One reason I find Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis so dangerous to our children:
In this age when too many Christians are believing conspiracy theories, Ham marinates kids in conspiracies from the very beginning when teaching young earth creationism.
He teaches kids: You cannot believe scientists or teachers or leaders. They are all trying to lead you astray. Only we, who aren’t actually scientists, know the real science.
(When kids grow up and learn science, they feel they have to abandon God).
From very young ages, then, our schooling of kids is predicated on conspiracy theories.
Think how much the church does this! Even with biblical counselling—you can’t believe anyone secular or medical. They are trying to lead you astray. You can only believe the Bible.
So much of our church culture is about how “they” are out to get “us” and how we have to double down and ignore “them.”
No wonder we’re in the mess we’re in! As a church, conspiracy theories already form so much of our corporate identity. It’s scary.
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Apparently Every Man's Battle has a new edition out this year--a 20th anniversary edition that they have revised.
Here's what I hope they took out (a thread):
I hope they repented of calling women "methadone-like fix when your temperature is rising"--
Women are not methadone.
Women are people. Whole people. We are not sexual receptacles, as we are called in the accompanying book Every Heart Restored.
I hope they repented of the pornographic description of the jogger in the intro--"As she approached on my left, two tiny triangles of tie-dyed fabric struggled to contain her ample bosom. My eyes feasted on this banquet of glistening flesh..."
Can I we talk about orgasms, and the numbers 48 and 33?
A thread.
In our survey of 20,000 married (predominantly Christian) women, we found that 48% of women almost always or always reach orgasm during sex, while 33% never do, rarely do, or do so intermittently.
(for numbers geeks who are bugged right now, the other 19% reach climax often).
I'd like to say two things to that 33%.
First, you are not alone. So many women struggle with this! Orgasm is complex. There's a mental component & a physical component, and sometimes things don't line up well.
You are not broken. You aren't missing a "pleasure gene".
In our survey of 20,000 women, we found that sexless marriages weren’t caused by women just deciding not to have sex. They generally had other factors, including: husband’s porn use; sex feeling terrible (never orgasming); sexual pain; relationship issues.
Our results will be out in our book The Great Sex Rescue (Baker, March 2021), but in a nutshell, sexless marriages generally are not the problem; they are a SYMPTOM of another problem. Figure out that other problem.
When I started writing on marriage, I did it largely from my own perspective + my university studies. I had nothing else.
Over the years, here are some of the things I’ve changed my mind/perspective about (and what I regret teaching earlier):
High drive husband/low drive wife is only the norm in 60% of marriages. In other marriages, SHE is the higher drive or they report the same libidos. To treat sex like it's something only he wants stigmatizes high drive wives and leads to self-fulfilling prophecies.
Often the reason women don't want sex is because they've never experienced pleasure. In our survey of 20,000 women, only 48% of women reliably reached orgasm.
When women don't want sex, it's not always selfishness/lack of priority. It could just be lack of foreplay!
Working through Every Man’s Battle today to get quotes for our upcoming book.
Prelim thoughts: the advice to men isn’t terrible. The advice to women IS.
I’m glad they take a firm stance to men, but they don’t understand women’s libido or sexuality at all.
All of that is not to say that their advice to men is perfect (I have MAJOR problems with the “bouncing the eyes” advice). Just that they do take a hard line that lust is your fault—at least to the guys.
To women? Not so much.
Oh, dear. Just hit chapter 6. I think it’s about to go downhill.