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On September 2, 2014 By In Family and Children

The Right Way to Promote Fruitfulness in the Church

Scylla and Charybdis: Legalism and Antinomianism

Scylla and Charybdis: Legalism and Antinomianism

Is there a simple way to talk about child bearing that is robust enough to move the church in the biblical direction of “fruitfulness,” but which also takes into account the deeply sensitive areas of life that hide inside the soul of each couple in our body? I believe there is. I want to direct any curious readers to glance at the end of the post; that is where my 2 suggested rules are found.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

What is really being looked for is the right path between the one error of legalism, and the other error of antinomianism. Legalism is making up rules that God has not made. Antinomianism is pretending he hasn’t spoken when he has indeed. And viewing the question about promoting fruitfulness in the church through this filter helps us to come to some simple but powerful answers.

Because the Bible really does send us the message of wishing for many children in the church, but the life of the church really does contain many exceptional situations that would give us pause from each man pressing his neighbor and his brother with inquisition over why they have less children than he has in mind as godly, therefore we need to take into account what God has said and what he hasn’t.

What the Bible Does Say

Let’s quickly get the sense of pleasure the Lord has poured into his words about the expansion of Christian families:

Humanity, back when humanity as a whole was also the church as a whole, was told explicitly this commission:

“And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…”” (Genesis 1.28)

We do have it on good authority (from the wisdom of Solomon) that God blesses families that seek to expand with childbirth:

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!” (Ps 127.3-5)

We do hear a general expectation that faithfulness is turned by God into growing families:

“1 Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,
who walks in his ways!…
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
4 Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the Lord.” (Ps 128.1-4)

So it isn’t imaginary. But we must also keep in mind what the Bible doesn’t say, and what it does say about difficulties in this process.

What the Bible Doesn’t Say

  • The Bible doesn’t tell us an ideal number of children.
  • The Bible doesn’t forbid birth control, per se.

I am not giving verse references for these, since the Bible doesn’t command them. But we should take note.

What Else the Bible Says

Here is some other significant information to making a pastorally wise decision about how the topic is handled in church.

Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Samson’s mother (the wife of Manoah), Hannah, and Elizabeth all had something in common: They were godly and barren at the same time.

So the Bible’s generalized blessing about bearing fruit is not a categorical assertion that godliness begets large families. The Author (God) of the text is quite aware that women endure the pain of singleness, the pain of barrenness, and also in many of these cases the stigma and shame that comes with it. The Bible does not cast any shame from the Lord over these women who have been made to go without, rather it is the Lord’s compassion that hearkens to them in their prayers, and the prayers of their loving husbands.

  • Gen 16.17 The Lord blessed Sarah.
  • Gen 25.21 The Lord granted Isaac’s prayer for his wife.
  • Gen 30.22 The Lord remembered Rachel, and God listened to her.
  • Judges 13.3 The Angel of the Lord appeared to the wife of Manoah and spoke to her.
  • 1 Sam 1.19 The Lord remembered Hannah.
  • Luke 1.13 An angel appeared to Zechariah, and told him his prayer for Elizabeth had been heard.

But God Doesn’t Always Grant These Requests

Similar to Hannah who spent time at the temple asking to have a child, we hear about a prophetess in Jesus day, a woman named Anna (which is exactly the same name as Hannah), who had been married only seven years before she was widowed, and then had lived to eighty-four years old still unmarried. She was devoted to temple life, and the Lord heard her prayers as well, but the answer of provision had been to give her the temple, and the answer of new children for her had been to let her live to see the dedication of baby Jesus, come to save his people from their sins.

So What Overall Have We Found About God’s Word and Childbearing?

  • God does want to expand his image and glory in the world through the fruitfulness of children coming out of Godly marriages.
  • We can expect this to be a normative quality to the life of faithful churches, but this is far from saying it will happen to all godly church members.
  • We can know along with scripture that many difficulties and challenges lie beneath the public surface of marriages in our midst.

THE REALLY NEEDED CAUTION

I think one more very efficient wise word is to be added in before we make a simple conclusion. Similar to the question in Romans of eating meat purchased in idol temples, the above findings would make us want to want the church to have fruitfulness, but might also make us cautious about messing with the conscience or the private motivations of other church members. So here is that biblical wise word to individual Christians:

“Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls,” (Romans 14.4).

The Conclusion

My conclusion in two rules (yes rules):

Rule #1: The church must love fruitfulness.

The church as a whole should have a public attitude of desiring children, of loving and encouraging children, of not speaking negatively of childbearing, and not complaining about their presence in worship. It must be okay in worship to preach about multiplication. It must be okay in conversation to rejoice that someone is pregnant. It must be okay to rejoice with adoptions. This will challenge many, many couples to open themselves to God’s blessing. Mere inconvenience or a preference for the good life is always trumped by the prime directive in Genesis 1.28 given for the glory of God. This is good for all of us.

Rule #2: The individual must not judge his neighbor about fruitfulness.

The church should preach that we need to let people be free to have their ups and downs without being hounded by nagging do-gooders trying to stir up the fertility in the next pew. This doesn’t mean a good friend could not encourage a person he is close to about biblical fruitfulness. We are free to confront a brother about a truly known sin, but in this area it requires being privy to a lot of information that average pew neighbors don’t have about each other. We might run into a rare time to put a finger on Genesis 1.28, but we cannot go home with simple ideas about how other members are faithful or not in the private of their lives, just because they look more like Jacob and Rachel than like Jacob and Leah.

Remember that people in your church have gone through much without sharing it all publicly, and many have lived much life before joining your flock. Men have had testicular cancers. Women have been damaged by abortions. People have surgeries, and medicines, and sometimes deep psychological problems they only barely keep at bay, problems which may even have come from receiving abuse as a child.

Rule 1 guards against antinomianism. God has spoken. Children are an inheritance and a reward.

Rule 2 guards against legalism. God is judge. Children shouldn’t be a whip for casual use on other Christians.

If God is indeed the one who opens the womb, then pray to him that he be the one to pour out multiplication on the images of God in the garden of your church. And pray that God would give us all self-control in the way we speak, and wisdom in seeing the serious needs of all the families and couples in our midst.

The straightest, safest path is never denying what God has said, and never demanding what God has not.<>оценка рейтинга а

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On August 19, 2014 By In Culture, Family and Children

I Call That a Bargain

As a boy I loved to trade baseball and football cards with my friends. We would meet on Saturday morning, go to the local supermarket, buy a few packs, open them up and then decide what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to trade.   Of course, what you could get from your friends always depended on what you had. If I had a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card or Brett Favre special edition then I could get something in return. But if all I had was a 15 year veteran who had never really done much then I was stuck.

I was talking to a friend recently and we were discussing how we treat our wives and God and it became clear that even as grown men we still like to trade. But now instead of trading cards we are trading good deeds for good deeds. I will do this for you, if you will do this for me.  We give so we can get.  We bargain. The more I thought about this the uglier it became. I realized that as Christians we often approach life like we are trading cards (or whatever girls traded when they were young).  Here are some ways we do this.

 Parenting

I never traded a card if I did not think I was getting something better in return.  Parents adopt this same mindset. They do not give for the sake of the child, but for the sake of the parent. This can work a thousand ways, but here are some examples. I bought you those clothes so now you must show me respect.  I spent time playing a game with you, so now you should happily do your chores. I spent my time and money to educate you, so now you must get a job that I approve of.  We can do this with spanking as well. Spanking can become a way of getting from the child instead of giving to the child. We are trading some swats for what we want. Now all of these things, buying clothes, playing games, etc. are good things and we should do them. But there is often a spirit behind them that does not reflect the love of God towards us. The things we do become hooks in our child to bind them to us instead of training for our child to be free to follow God. The parents do not spend their life giving. They spend their life trading.

 Marriage

Spouses do the same thing in marriage.  The wife cooks all day and thinks her husband should now be nice to her because of her labor in the kitchen. The husband treats his wife to a nice dinner on Friday night so he can watch football on Sunday afternoon.  The wife submits to her husband in one easy area so she won’t have to in another more difficult area.  The husband is kind in public so he can be a jerk in private.  The possibilities are endless. Just like the parents the spouses here are trading, not giving.

Our Walk with God

And of course, we can do this with God as well. We barter with God. God if I pray every day then I expect my life to be easier.  If I show up at church every week then I won’t get fired or fall into financial ruin. If I clean up my life then you will bring me a wife/husband. If I read my Bible every day then I will not get cancer or my child won’t die in a car wreck. If I preach faithfully then my church will grow. If I start obeying here then I expect you to bless me over there. And on and on it goes. We are trading with God. We are not giving. We are treating God like a vending machine where if we put in so much time or obedience then he will dispense blessings.

One final point here: these trades are usually unspoken.  We don’t say to neighbor, “I play ball with my son so he will do his chores.”  Or “I am nice to my wife so she will let me buy that gun I want.”  The words are rarely spoken, but that doesn’t mean the trade is not happening.

 Dangers with this Mindset

First, we begin to look at people based on what they can give us. You don’t trade with people who have nothing to offer.  Unless the person has something worth trading they are of little value to us. At best we put up with them and at worse we totally reject them. We stop being generous. We don’t give freely whether the person can return it to us or not. 

Second, we are frequently disappointed when God, our children, or our spouses do not deliver on their part of the trade.  People who live this way are bitter because they thought they were trading for $50.00 rookie card and got a 2 cent card instead.

Third, we can assume that others are treating us the same way.  When someone is kind to us, we assume they are trading with us, not giving to us. So we try to give back to them in some way.  This cuts out true thanksgiving. True thanksgiving comes when something is given, not when something is traded for.

Fourth, our children will learn to function this way. They will drink from our well and learn to be kind to those from whom they can get something in return.

Fifth, we misunderstand God’s grace in our lives. If we think that God is in the bartering business we are blind to our own sinfulness and God’s goodness to us. God was not kind to us because of what we could give back to him.  We can offer him nothing that he does not already have. It is not a minor problem to misunderstand God’s free grace. 

Sixth, we obscure God’s grace to those around us. God’s grace is freely given. But if we treat others as bargaining tools to get what we want then we twist his grace. Our offer of free grace loses its potency. Then our evangelism falls short because we are no longer heralds of the good news, but rather we  are heralds of a flea-market god who will bargain with you for his great salvation. 

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On August 4, 2014 By In Family and Children, Interviews

Interview with Matt Bianco at Trinity Talk: “My Letters to My Sons”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (9.4MB)

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From “Letters to My Sons:”

“Once upon a time, fathers had “the talk” with their sons. They used to say it was the talk about “the birds and the bees.” As a young man, I had that talk, not with my father, but with my godfather, John. I still remember it, mostly because I was fascinated by his willingness to tell me “adult” stuff.  Some fathers still have this talk, but it has become increasingly rare and increasingly more difficult to do. For many it seems unnecessary because of all the things our sons are learning in school and from pop culture. Fathers don’t need to talk to sons about changes in their bodies because someone else already has. And fathers can’t talk to sons about the birds and bees part because they don’t have the technical “body changing” stuff to break the ice anymore.  There is more to the talk, though, than just the information that is passed between father and son; the talk itself has a formative impact on the young man.”

In Letters to My Sons, M. G. Bianco writes real letters to his real sons on a variety of topics from love, hate, marriage, adultery, and interpersonal relationships. His letters seek to encourage his sons, and now other fathers and men to understand the basis and nature of relationships so that both parties to the relationship can be fully human.

M. G. Bianco is married to his altogether lovely high school sweetheart, Patty. They have three kids they homeschool together, and he works as the Director of Education for Classical Conversations. Is he a modern day C. S. Lewis? No. But he really enjoys reading him.

Purchase Kindle or Paperback editions of “Letters to My Sons: A Humane Vision for Human Relationships” by Matt Bianco<>rd-teamреклама от яндекс

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On July 16, 2014 By In Family and Children

Practicing Hospitality

Guest Post by Rev. Gregg Strawbridge

Just a little after the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, Flavius Claudius Julianus, was born in 332. He became infamous: Julian the Apostate. He tried to reinstate paganism despite the fact that he was the last of the Constantian emperors of Rome. Augustine reports how Julian the Apostate (the Roman emperor, 361-363) would not permit masters of rhetoric and grammar to teach Christians. Why? Because the liberal arts were “conducive to the acquisition of argumentative and persuasive power” (City of God, 18). Philip Schaff, wrote of this episode in Church history:

“Julian would thus deny Christian youth the advantages of education, and compel them either to sink in ignorance and barbarism or to imbibe with the study of the classics in the heathen schools of the principles of idolatry. . . Hence he hated especially the learned church teachers, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen, Apollinaris of Laodicea, who applied the classical culture to the refutation of heathenism and the defence of Christianity…” (Church History, Vol. 3, pp. 53-54).

While he suppressed Christians through these educational policies for a time, there was something that he could not suppress: the hospitality of Christians. In Julian’s Letter “To Arsacius, High-priest of Galatia,” he complained against Christians, “the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well,” and “it is their benevolence to strangers” that keeps Hellenistic religion from greater acceptance.

The concept of hospitality is woven into the fabric on the gospel. The Father sent Jesus as the bread of life for the world. He showed the ultimate kindness to those at enmity with Him (Rom. 5:8). Though the world rejected Him at first, by His grace, He efficaciously called us to Himself and continually serves us. The terms translated in the NT strongly convey the concept: Philoxenia literally means, love for strangers or foreigners. Hospitality is kindness to strangers (Rom. 12:13, 1 Pet. 4:9). Another term, Xenodocheo (a verb) means literally to “lodge strangers” (1Tim. 5:10). Jesus taught this in Luke 14:12–14:

“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

When we welcome others, strangers, foreigners, those that are different, this approaches the idea of hospitality. Many times, we have our friends over, whom we feel comfortable with and know that they will repay the kindness. This may be good to do, but it misses the mark of the biblical commands of hospitality. Hospitality takes us beyond our comforts into those awkward and somewhat fearful places of risking ourselves and our goods, without knowing or caring about a return. When we truly show hospitality, there is sometimes an occasion for complaining, e.g., since we did not get any return on our investment. This is why Peter adds a second exhortation to being hospitable: “Be hospitable to one another without complaint” (1 Pet. 4:9). Why would he have to say this? Because welcoming and serving those you know least and who are not your close and comfortable friends sometimes creates the occasion of guests not responding graciously.

If you knew your next guests would not be very gracious, would not be very grateful, and would even do some damage to your property (e.g., one of the kids break a dish), would you still serve them? The biblical answer is that true hospitality does not look for reward or repayment here or now. It acts on the basis of grace already received and gives without the need for human repayment. In this way the gospel can be preached through casseroles and cupcakes, through burgers, brats, and blueberries, when these are freely and graciously given.

I think once we have a right mind about hospitality (stranger love based on grace and looking for no repayment), then we must apply this to our own church circumstances. Hospitality is a means of loving people to Christ and to the means of grace in your church. It provides a means of general ministry for you and your family. It provides opportunities with visiting missionaries, pastors, or Christian workers.

Let Me Get Specific

  • Schedule it. Set a regular time to reach out to those you don’t know well.
  • Set a goal: Every family in the church over a set time period, starting with those least known to you.
  • Write it down: Make a list of people who may need to be encouraged by your service.
  • Practice kindness:
    • “Some folks make you feel at home. Others make you wish you were.” Arnold H. Glasow.
    • Learn to ask meaningful questions; make the conversation about your guests; seek to understand their spiritual journey; focus on knowing Christ, not secondary matters; don’t be negative; look for gifts and graces in guest’s lives; ask for matters about which you can pray and then pray.
    • Practice serving and hosting in peace: Proverbs 15:17 – “Better is a dish of vegetables where love is than a fattened ox served with hatred.” Proverbs 17:1 – “Better is a dry morsel and quietness with it than a house full of feasting with strife.”
  • Volunteer to house missionaries or traveling servants of the Lord.

Hospitality by hosting families for a meal can be a wonderful service. Unfortunately, we sometimes fall into the pattern of hosting those who least need it. One of the challenges in the Church today is the tendency for divisions along social and/or economic lines. Some perceive themselves as “normal” and view others not like them as “fringe.” There are those that have less means and space. They may feel intimidated by others and fear that what they could offer is “not good enough” for another family.

Epiphany in the kitchen. Some years ago an acquaintance invited our family to a meal along with another family, whom we also did not know very well. There was a slight amount of concern on my part: will this be enjoyable, awkward, stressful, peaceful? As soon as we arrived, we were put to work cutting up vegetables, sautéing mushrooms, peeling shrimp, filling up water glasses. We did not know these people very well and very soon we were conversing freely in the kitchen. The meal was great, but I hardly remember it. What I do remember is that the experience of simple preparations drew me into their lives.

Here’s a way to help overcome those self-made (imagined) obstacles. Bring all kinds of people in to share at your table and have them help in preparing the food. There is a place for simply serving others without their co-laboring. But I think some shared preparation opens up several possibilities to help overcome that awkwardness of a first invitation, of not knowing a person well, especially they are not at your exact socio-economic place.

  • Preparation together changes the conversation to what is naturally before you and eases you into other conversation.
  • Working together in the kitchen breaks down those imagined barriers.
  • Providing guests with a needed service (however small) provides a way for them to feel even greater acceptance.

Consider some meals that work well with shared preparation:

  • Salad – Most people can cut up vegetables (and other toppings). Some can mix herbs, oil and vinegar for homemade dressing. This can be a full meal or just the first course of a meal. We often do this by preparing some steak and/or salmon ahead of time for a chef/steak salad with a side of bread.
  • Homemade pizzas – If you can make a good crust, then great. Otherwise pre-mades are widely available. Have guests cut veggies, mushrooms, sausage, create special sauce (tomato sauce, garlic, olive oil, spices). Serve it in courses starting with a cheese pizza, then a veggie, then a classic italian, then a dessert pizza, etc. Let the guests lead on the selections. Get everyone involved and let everyone choose.
  • Hotpot – This is now my favorite such meal. It is a little like fondue without all the specialized equipment. Hotpot seems to be a pan-Asian meal that varies from region to region. It begins with a broth based soup and is very simple to make. Crock pot a chicken or a duck, strain the fat and bones. Add water and spices. We like ginger and five-spice for a truly Asian taste, but it can be bland to begin. Cook a large bowl of rice and/or rice noodles. Put the pot (on an electric burner) on the table. Let guests cut up veggies, mushrooms, shrimp, scallops, peel eggs (we like quail eggs), thinly sliced beef, tofu, etc. Everyone gets a bowl with rice. The first course is just broth on the rice. Then add an assortment of veggies (guests can select) to the pot and let them cook for a few minutes (keep adding water to it). Serve the second veggie course and notice the change in the broth. For the next course try a different assortment of veggies with mushrooms (in the pot). Then tofu, then seafood, then beef. This meal promotes conversation and a long time at the table. Remarkably, no one left stuffed after about 10 courses!

These kinds of meals provide an opportunity to share in the preparation, as well as show something about the gospel. When we welcome others into the fellowship, we share Christ and build up the Body. Many different ingredients go into the pot, but it becomes one meal. Hospitality within the Body of Christ keeps this in mind. We are not all alike, but we are like Him. We are not the same, but we belong to the same Lord. We are not much separate, but become a mighty army under our one Head, Jesus Christ.

Dr. Gregg Strawbridge is the Pastor of All Saints Church<>поисковое продвижение ов в яндексе

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On June 13, 2014 By In Culture, Family and Children

I’ve Stopped Yelling. Can I Stop Scowling?

by Marc Hays

Over a year ago, I stopped yelling at my children. The urge to vent my displeasure became increasingly distasteful until I could hear myself snap at them just before I did it. Whatever the child had done, whatever infraction had occurred, ceased to kindle my ire like the thought of hearing myself lash out at them. Accompanying this conviction, my sin decreased. Go figure. It is encouraging to no end for a man to see that the deeds of his flesh can be mortified as Scripture says they must and for a man, alive in Christ, to experience the Holy Spirit at work, bearing good fruit on formerly dead limbs.

As my desire to shout the fear of God into my children waned, I found an increasing zeal to see my children flourish. Replacing the idle threats about their doom, should they fail to mend their ways, was an increase in instruction concerning righteousness and sin; wisdom and foolishness; repentance and forgiveness. I yell less, if at all, which is good, and instruct more, which is better still, but as with most virtues, too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.

I’ve found that my new virtue has become my new vice, for at some point a father’s instruction becomes a father’s lecture, which at yet another point becomes a father’s tongue-lashing. I am quick with my mouth and hasty in my heart, therefore my words can in no way be described as “few.” Quick with my mouth—speaking before thinking, and hasty in my heart—not patient enough to raise them over a lifetime, wanting to accomplish it all at once. As I lecture, and lecture, and lecture some more, I can see that they go from being instructed, to being irritated, to being bored—anxious to get back to the life that comes at the end of my soliloquy.

If my verbal instruction merely waxed long, there would be less of a problem than there actually is, because along with this extended scolding comes an explicit scowling. My voice is calmer than it once was; I’ve learned to keep the decibels down, which prevents the veins in my neck from popping out as far, but I know that my face tells the story of a dad who is not remembering his own sin at that moment, a dad who is not treating his children the way he wants to be treated, a dad who is not loving his neighbor as himself.

If Jesus is King over every square inch of creation, which He is, then wouldn’t that include every square inch of my face as well? Can I be serious about sin without scowling about it? Can I handle my children’s sin biblically without acting like they’re the first ones to ever do it? Does it help for me to act like I’m surprised that they don’t do everything right all the time, or that they committed this particular household crime again?

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not behave itself unseemly. It is not rude.

God is patient. God is kind. He does not behave himself unseemly. He is not rude.

When it comes to raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, are we patient? Are we kind? In disciplining our children, do we behave ourselves in a way that would be embarrassing for anyone else to see? That would be unseemly. Even if we’ve stopped yelling, do we berate them with our words? That would be rude.

Children are to respect and obey their parents; parents are to respect and disciple their children. To put it technically, the economic relationship is different, but the ontological relationship is the same. Parents must correct; parents must instruct. Children must take heed; children must amend their ways. This economic reality is one of complementary difference, but ontologically—in our being—we are exactly the same as our children. We are no more image-bearers of the triune God than they are. We are exactly the same in our being—identical.

It is this identity that makes the whole parenting thing work. Can a wolf raise a Mowgli? Probably. Can a wolf identify with a Mowgli? Barely. Can we identify with our children’s struggles and temptations? Yes, indeed. Can we long for their sanctification as we long for our own? Definitely. Can we stop lecturing long enough to think about how we would like to be treated? Can we remember how it feels to be scolded so that we keep our scolding at a minimum and our patient, kind instruction at a maximum? In Christ, empowered by His Holy Spirit, we can, and we must.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not behave itself unseemly. It is not rude.<>как продвигать недвижимости

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On May 14, 2014 By In Family and Children

“The Good News About Marriage”

Guest Post by Ben Rossell

“Half of our marriages end in divorce.” No, they do not! The real numbers are in and it seems that little more than half of half end in divorce.

As a homeschool dad, I often refer to the “smell test” when reviewing math assignments with my sons.  ‘Okay, if you multiply a big number by another big number, the answer is not going to be a small number, right?’

Well, perhaps we can do the same here.  How many married people do you know?  Okay, now how many divorced?  This is a difficult thing to get our minds around, but try.  Think about the sheer staggering number of married adults you know.  It is far easier to list the unmarried adults than the married.  Now think about the divorces.  Do they even begin to approach half?

Jeff and Shaunti Feldhahn are Christian marriage counselors, popular conference speakers, and family enrichment authors.  This Month Shaunti released The Good News About Marriage reporting the findings of an 8-year research project reviewing the statistical data on marriage and divorce in America.  Her conclusions are shattering many of our most common conjugal clichés.

Among her more noteworthy findings were:

 

–          The divorce rate in America has never even been close to half.  While the actual divorce rate is impossible to establish, [the Census Bureau stopped trying in 1996] realistic estimates put the societal divorce rate as low as 27% with almost every source reporting a decline in divorces for the last 30 years!

 

–          College-educated couples, married after their mid 20s, who stay together for their first 5 years have a general divorce rate of only 5-10%.

 

–          Almost 80% of married couples describe themselves as “happily married”.

 

–          A statistical majority of those who respond that they are “unhappy” or “miserable” in their marriages, when willing to hang in there, rate their marriages as “happy” when surveyed 5 years later.

 

–          Only around 33% of remarriages end in divorce, rather than the often quoted 60-75% figure.

 

–          The vast majority of marital problems stem from accumulated minor offenses.  Small, simple changes produce significant and lasting improvements for the majority of married couples in counseling.

 

–          Christian couples who attend church weekly have a divorce rate 25-50% lower than the average.

After hearing these results, one reviewer commented, “Wow!  You’re like the Snopes of marriage!”

Well, besides being interesting, does any of this matter?

The Feldhahns insist that these things matter a great deal and that falsely inflated divorce statistics have been deeply detrimental to our national morality.  If young people take for granted that they have a coin-toss-chance of succeeding in marriage, they will be much more prone to accept divorce as an inevitable outcome.  They will be more tempted to cohabitate rather than marry.  And they will be discouraged from persevering and fighting for their marriages.  Statistics of defeat rob us of hope.  And as any counselor can tell you, hope is the single most important factor in making a marriage work.

Ben Rossell is the Senior Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Valparaiso, Fl.<>уникальность контентасоздание и раскрутка интернет магазина

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On May 13, 2014 By In Family and Children

Should Christians Date Online?

Our friend (and one of the fabulous Baylor history Ph.D. students) Paul Putz has  a fascinating piece over at the Religion and Politics blog on the deep history of Christian matchmaking in America. After discussing the intriguing “matrimonial bureau” of Omaha pastor Charles Savidge in the early 20th century, Putz reflects on the contemporary relevance and challenges of online dating sites such as ChristianMingle. Putz says that

Given the reality of our increasingly online, increasingly digital world, Christian niche dating sites serve as an easily identifiable online companion to more traditional offline means used by evangelicals to find a spouse. They allow evangelicals to adopt the broader cultural turn towards individualism in the selection of romantic partners while still remaining true to conservative evangelical insistence on intrafaith marriage. “We want Christians to marry Christians,” Moorcroft said. “We don’t want Christians to marry nominal Christians or nonbelievers at all.” And once their customers are married, Christian dating sites claim to provide help on another account: they supposedly facilitate more compatible matches, which, according toChristianCafe.com’s Fred Moesker, will help “to decrease divorce rates.” Moesker’s claim may seem dubious, but it does have at least the modest support of initial research from John T. Cacioppo and others for the National Academy of the Sciences. They conducted a recent study showing that marriages that began online were slightly less likely to end in divorce and were “associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction” than marriages that began offline.

Of course, not all evangelicals view Christian online dating in a positive light. In 2011, Christianity Today ran an opinion roundtable with the headline, “Is Online Dating for Christians?” Answers ranged from “With Gusto!” to “With Caution” to “No; Trust God.” More recently, Jonathan Merritt, a senior columnist at Religion News Service, wondered if online dating websites actually served to undermine Christian values, concerns that were echoed from another corner of the evangelical world by the Gospel Coalition. For wary evangelicals, the turn to online matchmaking could carry the potential for further detachment from involvement in local church bodies at a time when more and more Americans are willing to shun affiliation with formal religious organizations. 

I am no Luddite about technology, or about newfangled ways to connect with people. For full disclosure, I met my wonderful wife through common friends, not through the internet, but we were a several-hour drive away from one another when we started courting, and e-mail did play an important role in starting our relationship. Therefore I can fully appreciate circumstances which warrant looking outside one’s own town, and one’s own congregation, for a good match, and using technology to do so.

But there may well be a price to pay for a highly individualized, digital method of dating. Yes, online dating can help singles find “like-minded” believers more readily, and evangelicals should unapologetically affirm that marrying a spouse who’s within the evangelical (or at least orthodox Christian) fold is a must. But I wonder if our approach to dating in evangelical circles implies that if you can just find the right match, wedded bliss will follow, with no thought toward the struggles or suffering that inevitably come via changing circumstances, family problems, or the garden-variety consequences of sin. Spiritual compatibility matters, but a focus on compatibility can also obscure the difficulties and gracious compromises that any healthy marriage will pass through.

The right balance, for those not called to singleness and celibacy, is to look for someone of spiritual compatibility, but to understand from the start that this is someone with whom you will share hardship and struggles as much as the much-advertised (literally) delights of Christian marriage. Instead of the quest for Mr. or Ms. Perfect, those called to marriage should pursue someone of shared values regarding family and church, but realize that for all its goodness, even the best Christian marriage only unites two sinners who are at some incomplete stage of sanctification. No matter how perfect the match, this is going to require some work.

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Follow @ThomasSKidd, {Originally published at Patheos}

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On May 8, 2014 By In Culture, Family and Children, Pro-Life

Abortion Isn’t Scary? Please, Cut to Camera Two

An amateur video titled “Emily’s abortion” has gone viral on the internet this week, chronicling the experience of a young mother undergoing an abortion procedure. In the video, Emily Letts explains her intentions:

“I wanted to show it wasn’t scary — and that there is such a thing as a positive abortion story.”

It should be noted that we never see any part of the actual procedure. The camera is focused solely on Letts’ face, showing her talking, laughing, and humming. It’s as if nothing horrific is happening at all. When the abortion is over, she says, “Cool,” and exits the room. Yes, it is true, abortion is no scarier than a yearly pap test – at least for the mother. (more…)

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On May 8, 2014 By In Family and Children, Theology

Educating Royalty: Teaching Our Children to Be Kingdom Heirs—not Just Laborers in the Marketplace

Guest Post by Dr. Roy A. Atwood

“Who are you?” a university student once asked me after class many years ago.

Odd question, I thought. I’d handled countless student questions, but this one caught me unprepared.

“Uh . . . I’m a professor,” I answered weakly.

“No!” he shot back. “I don’t mean what do you do, but who are you?”

His question unsettled me. Like most North Americans, I’d been carefully, though not intentionally, catechized since a lad at my parents’ side that the first and most important question we ask adults at first meeting (after getting their name) is, “What do you do?”

I’d learned that catechism lesson well, repeating it literally hundreds of times in all kinds of social settings over the years. But that catechism had left me quite unprepared to answer this more fundamental question about my personal identity separate from my place in the market. That grieved me because, as a Christian, I had been better versed in the catechism of secular pragmatism than in Lord’s Days 12 and 13 or the Scriptures. And I knew I wasn’t the only one.

The Answer that Changes Everything

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ . . . .

—Romans 8:16-17a

As I have reflected on that encounter over the years, I’ve realized that the biblical and covenantal answer to the question, “Who are you?” is a glorious one that stands in stark contrast to the secular myth that our employment or “career” defines us. Of course, our work and callings as Christians in the marketplace are important. Providing for our families is a great privilege and responsibility. But the priority of work in both our lives and the education of our children is almost certainly misplaced and overemphasized today in Reformed circles.

Our Calvinistic work ethic and sense of vocation—serving the Lord in all things—are a glorious heritage, but in our 21st century context, they have become largely indistinguishable from the middle class idolatry common among of our unbelieving neighbors (i.e., having “another object in which men place their trust” [Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 95]). In fact, over 30+ years of university teaching, evenly divided between secular universities and Christian colleges, I can testify that the one question all parents—Christian and non-Christian alike—ask about higher education is, “What kind of job can my kid get when he/she graduates?” Intended or not, that question reveals deep worldview priorities. And such a question is certainly not the fruit of careful, prayerful parental reflection on what it means to educate covenant children as heirs of Christ who will seek first the kingdom.

By contrast, the Scriptures never identify God’s covenant children as people with jobs who happen to hold to a particular religious tradition. Instead, the Bible repeatedly calls us heirs of a kingdom, adopted sons and daughters of the King of the universe. We are not just Christians who happen to have various jobs or work to do. We are royalty (Rom. 8:14-17, Eph. 1:3-6, I Pet. 2:9). We will reign over all creatures with Christ eternally (Heid. Cat., Q. 32). We are the adopted children of God and fellow heirs with Jesus, with all the privileges of the sons of God (Luke 2:11, Acts 10:36, I Tim. 6:15, Rev. 19:16; Heid. Cat., Q. 34). We are princes and princesses of the King of kings!  We are royal heirs! And that answer to the question, “Who are you?”—changes everything.

Like young Prince George, the child heir to the throne of England and the United Kingdom, a day mustn’t pass that we wonder who we are, why we are being educated, and what we are being prepared to be and to do. We are heirs to a throne and a Kingdom far greater and more glorious than the one in England. The House of Windsor pales in comparison to Jesus’s realm and our divine inheritance! How much more, then, should we, who are heirs of the King of kings and Lord of lords, prepare ourselves and our children to be thoroughly and faithfully educated in everything it means to be a son and daughter of the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord of the Universe. Thoroughly and faithfully educated in everything it means to be royalty.

This is no time for the wicked nonsense about “sowing wild oats” or setting a low bar of expectations for our children. That is the rebellious spirit of prodigals who forget who they (and their children) really are. Those who are in line to take their places in Christ’s kingdom as princes and princesses must expect more of themselves and of their children. “To whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48).  Because we are royalty in Christ, God has king-sized expectations and blessings in store for us and our children—if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The entire book of Proverbs is Solomon’s instruction to his royal heirs “to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth—let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles” (Prov. 1:2-6). Such an education must provide much more than an awareness of fragmented facts or specialized work skills for a place in the job market. Again, that’s not to say that facts and skills are not important. Nor is it to say that we should suddenly trade pragmatic, nose-to-the-grindstone sweat of our brows for pious sounding spiritual platitudes.

The issues are (1) where does the education of Christ’s royal heirs fit in our list of priorities and (2) what should that education look like.

Priorities: We are Royalty. So Start Acting Like It.

Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the instruction of the Lord, nor be weary when corrected by him. For the Lord instructs the one he loves, and corrects every son whom he receives.” It is for instruction   that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.

—Hebrews 12:5-7

 

Those who are fellow heirs in Christ know that His regal ways are not the power-grabbing, lording-it-over-others, self-seeking ways of the ungodly. Far from it. Christ ascended to His Father’s throne only after sacrificing everything for His people and His creation. He gave himself away. His royal way is the way of selfless love and sacrifice. He died that we might die to sin and death. He lives that we might live in glory forever. Sacrificial service for the sake of the kingdom is the mark of true kingship, true royalty. It characterizes our Lord Christ. And it must characterize our Lord’s true heirs in their lives and in their education.

As Christ’s royal heirs, we dare not be content to prepare ourselves or our children merely to be cogs in the economic machinery of our secular consumer culture. Even the ancients understood that slaves are only trained to perform tasks. They have no rights of inheritance, no deeper identity. A slave’s identity is his work. But free citizens and royalty, who will dedicate themselves to the advance of the kingdom, must be educated deeply for the day when their royal leadership and service is expected. Similarly, we are called to a higher purpose and bear greater responsibility for how we live and prepare our children for their royal callings.

Unfortunately, we have, as the author of Hebrews suggests, forgotten the divine exhortation to educate our children in the nurture and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4, Heb. 12:5ff). We have forgotten in part because we have forgotten who we are.

A Royal Education: Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning.

This memory lapse is most evident in how we educate our children today. Education, even that which purports to be Christian, is now often devoted primarily to the goal of producing good little workers for the secular labor force, efficient widgets for our economy’s production line, and little more.

That falls far short of the biblical expectation that Christian children be saturated in the instruction of the Lord and grow up knowing what it means to be royal heirs of Christ the King. An education bearing the name of the King ought, at the least, to offer His royal heirs . . .

  • A comprehensive and integrative understanding of God’s world and of how all things cohere in the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:4-11). Such an education will give children the “big picture” of how all things, all spheres of creation, are interrelated in the glory of their Creator.The university itself was a Christian invention in the Middle Ages (the earliest established between A.D. 1100 and 1200), designed to give students an integrated Christian vision and foundation for all future learning. That was the original purpose of the classical liberal arts (meaning, the arts of a free citizen). For almost a millennium, Christian universities taught the classical liberal arts or the so-called Trivium and Quadrivium:
    • The Trivium, or the Three Ways, stressed the good structure of language (Grammar), the way to discern truth (Logic), and how to express truth beautifully (Rhetoric)—all to encourage a student’s life-long love of goodness, truth, and beauty in words and language, as typified by The Word Himself in John 1:1-14.
    • The Quadrivium, or the Four Ways, encouraged a life-long love of goodness, truth, and beauty in the use of numbers (Arithmetic), numbers in space (Geometry), numbers in time (Music or Harmony), and numbers in space and time (Astronomy), revealing the unity and diversity of creation and of our Triune Creator Himself (Deut. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one,” and Matt. 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”).
    • Together, the Trivium and Quadrivium, the original seven liberal arts, offered students essential insights into the harmony and wholeness of God’s diverse world and into the interrelated truth, goodness and beauty of its Triune Creator. They didn’t give students just the facts or skills for a job, but the tools of lifelong learning from a Christian perspective.

Unfortunately, today’s arbitrarily selected smorgasbord of academic subjects and randomly structured university curricula, following the modern analytic, scientific tradition, tend to do the opposite: they offer fragmented bits of information with no principle of coherence or relationship. But in God’s economy, the whole is always more than the sum of its parts. An education that does not teach us how to see the wholeness of God’s creation, and to equip us to understand how all things cohere in Christ, inevitably misses the big picture about creation and creation’s God. It is a partial, incomplete, distorted education.

Curiously, specialization at the undergraduate level was virtually unknown in North America prior to the late 19th century. University students did not “major” in a narrow academic disciplines or vocational specializations prior to 1879. They couldn’t. “Majors” simply didn’t exist before then. Instead, all undergraduates received a classical, integrated liberal arts foundation. The universities gave them essential tools for learning that applied to all their various callings as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, neighbors, citizens, providers, voters, buyers and sellers in the marketplace, and parishioners. Their work skills and the job training needed to provide for their families were developed outside the classroom in on-site training or apprenticeships done in the context where the work was actually being done. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Kuyper, C.S. Lewis—all the greatest leaders in our Christian tradition—were so classically educated in the traditional, integrative liberal arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium and practically trained.

But pragmatists of the late 19th and early 20th century sold their Christian academic birthright for a mess of modernist career pottage. They turned schools into egalitarian job training camps for the workers of the world and abandoned the Christian pursuit of wisdom and knowledge in the Lord. The schools dumbed down and the church has grown steadily weaker ever since.

Reversing that trend will require that the King’s royal heirs expect . . .

  • Truly godly and wise teacher-mentors (Luke 6:40).  According to Jesus, the teacher—not the curriculum, not the lesson plan, not the technology, not the facilities, not the accreditation, not the tuition rate—is the single most important factor in a child’s education. “A student, when mature, will be like his teacher,” Jesus said. All the other bells and whistles may be nice (though they can often be more of a distraction than a help), but the teacher is key.Yet, in my experience, Christian parents often know more about a school’s university admission rates, or a college’s career placement rates, or tuition rates, or financial aid plans, or sports programs than they do about the character and spiritual health of the men and women who will actually be shaping the minds and lives of their children in and out of the classroom. Sadly, many Christian school administrators and boards aren’t much better, giving higher priority to paper credentials and standardized test scores and bricks and mortar than to the character and spiritual integrity of their teachers. Of course, academic expertise and standardized testing have their place. But parents, administrators and school promotional literature often stress most what actually counts least from a Kingdom perspective. And such misguided emphases have the potential to catechize generations of parents and children in what is least in the Kingdom.

    The teacher is so crucial, as Jesus says, because all education is fundamentally personal. That’s because truth itself is personal. Truth is a person. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Truth is not some collection of brute facts or scientifically verifiable propositions. It is a living person. Teachers either faithfully represent or embody that Truth before their students or they don’t. Parents or educators who misunderstand this crucial biblical principle put their children and students at grave risk of misunderstanding the Truth and being catechized in lies and ungodliness. No matter how much parents think their child can be a “good witness” in a secular education environment, that child is not the teacher, but the one being taught. And no matter how mature we imagine our children to be (often overestimating), their “cement is still wet.” They are still students seeking to be taught and led into maturity, readily influenced by others older and more experienced. The question is, who will teach them and lead them into what kind of maturity?

Moreover, those who think that new distance learning technologies will provide a quality education without putting their children at risk under ungodly teachers make a similar mistake. Learning godly knowledge and wisdom is not a data download. A student will be shaped by his or her teacher, no matter who that teacher is, no matter how the instruction is delivered.

Finally, the education of the King’s royal heirs ought also to include . . .

  • The shaping of our desires for the things of the Kingdom

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  . . . For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

—Matthew 6:25, 32-33

Jesus did not say, “Seek first vocational-technical training, and all that kingdom of God and righteousness stuff will be added later.” Yet to hear parents of university-bound students talk today about their educational goals for their children, you’d think he had. The dominant secular vocational paradigm for higher education has influenced us more on these issues than our Christian schools, our catechism classes, and even our churches. For that, we must repent. Our heavenly Father knows everything we need to live and to thrive, and He will provide them for us by His perfect means according to His perfect timing. He tells us explicitly not to stress over the little stuff. Grasping at college majors and career preparation will not add one penny to our bank accounts, put one more meal on the table, or add one more second to our lives that He has not already ordained. So stop majoring in the minors. Instead, major in God’s priorities: Christ’s kingdom and His righteousness.

What our schools and universities must encourage in our covenant children is a deeply held heart-desire for the things of God and of His Kingdom.

As Calvinists who take the sovereignty of God—the crown rights of Christ—seriously, we cannot, must not, train our children merely to be good little widgets in the secular marketplace who also happen to go to church each Lord’s Day. We vowed to raise them for much greater things at their baptisms.

So, “Who are you?”

You are the royal heirs of the King of kings; start acting like it.

Your children are royalty; start treating them like it.

Your children are inheriting a Kingdom; so start educating them for it.

{Originally published at Reformed Perspectives}

Dr. Roy Alden Atwood is the president,  and a founder, of New Saint Andrews  College (www.nsa.edu) in Moscow, Idaho<>google контекстная рекламабыстро продвинуть

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On May 5, 2014 By In Culture, Family and Children

We Told Everyone Gay Marriage Is Perfectly Okay

Remember Gene Robinson? Only a few years ago, he scandalized many by becoming the first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop, and then by marrying his partner.

Welp. Now he’s getting divorced. You can read about it here. He’s sixty-six years old, but apparently the acrimony is too great to continue with the 25-year relationship. Although he wouldn’t say so.

Here’s what he did have to say:

“As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for us — not a decision entered into lightly or without much counseling,” Robinson wrote in a letter. “We ask for your prayers, that the love and care for each other that has characterized our relationship for a quarter century will continue in the difficult days ahead.”

“It is at least a small comfort to me, as a gay rights and marriage equality advocate, to know that like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subject to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples.”

Mr. Robinson continued in this vein of acting like a responsible adult. As we all know, in this day and age we’re all French: we pretend to be blase about our lover’s lover and about our bitter divorce. It’s grown-up to be cool about divorce. Be cool, Gene.

“My belief in marriage is undiminished by the reality of divorcing someone I have loved for a very long time, and will continue to love even as we separate,” Robinson wrote in his column. “Love can endure, even if a marriage cannot.”

Love can endure, even if a marriage cannot. Right. I keep forgetting that love is a feeling, not an action.

It’s not like divorce could by definition mean someone’s not loving someone. That’d be ridiculous.

But that’s not the point here anyway. The reason I’m sharing this is to say that Mr. Robinson is right. Just like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subjected to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples.

This is not Mr. Robinson’s first divorce. He divorced his wife in 1986. He did so “amicably”, for no other reason than that he could no longer be married. And that was fine. He divorced for no sound biblical reason, and was not defrocked.

Remember when you and I told the homosexual community that marriage was sacred? And then we went and got divorced like everyone else did? That’s what made this okay. We declared marriage profane well before anyone started trying to say that marriage could be something besides what it obviously is.

One thing marriage obviously isn’t is unholy. Or convenient. Or bitter. Or selfish. Or temporary.

Once we said it was those things, we were the ones who changed the definition of marriage.

Originally published at Joffre The Giant.<>seo оптимизация веб а

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