Emotional chastity and the break-up.

One thing that I don’t think is talked about enough in Christian dating circles is emotional chastity.  Yeah, I know Boundless likes to pound the “intentionality” drum (mainly in the direction of men), but it’s not exactly the same thing.  “Intentionality” makes it sound like you’re running a program called IntentionalityCheck 2.0 that has an intentionality app that you can install on your smartphone to make sure your dating behavior is kept within intentionality guidelines.  “Did I guard my heart?” Check.  “Did he pay for dinner?” Check.  “Did he directly say it was a date and that he would like to pursue me for the purpose of marriage while being the spiritual leader that the Bible instructs him to be while loving me sacrificially as Christ loved the Church so as not to defraud me during this season of singleness?”  Oops.  EJECT!  EJECT!

Emotional chastity, on the other hand, is more a character trait.  It’s internalizing a way of living.  Just as a physically chaste person not only refrains from improper sexual behavior but also lives in such a way as to not put himself in a situation where physical chastity could be compromised in the first place, an emotionally chaste person guards his heart as a matter of being, not as an item on a checklist to qualify for emotional chastity.

I think that Christian singles today get themselves into more trouble by violating emotional chastity (EC) than by physical chastity (PC).  (And since the number of Christian singles who aren’t physically chaste is pretty high, you can only imagine how many aren’t emotionally chaste.)  Especially among Christian singles who are trying to practice PC, the EC thing can be a huge downfall, since getting close to someone emotionally is the only outlet for sexual energy that hasn’t been slapped with a big NO-NO sticker.  As a result, we have Christian singles entwining themselves into friendguy/friendgirl relationships with endless angsting and drama on one party’s end, which just leads Boundless types to shriek at the men to install IntentionalityCheck 2.0 and MAN UP AND MARRY THOSE WORTHY CHRISTIAN GIRLS.

EC isn’t just for the romantic arena, though; its benefits extend to all areas of life.  How many times have you known someone who lacks discretion in how much of himself he gives away to friends, to relatives, to parents, children, or coworkers?  EC isn’t about prevention so much as it’s about discretion and self-control – in a word, maturity.  It’s about maintaining boundaries that are healthy.

In the context of dating relationships, EC can help a relationship blossom as it was meant to unfold.  You’re not oversharing too early.  You’re not becoming emotionally dependent on the other person to the point you’re smothering them.  You’re not promising things you haven’t thought through or don’t intend to follow through on.  You’re taking the time to establish a foundation before you start erecting an emotional three-car garage McHouse with dust-repellent blinds and a mint-green nursery for the twins.  Likewise, if you break up, especially if it’s early into the dating process, you won’t feel like someone robbed you.

Speaking of which, I really think that Christian dating advice needs to focus more on break-ups.  I feel like there is so much emphasis on just trying to get people to date ~intentionally~ that there’s next to nothing out there if that dating doesn’t work out.  Most people don’t marry the first person they date, so what do you do if you realize this person isn’t the one?  Well, that’s easy. You just tell the break-upper that he’s not being sufficiently spiritual or seeking the Lord enough.  That’ll teach him to date a girl and not marry her!  So many people would benefit from getting broken up with swiftly and succinctly, rather than trying to couch it in LJBFs and “You’re so great, someone (else) will be lucky to find you!”s.

New Boundless blogger to men: “Yep, still your fault.”

I noticed today that Boundless has a new male blogger this summer named James.  According to his bio on the site, he will be entering his senior year at Liberty University this coming fall and plans to get a Master’s degree for marriage and family counseling.  Now, obviously James is just one person, but being that he seems to be following a very stereotypical Christian path to a profession that will specifically engage Christians, his views are very likely to be widely held by people like him.  So it’s worth paying attention to his viewpoints, because those are the viewpoints that Christians with marital troubles are going to hear.

Based on his most recent (and introductory) post, those viewpoints are pretty standard churchian stuff.  In “One of the Boys,” he relates an email conversation he had with a reader named Jeff.  Jeff was venting about standard church-manosphere complaints:  churches blame the men for everything and don’t support them with camaraderie or encouragement.

James responds:

I wish I could sit down and have a conversation with Jeff. “Jeff”, I’d say, “I completely understand where you are coming from.” I grew up in a church culture where the mindset seemed to be that men were the animals with the problems and all women had to do was not feed the beast inside the man. The women were the innocent victims of man’s inability to “live right.”

I, however, don’t want to deny the truth that God created men to lead and take responsibility of their families. Therefore, changing men’s hearts and lives is the most effective way to shot block our culture’s high divorce rate. Here at Boundless, our passion and dream is to see men rise up to their full potential as leaders, filled with the Spirit, putting aside their own desires, and passionately sacrificing for their families. If men will lead well, women will follow. In trying to communicate this to our readers, however, some guys seem to receive a nagging and condemning rant, rather than an inspiring and encouraging call to arms.

This is where Boundless, and the whole churchosphere of gender relations, just completely misses the boat.

One, if “changing men’s hearts and lives” is the most effective way to reduce divorce, then that effectively means that women are not responsible for their own actions and will justify divorcing their husbands because they don’t have the correct “heart” and “life.”  So James has some sort of cognitive dissonance that he can recognize his own church’s special snowflake stance, yet buys into it at the same time.  This stance ignores or at best downplays the possibility that women have depraved hearts as well, and may choose rebellion against their husbands regardless of the husband’s actions.  Furthermore, look at how many women remain married to awful men, or who won’t leave adulterous or abusive husbands.  It’s pretty obvious that “changing men’s hearts and lives” is not necessarily an effective method of reducing divorce.  Sure, in some cases it will work, but it won’t work as often or as well as Boundless thinks it will.

Second, James’s assertion seems to be that leading well is equivalent to more self-denial, more self-sacrifice, and more appeasement, with no room to say enough.  I feel like the churchosphere’s idea of manly leadership is running yourself ragged for your wife and kids to get them the things they need to feel loved, and if you’re not doing that, you’re an inadequate man whose wife will probably divorce you on account of bad leadership.  In reality, real leadership often boils down to judiciously and firmly saying no, and holding others accountable for their actions.

Third, and this is really mind-boggling – if the readership is continually saying it feels nagged and condemned by all the exhortations to man up, THEN MAYBE YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.  Maybe you are scolding them like a woman, and as a man you should recognize that MEN HATE THAT.  If your “inspiring and encouraging call to arms” comes across like finger-wagging scolding, then maybe you need to change your approach and stop blaming everyone else for being too sensitive or not being submitted to God enough to hear His special message for you or whatever.

Any effective campaign to reduce divorce needs to address BOTH women and men.  You can’t just tell the men to lead and expect the women to follow when there is no concurrent expectation for women to change their behavior and mindsets.  Every time you tell men to man up and lead, you have to tell women to simmer down and submit.  Otherwise, the implicit message is just “you only need to submit if he’s doing an adequate job of leading.”  Which is precisely the attitude that landed us in this too-much-divorce culture in the first place!

I mean, you just can’t have a church culture where the men are constantly called on to be more humble, more sacrificial, more manly, yet the women’s heads are filled with messages that they are Daughters of the King! and special and anointed and powerful and beautiful and shouldn’t settle for less than God’s best.  Can anyone honestly say that this is a recipe for reducing divorces?

Men, you should stop abusing your wives. Women, let me think of something you shouldn’t do.

My church is currently doing a sermon series on the Ten Commandments.  This morning the sermon centered around the second commandment, which is the anti-idolatry commandment.  If you read beyond the actual verse prohibiting the making of an idol, you will find that God goes on to say that the third and fourth generations after the idolaters will be punished.

My pastor interpreted this as meaning that the negative consequences of the sins of the father will be experienced by his grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.  And I agree – we see this play out over and over in society.  For example, alcoholics tend to produce alcoholics, smokers produce smokers, welfare recipients produce welfare recipients, baby daddies and baby mamas produce more baby daddies and baby mamas, obese parents produce obese kids, etc.

But did my pastor use any of these as examples?  No.  For some reason, after an admonition to men to provide for their families and sacrifice for their wives, he brought up ABUSE and said that fathers who model abuse to their families will produce abusers.  So fathers should think twice about abusing their families.  I don’t want to downplay abuse, but this seemed like a really random and extreme example to use.  Then he said that mothers have a responsibility, too – to treat their husbands well and give them respect and encouragement.

HAHAHAHA, just kidding!

What he actually said was that mothers should think twice about staying in abusive relationships because they’re teaching their daughters to that a loving relationship includes abuse.  And that was the extent of things mothers need to do to stop propagating bad family situations.

While the pastor was giving these examples, I started wondering if my church had an actual problem with abusive husbands.  Why else would the pastor use this kind of example?  I mean, is he getting a lot of calls each month from women claiming to be abused (whether physically or verbally) by their husbands?  Am I attending a church where the husbands are constantly roughing up their wives and calling them profanity-laden pejoratives or otherwise psychologically manipulating them to believe they are worthless?

Or is it that abuse is such a knee-jerk sympathy trigger and clear-cut black and white issue that no one will argue with it?  Hmmmmmmm.  Regardless, I was disappointed that the teaching was presented in such a way as to make it look like husbands are the main propagators of badness in future generations, except for those wives who stay with abusers.  In reality, women are just as capable of destroying the futures of their children as men are.  They’re just given more of a pass because they don’t have the ability to be as physically dangerous as a man.