New “Divorce and Remarriage” .pdf available for download

Okay, I’ve finally gone and done it. I have finally complete the task of gathering together my blog posts dealing with divorce and remarriage, editing them and creating a downloable .pdf for my readers. This is the biggie, the one that touches the third rail of marriage teaching, Divorce and Remarriage. As I put it in the introduction, it is the Big Mammoo, the heaviest of the heavies.

I do believe that God intended marriage for our benefit and our blessing, but as Wife once put it, “A marriage is only as strong as the people in it.” This .pdf collects several series that I have written over the years into one document for you. To access it, go to my Free Download page (the link is in the header, above, and in the sidebar to the right.)

As always, my prayer is that this is a help and a blessing to you.

CSL

New .pdf, “CSL’s Marriage Observations and Advice”, Available

I have uploaded a new .pdf file to my Free Downloads page. This file is different from others that I have created. Yes, it is another collection of selected posts from the blog, but unlike the other files, this doesn’t really address great themes.

Previous files addressed issues couples in marriage, such as Bad Teaching, Porn, or Addressing Sexless Marriages, just to name a few. This file, however, is basically a practical one, in which I address smaller, specific topics, howbeit with my usual curmudgeonly tact. (Hey, lines like “Just because you have a dick doesn’t mean you have to act like one” aren’t really the stuff of scholarly examination or exhortation.)

The .pdf is free, as all my files are, and you can find them on my Free Downloads page. The link is in the header above and in the sidebar to the right. Your pick.

CSL

New .pdf, “Red Sky At Morning…”, Available

I have created a new .pdf for my readers, which can be found on my Free Downloadables page. In this new .pdf, I have gathered several of my posts dealing with warning signs for those who are worried about lack of intimacy in their marriage. A smaller .pdf, but I hope it will be helpful. The link to my Free Downloads page is above in the header, and to the right in the side bar.

New “Waiting and Working” .pdf for downloading

Okay, CSL, I have read your articles about the Bad Teaching that we have heard about marriage, and I have read what you had to say about good teaching, and I even agree with you. I’ve even spoken to my wife about how I think that we don’t have a good or happy marriage at this time? So now what? What am I supposed to do?

Again, I’m not a marriage counselor, but since when has that stopped me before? You are either thinking about doing your version of The Shot Across the Bow, or you are waiting for some kind of response to it, and don’t know where to go from here. In the past, I have written about what I call The Interim, which is that period that you are now it. I have just uploaded a new .pdf for helping refused spouses with the things that they can do to help themselves as they wait to decide, and some of the things to consider as you think about what you want your marriage to be.

If you are in The Interim, if you don’t know what you should be doing, this .pdf is for you. It is available for downloading on my Free Downloads page, listed in the side bar.

CSL

New Sexless Marriage .pdf available

A new .pdf on Addressing Sexless Marriages is now available. Once again, I have gone through my unorganized archives and aggregated articles that I have written on how to start to address sexless marriages.

My first two downloadable .pdfs on Bad & Good Teachings were descriptive, focusing on presenting teachings about sex and marriage that is promulgated by the Church. With this new .pdf, it is my intent to expose strategies and tactics that are used by one spouse to break faith with the other and to present reasons for why these tactics are wrong. I want to help to blow away the fog that befuddles hurting husbands and wives, and then to present strategies for husbands and wives to counter these faithless strategies and tactics.

This is now available on the Free Downloads page. The link is in the page header and in the sidebar to the right. As always, I hope that having these articles collected in one  place is an aid to hurting brothers and sisters in Christ.

CSL

Oh, just one word of caution… it’s BIG! It’s nearly 500 kbytes, and apparently, if printed out, it will run about 75-80 pages, so be aware of toner needs.

Sheesh, can I be verbose!

New Downloadable .pdf

I have aggregated several of my posts into a downloadable .pdf. While not a compendium of all knowledge about marriage, I supplement my Bad Teachings .pdf with what I believe to be biblical teaching about the nature of marriage. As well, I included my series on Mark Twain and Relationships.

This is available on the Free Downloads page. The link is in the page header and in the sidebar to the right.

Respect: A Dirty Word?

In my first post after my undeclared sabbatical, I spoke about how one influential blogger has apparently decided that men are pretty much second class citizens in Christian marriage, anymore. In reading her posts attacking Emerson Eggerichs’ Love & Respect, you are faced with the undeniable fact that Madame DeFarge** embraces the teaching that husbands owe their wives “unconditional love” (after all, LYWACLTC™, don’t you know?). Readers of this blog will recall that in past posts, I have debunked the idea of unconditional love, but, hey,  it’s a major tenet of today’s Church, almost approaching the status of accepted orthodoxy. 

Be that as it may, in one of my Bad Teaching posts, I did demonstrate that the command for husbands to love their wives was accompanied by the command for wives to respect their husbands (this can be found in Eph. 5.33). I pointed out that due to parallel construction, either love and respect are both unconditional or neither is unconditional, that it isn’t a mix ‘n’ match set. It’s just not kosher to say that the husband has to love his wife unconditionally, whereas wives only have to respect their husbands conditionally. Nope. T’aint fair, t’aint biblical.

But this is exactly what Madame DeFarge argues on her blog. In fact, when one commenter said that while a husband’s love should be unconditional but it was alright to require a wife’s respect to be earned, Mme. DeFarge replies “Totally agree!” While Mme. DeFarge says that she is a new convert, her history shows that she has been undermining respect for husbands for several years. After all, three years ago, she wrote a post for her followers asking if they respected their husbands TOO MUCH.

Echoes from My Well of Silence

Hello, folks; long time, no see, and all. I recently received some emails from readers who called down into the well, “Is anybody there… body there… body there?” (When you have people checking you for a pulse, you realize you’ve been gone too long.)

Yeah, I have been silent for some time, as it’s been over six months since I have made any posts on this blog. First off, my family had to fight off the annual winter plague that descends upon the CSL household around Christmas and lingers for months. Add to that Wife and Daughter #1 making three trips to the hospital in Feb. (two in ambulances), and I recently had to have dental surgery, I think I have a plausible alibi for my extended absence. Alibi, but not an excuse, if I’m being honest with myself.***

The Church and Your Marriage. What Could Go Wrong?

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve gone down the road of a personal rant, but a recent comment by a husband who feels somewhat abused by our feminized church culture has me turning to the dark side of the Curmudgeonly Force.

In the back and forth to my Reset #3 post, I responded to a reader’s comment by saying that a refused husband needs to take action in his marriage, and not let things coast along in a sexless marriage. I made the statement that the husband in a situation where the wife insists that he needs to move first should say “This is not a negotiation. Yes, it is my duty to meet your emotional need for connection, but by the same token it is your duty to meet my need for connection, as well. You have to be willing to step up.”

Of Resets, Resolutions and Reality, part 3

 

[This is the last of a three-part series; the first post can be found here, and the second post can be found here.]

First off, please accept my apology for the delay in following up with another post to complete this series on Resets. I have been working on developing, from the ground up, a class for my church on the Roots of Christianity. With no textbook, I have been busy creating lessons and resources, creating PowerPoints and .pdfs, loading movies up to YouTube, and creating a web platform on Moodle for my lesson resources. As you might imagine, that occupied all my summer and September. With most of the work behind, I find I can devote a little time to writing for my blogs, and so I especially wanted to finish with the final post in this Reset series.