Spousal Abuse and the Church

The latest edition of the Mortification of Spin is up and running:

Author and blogger Aimee Byrd joins your regular hosts Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt to talk about a perennial issue throughout the life of the church: abuse. Though Carl and Todd have discussed this issue before, they seek Aimee's wisdom in confronting a more subtle form of abuse that happens more often than it ought within the church. What role should pastors, elders, deacons and their wives play in unveiling marital abuse and reconciling husbands and wives? How can the church better prepare women to deal with these things biblically and theologically?

Bully Pulpit

The latest edition of Mortification of Spin: Bully Pulpit is up and running. You may also want to check out Carl's suggested rating system for listening to MOS.

What has become of marriage in our society? When the rules are as bent as they are now, even something as absurd as "marrying" oneself is no longer seen as laughable as it would have once been, but is praised and even endorsed. Listen to Mortification of Spin: Bully Pulpit and hear Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt discuss the state of marriage, and God's clear words about it in Scripture.

Mortification of Spin

The latest Mortification of Spin is up and running:

Your favorite comedian/theologians, Todd Pruitt and Carl Trueman, team up yet again - this time to answer some important questions about how the church should be run and who should be running it. We'll learn that faithful teaching, a willingness to contend for truth and godly maturity are all important characteristics of a good pastor or elder. But women listeners won't be surprised to learn what Todd and Carl eventually conclude...that the way an elder treats his wife may be the best indicator of his ability to lead well.

The Pastor as Exhibitionist

From a timely post by Phil Johnson:

The notion that evangelicals are naïve and squeamish about sex and don't discuss it openly enough is a myth. Evangelical sex manuals have been all the rage as long as I have been a believer, going back to the early 1970s. You had Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman in 1972, which generated tons of evangelical sex-talk. (Marabel was known for—among other things—a kinky suggestion involving the use of Saran Wrap as a dressing gown.) You had Ed Wheat's book Intended for Pleasure: Sex Technique and Sexual Fulfillment just five years later. It has sold multiple millions of copies. Even Tim Lahaye wrote a surprisingly candid sex manual, The Act of Marriage in the mid-1970s. Having sold more than two and a half million copies, that book is still in print.

Yet evangelicals have been complaining for decades that we don't talk enough or hear enough teaching about sex. From the point of view of many non-evangelicals, sex is about the only thing evangelicals have demonstrated a serious and sustained interest in for the past 40 years. As early as 1977, Martin Marty, a liberal religious scholar, referred to the trend as "Fundies in their Undies."

So the premise that evangelical churches are in desperate need of more and more explicit instruction on sex techniques is a risible falsehood.

But evangelical leaders who aspire to be at the vanguard in this trend have to keep looking for even kinkier ways to contextualize their Kama Sutras and their "sexperimentation." Ed Young, Jr., for instance, announced this weekend that he and his wife "will spend 24 hours in bed on the church roof next week and stream themselves live on the Internet to encourage married couples to see firsthand the power of a healthy sex life"...

This trend toward increasingly explicit sex-talk and more deviant practices is a bad one for the church. The ease and speed with which evangelicals have embraced the trend is troubling. Just a couple of decades ago (and in every era of church history prior to that), shenanigans like Ed Young's rooftop exhibition would have been roundly and universally condemned by evangelical leaders. The silence (or weak, accommodating response) of most Christian leaders today in the face of such an obvious sea-change is deeply troubling.

It's yet another sign of evangelicalism's growing conformity to worldly values and worldly behavior. The various evangelical coalitions and young Reformed movements that looked so encouraging five years ago have done more to encourage and enable this kind of exhibitionism than to challenge it. These things ought not to be.

How bad will it have to get before true leaders in the church and in the various gospel-centered movements find their voices and start calling the church—and some of these out-of-control exhibitionist preachers—to repentance? I for one hope we get an answer to that question before very long. I pray for it every day.

Read the entire post HERE.

Is Marriage (as traditionally defined) worth protecting?

Take time to read this excellent article entitled Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles.

Floundering to Sodom

New York is the latest state to approve same-sex marriage. That makes the Empire State the sixth and largest state to approve of the practice.

Make no mistake, these are defining moments for the United States. As marriage goes, so goes the culture. Marriage has a very particular meaning. By its very nature marriage is between a man and woman. Procreation and the stabilizing of societal norms are fundamental to marriage.

Certainly we ought to reject all notions of theocracy. God's kingdom will not be established in this dying era. The state cannot be the church. We can even debate the propriety of laws banning homosexual acts. However, the state must never put itself in the position of approving that which God has condemned.

The Bible makes it clear that homosexuality is an abomination. It is a sin that characterizes a people in the final death throes of moral and societal decay. It is a sin that is particularly degrading to our identity as those who are made in the image of God. It reeks havoc upon the offender physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Homosexuality is the evidence of a people who have been given over to a wicked mind (Romans 1:18ff).

Granting that the state is not the church, the civil magistrate is nevertheless provided by God for the purpose of ordering society and suppressing evil (Rom 13). In this way God provides common grace to believer and unbeliever alike. It is therefore a frightening reality when the state becomes blind to obvious evil and even celebrates wickedness.

The following are a few articles that are helpful in the same-sex marriage debate:

What is Marriage? by George, Girgis, and Anderson

Offense and Criticism in the Marriage Debates by R.J. Snell

The Abolition of Marriage by Christopher Wolfe

So, What's Really At Stake in the Gay Marriage Debate? Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 by Al Mohler

The Compassion of Truth by Al Mohler

Marriage is not whatever we want it to be...

Robert George, Sherif Gergis, and Ryan T. Anderson make the case against same-sex marriage.

Keep the Marriage Bed Pure...

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
- Hebrews 13:4

“In marriage pleasure and fidelity we shout against the inevitability of marital breakup and adultery proclaimed by the godless. Our healthy marriages trumpet the redemption of people from self-centeredness and destructive, immoral life patterns. The bed becomes a mini-church in which the two covenant members sacrificially and ecstatically meet one another’s needs and offer their bodies as living sacrifices in worship before God. We should remind the world that God created the wonder and fireworks of sex long before the advent of the glossy, counterfeit sex-sellers of modern culture.”

George Guthrie from his commentary on Hebrews (p. 448)

Husbands Love Your Wives

The latest issue of the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is now available. The JBMW is not exclusively online. It is an outstanding resource.

Online Version
PDF Version
The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Check out the article by Rob Lister which offers a practical plan for helping husbands to better love their wives. After setting the proper context Lister suggests a series of questions for husbands and wives to discuss in order to assess the health of their marriage.

After praying and seeking God’s blessing on our time, we turn our attention to the following questions:

(1) On a scale of 1-10, give your overall assess- ment of our marriage in the past six months. To be sure, this is a very broad and subjective item, but I have found it helpful to open the conversation with an item of this kind of breadth, because it helps to prime the pump. Obviously, you won’t hit on a ton of specifics with this one—that’s what the rest of the questions are for—but I have been truly amazed at just how much discussion this assessment alone can generate, as various issues come to mind. From there, we’re off and running. Follow-up questions in the event that the conversation fails to gain traction initially: What have been the strengths of the past six months? What would make your assessment higher?

(2) How has the husband’s leadership been over the past six months? The wife’s support? Fol-low-up: How can I improve in fulfilling my respec- tive role?

(3) How is your walk with God, both person-ally and as a couple?

(4) Where do you see ungodliness in my life?

(5) Do I have any unconfessed sin that needs to be shared with my spouse?

(6) Are we guarding meaningful time together? Prayer? Conversation? Date Night?

(7) How is our sex life?

(8) What could I do to make you feel more loved/secure/respected?

(9) How can I serve you better?

(10) What are the issues that we need to anticipate in the upcoming six months?

(11) What’s your greatest personal disap-pointment and your greatest satisfaction in the last six months?

(12) How can I best pray for you?

(13) What are our major upcoming mutual prayer concerns?

(14) Spend a few moments, in an encouraging fashion, sharing several of the things that each of you loves and appreciates about the other.

(15) Then close, by spending some concerted time in prayer for those prayer concerns you just shared, as well as thanking God for his faithfulness to you as a couple over the past six months.

Before charging ahead, read the entire article HERE

What did you expect?

Paul Tripp from Crossway on Vimeo.

I am my biggest marriage problem

David Powlison on Marital Intimacy

Gay Marriage and the cult of self-fulfillment

Mark Galli has a great article on gay marriage at Christianity Today.

‘Evangelicals are sensitive to this reality, but are less aware of how much we proactively participate in the culture of individualism. While stopping short of abortion, we have not given much thought to our easy acceptance of artificial contraception. I’m not arguing for or against contraception here, only pointing to the reality that contraception has separated sex from procreation. That, in turn, has prompted most couples, evangelicals included, to think that sex is first and foremost a fulfilling psychological and physical experience, that a couple has a right to enjoy themselves for a few years before they settle down to family life.

‘In essence, we have already redefined marriage as an institution designed for personal happiness. . .

‘We are, of all Christian traditions, the most individualistic. This individual emphasis has flourished in different ways and in different settings, and often for the good. . . But it is individualism nonetheless, and it cuts right to the heart of one of our best arguments against gay marriage.

‘We cannot very well argue for the sanctity of marriage as a crucial social institution while we blithely go about divorcing and approving of remarriage at a rate that destabilizes marriage. We cannot say that an institution, like the state, has a perfect right to insist on certain values and behavior from its citizens while we refuse to submit to denominational or local church authority. We cannot tell gay couples that marriage is about something much larger than self-fulfillment when we, like the rest of heterosexual culture, delay marriage until we can experience life, and delay having children until we can enjoy each other for a few years.

‘In short, we have been perfect hypocrites on this issue.’

Read the entire article HERE.

Are "Chick Flicks" Good for Us?

Over at the web page for Capitol Hill Baptist Church I found the following article by Beth Spraul:

I have quite the extensive movie collection. Actually, my husband says I have an extensive “chick-flick” collection. I remember in college when my girlfriends and I would try to borrow each other’s movies. It was often a useless exercise because we would discover we already had all the same titles. The women will know some of the ones I speak of . . . “Pride & Prejudice,” “Sense & Sensibility,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Ever After,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” . . . you can likely name your own list of must-have romantic classics. But why does Hollywood know how to make a movie that most women will not only love, but want to own -- and then (this is the part that perplexes my husband) be willing to watch countless times, sighing or tearing each time at the same sappy endings? Could it be that these movies strike an emotional nerve -- a nerve that longs for the bliss of falling in love with the perfect man or the rush of romance that will replace our emptiness and loneliness?

Whether we realize it or not, as we munch our popcorn, films communicate underlying emotional messages to us. What are these messages teaching us about life, love, and romance? Better yet, what do these films teach us about the nature of true masculinity and femininity? Does watching such movies actually affect our understanding of romance or shape how we go about looking for this ideal husband?

I think the answer is yes...

In this article, I’d like to discuss briefly what I think are three powerful lies communicated to and believed by women through this genre of “chick-flicks” as well as “chick-lit” (literature).

Read the entire article HERE.

What did you expect?

Below are some clips from Paul Tripp's teaching series on marriage: "What Did You Expect?" Paul presented this series at Metro East Baptist in Wichita not long before I departed for Philadelphia. It was outstanding.






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