Theology for Women

Several weeks ago I wrote a blog entitled “What God Thinks About Your Sex Life.” Since that post, I’ve had some follow-up thoughts that I have decided to add here.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but God designed sex in kind of a weird way. Depending on the context, sex can have two completely opposite effects. Within marriage, sex can make a marriage stronger, but outside of marriage it is just the opposite. Rather than make a dating or engaged couple stronger, sex can actually tear the couple apart.

Perhaps one of the best analogies for this principle can be seen in a fireplace. When a fire is built inside the fireplace, it heats the whole home and keeps everyone warm. Prior to the age of electric heated homes, this was a life saving gift during winter. But if you take that same  life-giving fire out of the fireplace, it will burn the house down, destroying everything and everyone within it.

It is the same with sex. Marriage is the hearth that contains the flames of sexual passion. When taken outside that protective guard, it has the power to destroy.

But why is that? Why is it that, in one context sex builds up, and in another context sex tears down?

To answer this question, we must first recognize the fact that most people, even many married people, have a fundamental  misunderstanding about sex. We see it as a right, not a responsibility.

Think about it this way–the way that Christians frequently articulate the nature of sex within marriage is that all bets are off once you say “I do.” As soon as the ring is on the finger, your bodies belong to one another so you can and should do whatever crazy sexual stuff you want, as long as it’s legal. And the more sex you have, the better.

For example, I heard about a church in Texas in which the pastor gave his married listeners a homework assignment as follow-up to the sermon–every night that week, they had to have sex. That is the Christian culture we live in right now.

What is somewhat problematic about this mentality is that it flirts with the idea that sex is a right. In a Christian form, it sells the worldly mentality that we all deserve sex whenever and however we want. That is the perspective driving the homosexuality debate right now–Americans believe they have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and sex. And anyone who stands in the way of you having sex the way you want it is either a religious fundamentalist or a chauvinist.

But sex is not a right. It’s a responsibility. When two people engage in sex, they put one another in a position of extreme vulnerability, which means they are in a position to get hurt more than ever before. That’s why affairs are so devastating. But when two people have sex they ALSO create the possibility of conceiving a child. Those are high stakes!

And that’s why it’s important to guard sex no matter where you are in life. Whether you are married or single, it’s not as if anything goes. Sex is still a responsibility, and it should be treated as such. That is what I love about the natural family planning method of birth control. It requires that a married couple abstain from sex once a month when the woman is most likely to get pregnant. It demands that the couple make a sacrifice and step away from the act of sex to reflect on the responsibility that it involves. It prevents them from taking sex for granted.

When married couples forget the significance of sex, they are tempted to use abuse it just as much as single people. Maybe a husband begins to see his wife more as an object to used than a gift to be treasured and romanced before she gives herself to him sexually. If she does not give him his right to sex, he may even go looking for it elsewhere. Conversely, a wife might withhold sex from her husband as a form of manipulation.

Yes, sex must still be guarded within marriage because it can very much be abused.

But what does this mean for single people? Given that sex is such a powerful force, even within the hearth of marriage, it has an even greater potential to destroy when taken outside of that context. Why? Because having premarital sex means you have altogether bought the lie that you deserve sex whenever you want it. And when you engage in that kind of perspective, sex becomes a false idol.

Maybe it’s not an idol at first. Maybe it begins with you messing around with your boyfriend from time to time. Slowly, you two push the line back further and further and further. You’re no longer going too far once a week–now it’s almost every night. And one day you push the line back all the way. You have sex.

But don’t think the story ends there. Soon you find yourself justifying the sex. “I really love my boyfriend” or “I know I’m going to marry him” or “There are worse sins than this one.” Eventually you reach a point at which it no longer bothers your conscience. You have altered your entire system of faith to suit your sexual practice. Now, your life and your beliefs center around  your sex life. Your interpretation of Christianity has been perverted or ignored to serve your sexual needs.

That is the definition of idolatry–when you center your life around something other than Christ. That doesn’t mean you’re a sex addict, it just means your sexual desires hold rank over God.

And that is the key difference between sex in marriage and sex outside of marriage. One stems from a life centered around idolatry and a need to satisfy one’s own desires. The other stems from a life centered around God.

And that is why one practice is more likely to bring life, whereas the other is likely to destroy. Whenever any practice or belief supplants the centrality of God in our lives, then we are headed towards self-destruction.

No matter where you are in life, married or single, that should be your theology of sex. Sex should always be practiced in a way that draws one another closer to God. This can ONLY be done in marriage, but it is not necessarily done in marriage. It is a discipline, and it is a form of worship so we must keep it sacred. Take the steps to guard it as such.

In an attempt to get as much done before my students come back from Christmas break, I have spent the last week in all-out wedding planning mode. I’ve talked to photographers, looked at countless flower arrangements and been to too many bridal shops to count.

In particular, I’ve been using the last week to figure out the bridesmaid dresses, which has been tricky given that I don’t want my bridesmaids to hate me.

But as I’ve gone from store to store, looking at bridesmaid dresses and wedding gowns galore, it got me to thinking about this whole wedding ceremony thing. More specifically, I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of the white dress.

Symbolically, the white dress is meant to represent the bride’s purity–she has saved herself for just this special day and now she can present herself as untouched, for her husband’s embrace alone.

Realistically, this almost never happens. One of my friends who lives with her boyfriend recently joked about wearing a silver dress at her wedding. “I’m not going to wear white,” she proclaimed. “The jig is up!”

And she’s not alone in this. In all honesty, how many of us can really wear white on our wedding days? Even for those women who maintain their virginity, it is oftentimes only by a thread. That’s hardly the symbolism behind the dress, is it?

Why, then, do we go on with this charade?

For most women, the main reason behind a white dress is the tradition of it. Plain and simple. I, however, have realized a very different but very important reason for maintaining this practice. But before I get into that thought process, let me back up a bit by setting the stage of how weddings generally go these days…

Today, the world tells us that your wedding is all about YOU. The rehearsal dinner is full of toasts about what a great couple you make, the church lobby and reception are decked with pictures of the two of you, and everyone is at your beck and call. This is YOUR day, and the focus is on you alone.

Scripturally speaking, this mentality is way off. Contrary to what the world says, your wedding day is not about you. It’s merely a reflection of a much greater love story, the romance between Christ and the Church. It is no coincidence that marriage reflects God’s relationship with us so neatly–marriage was fundamentally designed to.

That said, the aim of any wedding ceremony should be to highlight this greater truth. Everything about the day and the process leading up to it should be about the glory of God and His love for the Church. That perspective has already held me accountable in many ways, not the least of which is my understanding of the white dress.

Ultimately, the white dress is not about the purity of the bride’s lifestyle. Yes, her lifestyle is relevant, but that’s not the most relevant. Ultimately, the white dress is significant of the fact that God has made the bride pure.

The Bride is able to present herself as blameless before the Groom because the Groom laid himself down for her and cleansed her of her sin. And that purity has nothing to do with how many men she slept with before, or how unclean she might have been. All of that is behind, because Christ intervened.

Christ died to make his bride, his Church, clean. We reflect this beautiful news to the world around us when we wear white on our wedding day.

And this should be liberating news for us ladies who carry the baggage of a sullied past. If you worry about whether or not a Christian guy will marry you because of your shameful history, remember that you are no longer defined by that past. Christ has made you into a new creation, so you can still wear that white dress and you can wear it with confidence! Not based upon your own purity, but on the one who made you pure.

That does not, however, mean that the dress has no meaning for our present lifestyles. Because a wedding is a picture of the eternal Groom and His Bride, we must strive to reflect that relationship daily. Only yoke yourself with a man who will lay himself down for you and your purity, desiring to present you as blameless before God. Yes, God can redeem your mistakes, but that does not grant us the freedom to live however we want. Reflecting the relationship between Christ and the Church is more than a one-time wedding event. It is a way of life.

That is a good reminder for everyone, no matter what stage of life you find yourself in today.

I recently received an e-mail from a young woman who loves her career but is getting married soon and wonders how her job will fit with her family. If she’s going to have kids one day and stay at home with them, then why bother building a career now? Is it even worth it?

This is a question that many women find themselves asking, so I decided to post a version of my response to her. I hope you will find it helpful.

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This is a question that a LOT of women ask–what’s the point in working now, or even getting an advanced degree, if I’m not going to use it later on? In my opinion, the root of this question comes from observing a very narrow sample of what the Christian family looks like.

For many of us, when we look around our church we see families in which the father works and the mother stays at home. And as a result of our cultural surroundings, we assume that this model of family must be set in stone by Scripture. In reality, this model is more often determined by the family’s personal circumstances.

You see, this model is most typical of white, middle to upper class families. Once you depart from this demographic you will find that not all families can actually survive on the salary of one working parent. And those of us in a more privileged demographic may come to experience this first hand as a result of the economy’s recent turn. If the country’s economic situation worsens, we will see more and more families in which both parents must work because one salary isn’t enough to live on.

That said, we should be wary of ascribing spiritual superiority to families with privileged financial circumstances. Just because a mom is able to stay at home does not, by definition, make her a better Christian mom.

For another example in which life circumstance might lead a wife or mother to work, there may come a time when the wife is the only one who can get a job and her husband cannot. If your husband is having trouble finding work, your own career might be the only thing sustaining the family financially until he does.

In my own situation, I will have to be the primary provider during the first years of my marriage because my fiancé has another year of seminary, after which he will pursue a Ph.D. When the time comes for me to fill this role, I will be glad to have the education and experience to work a job that will support us both.

And for all you single gals, this isn’t a question you should really even be asking just yet. Instead of looking too far ahead, focus on what God has for you right now. Only God knows when your season of singleness will come to a close, so don’t waste this opportunity simply because you think your job skills will eventually go unneeded. The fact of the matter is that God wants to use you in your career NOW, so make sure you’re maximizing your time and energy for the Kingdom of God and get out there!

So in light of these arrayed circumstances, I would be so bold as to state that it is irresponsible for women to assume that once they get married they’ll have all their needs provided for. That mentality results from a culture of excess, but our country may be entering a time when such a scenario can no longer be assumed. We need to train ourselves to be ready in the event that we need to help provide for our families. Yes, the husband is the head so it is his primary responsibility to provide, but his wife should also be helping him.

Those are the practical argument for women building careers, but there are other aspects to consider as well. One reason the model for American Christian families is often so narrow is that it fails to be creative. There are numerous ways for families to allow both parents to work AND be in the home with their kids, but we don’t often consider them.

For example, I once interned under the president of a non-denominational women’s ministry who actually home-schooled her kids SO THAT she could have a more flexible schedule to work. Because she wasn’t bound by a schedule determined by a public or private school, she could decide when and how to school them in such a way that worked with her speaking and writing schedule. Ironically, she spent more time with her kids than a lot of non-working moms, yet she accomplished more than any woman I’ve ever met.

Now that’s not to say that we all need to home-school our kids, but I think it goes to show that when it comes to the family, we need to think outside the box.

I once a read an article by Nancy Pearcey in which she traced the history of the American family, and as a result of her research she found that prior to the Industrial Revolution the whole family lived and worked together. Unlike our current model in which the family is disjointed because the father goes off to work and the mother stays at home with the kids, EVERYONE worked on the family’s farm or business together. The mom and dad both worked, but they were with their kids throughout the day.

It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution, which took men out of the home and placed them in factories, that we even see a model in which the man leaves his wife alone with the children. We’re so used to this model that we think it’s Scriptural and that it’s always been this way, but that’s not actually true. Prior to the Industrial Revolution we had a much more holistic picture of the family, in which the husband and the wife both shouldered the burden of providing financially and raising the children.

Reading Pearcey’s article challenged me to question the model that I had always come to accept. It caused me to search for alternative models in which the father is less absent from the lives of his children. My fiancé and I are praying through this as well, and seeking out what model would work best for us.

We both want to be ministers, and that may very well mean that I stay at home more so that he is free to pastor a church. But it doesn’t mean I have to step out of ministry completely. I may work some so that he has to work less, thereby freeing him up to spend more time with our kids than he might have otherwise.

But whatever the model, we want to make sure that we do it as a team. Yes, he will be the head of the home, but that means he has an even GREATER responsibility to be in the lives of our kids, rather than just leaving that role to me when he leaves the house every morning. He doesn’t want the home to simply be “my realm” but to instead be “our realm.” So depending on where life takes us, we’re going to try and think creatively about how to minister to and care for our kids first and foremost, while also honoring and maximizing one another’s individual gifts and callings for the Kingdom of God.

And that’s what I would encourage you to do–be creative, and don’t get stuck in the model that you see around you. Yes, honor Scripture, but even the Proverbs 31 woman worked, so you can certainly be a good mother and also have a job. Your boundaries should be Scripturally prescribed (God first, Marriage second, Kids third, and Work last), but within these parameters you can seek to build a family model as innovative as the infinitely creative God who made us.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I rarely say anything about my current dating life. I have frequently written about my experiences and mistakes in the past, but I’ve tried to avoid discussing my present personal relationships for the sake of guarding people’s privacy and reputations.

Now as a result of this silence, many of you will probably be surprised by what I’m about to say, but hopefully you will be excited as well, because over the weekend

I GOT ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!

WOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s right, for the last 10 months I have been dating the godliest and most wonderful man I have ever met. Though I have not mentioned him by name, he has been the inspiration behind many of my blogs this past year. He is a man so immersed in the Word that our every day conversations give me plenty to think about and write about each week.

Because of him, I have learned the importance of having a spiritual leader with whom you are ALSO equally yoked.

Because of him I have learned first-hand that a Christ-centered relationship sets you free to do ministry better, rather than tying up your time and holding you back from it.

Because of him, I have captured a glimpse of the beauty God wrote into my created being. I wish I could change the aspects of myself that are different from the world’s standards of beauty, yet those are the attributes that he loves most, because they set me apart–and that’s exactly why God gave them to me.

Because of him, I have experienced first hand the truth that God desires you to marry another person ONLY if you can serve God better with them than without them. I have found that partner, that co-laborer who pushes me and affirms me and challenges me every day.

Now that we are engaged, I am going to keep writing but I will be a bit more open about the ways in which my relationship with him teaches me about God. This will not, however, turn into a blog for married people. It is my desire that no matter where life takes me, I will continue to write for women wherever they are in life. Theology is not just for single women or just for married women–it is for Christian women.

I am excited about this new chapter in my life, and I’m sure that God has wonderful things to teach me through it, so I’m anxious to see what I learn. I hope you will continue to walk along with me.

Odds are that many of you who are reading this blog right now have either had premarital sex, are having premarital sex, or are thinking about having premarital sex.

Just look at the statistics:

• A 2002 government survey reported that 94% of American women and 96% of American men engage in premarital sex–as one article concluded, almost EVERYONE has sex before marriage
• According to a poll conducted by Time Magazine 10 years ago, 61% of frequent church attenders do not believe that it’s wrong for an adult to have sex outside of marriage. A recent Barna study confirmed this statistical range, also citing that over 60% of born again adults believe that co-habitation before marriage is also acceptable.
• In 2003, researchers at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. Of the remaining 39 percent who kept their pledges, 55 percent said they’d had oral sex, and did not consider oral sex to be sex.
• According to statistics in the book Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Mark Regenerus), Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17

Now statistics can be unreliable–we have no way of knowing just how the terms “evangelical,” “born-again,” or even “Christian” are defined in these studies. But even considering the margin of error, premarital sex is a big problem in the Church today. Just ask any pastor who does premarital counseling. I, personally, have a number of friends who are professing Christians but have no problem with it and don’t believe it is in conflict with their faith.

That said, I thought I should write a blog about a seemingly obvious truth that is not so obvious anymore: why premarital sex is wrong. And just so you know where I’m coming from, this is a point on which I have no room for argument. If you say you’re a Bible-believing Christian and you think it’s ok, you are wrong. There is simply no way around that fact. Scripture is clear.

(And if you don’t believe me, just go to biblegateway.com and search “sex.” Or if you’ve got the KJV version, look up fornication. That’s the old school word for premarital sex. It appears pretty frequently, and you’ll get the idea pretty quickly.)

However, for a lot of you it’s not enough to hear “because the Bible says so.” You need to be convinced that this is more than a matter of rule following. And I sympathize. Sex is hard to resist because, simply put, it’s awesome. We wouldn’t want to do it so badly if it wasn’t.

But what feels good now is not necessarily good later. My 6 year old self thought that my greatest good was to eat all the cookies that I could get my hands on in one sitting. My parents knew better. They knew that I would enjoy the cookies at first, but I would get horribly sick, and eventually horribly obese. But at the time, I was blind to the ways in which that instant gratification could make me sick, and we do the same thing with sex.

That said, we need to redefine our categories. Instead of thinking in terms of just right and wrong, we need to also think in terms of healthy and unhealthy, or spiritual life and spiritual death.

And that is what’s at stake here–your soul. Sure, it seems like a bunch of harmless fun, or maybe you really do care about the person you’re sleeping with and this is one way of showing them how you feel.

But God says otherwise. God cares about what you do with your body. And what we do with out bodies is very much connected to our souls.

Here’s why:

Sex is not just a benefit of being married. It is an integral part of the way God designed marriage and our function within marriage. The reason being that marriage, as a whole, reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church. And what do we know about that relationship? That it’s defined by two things: intimacy and sacrifice.

Sex within marriage is the only perfect picture of the Christ-Church relationship because it incorporates both of those elements. In the same way that we only achieve intimacy with God as a result of Him first sacrificing His Son for us, intimacy between spouses should only come as a direct result of their sacrifice for one another, their willingness to lay their lives down for one another.

And this idea of laying yourself down for one another is not mere lip service. God didn’t casually mention one day, “Hey, I’ll be there when you need me. Just shoot me an e-mail.” No, He didn’t just tell us with words, He died.

Similarly, it’s not enough to claim, “But my boyfriend loves me and he WOULD do anything for me.” No, he needs to show it, just like Christ. And he needs to make this sacrifice in 2 ways:

1. He needs to sacrifice having sex with you before marriage. Scripture tells us that we are bought at a price, and this verse reminds us that anything worth having comes at a price. That said, when a man sleeps with a woman without “paying the price” of laying himself down for her in a marriage covenant, then he essentially cheapens her asking price. He wants the pleasure without the commitment.

And we do the same with Christ–we “pray the prayer” but we don’t want the commitment and the sacrifice that true discipleship entails. And when we do this, the intimacy we claim to have with Christ, or another, is nothing but a sham. Even if you and your boyfriend have lived together for years and you really love each other, you’ve still sold one another short, because he simply wasn’t worth waiting for.

2. He needs to sacrifice by standing before God, your pastor, your family and your church community, promising to lay himself down for you. In addition to this, he must subject himself to the continuing accountability of those witnesses, who will push him to put you before himself, to take on your finances, your debts, your cares and your hardships, even when he doesn’t want to. In so doing, he lays down his own interests and puts yours first. Only then, having gone through the sacrifical marriage ceremony, does he have the freedom to engage in full intimacy with his wife in a way that mirrors Christ’s relationship with the Church.

With all of that in mind, we come to the key reason why premarital sex is not just wrong, but spiritually poisonous: IT TELLS A LIE ABOUT GOD. It proclaims the lie that intimacy, as God has defined it, is not worth sacrificing for.

That said, you cannot build true, long-lasting intimacy upon a deception about the nature of intimacy. What you have with your girlfriend or boyfriend might be special, but that does not mean it reflects the heart of God. Even if you get along great and never fight and you think that you’re soulmates, you are sewing seeds of destruction into the relationship when you have sex before marriage–you are sewing seeds of impatience, lack of self-control, disrespect, lust, and idolatry. And even though you don’t see it now, those seeds WILL come to fruition.

And that is why I plead with you, not as someone who is lily white in this area, but as someone who has seen the destruction that sexual immorality leads to in my own life–flee from it! Run as fast as you can! Your life might be good now and you might think you’ve got it all figured out–maybe you even think you’ve pulled a fast one on God, that you’ve figured out a way to work the system and get what you want without the consequences. But you will be shocked and regretful 10 years down the road to realize the ways in which your decisions have corroded your soul, your relationship with God, and your relationship with your sexual partner.

Remember, sex is an act of worship because it reflects the character of God. But it is not a thing to be worshipped, something worth compromising your beliefs and your lifestyle just to attain. I know the rationalizations and the justifications because I’ve used them myself, but they are all ultimately lies. There is only one foundation upon which you should build your future, and that is truth. Anything else will ultimately and inevitablely crumble.

*For a GREAT book on this, check out Lauren Winner’s book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. You can also find two great articles here and here.

For many women, the idea of trusting a man TOTALLY in marriage is a scary thing. It’s not that their husbands aren’t trustworthy or that they don’t trust their husbands in some things. But the idea of submitting when you think you’re in the right, or when something really life-changing is on the line? That can be hard.

And that’s why so many women find themselves wrestling with a tendency to take control. Stasi Eldredge describes this battle in her book, Captivating. She gets to the heart of this ever-raging struggle as she writes:

“Aren’t your deepest worries and heartaches relational–aren’t they connected to someone? Even when things are good, is your vast capacity for intimacy ever filled in a lasting way? There is an emptiness in us that we continually try to feed. And can’t you see how much you need to have things under control–whether it’s a project or a ministry or a marriage? Are you comfortable trusting your well-being to someone else? And haven’t you felt…your vulnerability as a woman to be a liability? Most women hate their vulnerability….Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security.”

Control is a major issue that women struggle to surrender in marriage, but as Eldredge points out, this is not a problem that begins in marriage. It begins long before.

Submission is a discipline that you must work on cultivating now, as a single woman. Think about it this way…

It really is no wonder that the transition from the single life to married life can be so rocky–they generally encompass two completely different mindsets! As a single woman, you learn to be independent and look out for yourself. But then you get married and you’re supposed to let someone else take care of you.

You go from being independent to dependent. What was once a virtue becomes a vice. A practice that once guarded your lifestyle can now sabotage your lifestyle. What are we to make of this discrepancy?

The problem here is that the predominant mindset of single women today is in direct conflict with the Christian life. The idea that single women are somehow independent and must fend for themselves is a mindset that conflicts with the sovereignty of God. If we profess Christ, then there is no independent. There is no “fend for yourself.” And there is no “I am in control.”

On the contrary, it is God who is in control. God takes care of you. To be Christian is to be dependent on Him.

An unhealthy independence is easy to hide when you’re on your own, but it quickly becomes apparent when your life is intertwined with another. It is a mindset that short-circuits your ability to trust others because it is founded upon a trust in yourself alone. That said, if you have thoroughly ingrained in your heart and mind a spirit of independence, then you set yourself up for failure in all relationships, not the least of which is your relationship with God.

With all of this in mind, an inability to trust a husband in marriage is not necessarily a marital problem. It is a spiritual one. It comes from years and years of not trusting God to provide and take care of you. When you live in the knowledge that God is in control, it takes a lot of pressure off of trusting others. A trust in God makes all other forms of trust possible.

So if you are single now, begin the hard work of learning submission–submission to God. Regardless of whether or not you get married one day, this is a discipline that will factor into your job, your church, and your family relationships. It is the difference between relating to others in fear, or relating to others in freedom.

That is a struggle that every woman must face and fight, no matter her marital status.

Forty years ago Pope Paul VI released a statement on contraception that, looking back, was stunningly prophetic.

The essay, entitled Humanae Vitae (”Of Human Life”), was written at a time in American history when contraceptive pills were becoming very popular. Women across the country were celebrating their newfound freedom as the history of American sexuality turned a new page.

The Catholic Church, however, was singing a different tune. Unlike the many women who rejoiced over the changing cultural tides, the Pope raised a voice of concern–a concern that we can now see was completely warranted.

Although the Catholic Church’s position on contraception has been debated among Christians (Catholics put a heavy priority on the procreative purpose of sex,whereas many other Christians do not), there is one point on which the Pope was completely right.

If only we’d listened.

What follows is an excerpt from Humanae Vitae in which Pope Paul VI projects the cultural implications of contraception. His predictions could not have been more accurate, and I have posted this today because of the profound impact it has had for women since:

Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Did you get that?

FORTY YEARS AGO, Pope Paul VI predicted the exact situation that we find ourselves in today. He warned that the practice of hormonal contraception would divorce the responsibility of sex from the act of sex. He also feared that, as a result of this divorce, men would no longer need to guard the sanctity of sex, thereby leading them to treat women and sex in a recklessly casual way.

And his fears came true.

Sex without consequences. That is what the contraceptive revolution bought our country. And what do you think happens when we cheapen the price of a costly good? We no longer value it quite so highly.

Pope Paul VI was exactly right.

So while the contraceptive pill seemed like a gateway to women’s freedom and a means for valuing the female life even more, it instead devalued women, giving men the freedom to use them for sexual gratification without weighing the implications of their actions.

Now I write all of this not as a diatribe against the practice of contraception, but to caution us about considering the ideological impacts of the decisions we make. Just because science develops a solution to making our lives easier or providing us with a convenient short-cut does not mean we should embrace it.

Whenever we seek to relieve ourselves of divinely placed forms of accountability and responsibility, we forget that God created those measures for our own protection. Sex is about more than just procreation, but the fact that sexual intercourse leads to the birth of a new human life should cause us to approach the act of sex soberly and reverently.

While the contraceptive pill can’t take all the blame for the objectification of women and the number of absent fathers in our nation, it certainly played its own part. In a consumer-driven culture that wants what it wants right now, we have taken a thousand tiny steps in the wrong direction, and those tiny steps add up to a society that has wandered horribly off the path of truth.

No, the contraceptive pill is not, in itself, an evil, but blank-check contraceptive practices do not coincide well with a Scriptural view on marriage, family and sex. It is time we start examining why. I hope you will ask yourself that question.

For a good portion of my dating life, I have largely misunderstood God’s design for men. This misunderstanding resulted from my personal dating experiences, and it developed the following way…

For a long period of time, I never dated a guy who ever seemed that into me. He might have liked me at first, but as the relationship progressed he grew distant, and he eventually detached himself altogether.

What’s more, my exes all moved on very quickly. It didn’t seem like they were heart broken or that I left any sort of void in their lives. They were all just fine without me.

As a result of these experiences, I grew to believe that men are not prone to emotional attachment in the same way that women are. They could be interested in a woman, or even grow to love her, but they could just as easily turn that love off. They were inherently independent beings who could do with or without women.

Granted, I would find exceptions to the rule–in movies I saw men go to great lengths for the women they loved. Poets waxed eloquently about the beautiful features of their beloved’s eyes, lips and neck. I also had male friends who’d had their hearts absolutely broken by a girl. Without their girlfriend, they were emotional wrecks.

So how did I categorize these men who defied my understanding? I decided that they were somehow lesser men. It’s not that being in love is unmanly, but being extravagant about it seemed foreign to the gender. Any guy who would be that gaga about a girl needed to stop himself and start acting like a man. Only girls are supposed to get that swept up in romance and be that emotionally tied to another person.

So that’s how I understood men.

Here’s the problem with that line of thinking–

When your standard of manhood is emotional guardedness, you won’t recognize godly affection when you see it. In fact, you could be turned off by it.

Here’s what I mean–the kind of love and care you should expect from the man you marry is a kind of love that mimics the Father. That love is extravagant, self-sacrificing, and seemingly crazy at times. It is a love that goes to great, even absurd measures for the beloved, all for the sake of lavishing love on another. The cross is, after all, the most extravagant act of love the world has ever seen.

That said, any relationship in which a man is guarding himself or holding back is a relationship that fails to reflect God in a fundamental way. Granted, relationships should be guarded at first, but if you continue to date and that dynamic never changes, then there’s a problem. Such a relationship is more selfish than godly. It falls short of the example set for us in Christ and the Church–it is not a love that lays itself down for the other, but instead puts its own best interest first.

With all of this in mind, we ladies need to correct our vision. We need to look for the guys who embrace godly manhood, not a manhood that values emotional detachment and independence over intimacy.

And don’t be fooled into thinking that a guy is worth working for, simply because he plays hard to get through emotional unavailability. That is not the kind of love displayed for us in Christ, so it is clearly not the kind of love that God desires for you. If you find yourself drawn to that type of man, then you need to reevaluate your standards.

And to all you godly men out there–thank you for being a light in the dating darkness, and for reminding us of the true standard of love. Though we may get confused at times, you serve as a compass pointing us back to God amidst a culture of selfishness. Thank you for persevering–please press on!

So yesterday I had another one of those “you really shouldn’t date him” conversations with one of my friends. You know the kind–your friend likes a guy who isn’t a Christian, and even though she knows she can’t marry him, she still sees potential for change so she wants to date him.

Whenever we see our friends do this, the reaction is always the same. We always act mildly scandalized by the idea, pondering the seeming absurdity with an ever so subtle self-righteousness: “I just don’t understand why she would even consider dating someone who isn’t a Christian! I mean, a non-Christian wouldn’t be able to understand the very core of me if he doesn’t know Christ!”

And thus our friend is swiftly cast off into the “back-sliding Christian” pile.

Now I have to be honest, I have definitely said those words myself. I have acted shocked and appalled when one of my friends dated a non-Christian because to me, it seems so simple. Scripture is clear!

But if that’s the case, then why does it happen so often?

One of the reasons Christians fall into missionary dating so easily is because of the very attitude displayed above. Our inability to comprehend a deep emotional connection with a non-Christian reveals our shallow perception of human relationships, as well as a dangerous naiveté.

Let me explain what I mean. Whenever I think about the idea of dating a non-Christian, I think something along the lines of, “No way! He would probably cuss all the time and want to have sex with me and he wouldn’t understand my heart or my drive at all.”

Well newsflash: not all non-Christians are like that! You can be non-Christian and still have high moral principles, a desire to seek truth and knowledge, and an ability to challenge others intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

That said, when we deny the possibility that we could have any sort of emotional, intellectual or spiritual connection with a non-Christian, then we let our guard down and set ourselves up to fall. We allow our hearts to become intimate in ways that are not wise because we have created a false sense of security. And slowly but surely, without even realizing it, we find ourselves connected with a non-Christian in a way we never expected…or even knew was possible.

And because of our past stereotypes about non-Christians, stereotypes in which we believed that most non-Christians are shallow or unable to be spiritually engaged, we think that our case is an exception: “I know he’s not a Christian, but this is different. He shows so much potential!” Plus, you might have a better relationship with him than you’ve even had with other Christians, which encourages you to rationalize it all the more.

For that reason, we should be wary of thinking about Christians and non-Christians in categories of deep and shallow, moral and immoral, or spiritual and non-spiritual. The only difference between us is that Christians have been saved by the grace of God, which means that many non-Christians can be more intellectual, philosophical, emotionally attentive, or spiritually challenging than Christians.

And with that in mind, we should never be so complacent or arrogant as to think that we are immune to the temptation of dating a non-Christian. The reason Scripture warns us against it is not because non-Christians are jerks, or because the relationship will be totally unhealthy. On the contrary, there are a lot of great non-Christians out there!

The reason Scripture warns against it is because you are ultimately centering yourself on something other than Christ. Being a Christian means that Christ is at the center of every part of your life, and this will be difficult if not impossible if you actively choose to marry someone who is opposed to Christ. You will instead be settling for a false idol.

So be humble, and be guarded. Being friends with non-Christians is a wonderful thing, but when it comes to members of the opposite sex, use caution. You may not be quite as strong as you think.

And keep that in mind the next time your friend dates a non-Christians. Perhaps shock and horror is not the best help for them, or your own ego.

“Irreconcilable differences.”

That seems to be one of the most common reasons for divorce that you hear today. And I really have no idea what it means.

I sometimes wonder if it’s a generic way of categorizing more specific problem, ie. “I want my wife to stop cheating on me but she would prefer not to” or “I want to use our money for food, but my husband wants to use it at the casino.” Those sound like fairly irreconcilable differences to me.

But perhaps the most likely reason for this term is that couples simply get tired of trying. Marriage is hard work, and if you fall out of love with your spouse, or someone better comes along, it no longer seems worth the effort. Little decisions become huge debates, and you can’t seem to agree on anything. At the end of the day, you are just too different to make it work, so you split on the basis of “irreconcilable differences.”

Well science and psychology are now disagreeing with this premise. Psychologist Dr. John Gottman is the founder of The Gottman Institute, which has done ground-breaking research into marital relationships and what makes them work. Specifically, Gottman did a study in which he videotaped newlyweds discussing an issue about which they disagreed, and then he tracked the couples over the following years to see which couples stayed together and which ones divorced.

After years had gone by and the fates of the marriages had largely been determined, Gottman went back to the videos and examined the interactions between the couples in an attempt to discover which couples were built to last, and which couples were doomed for destruction. Based on that information, Gottman now feels he is able to predict with considerable accuracy which marriages will succeed and which will fail.

And what were the characteristics of a doomed marriage? Gottman observed that in couples who later divorced, there was an element of contempt in their disagreements with one another. While arguing, they would be condescending, they would freeze one another out by refusing to listen to the other, and they would tear one another down with name-calling and insults.

The successful couples, on the other hand, were quite the opposite. Though they still disagreed on things, they were willing to listen and grow from one another. And even more fascinating about their interactions is that for every negative thing they said toward the other, they would counteract it with an average of five positive things.

The successful couples also prevented the argument from escalating. Gottman found that the more a person’s heart rate increased, the less they were able to listen and respond rationally. When the heart rate increased, they were more prone to become defensive and lash out. Couples who were able to be patient and gentle with one another, thereby preventing the argument from escalating, were able to sustain a conversation that was not only respectful, but from which they both could grow.

When this decades long study was all said and done, Gottman came to the following conclusion: a happy couple is not a couple without conflict. According to Gottman, all couples fight. All couples have irreconcilable differences. It’s how you handle those differences that makes or breaks your marriage.

Since Gottman first began his research, he and his wife now offer programs and seminars to help couples work on their marriages, and his teachings have met with tremendous success. Married couples do well to heed his advice–not to mention the fact that he’s merely reinforcing Scripture’s countless commands to guard your tongue, be quick to listen and always loving. After all, love is patient and love is kind, not sarcastic and condescending.

But what about us single folks? What’s the take away message for us? Well even though Gottman’s study relates to marital relationships, his principles are important to apply in almost any situation. Our spouses shouldn’t be the only ones we labor to love well–we should seek to listen and grow from everyone around us. That is a reputation that Christians do not have right now. The way we relate to non-Christians often looks more like the soon-to-be-divorced couple’s interactions–we know that we are right, and we treat people like idiots if they do not agree with us.

So whether or not you are married, we all need to cultivate the art of loving disagreement. This does not mean compromising ourselves, but it does mean that we convey respect and care amidst our irreconcilable differences. When we do this, we increase the likelihood that others will actually listen, and we might learn a thing or two as well.

I have heard it said that Christians never impose their beliefs on others–they simply propose, as a lover to the beloved. If that is our model for evangelism, then the keys to a healthy marriage have implications for us all.