James Eldridge, the newest face at Boundless, admits the obvious:
Being the newbie on the Boundless team, I have a lot of things to learn before I will feel confident of my handle on things.
In honor of the “old baseball” approach of Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels, I hope to shorten your learning curve with a few inside fastballs.
One of the commenters, in an email exchange with our good friend Martha Krienke, opined (not without merit):
Too much consumption [of Boundless] will reveal a ‘men you’re bad, man up; women you’re hurt, we sympathize and help’ attitude.
That would be an understatement, especially given what other Boundless writers–like Glenn Stanton–have had the audacity to print:
…women left to themselves will develop into good women, more responsible women, just naturally, for various reasons and we could talk about that. But men have to be taught how to lead. They have to be encouraged how to lead. They have to be welcomed into leadership. And I don’t think we’re doing that today. We’re not taking young boys and saying, “OK, we need to make men out of you.” And I think that’s the large reason for the man problem today, is that we have to be very intentional about man-making, man-creating. And I can hear all the women saying, “Absolutely!” It doesn’t just naturally happen. It happens more naturally with women than it does with men.
Eldridge’s response to “Jeff”, shows a little bit of reality, tainted with Headship Theology. First, he starts out well:
I wish I could sit down and have a conversation with Jeff. “Jeff”, I’d say, “I completely understand where you are coming from.” I grew up in a church culture where the mindset seemed to be that men were the animals with the problems and all women had to do was not feed the beast inside the man. The women were the innocent victims of man’s inability to “live right.”
Then he proceeds to step in six feet of fresh manure:
I, however, don’t want to deny the truth that God created men to lead and take responsibility of their families. Therefore, changing men’s hearts and lives is the most effective way to shot block our culture’s high divorce rate.
Given that women are filing over two-thirds of the divorces, piling on the men here is very counterproductive.
Don’t tell me, “Well, it’s because the men are abusive, and aren’t leading well.” Fact is, there are abusive wives just as there are abusive husbands. Calling men to be better leaders–while valid–is only half the Biblical equation. In fact, Paul–in Ephesians 5–addressed BOTH husbands AND wives in the same passage, and even called on the wives to submit first.
Yes, men need to do a better job leading. That said, better leadership on the part of the husbands will barely put a dent in the divorce rate. This is because perfect love by the husband does not assure perfect submission by the wife.
This doesn’t even happen with respect to Christ and the Church, so how can one reasonably assume that it will happen between a husband and wife?
OH.MY.GAWASH.
this kinda stuff makes me wanna scream.
i don’t right get where we’ve taken God’s rendering of Adam AND Eve’s sin, and their consequences, and made “Eve” innocent and “Adam” guilty!
Amir,
I have actually found reading Boundless much more tolerable of late. However, this is one of the issues that concerns me, along with the connection of marriage and sanctification, the notion that early marriage is the solution to the problems of the rampant sexual sin in our society, and the notion that marriage is an individual “need.”
The problem is that we have not even begun to address the real problem, and that is that we need to move from this place of sin to holiness. More specifically, we need to address how we move from the place of sin to holiness. Thankfully, there are people out there who are doing serious Biblical work in this area:
http://www.efca.org/files/document/pastoral-care/3.-bock-notes-formatted.pdf
http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=58
http://www.efca.org/files/document/pastoral-care/2.-averbeck-notes-formatted.pdf
http://metamorpha.com/blog/2011/10/01/richard-averbeck-the-human-spirit-in-spiritual-formation/
Unfortunately, given the hard work required for spiritual formation, it is unlikely that these folks will ever get any airtime on a show like Boundless. The solutions they are presenting involve far more than a simple “get married early” band aid on sexual promiscuity, that will never actually solve the problem, and may end up making things worse. True purity is hard, and it requires a fight with sin-something conspicuously absent from the “man up,” “get married early,” “marriage is an individual need” rhetoric I hear from Boundless. Only if this rhetoric is abandoned do I believe that real solutions to these problems can be found.
Still, it is a whole lot better than it has been. Even though I disagree with these areas, I have found much redeeming about the Boundless blog on pretty much every other topic. I guess as long as Albert Mohler is associated with Focus on the Family, it is difficult to see Boundless abandoning these ideas.
God Bless,
Adam
While I am certainly no defender of Mohler on this one, I honestly don’t see Boundless beating the “get married early” drum, at least not nearly to the extent that they once were.
At the same time, what I DO see–and I can’t fault Boundless here much, if at all–is the premise that, for those who aspire to marry, it is within one’s interests to get that matter settled sooner rather than later. It’s not a Biblical command, but rather one of pragmatic reality. And I’m not even referring to sexual matters.
As for the “need” to marry, that really depends on whether they are saying that as a semantic thing–like I “need” a job, or I “need” more education (one can live without either)–or a literal need (as in “I need water!”). The former is an expression of colloquial pragmatism–some things work better than others–and the latter is a literal, no-bones NEED.
(Writing a dissertation over that would certainly, however, constitute overkill.)
But here’s my experience during my single years: in no small number of circles, the “you don’t ‘need’ to get married” line is used–along with others–in order to dismiss a single who expresses the aspiration to marry. There’s no Biblical case for employing such a dismissal, and–in fact–it is a total denial of Providence: to one who aspires to marry, God ordained the marriage covenant. As a Church, we ought to help facilitate the process.
(Goodness, Adam: the Jews have understood this for milennia. It’s only in the modern Church that singles have a harder time finding a mate.)
As for the “earlier marriage is the cure for promiscuity” line, I don’t see anyone suggesting this either, although (a) a good Christian marriage can sure make that battle a lot easier, and (b) the premise that it is better to marry than to burn is a perfectly legitimate one.
(And don’t even bother trying to say that this logic applies only to widows and not singles. You won’t make it to first base on this blog if you attempt to go there.)
The Catholic world is littered with people, sexually abused by priests who weren’t permitted to marry. Would marriage have prevented all that abuse? Hardly, but there is a logical reason why there were a lot more such abuses in the Catholic world than, say, the Baptist world or the Presbyterian world.
Marriage–early or otherwise–is not a cure for sexual immorality. That said, it can–and, in my observations, does–make the battle easier. Especially if both parties are Christian.
On the pragmatic front, I do empathize with Mohler on one matter here: for the aspiring minister, singleness is going to make that road a lot harder. (And, again, I’m not referring to sexual matters, although that angle is legit.)
In the evangelical world, single ministers are largely persona non grata. Without the wedding ring, many congregations won’t even take you seriously.
I’m not saying I like that fact–I don’t–but it is what it is. And that problem is not one of Mohler’s creation, as it existed long before he arrived.
one of the things i LOVE about my new husband (3 year anniversary yesterday! yay!) is that he didn’t grow up ingrained in this church culture, and he doesn’t get it.
so i just said to him to preface sharing this article with him, “One of the things that is prevalent in the Christian community in general is that women are innocent and men are guilty anytime there is a conflict with a marriage or a relationship.”
he looked at me and said, “Well, here’s what I have to say to that … if that were true, there’d be no porn stars.”
yep! i love that man!
*******
what is befuddling to me is that the secular world seems to ‘get’ that men and women are equally depraved more than the christian world.
On what I’d dub a more positive note, take a look at Tim Challies book review of “Date Your Wife”. (Not sure how many of you have read his blog before, but it’s ranked very highly on Technorati).