Scripture can be used to abuse people. But it can also be used to heal! Today Dr. Steven Tracy takes us through some of the most weaponized verses in the Bible against abuse victims, and helps us see clearly how these verses have been misunderstood and misused. And...
In January of 1994 I went to see Schindler's list in movie theatres. About two hours after watching it I had a miscarriage, losing my first pregnancy. I've always thought somehow the horror of that movie and the miscarriage were linked. One of the scenes that has...
A scholarly look at Ephesians 5 shows that egalitarianism was baked in. I'm going to do something different today. Recently a woman named Liana Cavanaugh sent me an essay that she wrote for a theology degree that she is taking. I was really impressed with the essay,...
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...
Ephesians 5 calls husbands to submit too. But whenever we talk about men submitting, so many men take offense to that! I wrote up this super quick overview of Ephesians 5 on social media last week, and it went so big that I thought I'd post it here, too, so people...
Is marriage primarily about teaching you to be selfless and to grow like Jesus through suffering? I hope you would all say a resounding, “no!” We know that God thinks of marriage for our benefit–our emotional benefit, not just our character-transforming benefit. He...
How exactly do we judge something by its fruit? One of the things we’re adamant about here at Bare Marriage is the concept of “evidence-based” and “healthy” advice–meaning that you can judge things by their fruit. If we’re going to figure out if a teaching is healthy...
"The husband has to be prepared to die for his wife." One of the most bizarre arguments defending men being in authority over women is the idea that one day, he may have to take a bullet for you. A husband has to be prepared to die for his wife, but God doesn’t ask...
How do you have a Christian marriage? And is a healthy Christian marriage different from a healthy marriage of two non-Christians? A woman wrote in asking:You guys do a wonderful job showing what biblical marriage is NOT but sometimes I’d love just a clear and concise...
Does complementarianism lead to good marriage outcomes? I'm going to answer that question in this post, but I want you to keep something in the back of your head as you're reading this. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t...
When it comes to marriage, teamwork is associated with all the good stuff! Hierarchy, on the other hand, is associated with all the bad stuff. We explain today on the Bare Marriage podcast some of our biggest picture findings in The Marriage You Want, and how we...
I often get accused of just hating all evangelical marriage books. Surely there's SOMETHING you like, Sheila? Right? Or are you just trying to badmouth everything so that you can sell more books? The critiques often go like that. But here's the thing: It actually...
The idea that men want respect while women want love doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. We've studied it, as have others, and we can now definitively say that it's bunk. And I wanted a post that outlined some of it here on the blog--not just in our new book The...
When evangelical teachers say “men need respect”, what do they mean? On both Facebook and Threads, I posted this question:“Men have a unique, God-given need for respect.” When evangelical leaders teach this in regards to marriage, what, practically, are they saying...
Focus on the Family thinks life was better in 1964. You know, when many minorities in the U.S. had few civil rights. When women couldn't leave abusive husbands. When women couldn't get credit in their own name, or get a mortgage. That was better! When Rebecca and I...