Jesse Can’t Stomach It, but “Sadly, No!” Licks the Plate!
Jesse Taylor discovers a fundamentalist website dedicated to courtship advice and runs shrieking in unholy terror:
How To Date In One Easy Step
The “Christian” Way: don’t. Rather than address this point by point, which would lead to head-exploding of a detrimental nature to this blog’s visitor count, I’ll just pick out the five worst ideas for the survival of human sanity.
Since Jesse doesn’t have the stomach and/or masochistic urge to write about this in its entirety, it’s up to Sadly, No! to do the dirty work.
Jesse already ably handled the first essay on courtship (“What’s Wrong With Dating?”), so I’m gonna go straight into the second one, called “Are Recreational One-on-One Relationships Biblical?”
The philosophical heart of the institution of dating is the supposition that one-on-one, male-female relationships are not only healthy, but necessary for the two to get to know each other. What shall we say to this challenge?
That it’s wrong for people to have healthy relationships, so they might as well get married without knowing each other?
We need to remember that the first one-on-one relationship was with a view to marriage (Genesis 2:18). God made the woman because it was not good that the man should be alone. After Adam named the animals he knew he was alone.
And he probably had a mule for a girlfriend, just like Neal Horsley.
Then the Lord God put the man asleep and removed a rib from his side. When Adam arose from his sleep, he felt more incomplete–and indeed he was, for Eve was his “missing rib.”
That’s women for ya- all they do is take, take, take.
The Bible simply tells us that God brought the woman to the man. Here was the first “date,” as both Adam and Eve were alone in the Garden.
“And lo, Adam no longer felt urged to thrust his unit o’er a panda’s backside.”
What was the purpose of this first date? Adam deduced: This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh . . . Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they two shall become one flesh (Gen. 2:23-24).
Which doesn’t make a lotta sense, since Adam didn’t even have a mother to leave.
This creation pattern presents an interesting paradox, when viewed in light of the modern phenomenon of dating. Clearly, dating clashes with God’s creation model and yet, those who do date and engage in consummated or unconsummated premarital sex do so naturally and spontaneously.
And it’s clearly God’s will that we should only have unnatural sex. In fact, we should stop dating and just shack up with a mule to avoid arousing His wrath.
The one-on-one romantic relationship (understood in terms of creation) logically demands a sexual response. Such a response, then, is Adam (not just in a fallen sense) but in a creation sense. One man alone, with one woman alone, climaxes in the two becoming one (Gen. 2:24).
Or in the guy shooting his wad early and falling asleep.
Of course, the problem with recreational dating is that it envisions the one-on-one relationship apart from marriage. But the sexuality part is properly interpreted. This means that those parents who give their children one-on-one dating “privileges” should not be surprised when they discover that their children have fornicated…
I’m suddenly picturing a dirty version of Masterpiece Theatre:
[ENTER CHARLES AND MATILDA]
CHARLES: I say, Matilda, I think the courtship of our daughter Victoria and the Young Master Swithen is going most undoubtedly well.
MATILDA: Oh Charles, yes, he’s quite a gentleman… but I do fear that if they do not marry within a fortnight, they shall no longer resist the urge to… fornicate!
CHARLES: Matilda! How can such beastly thoughts enter your head? It sounds like I need to get your corset tightened again…
Above: Two sinners caught in the act of rollerblading and Eskimo-kissing, clearly contradicting God’s desire for people to be miserable.
And now, back to the article:
The dating “game” is the built-in occasion for such ungodly behavior. Those who remain sexually unscathed in such relationships do so unnaturally, as they are really fighting off the creational purpose for one-on-one relationships.
So if your children date and don’t have sex, it means they’re resisting sex “unnaturally,” which probably means they’re having mass orgies with their stuffed animals.
This, of course, does not mean that a Christian man and Christian woman cannot have a friendship relationship based upon Christ’s love for his church. Paul spoke of the women who labored with him in the gospel.
Oooooh, so that’s what they’re calling it these days!
We even find Elijah the Prophet staying in the same house as the widow of Zarephath, in the upper room (1 Ki. 17:19). Even a limited one-on-one relationship may be permissible on this basis, although such an arrangement must be vigilantly watched for signs of romanticism.
“You may want to hook your son’s genitals up to an Abu Ghraib-style ‘Erector Detector’ that administers painful shocks every time he gets horny.”
Certainly, men and women may sit together in church, and not be partitioned off into separate blocks of pews!
But make sure they don’t sit too close! You don’t want them engaging in the old “hand in the hymnal” trick!
It is most proper for single men and women to gather for Christian fellowship too. However, one needs to be wary of many “singles’ groups” which are often a pretext for pick-ups and dating
.
Yeah, when I want an easy lay, I go to the Christian Fellowship Singles’ Group too (oy, SO wrong…).
The first thing to remember about one-on-one relationships is that nothing is found in the Bible about what may be called “random dating” or “recreational dating.”
And just like life wasn’t created by random evolutionary mechanisms, true marriages can’t come from random recreational dating. Therefore, dances should be banned in public schools, just like evolution.
Almost all of what passes as “dating” today rests upon the recreational premise: “Mary is beautiful and charming; therefore I am going to take her out.” There is no commitment from either party to continue the relationship beyond the first date. Likely, there may even be others that the two would consider dating given the opportunity. Biblically, if a one-on-one relationship could be justified, it would certainly have to be with a view to marriage–always a view toward marriage. A more Biblical mind-set would be: “Mary is godly; I want to pursue a relationship with her that, Lord-willing, and with her father’s permission, will consummate in marriage.”
OK, I’m gonna use that as a pick-up line- “Hey baby, you look like a godly gal… whaddya say we go back to your dad’s place and, Lord-willing consummate on his couch?”
The second consideration is sin, and particularly the sin of lust. The Bible speaks about lust as “deceitful,” and young men are to “flee youthful lusts” (Eph. 4:22; 2 Tim. 2:22). The difference between male and female is that the male lusts, while the female lusts to be lusted after.
This principle is best illustrated by Cheap Trick’s poetic treatise on the subject.
Lust is not just a distant or peripheral threat, but something that regularly attacks the Christian, causing him to sin and to have a distorted view of reality.
So if you find a woman attractive and want to take her out, you have “a distorted view of reality.”
See, this is why I could never be a fundamentalist Christian.
Lust is so basic to the human constitution that immediately after Adam and Eve sinned, they fled from God, while hiding their secret parts behind apron-leaf clothing.
I’m not sure how secret their “secret parts” coulda been if they were running around nekkid all the time.
Why? Because they instinctively knew that sin had contaminated the organs of life. By lusting after the tree, their sexuality became polluted immediately.
Yeah, I’m a “live and let live” type of guy, but lusting after plants probably isn’t sexually healthy.
Paul even wrote Timothy, a man of God who was filled by the Holy Spirit, and warned him about his “youthful lusts” (2 Tim. 2:22). Lust operates in a vicious cycle. The lust in the man fans the lust in the woman, and the lust to be lusted after in the woman fans the lust in the man.
And the green grass grew all around, all around, and the green grass grew all around.
The third reason for our questioning the legitimacy of one-on-one, male-female dating relationships relates to the God-ordained role of the father. Since the Bible speaks of those who marry and who are “given” in marriage, it clearly assumes that the father gives away only what he has. Even the first marriage was not without an audience, for it was God himself who was acting as Father when he brought the woman to the man. This means that the father exercises authority over his daughter so that she may be “given” in marriage or kept as a virgin.
Yeah, if your daughter starts getting her lust fanned, go Rapunzel on her ungodly ass and lock her in the attic with a chastity belt.
The upshot of this is that the male-female relationship is a family matter, especially the regulatory concern of the father. That more fathers do not take active roles in the pairing of their children, or in their children’s would-be spouses, is a dismal commentary on the state of fatherhood today.
So if you don’t exercise total control over every aspect of your daughter’s life, you’re a shitty father.
OK, I’ve reached my breaking point- I really can’t read this anymore, and I’m just gonna skip to the end:
What are the abiding marriage practices of the Old Testament people of God? For one, the father gives away the bride. Another is that the bride secures the favor of her father. Another is that no one-on-one relationship (recreational dating) is permissible unless the man and the woman are engaged or married. The Bible endorses family courtship.
And that leads right into our next essay, “Daddy’s Girl,” which I’ll try to review sometime next week, after I’ve chugged a whole bottle of aspirin.
You should have started with the Daddy’s Girl. It is an unapologetic excuse for all SORTS of abuse, if I’ve ever seen one. Creeeeeepy. And some sort of sado-masochistic undertone as well. Ew!
You should have started with the Daddy’s Girl.
I haven’t even read it yet. I’m too traumatized by the first one. But I’ll get around to it…
Notice that these are not christians. They refer to the Old Testiment, which is Jewish.
Jesus never said anything like what these folks say. In fact, he said just the opposite. You know, like ?Judge not,? , or ?Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?, or ?I say unto you, forgive 70 times seven.?
This is really about control. And people who have burning control issues, fear they have no control over themselves.
Yeah, I want a healthy relationship, like they had in the Old Testament! Like Abraham and Hagar (he dumped her and their son Ishmael in the wilderness to starve once his wife produced a son). Or like David and Bathsheba (Uriah the Hittite must have been a very ungodly man). Or like Solomon and wife #534. Or #435 — I’m not sure.
Hell, I’ll do a write-up for “Daddy’s Girl” if you don’t want to torture yourself anymore, Brad. It’s so surreal it’s magical. There are basically two points:
1.) Children are the property of their parents, essentially slaves;
2.) (And this is the juicy one) As long as a girl lives with her father, she is beholden to his before God. According to the author, if a woman receives contradictory orders from her father and the Almighty, she is to follow her father’s orders. This means, in effect, that a parent can override the will of God [!!!]. I guess I was never aware that human beings had veto power over God’s actions, what with the whole omnipotence thing and all.
Sorry to break it to the author about engagement being OK. Just did a search through the old King James version – the word engagement ain’t in it. Aren’t these folks a hoot?
Yikes. “Daddy’s Girl” is indeed seriously twisted shit. I hope Dr. Hager doesn’t have any daughters.
Hey anything that slows these morons up in breeding is okay by me.
This is mental illness manifested.I can only imagine the number of”fathers”who have used this kind of mentally defective reasoning as an excuse to exercise more than one”ownership privledge”.My God,the generation coming out of being raised like this will be more fucking demented than their parents.What a horrible attack on women,condoned by another woman.The ways this is fucked up is just mind boggling.
The one about sons isn’t any better.
These kinds of beliefs used to belong to fringe lunatics,now the lunatics in places of power over other people on many levels,they’ve got influence.They need to be stopped,SOON.This kind of sexual and emotional damage is part of the problem in this country,it’s multi generational now,and it’s showing it’s legacy everywhere.
I did laugh my ass off at the spot on analysis here though,otherwise my head would have exploded.
I need a bong hit and a beer after that one,and I hate beer…..
AOB ain’t kidding about “Training Suitors” (love that choice of title). That article is all about how one “trains” a small boy to leave the home, which seems to consist of neglecting him and occasionally beating him. In other words, it’s not all that different from how one might “train” a pit bull to fight. Pleasant stuff.
WHO’S YOUR DADDY! WHO’S YOUR DADDY! WHO’S YOUR DADDY! WHO’S YOUR DADDY WHO’S YOUR DADDY!
And don’t forget, Janice: Not only did Abraham screw one of his servants and father a child with her whom he later abandoned, but his wife, Sarah, was his half-sister. Who he pimped out to Pharoah (I think, someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Plus he tried to kill his other son Isaac, claiming God told him to. So let’s see: Incest, pimping, adultry, sexual harrassment (Hagar was his employee, he used his position to get sex from her), child abandonment, attempted murder, child abuse, and schizophrenia. What a role model.
…and don’t get me started on his grandson Jacob. What a scumbag.
Not only did Abraham screw one of his servants and father a child with her whom he later abandoned, but his wife, Sarah, was his half-sister. Who he pimped out to Pharoah (I think, someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Plus he tried to kill his other son Isaac, claiming God told him to. So let’s see: Incest, pimping, adultry, sexual harrassment (Hagar was his employee, he used his position to get sex from her), child abandonment, attempted murder, child abuse, and schizophrenia. What a role model.And today, half of the world believes in one of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). No wonder we’re so fucked up.
Sorry, Brad, but you’re losing your touch. Look what you missed:
Yeah! Women are incapable of lust.
presumably to be sacrificed later.
Sorry. Anonymous at May 15, 2005 03:17 AM was me.
“the green grass grew all around” part gave me my absolute BEST laugh of the day, possibly of the week! thanks!
who do date and engage in consummated or unconsummated premarital sex
Um, how do I engage in unconsummated sex?
The difference between male and female is that the male lusts, while the female lusts to be lusted after.
Yeah, that’s why it doesn’t matter to a girl wheather a hot young guy or some creepy old man is flirting with her. All girls want is to tempt men, they don’t care about the end result of said temptation. Stupid jerk.
Oops, forgot the name.
The first thing to remember about one-on-one relationships is that nothing is found in the Bible about what may be called “random dating” or “recreational dating.”
Okay Christers, you know the drill! No mention of ‘cars’ in the Bible, so get rid of ’em now! You can sign ’em over to me, I won’t even charge ya! Oh, and you Southern Xtreme Christers? No air conditioning in Hell, so you might as well get used to it now!
And ‘democracy’ in the Bible? It is to laugh…
OK, so you are knocking these people because their view of life is much different from yours. But don’t you realize that what you’re doing is culture-centric? From your culture, they appear whack, but from most cultures throughout the history of humankind, they would appear far more normal than you with your radical freedom.
Why aren’t you knocking the fundamentalist Jews who must bring in some menstrual blood to a rabbi for the rabbi to check out its color so as to determine whether the women is niddah?
http://www.yoatzot.org/question/3058
How about the fundamentalist Muslims who need to “Ask the Imam” whether it is haram to cut their daghter’s hair? Answer: it OK because she hasn’t reached puberty yet, but hey, she’s going to hit it anytime now, so it’s best to play it safe and not cut the hair.
http://islam.tc/ask-imam/view.php?q=13349
Your example of the fundamentalist Christians is no more whacked out than the examples I just provided. We just find them strange because they come from a different culture than us.
Your example of the fundamentalist Christians is no more whacked out than the examples I just provided. We just find them strange because they come from a different culture than us.
If I hear this stupid, lame argument one more time, I swear to God I’m gonna scream.
First of all, the reason I make fun of Fundamentalist Christians more than Fundamentalist Muslims or Jews is that there are waaaaay more Fundamentalist Christians in America, and what’s worse, they have influence of public policy. Were I living in, say, Turkey, I’d be making fun of stupid Muslim fundamentalists (if, you know, they didn’t kill me first). But since I don’t live in Turkey, I’m stuck with the Christians.
Second- I was RAISED CHRISTIAN, and a pretty conservative one at that (King James Version, baby!). When I trash fundie Christians, I’m not doing it as some snooty outsider- I actually know what the eff I’m talking about.
Finally- it’s not PC to say this, but some “cultures” are just bad. I’m thinking Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, for instance- it’s just a shitty, sexist, repressive culture. Similarly, any “culture” in this day and age that raises its daughters “property” to be sold off at marriage ought to be unceremoniously swept into the ashbin of history.
I swear, one of the main reasons the left is dying in this country is because it has adopted this stupid misinterpretation of postmodernism- that we have to look at everything “fairly” and not be judgemental, and that there is no right and wrong, just different points of view. This is basically the same argument that creationists use to push their wannabe “science” on school boards- “Well, evolution is an opinion guided by a secular worldview, no one can prove it’s true, so why not allow different points of view to be heard?”
Complete and utter nonsense.
Amen, Brad R.
Stuff like this is why I’ve started to find the word “fornicate” to be unbelievably sexy.
This was the most useful blog entry I’ve read in weeks.
“I?ll shine up the old brown shoes, put on a brand-new shirt.
I?ll get home early from work if you say that you love me.”
All these years, I had no idea that was what he was singing.
Another reason to make fun of Fundamentalist Christians and not Fundamentalist Jews or Muslims is because Christians seem to want to take over the U.S. and completely make it a theocracy. Other religions in the U.S. seem to be content with letting things be.
It makes sense to knock those who present the biggest threat to your way of life, and today fundamentalist Christians certainly wield far more power in the US than fundamentalist Jews or Musllms. But what’s the point in mocking this article? Where does the author say that this idea should be the law of the land? You’re mocking it because it comes from a different cultural perspective than what you’re accustomed to.
If you say that subjugation of women is inherently wrong, whether it’s done under the guise of the traditions of another culture or the dogma of a fundamentalist religion, how do you support that claim? I find their ownership concept regarding women to be abhorrent, but I’ve had women who live under these circumstances very clearly tell me that this is the life they want. If it makes them happy, how can you say it is objectively wrong?
If you say that subjugation of women is inherently wrong, whether it’s done under the guise of the traditions of another culture or the dogma of a fundamentalist religion, how do you support that claim? I find their ownership concept regarding women to be abhorrent, but I’ve had women who live under these circumstances very clearly tell me that this is the life they want. If it makes them happy, how can you say it is objectively wrong?
Hey, Uncle Tom had it pretty good too.
And it’s wrong for a lot of reasons:
1.) In terms of economic development, countries will never climb out of poverty until they lower birth rates and educate women. When women all have to stay at home raising 13 kids (many of whom are very sick due to poor medical care), the economy is losing a LOT of potential output. Were the fundamentalists’ ideas to catch on culturally, we’d all be living in a Medieval economy again, with far too many resources devoted to taking care of children.
2.) Culturally, it hurts us too. The 20th Century has shown that women have made invaluable contributions to literature, music, and science. Does anyone really wish that Virginia Woolf had stayed at home and not written a word, submitting to her husband’s authority and washing dishes? Many of the cultural advances on the last 100 years were due in no small part to the emergence of women.
3.) The idea that anyone can be “owned” by anyone else is an affront to basic human dignity, no matter how much they say they like it. Christ, someone might get off paying five hookers to kick him in the stomach, but that doesn’t make it a healthy practice.
So yes, I’m bigoted against warped fundamentalist cultures. I don’t think we should be nice to them, I don’t feel the need to respect their values, and I don’t we should let them treat their daughters as property. Would you let Muslims come into the country and practice Sha’ria, as long as they kept it within their own community? How about female genital mutilation? Should that be tolerated because we don’t want to offend other cultures?
But what’s the point in mocking this article?
Come now, satire is a perfectly legitimate form of criticism. The article is going out of it’s way to try and change the culture to what they think is right. Those of us in the culture being preached to are within our rights to point our flaws in their argument, and to mock what we think is silly about there argument. Mockery is especially useful in this case, because the author(s) of this article are by no means interested in debate. They are delivering a sermon, telling us “how things should be” without regard to our opinion on the matter.Plus, it’s way fun.
Plus, it’s way fun.
Thank you, Moonbiter. Some people on the left are just way too anal…
Plus, it’s way fun.
Hells yeah! :highfive:
The other point in mocking this article is that it represents an extreme version of arguments we’re seeing in more shellacked, pr-friendly venues elsewhere. I try to avoid slippery-slope arguments, but it’s good to have “the father exercises authority over his daughter so that she may be “given” in marriage or kept as a virgin” somewhere in the back of my mind when I consider the merits of “parental consent” laws.