Young women and household management

It's been a long time. If anyone still reads this blog, I have a new post for you. :)

The other day I was listening to a discussion between a recently married woman and a single woman, both conservative Christians, and I noticed an interesting example of marital role reversal.

They were discussing how they thought it was a big problem that single Christian men live with their parents longer these days, and that this bothers them a lot. You see, they want (or wanted, in the case of the married woman) to meet a man who lives on his own and manages his own household. The reason they gave is that they are afraid that a man who is used to being cared for by his parents will suddenly come to see his wife as his mother and expect her to do “all the work”. Is this all there is to it though?

Before I get to my main argument, I want to stop to make a few quick provisos:

• It is good for men to learn how to manage a household. There will always be times when they will need those skills. They don’t have to live on their own to learn this though.
• Whether or not a man lives by himself is an unreliable indicator of how much housework he will do when married. I have seen men who lived on their own for a long time before getting married still expect their wives to do all the cooking and cleaning. There are probably also a lot of men who move straight out of their parents’ home into a “Marriage 2.0” style relationship and (for a time) happily share half or more of the housework.
• If there really are men that treat their wives as mothers, they are probably selling their relationship quite short.
• There are many good reasons for a man to move out of his parent’s house, but impressing these girls is not amongst them.
• My understanding of Biblical marital roles is still under formation, especially in regard to how to live as Christians in modern society.

Now, as we should know, the Bible is very clear that a man should move out of home and learn to be independent before marrying. As it says in Genesis 2:24 of the Modern Churchian Translation:

That is why a man leaves his father and mother, lives on his own for a few years, and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh until they get divorced.

Wait, let’s try that again, NIV this time:

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

There is no Biblical concept of ever being “independent” before marriage. A man leaves his parents and is united to his wife in the same action – the word for ‘leaves’ here is literally ‘rejects’ and likely has a sense of ‘changes his primary allegiance to his wife rather than his parents’. I suspect that the ideal of “being independent” is very Western and part of our individualistic culture. In the Ancient Near East, most free men lived and worked in the family business until (and probably after) marrying.

This aspect, though, is not what I think the girls found objectionable when considering the concept of men living with their parents. And although they stated it was because they don’t want to take on a motherly role, I think deeper reasons lie under the surface. I think what a girl really means when she says she wants to marry a man who has been living independently and managing his own household is:

I want a man with status. I want a man who not just has money but spends money, even if it’s just on his rent. Not only that, but I don’t want to think of my own responsibility to be a household manager. I won’t need to learn how to cook properly and manage a household if he can do it already.

First we have hypergamy – women want to marry men of higher social standing than they are. It doesn’t matter how responsible and suitable a young man is, if he lives with his parents then he is automatically seen as lower in their eyes. He obviously just needs to “man up.” It doesn‘t cross their mind that perhaps he fully expected to marry young but found that Christian women weren’t yet interested, or that he might be trying to save his money so that he can properly support a family in the future. I think women are very capable of differentiating between men who live with their parents because they are irresponsible and men who live with their parents because they have more important priorities than “being independent”. However, they choose not to exercise this discernment because then they would need to acknowledge their own hypergamy and self-interest.

Next we have the marital role reversal (an example of what Dalrock calls a ‘cross dressing’ view of marriage). For the most part, young Christian women are no longer taught to manage a household as instructed in the Bible but want to convince the men to do this for them. Feminism reinforces this by suggesting that a woman who desires to serve her (future) husband in this way must have been manipulated into accepting a low view of herself.

Let’s consider a couple of Paul’s instructions in the New Testament. (Lest I be accused of being one-sided, I am aware that both letters also contain instructions to men, but I am focusing on the instructions to young women in this post.)

^{Titus 2:3–5 (NRSV)}

³Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behaviour, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, ⁴so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited.

^{I Timothy 5:14 (NRSV)}

¹⁴So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, and manage their households, so as to give the adversary no occasion to revile us.

I chose the NRSV here because I believe it is the most clear in capturing the sense of the Greek words οἰκουργός (oikourgos) and οἰκοδεσποτέω (oikodespoteo) used in these two passages respectively. The first, from Titus, translates literally as “house-keepers” or “house-guarders”. The second, from I Timothy, translates as “to house-rule” (note the Greek root we use for the word despot!). The NIV translates these as “to be busy at home” and “manage their homes”, which still captures the same sense but not as strongly as the NRSV in the former.

While these commands are for married women, it seems reasonable that any young woman who aspires to marry should be prepared to learn these responsibilities. Note that these verses don’t say that only women should have these responsibilities, but rather that for young women this is an area which needed addressing in the early Church (and I believe even more so today). If every married woman had been naturally good at managing a household, Paul would not have needed to write anything about it. Instead, he wrote this command not once but twice in separate letters, both times suggesting that this is a matter of upholding the reputation of God’s word and the Church.

Therefore, hermeneutically, these passages should not be seen as a complete household code, but rather that Paul is targeting common behavioural weaknesses in each demographic. For example, in Titus 2:6 he says that young men should be urged to be self-controlled; is Paul saying that young women don’t need to be self-controlled? Not at all – he is just pointing to a weakness amongst young men. (Somehow this is less offensive to our feminist-influenced culture than pointing to a weakness amongst women, but it’s exactly the same principle.) In I Timothy 5:13 we get an example of how this weakness plays out amongst women:

¹³Besides, [young widows] get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to.

I think you don’t have to look very hard to see the obvious modern equivalent is Facebook (or Tumblr or Twitter). Check your Facebook news feed at any time on any day to see dozens of examples of totally inane rubbish and gossip – and in my experience, a majority of it is posted by women (studies have shown women spend much more time on Facebook). Meanwhile there are often kids stuck in front of the TV and jobs to be done all around the house. I’m sure you all know several women like this.

Instead of young women being prepared to learn how to manage their households, we see young women proudly announcing that they have no idea how to manage a household; as if it were some kind of feminist merit badge. For example, many of the young Christian women I know would barely be able to cook a packet of instant noodles, and they are proud of this fact. Or, they might know how to mix a packet of ingredients together to make a cake (which they then post all over Facebook) but wouldn’t know the first thing about cooking nutritious food for a family. And, rather than older women in the Church helping younger women to learn these responsibilities, we see them encouraging the young women to just find a man who knows rather than learn for themselves. Older women encourage the younger women to believe that wanting to serve their (future) husbands in this way is wrong and outdated.

Strikingly, the word of God is not just being discredited by those outside the Church, as Paul cautions in Titus, but the word of God is being discredited by the church who does not take it seriously.

How should we respond to this then?

• Regardless of whether you are a young man, young woman, older man or older woman, read Titus 2 and take note of each of the instructions Paul has for you. Consider how the weaknesses he points out are just as much a issue today in the Church and culture at large.
• Keep in mind that whether you are a man or woman, as a Christian the state of your household reflects on the reputation of the church and God’s word. I don’t think it’s quite as scandalous today to have a poorly managed house as it was in the Ancient Near East, but it’s still something we should avoid.
• If you are a woman who is married or aspires to marry, then learn to manage a household and see this as a great and honourable way of serving your husband and family. If you are not married, practice cooking meals for other families you know (e.g. from Church) that are going through a difficult time, or for your own family. Don’t only cook desserts and sweet food; this signals possible issues with impulse control rather than actual culinary ability. On this point, eat a healthy diet – if you don’t eat a balanced diet then guys will (correctly) see you as immature. Cooking well is easier than ever now that we have a lot of technology and easy scientifically-based cooking methods. Keep your bedroom and house tidy, even when other people aren’t there to see. Discern between men not based on whether they live with their parents, but whether they are responsible and Christ-like.
• If you are an older woman with experience in managing a household, recognise that you are a role model for younger women. Don’t complain about housework, but instead make it clear how you delight to serve your family. Invite younger women over to help you prepare meals for others so that they can learn to do this with you. Share tips on cleaning and maintaining a household – this will both help others to learn as well as reinforce it as a positive way to serve. Show how hospitality can be a great blessing.
• If you are a man who is unmarried and aspires to marry, keep an eye out for this kind of marital role reversal. Pay attention to the attitudes of young women on this issue, and look for signs that they do or do not want to take up the responsibility of managing a household. Don’t be pressured to move out of your parent’s home just because some girls say that’s on their checklist – make your decision to stay or leave for more important reasons.
• If you are a married man and your wife is a good household manager, then thank God for this blessing! If your wife has weaknesses in this area, you need to discern whether it is wise to bring it up directly, or whether it is better to be subtle and try to make more opportunities for her to connect with responsible older women.

In the beginning... (part 2)

Two months ago, I began looking at the Biblical basis for masculinity and femininity. In part one, I looked a little at what it means to be made in the “image of God” and the responsibility given to humanity to populate and bear God’s authority over creation. In this post I want to look at Genesis 2 and see how it relates to our understanding of humanity, masculinity and femininity.

Starting from verse 4 of Genesis 2, we have a more detailed account of the creation of man.

⁴This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

⁵Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, ⁶but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. ⁷Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

As an aside, the astute reader may notice that in Genesis 2 there appears to be a slightly different order to creation than in Genesis 1. This apparent contradiction is not found in the Hebrew, but is a translation issue; there is a Hebrew word שָּׂדֶ֗ה (sadeh) preceding the words for both shrub and plant here, meaning “field” and sometimes translated as “of the field” when used as an adjective (as in Genesis 2). This qualifier is not found at all in Genesis 1. It may not seem very important or relevant, but it is actually quite significant for helping us to understand the responsibility given to humanity. You see, the word “field” here (unfortunately absent in many translations) gives a distinct impression of something occupational and practical; it's an agricultural term. A ‘sadeh’ does not come into being by itself, it is planted.

⁸Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.

(and, skipping over some geographical details)

¹⁵The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Sometimes Christians get the idea that the whole world was created just how God wanted it, and then we went and messed it up. While there's some truth to that, it glosses over some important points. Namely, before the creation of man, the earth had no ‘sadeh’ (fields); there was life and vegetation, but not the kind of organised agriculture required to support human community. That was Adam's job, man's responsibility (Adam and man are the same word in Hebrew) – the first ‘sadeh’ was planted by God as described in Genesis 2, and man was commanded to tend and expand this field (in the process of multiplying to fill creation).

God not only gave Adam (and, by extension, us) this job, but everything Adam was going to need to do the job. There was an established field, livestock (as we will see next), a river for water (that split into four of the largest rivers of the ancient world – I believe this is meant as a symbol that Eden was the source of all life), and let's not forget that God himself was there.

Of course, the question is; how is Adam going to do all this by himself? I believe that the author of Genesis has deliberately built up this crisis in the narrative. (There is also a second crisis building, regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but I will not address that in this post.)

¹⁸The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

¹⁹Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

Here we see Adam starting to do his new job. Adam, bearing God's authority over creation, names the creatures (a responsibility which is rightfully God’s). We also see the first appearance of livestock here (literally, field beasts, using the Hebrew word ‘sadeh’ again); something not found in Genesis 1. The author of Genesis further highlights the crisis that Adam cannot do this alone.

A ‘suitable helper’

At this point, I want to explore the meaning of this term, עֵ֫זֶר נֶ֫גֶד (ezer neged). Many people have debated the exact meaning of these words, and in modern times the discussion has unhelpfully focused on whether the term implies inferiority or equality (of the woman). The fact is, the author did not write this passage to address that kind of question, and it is an exegetical mistake to read it is though such a question were in scope. That's not to say we can't look at the subtle implications of the term, but we must be careful not to take it out of context.

According to my Hebrew dictionary (Strong/Vine's), נֶ֫גֶד (neged) means “a front, i.e. part opposite; spec[ifically] a counterpart, or mate; usually (adv[erb], espec[ially] with prep[osition]) over against or before.” It's an interesting word, with this variant being used just a couple of dozen times in the OT; it is used in both positive and negative contexts, and gives the distinct impression of two things or people intentionally oriented towards each other. In this context, it is probably best translated as “corresponding”; that is, Adam needs a helper corresponding to him (and his needs, and his problem that he physically cannot fulfil God’s command.)

What about עֵ֫זֶר (ezer), then? The dictionary entry is just “help”, and mentions that it is from the Hebrew word for aid. It appears 21 times in the OT:

• Twice to refer to the woman in Genesis 2.
• Three times to refer to the help or assistance given by one person or group to another, each in the context of God's judgement (Isaiah 30:5, Ezekiel 12:14, Daniel 11:34). The first two are explicitly negative references to the assistance requested by a rebellious people from other men.
• Eight times it refers to something that God gives or does.
• Nine times it refers to God himself as the ‘help’ of his people. A typical example is Psalm 33:20 (“We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield.”).

What shall we make of the term ‘ezer neged’ then? First, the helper is a gift from God. It would be right to say not only that she is a helper, but that she embodies God‘s help in this particular instance. Some commentators make a big deal about the word for ‘help’ not implying inferiority; this much is true, but it is just as much of a mistake to read this as implying equality. The term implies neither inferiority nor equality.

To be continued in the next part...

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quoted is taken from the NIV 2011.

Homelessness in Australia: Women in Need?

I noticed an article on the ABC web site this morning, “Homeless women, young people most in need”, which said:

Almost 230,000 Australians used a homeless service in the past year and 99,000 of those were children or young people under 24, a report has found.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report found an average of 19,000 people slept in a government-supported accommodation each night during the 2011-12 financial year.

The Institute's Geoff Neideck says more women than men needed help to find shelter.

"Overall, we see that that main cause is in relation to domestic and family violence," he said.

…

The first thing that struck me was that throughout the entire article, women were only referenced twice; once in the title, and once in this indirect quote of Neideck (I'd be interested to know what he actually said). The next thing to note is that the only thing supporting the indirect quote is a statement about “domestic and family violence” which doesn't mention women at all ­– in other words, an implicit assumption that all or most victims of domestic violence are women, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (H/T Dalrock).

The report by the AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) referenced by the article can be found here, but there are some significant problems with their data collection. They collect this data from agencies which work with vulnerable groups, and so any bias in the client demographics of these agencies will be reflected in the data. In particular, since most of the some 1500 agencies referred to are exclusively working with female clients, and the majority of funding goes towards these agencies, it's not surprising that men would be under-represented.

Since the AIHW reflects the number of people being helped but not the number of people needing help, I decided to look up the latest census data instead. Released just over a month ago, the government's official estimates of the number of homeless people tell a different story.

Firstly, over 56% of homeless persons are men, and men comprise the majority of homeless persons for every single age group. However, those numbers include people who live in crowded dwellings and temporary accommodation, not just people living “on the street”. Perhaps the situation changes if we look at the unequivocally homeless?

Okay, so it gets worse – men comprise 68% of those most in need of housing support. And before anyone says “but men don't need the same level of protection”, just check the violent crime statistics where you will find that men are significant majority of victims of violent crimes for all age cohorts, so any innate protection they have is obviously not enough to counteract this.

We've already seen that the AIHW admit that most services go to women. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data also shows this:

There are a couple of age groups where it's close, but a majority (51%) of the support goes to women despite men being such a majority of the homeless (56-68%). If Neideck as quoted thinks this is because women are more in need than men, he should look more closely at the data. It's not that we shouldn't be helping women – the issue is that we are not doing enough to help men, and the media still insists on focussing solely on how homelessness impacts women in spite of evidence that men are much more likely to be homeless.

The ABC article title claimed “homeless women, young people most in need.” I'll let the reader examine this last pie chart to help assess the validity of that statement.

In the beginning... (part 1)

What is our basis for understanding humanity, masculinity and femininity? For some, it is just the prevailing cultural attitudes. Others base their understanding on feminist ideology and its construction of ‘patriarchy theory’. Many in the manosphere base their understanding on the precepts of ‘game’ and in the evolutionary psychology that underpins it. But I am not content with any of these approaches.

I want to spend a few posts exploring what the Bible has to say about humanity, masculinity and femininity. Of course, it would be possible to write many books on this, and indeed many such books have been written. But rather than attempt to take on the issue in its entirety, my intention is to start with a couple of key issues and see where things lead from there.

^{Genesis 1:26-31}

²⁶Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

²⁸God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

²⁹Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. ³⁰And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

³¹God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.

I contend that any discussion of humanity, masculinity and femininity must begin here. How can we discuss what it means to be a man or a woman without first discussing what it means to be human?

Clearly, fundamental to being human is that we are created in God's ‘image’ (something I will attempt to elucidate shortly). However, too many people stop half-way through verse 26 and so miss the reason why God wanted to make us in his image. “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over [creation].” Therefore, the concept of authority is crucial to understanding humanity – not only are we under God's authority (by his creative authorship), but we are to embody and extend God's authority to creation.

In God's image

I've heard many different theories on the meaning of the term, but most of them are unconvincing. A superficial reading of the translated text leads some to conclude we look like God in physical appearance. Others see it as meaning we have some of God's qualities like being creative and loving. Some preachers I know explain it to mean we are made to function as a community in some kind of trinitarian sense because God is triune. Now, any of these may be true to some extent, but I think we can do a lot better.

We are not made in God's image just for the sake of it. We are made in God's image so that we can embody God's authority to creation. This will be the key to determining what it really means to be created in God's image.

The Hebrew word used for ‘image’ here is צֶלֶם (tselem). The word comes from the Hebrew root word for shade, as in the shade of a tree. I suppose the connotation is that a tree's shade looks somewhat like the tree itself.

The Hebrew word is used 14 other times or so in the Old Testament (not including Aramaic variants). Of course, not all usages will be relevant to its usage in Genesis 1, but since there are not too many I will list all of them for completeness.

^{Gen 5:3}When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.

^{Gen 9:6}Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

^{I Sam 6:5,11}Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land... They placed the ark of the Lord on the cart and along with it the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumors.

^{II Kgs 11:18a / II Chr 23:17}All the people of the land went to the temple of Baal and tore it down. They smashed the altars and idols to pieces and killed Mattan the priest of Baal in front of the altars.

^{Ps 39:6}Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.

^{Ps 73:20}They are like a dream when one awakes; when you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.

^{Eze 7:20}They took pride in their beautiful jewellery and used it to make their detestable idols. They made it into vile images; therefore I will make it a thing unclean for them.

^{Eze 16:17}You also took the fine jewellery I gave you, the jewellery made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.

^{Eze 23:14}But she carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans portrayed in red

^{Amos 5:26}You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god – which you made for yourselves.

Taking these verses together, what we see is that an image (tselem) is a representation of an object intended to bear its responsibility, significance, or function. For example, in Genesis 5, Adam's son Seth carries on the responsibility of Adam – of Adam's children, only Seth is described this way; perhaps because Seth is the son whose lineage carries the responsibility given to Adam (leading to fulfilment in Christ). In Genesis 9, we read that it is God who demands an accounting for our blood, but since we are made in his image, it is other humans that typically bear this responsibility. Most of the other verses here speak of idols which are not gods in themselves but rather symbols bearing a god's significance and function of communication in worship.

Mankind bearing God's authority

God was not under compulsion to allow animals or mankind the ability to reproduce. He could have created the Earth fully populated, with everything directly under his authority (and saved all the drama in the process). Instead, he created humanity and gave them his authority to bring about these ends. Therefore, to be made in the image of God means to bear his authority over creation on his behalf.

Having now looked at what it means to be human, in the next parts we shall look at Genesis 2 and 3 and our understanding of what it means to be men and women.

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quoted is taken from the NIV 2011.

Sex is icky, right?

It's that time in a single man's life where he finds it increasingly difficult to be grateful for another wedding invitation. You see, as chance would have it, many of my friends in their early twenties are preparing to get married in the next six months. It's not that I dislike weddings, but I dislike a lot of the fuss that goes on around them

Like most young Australians, they dream of one day owning their own house and raising a family in it, but this is certainly not cheap – trying to follow this dream will leave a young couple working with little disposable income for 15 or 20 years to pay off a hefty mortgage (it's hard to get a house around here for less than eight times the average annual pre-tax salary).

I plan to talk more about newlywed culture in upcoming posts, but for now I just wanted to mention a discussion that my friends and I had recently. I can't remember exactly how it started, but I think one of my friends was complaining about the cost of the house they had just bought, and I suggested something along the lines of

“Why not find a housemate or something to help pay the bills?”

To which my friends immediately objected

“No way! You've got to have a few years on your own first to get to know each other.”

I understand that this is the standard way of thinking in a nuclear family culture, but I've really started to question the wisdom behind this. Leaving aside my other musings (especially about the selfishness of this assumption) until a later post, I thought it was fascinating that the primary reason my friends gave for their objection was:

“But, if you had a housemate, they might hear you... you know...” *laughs nervously*

What? You mean someone might realise that you, a married couple, have sex sometimes? Lord forbid it. I couldn't believe I was hearing this from a couple that was going to be married in little more than two months at the time. There are two inherent issues with their objection. One is that, at some level, they are uncomfortable enough about the idea of sex that they can't speak about it directly – I understand that Christians are not usually brought up discussing these things over breakfast, but by the time people are in their early twenties (and especially when they are about to be married) they should at least be able to say the word ‘sex’ without looking really awkward.

The second issue here is that my friends apparently seem to find the idea of sex “icky”. On an intellectual level, they know that sex was created by God and that it's normal for married couples and all that, but on another level, they seem uncomfortable about it. Certainly, sex is not meant to be a public affair, but I would think that any housemate living with a married couple would reasonably assume that the couple are going to have sex regularly and if they had a problem with that then it's their own fault.

What do you think causes this attitude? Do we shelter adolescents too much in the church? It's not as though they won't hear about sex from any other sources (they certainly will). If this is a tactic to somehow curb the rate of premarital sex, then the statistics indicate it really doesn't work. Some churches run mens meetings and womens meetings, but these are typically for older people who are already married, so it doesn't help the teenagers to develop more healthy attitudes themselves. I know that my pastor spends a lot of time talking about sex in pre-marriage counselling of young couples, but I wonder if even waiting for them to be engaged is too late.

Is this something you see as an issue too? If you are married, do you remember whether you felt squeamish about sex as a newlywed? How did that affect your early marriage and how long did it take before you could discuss it comfortably?

Sketching at the window of this train of thought

I have been meaning to start this blog for some time now, but it seems as though every time I herd my thoughts together, there are newer and more pressing concerns to address. I've already written several drafts, but I haven't really been happy with any of them as far as introductory posts go.

The matters I wish to discuss are as far-reaching as they are deep, and it has been more difficult to summarise my thoughts than I had expected. Therefore, I decided that perhaps it was better to just write something to get the ball rolling, and then see where I go from there.

What's this all about?

I have spent many years now reflecting, with some dissatisfaction, on the relationships in my own life, and on those of my friends. What I saw was an apparent disconnect between the way in which we idealised our relationships, and the reality that those relationships faced. Friends I saw making lifelong commitments to one another would not even be on speaking terms within a few years. My slightly younger friends were busy getting married, and my slightly older friends were busy getting divorced.

None of us expected these kinds of tragedies to occur to us personally. “Yes, I know that 60% of marriages end in divorce”, we'd say, then rationalise that those “other people” were obviously not as committed/faithful/devout/Christian/etc. as us and that of course we would be okay. And perhaps we were right – perhaps there really was something especially deficient in those broken relationships, something we could avoid. But maybe those people had felt no less sure than we do.

I was not content with just wishful thinking; I wanted to delve deeper into this disconnect between our idealisation and reality. If I were ever to marry or have children, I wanted specific reasons and hard evidence to indicate I was in the percentage of husbands that would never put their children through a divorce.

A few months ago, I stumbled across some blog posts about divorce and statistics that had been compiled. What I found was a shock to me – the high percentage of unilateral no-fault divorces initiated by wives (up to 70% of such divorces), the number of children born of married women estimated to be the result of affairs (10% or so), and the extent to which society encourages women to focus on their own personal happiness and use any excuse to divorce their husbands and take the house and the children.

The blogs looking at these issues, especially the degree to which they impact men, are part of what is called the “manosphere” – operated by those who have rejected the tried-and-failed relationship dynamics promoted by modern culture. A common refrain throughout the ‘sphere is that feminism has played a large part in creating this environment where relationships are set up for failure and set up to benefit women over men and benefit women over children. While being initially hesitant to reach these conclusion myself, especially insofar as relationships between Christians (which I had naively believed to be less influenced by secular feminism), the evidence has led me to the same conclusions.

At this point I wish to mention the blog which has been most influential in challenging me to rethink and reconsider my views on marriage and relationships: Dalrock – Thoughts from a happily married father on a post feminist world. For anyone who would like to know more, I strongly recommend you read his blog. For those who plan to be married for life (you know, nearly half-a-million hours or so), spending one or two hours reading a blog is more than worth it.

Recommended reading:

• Reframing Christian marriage
• Is frivolous divorce overstated in the manosphere?
• Which sex is driving delayed marriage in the US?
• Rules of the road for fornication
• Threatpoint

Why write my own blog?

Why not just keep my thoughts to myself, far more private from the eyes of those who might object (future employers, friends, relatives)? Well, here are a few reasons why I have decided to do this:

1. I firmly believe that explaining our views to others helps to develop and accelerate our own understanding. Our brains are designed to focus on just a few things at once, so we often fail to notice gaps in knowledge or in our logic until we attempt to formally articulate our views. I fully expect that my opinions and ideas will change as I write.
2. One way to articulate our thoughts is to write them in a private journal, but the advantage of a blog is that, hopefully, people will interact with you. I do not write for fame or glory, but iron sharpens iron (Prov. 27:17) and there is much I can learn from the comments and debates that people might bring to this blog. It's my hope that the interaction can give me motivation to continue to express (and so develop) my ideas.
3. While there are already hundreds of blogs looking at these issues, I do believe I have something unique to offer. Firstly, there are relatively few blogs dedicated specifically to examining these issues from a Christian perspective. Secondly, while most Christian blogs in the manosphere come from the perspective of those who are already married or divorced, yet fewer blogs come from the perspective of young Christian men yet to find partners, so I hope to spend some time focusing on issues for the not-yet-married and newly-married. Lastly, it is my hope to contribute via some other skills like being able to dig up interesting research papers or perform new statistical analyses.

This post is already longer than I had intended, so I'm just going to leave it there for now. In the next few days I'm hoping to complete and publish some of the other draft posts I had written. Thanks for reading.