Wagner’s Response to TGC’s Morris’s Review of “Non Toxic Masculinity” – and Morris is Incorrect About Singleness, Among Other Issues

Wagner’s Response to TGC’s Morris’s Review of “Non Toxic Masculinity” – and Morris is Incorrect About Singleness, Among Other Issues

TGC is the same group that brought us all that cringe, weird book about sex called “Beautiful Union,” whose author claimed that sex can point us all to God, which is a disaster for those of us over 30 who are still virgins and living celibately.

I had a few comments I wanted to make below this:

(Link):  A Response to Shane Morris’s TGC Review of Non-Toxic Masculinity

Excerpts:

[The review that Wagner is responding to is located here, on TGC’s site: Sexual Ethics Is More than Not Being Evil]

by Zachary Wagner

…I want to note some of my ongoing disappointment with The Gospel Coalition on their engagement with issues of sexuality, gender, and masculinity.

…For many of my friends who have left Christianity, the straw that broke the camel’s back was not merely that Christianity was sexually restrictive. It was the hypocrisy of those who condemned the culture’s sexual permissiveness while indulging in sexual sin themselves or excusing it on the part of Christian leaders and heroes.

…In particular, the juxtaposition between purity culture on the one hand and sexual scandal on the other has opened a floodgate of apostasy for Millennials in particular, including members of my family and many very dear friends. How should evangelical pastors respond to this? Morris has little to say on this point, but he seems to imply that defending purity culture and doubling down on its good intentions is the correct approach. …

This is pastorally irresponsible. Parents, pastors, and authors were the ones who should have known better, not teenagers with raging hormones and half-developed brains. The sons and daughters of purity culture have repeatedly been told that they were the problem. Any suffering or frustration or confusion they experienced was their fault, a result of their sinful and broken inclinations.

Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him – Podcast

Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him – Podcast

The following is a podcast. The identical episode is available on several different hosts, including iHeart media, Apple, and I forget where all else.

I listened to this podcast, then went back and re-listened to the first ten or so minutes of it, but the podcast did not go into detail in explaining how this woman’s church enabled this (not that I recall), but I’ve seen enough over the years to guess why and how.

Most Christians, and I include church preachers in this, are ignorant about Cluster B personality disorders (under which Narcissism falls), so they actually expect women to stay married to individuals who lack empathy and/or a conscience- this is not a realistic, safe, sane, or compassionate response or perspective, by the way – most Christians, especially preachers, are huge morons on these topics.

(Not that secular culture is great at understanding these topics, either.)

There is currently no ‘cure’ for Cluster B personality disorders, and they are quite therapy-resistant (especially Narcissism and Anti-Social), so it’s quite unrealistic for Christians to instruct someone married to a “Cluster B” person to tell them to just “submit more” to the spouse, or to just “pray and trust the Lord” and to tell them divorce is always prohibited, no matter the situation.

Goodness knows that gender complementarian Christians don’t help matters, in that under the false, un-biblical “complementarian” or “biblical womanhood” teachings they love to spout off, they essentially ask or guilt trip  Christian girls and women into adopting Codependent, people pleasing behaviors, to lack boundaries, and to endure abuse or mistreatment.

However, the Bible teaches personal responsibility for each person and does not teach that God wants or expects girls or women to remain in abusive relationships, but to leave them and to avoid them in the first place, if possible.

God gave girls and women discernment and wisdom and expects them to use it – to high tail it out of abusive situations, for one thing, not sit there and put up with it, all because Pastor John Doe has a faulty interpretation of the Bible.

It’s not up to any girl or woman to “change” a man, nor is it possible, certainly not in the case of Cluster B personality disorders. Women are not the Holy Spirit. It is not up to women to sanctify a man. It is that man’s responsibility to fix his own problems.

It’s possible I am misunderstanding things, but by “enabling,” I think the lady interviewed (who was married to a Narcissistic Sociopath named John) seemed to be saying that she was living with John as boyfriend-girlfriend, and he manipulated her into marrying him by continually nagging her with the observation that she was “living in sin,” which her church would not approve of.

They, her church, would expect her to make things right by getting married, and not living together as boyfriend and girlfriend, seemed to be the point.

Her ex, John, was using her religious upbringing to manipulate her into marriage.

She said in the podcast that John asked her many, many times to marry him, but she kept saying “No,” until he finally wore her down, and she caved in.

(I could write a separate blog post on that!
I’ve run into several people via this very blog and/or this blog’s associated Twitter account, who kept pestering me and hounding me repeatedly OVER MONTHS (some were very nice about it) to befriend them further over Facebook or e-mail, they kept saying they wanted to get to know me better, even though I politely turned them down many times.

I finally blocked one guy who kept doing this; he would not respect my boundaries and take “no” for an answer, when he kept asking if we could be friends over e-mail.
I’ve since come to learn that this non-stop pestering and hounding after you’ve said “no” to the person many times (and no matter how friendly and nice they are being about it) is one indication that the person more than likely has a personality disorder, and they are to be kept at arm’s length.)

(Link – to iHeart host, 1.15 hour long): Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him

(Link – same podcast episode, but located on Spotify): Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him

(Link – same episode but on PodPlay): Overcoming a Narcissistic Husband and a Church that Enabled Him

Sept 8, 2022

Today’s Guest overcame a tumultuous marriage with a narcissistic husband and the Church that supported his actions. Coming straight from a religious college and community, our Guest and her ex-husband met and were groomed by the Church to be together and get married.

After what she thought was the perfect pairing to the perfect man, and that they were going to change the world for the better, everything changed.

Dear Abby: Lengthy Marriage Now Includes Threats and Ill Will

Dear Abby: Lengthy Marriage Now Includes Threats and Ill Will

I like seeing content like below.

It’s nice to see that decades-old Hollywood and Christian propaganda about marriage (or romantic relationships overall) “completing” a person or making him or her happy is a bunch of garbage.

This married guy sounds miserable. His wife doesn’t sound happy with him, either.

(Link): Dear Abby: Lengthy Marriage Now Includes Threats and Ill Will

Dear Abby,

I am a 50-year-old man, married for 25 years. My wife is older than I. In the beginning, it was great, but our relationship slowly started failing, and now we argue about everything.

I feel like I’m trapped in a cage.

We don’t have one single thing in common anymore.

The Weird, Sexist World of Gary Thomas and His Weird Sex and Marital Advice Books to Christians

The Weird, Sexist World of Gary Thomas and His Weird Sex and Marital Advice Books to Christians

Several months ago, a lot of people on Twitter and Facebook – mainly married or divorced Christian women – were really angry with Christian author Gary Thomas, I think mainly for some new book he released last year about marriage that contained some really gross, sexist, or disturbing marital and sex advice.

To be honest, I was busy with other things in fall of 2021 when this stuff went down. I should’ve blogged about it then but didn’t have the time.

I wasn’t able to totally follow the controversy, so I am not sure how to write up a summary, but from what I could tell, Gary Thomas wrote a bunch of strange, bizarre, sexist stuff about women, wives, sex, and marriage – some of it involving advising married women to tickle their spouse’s testicles with their make-up brushes – ???? 🤨😯🤮

From what I do recall, after people online began posting screen shots of Thomas’ weird marital advice book around October of 2021, a lot of women then began taking Thomas to task for the book’s objectional contents by contacting him at his Twitter or Facebook accounts and letting him know how troubling his book is.

Along with screen shots or quotes from Gary Thomas’ new marriage book, some of the women may have also included screen shots of his previous, troubling work.

Below you will find a smorgasbord of material about Gary Thomas’ weird or sexist marital and sex advice, most of which will probably be from his recent marriage advice book, but some may be from other sources he’s written (I’m unsure about that).

I began putting this post together prior to reading the Sheila Wray Gregoire review of said book (which I have excerpted below), and wowza, this book is cringe. So cringe. It’s awkward.

I’m not even done reading the entire Gregoire review yet. I’ve only read down the first several sentences (where she summarizes from the book), and my eye brows are already raised in shock, when my facial expression is not registering horror.

Cringey Christian Advice (Link): @cringeyxtian on Twitter was once source of Gary Thomas material you may want to visit.

Apparently, Thomas is rather fixated on women’s breasts or breast size, as he discussed this topic in his marital advice books.

I’ve not read his books, does he tell any male readers of his book that huge penis size matters to a lot of women? Because according to studies, it does:

(Link): Article: Scientists: Why penis size does matter [to women]

Also pertinent:

(Link):  Bride Discovers New Husband Has Micropenis On Honeymoon After He Refused to Have Sex Before Marriage

The more cringey, sexist, awful martial and sex advice I see from Christian writers such as Doug Wilson, John MacArthur, Mark Driscoll, Gary Thomas, and guys like them, and the more exposes I see about churches who harass their abused, married women members to stay married to child abusers and stay married to pedophiles, the more I am happy I remained single and celibate into middle-age. It looks like I dodged a bullet. Marriage is not worth this misery.

This is a review about Gary Thomas’ marital advice book:

(Link): The Fragile Male Ego That Can’t Function Without Constant Sexual Validation by S. Ashley

By that same author, but hosted on Medium:

(Link): “But Have You Tried Sleeping Naked?”

by Shannon Ashley
Oct 2021

Writers like Gary Thomas keep banking on men’s sexual satisfaction to save evangelical marriages.

…For decades, most mainstream Christian self-help books have taught sex in a way that harms the end goal of healthy marriages. Instead, authors have relied on faulty principles and pseudoscience like pink and blue brains or good Christian men cheat when their frigid, dowdy wives drive them to it.

…To make matters worse, Gary convolutes the messages he’s plagiarized. Although he uses ideas and phrasing from The Great Sex Rescue, he also undercuts them by utilizing the same old faulty Christian teachings in question

The Fragile Male Ego That Can’t Function Without Constant Sexual Validation by S. Ashley

The Fragile Male Ego That Can’t Function Without Constant Sexual Validation by S. Ashley

The following pertains to Christian author Gary Thomas and his weird, sexist marital advice book, Married Sex, that got savaged by Christian women on social media in 2021.

I will provide an excerpt or two below, but really, this author’s entire review of Thomas’ book is quite good, so I would ask that you please click the link below to visit her review – which is hosted on Medium – to read the entire piece.

(Link): The Fragile Male Ego That Can’t Function Without Constant Sexual Validation by S. Ashley

Excerpts:

[Thomas earlier book, When to Walk Away, was well-received by many Christian women.]

Unfortunately, his latest book (co-authored by Debra K. Fileta and published by Zondervan Books), Married Sex, comes across more like a sex-obsessed man desperately trying to convince himself and the rest of us that his fixations were “designed by God.”

[The author of the piece then goes on to discuss certain parts of the book by Thomas that concerned her.]

[Excerpt from the Gary Thomas book, by Thomas]:

“Now she asks us to put a coaster under our drink or pick up our socks from the floor, and we act like she’s requesting twelve hours of hard labor. God isn’t unaware of this tendency, so he has given us men a physiological compulsion to keep our wives near and dear in our affections.
If it has been a while since we’ve had sex, those hormones start to boil, and the “drive” slowly begins to captivate our minds. If we grow in love and understanding, we’ll learn that for our wives to be sexually available to us, they need to be relationally and even spiritually connected with us.

When I saw this as God’s creational design, I realized that my sex drive was God’s way of keeping me aware of my wife’s relational needs. The fact that our brains have so much more space devoted to sex drive motivates us men to pursue our wives on all levels—with loyalty, empathy, and love. God’s design is for men to be so sexually vulnerable to their wives that they don’t neglect them in other aspects of the relationship.”
— end Thomas book excerpt —

This is so, so, so… gross. So gross! I (and so many other women) have zero interest in being with a man who requires constant sexual incentive just to be a decent human being.

Three Reasons Women’s Ministries Might Want to Focus Less on Marriage and Motherhood

Three Reasons Women’s Ministries Might Want to Focus Less on Marriage and Motherhood

I’ve been saying many of the same things on this blog for the last several years that this 2022 essay says.

Churches, especially gender complementarian ones – and not just in women’s ministries, but overall, in every facet of a church – make single / childless / childfree women feel ignored or unwanted, except for those Christians who patronizingly behave like the only use for a single, childless woman is to babysit the children of the married couples.

Reminder to Christians: more adults are not marrying these days – at all. Some may marry, but not until their 30s, 40s or older. Many (even if they do marry) are choosing to forgo children.

When churches focus on marriage and motherhood to the extent they do, they also send a message that being married and a parent is necessary for sanctification or relationship with God, which is false.

A person does not need to marry or have children to be sanctified, know God, or to be mature, ethical, godly, loving, or responsible.

(Link): Three Reasons Women’s Ministries Might Want to Focus Less on Marriage and Motherhood

Excerpts:

March 25, 2022
by Rachel Baker

Women’s ministries are often the home to every category of woman: Single, married, mother, widow, and so forth. As a Women’s Ministry Director, I both attend a women’s small group and organize the women’s ministry meetings at my local church.

In my small group alone there is a vast array of women, each in different categories, some are empty nesters, some are starting families, some are intentionally single, while others are single with the hope of being in a relationship in the future.

We cover the gamut, so why is it that women’s ministries’ regularly cast their focus on the married mother?

Don’t get me wrong, as a married mother I have absolutely benefited from Bible study curriculum and content focused on marriage and motherhood, however it should go without saying that these types of studies do not represent all women.

If you are in a position at your local church in women’s ministry or as a small group leader here are a few reasons why you might want to steer your Bible study content away from marriage and motherhood:

Studies Solely Based on Marriage and Motherhood Can Feel Exclusive

As a young married woman and then young mother I desperately needed support and connection and resources to help me feel a little less alone in that particular season of my life.

Marriage ministries and parenting ministries absolutely have a place within the church; they are absolutely needed.

However, when our larger-scale ministries such as women’s ministry or small group ministry only focus on young-married or motherhood we can miss out on the richness that comes from a group of women of all life-stages and relationship status.

‘I’m Allergic to Sex’: College Student Reveals ‘Rare,’ ‘Excruciating’ Condition

‘I’m Allergic to Sex’: College Student Reveals ‘Rare,’ ‘Excruciating’ Condition

This is yet another thing that Christian Gender Complementarians fail to grapple with: they are all the time maintaining flawed or false gender stereotypes, where they assume all men want sex all the time, women do not supposedly want sex, AND, they have this false, unbiblical, highly sexist “obligation sex” message, where they tell married women that their husbands are “owed” sex (which is the same attitude one can sometimes find in some segments of secular culture).

I do have a few other posts on my blog from years past of women who are unable to have sexual intercourse at any time, or long term, or very infrequently, due to having some kind of physical disease or physical deformity (I have linked to those previous posts under the “Related Posts” section at the bottom of this post).

And what would the average complementarian (usually male, but I can see the “sell outs to their own female sex” female complementarians also doing this) advise such women to do – have sex any way, in spite of crippling pain? Probably.

Gender Complementarianism is not only codependency for women, it’s also maintained by male narcissists.

If a guy is married to a woman with one of these types of medical conditions that renders sexual intercourse medically impossible, or next to impossible, Christians (and specifically gender complementarians) need to stress that chastity and self control is for married people too, NOT just for young, single adults, because the husbands in these marriages will have to practice some self-restraint and not expect to have sexual intercourse (or the other sex acts, depending on what the health issue is) with these women.

When I was growing up, Christians – in their sermons, magazine articles and books – used to falsely promise and claim to the young, single reader that if one just refrained from having sex, that God would eventually bless or reward that individual with a great Christian spouse, and that married sex would be frequent and AMAZING. Well, those promises don’t always come true. Christians need to stop making false promises.

But secular types, and some anti-Purity Culture progressive Christians, also need to stop pressuring people who don’t want to have casual sex (or any sex at all), and they need to stop depicting sex as always being consequence-free, both physically and emotionally.

(Link): ‘I’m Allergic to Sex’: College Student Reveals ‘Rare,’ ‘Excruciating’ Condition

Feb 16, 2022
by Ben Cost

It’s only pain, no pleasure.

A Colorado college student embodied the expression “love hurts” after revealing that she suffers from a rare semen allergy that causes her to experience “excruciating” pain whenever she engaged in sexual activity.

“Essentially, I’m allergic to sex,” Longmont’s Chloe Lowery, 18, told Kennedy News of her unfortunate affliction, which began when she first started sex-perimenting.

The English major and aspiring professor specifically suffers from human seminal plasma hypersensitivity, in which contact with the proteins in sperm causes her to experience extreme reactions, including redness and a “burning” sensation.

It Goes In Cycles: Push For “Early Marriage” Makes the Rounds AGAIN Lately, Because of Marriage-Idolater, Singleness Shaming Brad Wilcox (Feb 2022)

It Goes In Cycles: Push For “Early Marriage” Makes the Rounds AGAIN Lately, Because of Marriage-Idolater, Singleness Shaming Brad Wilcox (Feb 2022)

Late night talk show host Johnny Carson used to have this joke that there’s only one fruit cake in the United States, nobody wants it, so they pack it up and mail it to another family the next Christmas; it’s the same fruit cake, in endless circulation.

I was reminded of that Johnny Carson anecdote when this odious Brad Wilcox penned piece on early marriage popped up a couple of months ago, was picked up by Wall Street Journal, then made its way ’round conservative Twitter.

As I said in older posts about conservative dating books aimed at women, like here or here, (where women are told, “You’re still single because you’re not Codependent enough! Stop following liberal, feminist advice, and ditch the self confidence and boundaries, and start acting like a Door Mat again, because MEN ARE ATTRACTED TO DOORMATS, being a doormat is feminine!”), topics like that one runs in cycles.

Every few years, you can count on conservative women releasing new “anti-feminist” dating advice books chock full of codependency marketed as being a sure-fire way of getting a husband, and you can also count on conservatives every so often, either releasing “pro early marriage” books and articles, or, with every news release of birth rates falling, or declining marriage rates on the increase, more of their fear mongering, anti-singleness articles.

So this newest crop of conservative sites eagerly repeating this latest Wilcox “Get married really young!” propaganda is no surprise.

I am going to guess that is what happened, that Brad Wilcox, of National Marriage Project, released an initial commentary, or one of his wonky “studies,” and then, other Christian, marriage-worshipping outlets (such as “Christianity Today” magazine) pick up on it and run with it, so pretty soon, for about a week, you start seeing all these “Benefits of marrying young!” headlines sprouting up all over your Twitter feed.

It’s so barfy.

It’s not just online magazines and newspapers publishing these “pro early marriage” editorials, but your Christian “nobodies,” (some of whom work as preachers), who tend to lean “complementarian,” have been tweeting about the topic, and shaming single women into marrying and marrying young.

They show no regard for 1 Corinthians 7, which states it’s better to remain single than to marry, nor do they seem to recall that Jesus, the founder of their faith, never married and never had (biological) children, nor do they show regard for the quotes by Jesus which presented “spiritual” family to be on par with, or more important than, biological family (see those towards the end of this post).

I will see if I can round up some of the tweets, articles I’ve seen lately about this and put them in this post.

This entire situation is just so bizarre, for several reasons.

In earlier commentary, I’ve seen some of these marriage-pushers seemingly upset by news reports that more and more young people (and some older adults) are NOT having sex prior to marriage any longer!

Conservatives, whether secular or religious, used to respect and defend the concept of remaining a virgin until marriage, but no more.

Here’s a rough time line, as it seems to me, of the conservative abandonment of defending sexual purity:

In the last 15 or so years, the Christian conservatives gave in, recognized that a lot of singles are having pre-marital sex, so they quietly accepted it, so they began to writing all these noxious, “well, that’s OK, God will forgive you of fornicating!” articles,
to when the progressive Christian women on Twitter started bitching a few years back about how horrible they found “purity culture,” Christian pastors and authors moved on to actually appease them by  downplaying the importance of virginity and celibacy (see, for example, Tim “We’re All Virgins Now” Challies), to lately, they’ve even been out right expressing sadness or frustration that single Christian women don’t want to knowingly marry a porn addicted Christian man to sadness or upset that adults aren’t having sex prior to marriage as much any more.

It’s also weird how these obscenely pro-marriage conservatives and Christians will grasp on to any little, tiny sliver of where they perceive pro-marriage points to be made and then hammer people over the head with them.

For example, in this latest “study,” Wilcox and others of his ilk grabbed tightly on to some study finding that people who marry young but who DO NOT cohabitate first are likely to stay married longer and not divorce.

So… out they trot these breathless think pieces stating,

“Hey, look, young ‘uns who marry young but who don’t live together prior to marriage stay married longer! So do it, young people, do it – get married now, now, now, now! Just don’t share an apartment together first!!!”

A conservative lady on Twitter,  Allie Beth Stuckey (tweet link), said in regards to this report:

My favorite thing is when researchers “discover” things the Bible has been saying for thousands of years
— end quote —

I do think the Bible teaches that pre-marital sex is sinful, but no where does the Bible imply or suggest that it’s a command of God for all people to marry and at what age if they do.

I have more commentary way below all the links and excerpts below, so please read on (or at least scroll towards the bottom, thanks).

I think this is the piece that got excitedly commented upon by all the marriage-worshipping conservatives that started it all; published Feb. 5, 2022 (note the authors):

(Link): Too Risky to Wed in Your 20s? Not if You Avoid Cohabiting First

Research shows that marrying young without ever having lived together with a partner makes for some of the lowest divorce rates
By Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone

(Link – Not The Bee site):  SHOCKING: Experts discover a secret to marital happiness that’s only been known to anyone in history who ever read the Bible (Re: Wilcox Article About Marrying Young)

(Link – Christianity Today magazine):  Research: Religious Americans Less Likely to Divorce

Recent data suggests that faithful young adults can marry in their 20s without increasing the risk of separation.
by LYMAN STONE AND BRAD WILCOX | DECEMBER 14, 2021 

This Stonestreet guy is also at BreakPoint. He’s written some pieces I disagree with before, such as this one. He wrote another one which I kind of agreed with, I guess, that one is here.

(Link): Marry Early, but Don’t Live Together First by John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander – article originally published at BreakPoint

Feb 23, 2022
By John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander

New data is poking holes in what’s become a prominent cultural myth. “When it comes to divorce,” write Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone in The Wall Street Journal, “the research has generally backed up the belief that it’s best to wait until around 30 to tie the knot.” This is because the divorce rate is generally lower for those who wait to wed.

What Should Christian Singles Know about Online Dating? by S. Bricker

What Should Christian Singles Know about Online Dating? by S. Bricker

As far as Christian dating advice goes, this (article below) isn’t all bad, but it’s pretty pedestrian stuff. If you’re an adult who’s been on the internet for a few years, there’s nothing ground-breaking here.

You really should already know all of the information it contains.

I have more to say about parts of this dating advice article further below:

(Link): What Should Christian Singles Know about Online Dating? by S. Bricker

Excerpts:

According to Pew Research, 12% of married couples in America found their spouse through online dating. While this percentage is not large, online dating has grown in recent years.

People can now easily browse and find compatible relationship matches with only a few clicks or swipes.

Many single Christians find the prospect of online dating appealing as a quick and effective way of finding potential marriage partners, especially when other avenues of finding a compatible match have been exhausted.

Despite the effortless quality of online dating websites and apps, Christian singles need to know that there is more to online dating than what people commonly assume.

Rebuttal to, Or Observations About, the Kerwin Holmes Jr. Editorial “On Finding ‘The One:’ Another Correction on Christian Teaching Concerning Romance”

Rebuttal to, Or Observations About, the Kerwin Holmes Jr. Editorial “On Finding ‘The One:’ Another Correction on Christian Teaching Concerning Romance”

The following post has been edited after publication to fix typing mistakes or to add more commentary.

---

I will be commenting on this editorial about singleness and marriage on The Christian Post:

(Link): On finding ‘the one:’ Another correction on Christian teaching concerning romance by Kerwin Holmes Jr

That post as linked to on The Christian Post’s Facebook page:

(Link): On Finding The One – post on Facebook Page

This guy’s editorial is written in an odd way, so I’m having to go back and re-read it to just to try and comprehend some of the points he’s making.

Maybe I am totally wrong about this, but my impression is that Holmes is either in his 20s at this time, or in his 30s.
(Wait until he’s in his 40s or older and STILL single.  If Holmes still has not married by age 40 or older, his views on these matters will likely shift in time, thanks to good old life experience.)

Also distracting: his first name, Kerwin, reminds me of Kermit the Frog, so I unintentionally keep visualizing Kermit sitting at a keyboard typing this editorial I am reading. (That is not intended to be an ad hominem, just a random aside.)

At the beginning of Holmes’ editorial, he tells readers to view or read dating advice articles or videos by Christian pastors or personalities that he agrees with, such as the works by Reformed pastors or personalities in general and Voddie Baucham in particular .

Let me stop him right there.

I spent years following Christian dating advice (stuff I read or heard in the 1980s and 1990s, advice by and from standard, run- of- the- mill conservative Baptist or evangelical Christians), and none of that smelly, stupid advice ever actually helped me to marry, though I had wanted to be married for many years (I am currently in my 50s and still single). 

As a matter of fact, a lot of Christian dating advice, even the advice by conservative Christians, is counter-productive and actually plays a role in keeping single adults single (this includes, and is not limited to, the “be equally yoked” rule).

Convicted Sex Offender on the Run for 20 Years Found Living New Life as Pastor, or “Musical Minister,” in Alabama

Convicted Sex Offender on the Run for 20 Years Found Living New Life as Pastor, or “Musical Minister,” in Alabama

My parents used to tell me as I was growing up that church is a better place for single adults who’d like to marry to go “spouse-hunting” than other places, especially bars or night clubs.

I can see how maybe that was true in the past, but these days, I’m not so sure.

I don’t know or care if this bogus, sex offending pastor or minister mentioned was a “true” Christian or not; the point is, a lot of his church mates assumed he was a real-deal Christian.

So, could you imagine if you are a single, Christian woman, and he was single, you walk into this guy’s church, and you may just assume this guy is safe to date or marry?

Especially for those of you single, Christian ladies who are way too beholden to the “equally yoked” teaching.

If you’re a single, Christian woman who’d like to be married one day, you really need to get rid of the “equally yoked” teaching in regards to whom you choose to date or marry, as it will increase your dating odds if you get rid of following that rule.

If you insist on limiting yourself to dating only self-professed Christian men, you could end up dating or marrying a self-professing Christian man who by all appearances seems to be a devout Christian but who ends up being a child rapist, like the pastor in this news story below.

You may as well ditch that dippy, stupid rule and judge men by their behavior, not by what religion they claim to follow.

(Link): Fugitive sex offender caught working at Alabama church after 20 years on the run

A convicted sex offender who spent 20 years on the lam was busted in Alabama — where he’d been working at a church for a decade, authorities said.

Larry Albert Flake, 75, was nabbed Friday in Birmingham, where FBI officials said he was living under an assumed name, Larry White, and was known to locals as Rev. White, FBI spokesman Paul Daymond told AL.com.

Officials at the Evergreen True House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church told the outlet Flake was a minister of music and not a pastor.

Russian ‘Sex Coach’ Was Repeatedly Stabbed in the Head by Her ‘Jealous’ Husband

Russian ‘Sex Coach’ Was Repeatedly Stabbed in the Head by Her ‘Jealous’ Husband

As I was saying on Twitter, the older I get, and I continue to see such news stories as the one in this post, the happier I feel to be single and celibate.

I cannot believe as I grew up that the evangelical / Baptist / Protestant culture brainwashed everyone to think that being single is “second best” and being chaste over the age of 25 was “impossible” or somehow “not worth it.”

I see so many people who, as teens or adults, are not happy from having sex outside of marriage, or they get married, and they have a sexless marriage, or their spouse abuses them.

You’re ultimately not going to find healing and hope in another person (i.e., a spouse).

This news story should be another sign to Christians who keep peddling false notions about singleness, dating, sex, and marriage that sexual purity is not for singles only.

You have married people out there who think it’s acceptable to work as “sex coaches,” or open their own “only fans” accounts, or to “wife swap” (see links under “Related” below for examples).

Churches need to remind MARRIED people that sexual purity is for them as well. It’s not single adults that are falling into sexual temptations left and right, it’s married couples who are.

I don’t approve of this married woman’s “sex coach” occupation, but no, I sure don’t defend the husband stabbing her to death over it, or for whatever reasons he had.

Note that these are two married people who had a couple of children together. The pro-marriage and pro-have-children Christians and conservatives are wrong to teach (as they do) that getting married and having children will always (or even usually) make people more godly, loving, mature and ethical.

I have many more examples on my blog here that demonstrate that marriage and/or parenthood do NOT make people more ethical, responsible, godly, loving, mature, etc.

(Link): Russian ‘sex coach’ was repeatedly stabbed in the head by her ‘jealous’ husband

Excerpts:

by Will Stewart
Sept 22, 2021

A Russian ‘psychologist and sex coach’ was repeatedly stabbed in the head by her husband who then threw her body from a 130ft-high building.

Rustam Mursalov, 24, confessed to killing his wife Alexandra Mursalova, 25, out of ‘jealousy’, according to reports.

Mursalova, who had two children with personal trainer Mursalov, worked with wealthy clients in St Petersburg.