In 2019 I started critiquing Christian marriage books. Until then, I had been writing and speaking in evangelical spaces, but I hadn’t read a lot of Christian marriage books. I figured, they love Jesus, I love Jesus, we’re all saying the same thing! But in January of...
Does the Bible say divorce for abuse is okay? Lots of churches, and denominations, say no. You can only divorce for adultery, they say. But is that true? I've been wanting to do this podcast for a long time, and was prompted again when Naghmeh Panahi (who has also...
The medium is the message. And when it comes to Christian patriarchy, the medium is super pretty right now! Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian sociologist, said that famous “medium is the message” line sixty years ago now. He was explaining how the medium that we hear a...
You don't have to have a destructive marriage to be hurt by bad marriage advice. We're ending up our series on Marriage Misdiagnosis, looking at how all too often Christian marriage advice misdiagnoses the problem, and gives the wrong solution. We've talked a lot...
When Christian marriage advice goes wrong, we can end up following it to the letter--and failing our spouses. In the summer, when Rebecca and I were talking about this, one long-time reader sent me in her story, which illustrates this well, and I saved it to run...
If you just have enough faith, and if you just pray enough, then shouldn't God save your marriage? The first women's Bible study I ever went to, I think right around the time Rebecca was born, was for the book Power of a Praying Wife. The book has sold 8,000,000...
We have an addiction to fairytales--even when it comes to marriage. We love the Disney princesses who are rescued by the princes. We love stories of redemption. And we love our miracles! But sometimes I fear that our love and longing for the extraordinary is used in...
You guys! Guess what happened! Christianity Today actually covered The Great Sex Rescue--and it was phenomenal! A few weeks ago, just after we recorded the podcast about how the authors we critique have been either ignoring us or doubling down and saying awful things,...
We're talking Marriage Misdiagnosis in the month of September--how all too often the evangelical church especially gets the problem WRONG when it comes to marriage, and then the solutions proposed end up making things worse. Last week we started looking at why...
What if the reason that our evangelical marriage advice often doesn't work is because we're aiming for the wrong thing? And because we're aiming for the wrong thing--we've got the wrong solutions? Welcome to our Marriage Misdiagnosis series! This month we're going to...
We know that women have a huge problem with sexual shame. Many men do, too, of course! But let's stick with women for a moment here, because when we were reading best-selling books to see trends of how they taught about sex, we noticed a pattern: Quite often men were...
Do women long to be rescued? I may have done a Fixed-it-for-you-too-far last night on social media, critiquing John Eldredge for calling women's souls "a bloody mess" in the book Captivating, that he co-authored with his wife Stasi. While most people agreed with me,...
What if your wife has been taught toxic things about sex--and you don't even realize it? This month we've been re-running some of my favourite podcast episodes from over a year ago, to allow a lot of our newer podcast listeners to hear some of the great material from...
I am very, very tired of the "don't be a stumbling block" argument when it comes to modesty for girls. I know that this is a very widespread debate, and I have talked about it before in two main posts: My 40% Modesty Rule Why Don't Be a Stumbling Block is a Really Bad...
Hey, everybody! Keith and I have been on vacation this week, just camping and hanging out and doing a whole lot of nothing. He had something on his mind yesterday and wrote up this post that he wanted to share! So here's what he's thinking about when he has time to...