A Pair of Pessimistic Political Predictions

I’m not saying that these things will happen, but the way our society is going, I think it’s likely that they might happen. 

1.  Any straight people who get married will be seen as inherently oppressing gays who can’t marry.  This came to mind as I heard recently about a growing slew of celebrities who refuse to get married, saying they won’t do it until everybody can do it.  The logical end of that train of thought will be stigmatizing anybody who doesn’t get in on this “boycot.”  Cohabitation will explode even further as marriage rates drop drastically.

2.  The concept of nationality will come to be looked down on as narrow-minded, old fashioned, and akin to racism.  Under the guise of embracing all of humanity and “celebrating diversity,” many will decry those who assert that being an American–or any other nationality–has some intrinsic meaning.  Valuing your country over other countries will be the new “racism,” as the more “enlightened” among us will disavow their allegiance to any one nation and declare themselves “citizens of the world.” 

I know, I know–the seeds of both of these are already well sown into our society.  My fear is that they will become far more prevalent, that within a decade they will be the mandatory mantras of the mainstream, the same way that gay marriage, amnesty, and socialism suddenly became orthodox doctrines during the last ten years.

MYTH: “You have to live together before you get married”

Last Saturday, I heard this one over and over as people used it as their talking point for a radio audition.  I’m sure we’ve all heard this reiterated endlessly.  It always surprises me how blithely people rattle this one off, with little thought for how vapid the argument really is.

First, this thesis is usually followed by their one and only line of defense for it: “You don’t really know someone until you see how grumpy and grungy they are in the morning.”  Seriously?  You have to live with someone to know that they’re grumpy and grungy in the morning?  Isn’t everybody?  And if we already know this, then we don’t really have to live together first in order to learn it, now do we?  News flash, folks: that special someone you’re thinking of making a commitment to also has really bad breath when they wake up.  And I didn’t even have to live with them first to figure it out!  There, I just saved you the cost of some moving boxes.

“But,” interjects our torridly anxious co-habitants, “you need to live together first in order to truly know them and see if you’ll work out together.”  This “reason” is even more lame than the first one.  When, exactly, do you know if things are going to “work out” with someone or not?  After six months?  Three years?  Ten years?  What magic sign of “working out” are you looking for? 

Book of Moses Commentary Part V: What I Wish To Tell the Young Women of the Church

Moses 8:13-15 reads: “And Noah and his sons hearkened unto the Lord, and gave heed, and they were called the sons of God.  And when these men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of men saw that those daughters were fair, and they took them wives, even as they chose.  And the Lord said  unto Noah: The daughters of thy sons have sold themselves…”

This could have been written today.  The daughters of the sons of God were fair?  No kidding.  Everywhere I’ve seen, the local LDS young women tend to be among the most beautiful, the most talented, and the most wonderful girls there.  The sons of men wanted them?  Of course they did.  And still do.  Who wouldn’t?  Any guy in his right mind would want to be married to a Mormon girl.  And those fair daughters sold themselves into marriage with the sons of men?  I see it all the time.

I don’t know why so many Mormon girls marry non-Mormons, but I do know one thing: those guys may be perfectly fine, might even be really great guys, but when these poor girls become mothers and older women and see the priesthood and temple blessings they and their family are missing out on, and see the lack of unity their relationship has to deal with, it hurts them.  I’ve never known an LDS woman who married outside the church and never regretted it. 

So here’s what I wish to tell the young women of the church: don’t sell yourself short.  Don’t settle for anything less than a temple marriage.  And don’t be tempted by anyone outside of that goal who might want you for himself.  There absolutely will be many, many boys and young men who will want to be with you, and many of them will be good guys.  But they won’t be the right guys.  Your eternal happiness is worth holding out for the very best man.  It was true in Noah’s time, and it’s still true today.

I Did The Love Dare

After seeing the movie Fireproof with my wife recently, I wanted to do the love dare in it for my wife.  I put the book on my hold list at the library.  I couldn’t publish this until after the whole 40 days, because my wife reads this blog and I wanted it to be a surprise.  Here are some notes on what happened, but since I don’t want to ruin the book (or infringe on copyrights!), I won’t list the dares here.  (Update: the book’s web site actually has the full list.)  You just need to pick up your own copy. 

In the movie, all that stood in the way of their perfect romance was their fading feelings.  Real life is more complicated.  Just in the last forty days, some of the things that made it harder for me to do this included: a kid got sick and threw up seven times in one morning, my wife and I were taken to court (where we did not do well), I got sick (twice–once during the first week of the dare, and again during the last week), our refrigerator broke down and got repaired, work and other responsibilities kept us apart all day and up very late, the lock on my car door broke (and the dealer didn’t even fix it right!), the battery in our van died, and a motley assortment of other irritations, distractions, and adversities made their merry way into the path of my earnest scheduling.  In short, life happened. 

So it was hard at times, but I think my wife appreciated it, so it was absolutely worth it. 

My only frame of reference for ideas was the character in the movie, and at times I felt a little bad that my gestures weren’t as dramatic as his.  I guess that’s to be expected: my life isn’t scripted, nor does it have a movie studio’s budget.  I, alas, do not have twenty grand stashed away for a boat that I can dip into to help make her dream come true. 

Days 1-5 (May 20 -May 24)

Day 1: The day I picked this up from the library was one of the hardest, most discouraging days of work I had all year.  I wanted to complain about it and dump it all on my wife, but I took the injunction to not be negative as literally as I could, and held my tongue.  At least for today!

Day 2: foot rub

Day 3: Star Trek glass from Burger King.  We’re awesome. 

Days 6-10 (May 25 -May 29)

The Left Needs To Make Up Its Mind About Marriage

It’s ironic that America is now embroiled in an all out cultural war over whether or not gay couples should be able to get married.  It’s ironic because for the last several decades the cultural left has been waging a war against marriage itself.  The mantra with which we’ve all been bombarded is that marriage is “just a piece of paper.” 

So on one hand, a huge segment of the cultural left in America clings to its established dogma that marriage is outdated, oppressive, or irrelevant, while a growing faction of the same population battles to convince us that marriage is a crucial necessity worth fighting over.  Thousands of flexible, hip, cohabitating straight couples all blithely ignore the foundational covenant of civilization, while at the same time thousands of aggrieved, angry, entitled gay couples take to the streets to campaign for what seems to be a life-or-death need.

Perhaps it’s just traditional marriage that’s bad.  Alternative marriages–surprise!–are great.

This contradiction makes the convenient, experimental wishes of the left ever more difficult to take seriously.  Will America’s counter culture please make up its mind?  Either marriage is important or it isn’t.  Either it’s a vital ceremony with real value, or it’s just an optional piece of paper.  It can’t be both.

When you come to a consensus, let us know.  Then we can talk.

Book of Moses Commentary Part I: In Praise of Adah and Zillah

[For an introduction to the Book of Moses, please read this.]

Genesis 4:19-24 tells the story of Lamech, who had “slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.”  Other Bible translations I looked at word this declaration to say that Lamech killed the young man because the young man had inflicted an injury on Lamech.  A footnote in the NIV Study Bible explains these verses as a cautionary tale about revenge. 

But where Genesis moves on to another story in the next verse, the Book of Moses continues further.  And that’s where his wives Adah and Zillah shine.

Moses 5:49-59 adds material that says that Lamech killed the young man (named Irad, this text tells us) because the young man had learned the secret oaths that Satan had taught Cain, and which Lamech had also learned, but Irad had exposed those oaths, spreading them to the general public. 

But that’s not my focus here.  What impresses me most about this story is the reaction of Lamech’s wives to his confession to them of his infernal conspiring and homicidal treachery. 

Inactive Husbands

My experience ministering at church has shown me that there is one large demographic whose quiet sense of loss in their community is rarely understood by those around them: women with inactive husbands. 

There are certainly men who go to church but whose wives are unsupportive, but that’s relatively rare.  Far more common are women who strive to get to church as much as possible, often taking kids with them, but whose husbands refuse to get up and come along.  I’m not talking about women with non-Mormon husbands–those women knew what they were getting into when they got married–or even women whose husbands have never been very involved in church. 

What still shocks and discourages me is just how many men become inactive after marriage and then put their wives in an impossible position: these men may think that they’re not making their wives choose between them and church, but these poor women are still living in a gray twilight zone, trying to trudge along the thorny path of discipleship but doing so without a partner with whom to share her burden, unlike most of her friends at church.  Her husband may think that his non-involvement is purely neutral, doing no harm, but that doesn’t help when the kids ask why they have to go to church and Dad doesn’t. 

“First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage…”

A recent post I read has impressed upon me that cohabitation and/or actively chosen single motherhood may well be the most critical threat facing families and society at large. 

Ann Coulter devoted a devastating chapter to it in her most recent book, but Joanne Jacobs has linked to a new study that finds cohabitation and voluntary single parenthood so prevalent that it is now very much the norm.  Her report reminded me of this incredible essay in City Journal–part of a theme that they focused on for a while–that details the many problems of our generation’s heedlessly hedonistic lack of values. 

I knew a guy who lived with a woman for a few years, having a couple of kids with her.  After a while, he started calling her his wife, though they refused to actually get married.  When he decided to leave her for another woman, that concept of hypothetical matrimony must have gone out the window.  Now he calls the new woman, to whom he also has not gotten married, his wife. 

Multiply that to a large scale and you see the environment in which the next generation will grow up.

Five Things Parents Need To Know Before Getting Divorced

Divorce is a sensitive subject.  Those of us who have been through it might be reluctant to discuss its lingering problems, because it might lead to an impossible ”what if?” game: “What if I hadn’t gotten divorced?  Would I have more or less stress today?  Could things have been worked out?  Would my children be better or worse off now?”  There’s just no way to know for sure, and especially for those of us who have moved on to new marriages and more children, such debating can only cause unproductive pain. 

What’s done is done, and we need to go forward making the best lives we can for all of our families, but for those who might be in a troubled marriage and are contemplating divorce, I want to share a few things from my experience that it might help you to know.  At the very least, these are things that you will have to deal with if you do get divorced, and it’s better to know in advance what you’re getting into.  Frankly, if these thoughts give some couples pause for second thoughts, the world might be a little bit better off.

1.  If you get divorced, your ability to raise your children the way you want to will be severely reduced. 

Fireproof: A Great “Mormon” Movie

My wife and I rented this movie for date night on Friday, and we were both struck by how powerful it was.  Fireproof is an independent film produced by a team of evangelical Christians.  To the best of my knowledge, no Latter-day Saints were involved in any aspect of it.  And it’s just about the best Mormon movie I’ve ever seen.

By which I mean that this film better reflects the values of Latter-day Saints about marriage and family than anything I’ve seen that actually was produced by Mormons.  Fireproof treats marriage overtly as a “covenant,” and praises it as a joyful and integral priority in life.  Fireproof also makes it stunningly clear that no relationship is whole and complete until God’s love is brought into it.  Indeed, none of the relatively few doctrinal statements in the film would be uncomfortable for any Latter-day Saint.

But it’s not a dry, didactic documentary.  When Fireproof was released last year, critics panned it, so you know right away that it’s probably pretty good.