Tuesday, May 31, 2011

An Interesting Perspective

Marital roulette
Exclusive: Vox Day advises men to avoid wedding working women

Posted: May 30, 2011
1:00 am Eastern

Sunday, May 29, 2011

By Vox Day

There has been an amount of discussion of a marriage strike in recent years as various male and female commentators alike attempt to explain the continuing decline in marriage rates throughout the advanced nations of the West. As more and more men have become aware that women file for most divorces and that family courts are now little more than thieves' dens designed to funnel financial resources from men to women by any means or legal-sounding excuse necessary, they have understandably become considerably more marriage-averse.

In the last 40 years, the percentage of 25-34 American adults who were married has dropped from 80 percent to 45 percent. In 2009, it was reported that at only 52 percent, the percentage of married adults of all ages was the lowest percentage recorded since the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting marital information 100 years ago.

When one considers the widespread availability of wildly entertaining, time-intensive video games as well as high-quality, high-definition pornography produced to suit even the most esoteric sexual tastes, it is not terribly surprising that American men are becoming ever more disinclined to risk pledging their lives and fortunes to the increasingly adipose, decreasingly reliable creature known as the American woman?

Dr. Helen Smith writes: "Nowadays, for many men, the negatives of marriage for men often outweigh the positives. Therefore, they engage in it less often. Not because they are bad, not because they are perpetual adolescents, but because they have weighed the pros and cons of marriage in a rational manner and found the institution to be lacking for them."

The problem is that marriage is more than an institution; it is a structural foundation of society. Moreover, marriage is historically proven to be the best means of producing and raising healthy children, which means that it is integral to the continuation of both American society as well as the human race. Without a strong base of healthy marriages between men and women, no society is likely to survive, let alone prosper.

(Column continues below)

So, what is a young man who wishes to be a happy and productive member of society but does not wish to find himself locked into a life of post-divorce serfdom to an ill-tempered, overweight woman with a legal obligation to children who may not even belong to him? Fortunately, the answer is both clear and easily applied. To increase your chances of marital and familial success in life, it is vital to stay away from what are known as "career" or "working" women.

While this will not eliminate all the risks of what has become known as Marriage 2.0, it will return a man's probability of successful marriage to that of the earlier, more marriage-friendly era. Marriage to a stay-at-home wife rather than one with a full-time job reduces the risk of divorce by nearly one-third. Just the simple act of avoiding romantic involvement with working women is nearly enough on its own to again make marriage a viable option for young men.

Moreover, stay-at-home mothers make for much better mothers as they spend 91 percent more time with their children than working mothers do. The most remarkable observation is that stay-at-home mothers spend 12 more minutes per day on the physical care of their children than working mothers spend with their children in total; the net result of this insufficient attention is that the children of working mothers are 23 percent less likely to pass college entrance exams, 29 percent more likely to be unemployed and are more likely to be overweight by age 11.

Although it may appear to be disturbingly like one, this column is not intended as an indictment of career women or working mothers. The facts are what they are, and my only objective is to point out to men that it is a mistake to conclude the societal changes of the last 40 years have rendered all American women equally unsuited for marriage. No one would dispute that the odds of successfully raising a family with a meth head or crack addict tend to be on the low side, and no one should be upset by the statistically observable fact that men who wish to marry and have children will have a significantly greater probability of success if they choose to marry women who are dedicated to making a career of being a wife and mother.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Humility

If you have never read CJ Mahaney's book HUMILITY, then it's time to make room on your reading list--like around #1 position. No kidding--this book is short, sweet, sharp, and very much to the point. No really--it IS short (only about 150 pages and very small pages at that), sweet (in the sense that it gives us so many ideas for how to be more sweet *smile*), sharp (meaning intelligent) and to the point--well that's sort of self-explanatory.

Humility. As soon as you think you have it down--you're prideful to even be thinking that. And when you don't have it down, you don't have it down, and are therefore being prideful! It seems this elusive character quality is impossible to achieve.

Guess what?

It IS indeed impossible.

And this is where I realized that humility and the Gospel are so inseparable, that trying to have humility without the Gospel is like trying to swim when there's no water, or trying to breathe when there's no air. It's impossible! Our works of piety on our own accord are completely abhorrent to God because they reek of pride, and our own sinful propensity to think we are just amazing if we do something right.

And so without the Gospel, there is hopelessness for humility. Don't discount the Gospel! It's not just the first building block in your walk as a Christian, it's the entire framework! We never outgrow it as Christians, and we never stop needing it--every second of every day. What struck me most about Mahaney's book was how he never failed to being the saving grace of the Gospel into every point he made on humility.

Basically, we have a need so great that only Christ and his Word can fill it in our soul. But even once He has filled that desire, every day the temptations to do evil will overwhelm our defenses. And here's the greatest mystery of all of this... Our INADEQUACY and INABILITY to be humble on our own leads us to the only way we CAN be humble: in acknowledging that we are not! God loves working like this (check out 1 Corinthians 1).

I could go round and round on this--in circles. But the bottom line is, that if we keep our eyes fixed on Christ and what HE and not WE have accomplished, we will indeed be humble! He promises it.

Be encouraged in that today, and keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. It's that simple.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Determinism or Chaos?

This morning I was reading through Chalcedon magazine, and came across a fantastic article by RJ Rushdoony. First off, let me state my high admiration and respect for Rushdoony. I wish he were still alive so I could meet him somehow... Ah well, in heaven! :)

Anyway, this article addressed the caving in of churches and Christians to the idea that it took God longer--perhaps as long as billions of years--to create the world. Basically, the surrender of many godly people to the theory of evolution. First of all, I don't presume to judge any of my brothers and sisters in Christ who may believe in theistic evolution, or just plain evolution (I might argue that it's basically the same thing, but that's another blog post). I simply seek the TRUTH and this argument made sense to me...

Just like creationism, evolution relies on DETERMINISM and craves it. Determinism = the fact that there is order in any given circumstance, and that we as human beings discern situations from the perspective of already having a determined way it ought to be. The problem with evolution is that it rejects an idea of a supernatural being, so it cannot find a way to use determinism in its theory. Yet determinism is REQUIRED. The opposite of determinism is CHAOS. Let me quote directly from the article as the wording is perfect...

"Science thus WANTS a universe of law and of causality without God, but it would rather ascribe all the magnificent order of the universe to chaos rather than to God, because the scientists involved are fallen men, in rebellion against God and bent on suppressing their knowledge of Him. Men will either presuppose God, or they will presuppose themselves as the basic reality of being."

So if evolution rejects determinism, and the alternative is chaos, therefore evolution began out of chaos.. WAIT A SECOND. Is this really science? Science is socially thought to be a marketplace of ideas that are rationally and reasonably tested, hypothesis applied, theory applied, and finally fact applied it if holds up under the testing and scrutinizing of scientists. How can the very idea that our entire UNIVERSE sprang from chaos even have a seat--much less a high one!--amongst academic science!

OK so you believe that God DID create the world, he just did it a whole lot slower than six 24 hour days... This would lead us back to the Bible--does the word day mean day or DAY!? The word day in Hebrew literally means 24 hours. This is a whole lot simpler than many have made it....

There is a whole lot more from this article, but I will just encourage you to read this book. Find a review HERE.

We can either give glory to chaos and chance, or to a mighty God who DOES exist and who each one of us will see face to face once we die. I pray for a reformation among Christians and non-Christians alike, and a return to moral creationism as opposed to amoral and chancy evolution.