Surprise, surprise, but I finished this recent New York Times article still staunchly in the monogamy camp. Aside from the fact that extramarital sex is clearly extra-biblical, I can’t see how a couple — Christian or not — could ever be “secure” enough in their relationship to make it an open relationship.

The idea of a marriage where spouses know about and approve of each other’s romantic affairs seems absurd. But this article is worth a read to get an idea of where some of the leading voices in the pro-gay marriage movement stand.

It’s a long profile on one of the nation’s foremost sex/love advice columnists, Dan Savage, a gay man who adopted a son with his husband. They say a series of affairs has strengthened their marriage, and the “open marriage” arrangement is a more realistic approach than monogamy because it acknowledges one person cannot satisfy all of the other’s needs.

It’s interesting to see how the expansion of gay marriage is changing the gay subculture:
- It’s downplaying promiscuity
- It’s downplaying the tight networks of friendships that take the place of a spouse
- It’s emphasizing the stability of the nuclear family structure
- It’s calling into question monogamy in general

Questions to ask: Are those cultural changes good? Bad? Mixed?

And another: This story was written by a religion writer, who notes that pastors counsel couples before marriage that they should stay faithful no matter what. When the couple returns a few years later for emergency counseling as an affair threatens to rip them apart, the pastor counsels them to work it out and to forgive. Is that hypocrisy? An inconsistency? The article suggests marriages should be strong enough to outlast infidelity, and Savage concludes that infidelity, therefore, shouldn’t be as big a deal as we make it out to be.

What do you say to that?

10.  If you find yourself burning with passion/lust (1 Cor 7)

9.  If your girlfriend or boyfriend is a Christian (2 Cor 6:14)

8.  If you think your girlfriend or boyfriend is hot (the entire book of the Song of Solomon paints this picture for us)

7.  If you are a man who likes women(Gen 1-2)

6.  If you are a woman who likes men (Gen 1-2)

5.  If you have been preparing yourself to be a husband or wife (Titus 2; 1 Corinthians 7; 1 Peter 3; Eph 5)

4.  If you desire to be a pastor (1 Timothy 3)

3.  If you desire marriage and hope to glorify God by making much of Jesus in marriage (Psalm 37:4; Eph 5)

2.  If you have a job (2 Thess 3:10)

1.  Because it is biblical (Gen 1:27)

NOTE:  You do not find any of these listed above:  If you are financially capable; if you have a degree; if you have a well-established job; etc.

For the longest time, I have been thinking through my viewpoint on kids, specifically teenagers who are still in high school, being allowed to date.  There are many viewpoints out there.  On one side of the spectrum we have a strict no date until you graduate policy.  This position falls within a majority of fundamentalist camps who give dating a bad rep and point us toward a more, counter-cultural form of courtship.   [...]

Abortion has been legalized since the 1973 Roe v. Wade supreme court decision. During the course of these 38 years, nearly 50 million unborn children have been murdered before taking their first breath. Much attention has been given to the harmful physical, emotional and psychological effects to the potential mothers. Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania abortion doctor received national attention for his abominable clinic deemed a “house of horrors” where seven babies have died during gruesome, barbaric abortion operations. One woman also perished after an overdose on pain medication. Gosnell made millions performing late-term abortions in the poverty-striken West Philadelphia section. See the article HERE.

The atrocious acts of destroying unborn life should rightfully be brought to light. The harmful effects abortion has on women warrants our outrage as well. But a third dimension, one necessarily present in every single life terminated cannot be marginalized: the man. A woman cannot become pregnant without a man’s sperm. By virtue of this, a man does, and should have an equal right to the life created. The feminist notion of “my right for control over my own body” is false considering the indispensible dual-role in procreation. And although some men pressure, threaten and even pay for the abortion, the countless men who do not concede to the mother’s abortion are negatively affected –in a few cases, guilt even drives men to suicide. Consider the following case: [...]

My wife, Grace, and I got married after about 11 months of a dating and engagement process.  We dated for 6 months, were engaged for 5 months, and the rest is, well, history as they say.  Honestly, my wife is so hot that waiting any longer to get married would have been extremely disastrous for me, and I would have ended up repenting and asking her to forgive me for my human-man-sin-nature-sex-drive.  [...]

Kacie Fredrickson had the ring by October — a stunning, white-gold number that dazzles on her finger.

She had the fiance, a perfect gentleman named Ben Mills. All she needed was the wedding, and she had six leisurely months to plan it.

But in the midst of the dress shopping, the venue scouting, the bridesmaid-choosing, a bomb dropped. Fredrickson’s beloved soon-to-be father-in-law, Nevada City resident Jim Mills, had only a few weeks to live.

Jim Mills’ skyrocketing cancer count was a surprise — the 68-year-old had been battling a rare blood and bone marrow cancer for more than a year, but doctors had predicted he could live another two years, even if he stopped chemotherapy.

“It was hard, initially, because we still had hope for his recovery,” Ben Mills said. “That made it more real that he was going in the other direction.”

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It’s that time of year again when gobs and gobs of money are spent appeasing and pacifying the wants and wishes of small children (and 40-something-year-old kids) across the globe. On December the 25^th millions of men, women, boys, and girls throughout the world will receive their yearly injection of that oh-so intoxicating drug called materialism. While I’m all for giving gifts—and receiving them—I would like for us to at least give thought to the sorts of gifts that we are giving to our loved ones this year. [...]

The reality that this video brings to our attention is an alarming one. Shouldn’t it shake us up a bit to hear that two-thirds of the young people who attend church throughout high school are leaving once they move into college? I’d say so. This video maintains that the church has failed the next generation, claiming that the church is in a state of emergency. I probably wouldn’t go so far as to say that we are in a state of emergency—since God still sits on His throne and is still in complete control—but these statistics should bring pause to those of us who are leading churches and cause us to ask ourselves some questions. Are we failing the next generation? Why is it that the youth are falling away from the church when they leave their student ministries? [...]

In 2009 Crossway published a book by Voddie Baucham called What He Must Be…If he wants to marry my daughter. The idea behind this book is to let Christian men know what they must be before they can date, engage, and marry someone’s daughter – written from the father’s perspective.  Baucham sets high but realistic standards for Christian men.  In this blog I want to flip the focus.  That is, I want to set forth a paradigm of what a Christian woman MUST be before a Christian man should date, engage, or marry her.

The first paradigm for what a Christian woman should be can be found in Proverbs 31:10-31.  While women often and rightly look to this text for what they should be, we must remember that this section of Scripture is written directly to men (Proverbs 31:2).  That is, men are to read this section of Scripture and use these verses as lenses by which they view those women they are interested in, or as they decide if they should even have interest in them.  [...]

The most recent TIME cover poses the question, “Who Needs Marriage?”  If you keep up with my column at all then you know much of my writing and energy is placed around thinking through this issue with our generation.  With this being such a big issue, I knew I had to write something on this piece through lens of our generation.  You can read my positions on marriage HERE and HERE, and why you are at it you can read our views of cohabitation outside of marriage HERE and HERE.  Al Mohler, one of our heroes, has also written a sagacious article on this topic HERE.

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