For Better...Forever! - Part III

So I’ve finally gotten around to finishing my review of For Better…Forever! This is the stuff I didn’t like, and I wanted to take my time on it so I could deal with it fairly and evenhandedly. I know the author is never, ever going to read this blog, but I still want to be fair.

One thing I didn’t appreciate was his tone. When he got to the chapter on sex he began talking a lot about how pagans “stole” sex and twisted it around and perverted it. After re-reading the passage a few times I still couldn’t decide if he was using the term pagan to mean actual pagans, or if he was using it in the obnoxious way some people do, to refer to all non-members of your religion. For example, some Catholics will refer to all non-Catholics as pagans, some Fundamentalists will refer to all non-Fundies as pagans, etc. I find that to be distasteful. There was also a point where he said that he would personally come to the house of anyone who read his book and still used the threat of divorce in an argument and cut out their tongue. Which, if you think about it, is kind of silly, since that type of violence is as much of a sin as threatening to end a marriage. But yeah, the cutting out my tongue thing made me lose a lot of love for this author.

The biggest thing that irritated me about the book, though, was the following passage. It’s from a section of the book where he talks about couples that are truly unified and truly equal, and how they resolve conflicts.

…all decisions that affect the family should be made with the full cooperation of the husband and wife (and possibly the children). Further, decisions must not be made on the basis of who has more power, or whose turn it is to “win”; rather, they should be made on the basis of whose idea more clearly benefits the general good of the family. Therefore, in most instances, the husband and wife will be just as willing to defer to each other, just as Christ demands (cf. Eph 5:21). However, there will be times when either emergencies occur, or when consultation among the family members yields no clear winning answer. In these times, assuming the man is deferring to Christ (cf. Eph 5:21) and has the good of the family foremost in his heart and mind, the man would cast the deciding ballot. This designation is a result of the qualities God ordained Adam to emphasize, qualities that, assuming he is acting in deference to Christ and truly has the good of the family as his foremost thought, make him more likely to be able to discern God’s will for his family.

As funny as it sounds, I prefer people who blindly say, “The Bible says the man is the boss” because they only have a basic grasp of the message. This guy, though, is saying that the man is more likely to understand and relay the will of God. What makes Mike more able to understand God than me? Would a female saint married to an oblivious man be less able to understand God’s will just because of her femininity? It bothers me, especially when he’s not able to pinpoint just what these “qualities” are. For some reason, saying I should just submit is much less abrasive than saying that I should submit because I have a lesser relationship with God.

Overall it was an interesting book. However, it wasn’t written by a priest or a theologian. With this book I have a luxury that I don’t have with really religious teachings – I can take the parts that I agree with and just ignore the rest.