Tomorrow The Marriage You Want launches! I wanted to talk about it today, and do all kinds of fun things leading up to launch--but 10 days ago my father-in-law passed away, and the funeral was this weekend. We've been so busy and reeling as a family. And yesterday I...
A big value at Bare Marriage is that we're evidence-based. I open my podcast every week with "we like to talk about "healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice." And our new book The Marriage You Want (which launches next Tuesday!!!) is totally evidence-based. We've got...
I’ve spent years trying to untangle the Christian marriage advice puzzle. When we started researching the best-selling marriage books when we were writing The Great Sex Rescue, we found, to our dismay, that the majority of them ended up giving really bad advice, that...
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...
Why does our doctrine of forgiveness and healing often cause so much pain? We’re told the problem is our hearts, that we’re just bitter. But what if it’s not that? What if our teaching on forgiveness has gotten things all wrong? This week, on the podcast, I introduced...
Forgiveness is a concept that has often been weaponized against victims. Whether it's people married to abusers, or people married to someone who has cheated on them or hurt them in some other way, often in the church as long as that person apologizes, the onus is now...
Separate but equal has been tried and failed. So why is the church still using the same arguments about gender? It's International Women's Day, and I thought I'd sum up some of what we said in a podcast yesterday, combined with some great input you all gave me on...
Who is really a complementarian? Just when we think we're finished arguing something, another critique pops up. And honestly--we had SUCH FUN doing this podcast! Keith and I planned it for several days beforehand, going over all the arguments we wanted to use. But it...
Scott was a seriously cute Australian whose accent made me swoon. I was 18-years-old, and attending Capernwray Bible college in England for a semester before I started at Queen’s University the following year. And I spent the first few weeks trying to get Scott’s...
Not everyone who ends up dominating their wife is actually an abuser at heart. What they are doing may be abusive; the same dynamics may be at play, and the same harm may be being done. But it doesn’t always come from the same place. Over and over again since we have...
What if marriage isn't supposed to be that hard? This is one of those weird years where Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday land on the same day. For non-liturgical folks who don't follow the church calendar, Ash Wednesday is the day that Christians confess their sins...
ONE OF THE THINGS WE’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT ON THIS BLOG IS MAKING SURE THE ADVICE THAT IS GIVEN ABOUT MARRIAGE AND SEX 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...