Tag Archives: Marriage

Commentary

Courting rules: how men use self-control to make relationships count for God

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Consider this piece of research from Medical News Today. (H/T Uncommon Descent)

Excerpt:

Thinking about religion gives people more self-control on later, unrelated tasks; according to results from a series of recent Queen’s University study.

“After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control,” says psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Kevin Rounding.

Study participants were given a sentence containing five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not. After unscrambling the sentences, participants were asked to complete a number of tasks that required self-control – enduring discomfort, delaying gratification, exerting patience, and refraining from impulsive responses.

Participants who had unscrambled the sentences containing religious themes had more self-control in completing their tasks.

“Our most interesting finding was that religious concepts were able to refuel self-control after it had been depleted by another unrelated task,” says Mr. Rounding. “In other words, even when we would predict people to be unable to exert self-control, after completing the religiously themed task they defied logic and were able to muster self-control.”

“Until now, I believed religion was a matter of faith; people had little ‘practical’ use for religion,” Mr. Rounding explains. “This research actually suggests that religion can serve a very useful function in society. People can turn to religion not just for transcendence and fears regarding death and an after-life but also for practical purposes.”

So why would religious people have more self-control than non-religious people? Speaking as a Christian, I would argue that self-control is not a by-product of religion, but that it is a tool used by Christians to achieve certain ends that fit with the Christian worldview.

First, let’s look at how people who don’t have self-control operate. I have been chatting with some friends recently about the lifestyle that people get into when they get away from their parents for the first time. (Assuming the parents don’t take education and apologetics seriously). The fun lifestyle, it was explained to me, goes something like this:

  1. A bunch of friends meet in a bar
  2. They drink a lot, listen to music and dance around
  3. They meet people and have conversations in which the men are careful not to express any moral judgments, religious convictions or conservative political views to the women
  4. They gradually get more and more drunk, and it gets later and later
  5. The friends retire to different people’s houses in order to hook-up, which involves anything from kissing to intercourse
  6. They keep doing this, there is no structured courting and no parental oversight, and occasionally people move in together or have kids out of wedlock by hooking up
  7. Some of these children are aborted in order to keep the woman free for work and having more fun
  8. The children who are born are often raised fatherless, causing all kinds of damage on them, especially making the girls prone to have sex much too early and the boys more violent
  9. Any marriages that emerge break up shortly after since no one  is willing to sacrifice for the marriage or the children
  10. Government expands to address the broken homes with more police, day care, welfare, etc.

I never really knew much about this until recently when some of the people who read my blog have been explaining it all to me. The thing that strikes me the most about what secular people do is that they have no agenda for God when they go out and meet people – especially when it’s men talking to women. They don’t bring their relationships or group activities inline with religion, and so there is no reason to be self-controlled – they have no plan that they are are trying to achieve, they are just there to have fun.

Now what about Christians? When I go out with my male friends, we are not drinking anything – we’re going to play a sport like racquetball/squash or something and then we are going to go to a restaurant to eat and talk about apologetics and science and war and education and investments and parenting and education and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. After that, we might go back to someone’s house to play video games or play pool or watch a debate and discuss that. But always we have an agenda – we are trying to build each other up in our Christian lives and planning different activities like conferences, debates, etc.

But when dealing with women, who are very often influenced by feminism these days, it’s different. Most men seem to think that if a woman has sex with them, that this is some great affirmation of them. I don’t think that and my friends don’t think that. I have learned from women that they give up sex as a way to control men, to make them hang around and buy them things, but without having to be led by the man. Women who have been influenced by feminism hate the idea that men will tell them to read books, act morally, honor their obligations to men and children, develop religious convictions that exclude others and make them unpopular, mentor other Christians, and so on. They want to have men around, but they don’t want to be told not to act selfishly/irresponsibly/amorally.

Sex is a tool that feminist women use in order to get men to “like” them, without having to let men do what men do – lead, provide, set moral boundaries, defeat lies, and fit the woman to a plan so that she can help him achieve it. So the bottom line is that a woman giving me sex is no good for me – in fact, it would be bad. It would be a way for her to control me and to prevent me from having the leverage to lead her and fit her to my plan – a plan that includes a stable home for raising children who will have an influence. Instead of standing her up with duties and obligations (read this book, stop spending money, debate your non-Christian friends), I would just shut up and let her continue to let her act in ways that are no good for marriage and parenting. Men with plans understand what women are for, and the thing that we are looking for is not sex, but help. We need someone to help us achieve our plan.

So that brings us back to the topic of the post. The reason why I don’t play the hook-up game is because it gets me nothing.  I cannot get a woman to do the things I need her to do by giving her leverage over me. When you first meet a woman, she is very likely not to be ready to do what you need her to do in a marriage – she needs to be mentored. Right from the start, I want her to know that what I am offering her is the ability to do useful work, to achieve important goals, and work together with someone who is supportive, appreciative, thoughtful, romantic, devoted, faithful, attentive and caring over a long period of time. And the way that I communicate that I am not here just to provide women with fun is by giving them tasks to do right from the start, and making it clear to them why I need them to do things.

Back to the original topic, I hope that this makes clear why religious people exhibit self-control when secular left people do not. Christian men have a goal for our relationships with women. We need them to support us in our plans by having particular skills and performing particular tasks. During the courtship, men refrain from sex to prevent a woman from escaping from her obligations to get those skills and train to perform those tasks. To have sex is to give up leadership in the relationship and to let women control the relationship. And when women control the relationship, it means that the goal of the relationship is almost always going to be to please them – and not God.

Christian men should never give up control of the relationship by giving up sobriety and chastity, because we know that relationships work better when men lead and emphasize what men care about most: morality, reason, chastity, evidence, theology, apologetics, marriage, family, parenting, free market capitalism, personal responsibility, law and order, illegal immigration, protecting the unborn, national security, traditional marriage, the debt crisis, etc. Self-control is the tool we use to lovingly prepare women for the tasks that we need them to perform – tasks that we often cannot perform ourselves – and always with the higher goal of making the relationship please God by achieving something for him.

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News

Two things you can do to make your marriage last

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First, don’t have sex before you’re married.

Story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Couples who reserve sex for marriage enjoy greater stability and communication in their relationships, say researchers at Brigham Young University.

A new study from the Mormon college found that those couples who waited until marriage rated their relationship stability 22 percent higher than those who started having sex in the early part of their relationship. The relationship satisfaction was 20 percent higher for those who waited, the sexual quality of the relationship was 5 percent better, and communication was 12 percent better.

The study, published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Family Psychology, involved 2,035 married individuals who participated in a popular online marital assessment called “RELATE.” From the assessment’s database, researchers selected a sample designed to match the demographics of the married American population. The extensive questionnaire included the question “When did you become sexual in this relationship?”

Couples that became sexually involved later in their relationship – but prior to marriage – reported benefits that were about half as strong as those who waited for marriage.

[…]Sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the study, responded to its findings, saying that “couples who hit the honeymoon too early – that is, prioritize sex promptly at the outset of a relationship – often find their relationships underdeveloped when it comes to the qualities that make relationships stable and spouses reliable and trustworthy.” Regnerus is the author of Premarital Sex in America, a book forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Because religious belief often plays a role for couples who choose to wait, Busby and his co-authors controlled for the influence of religious involvement in their analysis.

“Regardless of religiosity, waiting helps the relationship form better communication processes, and these help improve long-term stability and relationship satisfaction,” Busby said.

Second, make sure you attend church regularly after you’re married.

From Citizen Link.

Excerpt:

It’s a number that is trumpeted from the rooftops — and the pulpit: Half of marriages among Christians and non-Christians alike end in divorce.

But the reality is that Christians who attend church regularly get divorced at a much lower rate.

Professor Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, found that among people who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, 60 percent have been divorced. Of those who attend church regularly, 38 percent have been divorced.

W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading sociologist at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, found a nearly identical spread between “active conservative Protestants” who regularly attend church and people with no religious affiliation.

Professor Scott Stanley from the University of Denver, who is working on the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, said couples with a vibrant religious faith have more and higher levels of the qualities that marriages need to avoid divorce.

“Whether young or old, male or female, low-income or not, those who said that they were more religious reported higher average levels of commitment to their partners, higher levels of marital satisfaction, less thinking and talking about divorce and lower levels of negative interaction,” he said. “These patterns held true when controlling for such important variables as income, education and age at first marriage.”

I think that young people who are serious about having a successful marriage need to study research to find out what works (chastity, pre-marital counseling, church attendance, etc.) and then demand that prospective mates demonstrate those skills before the wedding.

UPDATE: Commenter Mbelina has a third thing to do: Christians should choose to marry other Christians who take their Christian worldview seriously.

News

Mitt Romney’s tax returns would make him lose the election to Obama

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Wall Street Banks contributions to Mitt Romney
Wall Street banks make huge contributions to Mitt Romney

From The Hill. (H/T Riehl Worldview)

Excerpt:

It’s important not to overstate the perils Romney faces. He is still by far the best-funded candidate in the race. He has a state-by-state infrastructure that is the envy of his rivals. Even if he were to lose Saturday’s South Carolina primary, he would  likely remain the overall favorite to clinch the nomination.

But the procession of errors has been striking nonetheless — and it has raised concerns among many in the GOP about his vulnerabilities in a general election contest with President Obama.

Most of Romney’s awkwardness has revolved around questions about his wealth. During a heated exchange during a debate last month, he ill-advisedly offered to bet Perry $10,000 that his own account of what he had written in one of his books was correct. Perry declined, saying he was “not in the betting business,” but the episode heightened perceptions that Romney is out of touch with most Americans.

The same pattern keeps cropping up. Earlier this week, he was asked about the effective tax rate he pays on his income, and managed to injure himself twice in the space of a few sentences. First, he acknowledged that his tax rate was “probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything.” He then added: “I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”

The first claim was almost certainly true. Romney’s income is believed to come chiefly from long-term investments rather than earned income, and that would indeed make him liable for capital gains tax levied at a 15 percent rate. But it still places the multimillionaire in a more lightly taxed band than many voters — something which Newt Gingrich tried to take advantage of with his mocking proposal to introduce a “Mitt Romney 15 percent flat tax.”

Perhaps even worse was Romney’s “not very much” comment. His latest financial disclosure form, which covered the period from February 2010 to February 2011, revealed that he earned $374,327 for speeches. The sum is approximately seven times the median household income in the United States.

Those remarks had been preceded by a televised debate at which he gave a muddled response about whether he would release his tax returns.

Romney flubbed the tax-return question for a second time at a debate last Thursday, eliciting boos from the crowd when he said he would “maybe” follow the example of his late father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, who released 12 years of tax returns when running for the presidency in 1968.

Romney’s mangled syntax on these occasions seems symptomatic of a wider personal unease in discussing his finances. GOP consultants say he needs to get over that discomfort if he is to prove an effective candidate.

Another concern that I have is that Mitt Romney has $20-100 million dollars in his retirement account.

Excerpt:

Like many Americans, Mitt Romney has an individual retirement account. Unlike most Americans, Mr. Romney has between $20.7 million and $101.6 million in it, a big chunk of his fortune.

Experts on estate planning said it is highly unusual to accumulate such a considerable sum in an IRA, an investment vehicle restricted by annual contribution limits. It appears that Mr. Romney’s grew so large mostly because it holds investments in Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he helped start.

[…]Mr. Romney is one of the richest presidential candidates in decades, and his GOP opponents increasingly are trying to turn wealth into a liability. President Barack Obama is expected to do the same if the former Massachusetts governor wraps up the nomination. Mr. Romney’s tax liability has emerged as a debating point in the GOP nominating contest, a proxy for a bigger argument over who should shoulder the nation’s tax burden.

In recent days, Mr. Romney’s rivals have pressed him to release his tax returns. They have attacked him for his role at Bain Capital, the source of his wealth. When Mr. Romney revealed Tuesday that his effective federal income-tax rate had been about 15% in recent years, both the White House and GOP candidates used the number as a cudgel.

[…]Michael Whitty, a lawyer at Vedder Price in Chicago who advises private-equity executives, said it is impossible to determine from Mr. Romney’s public disclosures how the IRA grew so large. Based on its listed holdings, which include many Bain Capital vehicles, Mr. Whitty theorizes Mr. Romney may have invested in Bain funds through a 401(k)-type plan, or directed some of his Bain holdings into such a plan, which he then rolled into an IRA.

How is he going to explain that? This might be one of the reasons why Romney is not releasing his tax returns. He needs to be pounded on this by Gingrich and Santorum until he drops out – we can’t afford to choose a nominee who has no hope of beating Barack Obama.

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