INTRODUCTION
“We live in a day of guided missiles but misguided men.” This statement was once made by the famous civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. This is demonstrably true of many Christian leaders regarding their recommendations for marriage. Marriage is considered the very cornerstone of society. From the Bible we know the beautiful model God created for marriage. When God’s model for marriage is followed, it is a reflection of His character. Unfortunately, this model is rarely taught and consequently is seldom found. The crisis of broken Christian marriages today is indeed grave.
Although traditional Christian teaching rejects divorce and stresses marital fidelity, and family values are central to the religious conservatives’ moral agenda, data show divorce strikes born-again Christians at about the same rate as those who don’t profess a born-again experience. The Barna Research Group, a California-based polling and marketing organization that specializes in religion, even found that those who characterize themselves as “fundamentalist” had a slightly higher divorce rate than the general public.1
Much of our passion for writing this book comes from our empathy and commitment to our fellow human beings. In our professional practices, both of us see the dismal quality of many Christian marriages. We witness suffering and damage caused by marriages that range from lonely and inadequate to abusive. We boldly contend that if we are not godly toward our spouses, then the rest of our Christian walk cannot be healthy. Of course there are exceptions, but healthy, happy marriages we see are typically couples going through their second or third time around. Many Christian moralists would like you to believe high divorce rates come from feminism, working mothers and other harbingers of our deteriorating society. Period. End of story.
As long as we believe such over-simplifications of the crisis, we will continue to blame others, rather than look inside ourselves—and we will never find a solution. The fact that divorce is more common among “fundamentalist” Christians should be a warning to us—we have met the enemy, and he is us.
A low divorce rate is nothing to be proud of if Christians who remain married have deplorable relationships. Such an empty statistic points only to Christians’ willingness to live in misery and to leave that legacy to their children. The rampant moral decline of our society of course takes its toll on marriages. The media is especially seductive, drawing people into false promises that are inevitably broken.
Our thesis is people would not be so drawn to this world’s enticements if they experienced the powerful works of our mighty God in their marriages. We observe individuals stuck in empty, lonely, even abusive relationships who cling to God as their only refuge, recognizing that a better life awaits them after they die. We admire their faith and steadfast devotion to God’s institution of marriage. The fact that these individuals have not gone stark raving mad under the abuse does fall in the category of the miraculous. However, when we write about wanting to see God’s power manifest in marriages, we are referring to something far greater than people being able to merely survive until they reach heaven.
We are created by God for intense loving intimacy with our spouses. Since even pagan marriages can be intimate, kind and loving, God clearly desires more than that from the marriages of His followers. We must strive for our marriages to be distinctively Christian. That does not simply mean we study Scripture, pray and go to church together. We consider those minimal requirements. Scriptures detail God’s design for marriage as a replica of the relationship between Christ, the Groom and the Church, His bride. That requires holiness, and this book is founded on the premise that God does not give us commandments we cannot follow. We are convinced He graciously gives us supernatural means to carry through actions and attitudes that are impossible naturally. The Bible tells us so.
Rather than promoting the glorious scriptural version of what a Christian marriage should be, many popular authors actually promote our marriage crisis. Some endorse gender double standards and stereotypes, blaming the crisis on feminism and women’s inadequate submission. They promote acceptance of ungodly gender differences. The net result is a lack of accountability, especially by men.
This book is not about male bashing. Bashing is based on innuendo and fueled by malice and bitterness. When Jesus spoke harshly to the Pharisees by calling them “vipers,” was that “Pharisee bashing?” We think not. Our book is based on facts, with the intention to restore and redeem. We hold males in high regard as the gender God chose for leadership. We are fully aware of cases where the wife is the primary cause of the marital discord. We have a great deal of personal and professional experience with destructive women. Nevertheless, according to Scripture, those in leadership are held to higher standards. Tragically, the very opposite has happened in Christianity. There are leaders held in high esteem in the Christian world who hold women to the highest accountability while they excuse the behavior of men. That is why our book deals more with male issues and why we emphasize this theme.
There have always been double standards. One particularly distressing example is the colossal emphasis given to wifely submission. Wifely submission is usually preached in isolation, ignoring the rest of the Scripture passage that commands the husband to love his wife as Christ loves the Church. No wonder women trying to follow the Bible are confused. Does Scripture require a wife to submit to a husband who squanders family funds, abuses alcohol or drugs, is addicted to pornography or physically abuses his family? We hope to help people to see such abuses in marriage offend God Himself. “God is not the author of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33).
You will notice this book has three chapters devoted mainly to human sexuality. We realize this can be a sensitive topic and may offend some readers. Sex is God’s creation. Our intention is to treat it tastefully. We believe a discussion of sexuality is inescapable because it is such an integral part of who we are, and because sexual immorality is one of the top causes of marital discord and destruction. We also demonstrate how some Christian leaders actually promote immorality perhaps without realizing it.
The New Testament mentions wifely submission in three places, but never in passages attributed to Jesus’ words. Meanwhile, most chapters speak against sexual immorality. We quote seven of Jesus’ verses where He spoke against it. Some leaders who passionately emphasize submission for wives do nothing to encourage complete sexual fidelity for husbands. It seems likely to us their justification of male lust represents a male-oriented, self-serving agenda. Several quoted who encourage lust are leaders of our best-known Christian family organizations. All of those quoted consider themselves experts in marriage who write books and give seminars.
We are resolute in our stand that you cannot effectively promote family values without making sexual fidelity a high priority.
In this book, we quote Christian authors who rightly believe the heart of our cultural crisis is a lack of scriptural understanding of what it means to be a man. They write terrific books about how to reclaim scriptural manhood, calling men to pass this on to their sons. Unfortunately, these authors do not place the responsibility of men’s mistakes where it belongs. They promote the highly popular but intellectually untenable notion that feminism is the cause of the male leadership crisis. Blaming feminism has caught on. One woman, whom we both know and respect, blames women for the Christian leadership crisis. She stated, “Feminism has caused this problem because now men don’t know what their roles are.”
We are certainly not spokesmen for feminism nor other women’s liberation movements. We do not support some of their tenets. However, we understand why feminism came into existence. We use historical illustrations to show that feminism arose from men’s poor leadership, not the other way around. Blaming feminism takes accountability away from men and neatly places it on women.
Popular Christian literature and marriage seminars promote the notion that if we learn to understand, accept and embrace gender differences we will promote health, happiness and understanding in the marriage relationship. Unfortunately, this approach discourages personal accountability, especially among males. It places men and women on opposite ends of the spectrum; neither Scripture nor our broad professional experience supports such an approach. We have found the differences between genders less pronounced when individuals become emotionally, psychologically and spiritually healthy. Furthermore, with few exceptions, God has the same expectations for men and women. In widely popular marriage seminars, we are encouraged to “embrace” our differences, without requiring that those differences be godly. A successful marriage requires loving unconditionally and having compassion for each other’s struggles. However, we should never embrace sinful behavior or thought patterns, such as lust, nor should we consider anything sinful to be a God-given difference.
Because the secular world lacks God’s guidelines, observable behavior is a reasonable basis for it to determine differences between the genders. This secular segment of the population depends only on behavioral sciences and personal experience. We Christians are blessed to have Holy Scripture. Guidelines for Christian behavior must match God’s clear scriptural standard. Behavior less than God’s standards misses the mark and must be described for what it is—sin. Christian leadership fails when it employs a backwards approach to moral behavior. It bases standards on what fallen man does rather than what Scripture dictates.
Ultimately, this practice degrades men more than women. Men are reduced to genetically-programmed beings who are impulsive, shallow, overwhelmed and controlled by their sex-drives and dependent on their wives to teach them common decency in relationships. Some books even teach men are created to be dependent on their wives who must stop them from being total barbarians and must bring them to a relationship with God! Sadly, this description fits an embarrassingly high percentage of Christian men. Nevertheless, because of what the Bible says, we refuse to accept this pathetic, watered-down version of Christian manhood. Instead, we offer a Bible–based method for uncovering truly intrinsic gender differences.
We are convinced the basis for our marriage crisis is the long-standing epidemic of underestimating what God wants for us. The ultimate and deepest source of our devotion and fervor is our desire to see transformation of the Christian body into holy men and women of God who will bring this holiness to their marriages. We desperately need revival, and we hope this book can serve to invigorate the Church. Great revivals have always come from recognizing sin and turning from it. We belong to the Church, and believe in the Church’s role in the world. We love the Church because Jesus loved it and laid down His life for it. For this reason, we shudder at our accountability for confronting Christian leaders.
Many well-intentioned Christians may be offended by our book because they believe it is wrong to publicly challenge authority, especially Christian leaders. To those people we ask, where would you be without the questioning of authority that brought about the Protestant Reformation? The American Revolution? The fall of the Third Reich? Furthermore, Jesus’ harshest recorded criticism was of the religious leaders of His day. His warning is no less pertinent today than it was then: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ferocious wolves” (Matthew 7:15). We believe the false doctrine of not holding leadership accountable was created and promoted by these wolves to protect themselves and the pack. In our book, we quote leaders directly and in context, so they actually condemn themselves with their own words. We expect our Christian leaders to promote truth, yet many have broken this trust. Until we become dissatisfied with and move beyond the lukewarm, non-scriptural version of Christianity taught by these leaders, we will not become what God has intended us to be.
The moral sickness in our land cannot be blamed primarily on feminist-extremists, nor even on atheists and secular humanists who have infiltrated and poisoned the media and the educational system. Surely, if we Christians represented our Lord by manifesting His glory, power and love in our transformed lives, the dark principalities of wickedness would not have been able to take hold here. We echo this invitation from God and claim it for our nation:
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).
REFERENCES:
1. “Christian Divorce Rate,”
http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/4903.htm, p.1.