Pastor Saeed Abedini’s Wife Halts Public Advocacy, Citing Marital Woes and Abuse -article says her husband is a Porn Addict
Before I get to the link to the news story itself – about jailed pastor Saeed being a porn user who abused his wife, I wanted to comment about the story first (I also have comments below the news page excerpt below).
So much for the Christian teachings about “being equally yoked,” which is generally understood to mean a Christian person can only marry another Christian.
While it’s true that a lot of Non-Christians are scum balls who would make poor spouses, I have so far not seen any evidence that so-called Christian men are any more trustworthy, loving, or mature than your average atheist guy, Hindu, Jewish guy, or whomever.
I actually tweeted in support of this guy a few times several months back… but he was abusing his wife, and she says he has a porn addiction problem – I didn’t know this until a couple of days ago, when I saw this article.
I also want to remind you of another point I touch on often on this blog: Contrary to what some conservative Christians teach on how to go about getting married, you do NOT have to be perfect, clean yourself up, or change yourself in some fashion to “earn” a spouse.
A lot of Christians teach that if you are still single, in spite of wanting to be married, it’s because God is with-holding a spouse from you because you are flawed in some way, and God is waiting for you to “fix yourself” before he will send you a spouse, or God is going to fix you himself.
Now, if this thinking were true, if God demanded all Christians to be perfect or reach some adequate level of morality before God would reward them with a spouse, one would not expect to see a guy like Pastor Saeed – who is abusive and a porn addict, by his wife’s admission – end up getting married, but the guy is married, and has two or three children by his wife.
The Bible, by the way, says nothing about an unmarried adult having to be pure, look a certain way (such as, being thin and pretty), and morally clean, to “merit” a spouse.
The Bible does not say you have to achieve a level of godliness, maturity, decency, sexiness, monetary level, or what have you, or else God will forbid you from having a spouse.
Despite the fact the Bible does not say God expects you to jump through hoops or perform certain works to be eligible to get a spouse, Christians who say they are “sola scriptura” never the less continue to tell singles in some of their material about marriage, singleness, and dating, that God demands you to do “thus and so” (lose weight, become godly, whatever) to get a spouse.
Excerpts
- Bob Smietana/ NOVEMBER 12, 2015
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For the past three years Naghmeh Abedini has publicly battled her husband’s captors, advocating for his release from an Iranian jail.
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Behind the scenes, she also struggled with his inner demons.
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Last week, the emotional distress of doing both finally proved too much, she said.
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In two emails to supporters, Abedini revealed details of her troubled marriage to Saeed Abedini, an American citizen and pastor imprisoned in Iran since September 2012.
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Those troubles include “physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse (through Saeed’s addiction to pornography),” she wrote. The abuse started early in their marriage and has worsened during Saeed’s imprisonment, she said. The two are able to speak by phone and Skype.
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… She said Saeed continues to share his faith in Jesus, even while in prison.
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“But that does not mean he has not been battling with his own demons which I am believing that he can be freed of,” she wrote.
- …Saeed was arrested in 2012 while in Tehran to visit family and to work on plans for an orphanage.
That creeps me out. Though the wife says her husband is “sharing his faith in Jesus” with people in the prison he is in, he is still abusive towards her, and is still hooked on pornography!
She seems to feel that her husband is a true-blue Christian.
I don’t know if her husband ever accepted Christ or not – but does it really matter either way? He apparently at some stage claimed to profess belief in Christ, yet he is looking at porn and was hurting his wife.
One reason of several I used to think the Bible says that Christians are to marry only other Christians is that a Christian spouse will treat you better, with more love and consideration, than a Non-Christian would.
But as I’ve gotten older, I have come to see that some Christian men are just as awful and selfish towards their wives as you would assume a Non-Christian man would be to his wife.
I have read testimonies by Christian women who said they divorced their Christian husband for being abusive or a serial adulterer, and that they remarried again, this time to a Non-Christian.
These women say their atheist (or whatever variety of Non Christian husband) treats them way, way better and with more love and respect than the “Christian” husband ever did!
I remember so many Christian media outlets, including television program 700 Club, “Life Today,” and other programs, had Naghmeh Abedini (wife of the jailed pastor) on their programs, publicizing her husband’s plight.
These Christian shows sort of championed her spouse, this jailed Christian husband, as being a martyr and hero for Jesus.
In light of these new revelations, that he was abusing Naghmeh Abedini (his wife) and using porn, I no longer feel that the guy is deserving of as much hero adulation or admiration as before.
I’ve also given up many months ago on narrowing my dating pool to ONLY Christian men.
I am more accepting now of dating Non-Christian guys. It’s all about a man’s character to me now, how he treats me – not necessarily what his profession of faith is – though I would probably draw the line at Muslim men or Satanists.
Many Muslim guys are sexists to the hilt, they think it’s okay to beat their wives and to rape little girls (look at ISIS over seas, they are selling girls and women as sex slaves), and some Satanists are involved in creepy, immoral practices – some of them, I’ve read, sacrifice animals to Satan in rituals and so on, or rape daughters of Satanic cult members. A big no to all that.
Other than Satanists, Muslims, or any other religious group that supports or espouses violence against animals or women, I’m pretty open to dating guys from whatever other world view or philosophy.
Stories like this one, where I am hearing for the first time that this jailed Christian pastor is a regular porn user who abused his wife, just cements this choice for me to ditch the “be equally yoked” teaching even more.
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