Tag Archives: Marriage

News

New Scientist article shows why fathers are necessary for children’s well-being

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Here’s a story from the New Scientist. (H/T Jennifer Roback Morse)

First let’s re-cap the old stuff:

Previous studies have hinted at the importance of fathers in child-rearing. Some have shown that girls reach puberty younger, become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant in their teens if their father was absent when they were young. Others have suggested that the sons of absent fathers display lower intimacy and self-esteem.

Now let’s get the new stuff:

Cells in pups deprived of fathers had a blunted response to oxytocin – the “cuddle chemical”, which is normally released during social interactions and pair bonding. They also had an increased response to NMDA, which is involved in memory.

The fatherless mice were also less interested in engaging with other mice. “Usually if you put two animals in the same cage they investigate and touch each other, but when we put two animals deprived of a father together they ignored each other,” says Gobbi. Her colleague Francis Bambico presented the work at the World Congress of Biological Psychiatry in Paris, France, in early July.

But according to this Telegraph article, it doesn’t seem as though research impacts public policy. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Women who undergo fertility treatment and their same-sex partners are now both allowed to register as parents on their baby’s birth certificates.

The move has been criticised for damaging the traditional notion of a family, which many people say is necessary for a healthy upbringing.

But ministers insist it is a step forward for equal rights.

Lord Brett, the Home Office Minister, said: “This positive change means that for the first time female couples who have a child using fertility treatment have the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts to be shown as parents in the birth registration.

“It is vital that we afford equality wherever we can in society, especially as family circumstances continue to change. This is an important step forward in that process.”

There are powerful special interest groups on the left whose whole purpose is to demonize fathers and destroy marriage. They want children to be raised by the state, (i.e. – by those who run the secular government). They think that government programs taught by strangers and designed by experts well-versed in all the isms of the left, are better for children than their biological parents.

Mentoring

The rules for friendship and courtship between Christian men and women

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This post will probably be changing as time passes and I learn more about relationships.

The goal

The goal of my opposite-sex friendships (hereafter just “friendships”) is for me to build up the skills of Christian women by exchanging training materials to work through, and monitoring progress. The training materials for friendship are centered around apologetics, with some conservative policy, as well. The friendships are beneficial to God because we are building each other up, and it also provides a context for us to evaluate changing to a courtship.

Most of my relationships with Christian women will never enter into the friendship phase because virtually none of them even care for apologetics. But some Christian women have shown an interest in apologetics and conservative policy and that’s what gets the friendship going.

I basically think about this friendship-courtship distinction as a continuum where passing through the gate from friendship to courtship is dependent on progress in sharing my vision with her and having her take appropriate steps to recognize and contribute to my vision. When a female Christian friend begins to contribute to my overall life vision, that’s the point at which we consider changing to a courtship.

Marriage

I am open to marrying any chaste female Christian. The grounds for the decision to marry are that the marriage would provide a better benefit to God in terms of his purposes in the world than if we continued to work separately. In particular, I am looking for my prospective mate to demonstrate her commitment to my four-pronged vision for serving God in the most effective ways. (See below)

I am also interested in whether she understands the challenges facing men and male needs, especially in areas like feminism, big government, no-fault divorce, child custody, etc. But I am also interested in her views in areas like chastity, modesty, grooming, physical fitness and expected frequency of marital sex. She must also recognize standards of chastity, chivalry and romance and participate in standard activities like letter-writing.

My vision

My vision involves operations in 4 areas:

The university:

  • get a PhD and teach in the university as a publicly-identified Christian OR no PhD, but teach in a community college
  • fund Christian scholars to lecture and debate at the university
  • fund research by intelligent design scholars
  • raise brilliant home-schooled children who can get PhDs and go on to impact the university

The church

  • bring scholars in to lecture and especially to debate in the church, and sponsor these events
  • teach adult Sunday school classes in apologetics (i.e. – show debates and discuss them, read books and discuss them)
  • find a wife who can help with these goals

The workplace

  • study apologetics and engage co-workers in discussions at lunch if they are interested
  • operate a library to lend out lectures and debates to those who are interested
  • give co-workers gifts at Christmas like DVDs on intelligent design or debates
  • put things in my office to declare myself as a thoughtful Christian
  • find a wife who can be hospitable, prepare meals and host discussions in our home

The public square

  • blog: inform and educate Christians about economic and public policies that affect our liberty
  • donate to Christian politicians who reflect my priorities
  • donate to other Christians who engage in debates on abortion, Islam, etc.
  • run for office after kids are grown-up
  • encourage wife to run for office after kids are grown-up
  • encourage kids to run for office after they retire from teaching at the universities

If a Christian woman is interested in having me assist her with learning apologetics and stuff, so she can serve God better, that’s called a friendship. If she starts to inquire about my vision and begins to show real recognition and support for it, that’s called a courtship.

The main thing is that God’s goals are always the center of our interactions. Marriage is not the end goal of the relationship. God’s goals in the world are the end. Marriage is just a possible means to that end. Being a good husband is a means to that end. Even being a good father is a means to that end.

The rules

Here are my rules for dealing with Christian women:

  1. No touching during friendship or courtship. This rule holds until the engagement day, where a kiss is permitted, but nothing more. The reason for this rule is to avoid losing 1) the ability to focus on my plan instead of women, and 2) the ability to evaluate Christian women objectively and dispassionately. (Note: I now think that hand-holding and hugging is OK once the initial evaluation of her is complete, and she starts to put in effort on the things that you care about, that are related to your plan)
  2. No being together by ourselves in non-public places without a chaperone. This applies to friendship and courtship.
  3. The friendship advances by exchanging and executing tasks that help us both to be more effective Christians. For example, listening to lectures together and stopping the lecture to discuss things, and then writing about the lecture afterward.
  4. The courtship advances by exchanging and executing tasks related to my vision. For example, we arrange a viewing of a debate or lecture DVD at her church and then jointly take questions from the audience.
  5. Gifts exchange is allowed during the friendship, but no tokens can be given to me.
  6. Token exchange (e.g. – a lady’s handkerchief with her colors), is reserved to mark the beginning of courtship. I have to carry it with me whenever I fight, and give reports to her on how I did. She can withdraw it, ending the courtship. I can also return it, ending the courtship. I can only carry one token at a time.
  7. Parents should be kept informed about the progress of friendships and courtships.
  8. Her parents have the right to engage me in discussions about my views on apologetics, etc. at any time during the friendship or courtship, but they do not have the right to override my vision with their vision.
  9. It helps me if women dress modestly, because I am more comfortable when a woman tries to attract me using non-physical approaches, like words. I resent it when women try to attract me using sex appeal instead of words. I like being in control of myself. Sex appeal is strictly for after the wedding. There are a million ways for a Christian woman to knock a Christian man off his feet just by taking an interest in things like apologetics and economics. The trick is to find a man who cares about being friends with God.
  10. I am looking to court someone who already has the skills to assist me with my vision, or who demonstrates a willingness to develop them, or who is able to persuade me that other skills are an even better match for my vision.

These are guidelines that I try to communicate to women to help us to constrain our relationship to serve God’s goals. These are all subject to discussion and debate, of course.

I think that one of the effects of these rules is to take the pressure to be “sexy” off of women. And to remove sex from the equation entirely – there is no room for clumsy groping in the back seat of a car in this operation. Instead, a woman wins the heart of a man if she is willing to listen to him, learn about his needs as a man, and his vision to serve God, and then work hard to recognize and support all that.

Sample activities

In a friendship, the first steps are going to involve a lot of studying and talking. For example, it is not uncommon for me to spend 2-6 hours just talking to a Christian woman about spiritual things. We do independent studies around things like reading the same books, listening to the same lectures, or even doing the political compass or resurrection questionnaires together. Individual tasks for me from her might include Bible reading, church attending, bringing her resources that she asks for, writing about my feelings and experiences, etc.

I believe in exchanging tasks so that the woman gets into the pattern of getting outside her own needs and thinking about her obligations to me. My concern is that a lot of women have a fairy tale view of marriage. She picks a man for superficial reasons and hopes to change him later. This leads women to ignore male needs and the man’s vision prior to marriage. The man is tricked into the marriage by pre-marital sexual activity.

Unfortunately choosing a bad man and then tricking him with sex doesn’t work to keep that man as her appearance fades. This is particularly bad for women whose self-esteem is tied to appearance. And I think that is a major reason why women are so interested in no-fault divorce and massive government social programs – to relieve them of the burden of having to choose the right man and having to work to win him and having to work to keep him.

Real men find big government very discouraging, which is why men are not interested in marriage any more. The prospect of facing activist family courts run by feminists is too much for thoughtful men to contemplate. Men can’t support a family on a salary that is highly taxed to pay for things like VAWA or welfare programs, or single-payer health care. Men also don’t want to lose access to their kids based on fake charges of domestic violence.

I know that these rules and procedures are going to strike a lot of you as odd, and some of you are going to stop reading my blog because I am just too weird. Well, I think you should just snicker at me and keep reading. After all, someone has to be different. The only people really in a position to judge whether this is working are my female Christian friends, and God. I myself am very happy with these rules because they help me to put God first.

Building Christian women up

One last thing. The man’s role in the relationship is to love his wife all the time, and to do it intelligently. It’s therefore imperative for him to read about how women understand love. I recommend the book “The Five Love Languages” for learning about how to love women well. Also, it’s a great idea to read all about how women think and feel about what they do in a marriage, so that you can support them after first understanding them. A good book to read on that is “What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women: and similar books. It’s a good idea to think about how to become better at leading by persuasion – by convincing women to grow upward. For example, I convinced one girl I was courting to go back to school and do a degree in economics. Another one went back to school get her law degree. And this not to even mention the basic stuff that women I court do – like organizing public debates, apologetics conferences, teaching apologetics in the church, finding summer jobs, getting top grades in school, giving public speeches, and so on. Courting is the time where you intentionally lead women to become stronger.

In the 2012 the Presidential election, I supported Michele Bachmann as my first choice for the office of President. Her husband Marcus is very traditional about courtship and marriage, just like me. He actually asked her to go back to school at one point to specialize in tax law, in order to help the family business and be better at pushing the children upward through school. That was a smart decision, to grow his wife up like that so that she could be better. So whatever you do in the courtship, your goal should always be to push women up, up, up. And that applies whether she is for you or for someone else or for no one else. Make her better than she used to be so that she can serve God better – to be a better wife and mother, and to have more of an influence in the world for Christ and his Kingdom. Never, ever bring her down or minimize the impact she can have for good. She is a partner in serving God, after all.

Related posts

Neil has a related post on complementarian marriage (which is my view).

Polemics

Christians destroy their own religious freedom by supporting single-payer health care

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Muddling Towards Maturity linked to a Chuck Colson column which makes an essential point about how allowing a secular government to control health care is bad for Christians who want to live authentic Christian lives in the public square. Muddling writes, “Chuck Colson tells the story of Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college that won’t allow abortion, sterilization, and contraception to be covered by its employees’ health care plan.”

Excerpt:

[The Catholic Church] teaches that abortion, sterilization, and contraception are immoral. So it makes sense that a conservative Catholic college would make sure that its health plan doesn’t cover such practices.

Well, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a different word for Belmont Abbey College: “sexist.”

Using reasoning that could only be concocted by a consummate bureaucrat, the director of the agency’s Charlotte office has said that denying contraception is sexist “because only females take oral prescription contraceptives. By denying coverage, men are not affected, only women.”

The EEOC stepped in because eight college employees complained about the lack of coverage. The EEOC has now ordered the college to find a resolution. Even though North Carolina law protects religious institutions from having to cover contraception, abortion, and voluntary sterilization, the case could end up in the federal courts.

Colson also talks about how Catholic adoption agencies were forced to close as a result of state control of medical care provision. Catholic organizations do a ton of good in the world, so I find it appalling that so many Catholics voted for Obama. If you marginalize the worldview that produces the good works, you don’t get to keep the good works. The good works were rationally grounded by the good worldview.

This is a MUST-READ for those of you who believe that big government programs, like single-payer health care, are compatible with Christianity. If you want to put the needs of the poor above the gospel, that’s fine. But, in my view, Jesus put the gospel above the needs of the poor.

Have a look:

1Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2″But not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

3While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

4Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

6″Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

(Mark 14:1-9, NIV)

And you can see this problem in many other areas as well, such as welfare, hate crime bills and the removal of conscience protections. Few Christians, and certainly not those who support single-payer health care, would even recognize the imposition of the government’s vision of morality and purpose on individuals as fascism. Even homeschooling Christians sometimes support big government secular socialism which can lead to banning homeschooling.

Many Christians voted for the most pro-abortion President ever, and for the most anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-child President ever. I think this is a consequence of the church’s complete unwillingness to connect what goes on in the church with anything objectively real outside the church. We tell people stories that make them feel certain emotions, and they use that emotionalized conception of Christianity to decide who to vote for.

2008 voting broken by religious groups

2008 voting broken by religious groups

(Click for larger image)

I think what is really happening here is that Christians who prefer single-payer health care on “moral grounds” are either 1) trying to justify stealing money from their neighbors to pay for their own risky, irresponsible decisions, or 2) trying to embrace trendy, popular policies that put them in a favorable light with the secular neighbors. Either way, it’s a loss for God. Doing good is the job of free individuals, not the job of a secular, socialist government.