16 October 2022
I'm a total alien, apparently.
Jack's blog is not the only place where I read about the dynamics of human sexual relationships. Rather, it's just one of the best sources I've found. What seems consistent across all the sources, gauging only on what shows up in the posts and comments, is just how very bad the mainstream situation is. Someone linked a brief YouTube video that does a good job of describing the situation in terms of our common expectations. Here in America, we have drifted a very long way from even the most obvious norms. If things keep going in this direction, our particular branch of humanity will cease to exist. We won't reproduce enough to sustain our presence, and those who do have children will leave them so messed up that those children in turn won't even want to reproduce.
The mainstream offers them almost nothing.
My experience is far, far away from all of that. It's not that I don't see what's going on, but that I have been spared some of that. If you go by what men complain about in their marriages, I've been living on the threshold of Heaven. My wife isn't very much like what they describe as typical, but more like what they describe as ideal. And then there's a jillion electrons spilled all over those forums about how to move their situations closer to mine.
Granted, there are some who seem to have a knack for making the situation better, more tolerable, but nobody has any real solutions. What men call "Game" in that context refers to the lore of how men can "play" on a woman's responses to get what he wants. But that's just the usual PUA stuff, and there has been very little work done for those who seek something better than that. They want good marriages like mine. But because I haven't walked through all the fires they have, and don't have the burn scars to prove it, I really have no standing to offer much practical advice.
Please note: not much practical advice.
That's not my training, and it's not my mission. More to the point, my mission is to tell you that it's altogether likely there can be no fix for your bad marriage. Yes, listen to people like Scott who comments, and has guest posted, on Jack's blog. Even he admits that there really isn't much we can do in many cases. We could probably come up with an excellent training program for young men, but we cannot just rebuild society in such a way as to get those young men to listen. We don't have, and can't get, the leverage to change our society. The society is so utterly messed up that it's hopeless, as folks like deti warn us, another regular on Jack's blog. Keep in mind that deti is a lawyer who sees up close a very large number of people making bad choices.
Instead, I have been trying to point out a different kind of solution: Reject this world in the first place. If you can get some good advice on the mechanics of your situation, take it and run with it. But for the most part, I hope you'll embrace that this horrific situation is our condition at this time in God's plans for the world.
This is where all my blather comes in about the shocking difference between this world and what the Bible says is God's intentions for us. How did I get a great marriage? It wasn't by learning from my parents; that was a bad marriage. My great marriage was a longer term consequence of an early choice not to be like everyone else in my world. Miracle or not, the choice was mine to make, and it prepared me to choose wisely when the Lord brought the right woman into my life. I carefully avoided pursuing women who interested my fleshly nature, and waited on the Lord to touch my convictions.
I'll proclaim to my dying day that she is a miracle, and so was God breaking through to me when I was young. But if that shuts down your drive to seek something better, then you have completely missed the point. This life is supposed to suck. As someone else has said, the default for human existence is "a short miserable life, a lingering painful death, and eternity in Hell." That we somehow escape any part of that is God's mercy and grace. But there remains a duty to Him regardless of how He blesses us or doesn't.
It's not about the blessings you desire. That's just the side effects of something far more important. We are born owing God our lives. What He decides to do with us is His choice. That might include some things you really don't want, but if you shut yourself off from His will, you'll never know what He has in mind. Whatever He wants for you is the best you could possibly have; don't mess that up by demanding and seeking things you think you want just because you see someone else having certain blessings. If you don't consult Him, you cannot possibly know what you should want.
We will never know His blessings outside the Covenant. Whatever you gain in this world without the Covenant is not going to bless you eternally. But even that is missing the point: He owns you. He decides what is in your best interest. The only thing you should ever care about is peace with Him. Stop demanding that life provide whatever it is you happen to want for yourself. Get your "wants" fixed by surrendering to Him. Stop reducing things to the mechanics of how to get people to do what you want. Start thinking in terms of getting yourself to do what God wants. The only real problem is your frame of reference.
Just saying "the Covenant" includes an awful lot of obligation to restructure our lives as much as possible. A major element in His dealings with us is getting us to think beyond our own lives. You want your children to have good marriages? Get them as far as possible away from the mainstream society. Do all in your power to insulate them from sin. Not the natural bumps and bruises of being human, but insulate them from the influences that foist upon them a frame of reference that is false. It may well be too late for your life, but whatever God still has left in store for blessing you requires that you start thinking in terms of future generations.
Yes, Jacks' blog specializes in one narrow sector of what the Covenant has to say about our lives. We dare not let that specialization distract us from the wider question of what it means to serve the Creator. Just because I didn't have to walk through the fire of a bad marriage doesn't mean I have no solution, but it does mean the solution is not limited to the mechanics of dealing with a woman who is not yet committed to the Covenant. It means trusting the Lord to provide the things no amount of practical advice can give you.
Don't get distracted by the mechanics and outcomes. Focus on peace with God. Over the years, men I've counseled and led to the Covenant have frankly seen more in the long run get a divorce versus those whose marriages were healed. What happened is that their embrace of the Covenant gave God a chance to reveal that their marriage was already dead. It's sad that those outnumber the others; it's sad that the women in America are so horribly deceived and so intractably devoted to idolatrous lies. You cannot fix someone else's problems. The best you can do is help them see more clearly that there is a problem, and what it is.
The solution has ever been the same: Draw near to God and let Him do what He must do according to His divine moral character.
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