Tag Archives: Marriage

Commentary

Should Christian men marry? What’s the worst that could happen?

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This could happen.

Excerpt:

I recently discovered your site while searching the net about frivolous divorce and I think it is great you are trying to educate people about the realities of divorce in America. I went through a divorce two years ago, although I did nothing “wrong” so to speak, but rather because my wife was bored. Under my questioning, she said there was nothing I could have done to have prevented the divorce, which I believe to be true. I was not really lacking “game” (hadn’t heard of the term until recently, but I was manly and attractive), but she was very tired of the routine and banalities of married life, and wanted to, in her words, “find herself”, whatever that means.

As is typical, she did very well in the divorce and got the house, car, most of our assets (she cleaned out our bank accounts and savings and stripped the house bare while I was on a camping trip with a friend which she encouraged me to take – I should have been suspicious as it was the first time she had ever wanted me to do something like that, but I was overjoyed, and of course, completely taken by surprise when I returned to a house empty save for the divorce papers; I was never able to recover any of the things she took preemptively), full custody of both children, alimony until remarriage, and I got a disproportionate amount of debt and had to pay for the entire divorce, both lawyers. I have very restrictive visitation, usually I only get to see my children two days per month. I knew women usually were favored in divorce, but had no idea how unjust it was until it happened to me. In addition, I was completely blindsided. She was still very affectionate and sex had not dropped off at all. I never saw it coming.

I am a traditional Christian man, and had always looked forward to fatherhood and raising my children. In fact, I would say having a family was my dream ever since I was little (I never felt “defined” by my career or that it was anything other than a means to an end, but I am not a CEO or doctor). Now I am watching my children grow up in fast-forward, without any say in how they are raised. I have missed all of the birthdays and Christmases (and other holidays) for the past two years, not by choice. It is truly devastating to spend a month not hearing my children’s voice, or even touching them (let alone any human being) for weeks at a time, to say nothing of losing (who I thought to be) my soulmate after 15 years of marriage.

What is the most painful realization is that I have lost my future. I make $70,000 a year, but have to live on $15,000 after the payments (which I pay the taxes for, can you believe it? – I am in the $70,000 bracket!). I went from a decent house to a $500/month apartment in a bad part of town, and now live alone. I realize that I am becoming estranged from my children (I don’t really know anything about them) and my wife tries to make visitation difficult for me – it is awkward for her to arrange and for her new lover to deal with. I tried to be just a “fun dad”, who takes the kids out for a day of fun and doesn’t really “parent” besides providing paychecks and phone calls, but that is becoming difficult. Having a family is still my deepest longing in life, and I am so lonely, but I am unable to move on financially and start a new family with another woman (I am attractive enough and have the personality to get women quite a bit younger than me), because no woman wants a man that keeps $15,000 a year and goes deeper in debt every month to make ends meet. I could never support a family. I really see no hope of getting out of this vicious cycle – by the time all the payments stop I will be in my 50′s and I will have missed my opportunity, and be forced to live alone until I die. I can’t even have the dignity of a retirement, because my wife took half of my retirement fund which I had been contributing to since I was 22, and now I am so far in the red I have been forced to withdraw rather than contribute under severe penalties in order to make ends meet.

I have come to terms with the fact that this story can’t possibly have a happy ending, and my life is so far removed from what I envisioned and planned it would be like during my youth that it is unbelievable. I feel like a fool for having done everything “right”, because it ultimately made no difference in my happiness and fulfillment.

I wanted to thank you for being a force promoting honoring commitments and discouraging divorce, because it seems like a rare opinion to take in today’s society. You are helping the community by performing this service. I decided to relate my tale here for much the same purpose – if someone reads this and is able think more critically about what the legal implications of marriage are for men and be more cautious it will have served its purpose – I know as for myself I was really too overjoyed to be spending the rest of my life (ha ha) with the woman I loved to really understand what I was getting myself into, in addition to being ignorant and naive about the realities of divorce. If I had to do it all over again I would rather have remained single. It is truly better not to have known paternal and marital love than to have felt it and had it ripped away, regardless of what that folk wisdom quote says about loving and losing.

Please men, think very critically about what you are getting into. The laws are equal, but in court it won’t come out that way.

What’s my advice? I would recommend that no Christian man marry unless the woman he is considering has studied these issues by reading books like these:

At least give her this essay to start. Either she is going to read it because she wants the marriage to succeed and is ready to work for it, or she’s not going to read it because she wants marriage to be about her happiness.

It is also critical that she have firsthand experience dealing with children who are separated from their fathers through divorce. If she isn’t aware of stories like the one above, then you can’t really count on her to be opposed to divorce. Don’t settle for “I promise not to divorce you” and a kiss. Ask her to read the books about marriage, divorce and how divorce affects children. And find out what her experiences are of understanding men and children who go through divorce. Favor women who have seen firsthand how women who divorce are cruel to their children during divorce proceedings. You want her to say “divorce is child abuse” and “fatherlessness is child abuse”. That’s what’s required.

If she doesn’t hate divorce as much as she hates abortion, don’t marry her. If she makes excuses for single mothers, don’t marry her. If she doesn’t understand how government gives women inventives to divorce or to become single mothers by choice, don’t marry her. If she doesn’t understand how same-sex marriage would affect children, don’t marry her. If she wasn’t chaste before she married you, don’t marry her. If she doesn’t insist that you be chaste before you marry her, don’t marry her. If she doesn’t let you lead during the courtship, and value your advice and leadership, don’t marry her. She has to value you for being a man. Do not marry feminists who think women are victims and are never responsible.

Here are the facts. 70% of divorces are initiated by women. The woman gets custody, and therefore child support, in 85% of the cases. Divorce rates decline as women get older – so men aren’t trading in a 40 year old for two 20 year olds as some uninformed blowhards like to say. The problem with marriage today is that men and women are not acting in accordance with moral standards before marriage and after marriage. We shouldn’t be encouraging people to do relationships apart from the moral law – it causes a lot of damage.

The only way to judge a woman’s ability to commit is to assess how much she has done to prepare for marriage by studying what men and children need from her in a marriage. And the same goes for men. They have to show that they can do the job they are interviewing for.

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News

Tolerant leftists threaten to murder 14-year old girl for defending marriage

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That video contains the following testimony from a 14-year old girl:

Hi, I’m Sarah Crank. Today’s my 14th birthday, and it would be the best birthday present ever if you would vote “no” on gay marriage. I really feel bad for the kids who have two parents of the same gender. Even though some kids think it’s fine, they have no idea what kind of wonderful experiences they miss out on. I don’t want more kids to get confused about what’s right and okay. I really don’t want to grow up in a world where marriage isn’t such a special thing anymore.

It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislature or the court can change the definition of any word they want. If they could change the definition of marriage then they could change the definition of any word. People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice. People say that they were born that way, but I’ve met really nice adults who did change.  So please vote “no” on gay marriage. Thank you.

From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

A 14-year-old homeschooler who testified before the Maryland state senate against a bill redefining marriage has been the subject of cyberbullying, vicious name-calling, and death threats.

Sarah Crank, 14, told the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee last month she believes children need a mother and a father. “ I really feel bad for the kids who have two parents of the same gender,” she told the senators. “Even though some kids think it’s fine, they have no idea what kind of wonderful experiences they miss out on.”

She continued, “People say that they were born that way, but I’ve met really nice adults who did change.”

“Today’s my 14th birthday, and it would be the best birthday present ever if you would vote ‘no’ on gay marriage,” she said.

After audio of her uncharacteristically mature testimony was posted on YouTube, the story went viral on homosexual activist websites—and death threats quickly followed.

TFP Student Action, a Roman Catholic organization dedicated to traditional morality, recorded several of the most offensive threats in a press release. A commenter on the YouTube video wrote, “If I ever see this girl, I will kill her. That’s a promise.”

Other YouTube comments ranged from, “Her parents should be exterminated,” to, “Kill this child and his [sic] parent, for my 11 birthday would be a wonderful gift, thanks.”

A comment posted on LGBTNation.com said, ““And now everyone knows her name, so hopefully she will feel what its like to be harassed and bullied…”

I decided to leave out the comments with profanity, but they are really nasty.  I doubt that the mainstream media will be covering these death threats to pro-marriage dissenters, though.

Commentary

Should Christians mourn the death of the famous singer Whitney Houston?

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Probably one of the most alarming things for me about Christians is their tendency towards moral equivalence and moral relativism. Take the death of Whitney Houston for instance. I noticed a lot of Christians posting feverishly about it in a way that they never post about real heroes. Apparently, for these Christians, the amount of fame that a person has should determine their importance to us – and not their moral character.

Here’s why I don’t like Whitney Houston:

The singer’s comments provided a sad coda to Brown and Houston’s tumultuous 15 years of marriage, a union that unfolded like a gonzo soap opera across the pages of so many tabloids and a reality TV show, before crumbling under the weight of its numerous dysfunctions in 2007.

Over their time together, Houston and Brown positioned themselves as a kind of ‘80s R&B edition of Bonnie and Clyde—he, a hard-partying bad-boy pioneer of New Jack Swing, and she, America’s onetime sweetheart, the glowing beauty with a stunning multi-octave range—whose glaring personal disparities combined to create a dangerous codependent relationship. “He was my drug,” Houston told Oprah Winfrey in a widely publicized 2009 interview. “I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together, and we were partners, and that’s what my high was—him. He and I being together, and whatever we did, we did it together. No matter what, we did it together.”

What they did together, according to her testimony, included a nightmarish descent into hard-core drugs, fistfights and bizarro behavior by Brown, such as him spray painting “evil eyes” on the walls and carpets of their home and cutting the heads off all photographs of Houston.

The couple was married in 1992 and the following year they conceived a daughter, Bobbi Kristina. To hear Houston tell it, what doomed their relationship, though, was her movie breakthrough that year in the romantic thriller The Bodyguard, which includes the singer’s epochal contribution to its soundtrack “I Will Always Love You.” “Something happens to a man when a woman has that much fame,” Houston explained on Oprah. “I tried to play it down all the time. I used to say, ‘I’m Mrs. Brown, don’t call me Houston.’”

In 2000, Hawaiian airport authorities found nearly half an ounce of marijuana in the actress-singer’s luggage, but she and Brown boarded a plane and flew off before Houston could be arrested and the charges were later dropped. Although she flat out denied to Diane Sawyer that she and Brown abused drugs—“We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is wack,” Houston memorably said in the interview—by the mid-2000s, Houston had endured a roundelay of rehab stays. She admitted she made habitual use of marijuana and crack and specified that Brown’s highs of choice were alcohol and marijuana laced with cocaine.

By that point, the couple’s fights had entered a physical realm. In 2003, police responded to a domestic-violence 911 call to their Georgia home and discovered Houston with a bruised cheek and a cut lip. Brown subsequently turned himself in and was charged with misdemeanor battery for striking the superstar and reportedly threatening to “beat her ass.” Inexplicably, the couple left Brown’s court hearing arm in arm and drove away in an SUV with Houston singing along to the Aretha Franklin song “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

“They were like Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” says a friend who’s known them for roughly two decades. “It was a real, love-hate relationship.” Still, the person never really bought the popular media-storyline about Bobby being the thing that brought down Whitney. “I hate when people blame Bobby for her drug use. He had his drug use and she had hers. They got divorced many years ago, she had all the opportunities in the world to get herself to together and she didn’t. I actually think part of the reason they broke, up was that he was trying to get clean.”

This is why I oppose talking about Whitney Houston – I have moral concerns. I take morality seriously, because I allow my Christian worldview to determine what I like and don’t like in other areas – like my taste in music and art. I object to her moral standards and her choices in courtship and marriage, so I do not celebrate her success nor mourn her death any more than any other non-famous person. Moreover, I do not respect contributions to art that undermine traditional marriage and courting, which her singing clearly did. It is because of singers like her that women today feel justified in allowing emotions to dominate their choice of man and their interactions with men. They think that a roller-coaster of entertaining drama and spontaneity with a handsome man will result in a happy marriage.

These songs and movies teach them that you can marry a tiger (won’t your friends be so envious!) and then after the wedding, it will be a kitten in your lap. It’s stupid, but that’s the view of marriage that people get after decades of indoctrination in non-Christian art. And when they adopt these Whitney Houston methods of living and it doesn’t work out, that’s when they turn to big government programs and pastors who blame men who refusing to “man up” – it’s not their fault their plan failed – because it worked for Whitney Houston. Except it didn’t. We should not be celebrating anyone in the popular culture who discourages the idea that there are objective constraints on the roles that women and men play in marriage – and that spouses should be selected for their ability to perform those roles.

Here is a comment I wrote about it on Facebook to some of the men and women who were celebrating Whitney Houston. I posted my link to the story of Medal of Honor winner Michael Murphy, and a Christian woman replied asserting a moral equivalence between Whitney Houston and Michael Murphy.

I wrote:

If we are serious about putting forward a vision of life that includes morality, then we should talk about self-sacrificial heroes more than drug addicts. There is a moral law, and because it sends a message to young people about who their role models should be. There is a huge redefinition of moral standards going on right now because young people, especially young women, are having their values redefined by culture. Women, more than men, crave the approval of their peers when it comes to things like choosing men and deciding how to be courted by men, for example. For example, it’s possible for a woman to be swayed away from a man who has a record of protecting, providing, and being a moral and spiritual leader, simply because the culture’s standard of what a good man is is being determined by music stars and celebrity. Whereas characteristics like chastity, sobriety, employment and investments USED to be regarded as desirable, women’s views have changed so that they are allowed to have premarital sex with men who fire their emotions – that’s what happens in Whitney Houston’s “The Bodyguard” movie, isn’t it? So why is she good? Patrick McGoohan refused to kiss on camera and turned down the role of James Bond because of too much sex.

See:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/tag/patrick-mcgoohan/

Quote:
—-
As both a moral and opinionated man, McGoohan held strong views and was forceful about seeing that they were carried out. He had insisted at the very first meeting on the script for the first episode that the bedroom scene be cut out. In fact, he stipulated that romantic involvements would have to be eliminated if he were to play the role, and consequently none appeared in either this series or the ‘Secret Agent’ series that followed.

…It should come as no surprise that when McGoohan was offered the role as the first James Bond, he turned it down – several times – as being incompatible with the type of role he wanted to play. He says it was a decision he has never regretted.

[H]e was offered the roles of James Bond and Simon Templar (The Saint). He turned both down.

He once recalled: “When we started Danger Man the producer wanted me to carry a gun and to have an affair with a different girl each week. I refused. I am not against romance on television, but sex is the antithesis of romance. Television is a gargantuan master that all sorts of people watch at all sorts of time, and it has a moral obligation towards its audience.”
—-

Do you know more about Whitney Houston and her ilk than you know about Patrick McGoohan? Does it matter to you how popular art is going to influence young people away from traditional boundaries and requirements of relationships and marriage?

As Ravi Zacharias says – be careful what you celebrate. I celebrate the bravery of Medal of Honor winners who give their lives protecting their country. I don’t celebrate promiscuous, abusive drug addicts who makes millions of dollars singing about sentimental irrational immoral notions of love divorced from chastity, chivalry, commitment and traditional gender roles. There are many single mothers who derived their views on men and marriage from popular music, and think of the harm that caused. The values of Whitney Houston have been embraced by a younger generation, and now none of them will ever enjoy lasting married love – they don’t know how to do it. They think you can act like a fool and somehow, lifelong marriage will obtain independent of our efforts.

That is why one of my courting questions for women is: “Who do you admire most, and what is your plan for making your children become like him or her?” It’s not a good thing when women cannot distinguish between the Hollywood celebrities and Medal of Honor winners. This view that ballet dancers are the same as William Lane Craig when it comes to effectiveness for the Kingdom is also an alarming view, which many women share.

Is life about having happy feelings, or is there something else that we should be doing? What does God expect from us?

I just want to emphasize that I saw just as many air-headed Christian men as women posting about Whitney Houston.

One more thing that I didn’t say in the comment thread is this. Do Christians have an obligation to think about life? I mean, anyone can see that there is a culture war going on right now, where young people are having their values undermined by new values being pushed in the mainstream media, by Hollywood, in the secular public schools, and so on. I think that Christians should be obligated to stand apart from the culture and be different. Most of the Christians I know are thoroughly compromised by postmodernism, feminism, socialism and a host of other doctrines incompatible with a robust Christian worldview and a Kingdom-centered life plan. They are so steeped in it that they don’t even realize that they are identical to non-Christians in every respect, except for singing in groups on Sunday and reading the Bible for comforting feelings.

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