AMP: Homosexual Marriage

Should a Christian man who struggles with homosexuality marry a woman?

Albert Mohler was asked this question by e-mail and the reply he gave this "Ask Anything Wednesday" was about the least thoughtful replies he ever gave on a show.
Dr. Mohlers reply was if I may summon it this way: It's OK to enter into marriage once you discover that you are unhappy with your life as a single.

There are many good secular arguments why this advise is bad advise. But I will toss them aside for this reasoning. Not because they aren't valid but I think that biblical reasoning against Dr. Mohlers advise has a higher persuasiveness for you (if you stumble over this article) and because I hope and I expect Dr. Mohler to correct himself once he has read this article.

First: Why am I in any way competent to give an answer to this question? I'm a homosexual myself and for this reason I know how strong the attraction to men for a homosexual man is. I also know what it would mean to have to be intimate with a woman and most important of all for the reasoning: I observed the conservative christian community for more than a year now. I've read the bible. By that I'm able to rationalize Christian ethics as good as very few Christians themselves can.

Marriage isn't primarily about you. Just like anything on this world isn't primarily about you but about the glory of God. Marriage finds it special glory as it represents the relationship between Jesus and his Church in which the Christian Man has to play the role of Jesus and the Christian woman the role of the Church.
This relationship is defined by unconditional love, trust and absolute intimacy. Just as Jesus and his Church are intimate to each other a husband and a wife have to be intimate with each other.
To enter marriage you have to be fully willing to be fully intimate with your wife. When you take your marriage vow in church you also promise your wife to be intimate with her, just like Jesus promised an intimate relationship with his Church.
So let he take your question literally: Should I enter into marriage if I struggle with homosexuality.
- No
That you struggle with homosexuality means that you can't be fully intimate with your wife. The idea of being sexually intimate with a woman is disgusting for me. I can have women as best friends, as colleagues I could even imagine to share an apartment with a woman I call myself. But I couldn't enter into a sexually intimate relationship with her. And if your are struggling with homosexuality and you are honest to yourself you know that you couldn't also be sexually intimate with a women without feelings of repulsion.
When Jesus entered into the intimate relationship with his Church he did that with full love and having this desire to be intimate as he entered the covenant. When you stand in front of that altar and you take this marriage vow you have to do it in love to your future spouse in in the full willingness to be intimate with her. If take this vow not being sure whether you can be fully intimate with your wife, in desire and not in repulsion, you are lying to God, the congregation, to your wife and to yourself by taking this vow.
You also can't do this in the mindset that God will bless you and your marriage in making the sexual intimacy less repulsive to you once you are married. There's a simple word for the mindset that once I enter into marriage the Holy Spirit will change your mind to be able to have a desire for sexual intimacy with a woman: blackmail.
You would also be trying to blackmail God, by saying that he will change you once you enter into marriage. If God wants to heal you from your sexual attraction to men he will do it when he thinks that it's time to do that. If you believe that you can accelerate Gods decision to help you overcome that attraction you are questioning Gods sovereignty.

To summon it up, if you enter into a marriage with a woman while struggling with homosexuality you are:
- lying to God
- lying to your congregation
- lying to your wife
- doubting Gods sovereignty
- You aren't loving your neighbor like you love yourself (because you would never want that someone who feels repulsion at the thought of being sexually intimate with you marries you)

I hope I could dissipate all doubts that it's a really bad idea to marry a woman while struggling with homosexuality based on a Christian worldview.

If this answer contains theological errors I encourage you to write me why it does.
(after all, I'm still an atheist)

AMP: Secular Sunday School

Dear Readers!

Doctor Mohler made his last show about atheist churches and mentioned that atheists in America had the idea of sending their children to atheist Sunday Schools.
He wondered what in the world such an secular Sunday School would look like. I think I can help his imagination with that. In Germany religious education is taught as a regular subject in all schools. For those students who don't want to be taught religious education there is the subject of Ethik (Ethics)

I found a summary of what is taught in German secular ethics classes and will present it.

(note: First German students are 4 years at elementary schools. I will present the curriculum of a Gymnasium which last 9 further years.

source: http://www.schulfach-ethik.de/ethik/Gymnasium/Klasse_5-13.htm

5th grade:
5.1 Perception and Reality
5.2 Needs and rules
5.3 Freedom, Deciding and Acting
5.4 Playing and learning

6th grade:
6.1 The field of community family
6.2 Me and the others
6.3 Image of humanity and ethics of Judaism and Christianity

7th grade:
7.1 Becoming adult
7.2 Conflict and how to solve them
7.3 Image of humanity and ethics of Islam
7.4 Celebrations and their meaning to society

8th grade:
8.1 Way to find a meaning in everyday life
8.2 Responsibility for yourself and others
8.3 Arguing ethically
8.4 Environmental ethics

9th grade:
9.1 Conscience and acting
9.2 Religious interpretations of the meaning of life
9.3 Gender roles, partnership, family
9.4 Ethics of peace

10th grade:
10.1 Values as Foundation and Aim of human acting
10.2 Conscience and responsibility
10.3 Ethics of peace
10.4 World Religions: Hinduism, China
10.5 Gender roles, partnership, family

11th grade
11.1 Basic positions of philosophical ethics
11.2 Philosophic-ethical interpretations of Humanity
11.3 Philosophy of Religion and World Religions in comparing singular questions
11.4 Medical ethics

12th grade
12.1 Basic questions of philosophical ethics
12.2 Freedom and determination from the viewpoint of different sciences

13th grade
13.1 Joy
13.2 Right and Justice

AMP: The Divorce Industrial Complex

It seems that Dr. Mohler makes any effort to from this political alliance between the Far Left and the Christian Right. The logical fallacy of the argument from envy and resentment is something I'm more used to hear from the Far Left.
In his latest blog: "The Divorce Industrial Complex" he points out that a whole industry of government officials, lawyers, judges, social security bureaucracy and counselors formed around the divorce issue.
What he fails to argue is why those people don't deserve the money they currently receive by the divorce-system and how he wants to reduce the amount of money they currently receive.
The lawyers and judges are needed to set how much alimony one partner has to pay after a divorce to the other. To be able to judge on that with some sense of justice you have to be an expert in law - and experts cost money. So it's undeniable that the lawyers and judges who rule those trials deserve an appropriate payment.
It really seems that Dr. Mohler thinks that this payment isn't enough... because additional to those trials over alimony, he would also want the partners who want a divorce have a trial over the question of fault. At least that is what his demand for a fault-divorce would end. Shame is disappearing more and more from our societies and therefor I don't believe that many couples would feel a delicacy about washing all their dirty linen in such a trial about the fault of a divorce. Such trials won't just stretch the nerves of judges and lawyers to the extreme, if the marriage wasn't totally wrecked by the beginning of such a trial - in the end it will. The only ones who will maybe have some entertainment will be the people in the audience of such a trial.
The only ones who could really help a marriage in trouble are counselors who help the couple by mediating between both partners and teaching conflict management. For some reason that I don't really understand many people feel less shame about having a court trial to get their marriage ended than to have some counselor come in and help them to learn how to get around with each other. Perhaps it hurts their pride to have to admit that they need help to solve their problems. Pride is one of the worst guidelines for life.
I know that counseling has a very bad reputation within the conservative Christian community. But when I talk about a counselor that needn't be someone with a PhD in psychology. If the partners prefer to be counseled by a theologian with a focus on biblical marriage counseling than that's fine.
The social security bureaucracy also deserves its money. By the time it has to act on behalf of the good of the child the marriage of the parents is already wrecked. That we don't counsel the couple today how to be good parents even when divorced leads them to hold their child as hostage in an alimony trial.
If counselors would teach the parents in an early stage of the divorce how to be parent to their child even after a divorce we could perhaps really save a lot of money on those child care agencies - but for that we would have to get rid of our resentments towards counseling and mediation.

Having the question of fault return to the divorce issue will be no help whatsoever. If one of the spouses is really determined to leave the marriage than no trial over fault will stop him or her. If you want to make it harder to end a marriage than you should force those spouses through a process of mediation. Unlike a court trial, it keeps the dirty linen out of public and doesn't pose the risk to wreck a marriage once and forever.

WOTMR: Spanking Authorities

In my last blog I wrote that children learn best if they accept their teacher as an person of authority. And I will stand by that even as I'm presented by one of the stupidest means to reinforce authority by 'The Way of the Master'. Namely: Spanking.

Authority stems from character and competence. By his/her character the teacher or parent has to perform his/her role and by the competence reinforce that he/she belongs in that role. Coming from there I have to criticize quite a few behaviors.
One typical error (at least in Europe) is that parents and teachers want to be best friends with their children. They aren't; that's not their role. If by chance you are a parent or a teacher who wants to be best friend with their children / students: Your children already have best friends (at least I hope so). They also need a Mom, a Dad, or a teacher. Yes they won't like you as parent or as teacher as they like their best friends - but on the other hand: they also don't like their best friends as they like their parents and teachers. And especially the teacher has to realize that being liked by everyone isn't necessarily part of his/her job.
So much to the character part. As parent and teacher you also have to show your competence. That means that you don't just tell your children to do something but also explain why you want them to do that. If necessary: Explain why it is good for them.
OK, I couldn't possibly think of any good reason for reading the bible the fifth time - but (Todd) if you would want your children to read it the fifth time than that would be your job to explain.
Furthermore: Parents shouldn't put the competence of the teachers in question. A teacher might be wrong on some points, but as soon as parents start to slander their children's teachers in front of their children they shouldn't be all to much surprised if their child perform even worse at school.

And now: Spanking and Slapping.
Whenever you feel the need to spank or slap your child you should also feel the need to spank and slap yourself. Because apparently you could neither convince your child with your character nor with your competence otherwise. Each time you spank and slap your children you also put your competence into question. To your child you seem unrestrained in the moment you slap it. And maybe it will do as you told your child to do.
But it won't do it because it's convinced that what it has to do is for its own good. That will combine with the feeling of being treated unfairly and by your child just doing something in the mindset that it was blackmailed to do it. So while your child might do what you want it to do, it will do it in a mindset of frowardness - perhaps even thinking that you yourself couldn't even reason your demands and thereby questioning your authority.

Therefor spanking authorities are most of all spanking their own authority.

Does therefor spanking have to be illegal?

Yes, because this encourages that this behavior disappears from our societies. If you just spanked your child once and mildly it will most likely turn out like this: No plaintiff, no judge.
Do you really think your children will run to the courts as soon as they are slapped the first time?
They will do if it becomes a habit and than it is adequate for them to do so. And apart from arresting the parents or fining them (which would also hurt the children) they should be sent into parenting counseling. At least for the first times they come into court for spanking their children.

By the way: Wouldn't Christian parenting courses make great as a program at your local church?

AMP: Good Luck!

Dr. Albert Mohler (or should I better write Comrade Mohler?) sees the possibility of a political alliance between the groups of the far left of the political spectrum and conservative christians. As he told us last Wednesday, that he doesn't drink alcohol, he doesn't even have a good excuse for such thoughts.

OK, he just sees those common grounds at homeschooling - so fate will most likely spare us of Dr. Mohler performing 'The Internationale'.

How common are those grounds that Dr. Mohler sees with the very left really?

It's true: Also the Very Left (mostly anarchists) likes the idea of homeschooling but it does so to avoid that their children are brought up to be conformist citizens. In this course they want to raise their children as fully autonomous persons who fully enjoy their individualism (As parents they need to have nerves like steel).
The Christian Right wants homeschooling because it wants to fight the non-conformist influences of the public school system on their children. They (other than the Very Left) raise their children to be decals of their parents. It's not of the very first concern of the Christian Right that their children could be discouraged to think on their own. To the contrary: There's nothing more they fear that their children could question the biblical truth when presented with the theory of evolution or unbiblical literature.
I've never heard any proponent of the Christian Right say: I fear that, by the conformist influence of the public school, my child could be discouraged to think for itself.
- But exactly that is the reasoning of the Very Left to homeschool their children.
So while the means are the same - the ends couldn't possibly be more different.

I hope that the Very Left comes to it senses again and realizes that individualism develops from being exposed to several worldviews. To get such an alliance offered should make them start to think.

On the other hand: That they accept this alliance is quite unlikely. In its inability to make compromises the Very Left is nothing short of the Christian Right.

AMP: What marriage should be to the Secular World

I'm reading and listening with fascination about Dr. Mohlers concerns about marriage. His last article in his blog summons his point of view extremely well. I would like to give to this debate a viewpoint from a secular perspective.

In former times marriage had a great role in the public but it is declining every year. Article 6 of the German Basic Law (The German constitution) clearly states for example: "Marriage and the family shall enjoy the special protection of the state".
This Article also shows where the decline of the role of marriage comes from. The German law states Marriage and family almost as an unity, both inseparable from each other. The birth control pill has done away with that. While in earlier times children were expected to be born soon after a marriage was entered by two persons, today more and more couples stay childless. If there weren't children in a marriage than this wouldn't have normally been because of the choice of the spouses, but because of infertility. Marriage was a certain and the normal way to set children into this world.
That's no more today. Most couples delay childbearing or doesn't have children at all. Also very few unwed men feel obligated to marry their girlfriend anymore once they are informed that she is pregnant.

That marrying couples were soon expected to have and raise children, was the best secular reason to give some kind of special protection to this partnership. Now that no one can really expect a married couple to take on such responsibilities it's hard to justify those special treatments anymore. The only way out of it is a secular redefinition of marriage.
In my view marriage is the covenant between two partners who raise common children or where on partner is expecting to bear a common child, while family are the relationships between those two partners to their children and vice versa.

Just in this definition you could argue a special public interest in keeping the both partners together. It's hard to find any scientific or sociological study, that wouldn't show that children are best raised by their parents. Coming from that point it's quite easy to argue that the public has an interest in ensuring that such a partnership isn't broken easily.
If in a partnership without children one partner leaves the other that's maybe tragic for the partner whose left, but the public has no good interest in keeping both together. What else should others assume than that the partner who left had good reasons to do so? I don't see any good if we let both partners wash their dirty linen in public.
The whole issue becomes very different at the moment children are involved. The well-being of those children is a public interest and it's also in the best interest of the children if the public gets concerned about them. It's hard to grasp what some parents are able to do to their children in the process of a divorce and I seriously doubt the parenting skills of anyone who is able to use his/her children to blackmail the other spouse or to humiliate that person even more. To avoid that I would change the process of divorce radically.
The first step for a couple with children who wants a divorce should be into marriage counseling. Whether those partners want to get counseled by a church or a secular institution should be up to them. Some married partners simply lost the ability to talk to each after years of marriage. Forcing them into such a counseling to get a divorce also forces them to think again about their reasons for a divorce and will prevent marriages from being ended easily. Counseling also has the advantage over a court trial that it isn't about the question whose guilt it is that the marriage failed. I've never heard about a conflict that was solved by finding out who caused it. Maybe in some cases it can help to know the guild but viewing the problems like they are right now and solving them from there is often the best way. Having a court trial on whose fault the end of a marriage is would rather accelerate the process of the breaking apart of that covenant.
If after counseling one or both partners still want to divorce they should be obligated to go into a second counseling. This time not about their marriage but about their children. Even after their divorce both still stay parent to their children and both have to accept that the other partner also stays parent to the child. Just look at the example on what divorced parents do to their children to punish the other partner and you will clearly see that some serious education on how to go through this situation as adults  is needed.

I would like to live in a world in which every expressed will is thoughtful and informed, because in this world we wouldn't need either of the counsellings.

Those measurements would in my opinion be much better for the children than the systems that the United States and Germany (in a milder way) have.
But what about the role of God in a marriage that Dr. Mohler sees?
I couldn't care less. If there is a God, and if this God is concerned about those marriages than he should take measurements against those spouses on his own. If there really is a God than it would be an insolent overbearing of the state to believe that he (the state) has to punish or to act on God's behalf.
When it comes to the Church that might be involved in this divorce: That's also not the concern of the state. If this Church throws everyone out who gets divorced: That's their choice. Whether those partners had children or not. You could even have anyone who gets married in your churches sign that he/she has to pay a penalty of X dollars in case of a divorce to the church.

There are marriages from all kinds of worldview perspectives. The state in a pluralistic society should be a neutral agent. Instead of deciding that the Judeo-Christian perception of marriage is the right one and impose it on others, the state should weight legitimate interests of the persons (especially the children involved) against the freedoms of the persons who want the divorce.
The state also shouldn't privilege partnerships between a man and a woman over partnerships of two persons of the same gender. Both forms have the same kind of benefit to the state (happier citizens than if those people would live alone) and it hard to argue that a man shouldn't be allowed to visit his same sex partner in hospital if another man would be allowed to visit his female partner in hospital.

The dividing line between a civil union and a marriage should therefor be common children.

And as long as medical progress doesn't create those challenges or as long as we don't allow same sex couples to adopt children (which is a different debate), we won't need to talk about gay marriage.

Todd Friel: Defintion of the word 'universe'

Sorry Todd, after praising you in the last article I need to criticize you in this one.

I don't know how deep you studied theology. At least not that deep that you would have gathered any sophisticated knowledge of the Latin language.

the first syllable of universe, rightly comes from the Latin word "uni" which means one.
the second syllable comes from the from the Latin word "vertere" which means "something rotated, rolled, changed" (versum is the perfect passive participle of that word)

therefor the word universe means "everything rolled into one, everything combined into one".

I got this researched this information on Wikipedia and you might want to point your listeners to that link so that they can find the real meaning.

WOTMR: Meditating on Workfare

The good thing about The Way of the Master is, that I sometimes don't need to listen to the whole program to get two great topics for this blog. Todays topics will be Yoga in elementary school and workfare programs.

First I'll start with the Yoga issue. Todd is more and more concerned about the adaptation of Yoga into the evangelical culture in America. As part of eastern mythologies he sees it as demonic.  Of course, - coming from that standpoint - he sees the teaching of Yoga and meditation as state-religion issue. If it were a state-religion issue we atheists would probably be the first to alarm the ACLU and get it out of school.
But it isn't.
Meditation and Yoga are forms of self-hypnosis which are as tools to achieve altered states of the mind used in eastern religions. That doesn't make them religious themselves. That Christians when they meet sit quietly, enjoy church hymns and listen to someone speak, doesn't make it religious to visit a theater or an opera.
But both behaviors bring your mind in a different state. In the first case it's the self-hypnotic nature which does it in the second set the mind is brought into a different that by the illusion of some higher authority present.
The Christian set is already used as a tool in public schools - when students have to sit quietly in class and listen. That the teacher already presents an actual authority doesn't help the students as much to learn as if they, by the set they are in, also unconsciously presume that the teacher is an authority. By our evolutionary predisposition we learn better from persons we presume to be an authority than from others.
Yoga and Meditation on the other hands are great tools to deal with stress. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis can be used for all kinds of things. Just like a hammer can be used for all kinds of purposes. If someone wants to use it to get "in touch" with some God than he will get "in touch" with some God.  The imaginary power of our mind is that big that he will even be able to see his God (whatever God he believes in). When we encounter people who practice eastern religions we should remind ourselves that our mind is able to create all kinds of hallucinations - even without demonic influence. Just look at the example of LSD. Do you really believe that a horde of demons comes every time someone takes it to fool him around, or isn't it more likely that the brain does those hallucinations on its own (with help of some toxic chemicals).
Apart from creating hallucinations self-hypnosis can be a tool to cope with stress. One should always try self-hypnotic practices before he considers stress-medication. If it is taught as such a tool, to elementary students, its a good thing.
Elementary School is not just about reading, writing and arithmetic - I fully have to agree with the teacher on that point. It has to prepare the students for life. Whether they already have stress is at this point irrelevant - it is undeniably beneficial for them to know how to cope with stress in the future lifes.

I'm happy that I've learned how to meditate during my karate classes - otherwise my blood pressure would sometimes skyrocket during the program.

Now to the workfare issue.

Ehre wem Ehre gebührt! (eng: Give honor to whom honor belongs!)
I find it laudable that Todd rebuked the most common conservative objections to welfare issues.
Those objections are very often very misanthropic (Those on welfare just scam the system) or unworldly (Those on welfare are just to lazy to take one of the many jobs available).

He suggested that the poor would better be helped with workfare programs. Which is a thoughtful answer. I, as a social-democrat --> Social Democratic Party of Germany, still have problems to fully embrace those programs. And I'll try to give an answer as thoughtful as Todd gave.
Workfare programs have the advantage that they give the recipients of those money the feeling that they've worked for it - at least if they do something meaningful. And that is where the problem starts. This meaningful work was maybe done by someone else. It is very hard to prevent workfare people from doing jobs that were done by fully paid people before the program started.
To give an example: In Germany there were one-euro-jobs introduced. Additional to their welfare money the people on those one-euro-jobs were paid one tax free euro an hour. If they denied to work in such a job their welfare money was also annulled or reduced for at least a month. By law those employers of those 1-euro-jobbers weren't allowed to replace workers that formally worked for them with those cheaper people on the workfare program. But the abuses of those 1-Euro-jobs aren't. In the community where I lived 1-euro-jobbers were for example used to clean the green spaces next to the roads - something a company was paid for before the program was introduced.
Workfare programs tend to produce a tax-subsidized competition in the low income sector and very soon you find yourself with many more people on workfare than there were on welfare before. Therefor they tend to accelerate a process of impoverishment of the lower classes in our societies.

Furthermore: Workfare isn't very forward-looking.
Many people neglect the causes of unemployment in our western civilization. Most of it is caused by an ongoing automation of our industries and a very cheap workforce in former Third World countries. To be able to compete with the rising nations of China and India our industry is forced to replace more and more manual work by automation. Those workers and specialists who can build and handle those machineries have to be highly trained. Those who are unemployed are therefor mostly those who are less educated.
That's the point were I would start. Instead of workfare I'd prefer edu-fare, programs in which welfare moneys are dependent on the participation in educational programs (i.e. to improve technical skills, learn foreign languages, improve in written expression and so on). If western nations want to compete with the rising nations in Asia, we have to remember where our strengths are. They are most certainly not a poorly educated but cheap workforce. Therefor we should stop to subsidize manual work that needs no education, but should start to subsidize programs that would raise the education of our workforce even higher than it is today.