Friday, February 19, 2010

Did I get married too young?


http://www.dennyburk.com/did-i-get-married-too-young/
Well said, Charlie! The man I would consider my spiritual father always said “get yourself together so you can give yourself away”.

In my view, I think that we’ve put too much emphasis on man-based marriages. Today, it seems all about “finding the right one”. There is too much of a reliance on personality, predilection, and, well, feelings. While those things impact a marriage, marriages should be rooted in God first. Getting that right can overcome anything else. NOTE: Neither am I saying that we should ignore all personality traits and/or perceived compatibility. But as your marriage grows, even some of those original signs of compatibility will likely wane or disappear.

And Larry, if you are pointing to the replacement of biblical counseling with pop psychology and personality tests, I have to say what a dangerous proposition that is (at best). I agree that one or two sessions with a pastor or a day seminar isn’t it. Get a good mentoring couple. Seek out the greybeards in your church. Find godly people to pour into you, don’t go and drink the sewage of current culture and what’s currently fashionable. Psychologists can often get the symptoms right, but a solution divorced from God is doomed to failure*. And that, I think, is where the church has often failed. From the replacing of biblical counsel with current psych trends to a jettisoning of discipleship and any semblance of church authority, the church has fostered the undermining of marriage (and, in turn, family).

* - i.e. there are godly psychologists who marry the tools of analysis available with God’s word, but they are few, at least based on my experience and anecdotally speaking.

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

He Loves Jesus but Hates God


http://www.dennyburk.com/he-loves-jesus-but-hates-god/
Don:

I agree that we read in light of the at-the-time culture, but must also maintain a healthy dose of the fact that God authored the words to be transcendent (in one way or another). Taking the at-the-time culturally relative-izing approach to reading scripture (particularly when it comes to prescriptive versus descriptive) is equally damaging as porting every concept to 20th century America without regard to the original culture. The culturally static approach you seem to posit is dangerous at best. But I could also be completely misunderstanding how you mean to apply it.

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