New 9Marks eJournal on Marriage Is Online

The new issue of 9Marks looks very helpful. It covers a variety of topics including marriage, being a pastor's wife, and books on marriage. I have a brief review of Danny Akin's book God on Sex in this issue. Here are a few highlighted resources from the latest journal.

• This is a long list of evangelical books reviewed by a wide variety of contributors, including Tom Schreiner, David Powlison, Justin Taylor, and Jim Hamilton. This will be one of the best resources out there on the multiplicity of books on marriage. It's difficult to know what to buy and what to skip--read through the brief reviews for help (they're all less than 500 words).
• A compilation by several pastors on "30 Practical Ways for Pastors to Love Their Wives and Families."
• A thoughtful piece by CJ Mahaney on how the gospel influences masculine headship of families. Great selection from the piece: Gentlemen, here is a gift you can give to your wife this week. Set aside a few hours of uninterrupted time, and ask her to honestly evaluate your personal example of godliness and your leadership in the home. I dare you to ask her this question: Where do I need to grow in serving and leading you? For bonus points, ask this question: Where do I need to grow in serving and leading the children? This one conversation could initiate dramatic changes in your life.
• A Schreiner review of N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, which has made many theological waves.
  
• A pastor's wives forum filled with helpful answers to honest questions about pastoral ministry. Not to be missed, especially for women preparing for this role.
  

There's much more to peruse and benefit from. Yet another excellent journal by 9Marks.

A Reflection On What It Is Like to Live in the Stream of God's Blessing (To Live as a Christian)

I don't count myself especially sentimental, and I don't like it when preachers or others let poignancy substitute for exegesis and application. Once in a while, though, you come across a story that hits you at your core. I love writing original content for this blog, but in doing a review I came across a particularly powerful story of gospel-driven character that I had to share with my readers: "Berry Mauve or Muted Wine" by T. Suzanne Eller.

Readers who take the five to ten minutes to read the whole thing will come away freshly encouraged to live self-sacrificially for those they love. As one reads, one marvels at the awesome power of the gospel, the message that has clearly shaped this husband's approach to his wife.

"He found me weeping bitterly in the hospital room.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked, knowing that we both had reason to cry.

In the past forty-eight hours, I learned that I had a cancerous lump in my breast that had spread to my lymph nodes, and there was a possible spot on my brain. We were both thirty-two with three young children.

Richard pulled me tight and tried to comfort me. Our friends and family had been amazed at the peace that had overwhelmed us. Jesus was our Savior and comfort before I found out I had cancer, and he remained the same after my diagnosis. But it seemed to Richard that the terrifying reality of my situation had finally crashed in on me in the few moments he was out of the room.

As he held me tight, Richard tried to comfort me. “It’s all been too much, hasn’t it, Suz?” he said.

“That’s not it,” I cried and held up the hand mirror I had just found in the drawer. Richard looked puzzled.

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” I cried, as I stared in shock at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. I was horribly swollen. After the surgery, I had groaned as I lay asleep and well-meaning friends had freely pushed the self-dispensing medication to ease what they thought was pain. Unfortunately I was allergic to morphine and had swelled like a sausage. Betadine from the surgery stained my neck, shoulder and chest and it was too soon for a bath. A tube hung out of my side draining the fluid from the surgical site. My left shoulder and chest were wrapped tightly in gauze where I had lost a portion of my breast. My long, curly hair was matted into one big wad. More than one hundred people had come to see me over the past forty-eight hours, and they had all seen this brown-and-white, swollen, makeup-less, matted-haired, gray-gowned woman who used to be me.

Where had I gone?

Richard laid me back on the pillow and left the room. Within moments he came back, his arms laden with small bottles of shampoo and conditioner that he confiscated from the cart in the hall. He pulled pillows out of the closet and dragged a chair over to the sink. Unraveling my IV, he tucked the long tube from my side in his shirt pocket. Then he reached down, picked me up and carried me - IV stand and all - over to the chair. He sat me down gently on his lap, cradled my head in his arms over the sink and began to run warm water through my hair. He poured the bottles over my hair, washing and conditioning my long curls. He wrapped my hair in a towel and carried me, the tube, and the IV stand back over to the bed. He did this so gently that not one stitch was disturbed.

Next came the mascara, blush, and lipstick…

My husband, who had never blow-dried his hair in his life, took out a blow-dryer and dried my hair, the whole while entertaining me as he pretended to give beauty tips. He then proceeded, based on the experience of watching me for the past twelve years, to fix my hair. I laughed as he bit his lip, more serious than any beauty-school student. He bathed my shoulder and neck with a warm washcloth, careful to not disturb the area around the surgery, and rubbed lotion into my skin.

Then he opened my makeup bag and began to apply makeup. I will never forget our laughter as he tried to apply my mascara and blush. I opened my eyes wide and held my breath as he brushed the mascara on my lashes with shaking hands. He rubbed my cheeks with tissue to blend in the blush. With the last touch, he held up two lipsticks.

”Which one? Berry mauve or muted wine?” he asked. He applied the lipstick like an artist painting on a canvas and then held the little mirror in front of me.

I was human again. A little swollen, but I smelled clean, my hair hung softly over my

shoulders and I recognized myself.

“What do you think?” he asked. I began to cry again, this time because I was grateful.

“No, baby. You’ll mess up my makeup job,” he said and I burst into laughter.

During that difficult time in our lives, I was given only a 40 percent chance of survival over five years. That was sixteen years ago. I made it through those years with laughter, God’s comfort and the help of my wonderful husband. We will celebrate our nineteenth anniversary this year, and our children are now in their teens. Richard understood what must have seemed like vanity and silliness in the midst of tragedy.

Everything I had ever taken for granted had been shaken in those hours - the fact that I would watch my children grow, my health, my future. With one small act of kindness, Richard gave me normalcy.

I will always see that moment as one of the most loving gestures of our marriage." (From Danny Akin's God on Sex, 111-14)

On today, my twenty-seventh birthday, I am so thankful for those close to me who have loved me in self-sacrificial, gospel-driven ways. For my parents and the happy, healthy childhood they gave me, the regular sacrifices and uninterrupted love, I give thanks; for my wife, whose beautiful face is exceeded only by her beautiful character, I give thanks; for my Lord and Savior, who has saved me and is in the process of transforming me from a selfish, narcissistic, vain, disobedient, jealous, hell-bound man to a vessel fitted to praise Him, I give thanks. Though I can see great work to be done in my heart, I hope to glorify Jesus Christ by a life marked over and over again by expressions of love like that presented above, acts that capture in snapshot form, in momentary display, the great reality of Christ's cruciform love.

Women, Contact Sports, and the Mix of the Two in a Gender-Confused Age

In response to my blog from Thursday on the New York Times piece covering the extreme risks many girls face in playing high-contact sports, I drew some strong responses, and wanted to comment on them in today's post.

Let me first encourage you to check out the article by Michael Sokolove that appeared in this past weekend's NYT magazine. In addition, surf the comments related to the article. There are now 285 (as of this posting), so this piece, "The Uneven Playing Field", has clearly touched on a hot-button cultural issue of critical importance. The paper is to be commended for publishing a piece this controversial precisely because its central assertion works so strenuously and compellingly against gender-neutral myths.

I won't rehash much from Thursday's blog, but I will give you one snapshot quotation that sums up the general drift of Sokolove's writing:

"If girls and young women ruptured their A.C.L.’s at just twice the rate of boys and young men, it would be notable. Three times the rate would be astounding. But some researchers believe that in sports that both sexes play, and with similar rules — soccer, basketball, volleyball — female athletes rupture their A.C.L.’s at rates as high as five times that of males."

This is clearly a situation of grave importance to those who have athletically minded daughters and, beyond this, to those who are raising daughters in an age of supposed physical parity between the sexes. When Gatorade, for example, tells viewers that Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm are athletically and physically of equal gifting, strength, and agility, it is no surprise that the culture at large would begin to accept this notion and put it into practice in the form of their own familial decisions. This mindset has led many parents in our era to plunge their daughters headlong into high-contact sports, oblivious to the dangers (the word is carefully chosen) their daughters face from this decision.

This is not to say, though, that girls are weak, or that every girl will get injured. Sometimes people read the former statement into the biblical principle that women are to be treated as the weaker vessel. Nowhere did I say that women are weak. I noted instead that compared to men, women are weaker in a physical sense. There are of course exceptions to this principle; one can find weak men and very strong women. But these exceptions do not overturn the principle that men are generally stronger than women. I should say that in my life, I have been surrounded by women of considerable agency and ability. My mother was and is a dynamo, always working, always redeeming the time, even when relaxing. She couldn't even watch a television show without knitting! My own wife is in the same mold. She is a very capable woman, and I married her in part because I saw biblical industry and agency in her. She never ceases to amaze me in what she accomplishes around our home. Though she is a good deal less strong than me, I would not characterize her as weak, and I am continually stunned by what she accomplishes. I should not be read to be saying, then, that women are weak. That is an uncharitable and inaccurate reading, one that I cannot affirm based on the Word and my own life experience.

Neither will every girl who competes in a high-contact sport get injured. There are probably many girls who compete in a contact sport who, for a variety of reasons, evade injury. As the NYT article shows, there are also exercises that women can perform that lower the risk of serious injury. With this caution noted, though, we return to the above research finding. Some who study women's athletics very closely think that women tear their ACL's at five times the rate that men do. This statistic--and others--must be reckoned with. The personal angle of the magazine piece add a dreadful personal dimension to this statistic. Girls--and they are girls--playing with two blown knees, all for the "love of the game". This is a horrific reality.

Our sports-obsessed, gender-neutral society exhorts many girls to do nothing less than to sacrifice their bodies for games. No one will remember these contests in the years to come. The women who go on to the activities and responsibilities of adulthood will find that their athletic experience, however large it loomed in their teenage minds, suddenly has precious little importance compared to the duties of the family, the home, and for those who feel compelled to enter it, the workforce. Think of the reality of childbearing and raising. These are tremendously engrossing callings, challenging for the most physically strong and capable woman. They will be many times more challenging, however, with a blown knee and the other results of a career--that's what it is, a career--in youth sports. In women's sports, and in some that boys play, namely, football, the parents of our country are allowing or even leading their children to a path of physical disability and even destruction. This is not simply sad--it is sick.

As Christians, we need to seriously question the sports culture. We need to make sure that if our boys play sports that we watch their hearts and their bodies very carefully to make sure that they are not idolizing athletics and, in doing so, causing great harm to their bodies. There is nothing smart or biblical or romantic in a boy suffering considerable physical damage in youth sports, no matter what the sports legends or the television shows or the Nike commercials tell us. We need to make sure that if our girls play sports that they avoid the dangerous idea that they need to do what boys do. In some cases, they cannot, and to try to do so will be to bring lasting harm to themselves. We should steer them away from sports that threaten to compromise their bodies and their femininity. Unlike modern culture, the Bible celebrates a dignified, distinct womanhood that is quite different from many masculine qualities. In our homes and our churches, we must work to celebrate this femininity, to embrace it, and to train our daughters that it is absolutely beautiful and biblically right for a woman to be just that: a woman, distinct from a man.

To summarize, then, we must stop buying into the myths that the feminist-influenced society feeds us as Christians. Women and men are different. They have been given different gifts and bodies. A woman's body is not less muscled and differently shaped from a man's by accident; God did not make men and women with the exact same physical capabilities but with different shapes, as if He simply got aesthetically creative with the bodies of Adam and Eve. He made men to be strong because he wanted them to be those who led, protected, and provided for women and children. He made women to be able to nurture children not simply in a figurative sense through their instincts, but in a literal sense, through hips that can stand childbirth and breasts that can feed children. To speak frankly, though a husband justly delights in it, this part of a woman's body was not made for fashion, for the fetishes of unmarried men or the interest of boys, but for function, despite what our sex-obsessed, female-fixated culture says by way of advertising and entertainment. If a man's body is attuned to the tasks of provision and protection, a woman's is geared for physical nurturing. We do not have to derive our understanding of gender roles by some mystical divination of the Creator's will, but through the plain testimony of Scripture and, indeed, the anatomical realities in which we find ourselves.

This sounds to postmodern ears like caveman talk. The funny part is, it's actually older than that. The roles of men and women proceed from the mind of God, who made men and women to carry out fundamentally different roles through fundamentally different physical realities. This is not to say that there is never overlap between the duties of the sexes; there often is. Yet as men live at home with their parents, and treat women well only for the purpose of seducing them, and leave them to fight their wars, and do substantive work, and assume positions of leadership due to a shortage of available (and capable) men, a suspicion might just creep its way into their minds. As fathers watch their daughters brutalize their bodies in order that these dads might live out their athletic dreams through them, a thought may come quietly to mind. As another girl falls in agony on the soccer field, or the basketball court, as a researcher crunches statistic after frightening statistic, a realization dawns. Perhaps the gender-neutral experiment is flawed. Perhaps our whole program is awry. Maybe, just maybe, in seeking our daughter's "liberation", we are watching nothing less than their downfall, right before our eyes, with our permission, under our watch.

The Sad Tale Of Eliot Spitzer, and What it Tells Us (and What it Doesn't)

Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York, has resigned after it became public that he had hired prostitutes through a "high-end clientele" business. The story is sordid, and very sad for the people whom Mr. Spitzer has let down. This would include, significantly, his wife, and, not insignificantly, the state of New York.

In looking at web coverage of this event, I came across this article in the LA Times by an evolutionary biologist. David Barash argues in "Want a Man, or a Worm?" that it is natural for males of many species to copulate with a wide variety of females from their species. Barash notes that among men who seek a number of female sex partners that "Even if, thanks to birth control technology, they do not actually reproduce as a result (and thus enhance their evolutionary "fitness"), they are responding to the biological pressures that whisper within men." This is a good point. If one looks through most any type of human history, biblical or otherwise, one sees that men often seek out a number of women for sex. Speaking rather broadly, many men have struggled greatly to confine their sexual drive to one woman, particularly men in positions of power like Mr. Spitzer.

Here's the fascinating thing about Barash's opinion piece, though. Right after acknowledging this historically proven situation, he says the following: "That doesn't justify adultery, by either sex, especially because human beings -- even those burdened by a Y chromosome and suffering from testosterone poisoning -- are presumed capable of exercising control over their impulses. Especially if, via wedding vows, they have promised to do so. After all, "doing what comes naturally" is what nonhuman animals do. People, most of us like to think, have the unique capacity to act contrary to their biologically given inclinations. Maybe, in fact, it is what makes us human." One wonders why the evolutionary biologist--who has just taken numerous paragraphs to explain polygamous mammalian sexual behavior as entirely natural--suddenly becomes a moralist, and attempts to convince the reader that the natural orientation of men (to avoid monogamy) "doesn't justify adultery". Barash has offered us no moral framework, no higher, transcendent cause or reason by which he could justify his judgement that adultery is wrong. If biology explains all, then all that we have an "is", an explanation for what goes on in the world, but we have no "ought", for biology in itself cannot bequeath us morality, let alone the spirituality that would birth a moral standard. No, if we explain life in materialistic terms, then we live it, ethically, in materialistic terms, and adultery cannot be judged wrong, and Eliot Spitzer cannot be looked upon in a negative light. Yet this is exactly what even the most learned among us do, and so show us, time and again, that the Christian worldview alone gives us a comprehensive, logical understanding of man and man's world.

Christian men are reminded by this sad event to seek self-control, or, perhaps, Spirit-control of self. It is no accident that men have sought polygamous relationships throughout history and that men seem far more often than women to destroy marriages and homes through extramarital affairs. This is not to say that women do not ever fall in such ways, or that all women possess less reproductive drive than men, but it is to say that a quick historical scan yields that men are much more likely to stray than women are. We can acknowledge, then, that there are significant "biological pressures that whisper within men", as Barash argues. We go beyond this, however, to say that adultery involves not merely biology but spirituality. Indeed, it is our sinful nature, our errant spirituality, that drives our biology. Adam would not have cheated on Eve prior to the fall. His biology operated at a cool "faithful" then then. His fall, though, shot that temperature up to "hungry", and won him a sinful nature, and a part of this sinful nature is the drive to commit the horrible, tragedy-inducing sin of adultery. Biology matters, yes, but so too does spirituality.

Men have been attempting to control themselves (to follow Barash's moral guidance) for millenia, and we can all see where that's gotten us. No, we must have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, willing us away from Internet ads and tv shows and stray glances at the mall and extended consideration and appraisal of other men's spouses and meditation on past objects of lust and spending time alone with women who are not our spouses and so much more. We must have the Spirit, men, and we must strive for holiness, both personally and in the embrace of the local church. It is a difficult thing to be a monogamous man, armed with a sinful nature and existing in a sex-saturated world, but we can resist temptation. We've got to fight for holiness, we've got to prize Christ and find our joy in obeying Him and turning away from the world, and we've got to celebrate marriage and cultivate happy, romantic marriages. Only then will we avoid Mr. Spitzer's mistake; only then will we avoid his tragedy.

Reflecting on Marriage on a Meaningful Day

You know, sometimes we're so saturated by what the culture says about love, sex and romance that we cannot hear--or remember--what God teaches us about these things. That is to say, I sometimes catch myself thinking defensively, unconsciously defending my decision to marry at a young age rather than live a life of self-gratification and hedonistic pleasure. In such moments, my thinking is exactly backward.

The reality is that marriage is an incredible institution. Don't get me wrong, I'm no pro at it. I'm a year and a half into my marriage to the lovely Bethany, and I am the first to tell you that I don't have everything figured out. I just don't. For example, I am a complete novice when it comes to determining when to give my wife her gifts. This morning, for example, I set out her Valentine's Day gift beside some fresh flowers. From her reaction, I could tell that, while she was quite gratified to see that I, a clueless guy, had made a monetary purchase on her behalf, she also was slightly dismayed by (admittedly) strange timing in delivering my gift to her. It was the middle of the morning, she was bustling about, and it was not really the time for the delivery of said monetary purchase. I quickly retracted the gift without a word, a sign that though I am a clueless guy, I am not as clueless as I used to be. In the past, after all, I would have asked her why the timing was wrong, thus successfully spoiling the moment in its entirety.

This is a lighthearted example of my novice husband status, of course. I am a sinner, and Bethany sees that on a daily basis. We can both testify that I have clay feet as a man. And yet even with this stated, our marriage is so good, so happy, so transcendently meaningful. We are not simply Owen and Bethany Strachan, married couple. We are a united pair, a visible display of the reality of the biblical gospel in a broken world. This is a beautiful--and meaningful--thing. This is a holy thing. Marriage is no loser's trophy in this world. It is the best thing going. This is not what our secular culture tells us. In the current day, marriage is demeaned, ridiculed, or perhaps worst of all, ignored. Secular singleness-characterized by a narcissistic, self-exalting, self-gratifying way of life--dominates in the current day. And yet we who are married laugh as we are laughed at. We know what it is to come home to someone day after day. We know what it is to be in a lifelong covenant with another person. Just think about it--compare such a state to even the best cohabiting relationship, where either person can check out at any moment. Go beyond the basic reality of commitment to the daily experience of marriage. In happy, God-centered marriages, the couple does not simply live together in the bond of covenant, but they regularly express love for one another. They do things that communicate care and affection for the other person. They don't do this for a week or a month or a year--they do it for a lifetime. The sum total of all these expressions of love is gigantic. It is an incredible thing, this business of being loved tenaciously and devotedly by another person for all of life. I've only experienced it for a year and a half, and I can say that I have experienced far, far more goodness than even the most successful pickup artist, the most prolific hook-up king. I don't say this with boasting or arrogance. My experience is, among happily married God-glorifying couples, quite normal. We live lives in which our spouse regularly showers us with love. To think that a one-night stand, a chain of one-night stands, or a lifetime of one-night stands compares to this is to commit intellectual blasphemy, and to tragically delude oneself.

This is a very simple reflection on marriage. One could say so much more about it. But then, there's a sense in which one doesn't need to. The couple that loves one another is blessed beyond their imagining. To bring this home, I think of my grandparents' relationship. My grandfather, Daniel Dustin, loved his wife, Rachel Dustin, for over 60 years. There was some struggle in those years--there were some fights and a good deal of sins and things that one doesn't desire to talk about much. But there was such good, such tremendous good, in those sixty plus years of life together. There were so many tangible expressions of kindness, so many words of affirmation and encouragement, so many difficulties negotiated through the power of a bonded love. In sum, my grandparents created a beautiful life together. I compare them with a man who had great success in attracting girls to sleep with him. Some Hollywood actors, for example, are reputed to have slept with thousands of women. But what do they sit and think about as they prepare for death in old age? What tangible expressions can they recall? What difficulties were overcome through the sheer force of love? What legacy of committed happiness can they point to? What offspring are around to remind them of a love that endured over many decades? The answer is that such a man has little, precious little, that is truly meaningful to remember. Marriage--God-glorifying, Christ-centered marriage--is not alluring or mysterious. It is not flashy or fancy. It is simple, it is humble, and it is, in a way that utterly opposes secular singleness, transcendent. Here's one man's attempt, then, to give thanks for that which is humble, simple, and quite wonderful.