What happens when a charismatic man with no qualifications starts a marriage ministry? You end up with a book that sounds like he wants the best for people--but gives completely unhelpful, and often very harmful, advice. Today Keith and I are taking a deep dive into...
One of the things we’re passionate about on this blog is making sure the self-help and relationship advice in the evangelical world is healthy. Over the last few years, our team has surveyed over 32,000 people, measuring how certain teachings common in the evangelical...
We've figured out our biggest problem. Recently I was talking with a young couple who got married after having done everything "right." They thought marriage would be easy; instead, sex was the hardest part of their lives. She felt objectified; he felt rejected; and...
When we change our minds, we rarely do it all at once. Over the last decade, Keith and I have changed our minds about a lot of things. But we've done it at different rates, and it's been messy. We're pretty much at the same place today, but in some areas he beat me...
You can’t honor your husband into greatness, people. Do a thought experiment with me today. Imagine that you had recently moved to Louisiana, and you hadn’t made a lot of friends yet. Your kids had been playing with some kids down the street who went to a church...
Can there be justice for how the church has hurt people around marriage & sex? I was thinking about that question yesterday after episode 239 of the Bare Marriage podcast dropped, looking at the phenomenon of deconstruction. Specifically I was thinking about the...
Why do people deconstruct and become exvangelicals? Today on the Bare Marriage podcast author Sarah McCammon, an NPR journalist, joins us to talk about her experience with deconstruction, and what she learned interviewing so many people for her new book explaining the...
I grew up believing God was chronically disappointed in me. I knew He loved me, absolutely. But I also pictured God kind of like a self-help magazine cover: 7 Ways You Could be More Disciplined; 4 Ways You Could Be Getting More Things Done; 3 Ways You Could Stop...
Something interesting happened this Father's Day. I had so much fodder for a podcast--a terrible post by Focus on the Family telling women to "frame" their husbands as heroes, rather than telling men to act like heroes; a terrible postcard sent out by a Baptist church...
What if we’re asking the wrong questions about what to do in the bedroom? Does God have a spreadsheet of all the possible sex acts that two people could do together, with checkmarks or X’s beside each one? Sometimes it seems like that’s what we think. When I give my...
Should you read Christian self-help books that are a little bit harmful? Recently I posted an Instagram reel taken from the podcast I recorded with Natalie Hoffman and Gretchen Baskerville about the book Lies Women Believe.Here’s what I said:That is a big thing. And...
Do you think the Bible teaches people to accept bad behavior? It can certainly seem that way! And one of the passages that is most often used to support that is the idea that we should “turn the other cheek.” I remember being in a Bible study at IVCF in university...
Some awfully bizarre things happened at the recent Strong Men’s Conference–and Jezebel made an appearance. I don’t even know where to begin, and I don’t want to talk about the conference itself because so many have already done a good job. To sum up, there was one of...
Accountability is a necessary part of forgiveness and reconciliation. And yet often it’s downplayed, where even asking for accountability is somehow proof that you haven’t forgiven. Over the last few weeks we’ve been walking through some amazing truths from Susannah...
With thanks to Brazos Press for sponsoring this post. Forgiveness is possible only after we’ve had the opportunity to name our losses. That’s how Susannah Griffith opens the chapter on lamentations in her book Forgiveness After Trauma. We talked about the book on the...