Tag Archives: Responsibilities

Commentary

On women leaving marriages that don’t make them happy enough

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Don’t blame me! I didn’t write it. Alisha wrote it. She’s the meany, not me!

Excerpt:

I have a certain friend, a great guy I’ve known since I was a gawky teen, and who continues to be my friend in  my fully grown yet still gawky state. He has always been strong- fights hard, works hard, but loves the hardest.

When he married a few years ago, I was a little worried. Now that he’s divorced, I’m very hurt. And taken aback that he is not the only guy I know in this situation. In fact, I know about 4.

Now, these men are far from perfect. No one except God is. Yet in all these collapsed marriages, the women openly and willingly admitted the men they promised to be with until death had never hit, pushed, sexually or emotionally accosted them. They quite simply, no longer wanted to be married.

Of course, there is nothing really simple about dissolving one’s marriage, except for my simple-minded incomprehension as I sat at a showing of “The Devil Wears Prada” with one of these ladies a few years back. We had gone to the mall to do a little window shopping, and for what seemed to be the entire trip, this young lady- I’ll call her Amber- complained non-stop about what her husband wasn’t doing. He wasn’t buying her new clothes or shoes or taking her on vacations. She worked hard, many days 10 hours. And well, he worked, too, but it wasn’t fair he didn’t buy her more.

“Can he afford to buy you all that stuff?” I asked. She looked at me as if I were stupid. “MY FATHER works two even three jobs to make sure Mama gets everything she wants and deserves! Sometimes, he is away for weeks, working at construction sites to ensure it!”

[…]Another girl I know got hitched- only to ditch her groom before a tan line started to develop on her ring finger. The very same things she loved about him while they were dating- his commitment to God, desire to go into the ministry, his “good guy” sweetness- were instantly repulsive in marriage. Their marriage annulled, she jumped into a long term dating relationship which turned into cohabitation and a child together. But fortunate for her, no wedding.

I actually blame the men for choosing these women. Men have to test women during the courtship to see if what they are interested in is making a commitment and then acting self-sacrificially to honor their obligations. I could tell you nightmare stories about Christian women I know who can do the most amazing acts of selfishness and then totally refuse to make amends or accept any responsibility. But then, I’m not married to those women – because that all came out before I ever got serious about them. Many women are judging men today based on how amusing they are and whether their girlfriends will be envious and approving based on secular criteria supplied by TV shows and music videos. This all has to be detected during the courtship by the man. Courting is when the man has to detect if the woman is thinking anything other than “if I don’t like this – if it doesn’t make me feel happy all the time and impose no obligations on me – then I can get out of it”. Is she ready for a commitment? That’s the man’s job to find out.

What courtship is really about for men is communicating your plan and the challenges you’re facing and then standing back to see if she wants to help. I once met a Christian woman who would not so much as sit down with me to see what I did for a living. She wanted to have fun! And understanding my job so that she could help was not fun. (Presumably, spending my money that I earned from that job would have been more fun). So if a man marries a woman like that, then it is the man’s fault. If men are too stupid to know how to detect lemons then they deserve to suffer. Learning how to court is more important than playing video games. Knowing what laws strengthen men in their roles as husbands and fathers is more important than watching X-treme sports. Men are responsible to understand marriage, understand what women do in a marriage, and understand policies that strengthen or weaken marriage. Many men who are divorced today voted for the party of no-fault divorce (with the custody battles and fake charges of child abuse) and domestic violence laws (which criminalize criticizing your wife’s spending or weight) yesterday. And those men are fools. And they must be punished.

Men are terrible at knowing what they want from women. What matters to the stupid men about women today is not whether they are chaste and self-sacrificial and organized and goal-oriented, but only their physical appearance, how much they are willing to drink, and how far they are willing to go physically. Even Christian men have no idea what Christian women are supposed to DO in a marriage. Many men think that marriage will be 50% playing video games, and 50% sex or something. It’s just totally unrealistic. Not to mention that women are not inanimate objects. They are more like employees. If you bring a woman into your home and do not know how to motivate them, then they will not fill the role that they are assigned. Surely a wife is as entitled to as much “management” as an employee. Having sex with someone is not effective management. One-on-one eye-to-eye communication about current concerns and future goals is effective management.

I think that men and women really need to sit down and think about marriage and parenting as an engineering problem. What are the use cases? What are the requirements? What is the design plan? What are the possible solutions? What are the tradeoffs? What is the schedule? How much of this can we build ourselves, and how much of it can we purchase or outsource? If the woman is not on board with the seriousness of marriage, because she resents obligations, saving money and structure, then drop her like a hot potato. If she does not want a man to fulfill his roles in the marriage – protecting, providing and leading on moral/spiritual issues – then kick her to the curb. Spontaneity is good for a Sunday afternoon or a Friday night. It is not the way to run a a marriage, especially when there are kids. Spontaneity is not the way to produce quality software – with garbage in, you get garbage out. Can you imagine hiring an engineer based solely on their physical appearance and amusement value? Yet this is what men are doing. Christian men are doing this.

Commentary

Christian professor of economics discusses capitalism, socialism and the Bible

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Here’s an interview with Dr. Shawn Ritenour, economics professor at Grove City College. The interview is conducted by Dr. Paul Kengor.

Excerpt:

Kengor: …it seems that the very foundation of economics, not to mention the American republic in some respects, is the right to private property. Do you agree? If so, is that Scriptural?

Ritenour: The foundation of economic activity and policy is private property. All action requires the use of property and all economic policy is about how people can legally use their property. To benefit from the division of labor, we must be able to exchange our products, which requires private property. Private property is definitely Scriptural. The Bible explicitly prohibits theft, fraud, moving property barriers, debasing money, violating labor contracts, as well as coveting. These prohibitions apply to both citizens and rulers. In my text, I apply this conclusion to issues such as confiscatory taxation, government subsidies, business regulation, and monetary inflation.

Kengor: I find it very telling that Karl Marx was first and foremost against private property, not to mention against God as well. In the “Communist Manifesto,” he wrote plainly: “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.” And yet, there are some religious left Christians who claim that the Bible, especially in certain Old Testament passages, preaches a form of socialism and even communism. A student of mine had a teacher at a private Christian school in Ohio who instructed the class that as Christians they should be communists. Can you address this argument?

Ritenour: Communism can be condemned strictly on the basis of the Christian ethic of property (among other reasons). Nothing in Scripture either commands or implies that the means of production should be controlled by the state. There are passages in the early chapters of Acts that are often cited as promoting “Christian communism,” but, in fact, actually illustrate Christian sharing. The various Christians still owned their property, but were generous in sharing whenever they saw a need. When Peter rebukes Ananias in Acts 5, he explicitly says that both the property that Ananias and Sapphira sold and the monetary proceeds from selling it were theirs to do with what they wanted. That is not the gospel according to Marx.

Kengor: I like the way you turn the religious left’s thinking on private property on its head. You note that “God prohibits our coveting the property of others.” With that being the case, isn’t it wrong for the government to use the mighty arm of the state to forcibly remove property from one person to give it to another?

Ritenour: I see no other way around that conclusion, especially when we realize that, in our day of mass democracy, the state usually accomplishes policies of wealth redistribution by inciting envy and covetousness among the populace.

Kengor: What about profits? Reconcile the profit motive with the God of Scripture. We have people in this society who portray profits as greedy or unjust.

Ritenour: Profit is the reward entrepreneurs receive for more successfully producing what people want. This is no easy thing to do. Entrepreneurs must invest in present production of goods they sell in the future. Neither entrepreneurs nor government bureaucrats know exactly what future demand will be. Therefore, production necessitates bearing risk. If the entrepreneur forecasts future demand incorrectly, he will waste resources and reap losses. If he forecasts the future correctly, he serves his fellow man by producing goods people want. It seems only right that such producers are rewarded with profit. In a free market, the only way entrepreneurs earn profits is to serve customers better than anyone else.

I’m a fan of Paul Kengor’s work. If I had married and had children, I would have wanted them to go to Grove City College for their undergraduate degrees. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is at Grove City right now, directing a program in astronomy.

Should Christians study other areas of knowledge like economics?

Here’s a quote from McKenzie’s Facebook page that explains why I think Christians need to understand economics.

Quote:

“If inviting nonbelievers to worship matters, then so does preserving the freedom to worship. If ministering to the needs of the poor is a mandate, then changing the policies creating poverty is very much within that mandate. And if building shelter in developing countries is part and parcel of a Christian’s burden, so… is the destruction of the power of tyrants who oppress peoples around the globe.”

It’s from Hugh Hewitt’s book “In, But Not Of”. The book is about how Christians need to make good decisions early on in life if they hope to influence the world in effective ways. This is an excellent book for young people in high school and university, or for those (like me) who dream of raising children in a careful way, so they can impact the world for Christ. My hope is to raise Michele Bachmann and Jennifer Roback Morse clones.

By the way, you can be my friend on Facebook. My Facebook page is here. And you can also follow the blog here, you have a Facebook account. (Although we get about 1000-1500 page views per day, I have only a small number of Facebook friends and followers).

Further study

News

Cato Institute talks with Jay Richards about Christianity and capitalism

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Did you know that the libertarian Cato Institute has a podcast? I like listening to it, even though I am not a libertarian on many issues. But I like their views on economics, government and liberty. I think that they are right on issues like school choice, consumer-driven health care, and global warming skepticism. In the episode of their podcast below, they interviewed Protestant theologian and philosopher Jay W. Richards on the relationship between Christianity and economics.

The MP3 file is here. (10 minutes)

The guy who does these podcasts is named Caleb Brown. Now, with a name like “Caleb”, I always thought that he must be some sort of Christian. Well, it turns out that he is a Quaker. And this is a shock, because Quakers are actually pretty socialistic on economic issues. But it turns out that Caleb is as concerned as I am that Christians are not more inclined towards capitalism. The fit between Christianity and capitalism is much more natural than with secular socialism.

Further study

To learn more about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, check out this post (the second half is on capitalism).

Excerpt:

To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture entitled “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards, delivered at the Heritage Foundation think tank, and televised by C-SPAN2.

[…]If you can’t see the Richards video, here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. Also, why not check out this series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics? (a PDF outline is here)

And you can listen to Ron Nash’s course on Christianity and economics.