Why We Thought Marriage Made Us Healthier, and Why We Were Wrong by Bella DePaulo

Why We Thought Marriage Made Us Healthier, and Why We Were Wrong by Bella DePaulo

Why We Thought Marriage Made Us Healthier, and Why We Were Wrong by Bella DePaulo

Excerpts:

The power of marriage to transform allegedly forlorn single people into blissfully happy and healthy couples is not just the stuff of fairy tales. For more than 70 years, social scientists’ studies havesupposedly shown that marrying improves people’s wellness. Award-winning scholars and leading magazines have all proclaimed that marriage typically makes people healthier and happier.

The promise is seductive: Find and marry that one special someone and all your dreams will come true.

Recently, though, new and methodologically sophisticated studies have been published that suggest something startling: Maybe we are wrong about the benefits of marriage. People who marry, it seems, do not become healthier than when they were single, and may even become a shade less healthy.

They do not become lastingly happier, either.

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Those “God Brought Me My Spouse” Stories – Woman Says God Brought Her A Spouse on the Beach

Those “God Brought Me My Spouse” Stories – Woman Says God Brought Her A Spouse on the Beach

I’m really not supportive of these types of stories, the type that you see below.

When I was a teen and in my 20s, I would read Christian books and magazine articles. Every so often, I’d see an author claim that God answered her prayers by sending her a Christian spouse.

Now that I’m in my 40s and still not married – in spite of having faith and praying since youth that God would send me a great guy – I think these stories are fanciful and that they are aberrations.

I’m leaning more towards the opinion now that if you want to get married, it’s up to you to make it happen – by going to bars, asking friends to fix you up, going on dating sites – rather than expecting God to make it happen.

So, I find stories like the ones below misleading.

(Link):  Chance meeting on beach leads to marriage with godly man

By Rebecca Hagelin – – Sunday, July 30, 2017

Thirty-four years ago this month, I was fresh out of college and earnestly seeking God’s will in my life. My heart was hungry for a godly man of outstanding character.

And though I had decided that compromise in this most critical of relationships was not an option, I was beginning to doubt whether a man of that quality could possibly exist, or if I would ever find him.

Little did I know that God already had set his answer to my prayers into motion.

Woman Says She is Lonely in Marriage to Husband Who Ignores Her in Favor of His Job, Watching TV, etc.

Woman Says She is Lonely in Marriage to Husband Who Ignores Her in Favor of His Job, Watching TV, etc.

A woman named San wrote to Christian program “The 700 Club” to say she’s in a marriage where her husband is ignoring her in favor of TV shows and his job and so forth. Pat Robertson’s son Gordon answered her letter.

Here is her letter to The 700 Club:

I have been very lonely in my marriage.

My husband’s priorities fall in this order: work, television, and then his phone. I have brought it to his attention so many times. I find myself only relying on God and Him being my true friend but I am still lonely.

Yes, I have God to turn to and I talk to God all day, every day, but it would be nice to have a husband in my life who I can truly share my life with. What should I do?

[signed] San

I didn’t completely agree with the host’s answer.

Theology of Convenience, Expediency, and Borne of Culture – Christian Preachers and Writers Diminishing Seriousness of Sexual Sin

Theology of Convenience, Expediency, and Borne of Culture – Christian Preachers and Writers Diminishing Seriousness of Sexual Sin

Because American culture has seen a rise in the number of people, even Christians, using pornography and engaging in other forms of sexual sins, I’ve seen a disturbing and curious trend among some Christians (writers, commentators, preachers) in the last few years to downplay the seriousness of sexual sin, and to try to convince other Christians to just accept sexual sin as a normal part of life and marriage now.

And the people who pay for this lowering of standards is usually women. Women are once more expected, by male Christians, to bear the brunt of male sexual sin. Christians are always asking Christian women to endure and put up with male Christian sexual sin.

A few years ago, I created this post: (Link): Male Christian Researcher Mark Regnerus Believes Single Christian Women Should Marry Male Christian Porn Addicts and Regnerus believes as such because rates of porn use among Christian men have gone up quite a bit.

Regnerus feels if too many Christian single women refuse to marry Christian male porn users, then Christian marriage will come to a grinding halt, so, he feels, single women are obligated to marry a porn user, even if they really do not want to.

Not only have I seen articles saying that porn viewing has risen among single Christian men, but I’ve seen articles noting it’s on the rise among (Link): married Christian men (and (Link): women too).

Here are a few additional articles with numbers on Christian porn use:

(Link):  Survey: Alarming rate of Christian men look at porn, commit adultery

(Link): NEW SURVEY OF PORN USE: MEN AND WOMEN WATCHING IN STARTLING NUMBERS (2016)

Christian men view porn almost as much as non-Christians

According to the research approximately 64 percent, or two thirds, of U.S. men admit to viewing porn at least monthly, with the number of Christian men nearly equaling the national average. When divided by age “eight out of ten (79%) men between the ages of 18 and 30 view pornography at least monthly, and two thirds (67%) of men between the ages of 31 and 49 view pornography at least monthly. One half of men between 50 and 68 looks at porn monthly.”

The study claims three out of every 10 men between the ages of 18 and 30 are daily viewers of porn; three percent of women in the same age group purportedly access pornography daily.

— end excerpts —

Because sexual sins are running rampant among Christianity these days, it looks to me as though many Christians have given up, and they want to cave in to culture. They basically want to downplay or redefine certain sexual behaviors as not being so bad, not being truly unbiblical, or damaging.

Almost in all examples I have come across like this, where the male Christian writer is downplaying sexual sin or asking women to “put up with it,” the ones promoting these lax views are conservative Christians who believe in sola scriptura.

Flying Solo in a Family-Centered Church by Joy Beth Smith

Flying Solo in a Family-Centered Church by Joy Beth Smith and Gina Dalfonzo

(Link): Flying Solo in a Family-Centered Church by Joy Beth Smith and Gina Dalfonzo

Excerpts:

Gina Dalfonzo shares an insider’s perspective on the frustrations of long-term singleness

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This was never the life I imagined. My friends and I often sit around wondering how we got here. What boys did we pass up? What mistakes did we make?

What routines did we neglect, leaving us sleeping alone while the ticking of our biological clocks lulls us into fitful dreams? I don’t feel equipped for singleness.

All the youth group dating advice was predicated on the idea that marriage was in my future, that if I made all the right choices, kept myself pure, and sought after God, he would reward me with a husband. I’ve only recently gotten to a place where I can ask myself, But what if he doesn’t?

A June 2017 Viewer Tells Christian Host She’s Suicidal Over Being In Sexless Marriage for Twenty Years

A June 2017 Viewer Tells Christian Host She’s Suicidal Over Being In Sexless Marriage for Twenty Years

Christians often tell people that if they reserve sex for marriage, the sex will be great and regular. When I was growing up, Christians never acknowledged that sometimes, for whatever the reason, some marriages are sexless.

Then there is this secular and Christian notion that only men want and enjoy sex, while it’s assumed that women don’t want or enjoy sex.

But here we have a letter from a married woman who says she is in a sexless marriage and is so distressed over it that she is suicidal. She says her husband only wants sex at most once or twice per year:

Very shortly after we got married my husband said he could take or leave sex. I was shocked but thought he’d lean more towards the take it rather than leave it side. We’ve been together for 20 years and have sex once or twice a year.

Christians Are Not Called to Have Amazing Sex by R Pietka, and the SCCL Push-Back

Christians Are Not Called to Have Amazing Sex by R Pietka – via Relevant Magazine, and the SCCL Push-Back

The essay “Christians Are Not Called to Have Amazing Sex” by Rachel Pietka was discussed over at Facebook group SCCL (Link): here a few days ago.

The consensus by the SCCL readership is that the page – by R. Pietka – is that it’s awful. Many in the SCCL thread did not approve of it or agree with it.

I don’t know why the SCCL readership largely condemned the page, because some of it is right in line with the ex-Christian, or liberal Christian views, about sex and sexual purity.

I’ll give you a long excerpt from the page before discussing it a bit more below:

(Link):  Christians Are Not Called to Have Amazing Sex by R Pietka

What Christians need to remember about God’s design for sex.

…While the [Christian based sexual abstinence] movement is great at detailing— and exaggerating—the benefits of saving sex for marriage, it is dishonest about the challenges abstinence presents to couples who eventually tie the knot.

…Jessica Ciencin Henriquez recently detailed how the abstinence movement affected her sex life and marriage in a revealing article titled, (Link): “My Virginity Mistake.”

Henriquez relays how she pledged herself to Jesus at a purity ceremony at age 14, remained a virgin until she married six years later, and wound up divorced after she and her husband could not make things work in the bedroom.

Looking back, Henriquez states if she had not insisted on waiting for sex until marriage, she could have prevented her divorce.

Henriquez’s story is important because it highlights an issue the abstinence movement rarely acknowledges: sexual incompatibility within marriage.

While this issue may seem irrelevant, it is actually fundamental to traditional Christian beliefs about sex. The fact that sexual compatibility does not matter to Christians when choosing a spouse makes the shocking and countercultural statement that sex is not our God.

Motherhood Is Not A Woman’s Most Important Job by J. Wright

Motherhood Is Not A Woman’s Most Important Job by J. Wright

(Link): Motherhood Is Not A Woman’s Most Important Job by J. Wright

Excerpts:

…Except, for women, their mothering skills are becoming an increasingly relevant topic of discussion. In the past year, women have been told either implicitly or explicitly that traditional roles are the ones they should be most focused on fulfilling. We’re dealing with a President who has said “putting a wife to work is a dangerous thing,” because, “a softness disappeared.” He also said that “when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.”

….Being a parent is a source of joy and challenge and meaning for many humans of all genders. But it’s not the most important job there is. It’s not even technically a job, insofar as it pays no money. It is more like a very demanding volunteer position that you can never, ever get out of.

And, as rewarding as that position may be, producing a younger person is not necessarily the main contribution people make to the world. People can probably not tell you how many children Harriet Tubman or Marie Curie or Elizabeth Cady Stanton had, but they can, hopefully, tell you what they did.

What If Marriage Is Overrated? – A social psychologist has been chipping away at many claims about marriage changing one’s life for the better

What If Marriage Is Overrated? – A social psychologist has been chipping away at many claims about marriage changing one’s life for the better

(Link):  What If Marriage Is Overrated?  by Jesse Singal
– A social psychologist has been chipping away at many claims about marriage changing one’s life for the better

When I attended the American Psychological Association’s annual conference in Denver last August, the best and most well-attended talk I saw was by (Link): Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies single people.

For years, DePaulo has been chipping away at the commonly held belief — a myth, in her view and according to her research — that marriage offers unique happiness and well-being benefits. These findings are seriously overstated or misleading, DePaulo has argued, and if there weren’t so much intense social pressure to get married, a lot more people would be single, and many of them might be happier as a result.

Your Church’s Mother’s Day Carnation is Not Worth Any Woman’s Broken Heart – A Critique of ‘When Mother’s Day Feels Like a Minefield’ by L. L. Fields

Your Church’s Mother’s Day Carnation is Not Worth Any Woman’s Broken Heart – A Critique of ‘When Mother’s Day Feels Like a Minefield’ by L. L. Fields

Please note this blog post has undergone some modifications here and there since I first published it – a few fixed typos, some additional thoughts have been added here and there.

---

Here’s the link to the editorial – below it, I will comment about it, then a bit later, provide some excerpts from it, followed by yet more critiques):

(Link):  When Mother’s Day Feels Like a Minefield –  Let’s reimagine ways we can honor mothers without wounding others.   by L L Fields via Christianity Today magazine

Here are some of my thoughts about the editorial:

As I first began reading it, I had high hopes. I was optimistic.

It started out on the right foot but descended into a let-down where Fields is arguing for the status quo, which is inexcusable, especially after she admits she was educated, (after she publicly asked for feedback from women), as to how so many women find church Mother’s Day celebrations so painful.

(The summary of her piece: she doesn’t really care about your pain, you childless woman, or you women who are grieving for their dead mothers; she still wants her mother’s day carnation handed to her by a pastor, dammit, and culture doesn’t do near enough, she argues, to honor motherhood!
She would no doubt want to push back and say, ‘hey, I do care about other women’s pain’ – but no, she does not, if she is still arguing to keep Mother’s Day in place as-is. Please keep reading.)

First of all, motherhood is a choice for many women.

You chose to have a child. If there is one thing I cannot stand, it’s women who deliberately walk into a pregnancy and then spend 15 – 20 years complaining about how exhausting motherhood is.

Maryland Pastor Pushes Equally Yoked Doctrine – Which Only Promotes Unwanted Protracted Singleness

Maryland Pastor Pushes Equally Yoked Doctrine – Which Only Promotes Unwanted Protracted Singleness

This is a nauseating page by a pastor in Maryland, named Sean Nolan, for the “Desiring God” web site. (You can see the link below.)

I will comment more about this guy’s essay BELOW it. So please scroll down for some of my commentary – most of which you can already guess if you’ve been to my blog before and have seen my previous posts about this “Equally Yoked” stuff.

(Link): Letter to a Friend Engaged to a Nonbeliever by Sean Nolan

Excerpts from the page:

Dear Kelly,

I was surprised by the recent news of your engagement. While I wish I could celebrate with you without reservation, I admit I have some. My greatest concern is that your fianceé does not know or love Christ. Because I love you and care about your future, I feel compelled to speak now rather than to hold my peace, knowing full well how you might receive my “peace.”

…As I have watched people walk down this road, I have noticed several common ways people justify marrying a nonbeliever. I want to address them…

My Parents Excluded Me When I Was Single — Now They’re Doing It to My Sister (Ask Amy Column)

My Parents Excluded Me When I Was Single — Now They’re Doing It to My Sister (Ask Amy Column)

(Link): My parents excluded me when I was single — now they’re doing it to my sister (Ask Amy column)

DEAR AMY: I am a 35-year-old woman. I live in the same town as my parents.

My sister lives nearby. She married young, while I traveled and enjoyed the single life.

My parents spent a lot of time with my sister and her husband. They shared dinners, vacations and holidays. I have generally not been invited or included, as these were “couple things,” though I fail to see how Christmas is a “couples-only” event.

Single, Virgin Women Do Not Have Another Standard by Which to Be Saved, Contra Complementarian Group CBMW

Single, Virgin Women Do Not Have Another Standard by Which to Be Saved, Contra Complementarian Group CBMW

The Bible does teach that people should remain virgins until marriage, but oddly, some Christians do things like omit men from this teaching (as though virginity applies only to women).

In this case, they seem to be conflating being single, and a virgin, with receiving salvation, as though there’s some other standard by which others are saved. Christians also frequently make much too much out of the marriage analogy, in which they pretty much seem to suggest that a person has to be married (and having sex) to truly know God or be in relationship with God.

Via the Biblical Personhood blog:

(Link): Is “Biblical” manhood and womanhood compatible with the gospel of Christ?

The Biblical Personhood blog reproduces this quote from a Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood resource:

[from complementarian, CBMW, material:]

48. How can a Christian single woman enter into the mystery of Christ and the Church if she never experiences marriage?
[Their answer promotes offering your virginity to God. Nothing about becoming a Christian.] – CBMW, “Fifty Crucial Questions, Question 48

… The mystery of Christ and the church, likewise, is not about marriage or celibacy. Jesus loved you – male or female, single or married or divorced or widowed – first. Know you are loved by God, love God back, experience God’s love, and see how it never ends, and how it changes you to live for Him.

Mother Brutally Assaulted Daughter for Reciting Bible Verses Incorrectly: Police

Mother Brutally Assaulted Daughter for Reciting Bible Verses Incorrectly: Police

So much for the conservative Christian claim that parenthood is necessary to make a person more ethical, responsible, and godly.

Motherhood sure as heck did not make the woman in this story loving or godly.

(Link): Mother brutally assaulted daughter for reciting Bible verses incorrectly: Police

A Middletown woman was arrested after police said she severely assaulted her daughter and kicked her out of her house because the girl incorrectly recited Bible verses to her last week.

Police filed child endangerment charges against Rhonda Kemp Shoffner, 41, of the first block of Genesis Court, following the incident March 14.

The victim, who is under the age of 13, told police the assault occurred just after she awoke from a nap in her mother’s home about 3 p.m.

 … Each time the girl incorrectly recited a verse or gave her mother a wrong answer, Shoffner slammed her head into the wall, police said. Shoffner slammed her daughter’s head into the bathroom drywall at least five times, according to police.

Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

Christian Viewer Expresses Disappointment in God, Wants To Know Why, In Spite of Years of Service, God is Not Helping Him

I almost forgot to blog about this. I really related to this guy’s letter (which I’ve included much farther below, both in text and video format – I’ve embedded the video that contains the letter at the bottom).

This guy wrote this question to the hosts of The 700 Club – Gordon Robertson was the host.

I wasn’t too impressed by Gordon’s response – I felt his reply was just “meh” or “so-so.” It was not an awful response, but I didn’t feel it was great and really answered the guy’s concern.

My interest, though, is not in Gordon’s reply, but in the guy’s question (or maybe it was a lady). This letter resonates with me so much. Sometimes I don’t know if God exists or not, and on some days, I skip praying, because some of the same 3 or 4 things I’ve been praying for over a period of ten or more years now have not been answered.

Either there is no God to hear my prayers, or he doesn’t keep the promises he makes in the Bible about meeting our needs and so on.

Death, Grief, Marriage, Single Again, Soul Sleep, Christianity, Obnoxious Male Fixation on Female Looks

Death, Grief, Marriage, Single Again, Soul Sleep, Christianity, Obnoxious Male Fixation on Female Looks

I have several topics I’d like to address here. I’m going to discuss death, grief, dating, how men are too fixated on women’s looks, etc, and so on, all in the same post.

I learned from watching the Christian program “It is Written” today (Feb 2017) that the wife of Christian TV host Mike Tucker, Gayle, died. I’m not sure when the episode was first filmed or first aired.

You can read a transcript of that episode, “From Grief To Hope” (Link, off site): here.

You might be able to watch that very episode or one like it here: (Link, off site): Coping with Grief.

I see from an online obit that Gayle Tucker passed away in April 2016.

I am sorry for his loss.

I lost my mother, and it hurt a lot.

(Link, off site):  Gayle Tucker, Beloved Marriage Counselor on Faith For Today TV, Dead at 60

April 2016 –  The prominent Adventist television personality dies after a brief struggle with pancreatic cancer.

(Link, off site):   Beloved Christian TV Host, Couples’ Counselor Dead at 60

I learned a few years ago that the hosts and backers of “It Is Written” are SDAs (Seventh Day Adventists).

I also learned from a glance over google search results that Mike Tucker is a Seventh Day Adventist.

Part of SDA theology is something called “Soul Sleep,” a view that I totally disagree with and find discouraging and cruel.

Alpha Females Part 1 – Nothing New Under the Sun. Conservative Women Keep Issuing Same Sexist, Unhelpful Dating And Marital Advice to Women

Alpha Females Part 1 – Nothing New Under the Sun. Conservative Women Keep Issuing Same Sexist, Unhelpful Dating And Marital Advice to Women

This commentary will be divided up among a few posts. Here is part 1.

Visit Part 2 | Part 3 |  A Response to Venker: Re: Personal Experience

Part 4

Introduction.

For those new to my blog:

I am a right winger. I was a Republican until recently. I am now a conservative Independent.

I was a conservative Christian for many years (I am no longer sure about what my religious views are), and I (Link): Am A Former Gender Complementarian (someone who believed in and lived out traditional gender roles, views which are based in large measure on incorrect interpretations and applications about gender in the Bible).

I sometimes agree with secular left wing feminists on some topics, but not always. At times, I disagree with secular and religious left wing feminists and have written several blog posts critiquing some of their views.

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This series of posts is addressing author Suzanne Venker’s relationship advice, as I have seen her advocate for, in behalf of her book “The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage.”

I myself am not, nor have I ever been, what she terms an “Alpha Female.”

I have always been what she refers to as a “Beta,” and guess what?

Being a Beta did not land me a spouse, dates, or make my life easier, more peaceful, less stressful, or rewarding, as Venker tries to reassure her female readers that it will. More on that in a future post.

As a conservative who is in her 40s and still single (though engaged at one time), I have been seeing these sorts of attitudes about gender and marriage that are discussed below in an article by Venker advanced by secular and religious conservatives since I was a teen in the 1980s.

There is an annoying, recurrent, and yes, sexist, motiff by conservatives to say the reason society has problems with marriage, dating irregularity, high divorce rates, and other relationship problems – is that women are at fault.

Women are always blamed for relationship trends and problems – and at that, usually by other women – and at that, by women who tend to be conservative and who publish books or articles about dating and marriage.

Newlyweds Forced to Be Celibate After Bride Diagnosed With Cervical Cancer Just Days After Honeymoon

Newlyweds Forced to Be Celibate After Bride Diagnosed With Cervical Cancer Just Days After Honeymoon

I hope this woman’s health recovers. (The link to the news story about this woman and her husband is much farther below. I wanted to make a few observations first.)

Growing up, I often heard or read Christians say that if one remains a virgin until marriage, that the married sex will be regular and great – I never once heard Christians discuss the possibility of a sexless marriage, where at least one partner does not want to have sex, or cannot (due to health problems, job stress, or what have you).

A lot of people, Christians certainly included, mistakenly think that sexual sin is the province ONLY of adult singles.

Therefore, Christian sermons and materials rarely discuss the possibility that married persons may have affairs, use prostitutes or pornography. Christians tend to teach that sexual purity (including chastity and celibacy) are only for adult singles, even though the Bible teaches that sexual purity is also expected of married persons.

Many Christians are in error to assume that the “marry if you don’t want to burn in lust” verse, as written by Paul, should be translated to mean, “Married persons will never commit sexual sins once they marry.”

The only sexual sin marriage takes care of is pre-marital sex.

Obviously, if two people marry and have sex with each other after marriage, their sex is not fornication (pre-marital sex). However, I have example after example on my blog (especially in the “sex sins by married couples one stop thread”) of married couples who use porn, hire call girls, molest kids, have affairs, etc.

There is nothing intrinsic about being married that makes sexual sin impossible.

A married man may still view porn, rape little kids, or have affairs on his wife. Being married is not a fail-safe or guarantee measure of sexual purity, but many Christians continue to act as though it is.

Sexual sin is therefore generally associated by many Christians with ADULT SINGLENESS (with the state of being single), so that single women (such as myself) are ostracized by the Christian community  (often under the Billy Graham Rule) as being “sexual temptresses,” although we are still virgins over the age of 35.

I, as a virgin adult woman, am ostracized and penalized by other Christians for something I have not even done (ie, had sex with a married man) – Christians just assume because I am single and female that I will want to lure a married man into bed. It is a very offensive view point that is common in churches and among Christians.

(Link): These newlyweds were forced to be celibate after bride was diagnosed with cervical cancer just days after honeymoon

by Hattie Gladwell for Metro.co.uk Wednesday 25 Jan 2017 1:11 pm

Kayleigh, 29, and her husband Rory Spillman, 28, married in August last year, at a countryside manor in Hertfordshire, before jetting off to the beautiful Bora Bora to celebrate.

However, just five days after returning to the UK, the pair, who met at university 10 years ago, received the devastating news that school teacher Kayleigh had cervical cancer.

For the past three months the newlywed couple has been forced to be celibate while Kayleigh recovers from the radical trachelectomy to remove her cervix.

Woman Says She’s Been in Three Year Marriage that Has Not Been Consummated, Wants Advice

Woman Says She’s Been in Three Year Marriage that Has Not Been Consummated, Wants Advice

A letter or e-mail was sent from a lady to a Christian show called “700 Club” saying she married her husband three years ago, but the marriage has never been consummated.

I am not certain, but I believe this particular “Bring It On” segment in which this issue was addressed was aired on January 10, 2017.

I don’t think 700 Club has uploaded that episode yet. If or when they do, you can view it by going to their “Bring It On” You Tube channel (Link): here.

Edit: Okay, the video I am discussing can be viewed (Link): here (Sexless Marriage letter). It is the second or third letter on the video.

They may later upload it to the (Link): 700 Club Bring It On Video Page.

Edit. (Link): Same Video with Sexless Marriage Letter on 700 Club Site

The show host, Pat Robertson, basically told her to divorce the guy.

Preacher Robert Morris Horrible Eisegesis and Mangling of the Book of Job – Having a Penis Does Not Make One Immune From Bungling Biblical Interpretation

Preacher Robert Morris’ Horrible Eisegesis and Mangling of the Book of Job

Edit (Jan 26, 2017): I received a tweet from someone on Twitter in regards to this post who assumes that preacher Morris was referencing some verse from the book of Job where God spoke to Job and asked Job if Job intended to defend himself by putting God down.

However, that was NOT the verse Morris brought up in his sermon – at least not the portion I listened to.

In his sermon, Morris referred to, I believe, Job Chapter 33 (Link) or later, where Elihu (or another person in Job) makes an appearance and judges Job.

Elihu, son of Barakel the Buzite, said that Job was seeking to justify himself in his own eyes or by his own righteousness (see Job 34 – 37). I may be getting the verses or character name wrong, but my point is, Morris pointed to a “friend” in the story who told Job (paraphrase), “You seek to justify yourself based on your own righteousness, and that is wrong.”

Morris agreed with this take on Job by Elihu (or by whomever in the text spoke it) – but the text itself does not say this this was true of Job.

The text does not say that Elihu (or whomever it was in the text who said this) was correct about Job or about God on this.

God shows up at the end of the book of Job to say Job had God right all along, but that Job’s “friends” (such as Elihu) spoke falsely of God – and I think God said the “friends” also spoke falsely of Job, if memory serves.

It makes no sense to me, why, when God says the “friends” (including Elihu) got things wrong, Morris goes against God’s own interpretation to say that Elihu (or which ever friend it was) was correct – very bad biblical exegesis on Morris’ part.

The guy (or woman?) who tweeted me cited Job 42:6 as saying Job repented – but the text does not say Job repented of “self righteousness,” which is what Morris was citing Job for.

Here is what that section of Job says (Link):

Then Job replied to the Lord:

² “I know that you can do all things;
    no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know.

⁴ “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.’
⁵ My ears had heard of you
    but now my eyes have seen you.
⁶ Therefore I despise myself
    and repent in dust and ashes.”

(end quote)

It looks to me like one of the only things Job was repenting of in v.6 was:

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know.

(end quote)

I do not see Job confessing in that section that he was relying on his own righteousness to be right with God and was also repenting of that.

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One wonders why so many gender complementarians argue that women should not be preachers themselves but only listen to male preachers, when so many male preachers are heretics who get the Bible so horribly wrong on so many subjects.

This brings me to the topic of preacher Robert Morris and his sermon about the book of Job. (You can read the book of Job online (Link): here.)

I was watching Texas-based preacher Robert Morris (who is awful, for a lot of reasons I don’t want to get into in the here and now) of Gateway Church sermonizing about the Old Testament book of Job on TV a few days ago.

In the book of Job, God Himself refers to Job as a “righteous man” or communicates that concept.

As a matter of fact, God thinks Job is so great, godly, and righteous, he brags on Job to Satan. From the book of Job:

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

— end Bible verse quote–

Here are a few more excerpts from the book of Job itself:

 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.

— end Bible verse quote —

That sure sounds like a righteous man to me. If Job wanted to point to his righteousness to defend himself from the slander of his accusatory friends who show up later in the story, he would not be in the wrong for doing do.

If God Himself conveys that you are an upstanding kind of guy, it’s not bragging, or a sin of self-righteousness, for you to be in agreement with God on this, and to mention to your buddies you are righteous, godly, upstanding, what have you.