Can Christian Man Marry A Woman Intending to Tame Her?

Can a Christian man marry a feminist Christian woman with the intent of taming her like Petruchio did with Katherine in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”? Or must a Christian husband always seek a woman who is submissive and believes in and follows Biblical gender roles?

Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”

Here are some excerpts from synopsis of Taming of the Shrew by www.sparknotes.com:

“In the Italian city of Padua, a rich young man named Lucentio arrives with his servants, Tranio and Biondello, to attend the local university. Lucentio is excited to begin his studies, but his priorities change when he sees Bianca, a beautiful, mild young woman with whom Lucentio instantly falls in love. There are two problems: first, Bianca already has two suitors, Gremio and Hortensio; second, Bianca’s father, a wealthy old man named Baptista Minola, has declared that no one may court Bianca until first her older sister, the vicious, ill-tempered Katherine, is married…

The Katherine problem is solved for Bianca’s suitors when Hortensio’s friend Petruchio, a brash young man from Verona, arrives in Padua to find a wife. He intends to marry a rich woman, and does not care what she is like as long as she will bring him a fortune. He agrees to marry Katherine sight unseen. The next day, he goes to Baptista’s house to meet her, and they have a tremendous duel of words. As Katherine insults Petruchio repeatedly, Petruchio tells her that he will marry her whether she agrees or not. He tells Baptista, falsely, that Katherine has consented to marry him on Sunday. Hearing this claim, Katherine is strangely silent, and the wedding is set.

On Sunday, Petruchio is late to his own wedding, leaving Katherine to fear she will become an old maid. When Petruchio arrives, he is dressed in a ridiculous outfit and rides on a broken-down horse. After the wedding, Petruchio forces Katherine to leave for his country house before the feast, telling all in earshot that she is now his property and that he may do with her as he pleases. Once they reach his country house, Petruchio continues the process of “taming” Katherine by keeping her from eating or sleeping for several days—he pretends that he loves her so much he cannot allow her to eat his inferior food or to sleep in his poorly made bed

Katherine and Petruchio soon return to Padua to visit Baptista. On the way, Petruchio forces Katherine to say that the sun is the moon and that an old man is really a beautiful young maiden. Since Katherine’s willfulness is dissipating, she agrees that all is as her husband says

At the banquet following Hortensio’s wedding to the widow, the other characters are shocked to see that Katherine seems to have been “tamed”—she obeys everything that Petruchio says and gives a long speech advocating the loyalty of wives to their husbands. When the three new husbands stage a contest to see which of their wives will obey first when summoned, everyone expects Lucentio to win. Bianca, however, sends a message back refusing to obey, while Katherine comes immediately. The others acknowledge that Petruchio has won an astonishing victory, and the happy Katherine and Petruchio leave the banquet to go to bed.”

A lot of Christians who are ignorant of history and even the Bible would say a person is wrong for marrying for economic reasons. If you believe that, I would invite you to read the story of Ruth in the Bible.  She married Boaz to redeem her mother-in-law’s husband’s family land.  We falsely have been taught today that a person must marry because they first “fall in love with a person” – that command is found nowhere in the Bible. It is wishful thinking, mostly on the part of women.   Some will say – what about Jacob? He loved Rachel so much he served seven years for her.  But again, this is not a command, it is an example. And why did he love her? Check the story – it was because of how beautiful she was.

And let’s not forget Jacob’s mother and father. What a whirlwind romance they had right? They just met each other and went into his mother’s tent had sex and became man and wife.  No long courtship, no discussion.   Isaac followed his father’s advice for him in finding a wife and Rebekah followed her father’s command for her to go back and marry Isaac.  It was that simple.

But the most important question the Taming of the Shrew presents us with is whether or not it is sinful or immoral for a Christian man to marry a rebellious woman with the intention of taming her into submission?

However, before we can answer this question, we must first answer another very important question for Christians.

Can a Christian Marry an Unbeliever?

In 2 Corinthians 6:14-17 the Apostle Paul gives the following command regarding Christians entering into relationships with non-believers:

“14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”

As we can see from the above Scriptures, it is clear that believers are not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

This is why a Christian church has no business having an inter-faith conference with the Muslim church down the street. And it is also why a Christian man or woman can never enter into the most intimate of human relationships God ever designed which is marriage, with a non-believer.

Some Christians have falsely used 1 Corinthians 7:13-16 to say that the Apostle Paul was ok with Christians marrying non-Christians:

“13 And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.

15 But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.

16 For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?”

However, such an interpretation betrays the entire context of the passage which Paul states in verse 20 of this same chapter:

“Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.”

Paul is saying that if you become a believer and your spouses does not come to the faith as you have that you are to remain with them if they want to stay.  He is not saying it is ok for a Christian to purposefully marry a non-believer which would then conflict with what he said in 2 Corinthians 6:14-17.

Now that we have established this important principle of the Scriptures, we can go on to answer the question at the center of this article.

Can a Christian Man Marry a Christian Feminist Woman with the Intent to Tame Her?

Throughout the Bible God’s relationship with humanity is pictured in two different ways.  As individuals our relationship with God is pictured as a father and child relationship.  But God’s relationship with his people in the collective sense is always pictured as that of a husband to his wife.

We can see this concept shown where God pictures the nation of Israel as a treacherous wife in Jeremiah 3:20:

“Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the Lord.”

Notice how he refers to his wife – “O house of Israel”.

Now let’s look further in this book to Jeremiah 18:1-6:

“The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, 2 Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.

3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

6 O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”

What do we see here? God presents the picture of a potter who had a marred, meaning it had defects.  So, he reshaped it against as a whole new vessel.  God tells Israel, his wife, that she is like that clay.  He saw defects in her and wanted to reshape her in another vessel but she would not allow him to do so.

Now let’s look to the New Testament in Ephesians 5:25-27:

“25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”

There is an important parallel here between God as a husband to Israel and Christ as a husband to the Church.  How does a potter shape his clay into the form he wishes it to be? He uses water.  In the same way we as Christian husbands are told to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her so he could wash her with “water by the word”, so she would not have “spot, or wrinkle”, so he could present her to “himself a glorious church”.

Why did God want to reshape Israel as his wife? Because she was “marred” which parallels the “spot or wrinkle” shown to us here with Christ and his wife, the Church, in the New Testament.

The point is that God is a consistent husband.  Christ is not a different kind of husband to the Church than God was to Israel.  We as Christian husbands can learn just a much from God’s example as a husband to Israel as we can learn from Christ’s example as a husband to the Church.  This is a fundamental truth that all Christian husbands must embrace.

With that being said can a Christian man marry a Christian woman whom he perceives is marred by feminist tendencies with the intention that he is going to attempt to wash her of those tendencies?

The answer based on God’s own example with both Israel and the Church is a resounding YES!

Am I recommending Men Marry Feminist Women with the Intent to Tame Them?

I have proven the case from the Scriptures that nothing in the Scriptures stops a man from marrying a woman whom he genuinely believes to be a Christian but is marred by feminism.

I made the following statement about my second wife in a post I wrote a few years ago that include my story about how I met my second wife and married her:

“While we were dating, I detected feminist tendencies in her that she had from her upbringing (her mom was a career woman as well).  Her mom even told me on one occasion that she taught her daughters to “be independent and not need a man”.  So even though my wife had become a Christian a few years before she met me, the feminism ran deep in her.  I also detected that her job as a manager might cause some friction in her commitment to our marriage and our home.

But she was so different from my first wife, and such a good Christian woman with great character that I chose to overlook some of these areas that would later come back to haunt me, naively thinking I could help her to see what God says a Christian woman’s priorities should be in regard to her husband, her children and her home.

I mentioned in that same post that my wife displayed many marks of a true believer in Christ.  She was so dedicated to seeing people saved.  She witnessed to her friends at work and relatives and she was concerned for her lost loved ones.  She went on missions’ trips with her church.  I spoke with her Pastor and some deacons at her church and saw in her a woman that had many great character traits and a passion for God.  But she was a new Christian, saved only few years before I met her.

So, I believed when I saw the feminist tendencies in her that I could just teach her and help her to learn those ways were not right.  She told me she believed the passages about submission that I showed her. But she also believed that men and women were equal and she was trying to square that with what the Bible said about submission.

I thought I could wash this feminism from her, but alas after almost 9 years of marriage much of it remains.  There has been some progress and some change but not nearly as much as I had hoped.

The question though is this – does my failure to be able to wash away my wife’s feminism with the Word of God mean that no man could do this with another woman?

The answer is no.  It is in fact possible.

In the three years since I wrote about my story with my failure to completely wash away my wife’s feminism, I have had many men write me telling they had success with their wives in this.  I have actually even had many young women write me telling me that my writings helped to convince them that feminism was wrong and they came out of it on their own before marriage.

So, what is the variable that makes for success in the taming of a feminist Christian wife?  The answer is it comes down to whether the woman will recognize this sinful thought process in her own life and then allow her husband in conjunction with the Holy Spirit to wash it from her.

In James 1:23-24 the Bible tells us about a man looking in a glass seeing his reflection:

“23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.”

Now let’s apply what James is saying to a feminist Christian wife.  A man can take his wife to the spiritual mirror which is the Word of God.  He can show her the reflection of herself.  He can show her the sin of feminism all over her face.  But she must choose to humble herself before God and accept what she sees right there in the mirror.  She must then submit herself to her husband’s washing and see him as a God given instrument for sanctification in her life.

Some may argue “Well I am fine with trying to tame her before marriage, but you should not marry her until she is completely tamed of feminism”.  And I understand where that thinking comes from.   But just because something presents a lot more risk does not make it wrong.  Marriage itself is a risk.  Even marriage to a woman who seems to be a good Christian and one who fully embraces Biblical gender roles. It is simply a matter of how much risk is involved.

Is This a Change in My Position on Christian Men Marrying Feminist Women?

The answer is Yes. Throughout this ministry over the last four years I have made changes on several positions.  Really – over my entire Christian life I have made changes in my beliefs as the Lord has led me to do so.  We must never be so rigid or get to the point where God cannot change our position on something and teach us new things.

Up until now I have taught people on this blog as well as my own sons that I made a grave mistake in marrying their step mother with the intent to help her understand the errors of her feminist thinking.  I have taught young men on this blog and elsewhere that they should avoid interactions with feminist Christian women and at the first sign of feminist tendencies when dating or courting they should abandon such a woman.

If you or my sons want to follow the advice I have previously given there is no sin in following it still.  If you decide that the potential costs in this spiritual warfare to attempt to tame a feminist Christian wife is too much I completely understand and there is no sin in avoiding feminist women like the plague.

So here is my change. 

I have thought back to when I met my second wife and after I talked to all the people that knew her from her church as well as her family.  My intentions were noble.  I saw the potential in her for change.  I went into this marriage fully intent on washing her feminism away and believing she would allow me over time to do it. I believed her passion to see souls saved would result in a similar passion to conform herself as a wife to the will of God for her life. The problem was not in my intent, but in her continued unwillingness to fully yield to the Holy Spirit on this issue, so in turn she could not fully yield to me either.

If you find a woman who has the markings of a true believer in Christ as my second wife had, but this appears to be a blind spot in her life and you are intent on doing spiritual battle, even if takes the rest of your life married to her, to wash the spiritual wrinkles and spots of feminism from her then this is a noble cause. But be forewarned, this is not for the faint of heart. It could greatly affect your future children and in some cases the battle could even lead to divorce.

However, if you are marrying a feminist Christian woman with the intent that you are going to tolerate her feminism and will just give up your headship role over her then you are wrong.  As a Christian God does not allow you to surrender your position as head to your wife. So, if you know you are not willing to do battle to attempt to wash the feminism from a woman then you should not marry her.  You should only marry a woman who fully embraces Biblical gender roles before you marry her.

So here is the conclusion of the matter.  Is it a sin before God for a man to marry a Christian woman with the intent of taming her of her feminist tendencies and beliefs? The answer is no it is not a sin.

But I would leave any Christian man who intends to go into such a spiritual battle with this admonition from Christ found in Luke 14:31:

“Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?” 

Be sure before you go to war, that you count the costs that may be incurred on you in the process of that war.

Why MGTOW is an Unbiblical Philosophy

MGTOW is just one of many men’s rights groups comprising what is known as the Manosphere. MGTOW stands for “Men Going Their Own Way”. The Manosphere is comprised of several groups that share one thing in common. They all believe the rights of men in America and other western countries have been infringed upon for at least several decades and others for more than a century. Also, the vast majority of Manosphere groups believe that feminism is a problematic ideology that is eating away at the core of society and destroying Western civilization.

Where these groups begin to separate from one another is on two main issues.

The first issue which separates manosphere groups is how far back was feminism wrong? Was it from its very origins in the mid-19th century when women’s groups fought for more rights for in divorce and property rights for women? Was it when women were granted the right to vote in 1920? Or was it just from the advent of second wave feminism in the 1960s where feminism dropped the equivalent of a societal nuclear bomb on traditional gender roles and sexual morality and it became a misandrist movement that openly declared war on men?

The second issue which separates manosphere groups is how men should react to the damage feminism has caused to men’s rights, sexual norms, traditional gender roles, marriage and the family. And opinions on what the solutions should be are very much impacted by the group’s view on the origins of the problem.

For instance, if a group does not view equal rights for women, including the ability of women to vote and to be economically independent of men as a foundational part of the problem they will have very different solutions to the assault on men’s rights than other groups. Another way of putting this is that some manosphere groups are only fighting for equal rights for men with women, not less rights for women.

MRAs – Men’s Rights Activists

Many MRA groups in the manosphere believe they just need to just get the societal pendulum to the center. These groups are actually big supporters of first and even second wave feminism and all the new rights these movements granted women. They believe society was unjustly biased to support male privilege and patriarchy over women before feminism came along to correct this injustice. In their view, feminism just went too far and they want to re-balance the rights between men and women and have the courts deal equally with both men and women.

Jesse Powell’s Secular Patriarchy or Traditional Family Activism

Other manosphere groups believe that feminism was flawed from its very inception and that American and Western society made a grave error in granting women economic, social and political independence from men. In their view, tearing down the system of patriarchy which was the norm throughout human history was a colossal mistake.

Even among the manosphere groups that believe feminism was flawed since its very inception in the mid-19th century, there is much diversity of opinion. Some of these groups come from a secular perspective and others come from a religious perspective.

For instance, there are atheists like Jesse Powell who are believe in and teach “secular patriarchy” and consider themselves “TFAs” or Traditional Family Activists. Jesse Powell argues that evolution shows that men are meant to lead, provide for and protect women and that the feminist revolution of the mid-19th century went against this and was doomed to failure because of the unique evolutionary design of men and women.

Mr. Powell not only decries the damage caused by feminism to Western world, but he also offers what he believes is a solution to the problem:

What society needs instead is for men to assert themselves as men and return to their roles as the guardians, protectors, and foundation of support for women so that women will be once again freed from the concerns and burdens of the man and instead be enabled to focus on giving to others of their femininity and their unique and particular strengths as women. The feminine contribution to the family and to society must be resurrected, must be revitalized, must be held up as a fundamental priority and concern of men once again.

Under coverture women’s role as women was upheld in both culture and law. The beginning of the feminist revolution can be dated back to the initial reforms that worked to undo the principles of coverture; namely the Custody of Infants Act of 1839 and the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870. TFAs wish to repeal the feminist revolution in its entirety and return to a period of stable and healthy relations between the sexes such as existed in the era of coverture.”

So, in his view the answer to fighting the damage feminism has caused to the family unit and Western civilization is to go back to the very beginnings of feminism in the mid-19th century and remove it at is very roots. That means removing women’s right to vote, property rights and child custody rights in divorce. This would force women’s complete dependence on men as had it been for this history of mankind throughout the world.

Rollo Tomassi’s “The Red Pill” or TRP

Other secularists like Rollo Tomassi at RationalMale.com take a different approach. He does not oppose women’s right to vote, property rights for women or even their right to abortion, but he does think that the ideology of feminism is at odds with human evolution and he does not buy into the false blank slate theory that all of our behavior comes from our environment. He rejects the crazy idea that you can educate away basic male and female behavioral traits.

Rollo Tomassi has made a career of his own take on “The Red Pill” which uses the 1999 movie “Matrix” to illustrate how men need to be awakened to what is actually happening around them. In the Matrix movie the mentor character Morpheus offers Neo, the main Protagonist a choice between a red pill and a blue pill. If he takes the red pill, he will be awakened to the false reality he has been living in and shown what the world actually looks like. If he takes the blue pill, he can go back to the fantasy world he has been living in his whole life. But if he does stay in that world, he will continue to be what he has been since his birth, a slave to the Matrix system. He can only be free by taking the red pill and waking up to the harsh real world around him. It will be a harder world, and he will have to fight against the system he used to serve as a slave, but he would be free.

I actually love the Matrix Trilogy and own them all on Blu Ray. I watch them a couple times a year with my sons. I think there are many life lessons that can be learned from them and I actually think the red pill/blue pill is an excellent analogy to how we are brought up in our culture to view our world. I would even use the red pill/blue pill analogy to teach people that there is a spiritual world that is beyond this physical world that we can see and touch.

But unlike Jesse Powell, Rollo Tomassi does not see the answer to the problem of “feminine primacy” in Western culture as a need to completely rollback all gains of feminism since the mid-19th century. Mr. Tomassi is not really looking at long term political solutions to the problem of feminism, but rather he is more interested in helping men to “game” the current feminine dominated culture to fulfill their “masculine imperative”. The masculine imperative in his view is for a man to have sex with as many women as possible. In essence, men are programmed to be polygamous, or most specifically polygynous. Women on the other hand are hypergamous by nature, meaning they seek the best man with which to mate based on his genetics and his ability to provide for and protect them. This is why women are most naturally attracted to muscular, good looking men who have a lot of money.

One of the most important concepts Mr. Tomassi teaches men in their efforts to “game women” is the “Cardinal Rule of Relationships: In any relationship, the person with the most power is the one who needs the other the least”. By this he teaches men that the more they act like they need a woman, especially for sex, the more power she takes in the relationship and ultimately the less attractive he becomes to her.

And no introduction to the Red Pill ideology would be complete without the mention of alpha men, beta men and the concept of “Frame”. In his book “The Rational Male — Positive Masculinity” Tomassi writes:

“The sexual alphaness of a male towards a female is exhibited by her wanting to please him, and the sexual betaness of a male is exhibited by him needing to please her.

And on the subject of “Frame” Tomassi wrote the following in his article on RationalMale.com entitled “Hypergamy Knows Best”:

“One of the most basic Red Pill principles I’ve stressed since I began writing is the importance of Frame. The dynamic of Frame stretches into many aspects of a man’s life, but in a strictly intergender sense this applies to men establishing a positive dominance in their relationships with women. In a dating context of non-exclusivity (plate spinning) this means, as a man, you have a solid reality into which that woman wants to be included in. Holding Frame is not about force, or coercion, it’s about attraction and desire and a genuine want on the part of a woman to be considered for inclusion into that man’s reality.

Being allowed into a man’s dominant, confident Frame should be a compliment to that woman’s self-perception. It should be a prize she seeks.”

So here is a summary of what Tomassi is saying in these two statements. Men have a choice. They can be the beta male our post-feminist culture wants them to be. That means as a man you center your life on pleasing the women around you. If you are a beta male, your entire strategy in dating and eventually marriage is to make your wife happy each and every day. You will sacrifice your career, your sexual needs and anything else that is required in order to make her happy.

Alpha males are the polar opposite. The best summary of an Alpha male is man who absolutely and unequivocally does not care about what others think of him. He literally does what he wants to whether it is popular or not.

As an example, a beta male would ask his wife or girlfriend permission to go out with his friends on a given evening. The alpha male would tell his wife he was going out and not give her the option of a veto. Tomassi and other Red Pill philosophers have pointed to many studies which show women going after the “bad boy”, i.e. the guy who could care less about what anyone thinks of what he does. For instance, it is extremely common for a woman to be married to Mr. Nice Guy and then have an affair with Mr. Bad Boy who lives next store. The Mr. Nice Guy could work the 9 to 5 job and provide well for his wife and children. The Mr. Nice Guy could come home after work and help with the kids and even cook dinner. Mr. Nice Guy even takes his wife on regular weekly dates and even takes her on romantic trips a couple times a year. But instead his wife finds herself attracted to Mr. Bad Guy next store who is covered in tattoos, rides a Harley, would never want kids and has an endless string of bimbos coming in and out of his house.

This is because two of the driving forces that evoke what Tomassi calls “genuine” verses “negotiated” sexual desire in women are men that give off the allure of danger or excitement. Mr. Nice Guy is both safe and unexciting therefore his wife will most likely have no genuine desire to have sex with him and the most he can ever hope for is “transactional” or “negotiated” sex where he does things for her and then she gives him sex as a reward.

Another driver of genuine sexual desire in women, according to Tomassi, is fear or dread. Its not fear in the sense that she is afraid the man will hurt her if she does not have sex with him. It is not even fear that he might take away things like money or other things he supplies her with. This type of fear or dread as he refers to it is when a woman sees other women are interested in her man. It is really a jealous type of fear where she worries if she does not sexually please him, he will find what he wants elsewhere with these other women that want him.

And these are just some of the many techniques that Mr. Tomassi teaches men in order to stoke “genuine desire” for sex from women toward them. While he does talk about other masculine issues besides sex, his teachings could basically boil down to “How men can get laid both before and after marriage in a post-feminist world.” With teachings like these, it is not surprising that Mr. Tomassi has one of the largest followings in the Manosphere.

One of my many projects I have had in the works is to do an in-depth comparison of the doctrines of Biblical gender roles verses Red Pill ideology. I will say up front as a preview that Red Pill ideology is not all wrong from a Christian perspective. In fact, many observations of Red Pill ideology are backed up by the Bible.

But one of the big differences between Red Pill ideology and Biblical gender roles is that Red Pill just tells you what the differences are between men and women, it does not do a lot of explaining as to why those differences are there.

The only “why” you get from Red Pill for the differences between men and women is based on the evolutionary need to reproduce for the continuation of the species. Mr. Tomassi’s Red Pill ideology teaches that men have polygamous natures which causes them seek to sow their seed with as many women as possible. On the other hand, Tomassi teaches that women have hypergamous natures which causes them to be more selective and thus they seek out the most genetically superior males who can provide for and protect them and their children thus giving their offspring the best chance for survival.

The Bible actually shows that God made men with polygamous natures and it regulates polygamy and even blesses polygamy. So, in this area of man’s sexual nature the Bible would be in complete agreement with Red Pill ideology. The Bible would also agree with the fact that women have hypergamous natures but under Biblical laws women were not allowed to fully act on those hypergamous natures. While it is true that women often married for economic or political means, the fact is historically women had little to no choice in whom they married. Their fathers or other male relatives like uncles or brothers would decide who women married. Only widowed or divorced women had a choice in whom they married.

Also, before the sexual revolution which coincided with the second wave feminism of the 1960s, sex outside of marriage was the rarity and not the norm as it is today. Prior to the sexual revolution, a woman’s virginity was her most prized possession held and protected for marriage. So, the whole Red Pill ideology of cracking “the code of how to get laid” was meaningless for having sex with the vast majority of women. Prior to the advent of dating in the early 20th century and then the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the way a man got laid was to get married. And the way a man got married was to get a job, show he could provide and then earn the permission of the father, uncle or brother of the girl he wanted to marry. In many older cultures a man did not just earn the father’s permission with his character or by showing he could provide, but he also earned that permission by paying for the woman.

In other words, since the creation of mankind right up until the advent of mid-19th century feminist movements, women were considered the property of men. There were two primary ways men acquired women. They would take women as part of the spoils of war from the tribes or nations they conquered or among their own tribe or nation they would purchase women from their fathers or other male relatives.

So, when we look at the history of male/female relationship dynamics, a lot of what Red Pill ideology teaches only applies if a man fully accepts and just wants to “game” our post-feminist and post-sexual revolution culture to fulfill his own personnel desires for pleasure.

However, if you are trying to follow the Biblical model of gender roles some parts of Red Pill ideology will work within a Biblical framework but other parts of it will have to be discarded.

Now that we have talked about MRAs, Secular Patriarchists and Red Pill teachings from the manosphere we will now dive into MGTOWs.

What MGTOWs Believe

Here is the definition of MGTOW from mgtow.com’s “About” page:

M.G.T.O.W – Men Going Their Own Way is a statement of self-ownership, where the modern man preserves and protects his own sovereignty above all else. It is the manifestation of one word: “No”. Ejecting silly preconceptions and cultural definitions of what a “man” is. Looking to no one else for social cues. Refusing to bow, serve and kneel for the opportunity to be treated like a disposable utility. And, living according to his own best interests in a world which would rather he didn’t.”

https://www.mgtow.com/about/

On mgtow.com’s “Manosphere” page they explain what happiness looks like to a man:

Happiness is a man who protects and cares for his family, goes forth and conquers, gives of himself for a greater cause, and ensures his legacy – because that’s what he was made to do. He doesn’t fear resistance, turbulence, or commitment, because his masculine frame turns resistance into rise, finds sustenance in turbulent waters, and relies on the steadfast roots of commitment to provide stability for himself and safety for those he vowed to protect.

But today’s men are encouraged to meet resistance head on while being shamed for expecting lift. They’re told to “man up” and tough it out through turbulent waters while being called misogynists for expecting sustenance. They’re shamed into putting down roots in infertile hypergamous soil that offers no support, then are financially ruined and separated from their children when they cannot weather the storm…

The women they encounter demand attention, loyalty, resources and undue privilege, while offering very little in return. The natural hypergamous nature that once served them well in their quest to secure the best possible mate is now a sustained lifestyle bringing an endless pursuit of bigger and better. The average young woman today is less concerned about the number of quality men who would commit to her than she is about the number of men who retweet a photo of her breasts.

Young men today attend churches with pastors who demand they “man up” and support the church and its female parishioners, but that same church does nothing to cultivate an environment that encourages feminine strength. Sunday after Sunday they listen as the same Bible used to preemptively absolve women of all past, current and future transgressions is used to condemn men…

Men haven’t lost their need to find happiness by providing, protecting, sacrificing and conquering; we’ve simply discovered that providing for the modern feminist, working like a dog to protect a family that can be taken away at a moment’s notice, or risking our lives to conquer resources for some ungrateful women who claims she can do it on her own is an empty way to live. We haven’t changed the mission; we’ve changed the method. We now provide for ourselves and our immediate families, protect our interests, make selective sacrifices when the situation warrants, and conquer mountains of poon.

https://www.mgtow.com/manosphere/

On the subject of sex mgtow.com gives this answer in their “Frequently Asked Questions” (https://www.mgtow.com/faq/) section:

“Do MGTOW have sex? Or are you all virgins who don’t get any.

You know who’s not getting any?

Boyfriends and husbands.

Sex is a worthless commodity that grows on trees. Any man who has enjoyed his fair share would know that. It’s available to any man, anywhere, for less effort, money and time than anyone would have you believe. If it’s that important to a man, he can order it like pizza. Right now. Even if the modern man has only 3 lovers in his entire life, he is enjoying more trim than his own grandfather – who was socially expected to marry her first. The value of western vagina has plummeted to $0.

A significant number of MGTOW are fathers. Guess how that happened.”

And finally on the subject of marriage mgtow.com gives this answer in their “Frequently Asked Questions” section:

Can you be married and a MGHOW?

There has been some deliberation on this, but the short answer is “no”.

While it’s certainly possible that a man may have married 20 years ago, and recently became self-aware of the very precarious legal position he finds himself in today . . . this would be the only real way he could consider adopting a MGTOW lifestyle if he were contemplating divorce.

Cohabitation and the signing of a marriage contract eliminates any possibility that he has a true 100% agency over the outcome of his marriage and future. With 72%+ of divorces solely initiated by women (the number is much higher because she can still passively initiate while making it look like his idea) his kids, house, cars, freedom and ultimate destiny no longer belong to him exclusively. No matter how much he wants his marriage to work, he can’t legally control the outcome and can be totally devastated by the divorce. Divorce is a huge, billion-dollar industry deliberately designed to transfer his wealth and freedom to her, leaving him with little or no recourse – even if he were totally faithful and she had 50 affairs since the wedding.

Save a male and stop a wedding™ is an unregistered trademark of MGTOW.com

Now that we have shown what MGTOWs believe straight from the horse’s mouth we will take a look at some things that MGTOWs teach that are in fact true.

What is Right About MGTOW?

From a Christian and Biblical perspective most of the groups in the Manosphere have some elements of truth in their philosophies. MRAs are correct in stating that courts and our legal system are biased in helping women and sticking it to men especially as it relates to divorce and child custody issues. Red Pill teachers like Rollo Tomassi are right that sex is a major driving force in any man’s life if he is being honest with himself. Tomassi is also right about men being polygamous by nature and women being hypergamous by nature. And MGTOWs are right about a few things as well.

MGTOWs Are Right About Happiness Drivers for Men

Mgtow.com stated “Happiness is a man who protects and cares for his family, goes forth and conquers, gives of himself for a greater cause, and ensures his legacy – because that’s what he was made to do.” That is absolutely a true and Biblical statement. Men are absolutely driven to create a legacy for themselves both in the children that will carry on their name and in the mark they leave on the world outside their home whether it is in their conquest of the worlds of business, politics, the arts, philosophy, science, medicine, sports or a host of other areas.

A simpler way to say this is that men have a built-in desire to be the hero both in their individual homes and to a larger audience outside their homes.

In Ecclesiastes 7:1 the Bible says A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth”. We read in Proverbs 13:22 that A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just”.

In Proverbs 3:13 the Bible saysHappy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding”. And in Psalm 127:3-5 the Scriptures state:

“3 Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”

So, leaving behind a good and honorable name, an inheritance for one’s children and their grandchildren, learning and finding wisdom and understanding and having children were all meant by God to be sources of happiness for men.

MGTOW is absolutely right that one of the driving forces in a man’s life and one that is meant to bring him happiness is his legacy both in how he provided for and protected his family and how he left his mark on the world. As Bible believing Christians, we believe this is part of God’s design in man.

MGTOW is Absolutely Right About the Riskiness of Marriage for Men

Before the rise of feminism, a man could securely enter into marriage with a woman knowing she would be faithful to him for life. He could confidently set out to build his legacy with his wife and children at his side.

MGTOW is absolutely right that the modern feminist mindset has decimated the institution of marriage for men. They are right that around 70 percent of divorces are filed by women. They also right that the courts are biased toward women and that men can literally loose half or more of everything they have and be left with seeing their children much less than the mother does.

MGTOW is also right from a secularist perspective that in our post-feminist world a man does not need to marry to have sex. A man can get all the sex he wants whether through paying for it or using Red Pill gaming and pickup artist techniques. And it is absolutely true that many women freely give out sex to lure men into marriage and then once marriage comes, they stop having sex or only use it as a reward technique to keep their husbands in subservience to them.

MGTOW is Absolutely Right That Men Ought Not to Surrender Their Autonomy to Women

MGTOW is also right that for many men who do stay married, the only way they keep their wives from divorcing them is to surrender their autonomy to their wives. In other words, they must become full on beta husbands in order to avoid divorce.

The Bible tells us it is a shame when women or children rule over men:

“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” – Isaiah 3:12

In the New Testament we read a direct command from God that women are not to take authority over men:

“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” – 1 Timothy 2:12

Now that we have discussed what is right about MGTOW we must now warn Christian men as to what is wrong about MGTOW.

What is Wrong About MGTOW?

From a Christian perspective there are several core teachings of MGTOW that directly contradict the teachings of the Word of God.

MGTOW Misses Sex as a Primary Driver for Men

While MGTOW and Red Pill share much in common in their ideology one of the large differences between them is on the issue of sex. MGTOW sees a man’s legacy as his primary driver of happiness in life where Red Pill sees a man’s sexual fulfillment as his primary driver in life. The truth is that that BOTH the building of a legacy through providing for and protecting one’s family and a man’s life’s work as well as his sexual fulfillment were meant by God to be primary driving factors of a man’s happiness in life.

The Scriptures tell us the following in Proverbs 5:15-18:

“15 Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.

16 Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. 17 Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.

18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. 19 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”

Contrary to the teachings of MGTOW and Red Pill, God did not intend for men to find happiness in only their legacy or in meaningless sex with strange women. He did not mean for any man to share a woman with other men. He meant for a woman to belong to one man for her entire life and that she would never be sexually touched by another man as long as her husband lived. In other words, God meant for men to find sexual fulfillment in marriage with their wife, not outside of marriage with strange women.

God made man’s sexual drive so strong that he compares it to water and calls it a need in a man’s life. And the well to meet that need was meant to be his wife. Many MGTOWs deny sex is even a real need for a man and they advocate “Going Monk”. But other MGTOWs and the Red Pill folks while acknowledging sex as a true need in men teach men that they can fulfill this need with whorish women that give their bodies to many men.

MGTOW and Red Pill Miss the Most Important Driver for Men

Why did God plant both a strong desire for men to play the hero and build legacies both inside and outside their homes? Why did God plant such a strong sexual desire in men for the beauty and sexual pleasure of women? And really why did God create women with the power to give men such pleasure both visually and physically?

This is where much of the Manosphere won’t be able to give you an answer. But the Bible has a clear answer for this and it is found in the Apostle Paul’s divine commentary on the Genesis account in his first epistle to the Corinthian church:

“7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. 9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.” – I Corinthians 11:7-9

Man was created by God to bring him glory by imaging him. That is his primary directive and his purpose in life.

By “image” we mean “to display”. Man was designed by God to display his nature and his attributes. God is strong, so he made man strong. God is aggressive, jealous and competitive. So, he made man aggressive, jealous and competitive. God is a worker, a builder and a conqueror. So, he made man to be a worker, a builder and a conqueror. God wants to lead, provide for and protect his people. So, he created man to desire to be a leader, provider and protector for his wife and children. God wants to leave his mark on this world and so to he designed man to want to leave his mark on it as well.

Lastly contrary to what many Christians believe about God, the Bible tells us God is a lover of pleasure and beauty. In Revelation 4:11 we read that all of creation was created for God’s pleasure:

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Psalm 45:10-11 has been widely recognized by many Christian scholars as prophecy of Christ and his Church:

“10 Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house; 11 So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.”

These passages I have just mentioned prove that God does seek out and enjoy pleasure and beauty and this is why men are hardwired by God to do just the same in regard to the beauty and pleasure that women can offer them.

So, if man was created by God to display or literally live out his attributes than why did God create woman? The passage I gave above from I Corinthians 11:9 gives us the answer to this question. God created woman for man. Period.

That means every part of a woman’s being, every part of her psychological and physiological makeup was created for man’s benefit and more specifically to help him live out the attributes of God. God created man strong, so man needed someone weaker to protect. That is why God made woman “the weaker vessel” as I Peter 3:7 tells us. Man needed someone to bear his legacies in the form of his children, care for them and care for the domestic needs of his home. That is why the Apostle Paul gives women this command in 1 Timothy 5:14:

“I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”

As Christian men we must accept that our drive to have a legacy and to have sex for that matter were given to us cause us to image God with our lives.

MGTOW Denies Man’s Need for Female Companionship

MGTOWs encourage men to divorce themselves from the concept of female companionship. Sure, they will say if you need to have sex, go game a woman or find a prostitute. But we are not talking about sex here. We are talking about companionship. God said in Genesis 2:18:

“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

In Malachi 2:14 the Scriptures state:

“Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.”

So, as we can see from the Bible, God did not just create woman for man’s for sexual pleasure, to be the mother of his children and the caretaker of his home. He also created her to be his companion throughout his life. He said it is not good for man to be alone. And he did not create another man to solve that problem. He created a woman.

God created woman for man to be his greatest cheerleader. He created her to cheer him in his victories and comfort him in his defeats. That is why the Scriptures tell us in Proverbs 12:4 that “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones”. This is also why I Corinthians 11:7 states that woman is “the glory of man”.

MGTOW Promotes a Spirit of Fear in Men

As I said previously, I do not deny the we in western civilization are living in a feminine centric world. While women point to men still occupying the majority of top CEO positions, they neglect to point out that that the majority of middle management positions in companies are now held by women (except in technology companies). They also neglect the fact that women dominate colleges and universities. In most churches, even those led my men, women dominate and influence the teachings and direction of the church.

I do not deny that our courts are highly slanted toward women especially in divorce and child custody and marital property division decisions. The state literally incentives women to divorce their husbands.

Yes, this makes marriage a far riskier proposition for men than it has ever been in the history of mankind. And it is for these reasons that a core teaching and requirement to consider one’s self an MGTOW is to swear off marriage completely. This sets MGTOW apart from the ideologies of Red Pill and Secular Patriarchy and most importantly the Biblical principles regarding gender roles and marriage.

But let’s put the marriage risk into perspective. Statistics in recent years show marriages failing at a little less than 50 percent now. But let’s just round it up to 50 percent. Then we know that of that 50 percent of marriages ending, 70 percent of those marriages were ended by the woman. That means if you are a man you have a 35 percent chance that if you marry a woman, she will divorce you.

Now some might argue that the chance of divorce would go up higher if you did not become the beta man that many wives want their husbands to be. But we can offset that risk increase by men being choosier with the women they marry.

The are three ways this can be offset the risk that a man’s future wife will demand that he become a beta husband in order to save the marriage from the threat of divorce.

  1. Search out and marry a Red Pill American or western woman.
  2. Search out and marry a woman raised in another country that still has traditional gender roles and has not been poisoned by feminism.
  3. Search out an American woman who was raised in a conservative Christian home and that fully embraced male headship and Biblical gender roles as well as strict views on divorce.

Now as a Christian I would say we should only marry a Christian so even the first two women would have to be Christians. But for secular folks on the manosphere, the first two would still help to highly mitigate the chances of the divorce.

So, this is why if a man is careful in how he chooses his wife I believe the 35 percent chance of divorce is a dependable number. It may be far less if you find the right woman.

I want to encourage every man who as bought into the MGTOW spirit of fear to meditate on this passage of Scripture day and night and ask God remove the fear of marriage from your heart:

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” – 2 Timothy 1:7

7 Reasons that Christian Men Should Embrace Marriage and Reject MGTOW

I want leave MGTOW Christians with these reasons for marriage to combat all the MGTOW reasons against marriage.

You should marry because…

  1. God commanded marriage in his first command to “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
  2. God says that “is better to marry than to burn” with sexual desire (1 Corinthians 7:9).
  3. God only allows celibacy for those who have this special gift for undivided service to God (I Corinthians 7:7). The Bible does not allow celibacy for selfish reasons for fearful reasons regarding marriage.
  4. You cannot fully live out your purpose to image God without being a husband and father (I Corinthians 11:7).
  5. Married men are more successful and make more money than all other groups (single men, single women and married women (Proverbs 18:22).
  6. While a bad wife can cause great misery to a man, a good wife can bring great pleasure and happiness to his life. If you have a 65 percent chance of finding true joy and happiness in marriage as God designed it to be why would you not seize on this? (Proverbs 29:25)
  7. Even if you fall into that 35 of men whose wives divorce them your children from that marriage can remain a source of joy and happiness for the remainder of your life (Psalm 127:3-5)

I want to zoom on point number five above about married men being more successful than single men, single women or married women.

Quentin Fottrell wrote an article entitled “Married men earn more than everyone else (including single men)” for marketwatch.com where he made the following observations based on historic earnings data:

The wages of married men far surpass those of all of those groups. They exceed $80,000 per year by their peak earning years, while all the other groups barely graze $50,000 per year, according to data from the University of Minnesota and IPUMS-USA, a database of individual responses from the U.S. Census Bureau.”

While the world laments that married men still excel all other groups in their earnings this does not surprise me at all. It is a fulfillment of God’s Word:

“Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.” – Proverbs 18:22

There was a commenter on another blog that said something like this – “Women are like hand grenades for men. You just have to hope when you marry one, they won’t explode and destroy your life”.

But this is what God has to say about marriage and against the whoremongering that is encouraged by MGTOW ideology as well as Red Pill ideology:

Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” – Hebrews 13:4

A Final Word to Christian Fathers

As a father to my sons I could have fully embraced the MGTOW ideology. My first wife had two affairs on me with her ex-boyfriend.  When we got divorced, she took me for half of everything I had and I was saddled with a huge child support payment (we had five children together in that marriage). It was one of the hardest times of my life.

I did go through a brief period of depression and then bitterness and anger. But my relationship with God was too important to me to allow that bitterness to fester and destroy any joy I had left in my life. So, I gave my hurts to God and decided to move forward and risk marriage again. A little over a year after my divorce I married my second wife. And I made sure she was very different than my first wife.

As any of my readers know, it is very true that my second wife was very different than my first wife. But that just meant I would have a whole new set of challenges with my second wife that I did not have with my first wife. But in the end God has preserved us despite the trials and I came to thank God for my trials because some wonderful things came of them. I have five beautiful children, two of whom are now working adults, from my first marriage. I treasure the relationship I have with them and I am so excited about the prospect of my first grandchildren hopefully in the next few years.

God also taught me through the breakup of my first marriage that even though I thought we were following Biblical gender roles I really was behaving much like a beta husband trying to please my wife and not confronting her sinful attitudes as I should have.  As a result of my first divorce I became a much stronger man, became more grounded in my faith. I also realized that I could not live to please my wife and try to make her happy as that was a violation of of what I knew marriage was about.  Marriage is about seeking holiness, not happiness.  But happiness can come as a result of seeking holiness.

That meant I would no longer go out of my way to make sure my future wife was never upset or angry at me.   I would do what I thought was right whether she agreed or not.  She would not be the center of my world as I had often made my first wife. But instead caring for her physical and spiritual needs (as opposed to her wants) would be seen as only one part of the mission God had given me as a man.

I also thank God for the trials in my second marriage. My second wife’s feminist upbringing and her bucking of Biblical gender roles prompted me to start this ministry back in 2014. Over the last four years I have had over 6.5 million views and have been able to help many people each week via emails, comments and articles I have written.

If you are a Christian father reading this that has taught MGTOW ideology to you sons and discouraged them from marriage I pray you will repent of this. It is one thing to encourage your sons to wait for marriage until they are financially prepared to care for a wife and children and then to choose a wife very carefully. But it is a very different thing to completely discourage your son from God’s institution of marriage no matter how much feminism has poisoned our culture.

Why Millennials Need A Kick in The Rear

In 1968, about 40 percent of young adults aged 18 to 24 were married and living on their own. As of 2018 that number has plummeted for this group to around 7 percent. A third of young people in the US, 24 million of those aged 18 to 34, still live with their parents.  About 9 percent of this 18 to 24 age group that does not still live with their parents cohabitates rather than marrying.

All of these statics I have just stated can be found in two Census Bureau studies.  The first is from a study entitled “Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults” just released on November 15th, 2018.  The second is from a study entitled “Jobs, Marriage and Kids Come Later in Life”  which was released August 9th, 2017.

Here are some more observations about millennials from the study we have just mentioned entitled “Jobs, Marriage and Kids Come Later in Life”:

“What was once ubiquitous in their 20s is now not commonplace until their 30s – a trend that some demographers describe as a new stage between childhood and adulthood. They call it “emerging adulthood.”

A look at this new generation of young adults:

1 in 4 young people aged 25 to 34 living in their parents’ home (about 2.2 million) neither go to school nor work.

Most Americans believe educational and economic accomplishments are extremely important milestones of adulthood. In contrast, marriage and parenthood rank low: over half believe that marrying and having children are not an important part of becoming an adult.

Young people may delay marriage but most still eventually tie the knot. In the 1970s, 8 in 10 married by the time they turned 30. Today, not until the age of 45 have 8 in 10 people married.

In 2005, the majority of young adults lived independently, which was the predominant living arrangement in 35 states. By 2015, the number of states where the majority of young people lived independently fell to just six.

More young men are falling to the bottom of the income ladder. In 1975, only 25 percent of young men had incomes below $30,000 a year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent (incomes in both years are in 2015 dollars).

    Between 1975 and 2016, the share of young women who were homemakers fell from 43 percent to 14 percent.”

These statistics confirm what I and many other older adults have observed about millennials in their everyday lives.

Millennials value education and economic accomplishments more than marriage and children.

When you couple this with the fact than one third of millennials still live with their parents it tells us two other things about Millennials.  They are both fearful and selfish.  They are afraid to go out on their own and struggle financially as most young adults have done since the beginning of mankind.  Millennials in their 20s think they need to make what their parents do in their 40s before they can marry and have a family.

But if you really talk to many Millennials as I have you will also find that for a lot of them while they will say they can’t afford to have a family the truth is they “Just want to have fun and enjoy their life. Marriage and children can wait for much later in life”.

Another problem with millennials is the utter lack of ambition in millennial men.  They are willing to take their sweet time climbing the economic latter and live with mommy and daddy for a decade or more into adulthood with no shame about it.  This is one reason young men’s incomes have dropped compared to what they once were.

The other problem with millennial men is that they don’t want to get their hands dirty.  Many of them want a cushy office job with corner view and a nice parking space.  The skilled trades like carpentry, plumbing, electrical and welding jobs are screaming for young people to come and be apprentices.  The older generation that did all this work is not retiring and its ranks have not been replenished.

My 19-year-old son starting apprenticing as plumber just before he turned 18.  He has worked hard doing all the dig-ups and dirty work but at the same time he was hungry to learn the finer parts of the trade.  Now just over a year later he has excelled so well and learned so much that they are gave him his own plumbing truck and he is now working on commission. He is looking forward to eventually getting his journeyman’s card.

My son told me a story about when he was apprenticing and shadowing another plumber.  They were working on bathroom at a local high school where the plumbing had backed up and they were fixing the issue.  As with many plumbing jobs it was messy.

One of the teachers walked by with a few young men and as they saw the mess in the bathroom, the teacher made the following comment “Boys – that is why you want to stay in school and go to college, otherwise you will end up doing that kind of work”.  The older plumber whispered quietly to my son “And I make twice what that teacher does. So, who is the smarter one?”

My 20-year-old son recently finished his two-year IT certification program at a local community college and he is now working full time in IT.  He was shocked to find out at his new job that the overwhelming majority of young men there who were in their late 20’s still lived with their parents.  My son knows that he needs to be preparing to go out on his own soon.  I have been preparing him for this his whole life.  The goal I have set for my sons is for them to be on their own and financially independent by age 22 or 23 at the latest. If they can do it earlier so much the better.  The way I reached that number was giving them 4 years after high school to get a degree or go through some trade school or apprenticeship program and by then they should be ready.

My sons would view themselves as failures as men if they were still living with me by their late 20s.

Millennials Were Brought Up Wrong by Their Gen X Parents

The Gen X generation, my generation, also bears much culpability for problems we see with millennials today.  For instance, the idea of a parent sitting down and setting life goals with their sons and daughters as I have done with mine is foreign to most parents today.  “It is their life” after all and we as parents have no business telling them what they should or should not do. That is what we are told and have been told for decades.

The Gen X parents have raised a bunch of fearful, selfish and entitled young people and my generation even encouraged their children to take their time, wait to marry and have kids and “just do whatever makes you happy”.

These Gen X parents of one third of millennials are culpable by allowing their children to remain in their home at such late ages.

Parents have a duty to teach their children and prepare their children to go out in the world.  As parents we should be doing this from early teen years on.  We should be preparing our young men and young women for the responsibilities of adult hood which includes marriage and having children.

When Does a Person Become an Adult?

From a biological development perspective, girls begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11 and typically finish puberty between 15 and 17.  Boys typically start puberty at 11 to 12 years of age and finish by the time they are 16 or 17.  This is why it was common in older civilizations for a girl to be entering womanhood by age 12 (because most girls would have their first period before this age)   and for a boys would be considered to be starting manhood by 13 because they would be showing signs of puberty before that age.

But the question we are posing is not one of biological adulthood, but rather one of social adulthood.

I want to return to this statement from the Census Bureau study I cited above:

“Most Americans believe educational and economic accomplishments are extremely important milestones of adulthood. In contrast, marriage and parenthood rank low: over half believe that marrying and having children are not an important part of becoming an adult.”

So, by our modern standards, if a person finishes college and has a good job and a nice new car in the drive way, they are considered to be an adult.  Whether they still live with mommy and daddy is secondary.  And even for those who consider that a person must move out of their parents to be considered full adults, many today do not consider marriage and having children a critical part of becoming an adult.

But this thinking is in stark contrast to what has defined social adulthood throughout the history of the world.

Before the millennial generation, young men learned their trades from an early age and in their early teens they were often working full time in their trade.  By no later than the early 20s in most cases, and often times earlier, young men had saved enough money to build or buy a home and then they went and took on a wife to have children.

Young women often married in their early or mid-teens and became wives and mothers. Unlike how we raise our girls today, they witnessed child birth at much younger ages, learned to cook and sew and they were excited about and looked forward to marriage.

It was marriage and then having children that were considered critical milestones in becoming a full adult man or adult woman.

Today these milestones have been cast aside by millennials and Gen X parents’ bare responsibility for utterly failing to teach their children the importance of striving for these two milestones as soon as possible.

Secular Humanism Has Corrupted Parenting

What we are experiencing today can be very much explained by the definition of Secular Humanism found in the article “What is Secular Humanism?” from secularhumanism.org:

“Secular humanism is comprehensive, touching every aspect of life including issues of values, meaning, and identity. Thus it is broader than atheism, which concerns only the nonexistence of god or the supernatural. Important as that may be, there’s a lot more to life … and secular humanism addresses it.

Secular humanism is nonreligious, espousing no belief in a realm or beings imagined to transcend ordinary experience.

Secular humanism is a lifestance, or what Council for Secular Humanism founder Paul Kurtz has termed a eupraxsophy: a body of principles suitable for orienting a complete human life. As a secular lifestance, secular humanism incorporates the Enlightenment principle of individualism, which celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by family, church, and state, increasingly empowering each of us to set the terms of his or her own life.

What do we see today as America has immersed herself in secular humanism for more than a century and removed all these “traditional controls”?

We see sons and daughters freed from the control of their parents.

We see wives freed from the control of their husbands.

We see church members freed from the control of their Pastors.

We see anarchists marching in the streets wanting to take down nations and borders.

The result of removing all these controls has been the devastation of marriage and the family unit not to mention the devastation of personal morality.

While the Bible absolutely shows certain “inalienable rights” as the United States Declaration of Independence states, it does not grant the rights that our modern American society has given its members.  God instituted the spheres of authority of the family, the church and the civil government.  He gave to each of these spheres different controls for the betterment and stability of society.  And now that we have removed all of these “traditional controls”, we are reaping the consequences of those choices.

Now I want to bring this back to Gen X parents.  The Gen X generation has helped advance the ideals of secular humanists more than any other generation of American parents.  Who could have imagined back in 1960s or 70s that gay marriage would not only be legal, but that gays and transgenders would then take their new-found freedom to launch an all-out assault on religious liberty in this country in only half a century?

The Gen X parents took off the controls of family, church and the state. It told its children they could do anything they wanted.  They could live with their parents as long as they wanted.  Get married or don’t get married.  Have children or don’t have children. Get a job or don’t get a job.  They taught their children to worship the false American gods of equality, education and the pursuit of individual happiness to the detriment of society.

And now we are reaping what the Gen X parenting generation has sown.

Feminism Has A Lot to Do with The Problems with Millennial Men

While Feminism had its origins in the egalitarian movements of the mid-19th century its most devasting blow to the institutions of marriage and the family were not felt until the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s.  Up until that point feminism had only been dropping small bombs on the God given institution of patriarchy in the home, the church and society.  But in the 1960s, second-wave feminism dropped the societal equivalent of a nuke on traditional gender roles and by extension marriage and the family.   It was also during second-wave feminism where feminism became more than just an equality for women movement, it became a full-on misandrist movement.

The Apostle Paul asked the following rhetorical question in I Corinthians 9:5:

“Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife?”

Now before anyone gets silly about this when he said “sister” he was referring to a “sister in Christ” meaning a Christian woman.  What he was saying is “Don’t we have the right to lead about a wife as long as she is Christian?”  Most new translations say “take”, “take along” or “be accompanied by”.   But the KJV’s translation is actually the most literal of commonly used translations when it says “lead about”.   It literally has the idea of man leading his wife through life. This is why in Biblical times and still some older cultures today when a man walks his wife walks behind him and then their children behind her.  This was a symbol in pre-modern cultures of the order of the family.

In Ephesians 5:23 the Bible tells us “the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church” and in Ephesians 5:29 we read that husbands have a sacred duty to “nourisheth” meaning “to provide for” and “cherisheth” meaning “to protect” their wives.

God has literally designed men with this natural instinctive desire to lead, provide for and protect women.  God also gave men a strong physically based sexual desire toward women and that is why in Proverbs 5:15 he commands them to liberally drink of the well that is their wife’s body and in Proverbs 5:19 he tells men regarding their wives to “let her breasts satisfy thee at all times”.  In the New Testament the Apostle Paul tells men in Romans 1:27 that sex is “the natural use of the woman”.

It is a statistical fact that the vast majority of married men with children go much farther and faster in their careers than men who never marry or have children.  Why? Because men are given a strong desire from God to seek out women so they can have sex with them, lead them, provide for them and protect them.   And without a woman and children to provide for most men are far less driven in their careers.

Feminism has robbed men of the ability to lead women, provide for them or protect them in marriage by making them independent of men.  It has robbed men of having wives who actually need their provision and appreciate it.  It has robbed men of having mothers to care for their children and homemakers to care for their homes so they can excel in their careers.  It has robbed men of their sexual rights in marriage.  It is a common joke today that the best sex and the most sex a man will ever get from a woman is before they are married.

Feminism has so radically redefined marriage, sadly even amongst many Christians today, that women no longer seek a leader, provider and protector in a husband.  Instead they just want to “marry their best friend”.  Friends are great and even friendship in marriage is wonderful and should be a goal in marriage.  However, friendship is not the core purpose for which God designed marriage.  God designed marriage to paint a picture of Christ and the Church.  The husband is to emulate Christ in how he lovingly leads, provides for and protects his wife.  And the wife is to emulate the Church by following his leadership and submitting to him everything as the Church submits to Christ.

Before 19th and 20th century feminism economically freed women from men, women were highly dependent on men in order to survive.  Except for rare instances, women could not own property and it was difficult for women to work and make money except through their father or husband.

So it was primarily through economic means that a man acquired a wife.  Men did not have to “win the heart” of a woman in order to marry her.  They did not need to be the most handsome man .  They did not have to flatter the woman and tell her they wanted to worship her with her their lives.  They simply had to make enough money to support her and then if her father was impressed by his economic means then he would approve the marriage.

This is not to say that fathers did not often consider the character of a man to whom they would give their daughters in marriage in addition to his economic means.  But the point is, it was not the woman that the man had to impress in order to marry her, but rather it was her father.

But because of feminism there has been a massive paradigm switch in how men come to marry women.  No longer are fathers the ones who determine who marry their daughters, but it is the women themselves who set the terms.

And because women no longer want leaders, providers and protectors in men and because of how women routinely sexually deny men in marriage many men see absolutely no point in marrying.  Their core drivers to seek out marriage have been removed.

Marriage used to offer security for both men and women.  The man knew his wife would belong to him and him alone.  No other man would have her sexually or otherwise.  She would bear his children and care for them.  She would care for the domestic needs of his home.  The woman knew the man would provide for physical needs and the needs of her future children.  He would also be a source of protection for her and her future children.

But feminism has now all but shattered the security that marriage once offered to men.  Men risk a 50 percent chance their wives will grow tired of them and divorce them within the first four to seven years of marriage. And our society has made it so easy for women that in divorce they will walk away with half of everything the man has and most likely majority custody of the children unless the husband fights hard for 50/50 custody.

Sex is the most powerful driving force for men to seek women for marriage, but now that women freely offer sex outside of marriage men can get that need met without risking the damage women can do to them in marriage.

So, it for these reasons that we see many millennial men giving up on the institution of marriage altogether.

So How Do We Turn the Millennials Around?

So how can we turn back the tide of secular humanism and feminism that has so poisoned our millennial generation?

First and foremost, we need to pray for our nation and our world each and every day.  We need to pray that God will bring about a revival amongst his people.  That he will raise up a new generation of young pastors who call out secular humanism and feminism as ideologies that are evil and opposed to Biblical values.

And even many who are not Christians in America would agree that the Biblical values we once held as a nation resulted in far better marriages and families and individuals than what we have today.  People in America used to respect their parents and their country. They were proud of their families and their country.  They proudly served in the military.  And they were excited as young people to marry as soon as they could and start a family and raise children.

Millennials are not focused on finding a person who would make a good spouse to them and a good parent to their children. Starting a family is for “older people”.  It is not surprise that more and more millennials do not marry until they reach their late 20’s or earlier 30’s if they ever marry at all.

They are focused on what video game is coming out, what movie is coming out and talking with their friends on the phone or online.  They are focused on parties and taking trips around the country or even around the world.  They are obsessed with education and material things.  Homes get bigger and fancier each year and so do cars.  And these new fancier homes and cars come with much higher price tags that many millennials are willing to pay.

And to get and do all these things millennials sacrifice what matters most in this world – God, marriage and children.

But there are some other things that we who believe in Biblical values can do. We can encourage the young people we meet to do what is right.  We can tell them about what truly matters in the world.  We can teach them the Biblical concept that you will never be happy focusing your life on yourself and your own desires.

Millennials need to be taught that true happiness only comes by serving God and serving others for his glory and honor.

In my personal life I have made an effort both with my son’s young college age friends and even the young men I work with at my job to encourage and admonish them to do their duty that first to God and then to their society.  I have a duty to pay forward what their parents did for them and what their grand parents did for their parents.  They have a duty to marry, have children and love their spouses and children.  They have a solemn duty to the next generation.

Many of these young people will at first laugh and joke when I say these things.  They will say things like “So do you think it’s wrong to have fun and enjoy life?”.  I have told them absolutely not! Its not wrong to have fun and enjoy life.  The Bible teaches us that God has given us things that were meant for our pleasure and joy in this life:

 “18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. 19 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”

Proverbs 5:18-19

“3 Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”

Psalm 127:3-5

“18 Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion. 19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.”

Ecclesiastes 5:18-19

God has blessed us so richly and has given us many sources of happiness or “fun” as younger folks would call it.  God has given us companionship and sex in marriage.  Sex was definitely meant by God to be a source of fun! But God also gave us children and he tells us directly in Psalm 127:5 that he meant children to be a source of happiness for us.  I can tell you as a father of five children, while it can be hard sometimes, my children have been a great source of happiness and even fun.

I was a big computer game player in my youth.  But you know what is more fun than just playing video games? Its playing video games with your children! But we also watch movies together and go places together and we enjoy life together.  We learn about God’s Word together.

And God wants us to truly enjoy the fruit of our labors.  We don’t have feel bad if the Lord provides so that we can take a nice vacation with our family.

But what is my point to these young people? The point is the lie of this world is that marriage and children hold you back.  They keep you from truly being happy.  They tell you living for yourself is the only way to be happy. That is a lie! It is a lie straight from the devil himself.

We can serve God, marry, have children and serve our families and have a great joy in doing what God has designed us to do.

But when I speak to these young millennials whether at my house or at my job, I also express to them the darker consequences of the way they are living their lives.   I show them the fact of the fertility crisis that the world faces.  I show them UN studies that show by 2300 if the world continues living as American and Western millennials live the world population will drop to 25 percent of what is today.  And if no change is made in the selfish life style choices of future generations the world will die out within few centuries after that.  Literally the human race could become extinct by 2600 if the rising tide of secular humanism is not turned back.

I tell them this is why it is their duty to God, their parents, grandparents and other ancestors as well as their nation to marry and be fruitful and multiply.

A Message for Millennial Men Who are Afraid of Marriage

If you are millennial man who is a Christian reading what I just wrote on how feminism has robbed men of the security marriage you might have been saying “Amen! That is exactly why I am not getting married.”  While that might be an option for non-Christians, as a Christian man you don’t get to run away from marriage because it is scarier now than it is has ever been for men since the creation of the world.

God’s rule is marriage and his exception is celibacy for service to him. If you are trying to use God’s allowance for celibacy as your excuse to get out of marriage you need to re-read your Bible.

God’s first command to mankind in Genesis 1:28 was “Be fruitful, and multiply”.  He never rescinded that command, even in the New Testament.  In Hebrews 13:4 we read that “Marriage is honourable”.  In the New Testament he offers an exception to this command for service to him, not because one is afraid of the commitment of marriage or has a fear of divorce, but rather for undivided service to him.

The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:9 that “it is better to marry than to burn” with sexual desire. If you have the gift of sexual desire then you do not have the gift of celibacy.  God does not give these two gifts together because they are contradictory to one another.

God wants you to marry, have sex and have children.  He wants you to find a woman so that together you and that woman can do what he designed you both to do together and that was to model the relationship of Christ and his Church.

Even if Millennials Do Not Listen Things Can Get Better

Many people write me accusing me of being such a huge pessimist about our current culture and our immediate future and I plead guilty to that accusation.  I am extremely saddened and discouraged by many things I have seen happen over the last couple decades in this country.  And our immediate future, as in the next few decades or even next half century does look very grim.  It will get much worse before it gets better.

But I also find hope in the fact that not all millennials have gone down this selfish path.  Many millennials when they get a little older return to church.  And traditional minded millennials are far out-breeding liberal millennials.  So, it is very possible that we could sit back and watch as the conservative and Christian millennials who actually marry and have many children raise up the next generation.

In the same way that socialism can only survive on the back of capitalism, so too liberalism which is anti-natal at its core can only survive on the back of pro-natal religious conservatives.  Another way of putting this is, liberals need conservatives to have babies with the hope that they can convert those babies to liberals by they time they reach adulthood.

This is how secular liberals use their church, the American public education system, to indoctrinate the youth of conservative born children into their secular humanism.

For many years this insidious agenda was hidden and naïve conservative parents who failed to teach their children the lies of secular humanism would eventually find by the end of high school or college that their children had become converts of secular humanism.

Thankfully over the past couple decades with the rise of conservative radio and TV media this insidious agenda has been exposed.  Many conservative parents are now inoculating their children from the disease that is secular humanism.  They are prepared for the secular humanist arguments and can even challenge their teachers and professors.  The tide has turned and this is what has progressives more frightened today than ever.

They can’t reproduce by converting children from native born conservative homes any more. Even some liberals are sounding the alarm on this.  They see the demographic writing on the wall. The many children of conservative millennials could far outnumber the few children of liberal millennials in the next generation resulting in a sea change in this nation.

This is also why liberals are for the allowance of mass immigration from poor countries with people that are far less educated and dependent on government.  These people are much easier to indoctrinate into liberal ideology and it will often not be until the the third generation of these immigrants that their children may turn from liberal ideology to conservative ideology.

But the Scriptures give us this hope for our millennials and the next generation they will give birth to:

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” – 2 Chronicles 7:14

We need to continue to pray for a revival in our land and pray that God will bring up a godly future generation to replace the secular humanist society that has come to dominate America.

Is the Wife the Holy Spirit of The Home?

During a revival meeting I was recently in at my church, the guest Pastor said “the wife is the Holy Spirit of the home”.  This Pastor had been married for more than 20 years and had previously talked about times in his marriage where his wife stopped him and corrected him when he was going down some wrong paths or about to make some wrong decisions.   He then went further after his statement and asked the men of the church to raise their hands to affirm that they agreed that their wives were the Holy Spirit for their homes.

Needless to say, my children looked at me when the Pastor said this and they knew where I stood on this and they knew such a statement was highly unbiblical and it actually was heresy.  My hand was glued down to my chair as many hands from other husbands went up across the auditorium.   I was pleased to see that many other men did keep their hands down though.  I could not see if my Pastor lifted his hand or not.

Let me just say that besides this statement and his having the men raise their hands about it everything else this Pastor taught both before and after it was very Biblical.  He taught a perfect message on the Gospel and he taught on holiness and us living our lives in a holy way in which we would not be ashamed when Christ returns.

I truly believe this Pastor loves the Lord, believes the Bible is the Word of God and believes the same Gospel I do.  He preachers hard against sin.  But like so many Pastors, even conservative Bible believing Pastors, he has had his thinking poisoned by the feminist ideals that have infested our churches.

Let me make something abundantly clear. The Scriptures never compare the wife to the Holy Spirit.  Such an analogy is borderline blasphemy.

The Bible Compares the Husband to God, Not the Wife

The Bible compares man to God in I Corinthians 11:7:

“For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.”

Because man is God’s direct image bearer and woman is not, this is why God is very concerned with there always be a distinction made between men and women.  This is the reason that God condemns cross-dressing and transvestism in Deuteronomy 22:5:

“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.”

In Ephesians 5:22-24 the Scriptures tell us that in marriage man represents Christ and woman represents the Church:

“22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. 24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.”

The Scriptures here are clear that the husband is the head of the wife AS Christ is the head of the church and that AS the church is subject to Christ in everything so to wives are to be subject to their husbands in everything.  In fact, the husband wife relationship is the only human authority relationship where God commands the one under authority to submit to their human authority “as unto the Lord”.

But Men Are Not God!

It is interesting to me that this Pastor and many Christian feminists would have no problem hearing a person say “the wife is the Holy Spirit of the home” but if you were to say “The husband is the Christ of the home” they would go nuts.  This is due in part to the misandry that we have allowed to fester in this nation since the start of second wave feminism in the 1960s.

Am I saying Husbands are Christ? Absolutely not! Men are God’s direct image bearers and in this world husbands symbolize Christ in the home but that does not mean they are Christ. Husbands are not sinless, all knowing or all powerful as Christ is.  Husbands do not have all the attributes of God as Christ does.

But men, and by extension husbands, have more in common with God than women do. And this is not by chance, but by the design of God.  This is why God is always referred to in the masculine sense.  This is why God is referred to as a husband, father and son and never as a wife, mother or daughter. The masculine human nature is a reflection of God’s nature and feminine human nature is not.  The feminine human nature was created to compliment and serve the masculine nature, not to image the nature of God.

The Husband is the Ruler, Leader and Guide to Wife

The Scriptures tell us in I Peter 3:1-2 & 5-6

“1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear…

For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: 6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.”

The Scriptures tell us in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35:

“34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. 35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”

And in 1 Timothy 2:12 the Scriptures tell us:

“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”

These passages smack our modern feminist ideals right in the face. But it is the Word of God.   God does not tell husbands to go to their wives to learn how to lead their home or understand the Word of God.  On the contrary it teaches women are to seek spiritual guidance from their husbands.

Should Husbands Listen their Wives?

In Genesis 3:17 the Scriptures tell us the first sin man ever committed:

“And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life”

If you ask most Christians “What was the first sin that man committed?” most will answer “eating the forbidden fruit”.  But Genesis 3:17 tells us the first sin man actually committed was listening to his wife when she was wrong.  Adam’s first failure was a failure of his duty to rule over his wife by rebuking her sin and then refusing to participate with her in it.  But he was more concerned with keeping her love and affection and so he listened to his wife when he knew she was wrong.

Job in many ways was the “anti-Adam”.  In Job 2:10 we read that when his wife asked him to sin against God he responded as Adam should have to Eve:

“But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.”

But the question is, are there times when husbands should listen to their wives? The answer from a Biblical perspective is yes.   In Genesis 21:12 the Scriptures tell us:

“And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.”

In Genesis 21:12 we see a situation where Abraham did not feel right about sending Hagar and Ishmael away as his wife was asking him to do.  And it was her advice to try and have an heir through Hagar that got him in this mess in the first place so I am sure he was at a point where he felt he should not listen to her.

But God knows Sarah is trying to clean up the mess she had made.  She knows there will be contention over the inheritance and leadership of the tribe between Ishmael and Isaac when Abraham dies if Ishmael is still there.  So, God intervenes and speaks to Abraham telling him in this particular case to listen to Sarah.

There are other stories in the Scriptures where we can see that husbands should have listened to their wives as in the story of Abigail and her husband Nabal in 1 Samuel 25 as well as the story of Pontius Pilate and his wife in Matthew 27:19.

The Scriptures tell us of the virtuous wife in Proverbs 31:26 that “She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness”.  What that means is that a wise wife is meant to be asset to her husband, not a burden.  But she is to offer her wisdom to her husband and others in a kind and gentle way that is appropriate for women of good character.

The unfortunate truth is that often times intelligent women are more of a liability and burden to their husbands because they do not use their intelligence in a kind and respectful way with their husbands.  Instead they use it to badger and disrespect their husbands and often to try and usurp authority over their husbands.

So, the answer to the question “Should a husband listen to his wife?” is – it depends on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.   Sometimes the Holy Spirit will prompt us to follow our wife’s advice in a certain situation and other times he will tell us her advice is wrong and we must then go against her advice and in some cases it might actually require a rebuke toward her.

Should a Man’s Wife’s Advice Carry the Most Weight?

Many Christians including Christian feminists and even some complementarian Christians believe that the concerns and advice of a man’s wife should carry more weight for him than any other advisor in his life.  The Christian feminists argue this from their belief that marriage is a partnership of equals and therefore the husband and wife have equal say in all family decisions.  Many Christian complentarians while teaching male headship in marriage teach that a man’s wife’s concerns and advice should carry the most weight because he is in a one flesh relationship with her.

Some would argue that this passage below from I Peter 3:7 teaches that husbands should give the most weight to their wife’s advice:

“Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.”

It is for these reasons above that many Christian wives are mortally offended when their husbands seek the advice of others and even follow that advice over the advice of their wife.

The question is what does the Bible say about this? Should a man’s wife’s advice carry the most weight in is decision making?

Before we answer this from the Biblical point of view let’s make something clear.  Contrary to what many Christian feminists teach we who believe in Biblical gender roles do not believe husbands are all knowing and that wives know nothing.  Such an attack is straw man argument.  The argument basically goes, if you believe a husband is the head of his wife and that a husband does not always have to listen to his wife then you believe husbands are never wrong, never make bad decisions and that they know all.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Bible exhorts men to seek the counsel of their parents in their old age as well as other men both older and the same age to get different points of view and learn from the experience and spiritual knowledge of others:

In Proverbs 23:22 the scriptures tell us this regarding a man’s mother and his father:

“Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.”

And in Proverbs 13:20 we read:

“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”

And finally, in Proverbs 27:17 the Scriptures state:

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”

The Scriptures are clear from the passage we discussed earlier in Ephesians 5:22-24 that marriage is not an equal partnership between a man and a woman.  The Bible says the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church – are the church and Christ equal partners? The answer is no.  The Church is subject to Christ.  And as the Church is subject to Christ so too the wife is to be subject to her husband.  Therefore, Christian feminism does not have a Biblical leg to stand on.

But what about the Christian complementarian argument that because a husband and wife are in a one flesh relationship and the husband is to dwell with his wife according to knowledge (I Peter 3:7) that this means her advice should carry the most weight in his decision-making processes?

I Peter 3:7 does not teach men that their wife’s advice or concerns must carry the most weight in their decision-making processes.  When it warns of a man’s prayers not being heard, this is a warning to the husband that he must know his wife and at least hear her concerns.  He should hear his wife’s concerns the same way he wants God to hear his.  God is telling husbands – “if you won’t listen to your wife’s petitions, I won’t listen to yours”.

But let’s think of how prayer works.  Does God always do what we ask in our prayers? The answer is no.  Often his answer may be “no” or “wait”.   Sometimes we ask for things we should not ask for.  Sometimes we don’t realize we are wrong in asking for the things we are asking for. It is the same way with a husband and wife. Sometimes a husband’s answer to his wife will be “no” or other times it will be “wait”.  And sometimes women ask for things that are completely wrong or against the will of God.

Finally let’s address the “one flesh” argument for husband’s giving the most weight to their wife’s advice. Who is the head of this “one flesh” relationship? The man or the woman? We know from Ephesians 5:22-24 that the husband is the head of the “one flesh” relationship otherwise known as marriage.  That means the wife should be molding herself to and following her head.  The unity of the husband and wife is most dependent on a wife submitting to her husband even when he does not follow her advice or grant her wishes.

So, no the fact that a husband and wife are in a one-flesh relationship does not mean a husband must give the most weight to his wife’s advice.  What it means is that the wife after giving her advice must humble herself and realize she is but one of her husband’s many advisers.  It means she must humble herself and follow her husband even when he goes against her advice.  It also means that she needs to mold herself to her husband’s views over time.  Biblically speaking, a husband and wife become one as the wife molds herself more and more to her husband and his thinking.  As long as his thinking in any given area does not directly contract the Scriptures, the wife is to mold herself to her husband.

In other words, biblically speaking there is nothing wrong with a woman “loosing her identity in her husband”, but rather Biblically speaking that is exactly what a wife is supposed to do.   That is why wives are to take on their husband’s name and leave their father’s house behind.

“Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house;” – Psalm 45:10

Conclusion

The wife is not the Holy Spirit of the home.  But rather Christian husbands should listen to the true Holy Spirit of God and follow his guidance and he will guide husbands as he did Abraham as to when they should or should not listen to their wife’s advice or grant their requests.   Also, husbands should not feel that their wife should be their only advisor or that her advice must always carry the most weight.  Husbands don’t know everything just because they are men and neither do wives because they are women. It is good for men to have a multitude of counselors, especially other Christian men both older and of the same age who can offer spiritual advice and life experience.

Pastor Publicly Rebukes Drag Queen in Church Service

Antonio Rocquemore, Pastor of Power House International Ministries in Chicago, publicly rebuked a member of his church dressed in drag and then asked him to leave the service.  Not surprisingly the LGBTQ community is up in arms about this.

During the service the Pastor made the following statement just before calling out the young man in drag:

“if you stop believing, standing for something, you will fall for anything. And God can’t move the way he wants to because of the standard. He set a standard. Stand by him, even if it costs you friends because you’ll always be approved by heaven. I’m at a point in my life where I’d rather heaven be pleased with me than people speak to me…”

He then pointed to the young men and made the following statement to him:

“Can you step out into this aisle. Please. Can you leave my church and go put on man clothes. And don’t come dressed like that no more.  I hold a standard in here. Whatever you do on the outside is your business, but I will not let drag queens come in here. And if you’re gonna come in here you’re gonna come in here dressed like a man … If you’re a man, dress like a man. If you’re a woman, dress like a woman. I’m not going to allow it … you will not be wearing weaves and heels and fooling people up in here.”

You can view a partial cell phone video of what happened here.

After many false accusations against him regarding his public rebuke of the young man dressed in drag, Pastor Rocquemore, posted a video reply to all his critics clarifying why did he what he did and reemphasizing that he had no regrets about doing it.

In that clarification he makes the following facts known.

The young man in question was a member of his church.  Not some random stranger off the street.  The Pastor also makes clear the when coming to join the church as a member the young man told the Pastor he wanted to learn how to be a man.  The Pastor made clear to him the rules of the church including dress codes for both men and women for the services. He told him he could not dress as a woman while attending their services but what he did outside of the service was between him and God.

This Pastor even tried to love on this young man and gave him some of his own money. The young man showed up in women’s attire a few times after joining and the Pastor quietly pulled him aside and told him he needed to stop doing this.  The young man finally stopped wearing women’s clothing for a period of time.

Someone, outside or inside the church, encouraged this young man to defy the Pastor by wearing full drag again to a service.  This time after several quiet and private admonishments, the Pastor felt that he needed to take a public stand against what this young man was doing as he was challenging the Pastor’s position on men wearing women’s clothing.

You can watch Pastor Rocquemore’s full video reply here.

Now that we have the full truth about what happened in this church let’s look at what the Bible says about this.

The Bible Condemns Transvestism

In Deuteronomy 22:5 the Scriptures tell us:

“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.”

So, we can see here that God’s unchanging moral law makes it crystal clear, beyond any reasonable doubt, that a man is never to wear that which pertains to woman or try to change his appearance in anyway to look like a woman.  The same goes for women – a woman is forbidden from changing her appearance to look like a man.

Deuteronomy 22:5 then is a clear and concise condemnation of transvestism, cross-dressers and transsexuals going through sex changes.

But the Bible Forbids Us from Eating Shellfish and it Condones Slavery!

Among the myriad of comments on line attacking this pastor we will see people dismissing passages like Deuteronomy 22:5 on the basis that the Bible condones slavery and it commands us not to eat shellfish or wear mixed fabrics. If I had a dime for every person, some sadly even professing Christians, who throws this tired old argument at me I would be a rich man.  This is an argument that comes from a complete and utter ignorance of the Scriptures.

The goals of those who use this argument are two-fold.  The first goal is to say “Well you don’t follow all the laws of the Old Testament; therefore, you cannot use any Old Testament passages as a basis for morality.”  A second goal in this attack is to discredit the Bible as a source of moral truth on the basis that it allows for things that our society considers to be immoral like slavery (Leviticus 25:39-46) or forcing a woman to marry her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28–29).

I have written several articles and even done a You Tube video refuting these false arguments which attempts to either dismiss all Old Testament laws or even the entire Bible on these grounds.  See these links below:

What is the distinction between the Moral, Ceremonial and Civil laws of the Old Testament?

What are the Moral Laws of God in the Old Testament?

Why Christians shouldn’t be ashamed of Slavery in the Bible

Shellfish, Mixed Fabrics And Slavery – Oh My!

The short answer to these false arguments against Biblical authority and specifically the authority of the moral laws of the Old Testament is as follows.

God gave moral laws all throughout the Old and New Testaments.  He gave moral laws before Abraham or Moses were ever born and before he instituted the nation of Israel as a theocracy.  But when he gave the new nation of Israel it’s laws, he repeated moral laws he had given before and also gave new moral laws as well.  In addition to his moral laws, God also instituted civil laws for the nation of Israel which were mostly the punishment or restitution to made for the breaking of his moral laws.  He also instituted ceremonial laws which included laws about the priesthood, tithes, festivals, clothing, diet and the sacrificial system.

In the New Testament with the coming of Christ the ceremonial laws are put away because Christ is the fulfillment of God’s law.  He was the sacrifice that believers had always looked for.  The civil laws were also done away with because those were given for the physical nation of Israel and not the spiritual nation called the Church.  God would eventually dissolve what was left of Israel within a century of Christ’s death the Jews would be dispersed throughout the world.

So, the point is that Deuteronomy 22:5 is moral law that is still standing today.

But while Deuteronomy 22:5 could stand on its own the Apostle Paul repeats God’s condemnation of men appearing like or acting like women in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

“9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

But Jesus Did Not Condemn the Adulterous Woman

In the Gospel of John 8:3-11 we read the story of the woman taken in adultery. The scriptures tell us she was found “in the very act” (John 8:3).  The Pharisees wanting to see what Jesus would do threw her before him and reminded him of Moses’s law that commanded that she be stoned.  But Jesus said to them “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7).   And then when all her accusers left by one by one Jesus finally tells the woman “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).

This passage is used by many unbelievers and even professing Christians to say unless we are sinless, we as Christians have no business passing judgement on other’s sins.  But again, such an argument is based on an ignorance about the teachings of the Scriptures.

Some have pointed to the fact that the Pharisees had not brought the man whom she was caught in the act of adultery with to be stoned as well.   The Bible commanded that both the man and woman caught in the act of adultery must be killed (Deuteronomy 22:22).  So, they were not completely following the law by letting the man go and only taking the woman to be judged.

But aside from their half following of Moses law, Christ was trying to demonstrate two important principles to them.  He first was showing his authority as he had previously stated that “that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” (Matthew 9:6).  Secondly, in exercising his authority to forgive sins he was demonstrating to them mercy and forgiveness as he commanded us all to have toward each other:

“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” – Matthew 6:14

Pastor Rocquemore demonstrated Christ’s example perfectly toward this young man. He tried to quietly address the issue with this young man.  He forgave him on multiple occasions but in the end the young man became more defiant than ever and the Pastor had to take action.  People often will cite the first part of the story of the woman taken in adultery but they miss Christ’s final words to that woman “go, and sin no more”.  This was exactly what this Pastor did when he told that young man “go put on man clothes. And don’t come dressed like that no more”.

But Doesn’t the Bible Tell Us Not to Judge?

There are a lot of comments by those detractors of what this Pastor did stating that what he did was a violation of God’s prohibition on Christians judging other Christians.

Jesus said “Judge not, that ye be not judged” in Matthew 7:1, but John 7:24 Jesus also said “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.  The Apostle Paul said “Let us not therefore judge one another any more …” in Romans 14:13 but he also said in 1 Corinthians 5:12 “For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?”.

So, we can clearly see that both Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul are condemning one type of judging but commanding another type of judging.  What they are condemning is hypocritical judging or engaging in judgement over those whom we have no authority to do so.

In 1 Corinthians 5:1-2 we read of a serious situation happening in the Church of Corinth:

“It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. 2 And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.”

So, at the Corinthian church a man had his father’s wife (his step mother) and the church was proud of this! This is no different than many so-called churches today that are “proud” of their gay members, transsexual or transvestite members. But unlike so many false Christian churches today the Apostle Paul did not tell them they were right in not judging this couple living in open immorality, but instead he called on them to JUDGE this couple as he had already done before he arrived.

In 1 Corinthians 5:3-7 Paul gives the church the remedy for dealing with those who try to enter the assembly whilst being in open sin against God:

“3 For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, 4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, 5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? 7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Paul literally commands that the Church gather together as an assembly and publicly hand this person living in open immorality over to Satan.  He commands them to “purge” such people from the assembly of believers.

The Apostle Paul then goes on to clarify for them those whom they are to judge as a church and those who they cannot judge as a church in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13:

“9 I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:

10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.  11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.

12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? 13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.”

Paul makes it clear that that righteous judgement has to do with those whose claim to be brothers in Christ but are proudly living in some type of sin. We are to having nothing to do with such wicked professing believers and we are to put away such people from the assembly of God.

So, we can see based upon the clear teaching of the Scriptures that what Pastor Rocquemore did in this instance was righteous judgment according to the Word of God.

But Doesn’t the Bible say “Come as you are”

Another common argument in the comments condemning Pastor Rocquemore’s actions toward the man dressed in drag at his church is that his actions violated the Biblical principle that we can come to God as sinners.  In other words, we can come to God as we are.

The Bible tells us in Romans 5:8 “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”.  It also tells us in Revelation 22:17 “Come! Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely”.

The problem with this argument is that it mixes apples and oranges.  The “apple” in this case is coming to God and taking freely of the water of life by calling on Christ for salvation.  The “orange” in this case is fellowship within the assembled church.

God absolutely takes us as we are, wicked sinners.  But we cannot remain in this state.  If we do remain in sin then we prove we never truly accepted the salvation he so freely offers us.

The Scriptures tell us this:

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” – Romans 6:1-2

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17

It is absolutely Biblically true that we can come to God as we are – wicked sinners.  In fact, there is no other way we could come as we cannot cleanse our own sin, only Christ’s shed blood on the cross and the work of the Holy Spirit within us can do this.  But if we truly believe, then our minds will be renewed.  We come as we are but we cannot and will not remain the same if we are truly in Christ.

While God invites all to come as they are for salvation, he only invites those who are not as they were, those who are new creatures in Christ, into to the assembled church.

This Crisis is the Result of the Seeker-Sensitive Church Movement

The fact that it is even debatable as to what this Pastor did in openly rebuking and expelling this man from his church is a direct testament to the massive damage that has been done to many churches by the seeker-sensitive church movement.

The false philosophy of the seeker-sensitive church takes God’s command to the Church to preach the Gospel to the world (Matthew 28:19 & Mark 16:15) and uses it to cancel out all other commands given to the Church.

God did more than just command the Church to spread the Gospel.  In 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 God commanded that the holiness of the church assembly be kept above all other concerns and that those who would live in sinful lifestyles while trying to be part of the assembly be expelled from the assembly.  In Ephesians 4:11-15 we read that a core purpose of the church is “the perfecting of the saints” which means helping Christians to learn the doctrines of the faith and apply these doctrines to their lives. And in 2 Timothy 4:1-5 God commands that the Church is to “Preach the word” and “reprove, rebuke, exhort” those in assembly.

The modern seeker-sensitive churches cast aside all these other commands given to the church in order to make their churches more appealing to the outside world and unbelievers in their midst.  They refuse to preach against sin, to rebuke those who sin in their assembly and to keep the church only for those who are new creatures in Christ.

The Bible tells us:

“Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” – James 4:4

These seeker-sensitive churches value friendship with the world and being loved by the world more than faithfulness to God’s commands to keep the holiness of his Church.  As a result, these compromising churches find themselves filled with people who are not new creatures in Christ.

As Christian Churches we may disagree on various doctrines.  But standing for the holiness of the church cannot be one of them.  We must stand together on this.

A War on Christianity Has Begun

As Christians we must realize that within our culture a war is being made on Christianity.  Just a few days ago the following news was reported in an article on CBNNews.com entitled “Incoming Democratic Congress Has Hobby Lobby in Their Sights, Hoping to Force Abortion Funding“:

“Having just won back control of the House in this year’s midterm elections, Democrats now have their sights set on an issue near and dear to people of faith: the sanctity of life.

As they prepare to take over the chamber, 50 Democrats have agreed to co-sponsor legislation that would effectively cripple the 25-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That brings the total number of Democratic House legislators supporting the bill to 172.

According to The Washington Examiner, H.R. 3222 would make it so LGBTQ rights and other progressive causes would take precedence over religious freedoms.

In addition, supporters say the bill would reverse the Supreme Court’s rulings in the Hobby Lobby and Masterpiece Cakeshop cases.”

The enemies of true Christianity are trying to force church ministries and Christian owned businesses to provide abortion services as part of their health insurance for their employees.  Homosexuals purposefully go into Christian bakeries, florists and wedding photographers to set them up for lawsuits. And now we see transvestites forcing their perverted actions and beliefs on local churches.  I have no doubt that if not in this case that in the future we will see homosexuals suing churches to force them to allow them to be members.

Those who do this believe they fight for civil rights and social justice.  But God grants no such right to live in these wicked ways or do these wicked things.  Thus, they stand in opposition against God and his Word.  Many falsely compare the fight for equal treatment for those of different races in the 1960’s with the fight now for LGBTQ rights.  But the difference is that one was based on race and the other is based on one’s actions.  These two things are as different as night and day. Those who falsely believe they will force by the power of civil law full acceptance of the LGBTQ community on  Bible believing Christians are in for a very rude awakening.

We know what the Scripture tell us when civil authorities pass laws which contradict God’s laws:

Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.” – Acts 5:29

Christians have been dying for centuries for their belief and adherence to the Word of God and now will be no different than then.  When the time comes, the true believers in Christ will be willing to lose their businesses and even in their lives for the cause of following the Word of God.   But as Churches and other Christian organizations continue to be taken to court many Christians and non-Christian alike in America will grow tired of this. And the fight for the soul of our nation may boil to a point we have not seen since the Civil War.

I Caught My Husband Masturbating

How should a Christian wife handle it when she catches her husband masturbating? Today I received this comment from a regular reader and commenter on this blog who calls herself livinginblurredlines.  I think her story and how to properly deal with such a situation could help many Christian wives to better understand their husband’s sexuality.

Livinginblurredlines Story

“I am always ready and willing to have sex with my husband. He has no fear of rejection. We have sex an average of 3 times per week and I check in from time to time to make sure he is happy with the frequency and variety.

The problem is I have been catching him masturbating. Just now I caught him and offered myself, but he refused. On top of that there was no pursuit, no asking. He just slipped off to bed while I tackled dinner clean up and the kids’ homework.

I’m a bit upset at this because 1. He never let me know he was horny. 2. I would have happily had sex with him. 3. I feel a bit cheated. 4. He never says he is unhappy with our sex life, quite the contrary!

The only thing I can figure is that every so often a guy just wants to masturbate, even if he has a wife at his beck and call. Just a quick jack off to relax.

I just feel like I failed him in some way. I missed the boat. I’m not desirable enough or worth the pursuit or the wait until I get the kids tucked in….

What say you, BGR?”

My Response

Livinginblurredlines, I know from your previous comments over the years that you are a very submissive wife whose submission does not stop at the bedroom door as it does for many Christian wives.  You are just as submissive inside the bedroom as you are outside the bedroom as that is to be commended as it is so rare today for Christian women or women in general.

I have previously written on the topic of masturbation and I showed from the Scriptures that contrary to the views of our Catholic Christian brothers and even some non-Catholic Christian brothers’ masturbation is never condemned in the Bible.  I have shown that it is a natural release valve that God has given for many reasons, one of which is to keep us from sexual temptation before marriage.

But the question is does masturbation have a place in marriage? Some of my Christian friends will agree with me that masturbation before marriage is not wrong especially when it is used as a way to avoid sexual temptation. But they think it is strictly forbidden in marriage.  All sexual releases must come with the spouse in marriage in their view and again I have to disagree with my some of my Christian brethren on this.

8 Reasons A Person May Still Masturbate After Marriage

Below are several reasons a married person may still want to or need to masturbate:

  1. They have a much higher sex drive than their spouse and don’t want to trouble them all the time.
  2. The spouse may have a temporary medical reason for not being able to have sex. Examples would include after surgery, or sickness or when a woman is pregnant or right after giving birth.
  3. The spouse may have experienced a traumatic life event like the death of a parent, child or other loved one and they need a little time.
  4. Perhaps they would always go to their spouse for sex, but the spouse restricts how often they may have sex. So in between allowable times they masturbate.
  5. Their spouse rejects them sexually for long lengths of time (many weeks or months) or they completely deny them sexually altogether so the masturbate as a coping mechanism.
  6. Their spouse does not deny them, but constantly delays them. They ask for sex and the spouse’s go-to-answer is always “maybe tomorrow”.  Some people get tired of the delay tactics and just take care of their need through masturbation.
  7. Sometimes a spouse does not please their spouse sexually. They might be not be able to climax for a variety of reasons.  Or it could be that even in climax it is not as good because there is little excitement in the act of sex.
  8. Sometimes there is nothing wrong the other spouse. They completely and utterly attempt to please their spouse and be available sexually at all times.  Yet the person still chooses to masturbate either because it is far less work than the actual act and they are very tired or because they just want some alone time with their fantasies and thoughts.

Before we discuss these eight reasons that people still might masturbate after marriage we first need to make clear some Biblical principles regarding sex in marriage.

Sex is a Need in Marriage

I will say this over and over again because it needs to be said.  Far too may Christians, more often women than men, will say that sex is not a need, but a want.  The Bible contradicts this false teaching.

In the book of Exodus, the Bible states:

“10 If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. 11 And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.”

Exodus 21:10-11 (KJV)

We can see from this passage in Exodus that God considered a woman’s desire for sex in marriage to be a NEED and not simply a want.

In the book of Proverbs, the Bible states:

“15 Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well…18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. 19 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”

Proverbs 5:15 & 18-19 (KJV)

The Bible compares a man’s wife’s body to a well from which he drinks water.  God is literally comparing a man’s sexual desire for his wife to his desire for water.  In other words, God is calling a man’s sex drive a NEED and not a want.

This principle of meeting the sexual needs of one spouse is further expounded upon in the New Testament:

“3 Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. 4 The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. 5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”

I Corinthians 7:3-5 (KJV)

Liberal Christians today have totally twisted this passage to protect sexual defrauders in marriage which in more cases than not are women.  They take the “consent” clause of verse 5 to say that sexual encounters between a husband and wife must be only by “mutual consent”.  Such a reading betrays the clear and unambiguous language of this passage.

The only “mutual consent” that is required for sexual relations in marriage is the “mutual consent” NOT to have sex for a short time.  The entire thrust of this passage is that husbands and wives have both a RIGHT and DUTY to have sex in marriage.  Put simply if one wants it, the other one is to yield their body to the spouse that needs sex.

The Right to Sex Does Not Trump Other Commands Regarding Marriage

We must not forget though that the right to sex in marriage does not trump other commands regarding marriage.  The Bible tells husbands:

“28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church”

Ephesians 5:28-29 (KJV)

So, while the Bible gives men the right to have sex with their wives it also tells men they must care for the needs of their wife’s body as they would their own.  Therefore, if a man tries to have sex with his wife without regard to her medical or other physical needs he is in violation of this principle.   For example, I had a young relative who tried too soon to have sex with his wife after she had a baby.  He ended up tearing her stiches and caused a lot of medical complications for her as a result.  When he did this, he violated the Ephesians 5:28-29 principle we have just discussed.

In the same way a woman’s right to sex with her husband does not trump his authority over her:

“22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. 24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.”

Ephesians 5:22-24 (KJV)

Practically speaking this means a woman while having a general right to sex from her husband cannot dictate to him the moment he must perform this duty.  But a husband, because he is his wife’s highest human authority, can dictate to his wife when she will have sex with him.

For example, if a man is working on his car in the garage and his wife comes in she may request he stop and go have sex with her but she cannot command it.  She has a right to request sex from her husband, but not a right to demand that he stop what he is doing and give it to her right then.

However, let’s say a man has been thinking about his wife all day at work and wants to have sex when he comes home.  So, he comes in the door and finds his wife washing the dishes in the kitchen. He goes to her and grabs her from behind and starts kissing her neck and says he wants to go to bedroom.  If she were to push him away and tell him “no”, “later” or “not now” this would be sinful on her part.  He is her spiritual authority.  Not only does he have a right to request sex from her as she does from him, but he has the authority to command it. Now she may respectfully and kindly ask for a delay but she cannot outright refuse him.

This is a concept that is completely foreign to our modern post-feminist and egalitarian society which teaches against the Scriptural principle of male headship.

Digging Deeper into The Reasons for Masturbation in Marriage

Now that we have given the Biblical principles for sex in marriage we can discuss in more detail the 8 reasons I gave above that one might still masturbate after being married.  First please take note of the fact that I used “spouse” instead of specific husband and wife language.  This is because these reasons I listed for why people sometimes still masturbate after marriage apply to both men and women.  That is not to say that some reasons are not more slanted toward men and others are not more slanted toward women.

Reasons 1 to 3 are just one spouse giving up their sexual needs at times for the true needs of the other spouse.  There may be some times where no medical or other reasons are involved and no great event has happened, but you just see your spouse having a hard time and you forgo your need and do not initiate sex and you go take care of yourself(masturbate).

Reasons 4 to 6 have to do with chronic restrictions on frequency or delay tactics when it comes to sex in marriage.  In most marriages the person issuing these restrictions on sexual frequency or the person engaging in constant delay tactics is the wife.  That is not to say there are not some husbands that do this but ask any marriage counselor and they will tell you that men rarely engage in this kind of behavior.  It is this sexually dysfunctional behavior by many wives in marriage that gives husbands no recourse but to masturbate.

Now we come to Reason 7.  This probably affects wives 70 percent of the time and husbands only 30 percent of the time.  This really could be broken down into several sub reasons.  Sometimes men are ignorant of how to please their wives sexually.  Sometimes men are just selfish and don’t even try to understand how their wife’s body works.  Other times women are ignorant of their own bodies and how they work.   Sometimes though women can make sex so boring or just plain horrible for their husbands (think star fish sex) that husbands sometimes have a hard time climaxing.

And finally, we come to reason 8.  Livinginblurredlines, I believe this is the reason for your husband masturbating. He may just want some alone time.  Some men do actually like to masturbate by themselves from time to time even when married to a perfectly willing wife and this is no indictment of how the wife is pleasing him in the bedroom.

Now for those of us who are not married yet or those of us who are married but have wives that engage in chronic restrictions or delay tactics regarding sex we might think this is crazy.  We will take it any time we can get it and can’t ever imagine wanting to masturbate if our wife had a “Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week” policy on sex.  But the truth is when a man is well fed sexually this could be normal behavior to masturbate from time to time.

Sometimes Masturbation Is Unhealthy

The only way this behavior becomes wrong is if your sex life starts to take a nose dive.  If he continues having sex with you three times a week still then don’t worry about it if he masturbates sometimes in between. Now if his interest in sex with you drops to say once a week and he would rather masturbate most of the time then that becomes a problem and you need to talk about it.

I once read somewhere that Hugh Hefner, the founder of playboy magazine, had a major masturbation problem.  He could not climax without taking care of himself – masturbating at the end and often he did it to porn.  There are many stories told by women that he would have sex with 3 or 4 women in one setting but none of them could give make him climax and in the end he sat a couch and masturbated to porn.

So yes, sometimes masturbation can be part of a larger sexual dysfunction and if a person were like Hugh Hefner in that way they should seek professional help. But I don’t think this is the case with your husband.

Conclusion

You should try and talk to him about now just to make sure everything is ok.  Renew your commitment to him that you are there for him any time he needs it.  Renew your commitment to the fact that you are willing “to do all the work” sometimes when he is tired by getting on top or orally pleasuring him.

But after you say all that make you sure you let him know he has nothing to be ashamed of. You are not judging him.  As I said as long it does not affect your average frequency then let him have his “alone time” in between those times.

In conclusion Livinginblurredlines – I think you have answered your own question when you stated:

“The only thing I can figure is that every so often a guy just wants to masturbate, even if he has a wife at his beck and call. Just a quick jack off to relax.”

And please don’t let this these thoughts occupy your mind:

“I just feel like I failed him in some way. I missed the boat. I’m not desirable enough or worth the pursuit or the wait until I get the kids tucked in….”

Know that your husband still loves you and still finds you desirable.

For more on these topics see the articles below:

Is Masturbation a Sin?

The 7 Reasons God Made Sex

12 Reasons your husband may NOT want to have sex with you

Why God Wants You to Seduce Your Husband

A Biblical Guide to Seducing Your Husband

The 10 actions of the sexually intelligent wife