Tag Archives: Spouse

News

France passes law to jail spouses who commit psychological violence

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Here is an article from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Married couples in France could end up with criminal records for insulting each other during arguments.

Under a new law, France is to become the first country in the world to ban ‘ psychological violence’ within marriage.

The law would apply to cohabiting couples and to both men and women.

It would cover men who shout at their wives and women who hurl abuse at their husbands – although it was not clear last night if nagging would be viewed as breaking the law.

The law is expected to cover every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner’s appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence.

Police are being urged to issue a caution in the first instance, but repeat offenders could face a fine, a restraining order or even jail.

Feminists don’t like long-term, stable male-female relationships, because they think that it creates unequal “husband” and “wife” roles.

This law will dissuade men from marrying. Men are not going to be happy about going to jail just because they tell their wives to spend less money, etc. And women need to start to do something to prevent such laws. Women are going to have decide whether they want to substitute courts, police and government-run social programs for husbands and fathers. They can’t have socialism and a family.

Until I see proof that women intend to crusade against these anti-male, anti-family laws, I am not going to be favorably disposed toward marriage. This is where we are going in the West, towards greater and greater feminism, higher taxes, more social programs, and greater regulation of the family by the courts. A man cannot be the head of a family when he has no power and no respect.

Commentary

What prevents teen sexual activity? Parents, sex education, or social programs?

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Christine Kim
Christine Kim

What are some of the measurable consequences of pre-marital sex?

The kinds of problems most people think of when they think of pre-marital sex are problems like sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy, abortions, reduced ability for stable marriage, and maternal poverty.

What’s the best way to prevent teens from engaging in pre-marital sex?

On the one hand, social conservatives on the right favor the traditional family structure, complete with a father who lives in the home and is an involved parent. On the other other hand, social liberals on the left favor laws that promote pre-marital sex and no-fault divorce, which tends to weaken marriage and break up families. Those on the right prefer strong families and involved parents, while those on the left prefer to tax money away from families and use that money to provide sex education, taxpayer-funded abortions, and single-payer health care.

Who’s right?

Well, consider this research paper from the Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank.

It’s written by Christine C. Kim. The title is “Teen Sex: The Parent Factor”. (PDF)

She writes:

Many policymakers, health professionals, and “safe sex” advocates respond to these troubling sta­tistics by demanding more comprehensive sex edu­cation and broader access to contraceptives for minors. They assume that teens are unable to delay their sexual behavior and that a combination of information about and access to contraceptives will effectively lead to protected sex, preventing any form of harm to youngsters. Not only are these assumptions faulty, they tend to disregard impor­tant factors that have been linked to reduced teen sexual activity. A particularly noticeable omission is parental influence.

[…]The empirical evidence on the association between parental influences and adolescents’ sexual behavior is strong. Parental factors that appear to offer strong protection against the onset of early sexual activity in­clude an intact family structure; parents’ disapproval of adolescent sex; teens’ sense of belonging to and sat­isfaction with their families; parental monitoring; and, to a lesser extent, parent-child communication about teen sex and its consequences.

That parents play a role in teen sex points to at least two significant policy implications. First, pro­grams and policies that seek to delay sexual activity or to prevent teen pregnancy or STDs should encourage and strengthen family structure and parental involvement. Doing so may increase these efforts’ overall effectiveness. Conversely, programs and policies that implicitly or explicitly discourage parental involvement, such as dispensing contra­ceptives to adolescents without parental consent or notice, contradict the weight of social science evi­dence and may prove to be counterproductive and potentially harmful to teens.

She supports her conclusions using her research findings and some very helpful graphs (see the PDF version).

My thoughts

So what does this mean? It means that parents need to be trained and equipped to talk to their children about topics like pre-marital sex. It means that unmarried men and women need to be serious about choosing their spouse so that there is an increased likelihood that the spouse will have the knowledge, the time, and the disposition to talk to their children about sex. The best way to find a spouse who can make moral judgments and be persuasive on moral issues with the children is to choose some who demonstrates those capabilities over a significant period of time, during the courtship.

I’ve noticed that many young people reject prospective mates who make moral judgments and who have definite ideas about moral issues. What young people seem to want is complete autonomy to pursue their own happiness. They don’t even want to deal with the normal demands of relationships with friends, co-workers, pets, children – and even with God. They just want to pursue their own vision. And if their own choices make them unhappy, then they blame others and demand to be bailed out, (often by the government).

But valuing amorality and permissiveness in prospective mates is not going to attract a spouse who is capable of teaching children right from wrong. Instead, young people should seek to marry someone who is informed on moral issues, and who is passionate about persuading others. Marriage is not the kind of thing that two selfish, amoral people can do well – there has to be a vision and a way of settling disagreements using a standard of objective morality and moral reasoning. Children don’t do well being raised by parents who have no vision for how the children ought to be.

I think a pretty good question to ask a prospective mate is “how would you like your children to turn out?”. What you are looking for is a person who wants their child to have respect for objective moral values and duties and a strong relationship with God. And then ask a second question, “what capabilities do you think your spouse should have to achieve that vision?”. And finally ask, “how have you prepared yourself to guide your children towards that vision?”. These are the questions that we should be asking during courtship to find out whether prospective mates are capable of imparting moral knowledge to their future children.

Mentoring

How an interest in apologetics is a sign of a friendship with God

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Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason wants Christians to be “ambassadors for Christ”. What’s that?

Here is a dictionary definition of ambassador:

1. a diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign or state to another as its resident representative (ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary).

2. a diplomatic official of the highest rank sent by a government to represent it on a temporary mission, as for negotiating a treaty.

3. a diplomatic official serving as permanent head of a country’s mission to the United Nations or some other international organization.

4. an authorized messenger or representative. Abbreviation: Amb., amb.

Greg Koukl says that a good ambassador needs 3 things: knowledge, wisdom and character.

Greg writes:

I’ve heard it said that sometimes you will be the only living Bible that anyone can read. Well, that’s what it means to be an ambassador. You will speak for Christ. One way or another, for good or for ill, you will speak for Him if you are a follower of Jesus Christ. So we want to strengthen good representatives, and we know that takes emphasis in three areas.

One are to strengthen as an ambassador is knowledge. In other words, you’ve got to know a few things that your sovereign wants you to represent to the rest of the world. So you’ve got to have this knowledge base.

Secondly, you’ve got to communicate that knowledge in a way that is sensitive to the people that you’re sent to. You need to understand their way of thinking. You need to understand their language after a fashion. You must be diplomatic, tactical after a fashion. So there is a certain wisdom, the right use of knowledge, that’s necessary for you to be an effective ambassador.

A good ambassador, any ambassador, packages that knowledge and strategy in the manner of delivery in himself or herself. It’s all wrapped up in an individual, and if that individual is offensive, if that individual is a bad representative, it doesn’t matter that the knowledge and tactics are sound. If the individual is wrong then the message loses its force. This is why we emphasize not just knowledge, not just wisdom, but also character. You must package the entire message in you personally so that you can be an effective, accurate, and virtuous representative or ambassador for Jesus Christ.

I think that a good ambassador for Christ needs to be motivated, as well. A good ambassador is concerned when some people have false beliefs about God’s existence, character and purposes. An ambassador cannot stand by and do nothing while God’s reputation is diminished in public. It is this concern for God as a friend that drives people to study apologetics, as well as theology,science, history, etc. We want to know what God is like, what he’s done and how we can show these things to be true.

The mission of Christian ambassadors

Consider 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, especially verses 11 and 2:

11Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience.

12We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.

13If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.

14For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.

15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:

19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

20We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

21God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This passage about reconciling God and man is one of my favorites in the Bible.

God has chosen us to communicate on his behalf to people who don’t know him. An ambassador doesn’t treat God as a means to achieving happiness, security, health and wealth in this life. Nor is the ambassador’s job to let other people be happy without a relationship with the real God who is really there. The ambassador has a responsibility to explain God’s existence, character and purposes to those who are still ignorant of him. And that takes effort. God is not interested in making his human “pets” happy. He’s given us a task to accomplish – a task that may well consume a good deal of time, effort and money. A task that may diminish our happiness by making us different and unpopular.

Apologetics demonstrates your friendship with God

I often think about how to test others to see whether they are genuine Christians or not. This can be done for friendship or even when testing a prospective mate. A subjective “Christian” who invents their own view of God subjectively, using intuition and emotions, is not going to put themselves second for God and serve him as an ambassador. Instead, they’ll think that a relationship with God really means projecting their own desire for happiness onto God. “God” is there to make them feel happy, not to make demands on them.

And if a person doesn’t want a relationship with God as a real person, they won’t relate to you as a real person, either. If a person doesn’t think that God has purposes and feelings distinct from their own, they won’t think you have purposes and feelings distinct from their own. If a person thinks that God’s purpose is to make them happier, then they’ll think that your purpose is to make them happier. If a person is not willing to sacrifice their interests for God’s interests, they aren’t going to sacrifice their interests for your interests, either.

am⋅bas⋅sa⋅dor

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Use ambassador in a Sentence

–noun

1. a diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign or state to another as its resident representative (ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary).
2. a diplomatic official of the highest rank sent by a government to represent it on a temporary mission, as for negotiating a treaty.
3. a diplomatic official serving as permanent head of a country’s mission to the United Nations or some other international organization.
4. an authorized messenger or representative. Abbreviation: Amb., amb.