. Clinton “suddenly stopped, raising the suspicion that the friendship abruptly ended, perhaps because of events related to Epstein’s sexual abuse of children,” the Post reported.

Mrs. Clinton, widely considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential bid, is reportedly outraged that her husband’s name has again popped up in a sex scandal.

When I read the story about what allegedly happened to Virginia Roberts, I literally cried my eyes out. But then again, I’m coming at this from a Christian perspective where selfish adults ought to give way to the needs of vulnerable children. Secular leftists don’t have that view, so anything goes.

The second story is from Oregon Live and is about another wealthy Democrat donor:

The former boyfriend of Terrence P. Bean was arrested early Thursday on sex abuse charges stemming from the same alleged 2013 encounter with a 15-year-old boy at a hotel in Eugene.

Kiah Loy Lawson, 25, was arrested at 1:15 a.m. at the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center shortly after 2 a.m.

[…]Detective Jeff Myers from the Portland’s Sex Crimes Unit made the arrest, hours after police took Lawson’s ex-boyfriend, Portland developer Terrence Patrick Bean, into custody Wednesday morning.

Bean, 66, a prominent gay rights activist and major Democratic Party fundraiser, was arrested at his home in Southwest Portland and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center at 10:12 a.m. Wednesday.

The indictment charges Bean with two counts of third-degree sodomy, a felony, and one count of third-degree sex abuse, a misdemeanor, police said.

[…]Both Bean and Lawson are accused of having a sexual encounter with the same 15-year-old boy in a hotel in Eugene last year. They had arranged the encounter with the teen after meeting him via a website, investigators allege.

[…]Bean has been one of the state’s biggest Democratic donors and an influential figure in gay rights circles in the state. He helped found two major national political groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, and has been a major contributor for several Democratic presidential candidates, including Barack Obama. He’s also a close friend of former Gov. Barbara Roberts.

Children are weak and adults are strong. Secular leftists believe that selfish adults should be able to do whatever they want with children in order to gratify their own desires. This is the default “no God” view. I can guarantee you that no one who abuses children, unborn or born, expects to face God and be held accountable for what they did.

The secular left, which does not recognize that children are made in the image of God in order to know God, has discovered that it’s easier to sexually abuse children if you separate them from their biological parents, especially their fathers. That’s one of the reasons why they support no-fault divorce, single mother welfare, and now even same-sex marriage. Children who don’t have biological parents are much easier to exploit sexually. And if the children find anything wrong with being sexualized at an early age and groomed for sexual exploitation, well, we have public schools to teach them that this is all perfectly normal. Public schools that are championed by Democrats, of course.

Commentary

Who should you marry?

1 Comment
“Tristan and Isolde”, by Marc Fishman

Dina found this article in the leftist Washington Post, of all places. The author explains how her husband lovingly helped her to recover from her Caesarian section. He actually had to to carry her to and from the bathroom, very slowly. Until she was better.

She writes:

At the time, I thought: This is why I married this man. Not for his fabulous head of hair or his beautiful, light-brown eyes — though those things were certainly bonuses. But no. It was his gentleness, his thoughtfulness, his loving heart, his caring nature that sealed the deal for me.

As a dating coach who works with singles in their 20s to 50s, I see a lot of people focusing on superficial things that have little to do with a potential partner’s character. I get it — I once obsessed over those things, too.

Most of all, I see how the trap of chemistry can lead people astray. Chemistry is important, but as far as relationships go, it’s only half the equation.

So how do you look for these deeper, more important qualities in the early stages of dating? Some might argue there’s no way to tell in, say, the first several months of dating someone — after all, it is the honeymoon stage — if this is the type of person who will help you onto the toilet during times of trial. I disagree.

Looking back to the early days of dating Dave, all the signs were there. He treated my friends with care and kindness, which showed me he had the ability to be compassionate. The way he scoured the Internet for the perfect gifts for my parents and nephews showed me his thoughtful, generous side. He rubbed my back and wiped my tears after I suffered a heart-wrenching squash match loss, showing me that validating my feelings was important to him (even if I’m the most competitive person alive and it was just a squash match). He listened to me vent after a difficult fallout with a colleague, showing me he was ready and willing to be a part of my support system.

When he stayed up until the early hours of the morning, helping me with Web site issues relating to my coaching business, I knew I’d found someone who would support me in my professional goals as well as physically and emotionally. When he held my hands and said “We’ll figure it out” while I was dealing with a frustrating medical situation, that was probably my biggest clue that he’d be so supportive in that hospital room years down the line.

Singles should keep their eyes open for these signs. They’re more telling than a person’s job, salary, ambition or education; whether he or she is the “right age”; has the perfect body; or can dazzle you with their charm and wit.

Keep your eyes open for the type of person who one day might lovingly help you onto the toilet.

When you are married, the amount of time you spend having fun and feeling thrilled is minuscule. The real problems you face are money problems, sex problems, in-law problems, holiday problems, parenting problems, etc. Most often in marriage hard stuff needs to get done. Compromises need to be made. There is actually very little fun and thrills. If you want to prepare for most of what marriage is about, then it’s best to focus on responsibilities, expectations and obligations. Spouses need each other, and the ability to sense someone else’s needs and to care for them, even when it’s not fun for you, is non-negotiable.