Tag Archives: Marriage

News

The apologetic value of self-sacrificial romantic love

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In his arms
In his arms

Here’s a nice list of descriptions of what love looks like in a marriage on Michael Patton’s Parchment and Pen blog.

My favorites:

  1. Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.
  2. Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.
  3. Love is the daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.
  4. Love is being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity and love than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.
  5. Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.
  6. Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.
  7. Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.
  8. Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.
  9. Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.
  10. Love means being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the problems that you face as a couple, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.
  11. Love is always being willing to ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.
  12. Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.
  13. Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse’s character or assault his or her intelligence.
  14. Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want or doing something your way.
  15. Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.
  16. Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a husband or a wife.
  17. Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.
  18. Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn’t seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.
  19. Love is the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.
  20. Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.
  21. Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.
  22. Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God’s protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.
  23. Love is a specific commitment of the heart to a specific person that causes you to give yourself to a specific lifestyle of care that requires you to be willing to make sacrifices that have that person’s good in view.

Yes, that’s all of them. They’re all my favorites. I’m a big believer in romantic love – and it’s not just for marriage, either, as long as it’s done chastely before marriage. You can do lots of things during courtship that can serve as practice for loving well during marriage, before you ever get married.

I’m blogging this topic because several of my friends (Rob, Wes, Andrew, etc.) have amazing wives and they really, really love them and that’s fun for me to see and hear about since I want to love my future wife like that, too. And I hope that she wants to love me like that, if there is a future Mrs. WK. A list like this provides useful guidelines for knowing what Christian romantic love looks like, although I wish they had mentioned slaying dragons.

And notice that the main focus is on the ability to love self-sacrificially – and the man and the woman are both obligated. Anyone who is growing in their Christian faith should find that growing the capacity for self-sacrificial love is normal for them. And you can actually try it out as you are learning more about it – to follow Jesus by loving self-sacrificially.

The persuasive power of romantic Christian love

One of the neat things that apologists often overlook is the witnessing power of loving other Christians, even romantically. There are lots of non-Christians in my life who are always waiting for the latest news of my adventures in my platonic attempts to loving Christian damsels in distress well. (they usually don’t know who the woman is so I’m not breaching her privacy). Non-Christians are more willing to listen to heroic and dangerous deeds of self-sacrificial love than they are arguments, although the one often leads to the other, because the deeds are supported by a worldview.

When non-Christians see how Christians in relationships bounce back from sin and disappointment to love other Christians, it says something about Christianity. When Christians in love forgive each other for sinning against each other, that says something about Christianity. I think it’s sometimes tough on non-Christians that we have all of these moral rules that make us appear exclusive and judgmental – but by distinguishing ourselves in loving others then we can actually balance that out by the way we love.

Obviously, I think it should be paired up with good reasons and evidences, but love does get their attention. Especially romantic, married love that produces a lot of well-behaved children who know the Lord and serve him effectively! And I think that Christians need to think more about viewing opposite-sex Christians as people who need love and who can be loved – as a way of serving God and witnessing to unbelievers. It’s good to serve God by shoring up other Christians who are in tough trying to serve the Lord effectively. And there is no way to shore up a person more than by marrying them and knitting your soul to theirs, your fate to theirs. It’s the ultimate act of unselfishness towards your spouse and towards Christ the Lord, who expects to be served effectively by the marriage.

Consider John 13:31-34:

31When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. 32If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

33“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

34“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Christian romantic relationships are not the same as secular romantic relationships. The criteria of attraction are not the same, and the goals are not the same. It’s not about individual fulfillment, it’s about helping another person be more Christlike and helping them to serve Jesus better. It’s about two people fighting on the same battlefield who are less concerned about their own well-being, and more concerned about the life and combat capability of the soldier next to them. We need to put ourselves second and take care of the soldier next to us even when we don’t like them. It’s enough that they they are on the same side as we are. Some people who are not fighting yet may join us when they see the care and concern we have for each other.

The person whom this post is about can own up to his amazing marriage in the comments, if he wants to. Glenn, Neil, Matt, and Richard B. can all mention their super-duper marriages, too. It’s fun for me to hear about – although I remain cautious.

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Commentary

Women should read “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands”

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Here’s a Christian woman’s review of Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s famous book.

Excerpt:

“No emotional outlet is worth damaging my husband’s reputation,” shared one of Dr. Laura’s listeners named Becky. Another named Melissa told how she had begun bragging on her husband whenever her girlfriends started griping about theirs. Melissa said, “As much as men’s bellies need to be filled with delicious home-cooked meals, their egoes need to be filled with ‘yummy food’ as well. I have found that if I speak blessings about my husband, then blessings are what I get in return.”

And:

Dr. Laura reiterates over and over that a wife’s approval is like oxygen to a husband, her disapproval like emasculation. A listener named Bill wrote, “Words are a whisper, but what she does for me is a thunder.” And Dr. Laura says, “There are only so many hours in a day and only so much we can put our energies into. We have to make choices. And if you don’t pick your husband as #1, that favor will, sadly, be returned.”

Words of encouragement are extremely important to a man, especially when they are spoken in public to other people in front of her man. Words of encouragement are non-negotiable for a man – he needs to hear them when he does good things for his woman. A good rule of thumb is that a woman should never criticize a man in public, and she should never criticize a man to another women behind his back for silly things. Even if he never finds out what she is doing by blaming and criticizing him for trivialities, it poisons the relationship and undermines the goodness of men to her female friends.

Here’s an excerpt from the excerpt of the book:

“A good man is hard to find, not to keep.” That sentence should really make you stop and think. As a radio talk-show host/psychotherapist, I’ve got to tell you how remarkably true and sad it is that so many women struggle to hold on to some jerk, keep giving an abusive or philandering man yet another chance, have unprotected sex with some guy while barely knowing his last name, agree to shack up and risk making babies with some opportunist or loser, all in a pathetic version of a pursuit for love, but will resent the hell out of treating a decent, hardworking, caring husband with the thoughtfulness, attention, respect, and affection he needs to be content.

It boggles my mind.

What further puts me in boggle overdrive is how seemingly oblivious and insensitive many women are to how destructive they are being to their men and consequently to their marriages. Women will call me asking me if it’s alright to go off on extended vacations “without him” when they want some freedom or R&R, or if it’s okay to cut him off from sex because they’re annoyed about something or just too tired from their busy day, or if they really have to make him a dinner when he gets home from work because it’s just too tedious to plan meals, or if it’s okay to keep stuff from him (like family or financial issues) because his input is unnecessary, or if they’re really obligated to spend time with his family (in-laws or stepkids), or if they really have to show interest in his hobbies when they’re bored silly by them, or — well, you get the idea.

If a women loves a man, then she has to treat him like a car and change his oil and put gas in his tank, and inflate his tires. If the owner doesn’t work hard at maintaining the car, then the car breaks down and the owner is unhappy. And cars – no matter what kind they are – all need certain things from the owner in order to make them work – there is no car in the world that can work for very long unless the owner takes care of it. It does no good to worry about tall cars and short cars, rich cars and poor cars, cars that can cook and cars that can’t kiss. In the end, no car can survive long with an owner who neglects it.

In the long run, it is the owner (the woman) who will decide whether the man works or not – her own maintenance skills are more important than the type of man it is. She is responsible for making a commitment to a man and then keeping him in working condition by her own choices. And this is especially true for Christian women, who are supposed to love self-sacrificially. What else is a husband for except to reflect the love of Christ to him more than any other person on the planet? Really the woman is responsible for the health of the relationship – men are naturally good when they are properly maintained.

(I once spun out my roadster and blew out two tires by running up a curb because I neglected to rotate the tires for TWO YEARS and then decided to try powersliding at high speed – it was all my fault! They were Bridgestone Potenza S-03 Pole Positions, but even those won’t save you if you don’t rotate them for two years! And what about the time I bought four Bridgestone Blizzaks for my winter car and didn’t rotate them for a year so that the front ones were almost worn out and the rear ones were practically new! And I probably blamed the car at first – even though it was all my fault for being lazy)

PCF Husbands is my favorite book on marriage, because it’s the best. Everything she says about men and marriage is 100% true. For a woman who wants a man to love her well, this is the first book to read in order to learn how to love him well. And that is how she can reap the benefits of a good man’s love – by taking responsibility for making good decisions.

If you like this post, be sure and check Arlemagne’s post on “The Evils of Sentimentality” on RuthBlog. There’s an easter egg in it.

News

Gay federal judge rules traditional marriage unconstitutional in California

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Here’s the story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

A federal judge has ruled that California’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is unconstitutional, because it excludes same-sex unions.

Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, who presides over the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, declared Proposition 8 had no “rational basis” in a 138-page ruling on the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case released Wednesday afternoon.

[…]The judge dismissed the amendment, saying its restriction of marriage to heterosexual couples was “nothing more than an artifact of a foregone notion that men and women fulfill different roles in civic life.” He also added that it seemed to him proponents of Prop. 8 were defending the amendment on the basis of “moral disapproval,” which he said was “an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians” and enacted in law, “a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples.”

[…]Walker, however, is himself an active homosexual, and some conservative critics of the Prop. 8 case contended that Walker would be too personally invested in the case to deliver an impartial outcome.

[…]Walker also ruled that domestic partnerships did not satisfy the duty on California to let same-sex couples marry each other.

Michelle Malkin reports that pro-marriage activists are appealing:

In court papers filed Tuesday night, lawyers for the Proposition 8 defense team asked Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker for a stay of his ruling if the outcome is to declare the law unconstitutional. The motion indicates that the Proposition 8 lawyers will immediately ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the ruling if Walker rules against them.

Comments to this post will be strictly filtered in accordance with Obama’s law restricting free speech on this topic.

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