Marriage/Women/Sex Archives - Spartan Christianity

Desire – Lust: Are Desires Wrong?

Lust is a desire that is dwelt on. It goes beyond normal thinking, and beyond normal desires. Because we dwell on it, it grows exponentially more powerful until it overpowers us. That is the very nature of lustful thinking.

Desire itself is okay – but roots of desire that lead to evil are to be stamped out with ferocity. That’s one of the lessons we learn in James Chapter 1. Sin is a result of a desire that has been resting in the mind for so long that it’s taken root and grown. It is literally conceived like a child, and it’s growing into sin. And that sin, in the end, brings about death of a spiritual nature.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
Matt 5:27-30

We have physical desires for a reason.

They push us to take action. The problem, however, comes when we spend too much time desiring something that is outside of God’s moral law. As much as men in the religious world tried to deny it, God has a set of regulations for behavior for his people. One of these is about avoiding adultery and lustful thinking.

Lust is adultery lacking only in opportunity, as Matthew Henry would say in his commentary. This is where most men live – no opportunity, but also no control over their own minds. Many men think that they are faithful to their wives, that they are loyal, but they are not. They simply have no choice but to be faithful and loyal because they have no opportunity or options to be unfaithful. I recently heard it said this way in a short video clip online, “drop your man outside the Playboy mansion and see how loyal he is then”. [Of course, you have to add that these women would somehow magically be attracted to the average churchgoer male, who is in most cases, unarousing by default – but that is beside the point. ]

Because for most Christian men, it’s not about loyalty, it’s about opportunity. And most men simply aren’t attractive enough to give themselves sexual access to options that they then have to resist. Meaning, there are no women who want to have sex with him. So they are not faithful, they are involuntarily loyal. They are “incels” but in married form.

Going back to lust – Lust is a desire that is dwelt on and approved by the mind, or at the least not resisted. This is different from having a desire and warring against it.

Christians live a life of self-denial. This means there must be some desire to deny, implying there is desire. Desire itself is never the problem. It is what we do with the desire that is the problem. Or if we feed the desire until it is a raging inferno, that is also a net negative. Even if you can make the argument and rationalization in your own mind that a raging desire is not a sin, you can at least see how it would be a disadvantage to have to war against that kind of desire. So your goal should be to avoid building it up to that level in the first place. And you do that by directing your thoughts toward other matters.

When it comes to the biblical model, we have one morally approved source of sexual access if we are married [which itself is an incredible sacrifice]. If we are unmarried we have no source of approved sexual access. That makes early unmarried life very difficult for men. Because most men have a massive amount of sexual energy that they then have to do something with. And I’ll tell you right now, you need to reorient that energy somewhere else. If you simply try to repress it, it will force an outlet. And with upwards of 70% of Christian men admitting to viewing pornography, I would say it’s forcing an outlet.

This war of sexual discipline requires us to plan strategically in advance. You are going to have a desire for other women who are not your wife, whether you are married or not – it’s all about what you do with it.

And I suggest you take that energy somewhere else. Literally, get up and go somewhere else when you start generating that powerful sexual energy. You do not want to be spending excessive time, or anytime at all, around women you find sexually attractive. That puts you in a losing position at all times.

Most men understand this logically. Even some high-level executives or men of success will talk about their principle of not having a meal, or being alone with any woman who’s not their wife. They usually take a lot of heat for this and get made fun of, but these men understand the male sexual nature. They understand that the sexual nature is a war with the rational mind. And that one should never voluntarily place himself in a position where he’s going to have to engage in that war because it’s difficult, and Sexual Energy can very easily overpower the rational mind if it is stirred to an excessive degree.

Remember, Desire itself is not a sin. If it is, what then is temptation? Isn’t Temptation just a form of desire? Of being pulled towards something that God has placed the divine stamp of disapproval on? Temptation cannot be sin because then Christ would have committed sin since he himself was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin [Heb 4:15].

The biblical distinction is very clear, Temptation and sin are separate. Temptation is the thing we war against. And we have temptations because we have desires, and there’s no getting around this. It’s just a question of what we do with the desire, and how we tamp it down.

We can be tempted and pulled by desire, but we must avoid letting it marinate in our minds. What sits in the mind inevitably expresses itself in action. If you are constantly meditating and focusing your mind on having sex with other women, you will be in a position of weakness. You will have programmed your mind through hours upon hours of visualization to believe that sexual activity with a multiplicity of women you are not married to is morally okay.

I am certainly not going to try to tell you not to have sexual energy, or not have sexual thoughts. I’m telling you to reorient those thoughts and direct them somewhere else. While you’re unmarried, and even while you’re married, You should find an outlet for those sexual energies. That is your masculine Divine energy, do not waste it on women or in fantasy. Because you can use that energy to make yourself a success in the physical world.

And of course, I argue that you should first do this for yourself, making yourself your own mental point of origin, because when you improve yourself everyone around you benefits. When you focus on yourself, and make yourself better, and make decisions that would be for the betterment of you, it’s not selfish unless it damages those around you. In fact, it’s the opposite of selfishness because it improves the lot of all those around you. The best thing you can do for those around you is to make yourself your mental point of origin and focus on yourself.

Again, this only becomes selfish if it damages those around you.

But you have to understand that this almost always improves the situation of those around you far more than you would ever be able to improve their situation by concentrating directly on trying to improve their situation.

The biblical model for handling lust is very severe. Christ moves from teaching on lust to teaching about hell. Why? Because Lust is one of the sins and desires that requires a reminder of severe punishment. We cannot always motivate ourselves with happy fluff. We will not motivate ourselves to do well with exclusively positive fuel. In fact, we need some fear and anger.

Christ does not teach “great is the reward for those with a pure mind” or “heaven will be more fulfilling than these desire of the flesh could ever provide”. He avoids this because it wouldn’t be enough to compete with the lust of the flesh. Heaven in fifty years or sex right now? Sexual energy and the urge of the moment are likely to win.

The complete counsel of God demands teaching on Hell.

It is motivating. We need to appreciate the fact that it is highly motivating and use it. When your rational mind is unable to overpower your sexual nature when you are tempted by sexual sin, you must conjure up the fear of Hell and the hatred of sin. These are some of the Practical tools for overcoming lust.

Become angry at your sin. Develop a hatred. Pray to the God of War[ Ex15:3] for strength and hatred.
Never be alone with a woman who’s not your wife. Your Sexual Energy will be at war with your rational mind. And that’s not a battle you want to engage in. The enemy is very strong, avoiding whenever you can.
Motivate yourself with reminders of punishment. When you’re being sexually tempted, the idea of Heaven’s not going to motivate you. Because the immediate pleasure of today is infinitely more tempting than the potential of unknown pleasure tomorrow.
Get clear in your mind about the practical consequences of adultery. You are risking your wealth, family, and future to have sex with a woman you are not married to. If you are unmarried, the risks are lower, but they are still present in the form of disease and pregnancy. But besides those two things, [which are the primary motivators most fear-mongering Christians use to talk about abstinence], you must be more concerned with the consequences from God.

Monogamy Revisited – Natural or Not?

I have written before about monogamy.

I gave two views on monogamy: one view states God designed men for monogamy and the other is that men are promiscuous by nature and that they must harness and manage their sexual urges for the betterment of humanity and for the betterment of their own spirituality.

For years I have held the position that men are not wired for monogamy. Male biology does not seem to be wired for it. We seem to crave sexual variety and quickly grow discontent with our singular source of sexual access. Granted, mere biological optimization speaks neither for nor against the morality of something. Much of Christianity wars against our nature. Man’s biology seems to naturally pull him towards promiscuity. But one new perspective is that this nature is merely the result of no mental discipline.

It is worth performing a thought experiment and analysis on, though I still believe that men are not purpose-built for monogamy. It seems to me that both men and women have internal wars they have to fight against their own very nature in order to be obedient to God. Men resist the urge to spread their sexual seed as far and wide as possible. And women resist the urge to constantly trade up, or they try to reorient their thinking to find Christianity attractive [not arousing] and value those traits in a man.

I think one of the places I have gone wrong before in writing about monogamy is not separating man into his different drives. I do not believe we should think of monogamy as something that man as a whole is or is not wired for. What I mean by this is that man has multiple layers.

The libido of man is not optimized for monogamy. If a man is trying to remain sexually disciplined – his biology will be warring against him. The Coolidge effect and subsequent experiments are demonstrative of that reality.

There is no way for one singular source of sexual access [a wife] to compete with a variety [multiple girlfriends/pornography] of novel sources in a one-to-one comparison. Again – we are speaking strictly of the amoral male libido in this circumstance. When the question is simply about sex and sex drive, men are wired to want multiple partners. This is something that Christian men have to discipline themselves against in order to manage.

The spirit of man is optimized for monogamy. Now the higher mentality of man may want to be monogamous. Maybe this is natural, maybe it is the result of feminine-centric society indoctrinating him about “Soul mates” and other common myths, it is difficult to truly tell.

I think when the higher mind of a man competes with his libido, most libidos will win. The discipline to manage themselves is simply not present in most men. I believe I’ve read before by another author that “biology trumps conviction”. I believe that statement – which is why environmental control is so critical to any form of discipline.

Want to be monogamous? Create an environment that supports monogamy. Because your biology is doing you no favors.

This is the bedrock philosophy of why men shouldn’t be alone with other women. And I think men and women cannot be friends at all. Why would a man have to avoid being with other women if he were naturally monogamous? The answer is: he isn’t. And if a man was alone with a woman, his biology would be waging total war against his conviction, and it would be difficult to see who would come out the victor.

The best-case scenario is to never engage in those battles. This is done by environmental control. Do not trust in your character, trust in habit and environment.

On Mental Training

If you never provide a child with any direction, he will grow up to be an uncivilized man. If you never train a dog, it will grow up to be disobedient and feral. Could it be that men are the same way with regard to sexual training and discipline?

Perhaps men actually are designed to be monogamous, but they lack training and direction with regard to sexual discipline. They have never been given any direction on how to manage their sex drive. Men receive no training on how to handle their own physiology or use it productively in order to be successful in the world.

And it is no wonder. Because what do men in the church know about this? They have obviously failed on the front of sexual education for young Christians for generations.

You have two basic types of men in the church. These are opposing extremes, and they are certainly not all there is, but they are the most glaring examples.

The unfaithful man acts on every sexual impulse he has and eventually relinquishes his religion and goes into the world or finds a church tolerant enough to ignore the bible’s teaching on marriage and accept his adulterous lifestyle.
And on the other side, you have the castrated beta male. These are the men who come out of the womb without testicles. They are subservient to females, pedestalize them, and mindlessly self-sacrificer to the vagina gods in order to receive their good favor. This man loves to tell you about how “rewarding” and “fulfilling” his marriage is, despite observable evidence to the contrary.

The former makes up about 20% of the church and the latter makes up the remaining 80%.

What would a man look like if he was actually trained from his youth to manage his sexual impulses? Or better yet, to convert them into success? That would be a rare breed of man. He would not fall into any of these two categories.

But there will never be any type of training like that because what religious man knows anything about sexual discipline? Most religious men either have no sexual access, or babble on about sexual purity one minute and are masturbating to pornography the next minute. Have any of these men seen the heat of the sexual battlefield, claimed victory, and lived to tell the tale?

The majority of men who are masculine and high value commonly fail to save sex for marriage. So we cannot listen to their advice – they lost their war. Those who are beta males are the ones we want to avoid imitating our actions as well if we are interested in avoiding sexless marriages.

But men could be built better [regarding sexual discipline] from a young age, no one can deny this. One of the problems is far too much feminine influence at the expense of masculine influence. When kids spend all day around mom is it any wonder when they start acting like mom [even the sons]?

Men could be raised and trained to manage their urges, channel their sex drive and transmute it into something better. Convert it into a drive for success until it can be used morally, based on the principles of the Bible, within marriage.

I always hesitate to make comments about “biblically correct sex” because there is no way to talk about it without looking and sounding like a loser. Probably because the only people who talk about it are losers on the scale of masculinity.

However, I can acknowledge the fact that men are likely built to crave sexual variety, but then required to sacrifice that drive for the sake of Christ.

Notice that this is not a sacrifice made for the express benefit of women. Christ has asked us to do something difficult – limit our sexual relationships to one woman for life.

That’s not easy. That is not a light request. That is a heavy request and a painful sacrifice. It’s not a sacrifice made directly for women – it is a sacrifice made directly for God. And it is something that is difficult to reason through, especially at the height of a sexual urge that you have no religiously justified outlet for if you are a single man.

This walk of faith comes at a cost to your pleasures. The Bible tells us that sin is pleasurable [Heb 11:25], anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. The sins of this world are very enjoyable to engage in. And to give them up for Christ is a major sacrifice.

It is a sacrifice because we want those pleasures badly, we are built to crave them, yet we must deny ourselves. And we are left to hope that trading all the pleasures on earth will be worth the pleasures of heaven. It doesn’t matter how good heaven is made to sound by your preacher, that is still a hard trade for a 19-year-old guy at the height of his natural testosterone production trying to stifle a sexual urge or hide his erection while sitting in a church pew.

How about instead of continuing to say “Well it’ll be worth it. Heaven will be worth it. Marriage will be worth it. Everything will make sense”, we start to accept the fact that the trade is difficult. It is just difficult. It may very well be true that marriage is “worth it”, whatever that may mean, but that does not mean marriage is any less of a sacrifice and a risk [professional, financial, social, sexual, emotional, psychological] for a man – especially in the 21st century.

Closing

Job said that he made a covenant with his eyes never to look at a woman lustfully. What kind of mental training does that involve? Sure, we could sit around and argue all day that Job did not have the same temptations and pressures that men today have. Many modern women are walking advertisements for sex, and we can always point fingers and say Job had it easier. But the reality is that this man set rules and regulations for the proper use of his own mind. There were certain ways that it was to be used and certain ways that were not allowed. He likely passed this training on to his sons as well.

We should work to replicate the mind of Job, the man who imposed complete control on his own body. And if we work to train ourselves and to train our sons from a young age, perhaps they will be in a better position than most Christians. Because while the people in the church want to sit around and pretend like sex does not exist, their sons are already learning more about sex from school and the internet than they could ever expect.

The difficulty in managing sexual drive demands better sexual education in the church. Again I note that most men do not know anything about sex. They know little about purity and warring against urges successfully because women find the majority of men unattractive and low value, and these men will never have to struggle to attain their purity. But perhaps if there is the one in a million man who is high value but sexually disciplined – he could teach men how to manage and redirect sexual impulses.

Is Marriage Dangerous for Christian Men?

Marriage carries inherent risks, even for modern Christian men. There is the risk to his wealth. A woman can divorce him [and in the modern day she can do so for no reason] and rob him of his earnings for years to come. This is called alimony.

Modern divorce favors the woman. Why should we be surprised that people do things they are incentivized to do? When women are incentivized by the government to divorce their husbands and to be single mothers, we should not be surprised when they do so.

Another risk involves the permanence of marriage. There is no getting out. It is a permanent contract. The problem is not the fact that it is a permanent commitment, the problem is that this commitment puts both men and women at risk.

Men are put in a position of having only one source of potential sexual intimacy that they can have while remaining obedient to God. No porn or other women are allowed. This gives the woman extraordinary power. She has authority over all the access a man has to his only option of sexuality.

Of course, God knows this outlines a principle of mutual authority over one another’s bodies in marriage.

Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me:

It is good for a man not to touch a woman. ²Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. ³Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. ⁴The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. ⁵Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
1 Corinthians 7:1-5

But just because the command exists has little bearing on the inherent risk built into the power dynamic of marriage. We disobey commandments all the time. So the simple fact that a command exists does not mean people will live in accordance with it.

Based on this passage, neither partner in marriage is allowed to sexually deprive the other. Nonetheless, what is one of the most common complaints of men in marriage? It is generally about sexual frequency, quality, or some other component of sexuality. Now it is the husband’s responsibility to max out his own sexual market value as much as he can, but the power of sexual access remains with the woman.

And because she has that power, she has the ability to singlehandedly shut off a man’s only access to biblically supported sexual gratification. This makes marriage a great risk to a man’s sexual access.

I. Examining Scriptural Perspectives:

A. Jesus’ Teachings on Marriage:

³The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

⁴And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who ^[a]made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? ⁶So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

⁷They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

⁸He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for ^[b]sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

¹⁰His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

Jesus Teaches on Celibacy

¹¹But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given: ¹²For there are ^[c]eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.”
Matthew 19:3-11

Jesus and the apostles discuss marriage as a challenging and demanding commitment.

The Bible has clear and concise teachings on marriage, divorce, and remarriage. It is only mankind who has perverted and twisted these teachings to accommodate his personal desires.

The above passage gives the guidelines for a marriage.

Marriage is between one man and one woman.
It is not lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason.
The only reason that a man or woman can divorce their husband or wife is because one party had sex with someone else [fornication/adultery].
A man or woman can remarry if their spouse dies.

It does not simpler than this teaching, but people live as if biblically approved marriage is not a requirement for godly living.

At the end of Christ’s speech on marriage, the apostles came to a logical conclusion: marriage no longer sounds like a good deal for us compared to what we thought it was before.

Marriage sounded okay to them until they learned that Christ’s teaching made marriage permanent.

So the apostles then further deduced that it would be better for a man not to marry at all.

That is quite an interesting conclusion.

Is it rational? I believe it makes rational sense. It is difficult to argue with the logic of the apostles.

Once they heard Christ’s teaching they performed a quick cost-benefit analysis of marriage and determined that marriage was not worth the risk and the cost.

What is even more interesting is Christ’s response to the apostle’s deduction.

Christ doubles down on the teaching and tells the disciples that not everyone can accept the teachings of marriage and some go down the path of the eunuch. He does not argue with them or say they misunderstood Him. Rather he explains the practical ways a Christian man can live without being married.

B. Understanding the Concept of Eunuchs

A eunuch is a person who literally has his genitals removed. Some also argue that the term “eunuch” could be a figure of speech for someone who voluntarily denies himself the opportunity for marriage in favor of serving the kingdom without the removal of the genitals.

So Christ’s response to His apostles’ deduction that “A man is better off if he does not get married” is to educate them on the ways that some men go about living that way.

Christ was not teaching that we should never get married, but to rather be wise and discerning when making that decision.

II. Acknowledging Statistical Realities About Marriage

A. Applying Real-World Statistics:

There are inherent risks to marriage for men. You have to consider them practically. These risk-based stats change from year to year. Look them up to see what they are now, as they will not be included here.

1. Financial risks

Division of assets and potential loss of wealth in case of divorce. Get divorced, lose your stuff – even if that divorce is based on the emotional whim of the woman who has no legitimate reason for the divorce.
Potential alimony payments or financial support obligations.
Joint liabilities and debts accumulated during the marriage. Feminine-centric society expects a “good man” to marry a woman and take care of her student loan debt for her psychology degree while she stays at home without any kids and runs MLMs online.
Changes in financial goals and priorities due to shared expenses and responsibilities. A man has to get used to providing for two. Whatever his dreams were for life, many of them get sacrificed to the altar of “being a good man”. Make sure marriage is worth that sacrifice because it is a steep one.

2. Career risks

Potential disruptions to career progression due to family commitments. Many men, especially in religion, are expected to make career decisions while thinking about their families first. I would argue there is no better way to guarantee misery for a man than for him to manipulate and contort himself based on the wants and expectations of others, even if those others are his own family.
Balancing work and family responsibilities, which may require adjustments or compromises. Marriage can be a blessing but understand that it will come at the cost of much of your personal time.
Relocation or changes in job/school prospects due to the spouse’s career or family needs. How many men have followed the “girl of their dreams” to a college, to a college major and eventual career that does not fit them and is unsatisfying to them? But they believe if they just meet all of a woman’s qualifications for them, they will earn her intimacy. These men are confused about what a woman finds arousing. Desire cannot be negotiated. No amount of placating will make a woman burn with desire for her husband. A man risks lifelong contentment in a career that fits his skill, inclination, and enjoyment for the sake of a woman. That is a massive risk.

3. Emotional risks

Relationship challenges, conflicts, and potential emotional distress. If you hear anything from married Christian men, it’s that “marriage is work” or “marriage is hard“. You hear those statements more often than anything else regarding marriage. So as a result they should stick out in your mind. But a second effect is that we take the statement less seriously because we’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s true though. There are many hard things in life. Each person has to decide for themselves if the reward is worth the difficulty. The same applies to marriage. Decide if the difficulty is worth the reward.
Changes in personal freedom and autonomy. One of the best parts of early college for me was not having to ask anyone if I could do something or tell anyone what I was doing. I came and went as I pleased. In marriage, you cannot always do that. I don’t ask for permission since I’m the source of authority in marriage right below God, but I do inform my wife about what I’m doing so she doesn’t worry. This is not a problem, but it is another thing to think about. And inconvenience where one did not exist before.
Emotional stress associated with maintaining a healthy and fulfilling relationship. Many people suffer emotionally because they worry about their families. Maybe this is a “good worry”, but it is still a worry – an uncomfortable sensation. It is something that comes as a cost of marriage.

4. Lifestyle risks

Adjusting to shared living arrangements, household responsibilities, and potential conflicts over decision-making. Whether married or not, living with other people is no joke. There will absolutely be difficulties and inconveniences. From simple annoyances concerning people not washing their clothes or dishes, to bigger ones like people’s animals damaging household appliances. It is challenging to live with others. If you are going to do so, the reward has to be worth it. For roommates, the reward for putting up with each other is a cheaper living situation – as rent and utilities are split between tenants. This makes the trade worth it for many people. For marriage, there are also rewards, but they come at costs. Nothing is free. Consider if the reward is worth it.
Changes in personal routines, hobbies, and social life due to marriage commitments. You will not be able to live as a married man in exactly the same way you lived as a single man.
The need for compromise and negotiation in various aspects of life, including leisure activities, financial decisions, and long-term goals.

B. The Church and Human Nature:

We continue to make comments about human nature because it is critical to understand. Some have this idea that human nature does not apply in the church. You can tell by some of the statements they make.

“You Christians are supposed to be happy all the time”.
“Wow, You never want to do what is wrong, do you?”
“Being good is easy for you”.
“Marriage is easy for you Christian people”.

People make the incorrect assumption that the moment you walk into a church building you deposit your human nature in a box in the front foyer. Everyone who is a Christian knows this is not the case. We continue to be human beings and have our human nature despite our religious faith.

A man and woman have unique desires and tendencies in marriage. Sometimes these conflict. This conflict results in people taking different actions.

Men want sex, women want security.
Men want a career, women want a family.
Also, Men want skill, women want social interaction.

Of course, these are not all-or-nothing descriptors. Men and women can want various things and have overlapping desires. But nonetheless many have different wants and needs in life and love. Each of these differences can cause conflict. One or more parties will have to compromise. Is that compromise worth the rewards of marriage to you?

III. Selectivity and Discernment in Marriage Partner Choice

A. Emphasizing Selectivity:

It is the role of a man to be wise and discerning when choosing someone to marry. Because if you obey the Bible, that is a permanent decision. There is no going back. There is no getting out. Therefore you must leave nothing to chance and avoid guesswork.

Mutual Faith: This is the foundation. It should go without saying.

Genuine arousal: you have to find ways to determine if your wife is genuinely aroused by you. I do not mean attracted. And I don’t mean compatible. I mean sexually arousing. Is she sexually excited by you? Obviously, as a Christian, you should be avoiding sexual intercourse until marriage. That does not mean you cannot determine if she is aroused by you or not.

Trust and sincerity: Trust and sincerity are essential qualities to look for in a life partner. It is important to choose someone who is honest and trustworthy. This is a question of character. You have to determine this by all of her interactions and even micro-interactions in social settings as well as her behaviors in her private life.

Priorities: it is important to consider your priorities when choosing a life partner. Some important questions to ask yourself include: Do I want to have children? Where do I want to live? Do I want to work or manage the home (or both?)? What do I want to accomplish before I die? What kind of lifestyle do I want to have?

Behavior and etiquette: watching etiquette and basic nature when choosing a life partner. It is important to observe how a potential partner behaves with you and others.

People’s actions are 5-10x more important than their words.

With their behaviors, people will tell you exactly what they think, feel, believe, and want. It is easy to lie with words, but much more difficult to do so with actions.

When people’s words and actions don’t line up, look at their actions. Behavior will always tell you the truth.

If women confuse you with “mixed signals” [of which I would argue there is no such thing, most of the time], then look at their behavior

Compatibility: Compatibility is an important factor to consider when choosing a life partner. It is important to use the logical parts of your brain to determine whether someone is a good fit. Use your mind but also trust your intuition.

Find out what your woman’s values are. First, ask her, then watch her behavior. If her behavior and words are in conflict, believe her actions. Once you have her values, consider if they overlap with yours or not.

True compatibility is core value overlap.

If faith is not at the center of these values, you will have a problem. This is the most important facet. Differing faiths will handicap you as badly as having a wife who is not sexually aroused by you. These are both highly dangerous scenarios.

B. Recognizing Moral and Lifelong Commitment

You have to understand that people of faith are morally bound to maintain a faithful marriage. It is a lifelong commitment. You make a promise to God to be faithful, and you subject yourself to the penalty of judgment if you break that oath.

The cost is steep, but the rewards are also promising for some women. You have to make that decision with wisdom.

IV. Practical Strategies for Risk Mitigation:

A. Pre-nuptial Agreements:

Many unmarried or even married men will chuckle at this suggestion. But you know who isn’t laughing? The divorced man who lost 50% of his net worth will have his wages garnished to pay alimony for the next several years. This man is free from cloudy emotionalism. He has a perfectly rational mind – it’s a shame he acquired that mind too late.

A Pre-nup is asset protection and it makes perfect sense.

If a woman is planning to stay with a man for life, she won’t care about a pre-nuptial agreement. She will have no reason to be annoyed that she won’t get favored in divorce because she isn’t planning to get divorced.

Perhaps some would be insulted and say that a prenup means that the man doesn’t trust the woman. And considering how men fare in divorce courts and the fact that women are more likely to initiate divorce, men have a right to be apprehensive about the modern institution.

A logical woman would understand.

Some would then suggest “Well then what is going to stop a man from going out and cheating on his wife?”. I would say that if the only thing stopping a man from having sex with other women is his fear of losing his wealth, the relationship has bigger problems.

Asset protection: One of the main benefits of a pre-nuptial agreement is that it can protect assets from divorce by allowing financial protection through a pre-arranged, legally binding agreement. A good prenup will protect a man from frivolous divorce based on the emotional whims of the wife. Sure the man could initiate the divorce, but as we mentioned, it is not as likely as a woman initiating it.

A pre-nuptial agreement allows both parties to be open and honest about the assets and debts they bring to the marriage, and it requires the couple to discuss their financial expectations regarding these assets and any future assets they acquire as a couple.

Wealth protection: A pre-nuptial agreement can help you and your future spouse protect your wealth, both the individual wealth you bring to the marriage and the money you will gain throughout your marriage.

It allows you to designate what property should remain separate and what will be shared, which can be particularly useful for couples trying to keep separate significant pieces of personal property, including future inheritances and other anticipated income.

The value of the modern prenup is the protection of the assets and the protection of the asset generational potential of the man.

Debt protection: A pre-nuptial agreement can also protect you from your partner’s debts. It can include a provision that one spouse isn’t obligated to pay the debts of the other spouse.

Inheritance protection: A pre-nuptial agreement can also help protect inheritance rights. It can handle inheritance and ownership rights in the life insurance or disability policies.

Validity: A pre-nuptial agreement can make divorce proceedings less complicated and less expensive, as it can help avoid disputes over property and assets. It can also make the divorce process faster and less stressful. Should Christian people be thinking about divorce before they even get married? No, but a man has a responsibility to protect himself and hedge his bets against the possibility that he is marrying someone who will take him for all he is worth. Marriage is risky even for the Christian man.

Or consider this. If a pre-nuptial agreement is out of the question, what about donating assets to charity in the event of a divorce?

Say that neither party wants a pre-nuptial agreement. Would they agree that in the event of divorce, assets would be split evenly and anything irreconcilable would be donated to charity? If not, consider the motivations of the individual members of the marriage party.

V. Awareness and Preparedness

A. Seeking Wisdom and Guidance:

It is important to seek guidance from men you respect. Oftentimes people like married couples, ministers, or other church leaders would be the ones you should talk to, especially in matters concerning spirituality.

But in this instance, many of these people do not understand the biblical structure of marriage. They have accepted the modern, 21st-century version of marriage that is feminine-centric, dangerous for men, and requires a man to essentially castrate himself and bow to every whim of the woman or risk losing access to his only source of sexual intimacy. This is not what you are after.

When it comes to seeking advice, it is critical that you only take advice from people whose results you want to replicate.

This seems obvious, but people will take advice from anyone these days.

Therefore, if you know men who are in feminine-centric marriages dominated by women [who also “wear the pants”], you probably shouldn’t take their advice unless you want to end up in their situation.

Who wants to end up there? Not a soul.

So if you want to learn from anyone, pick someone who you would happily trade places with. If you wouldn’t trade places with the person giving the advice within the respective field in which they are giving the advice [i.e., if you wouldn’t trade career positions with someone giving career advice or if you wouldn’t trade marriages with the person giving the marriage advice] then reject the advice.

VI. The Covenant of Marriage

A. Honoring the Sacred Covenant:

Divine purpose: Marriage is held in God’s own heart and is a spiritual reality. This means that marriage is not just a human invention, but rather a divine purpose that should be approached with reverence and respect. Even though that is not how it is treated today, that is how God designed it in the beginning. And we should work to get back to that original design for marriage.

Highest commitment: Covenant marriage is the highest commitment two people can make to one another. Just as Christ has made an unshakeable, unbreakable covenant with His bride the Church, so we in covenant marriage make the highest commitment to one another. Meaning marriage is not just a legal contract, but a sacred covenant that should be taken seriously.

God-sealed covenant: God considers marriage to be a covenant relationship. This means that marriage is not a simple human agreement, but a covenant that is sealed by God. This means that marriage is not just a social or legal institution, but a spiritual one as well.

Marriage does have innate risks for men. This is not what God intended, but this is what marriage has become, especially modern marriage.

The risks for men are undeniable, but the benefits are also incredible as well. But not every marriage gets those benefits. Not every marriage is enjoyable. This is why the decision making and groundwork you do before marriage are so important.

Be wise. Marriage is dangerous for men to enter into blindly and without any consideration. You can make it good, but not by accident.

Biblical Headship – Why Most Preachers Are Wrong

We rarely hear about biblical headship in the church, at least the headship that follows the biblical standard. You would think this would be included in the concept of “biblical headship”, but most preachers leave it out. One of the reasons we do not hear about it is the fact that feminism has been leaking into the church and damaging the minds of young women [and even young men].

Religious people have been shown to have greater marriage satisfaction than non-religious people. It makes logical sense, then, that if philosophies of the world such as feminism leak into the church, it would cause a reduction in overall marital satisfaction. This is obvious when you realize that women are increasingly unhappy in their marriages, as are the men who are married to those women.

Additionally, many preachers are scared to preach about headship because they are in female-dominated marriages or they are afraid to offend women in the church.

Not only do they not preach the truth about headship, but they avoid the topic altogether! Speaking of offense, make no mistake about it, select, highly vocal women will without a doubt become offended by the truth about the headship message. And also be aware that it is truly a minority of women who will become offended, but they know how to scream the loudest. These contentious women can plague many neutral-thinking women and drag them into poor thinking. Because of all the potential blowback they may receive, most preachers blunt the truth.

We need to realize that the only reason that women can even be this vocal about the issue is due to the overwhelming safety of the modern civilized world.

This is similar to when we wrote about the effeminate man. More and more weak and effeminate men exist because there is no demand for men to be strong. When the demand is not there, the supply will not be there either.

The reason that vocal, contentious women exist is because of the safety of the world. When the world becomes dangerous, and men are called to become strong again, women naturally fall into a submissive role. They understand that now is the time to support their husbands in their marriages as those men have to go out to war and become ferociously violent for the protection of society.

A weak society creates weak men who get married to raise weak sons with nagging wives.
A dangerous society creates strong men who raise strong sons with wives who realize the importance of supporting and submitting to their men.

Back to headship being preached in the church: Let’s get the obvious facts out of the way when it comes to biblical headship.

Women are not less valuable than men.

Men are not less valuable than women.

Women simply have less authority than men.

This is simply the way God designed the authority structure of marriage and the church. But remember that the possession of authority does not equate with greater value. To state it another way, authority is not the same as value. We understand this logically.

The men at the top of businesses such as CEOs do not have more value as human beings than the people at the middle and bottom of the company. The CEO has more valuable skills which translate to a higher income, but they don’t have greater intrinsic worth as human beings simply because of their position and authority. In the same way, men have more authority than women, but they do not have greater intrinsic value. And when you begin to ask why men are given the authority instead of women, it comes down to the individual strengths and weaknesses of each of the two genders.

Women tend to have people-oriented personalities and are more suited to thrive in interpersonal relationships. They also possess excellent nurturing abilities that allow them to keep children alive. Mothers are generally better at keeping children alive than they are at making sure they are properly situated to thrive in the world emotionally, physically, and mentally – this is the role of the masculine father.

The father generally has more command over his emotion, is level-headed, and as such is in a better position to rationally exercise his authority. The mother nurtures and cares for her son, while the father symbolically trains the son for war. Because when his son enters the world, there will be war on every front – from the physical to the spiritual.

Given that men and women are of equal value, we need to address where preachers fall off the path with the biblical headship categories.

Here is the exact point most people and preachers go wrong when talking about biblical headship in the church. These churches/preachers teach variations of egalitarianism about the authority structure in the biblical home. They teach some form of a “50/50” model or something like the following: “husband and wife have equal decision-making authority but the husband has the final word”. While this is beautifully politically correct, it is not the way biblical headship was structured in the Bible, and this can be demonstrated with a few simple thought exercises.

First, we need to understand that marriage was designed by God with biblical headship from the beginning [Gen 3]. This was designed for the benefit of both men and women, to allow for greater marital satisfaction as both the man and the woman are allowed to act in the marriage in ways that best suit their sex-specific nature. [We are happier when we do things we are good at, including marital roles].

Additionally, as marriage is the structure designed by God, we can extrapolate that there must be a logical and beneficial reason for this structure.

We induce this because God does not make stupid, arbitrary laws without purpose – there is a logical root of the law of God that is linked to better life satisfaction when that law is obeyed. Therefore the first reason for traditional, Biblical male headship in marriage is the fact that God designed marriage this way. Of course, the reasons do not stop there. If they did, that would be poor logic and generally blind adherence that is encouraged by many religious people today.

Second, later in the Bible, we have the book of Ephesians which paints a picture of marriage as mirroring the relationship between Christ and the church.

Here are the critical questions that disprove the egalitarian, “50/50” authority structure of marriage that many preachers teach because they do not have the necessary boldness to teach the truth: is Christ’s relationship with His church a 50/50, egalitarian relationship on authority? Do we have equal decision-making authority with Christ, but Christ has the last word if there is a “disagreement”, whatever that might mean? No This is not the case.

Christ has all authority on heaven and earth as the husband of the church [Matt 28:18]. The man has all authority as the husband in the relationship. And if according to Ephesians, marriage symbolizes the relationship between Christ and the church, then the authority structure is the same. Man mirrors Christ and has all authority over his bride, as Christ has all authority over his bride which is the church.

This does not mean that the wife loses all ability to speak or request, talk and communicate or is placed in a subservient slave position in the marriage. We as the church, the bride of Christ, still pray to God and present our communications and our requests for Him to act in a specific way in our lives.

And we even exercise our free will in submitting to Him. And this requires discipline, as submission requires the subjugation of personal wants to align ourselves with the will of God.

Even so, the wife can voice concerns, contribute her thoughts, talk and communicate as one with equal value, but not as one with equal authority to make the decisions. And she must exercise her free will to submit to her husband.

Many Bible teachers are simply too afraid of their wives to act on their authority, so they defer to this egalitarian view of the marriage authority that is simply and logically unscriptural. “I’m too afraid to exercise authority, but I’ll just point to this conveniently created doctrine of men as a good excuse to justify my lack of gonads”.

As men, we have the heavy responsibility to lead our wives, to make decisions for the household, and to bear the consequences for each and every one of them. So lead your wife, make good decisions, and take ownership when your decisions are poor. Because this authority exists not so you can take some power trip and rule with an iron fist over your family. That may be required on very rare occasions with disobedient, rebellious children or wives, but it should be essentially unheard of in scriptural marriages and households.

But your decision-making authority is not something to gloat about.

Rather it is a cumbersome gift with consequences at each and every turn. Men are not sitting around, smoking cigars, and laughing about how much power they have. This may be how feminism perceives them, or men and women who do not understand the structure of marriage. In reality, the weight of authority is a heavy one, and many women do not consider this when they are busy airing grievances about their position of submission. Do not hold this position of authority with pride, hold it with wisdom, fear, rational thinking, and kindness. But hold this position as a man, and do what is in the best interest of the family unit despite the popularity of the decision.

The Opportunity Cost of Marriage

When it comes to the opportunity cost of marriage, at all times, we are speaking in generalities and averages. Obviously, there are outstanding, amazing marriages and relationships in the world. What we are trying to do here is expound upon some of the rational reasons why men no longer see marriage in general as a good investment. and we will look at it from the perspective of investing in a company.

What is the definition of an opportunity cost?

“Opportunity costs represent the potential benefits that an individual, investor, or business misses out on when choosing one alternative over another.”
Investopedia

This is the business definition of an opportunity cost, but the same thing can apply to relationships. When a man marries a woman, there is an opportunity cost to that decision. Because he is giving up the opportunity to have relationships with all other women, specifically relationships with a sexual nature.

Obviously, you can get into a discussion about open marriages and various other permutations and combinations of marriage which are at their core perversions of marriage. But in this discussion we will be talking about marriage in the traditional sense, the way it should only be talked about. – between one man and one woman.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24

Again, a married man has given up the opportunity for all other relationships.

In this way, marriage has a substantial opportunity cost, and it is likely one of the many things men fear about marriage. While many men are accused of being afraid of commitment, looking at it from a rational business perspective you can understand why they are so fearful!

Opportunity cost is frightening for business owners. Opportunity cost is scary to people who are deciding on a college major. Because when making that final decision about a business or a major, they give up the option for all other college majors. In fact, there is less finality to college and business than there is with marriage. If you are going to be stressed out about these small decisions that can be reversible, how much more should you be stressed about the decisions that will affect who you spend your life with?

Getting married is like investing in the stock of a company.

For the purpose of this discussion, we will paint an analogy between the stock market in marriage, to maintain the business perspective. A stock has a specific and quantifiable opportunity cost. Because when you invest, you are taking a certain amount of money that could be spent on anything and investing it into one item. You lock the funds into one specific item. And by doing so you lose the opportunity to use that money for anything else.

The same thing applies to marriage, it’s like a stock. You lose the opportunity to use your time or sexual nature for anything other than what you have confined it to within that marriage relationship.

We should note that we make this investment voluntarily. No one is forcing us against our will to invest in the stock of marriage.

Why does anyone invest in anything at all? It is because they believe that at a future moment in time it will be of greater value to have invested in that item that to have not invested. People believe that stocks will increase in value and eventually pay dividends, this is why they invest in them. Similarly with marriage, even though there’s an opportunity cost, people invest in marriage because they believe that in the future it will have greater value than what the relationship has at the present moment.

Understanding both the cots and the value potential for marriage, we can see how many individuals get married and have regrets about it soon thereafter. They have regrets because they judge the value of the marriage too early and have not given the marriage stock enough time to appreciate in value or to start paying respectable dividends. It takes time to grow a loving, valuable marriage. It doesn’t happen instantly without any effort or further investment. Just like a stock portfolio requires continual investment to build to any appreciable level.

The lesson here is that we should understand both the cost and the potential of marriage and not expect it to start paying immediate dividends to us on the first night. Even though there are few immediate benefits [access to sex/ companionship/sharing of responsibilities which reduced the necessary workload for everyone], many of the long-term benefits don’t show up until significant time and energy investment in the relationship has been made. This is the way it was designed to be, and this is important.

Stocks have an opportunity cost.

We’ve already noted briefly before that stocks have an opportunity cost. If you pay $50 for a stock, you cannot use that same $50 to buy something else that has immediate value in the present moment. But you do so believing that in the future that stop will be worth $100 or that it will pay dividends.

Stocks pay dividends.

Some types of stocks pay dividends periodically. When a company increases in value, and if stock increases in value, that increase in value is shared among the people who own stock in that company. The size of the dividend is usually related to the respective growth of the company. Meaning that you will get larger dividends when a company increases its value by a million dollars than you would if the company increased its value by $500,000.

Not all stocks pay dividends but for the sake of this example, we will stick with dividend-paying stocks.

Individuals buy stocks with the idea that in the future they will start providing them value in return. People believe that the stock will pay them dividends at a future date that they can then use for further investment or at their own personal discretion.

Individuals do not buy stocks with the idea that the stock will go down in value and end up costing them their initial investment.

People do not get married believing in their rational minds that they will be divorced shortly. Yet this happens to so many people due to poor market research on their spouse, personal lack of discipline, or any other of the plethora of reasons people divorce one another.

Stocks have risks and can go to zero.

If you buy stock in a company and that company goes bankrupt, the value of its stock will go to zero and you lose your initial investment money. This is what makes some stocks “risky”. You can try to reduce this risk by analyzing the financial track record of the stock and predicting how it will perform, or by diversifying your investment into multiple stocks.

At least at this present time, you cannot diversify your investment into the marriage stock. It is a single-time buy, and it requires you to use 100% of your sexual/romantic relationship capital. This makes the investment highly risky.

In what investment in your life would you risk 100% of your money? If you were to make such an investment, there should be no value in your mind of the value and potential of the company you are investing in. Investing everything you have in one stock that seems to be risky to you would be foolish – but many people do this very thing with their marriages.

Stocks have a historic track record and dividends can be rationally analyzed by examining those who own the stock.

If I am interested in buying a stock, I can look at how well the stock has performed over a period of time. Or I can talk to people who own stock in a company and ask them what the dividend payout is like from year to year. Using this rational method, I can make a scientific and precise determination about the value of a stock and decide if I want to invest in it.

The same applies to marriage, I can look at other people who have invested in the stock of marriage and determine if the historical track record of the stock is appropriate given the opportunity cost and risk, and additionally evaluate if the dividends are worth the cost of buying that stock.

Every rational individual has to ask himself if marriage is going to provide him with greater value than what it costs him. People don’t take action that eventually cost them down the road, at least not intentionally. We always act with the idea that we will improve the situation for our future selves. No rational individual makes a conscious choice to make life worse for himself later down the road.

People are discontent with the outcomes of marriage.

Many people today are dissatisfied with the outcomes and dividends of marriage. They can look around them and observe people that are incredibly dissatisfied in their marriage and who happen to be incredibly vocal about that dissatisfaction. We would be wise to remember that perhaps the value of the stock may be high but the people who complain about losing money in this investment are extraordinarily vocal about their personal experience, which may or may not represent the experience of the whole. People are more likely to be vocal about negative experiences than positive experiences, including investments and relationships.

What is tragic is that many young men today observe individuals who are married, and come to the conclusion that the investment isn’t worth the opportunity cost and risk. Some of them make this determination merely because of the extraordinarily vocal minority of men who had breathtakingly bad experiences investing in marriage. And this is tragic for society as a whole, as societies become more stable when marriages are built and families are established.

The opportunity cost of marriage is high.

When a man commits to one woman for life, he rarely knows what he is doing. do you really think people would get married if they knew that in a few short years they would be divorced? Even though this is the case for many marriages, it’s obvious that people don’t know in advance what they’re getting into or they would make different decisions.

For a man, the opportunity cost of marriage is extraordinarily high. He must give up on sexual partners for the sake of a single marital relationship. Considering a man’s natural sexual drive, this is a difficult sacrifice. But again, many make this sacrifice believing that it will be a worthwhile investment that provides value and dividends at a future date.

We need to recognize that for many rational men, simply observing the opportunity cost of marriage is enough for them to say “I’m out” when it comes to investing in the marriage stock.

The current dividends of marriage are low.

Men can rationally observe older men in miserable marriage relationships and make judgments about the value of marriage as a whole. By the time men are middle-aged and older, their marriage should be paying massive dividends. A man should feel a massive sense of fulfillment for a life well-lived, a wonderfully enjoyable marriage relationship, and a legacy established through children. But instead what he has is mountains of weighty responsibility, the inability to ever retire, and a contentious wife to live with.

Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop,
Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.
Proverbs 21:9

If these are the dividends that men have to look forward to in the middle and end of life in a marriage relationship, why would they ever invest in the marriage stock in the first place? Better to be alone than in this relationship is the message taught in the above Proverb.

With men referring to their wives as “the old ball and chain” and other similar idioms, why is anyone shocked that younger men aren’t wanting to get married? Are you shocked that young men aren’t investing in marriage stock when it has this kind of PR?

If you constantly talk about the pitifully low-paying dividends of a company, the worthlessness of the company, and how difficult it is to invest and maintain investment in the company, why would anyone ever buy stock in that company? The only life commentary that some men provide is negative press about the institution of marriage and they’re shocked when people aren’t getting married anymore.

Marriage can “go to zero” and its risk manifests.

In its most extreme case, marriage, like a stock, can go to 0. This is when a marriage ends in divorce. In the modern day, women are initiating the vast majority of these divorces. Not only are they initiating them, but it seems to be based on nothing. This makes the marriage stock extraordinarily risky.

If someone told you that a company’s risk of going to zero was 50% every year and that the company could actually close its doors for any reason, and still take half of the money you’ve invested in it for themself, would you invest in it? This is the business structure of the modern marriage relationship, so it should be no surprise that men are uninterested in investing in something this risky.

In the end, marriage really is more like a business than a stock. This is because you cannot really influence what a company does unless you are the one who owns the majority of the shares. But in a business, you make substantial investments, and also then can work to direct and guide the company to something better.

When viewed this way, you realize that the business of your marriage is under the control of the people engaged in that relationship. Value is added to subtracted from the relationship because of the decisions of the business partners.

The business of marriage can provide massive massive value if you will take the time to invest in it and grow it. Or it can be the worst decision you make – it is up to you. Make good decisions. Decisions in marriage is a topic for another post.

But is the opportunity cost of marriage worth all the risks and benefits? That is left to each individual. What do you think?

Page 1 of 3

1 2 3 Next »