Category: sexual ethics

Book Plunge: Called To Love

What do I think of Carl Anderson and Jose Granados’s book published by Doubleday? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Called To Love is an in-depth look at Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Now as readers know, I am not Catholic, but I do think there is much Catholic wisdom out there and I’m definitely interested in researching topics relating to our understanding of sexuality. This was a topic I did a lot of thinking on long before I got married and now that I am married, I can say experience brings to light a whole new way of looking at the equation.

The book starts with a look at the body and sees the body as an extension of the self, the way that you interact with the world. It is by your body that your presence is best made known to the world. Why do we say people like my grandmother, for instance, are no longer with us? Because their bodies are not here or they are absent from their bodies. In the case of a marriage, the body is the gift that each spouse brings to the other. It’s easy to look at your spouse and treat them as an object alone, such as a breadwinner or security or a household servant and even as a sexual object, but it’s something else to see them as not just a body but as a person dwelling in a body and realize that of all the gifts they give you, the greatest gift they give you is their body. It is not their body as an object, but them as a person and saying “I give you all that I am.”

Love for the other person then is being thankful that that other person exists. It is not just they exist for your sake, but you exist for theirs as well. When true spousal love takes place, the two spouses want to bring about the best of the other person and many times, this comes out in sex. Sex is the place of ultimate sacrifice and it is the reminder that we are made for connection. We are made to first be connected to our creator, but it is in a powerful connection to a person of the opposite sex, that we experience the totally unique love of the other. We experience someone who is so radically different from us and that person receives us as we are. In fact, this sexual love, especially since it has the ability to bring about new life, can be seen as the closest mirror we have to the Trinity.

Of course, this also ties in with the person of Jesus who came to show us how to live and by His embodiment, it is shown that the body is a good thing. This is further shown by His resurrection which is an indication of our future resurrection. The resurrection says we are made to dwell in bodies and that our bodies are good and holy things and we need to treat them like that. That God Himself becomes incarnate in a body should tell us that there is nothing wrong with having a body and today, we have God the Holy Spirit dwelling in us to show us that in this way God is also indwelling in a temple today and we should treat our bodies like that temple.

While I did not agree with a lot of the Catholic doctrine in the book, I can say that as a Protestant, it did get me more appreciative of the body and taking it seriously and I hope Protestants do catch on to this kind of reality. We do far too little talk on what sexuality is and how it matters and we pay far too little attention to our bodies and do not realize the grand place that they have been given in creation. Through any number of means, we treat our bodies just like they were machines or other purely material objects, when they are not. God did not make a mistake when He gave us our bodies. He meant for us to treasure them and use them in love. The great love is following Romans 12 and presenting our bodies as living sacrifices. The earthly side of that is often going to our spouses and giving our bodies to them self-sacrificially as well.

We were Called To Love. Let’s fulfill our calling.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Who’s The Boss?

What happens with disagreement in marriage? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday my wife and I got into a discussion with other men talking about the Garden of Eden and then the roles of men and women. Within the past week, I have been accused of being a misogynist for the great crime of daring to say that men value respect more than women. With all that being said, I figure it’s time in light of yesterday’s post on marriage to write up something about how that dynamic takes place.

Now first off, I am someone who does believe in male headship in the household. I do stand by this, but note what that means. This does not mean the man stands over the woman with a whip. Seeing as one of my wife’s favorite series is Dragonball, she will appreciate this illustration of what I am NOT talking about as how male headship should go.

If you are a husband like that, frankly, you’re a jerk.

This also doesn’t mean that the woman has no say in the household. A captain of a ship has a first mate and sometimes, he needs some wisdom outside of his own perspective. A husband should consult his wife on matters and see what she thinks. In fact, there are some areas he might just put her in charge entirely and let her do what she wants. Finances can be just such an area. I know many households where the woman is a master at handling the bills and so the husband just trusts her discretion in the matter. I have no problem with this.

It’s my stance that the husband is the king of his castle, but if he is the king of his castle, then that means his wife gets treated like a queen. Too many husbands look at the verse that says “Submit!” and use that as a whip over and over. Now my own wife knows that I do think that the wife does submit to her husband, but she also knows that I have never used that verse of Scripture like a weapon and it’s a shame that any man is doing that. Perhaps they should consider what 1 Peter 3:7 says.

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Yes men, you have a responsibility, and you are to love your wives as Christ loved the church. It’s hard to think of an attitude more self-sacrificial than that, but that is in fact what the very text of Ephesians 5 says and if you hear those words and you don’t get any nervousness whatsoever as a husband, there is something wrong with you. It is too easy to treat the wife in the picture as a household servant or as a sex object. You did not marry someone just so they could be a maid. You did not marry someone so you could treat them just like you would a prostitute. You married a person and if you did the right thing and married a Christian woman, you married a child of the king. Treat her like one or else her Father might not be too happy with you.

Now does this mean there are no other differences? No. I do stand behind the idea that men do as a general principle thrive more on respect and women thrive more on love. I don’t see that as sexist. I just see that as stating a fact. With what I said yesterday, I urge women to give their husbands that respect, even when you think he’s being a bonehead. You men meanwhile give your wives that love, even when you think they’re being uncaring. I should point out that the stakes do change if somehow the situation gets abusive. No wife should have to submit to a husband that is abusing her. A man should avoid a woman that is abusing him.

I contend that if this is done properly, leadership will not be the rule of a tyrant and submission will not be the slave begging for mercy. In fact, both parties might not even realize it’s going on.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Importance of the Covenant

What does it mean to say you’ve formed a covenant? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Covenants. The term doesn’t really resonate much with us today. We don’t take it as seriously as we used to, and yet all our talk today is about covenants. What is the debate over marriage but a debate over covenants? What covenants are we going to hold up and affirm and what are we not going to affirm? Do we give some covenants greater recognition than others? Do some covenants require more than others?

On a minor level, we can think of a business contract. These are legally enforced by the law for example, but we will not put it on the same level as a covenant. A contract has two parties making an agreement to be sure, but a covenant involves a lifelong self-sacrificial commitment. Many of our best relationships are built on sacrifice. The greatest of friends are those who are willing to sacrifice for one another. Of course, this will not involve the same as the ultimate covenant that we know of in society today of marriage.

My wife recently blogged on this. I agree with much of what she said, but I’d like to add my own spin to it. The point is that in our society we too often have an idea of “Look out for #1.” In that case, we often treat marriage as a way to get what we want. Now naturally, all of us enter marriage wanting some things out of it and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the institution is greater than we realize and we do a dishonor to it when we treat it wrongly. We can rightly say that too many Christians have no basis arguing against redefining marriage when they’ve allowed no-fault divorce and living together before marriage to go on in their own lifestyles. Of course, many of us have not done these things, but unfortunately too many Christians have. I do think that our culture as a whole has dishonored marriage, but they have dishonored it because the Christians took the lead in dishonoring it first.

When you marry someone, you make a lifelong commitment to that someone. You make a commitment to do and live the way that you ought and you give yourself to that one person only. That is quite a severe oath to make. Consider that when we speak of it sexually, that that means that until the point of death, the only person you are going to have any sort of sexual relationship whatsoever with is that person that you are marrying. If you break that promise, then biblically, you are guilty of adultery. This is something that we should take extremely seriously, especially in light of a passage like 1 Cor. 6:9-10.

9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Now in our current climate, we can rightly note that those who participate in homosexual acts are there. Who else is in there? How about those who commit adultery? Yep. That’s how seriously God takes it. Why does He say to not be deceived? Because this is something you are quite likely to be deceived on. In fact, Paul spends the rest of the chapter talking about the gravity of sexual sin. It is sin unlike any other because it is a sin against your own body and it is taking that which is supposed to be the temple of Christ and using it in a completely unholy manner. Robert Gagnon has compared it to having sex in the Holy of Holies right on top of the Ark of the Covenant.

Signing on the dotted line of marriage is a strong commitment to make and too many of us are breaking it way too easily. What are some of our favorite reasons?

“Well I don’t feel the same way any more.”

I hate to tell you this, but your life is not to be dependent on your feelings nor is right and wrong dependent on your feelings. If you become a parent and have a child, you can’t just say one day “I don’t feel like being a parent any more so I’m not going to take care of this child.” On a lesser level, try being in a business contract with someone and saying you’re not going to uphold it because you don’t feel like it. If you do that, hopefully you will feel like showing up in court because that is exactly where you will be going. If it applies to the lesser, how much more to the greater?

If your feelings aren’t there, well so what? It’s nice if they are, but you have a duty to do the right thing anyway and doing the right thing is not dependent on how you feel.

“We’re just not in love any more.”

In our modern day and age, marriage has been about love. This sounds perfectly normal to us, but we are the exceptions to the rule. Could love and affection have happened historically? Sure, but that was not the norm. Most of the time it was about survival. How are we going to make it in this world? Today, it is mostly about love, so what do you do when it looks like that spark is no longer there?

Simple. You love the person.

We often think of love as a feeling, but it is not. It is a verb. It is an action. It is seeking the good of the other for the sake of the other. Sometimes this is soft and gentle. Sometimes it’s hard. We have to do things that are painful to the people we love at times because we love them, such as when a family has an intervention for a person who is getting caught up in behavior that they shouldn’t be caught up in. Sometimes when you act in loving ways, the feelings will follow and that’s great. Sometimes they won’t, but oh well. This isn’t about you and your feelings. This is about the good of the relationship.

So what are some ways you can improve the covenant?

For you men, your wife generally wants love and security. She wants a man that she can feel safe with and who she knows cares about her. If she doesn’t think any of these things is true, you really need to take a look at yourself. Peter tells us in his first epistle that we need to be gentle with our wives. That means even when you think she’s being crazy and makes no sense, you try to be understanding with her. A great way men usually fail at this is that women tell us about their problems and we don’t listen really. We go straight into fix-it mode. A lot of times, women want someone to just listen. They could be fine with advice later on, but at the start, listening is all they want.

Another great mistake is to treat your wife like a sex object. My Allie recently shared something that said that what Planned Parenthood and pornography have in common is that they treat people like objects. You can treat your wife the same way. Your wife is not just someone in your life whose purpose is to have sex with you. She is someone you are in fact to be willing to die for. Live your life as a life of love for your wife. My recommendation is that if you’re both on Facebook, make your Facebook page sizzle. Let it be obvious to the rest of the world that you love your wife. I share an image of love to my wife everyday on Facebook save Sunday when I take a break. Facebook has been the cause of many marriages being destroyed so guard yourself closely on Facebook.

Beyond that, be a gentleman. Manners go a long way. Hold open the door when your wife is going somewhere. Make sure she sits down first in a public place and if possible, pull her seat out for her. These are simple things, but they mean a great deal. Remember, your wife is asking every day “Do you still love me?”

So now women, here are my recommendations.

I’ve said before that men should not treat you as a sex object. This is true, but women need to realize how central this is to their men. This is not just an add-on to marriage. This is something that strikes at the very identity of your husband. If you are asking every day “Do you still love me?” your husband is asking “Am I still your man?” If you do everything else in the world for him and don’t give yourself to him sexually, he will go to bed at night saying “Nope. Guess I’m not her man.” I’m sure that makes no sense whatsoever to some of you, but really, that is the way it is.

Now of course, women do enjoy sex and they should, but it’s usually more central for the men. A man with sex is wanting to give you the gift of himself and be accepted as he is. Turning him down is a way of saying he’s not man enough for you. Now of course, I’m not saying jump into the bed every time he asks, but I am saying take this seriously. Perhaps you just can’t then. If you can’t, then my suggestion is that you give your man a time frame. Let’s picture a husband wanting to have a frisky morning with his wife before he leaves. She’s just not into it. What can she do? She could say “Honey. I love you, but I’m just not feeling it right now, but tell you what. You go to work and you do a good job and when you come home, I will be waiting for you and I’ll show you how much I appreciate what you do.”

Ladies. You say something like that and your husband will be thinking about you ALL DAY LONG.

In fact, you do this kind of thing and you will shoot his confidence level through the roof. It is extremely difficult for a married man to have confidence if he does not think that his wife accepts him. If he is sure his wife accepts him, everything changes. This man will be able to do anything. He can conquer the world. He will walk with an extra spring in his step. Whatever miserable situation your husband is in, you can always help it with sex. As one of my friends told me, a husband will never gift his wife a return receipt on sex. If she’s worried about performance, she needs to remember that for a man, sex is like pizza. Bad sex is good sex. As long as it’s sex, that’s enough.

Another great benefit this will give your man is your man is constantly tempted. When we see a woman approaching us, we are instantly aware that this is a woman we are dealing with and in our mind, we start immediately checking her out. It is instinctive on our part. Your husband is going to do this regardless. It is what he does next that matters the most. I have written about this some here. The temptation is very very real and if you have a good and honoring husband, he does not want it to be that way. He hates the fact that he is attracted to other women besides you, but he is and he wants you to remain in his mind at the forefront constantly. A great way to do that for him is to have it be that your body is constantly in his mind by giving yourself to him. The gift your husband wants most from you is you. Your husband is better able to withstand temptation if you are honoring him sexually.

Something else to be careful about is with respect, watch how you speak about your husband. If your husband makes a mistake, and he will, be careful that you’re respectful. Don’t berate him even in a way that seems harmless. Your husband might not know as much about shopping for groceries and cooking as you do. If you send him to the store and he gets the wrong thing, don’t say anything that could be interpreted as “What? Are you some kind of moron? Don’t you know better than this?” It can be guaranteed your husband will not want to do that again or will see it as a chore for you because that sting will be remembered.

Suppose your husband does something really nice for you and decides to wash the dishes. If you take a look and say “Don’t you know how you’re supposed to scrub these? There are stains still all over this!” then congratulations on emasculating your husband right there. He will quite likely not want to do this again. It would work better to say “Honey. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I do want to show you this because there is a way to improve. You see, if you take the sponge and….” In fact, if you end it with “You know, I do appreciate what you did today and keep it up and I will REALLY appreciate it even more” then your husband will be begging to do the dishes for you. (Honestly women, if you want your husband to get up and do the vacuuming and things like that more often, seduce him. Seriously. You’ll have a husband lunging for that vacuum cleaner the moment you ask.)

This idea of nagging especially applies in public. Do not say something that is highly critical of your husband in public. If you’re at a couple’s event and you say something like that about your husband, he will instantly feel lowered. Believe it or not, men are very sensitive. You see, your man can brush off most everything everyone else in this world says. He cannot brush off what you say. He will take everything that you say and do extra seriously. Your man is still striving to be your knight in shining armor and he needs to know every day that that is how you view him and if you don’t feel that way at the moment, well tough. You would not give your husband a free pass on not being loving to you because he doesn’t feel like it. Give him the same courtesy back.

Ultimately, it is all about self-sacrifice. Now in your relationship, you might want to ask “Who makes the first move?” The answer to both parties who ask this is “You do.” The husband makes the first move. The wife makes the first move. You have no control over your spouse and how they’ll do at fulfilling their side of the covenant. You have great control over what you will do and how you will fulfill it. There is nothing in Ephesians that says “Husbands, love your wives, unless they don’t respect you and then you don’t love them.” It does not say “The wife must respect her husband, unless he’s being unloving and then don’t respect him.” Many struggles in marriage are because we are waiting for the other person to make the first move. I often tell people that it is better to be wronged than to do a wrong yourself. If you know the right thing to do, you simply do it.

Now many times, that could require patience on the part of someone else. For instance, I have a great phobia of water actually. As a child, the undertow dragged me under the water at the beach unexpectedly and I just don’t trust water. This makes it very hard for my wife who loves water in a pool with me because I absolutely panic to be away from the edge. I do require her patience, but I know that I must learn to overcome to some extent. (Of course, with the steel rod on my spine from earlier surgery, I will be limited anyway.) Where the other spouse is weak, be patient, but always try to be encouraging and enabling to them and let them know how much they’re capable of. Always try to realize that deep down, your spouse does want to please you.

Covenants are serious matters, but they can be a source of great joy and a wellspring of life if you cultivate them right. You know what you are to do. Your covenant is made before God and man. If you are wanting to honor God, you will honor your spouse.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Answering Thom Stark on the Bible and Homosexuality

What do I think of what Thom Stark has to say on the Bible and homosexuality? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It’s not a shock that Thom Stark has jumped on the bandwagon with wanting to support homosexual behavior. Now he thinks he has hard questions for Christians. Really? Let’s see what he has.

If you’re a Christian who condemns homosexuality because the Bible condemns it, there are at least five things you must also do before you can condemn it consistently:

Well I guess we’re off to a bad start since I have other grounds for my condemnation, but of course, Stark has this idea that all Christians are the same. But hey, let’s leap into the text.

1) You must also condemn sex between a husband and his menstruating wife (an act condemned on equal footing with adultery, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, witchcraft, and child sacrifice in both Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20).

On equal footing? Well no. Leviticus 18 doesn’t mention the punishments for certain crimes, but Leviticus 20 does. Leviticus 20 gives incest, homosexuality, bestiality, child sacrifice as leading to death. Witchcraft involves expulsion from the community. The same follows for sleeping with a woman while she’s menstruating since that involves blood and the punishment is being cut off. Homosexuality is right there with the ones that end in death and is thus treated differently. So sorry, point #1 doesn’t really work.

2) You must also acknowledge that, according to God’s laws, polygamy is morally acceptable to God, and is a standard type of “biblical marriage.” It is given tacit approval in the laws of Moses, in Deut 21:15-17, where a man with more than one wife is told that he must treat the children of unfavored wives equally to the children of favored wives. There is 2 Sam 12:8, where Yahweh reminds David that he gave Saul’s wives to him as a gift, and would have given David even more if he had asked. Then in the New Testament, only church elders are told they cannot marry more than one wife (ostensibly because more than one wife is a distraction from caring for the church family), a prohibition that does not apply to any other Christian.

Or being a good Christian, you could remember that this was a practice allowed because of the hardness of the hearts of people, much like divorce was. The NT has several indications about a time where God let some people have a little bit more leeway. But what about 2 Samuel 12:8?

And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.

Does this mean more wives? No. It refers to wealth period. Would God have given David other houses besides Israel and Judah? Israel was told to not expand their borders. It refers to increasing wealth entirely. It’s a way of saying “Look what all I gave you! Isn’t that enough?!”

3) You must also acknowledge that, according to God’s laws, it is morally acceptable to capture the women of your defeated political enemies and force them to marry you. “When you go out to war against your enemies, and Yahweh your God hands them over to you and you take them captive, suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry, and so you bring her home to your house: she shall shave her head, pare her nails, discard her captive’s garb, and shall remain in your house a full month, mourning for her father and mother; after that you may go into her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife” (Deut 21:10-13). That is biblical marriage.

I suppose Thom would have preferred that the women be either killed or left to fend for themselves alone in the ANE. That they were allowed to marry was a way to protect the woman. Is that a different kind of marriage? No. It is still a man-woman marriage. It is a different way to enter into marriage but the reality of marriage as the union of man and a woman is the same.

4) You must also acknowledge that, according to God’s laws, it is morally acceptable to force a rape victim to marry her rapist. “If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and forcibly seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act, the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives” (Deut 22:28-29). This is biblical marriage.

And Thom again doesn’t realize that this was set in place to protect the woman. In the culture, she would have been shamed and seen as undesirable for marriage by being raped. Forcing her rapist to provide for her for the rest of his life would make him think twice about the activity. The woman would have welcomed the arrangement wanting the man to be punished and making him pay the price for her.

5) You must also acknowledge that, according to God’s laws, it is morally acceptable as a matter of course to own slaves. “As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you, and from their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness” (Lev 25:44-46). You must acknowledge that the New Testament orders slaves to obey their masters, even while it tells their masters to treat them kindly. Nowhere does the Bible condemn slavery, and thus, if you wish to continue to condemn homosexuality simply because the Bible says so, you must never condemn slavery again.

Or we could try understanding the way slavery worked in the ANE. Sorry Thom, but you couldn’t just go to Wal-Mart and get a job. You had to work for someone else and the system set up for that was slavery, a way to actually care for the poor. It was nothing like the slavery that we saw in Civil War Times.

We could go on with things you ought to support: genocide, patriarchy, etc. But these five are a good jumping-off point. When you can honestly say 1) that you do not have sex during menstruation and that you excommunicate any fellow Christians who do, 2) that you support a man’s right to marry multiple women, 3) that you support a man’s right to invade a country, kill a woman’s husband or father, and take her as his wife, 4) that you support a rapist’s right to forcibly marry his victim and deny her right to divorce him, and 5) that you support a man’s right to purchase and own human beings as slaves and bequeath them to his children, then you may come to me and tell me that you believe homosexuality is immoral because the Bible tells you so. Until that time, suffer your own hatred in silence.

Ah yes. The hatred card at the end. You see, I took the time to write this post in the middle of stomping around my house talking about how much I hate homosexuals. When I meet other Christians, all we do is gather around and share stories of mean things we did to homosexuals that week. Please excuse me because after this post I have to go to a meeting where we will hold up our Christian flag and continue our prolonged hate of homosexuals.

Yeah Thom. That kind of drivel about hate means I just don’t take you seriously there. You see, believe it or not, hate can be a very good thing.

What?

You see, I take it you don’t support genocide, slavery, or patriarchy. I would wager you hate those things. Do you think that’s a problem? I don’t. I think if something is evil, you should hate it. Even if it isn’t evil, if you think it is, you should hate it.

Meanwhile, it would have been nice of you to explain what these passages mean that you think we should just throw out. It would have also been nice to have seen you touch a passage like Romans 1 and deal with what Paul said. Oh. Maybe next time you can look at the work of Robert Gagnon and comment.

But until then, it’s this kind of handling of the text that I just find completely unpersuasive and banks on people not understanding the historical context.

By the way, telling people to suffer it in silence is a way of saying “Shut up.”

How tolerant of you.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Five Years

What does a man learn after five years? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I know my wife has the fruit of the Spirit of self-control.

After all, as of this moment, I’m still alive and writing this blog. Somehow, she has not managed to kill me yet.

But it’s been five years now. As I write this, it’s around 11 AM EST and I’m remembering it was technically 2 PM EST when our wedding started. It’s hard to really think about what goes on on the wedding day. I just remember being so rushed. I even took an Ambien the night before and got an hour of sleep in and we have a picture of Allie chugging a five hour energy drink in the bridal room. I was traditional to the end and didn’t see her in her dress until the doors opened, but I remember one of my friends coming in who was a groomsman and telling me “You have no idea what you’re missing!” Our service went with no problem and yes, even the Superman theme playing as we walked down the aisle together. (And contrary to what you might think, it was HER idea.)

My best man wrote an incredible toast that had me laughing my head off during the reception. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to catch the garter at the wedding and the youngest guy trying to catch it did. Sorry friends. You’re going to be waiting a long time it looks like. (Meanwhile, it’s my understanding that the lady who caught the bouquet was engaged and did get married next.) Needless to say, Allie and I were also traditional in waiting for marriage, so yeah, we didn’t stay long at that reception.

Our honeymoon was spent at Ocean Isle Beach. It’s incredible that Allie got me into the water much further than normal in the ocean and in the swimming pool. This is incredible because honestly, I’m scared of water in that capacity. I don’t have a clue how to swim and I’m terrified of going underwater, but hey, miracles happen.

But after all of that, comes the part of learning to live together. So what has been learned? Over the past five years?

Marriage can be hard work. Recently, some of you may note that a prominent internet blogger responded to a post I wrote on him concerning polyamory. I plan on a much fuller response, but I remember seeing that a relationship should not be hard. After all, friendship isn’t hard. (Though I contend that it often is. It’s extremely hard on me when I see my friends doing very foolish things.) Why should marriage be hard? Well that depends on how you view marriage. If you view marriage as a relationship that can be ended at any time and is not a lifelong commitment, well no, it’s not hard. If you view marriage as a place where you can get your needs met, well no. It’s not going to be as hard either. Of course, it will be hard on the other person if they view marriage in either way, but if you don’t, yeah. No biggie.

But then, you have to ask if it’s really marriage.

As I said yesterday, marriage is all about the death to self. Marriage is also about your sacred space area. It’s about viewing your spouse as someone sacred and treating them as if they were sacred. Remember in the Old Testament about how elaborate the system was to carry the Ark of the Covenant? After all, the Ark represented where God dwelt with His people. You know what? You and your spouse if you’re Christians both represent where God dwells with His people. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. You really matter body and soul.

In fact, I’m currently working at this moment on a theology of sex for Christians and I’m considering having my Master’s research program be on the resurrection and sexual ethics. So that means in both cases, in preparing for this, I’m having to do a lot of thinking and reading and studying about sex. Yep. I know. I really suffer for Jesus. You all just pray for me in the midst of this trial and tribulation of having to actually spend time studying sex.

This also brings to mind what I’ve heard Robert Gagnon say that makes me treat things so much more seriously. What you do to yourself, you do to your spouse. It’s tempting to act like each of us is our own when it comes to marriage. We’re not. Allie’s body belongs to me, for instance. Well geez Nick. That sounds awfully sexist. If it ended right there, you would be right, but my body also belongs to her. When the Bible says we are one flesh, it really means that. That’s one reason marriage is a lifelong covenant. Cutting off one person from the relationship is like cutting your own body in half.

It also means you share pain and you share pleasure. Allie’s pain is my pain. Her pleasure is my pleasure. My pain is her pain. My pleasure is her pleasure. It’s important to know that that extends however to if it’s in line with what God says. If her pleasure is something that is hurtful to her, then it is pain to me. The same goes with me. It really has to sink in what that one flesh means.

In fact, in some marriage ceremonies of the past, the bride and groom would say to each other “With my body, I thee worship.” Marriage is in essence you and your spouse sacrificing yourself to one another. The thing is, when you sacrifice, you actually find your joy, because you get the joy of your spouse and that joy becomes your joy. This is one reason sexuality is meant to bring a lot of joy. The woman gives a sacrifice in which she has to make herself totally vulnerable to her husband. The husband makes a sacrifice in which he takes his strength and in essence, gives his life to the woman.

Marriage can be hard because we all look out for #1, but the truth is when we die to ourselves, we find our real joy. It’s odd, but I think there was someone years ago who made a similar statement about dying to yourself. Maybe he was right on something….

And you know what? That joy is intense. I’ve pointed to the joy of sexuality already and in many ways, it’s hard to get more intense than that, but I would let people in on a secret that I think is true. Intimacy is better than sex. It’s just that for a man, sex leads to the best intimacy that there is. It’s not always the same for a woman. Of course, a woman does and should enjoy the sexual aspect, but it won’t necessarily be in the same way.

But there is much joy also in the day to day little things. There’s joy in sharing a bed with someone in the evening and knowing they’ll be there when you wake up. There’s joy in riding in a car often with someone else. There’s joy in going to a church service together. There’s joy in having time spent with other couples. (It amazes me that before I married, most of my time with others was with single friends and now most of it is with other married couples.) There’s joy in sitting down and watching a favorite TV show together. There’s joy in the evening time of praying and reading the Bible together.

And when you suffer, you don’t truly suffer alone. (Well with some exceptions. Allie does like me in quarantine if I have the flu) If one of us is in the hospital, the other is right there. The pain is shared. You know that there will be someone there to take care of you. You know you have someone you can go to for advice and comfort. There have been times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and just not feeling the best and realized that just my wife putting her hand on my and giving me some light assurance is all that I need to calm down again.

Marriage is transforming, but like the grace of God, it will only transform us insofar as we change in response to it. (Please don’t turn this into a debate on free-will either. I have zero interest in that.) That change is painful sometimes, but it’s also for the best. Yet we can be an inspiration to one another if we are willing. Allie has inspired me to change in many ways for the better. I hope I’ve done the same for her. Many of you could even attest who knew me before Allie came along to the remarkable change you’ve seen in me since she’s arrived. Change like I said can often be painful, but we can each serve as an instrument to the holiness of our spouse.

By the way, this change that I’ve spoken about, the Bible speaks about a husband loving his wife as Christ loved the church and the wife loving her husband as the church loves Christ. That requires both be self-sacrificing and also, this is one reason we do not change the definition of marriage. Changing the definition of marriage changes the Gospel. If you’re a non-Christian, you can say “So what?” to that, but if you’re a Christian, you should take that extremely seriously.

It’s also why marriage is 100-100. We can often look at what’s going on in marriage and say “It doesn’t work. It’s like saying a sledgehammer doesn’t work to drive in something if you just use it to lightly tap. The fault isn’t marriage. The fault is the people. No one truly gives 100-100, but everyone should strive to and if we’re Christians, we should know that that is the path to true happiness. Our Lord calls us to lay down our lives if we need to for the Gospel. If we do not show that love to our spouse, who we have seen, how can we show it to Jesus, who we have not seen?

In light of that, marriage has for me been a time of learning. I get to have a big mirror put up before me every day that says “See? This is what you are like.” I have spent a lot of time giving and receiving forgiveness, but most of it has been receiving. There’s still a lot to do and if you’re doing marriage right, it should make you strive to be more holy and live a life pleasing to God.

So in the end, love to my Princess. It’s been a good five years and I hope we grow more in holiness for when year ten rolls around.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Death To Self In Marriage

Why is it that a marriage relationship requires hard work? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I lived the bachelor life for quite some time. I didn’t marry until two months before I turned 30. I had lived on my own for a time and then I lived with a roommate, who turned out to be my best man at my wedding. It was a couple of years after moving in that we realized that like the roommate agreement, we hadn’t put in anything about what if one of us gets a girlfriend. (That seemed a little too far-fetched) As it turns out, I was the one who got one and even after the first date, talk was buzzing around our circle of friends. “Well we all know where this is going.” Indeed, we did. My roommate moved into another place and I found another apartment for my future wife and I to live in together.

So then comes the wedding and then comes the honeymoon. When we get back, it’s time to get used to living our lives together as husband and wife with sharing a grocery bill, sleeping in the same bed, and of course sex is involved.

News flash to all of you out there who are unmarried.

This is radically different from anything else.

Now I could write a separate post sometime on why I think living together beforehand is really a disastrous idea, but not now. In fact, it could be when I’m done here you might get some clues as to why I think it’s so foolish. You see, after I made those vows and came home, I had to do my part of the work. I had to get used to sharing my life with someone else. When it was just me or just me and my roommate, for the most part, I could do my own thing. Oh sure, roommates have to make sacrifices for each other, and we did, but it’s not like a binding contract. If one of us had wanted to get out, well we could have I’m sure. Friendship does not require the level of sacrifice that marriage does.

Marriage shows that the pathway to true life is death. Not in a suicidal sense, but dying to the life of self. When you cling to yourself in a marriage, you will lose and in fact, your spouse will lose. What you do to yourself, you do to your spouse. What you do to your spouse, you do to you. There really is something to the whole idea of being one flesh. When you marry, you give up the right to be your own person as it were. You belong to your spouse and your spouse belongs to you.

This is why the marriage relationship can be so difficult at times. We all want to do our own thing and be able to get away with it. We all want there to be no consequences to our actions, but there are in fact consequences. There are prices to pay. There are no actions that have no ramifications. Every little thing you do has an impact. This is also because everything you do builds up a character. You are becoming a kind of person over and over and that is the kind of person that your spouse is going to have to live with. Remember this, in marriage, the greatest gift you give to your spouse ultimately is you.

This is one reason that when a husband wants sex, and in most marriages the husbands are the go-getters (Although I do like how Mark Gungor in his Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage says that he knows some of you men out there are married to women who love sex and want it constantly and can’t get enough and I think I speak on behalf of all men when I say “We hate you.”) and when you ask them what they want, it’s more than just pleasure and a good time. They want their wives. They want them as persons and nothing leaves them feeling closer to their wives than that sexual intimacy.

For a woman, a woman will often want that security from her man. She wants to feel safe and protected and nothing seems to make her feel as safe as the presence of the man in her life. My wife can be someone who can get scared of many things and I, as anyone who sees me knows, am not a big muscular man by any stretch of the imagination. I am actually very much underweight, and yet if I have her in my arms, my wife will feel much safer. What is it that makes her feel safer? It sure isn’t knowing that I’m a powerhouse who can take down anyone who comes after her. It’s just me. I’m what makes her feel safe.

Men and women want something different from each other in marriage. There is something that they do not have in themselves and they seek that in the other, but here’s the deal.

Both parties have to die.

A man will have to sacrifice much of himself for the love of his life. A man will give his time and his money and pass up many other things he would like to do. He’s no longer free to spend every minute of his day at the golf course or be spending all that time with his friends. Now of course, he can do that from time to time and that’s fine. When we lived in Charlotte, my wife knew that on Sunday evenings, I’d go out for a bit with my friends, but if she needed me, she could call and I’d be right there. She just knew that for me, time with my friends was important, just like I want Allie to have time with her female friends apart from me.

But a man has to sacrifice much of that and he does that when he marries, but let’s be sure on one thing. Men would not marry if it were not for sex. I’m not saying a man marries only for sex, but it sure is a high ranking reason. A man sees the beauty of the woman and wants to embrace and take it on and be received by all that beauty. He wants to be as close to the beauty as he possibly can.

And so, this is the death of the woman. A woman wants that kind of security quite often, but what does she have to do. She has to risk herself. She has to put herself in a position of vulnerability, but in order to do that, she must be convinced the person she’s with will not hurt her in any way. She must be willing to make herself totally vulnerable to that person in the most intimate way possible.

The beauty of this all is that the more the persons die to themselves, the more they actually find life. In fact, in the case of sexuality, they find true life in that that kind of love is capable of bringing about a life on its own.

And this is the difficulty of marriage. Our natural tendency is to look out for #1. In marriage, we have to not do that. That means that for the husbands, your wife needs that security from you and she needs you to sacrifice for her. Meanwhile, you wives, your husbands need that intimacy with you. You will have to sacrifice.

And in fact, the more each party sacrifices, the more it will not become a burden. It will become a joy. There will be no harm in giving something to your spouse that is entirely good for them. Their joy will be your joy.

Death is the way to life in marriage, but that life is something beautiful.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Our Dangerous Familiarity With Scripture

Is there a danger in our society where Christianity is normative? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If your household is like mine, my wife and I do frequently discuss the Bible and what it means for us, particularly when we are going through a difficult time, which we all go through. We also contrast it with others we see who fail along the journey and ask what they did wrong and how we can avoid it. One thought that comes to my mind is that too many people who call themselves Christians just aren’t taking Scripture seriously enough. The sad thought is that every one of us to some extent falls into that category.

You see, we will share with our neighbors and on Facebook and on our blogs and web sites about the glorious truths of Christ. We will talk about how His power is in us to work and to bring about the Kingdom. We will even listen to Christian songs that sing that message and sing those same songs in our church service. We will stand up and we will cite the creeds in our church services as if to say that we give full support to them and back them entirely. Many of us will stand up for the Inerrancy of Scripture and say that we fully believe that which is written in the Bible.

We’re good at talking.

We’re not so good at walking.

You see, we’ve become in some ways so familiar with the text that it no longer strikes us as radical in any way. Our Biblical morality has become normative for many cultures in many ways. We don’t realize how much of a change it is to dare suggest that a person should not be a slave, that a woman has value in herself, that sex is something sacred for marriage, that we should want to give to the poor, etc. Even many atheists today will agree to some of the claims before. (Probably you’d only find the most resistance on the third one) These have seeped into our background knowledge so much that we don’t realize it. Many people do not realize they are living with a Christian morality and frankly, we don’t even realize it.

When it comes to the story of the Bible, we’ve grown up with so many cute Vacation Bible School and Sunday School lessons on this that we have not got to have the shock value. We grew up thinking this is the way not only that the world is but that it has always been. The surprise of it has never been taught. Unfortunately also, we’ve made God detached in this one. We don’t really talk about who God is at all or what He intends to do in us. We talk about what He will do for us and very rarely does that seem to include personal holiness. Instead, it most often means things like providing comfort and peace when we need it and He’ll come when we pray because we’re in a bind. We don’t see Him as a day to day reality in our lives. It’s almost like we look and say “Well yeah, I know God is there and He loves me, but so what? Look at what’s going on in my life.”

We must really ask ourselves if we’re saying “So what?” to our worldview.

What does it mean when we talk about God? The great work of Jesus was that He gave us access to God, and yet we don’t really bother to learn anything about this God He gave us access to. How many of you men would like it if your wife treated you like just a paycheck so she could get the things she wants at the store and did not come to really know and appreciate you as a person? (And how many of you wives are doing just that?) How many of you women would like it if your husband only came to you when he wanted sex but just showed no interest in you otherwise? (And how many of you husbands are doing just that?) Yet too often, this is how we have treated God, you know, the being we say is the most awesome and wonderful and majestic one of all. The one who has all the power to do what He wants, all the knowledge to know what the right thing to do is, and is all present meaning He sees everything. Oh yes, we also believe He’s going to judge us at the end of our lives and everything we have done, thought, or said, will be called to account.

Tell you what. Let that last part sink in for awhile before moving on.

Everything. There are no exceptions.

Every. Single. Thing.

As I thought about this, I remembered a meme my wife put up that is a sentiment I have shared many times that a marriage cannot be 50-50 but 100-100 and I thought “Could it be that we do not seek to give all we can in our marriages when we don’t even do that with God?” In fact, it looks like we more often than not seek to give the bare minimum. Let’s consider a line like “You should not have sex before marriage.” We can look at that and say “Okay. I get it. No sex before marriage.” But then the rationalizations come in. “Yes, but what constitutes sex? Does this mean I can do absolutely nothing truly intimate before marriage?” It’s like we want to get as close to that line before we cross it. It’s practically thinking that we suspect God is holding out on some joy and keeping it from us.

Why on Earth would you give God the bare minimum? Do you think He’s going to waste what you give to Him? Do you think that if you give money or time or service to Him that He will waste that? Do you not realize that your actions in this life really show the world what you think of God? If your actions do not match up with your words, you can be sure that the people will go with your actions instead of your words.

Now some of you can say “God is going to judge me, but I’m saved so I get to spend eternity with Him.” Well to begin with, that’s just taking advantage of the grace of God. It’s saying “I’m already covered so this sin is no big deal.” That despite the fact that any one sin is enough to require the death of the Son of God so you can be forgiven. Sorry, but to Him, it’s all a big deal and if you do not see sin in your life as a big deal, then frankly you are not taking God seriously. You must also realize on the bright side that if you do take it seriously and come to Him and ask Him seriously for help as you repent, that He will help you.

Still, let’s suppose as we have good reason to that it is true that you will make it into His Kingdom. How you spend your life here will determine how much you will enjoy eternity the next life. So let’s look at you men again who might say “Look. I mainly value my wife for sex, but I love her still and our marriage is fine. What’s the big deal?” To begin with, I’m not sure why you would want your marriage to be described as “fine” when it should be described as awesome, but if you treat your wife as a sex object, you can certainly get a lot of jollies down here, but if you’re married to a Christian, that Christian is the temple of God and you will get called to account for how you treated that temple.

Your capacity to enjoy God in the next life could be greatly lessened by your failing to appreciate Him in this life.

Let’s also add in the case of Jerry Walls. Walls is a Protestant who believes that we shouldn’t have jettisoned the idea of purgatory. God has to make us holy somehow and he doesn’t see a guarantee of a sudden zap when we die. There will be a time of waiting according to Walls where God will purge our unholiness out of us.

Let’s suppose that that is true.

If so, do you not realize that living a life of sin means you will be further and further from experiencing the joy of the Kingdom because you lived so long in contradiction to it? I’m not sold on Walls’s idea yet, but it does make me look at myself and say “Am I taking sanctification seriously? Am I taking holiness seriously?” We can often act like our wrong doesn’t really matter to God and on what basis do we normally do it?

Feelings and experience.

“Sure. I did this thing I normally shouldn’t have, but I didn’t feel awful and the sky didn’t come crashing down around me so it must not be any big deal to God.” If personal experience and feelings were a guide to holiness that was surefire, I suspect many of us would be living better. Unfortunately, how we feel in a situation is often a result of not just that situation but a lifetime of training our emotions and feelings a certain way. They become repetitive. We can numb ourselves to any idea that we are doing something wrong by just ignoring it. That’s one reason so many guys can get caught in internet pornography. They ignore the one feeling and they emphasize that other feeling that certainly feels oh so good to them.

But for that, judgment is still coming. You will stand before God.

Again, let that sink in for a bit before moving on.

And what are the consequences of not taking Scripture seriously and thus not taking holiness seriously? Look around you.

How many of you live lives that the rest of the world will look at you and say “Wow. That’s what I want my life to be like.” How many of you husbands would have your wives be able to wake up and say “My husband is just so much like Jesus it’s a joy to be married to him.” (And wives, if you are saying that, are you indeed giving him your very best like you should give your best to Jesus?) How many husbands get up and say “I love my wife so much that I am willing to die for her at this moment.” (And if you say that, dying is no doubt difficult to do for someone, but are you willing to also live for them?) Again, many of us seek to give the bare minimum in our marriages. That could be why the divorce rate is so high.

Okay. I know there are times that a divorce is Biblically allowable. I also don’t think the claim is true that it’s just as high for Christians as it is for non-Christians since it’s my understanding that Christians who regularly worship and pray and read the Bible together and thus seek to live out a Biblical worldview have a much lower divorce rate. Despite that, divorce is a tragedy. Even if it is Biblically allowable, divorce is a tragedy. Our hearts should weep when we hear about it taking place in the church again even when we think it needs to be done. In fact, at our house, unless we’re discussing it in a context like this, we never use the word. It is simply “The d-word.”

This also includes our sex lives. Isn’t it a shame that we look at sex in our culture and the Christians are seen as the prudes who don’t really enjoy sex? We Christians should be the ones who are enjoying it the most. (Adding in if we are married of course.) If you want the world to look at your marriage and see it as something that they should desire, that will include your sex life in it. Sex is a covenant making activity and it serves the role in marriage of renewing the covenant as it were with your spouse. You come in and give everything you have to your spouse and leave yourself totally vulnerable to them. Yet in that vulnerability, there is to be the greatest of joy for you come knowing you are fully accepted and loved. Christians should in fact corner the market on having great sex and too often, we don’t.

What do you take the time to enjoy the most? Peter Kreeft spoke about one of his sports teams in baseball he likes once and said sometimes he worries he’s more of a fan of them than he is a fan of Jesus. How many of us could say likewise? How many of us follow our favorite sports team with more devotion and excitement than Jesus. Now some of you might call foul (pun intended) on me in this saying that you know I’m not a sports fan. Fair enough. Could I be more interested in a game I am playing at the time? Could I be more interested in a TV series I am watching at the time? Unfortunately, looking at the state of my prayer life, I think I could often say that yes, some things are more appealing. Could it in fact sometimes be that the ministry of Jesus is more appealing than Jesus Himself?

To get back to judgment, some of us will read and say, “Yes. I know I need to get things right, but judgment is off in the distance.”

For some people in Chattanooga, judgment came suddenly yesterday. I am not saying that their deaths was God’s judgment on them. Not at all. I am saying that they woke up yesterday morning I’m sure thinking they had the rest of their lives ahead of them. They had time to do things they meant to do. They had time to tell their loved ones that they loved them. They had time to play with the kids later on. They had time to show their spouse how much they appreciated them.

But they didn’t.

Before the day was over, they unexpectedly stepped into eternity.

And what guarantee do you have that the same won’t happen to you today?

We often look at our world and wonder how it got the way that it did. The idea of redefining marriage would have been unthinkable decades ago. Now it’s normative to most people. We can actually rip apart a baby in the womb and have people that will defend and celebrate it. Many of the things we were sure would never happen have in fact happened and as I tell people as an apologist, it really blows my mind the things that I have to defend today because I never would have dreamed someone could think otherwise.

This did not happen because the world did what the world does.

This happened because the church did not do what the church is supposed to do.

Do we really think this would have happened if we were taking the claims of Christ seriously? Do we really think this would have happened if we had properly informed ourselves on our worldview? Do we really think this would have happened if the church had more consistently lived what it believed? No. The blame falls on our heads for not doing the job of standing up and contending for the faith and we will be called to judgment for that.

In fact, we often talk about caring for the poor in Christianity. You know who’s job that is in Christianity? Yours. It is not the job of the government to take care of the poor. It is the job of the church to do that and the reason the church is having such a hard time is we decided to ask Caesar for his help. Do we really think that Christ is so weak and incapable that His church would need the help of Caesar to do what He had told them to do? The sad reality is yes, yes we do in fact think that. We can know we think that because that is in fact what we did.

Please also understand I am not going hard on everyone else and ignoring myself in all of this. I do take a serious look at myself and ask if I’m doing all that I could be. Of course, we can all always do more. None of us will live perfectly, but if I really do think God can help me in my struggle with sin, that He can empower me to live a holy life, that eternity of bliss with Him is the best thing that can possibly be, and that He will be my judge one day, I should take it seriously. If I believe the Bible is from Him and the commands in there are true, I should take that seriously.

Am I? Good question.

Are you? Also a good question.

Think about it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/18/2015

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Marriage. It’s all in the news today. It’s amazing that what has been argued by some as just a piece of paper is at the same time being argued as essential for the homosexual movement. What is it about marriage that has sparked such a debate? What is marriage? Is it just a connection of two people in love, or is it something different? How could we ever know? In order to answer these questions, I decided to have a scholar of marriage come on my show so this Saturday, I am honored to be bringing you Glenn Stanton.

GlennStanton

Glenn T. Stanton is the director of Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs and a research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family in Ottawa. He debates and lectures extensively on the issues of gender, sexuality, marriage and parenting at universities and churches around the world. Stanton served the George W. Bush administration for many years as a consultant on increasing fatherhood involvement in the Head Start program.

Stanton is the author of five books about marriage and families, including “Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern Society,” “My Crazy, Imperfect Christian Family” and “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” which was featured on C-SPAN BookTV. Stanton has also been interviewed on the Los Angeles NPR show, “AirTalk.” He is also a contributing author to nine others.

His latest book, “Loving My (LGBT) Neighbor: Being Friends in Grace and Truth,” explores how Christians should interact with gay or lesbian neighbors in a Christ-honoring way. He is also the author of “The Ring Makes All the Difference,” and “Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity.”

Stanton is a graduate of the University of West Florida with graduate degrees in philosophy and history. He now makes his home in Colorado Springs with his wife and five children.

We’ll be talking with Stanton about the SCOTUS ruling first to determine what his stance is on the matter and why he thinks the way he thinks. What are Christians to say about this? Does having something be the law of the land mean that it is actually true, or is this a case of trying to redefine something?

We’ll also then talk about what difference marriage really makes to a society and to a person. Many people today are wanting to live together before getting married. After all, why would you buy a car without taking it for a test drive? We also have a problem with a culture that readily turns to divorce. What role does sex play in a marriage? What difference does it make how you live your marriage if you are married?

These are all important questions and I am honored to have an expert in the field come on, particularly as my own wife and I get ready to celebrate five years together. I hope you’ll be watching for the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 6/20/2015: Debra Hirsch

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Not too long ago, I wrote a review of Debra Hirsch’s book Redeeming Sex. Since I have a great interest in the topic of sexual ethics, I figured this would be a great topic to discuss on the show. Just so everyone knows also, Debra will only be able to give us an hour of her time on the interview, but I hope it will be an informative one for you. So who is Debra Hirsch?

Debra Hirsch

According to her bio:

Deb Hirsch is a speaker, church leader, and writer. She has led churches in both Australia and Los Angeles. She is one of the founders of Forge Mission Training Network and a current member of the Forge America national team. She also serves as a board member for Missio Alliance. She co-authored (with Alan Hirsch) Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship. Her new book Redeeming Sex reflects something of her own journey and attempts to bring new conversations around sexuality into the context of the church. Deb has been involved in social work, community development and as a trained counselor has worked in the field of sexuality for over twenty five years. She and her husband live in community with others in Los Angeles.

We’ll be discussing the way sex is viewed in our culture and in the church. Why is it that so many of us in the church are so hesitant to talk about copies of sexuality when the world all around us is ready to talk about sexuality constantly? What is sexuality anyway? What is the purpose of sexuality? Can we think of Jesus really as a sexual being? How is it that people who are single are to view issues of sexuality?

We could also spend some time talking about the homosexual movement. What is the ideal way to dialogue with those on the left who are in fact often the most opposed to our message? How can you love a homosexual person while you disagree with their behavior? Even if we are right in our beliefs on homosexual behavior, is our approach always the best way to go about handling the issues that we talk about?

Ultimately, how can we redeem sex? How can we as a church reclaim the sexual ground that it looks like we’ve lost in our culture? Can a Christian really enjoy sex and be able to talk about it? Can a Christian encourage true intimacy with one another? What are the steps that we are to take if we are to appreciate the gift of sexuality that God has given us and at the same time to treasure it properly and hold it in the sacred place that it rightly deserves?

I’m looking forward to this interview with Debra Hirsch. I hope you are too and I hope you have got a chance to enjoy the past archives being caught up as I finally had the time to sit down and take care of it and may they never get that far behind again. I hope you’ll be watching for the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Meaning of Marriage

What do I think of Tim and Kathy Keller’s book published by Riverhead? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is the second Tim Keller book I’ve read and like the first one, I loved it and I hated it. I loved it because it’s just packed with excellent information and wisdom to help one be a good spouse and learn to appreciate marriage all the better. I hated it because in the midst of all of this, the Kellers smack you right between the eyes with what they’ve written so you have to take a good long look in the mirror and come to the conclusion that there are ways that you don’t shape up as the spouse that you are to be.

Tim Keller is the pastor of a church with thousands of people in New York and the overwhelming majority of those people are single, quite the rarity. Despite that, this book is based on a sermon series he did on marriage. Sermons on marriage are not just for married people. They need to be there for singles as well. Why? Because many of those singles just might want to get married someday and they need to learn to honor marriage the way God intended. If they don’t, they still need to honor marriage, such as avoiding having sex with other people, because they will be interacting with married people and even if you are not married, you can still work to build up the institution of marriage.

At the start, the Kellers want to dismiss with the idea of a Hallmark card. Marriage is usually treated like a fairy tale where you live your life feeling constant love for the other person. However, if this was what marriage was meant to be, then very few marriages would last. In fact, it could be the reason that many marriages do not last is because there are too many people who expect this. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the feeling of being in love is the explosion that gets the relationship started, but after awhile, it has to learn to rely on a deeper love that does not depend on the feelings.

The Kellers also give a history of marriage and show how in the Enlightenment, marriage came to be about fulfilling your own needs and not so much about self-denial. It came about fulfilling yourself as a person emotionally and sexually. Each person was entering more often for what the marriage would do for them and not what it would do for the other person. What a shock then that we wind up in a scenario where if the other person is not meeting our needs, well we just walk right out the door. Unfortunately, when we do this, we don’t realize that many of the problems from the marriage we still take with us and we just bring them into our next relationship, and then we probably bring even more since we’re trying to recover from a past relationship.

Tim Keller says that as a pastor, he points out to people that love is hard. Most anything that you want to do well, it requires sacrifice and effort. Look at the star athlete in any field. Could they have been born with some natural talent? Absolutely. Yet despite that natural talent, they had to work hard to do what they are doing today. We could in fact argue that love is very hard because it does go against our natural inclinations. Our natural mode of operation is to look to ourselves and take care of our own needs. Marriage calls you out of that to look to the needs of someone else.

The Kellers contend through their work that marriage is a picture of the Gospel. Of course, you can have a good marriage without knowing the Gospel, but if you know the Gospel well, it will improve your marriage. This is why they say that marriage is painful and wonderful. So is the Gospel. We can all appreciate good news about redemption in Christ and forgiveness, but with that good news comes the message that you are a human being who is not perfect and you are guilty of great wrong and need to seek forgiveness for your sins. We don’t like being told we’re sinners, and frankly, marriage has a great way of showing you the many things that you are doing wrong. I often tell guys that when you get married, it’s like God putting a big mirror in front of you and saying “Hey! This is what you’re really like! Do you like what you see?!”

The Kellers point out that at the heart of many divorces is a self-centeredness. You can see this because many times when someone divorces, they will often rail about what a jerk the other person was. Very rarely will they talk about all the things that they did wrong. (This is not to say there are no valid divorces. Sadly, there are.) This is of course our natural tendency. None of us really likes to look in the mirror and see who we are, but I often tell people who are married that the rule I apply in our marriage is when something goes wrong, I try my hardest to first look at myself and see if I did anything wrong. I’d like to say I always succeed at doing this, but I don’t.

Ironically, if we put the needs of our spouse first and seek their happiness, we can more often find our own happiness. The reality is many of us know this. A wife who provides a good romantic evening for her husband can enjoy the sexual act itself. Yet despite this, the greater joy she will often get out of it is knowing that her husband is going to bed that evening a happy man. (And yes ladies, we will go to bed happy men!) A husband will not normally enjoy spending money, but when he buys his wife some flowers, the great joy that he gets is not from spending the money, but from the joy that he brings his wife. We all know this! Why aren’t we living it more?

The Kellers then go on to speak about the people who ask why a piece of paper should matter so much. Keller says that if you say “I love you, but let’s not ruin it by getting married”, it’s a way of saying “I don’t love you enough to close off all my options. I don’t love you enough to give myself to you that thoroughly.” Getting that piece of paper is a public declaration with solid evidence that there is no one else and that all other doors are closed. Yes. The piece of paper does mean something. (Also, the Kellers are strongly against any idea of living together before marriage as that also increases your odds of divorce.)

Keller also talks here about our idea of passion and uses sex as an example. He writes that if you only have sex when you feel a time of great passion, then you will rarely do it and there will be fewer times of great passion as your spouse feels deprived. Why should they try to ask you for sex if they’re quite sure they will get a no answer? I happen to agree with those who say that many times someone should have sex even when they don’t feel like it. Once again, this is not about your needs. This is about the needs of your spouse. William Lane Craig has emphasized this as well.

There’s also the emphasis on what it means to honor your spouse. Breaking faith with your spouse means breaking it with God. It’s a shame that many couples enter the covenant of marriage and before a year is done, they’re looking to get out. When you got married, if it was in a church, you made vows to God and you made vows to man and you made vows to each other. Does that not mean anything to you? Those vows, the Kellers point out, are not just a vow of how you feel today, but they are meant to be vows that you will in fact keep loving your spouse in the future as well.

The Kellers also want us to know that in marriage, our goal is to shape the other person to be all that Christ wants them to be. We don’t just love them as they are. We love them as we see them becoming. We love to see what Christ is doing in them. You must be committed to your spouse’s holiness. As you do this, you will experience romance, sex, laughter, and fun, but those are not the cause of the great marriage. They are the result of it. The more that you are getting from your relationship with Christ and becoming like Him, the more also you will be able to impart that to your own family.

Aside from Christ, your marriage must be first. If your spouse does not think they are being put first, then you are not putting them first. That sounds hard, but it’s the truth. What would it mean if you have to convince your spouse that you are their first love? It would mean that you have done something to them to demonstrate to them that you are indeed not their first love. There has been someone or something else invited into the marriage and the person who feels rejected is just drifting into the background. You will not be able to have a great marriage if this is going on.

The Kellers also write about loving the other, and this in two chapters with Tim writing one first and his wife writing one on being a wife in the relationship. Tim writes about the power to transform, pointing out that he never really felt manly until he married. This is something I can relate to. I never did either, but now that I have a wife, I can fully delight in the masculinity that I do possess. This is also another reason why the sexual component means so much. It is the loudest way that a wife can scream to her husband “You are my man.” The rest of the world may look at me and see nothing special, but if Allie is looking at me and saying I am her man and her rock and the one she turns to, then I’m ready to conquer the world at that point.

Keller also writes to never withhold the primary love language. This goes both ways. A wife should not use sex as a weapon, such as punishing her husband by withholding herself when she doesn’t get her way. On the other hand, the husbands can often be quite guilty of this when they give the silent treatment.

The Kellers also have a chapter on the single life and marriage. It’s important to realize that if you are single, you are not looking for another Jesus. Your spouse is not supposed to be your savior. That is expecting too much of them. It is tempting to put your spouse in the place of God, but that is a recipe for disaster. Your spouse will not solve all the problems in your life. In fact, your spouse will quite often cause all new problems in your life.

The last chapter is on sex, and I think this is the way to go. OF course, this is the chapter most of us men want to skip ahead to, but we need to know all about marriage before we get to one of the greatest fruits of marriage. The Kellers write that sex is a covenant making activity. There’s a reason why in the bedroom, you will often get the greatest cries of love and passion. It is a passionate time and each person is practically under a spell. Earlier in the book, the Kellers write that it doesn’t necessarily start out this way. The Kellers write they were virgins when they married and the first time was frustrating, but like any other skill, it improves over the years. One of the greatest ways to improve it is to focus not on your happiness but on that of your spouse. Don’t try to perform. Just love one another. If you love one another, then there will definitely be times in enjoying that sex that you will indeed rock each other’s world.

Finally, sex is enjoyable not because it just includes awesome and incredible physical sensations, but because it reflects to the Trinity and the delight that our soul will have before God. Sex is often the closest we get to a moment of true ecstasy and an out-of-body experience in this life. (Is it any wonder some have even said that sex could be used as a proof that God exists?)

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book by the Kellers. I suspect I will be going through it again sometime, this time with my wife.

In Christ,
Nick Peters