Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

marriage

The Shepherd Leader at Home: Knowing, Leading, Protecting, and Providing for Your Family

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witmerIn 2010, P&R published Timothy Witmer’s The Shepherd Leader: Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church.

He’s written a corresponding volume for husbands and fathers:

Timothy Z. Witmer. The Shepherd Leader at Home: Knowing, Leading, Protecting, and Providing for Your Family. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.

Witmer shares practical advice for husbands and fathers using the shepherd-model as the governing metaphor. It’s a good reminder and motivator.

(The galley I read doesn’t include all the indexes, hence the question marks in the TOC below.) [Read more…] about The Shepherd Leader at Home: Knowing, Leading, Protecting, and Providing for Your Family

Deconstruct the Dream Driving Your Marriage

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Justin Buzzard, Date Your Wife: A Husband’s Guide (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 23–25 (numbering added):

A dream is what drives a man. As a boy grows up, he gradually forms a dream for his future marriage. . . .

Some men dream about marrying a woman who will satisfy their every desire, preference, and need.

Some men form an antidream; they simply dream of a marriage that is not like their parents’ marriage (or lack of marriage). Early on, they decide they want a wife who is not like mom. They decide they want to be a man who is not like dad.

Some men dream of a marriage that is conflict free or not a lot of work.

Some men dream of a marriage that honors God and that is a lot of fun.

The dream that drove you to that first date, that drove you to the altar, is likely still driving your marriage today. That dream set the course, and is probably still setting the course, of your marriage. . . .

The way to uncover something is to ask more questions. . . .

  1. What is the earliest memory of marriage that you can think of? How has that memory influenced you?
  2. Who taught you about marriage? Who taught you about what it means to be a man and how that’s different from what it means to be a woman? What did these teachers teach you?
  3. What is the healthiest, happiest marriage you’ve ever seen? What made that marriage so attractive?
  4. What is the most dysfunctional marriage you’ve ever seen? What made that marriage so unattractive?
  5. What kind of a man was your dad? What kind of a relationship did you/do you have with him? If we were having coffee together, what would you tell me about what it was like growing up as his son?
  6. What is your greatest fear for your marriage?
  7. What is your greatest frustration with yourself, with your wife, and with your marriage?
  8. What is your wife’s greatest complaint about being married to you? What does she appreciate most about being married to you?
  9. What is your greatest hope for your marriage? What do you really want to see happen in you, in your marriage, and in your life before you die? How’s it going to happen?

You just deconstructed the dream that’s been driving your marriage. Each answer to the questions above represents one piece of the dream that drives how you operate as a husband. All the pieces don’t make complete sense yet. Right now we’re staring at an engine that’s been taken apart. The aim of this book is to make better sense of these different pieces, to do some clean-up work, and then to rebuild the engine to run better than before.

Douglas Wilson on Parenting

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I recently read three short books by Douglas Wilson on the family after some friends recommended them for their insights on parenting:

  1. Standing on the Promises: A Handbook of Biblical Childrearing. Moscow, ID: Canon, 1997. 170 pp.
  2. Federal Husband. Moscow, ID: Canon, 1999. 110 pp.
  3. Future Men: Raising Boys to Fight Giants. 2nd ed. Moscow, ID: Canon, 2012. 199 pp.

   

I’ve read only a handful of Wilson’s other books (including a pithy one on writing but none of his controversial writings on federal vision or slavery), and I’ve subscribed to his “Blog & Mablog” for years.

My wife just finished carefully reading Wilson’s The Case for Classical Christian Education (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003). We agree with each other that reading Wilson often evokes one of three responses: [Read more…] about Douglas Wilson on Parenting

An Edifying Vision of Marriage

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In October 2011 I reviewed this book for the forthcoming edition of JBMW, and the CBMW Blog has posted the review. [Update on 12/4/2012: The review is now available as a PDF.]

Timothy Keller, with Kathy Keller. The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God. New York: Dutton, 2011.

Conclusion:

I could apply many adjectives to the book:

  1. insightful,
  2. shrewd,
  3. disarming,
  4. realistic,
  5. convicting,
  6. pastoral,
  7. warm,
  8. gracious,
  9. penetrating,
  10. theological,
  11. relevant,
  12. faithful,
  13. incisive,
  14. accessible,
  15. clear,
  16. compelling.

But perhaps best of all (because of those traits), it’s edifying.

It has inspired me to glorify God by loving and leading my wife like Ephesians 5:21-33 commands.

Related: I blogged on this book three times in October:

  1. You Take Me the Way I Am
  2. Some Practical Counsel for Marriage Seekers
  3. “My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me.”

Money quote from Keller in an interview:

In the long run, the more superficial things that made a person sexually attractive will move to the background, and matters of character, humility, grace, courage, faithfulness, and love will come to the foreground. So companionship, duty, and mutual sacrifice are, in the end, the sexiest things of all.

And here are three videos:

1. An interview with Tim and Kathy Keller:

2. Tim Keller presents the book to Google employees:

3. Tim and Kathy Keller present the book at The Gospel Coalition’s 2012 National Women’s Conference:

“My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me.”

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Tim Keller writes in The Meaning of Marriage  ,

Christian ethicist Lewis Smedes wrote an article that I read as a young pastor and a still new husband. It helped me enormously as both a counselor and spouse. It is called “Controlling the Unpredictable—The Power of Promising” [Christianity Today 27:2 (January 21, 1983): 16–19]. (p. 90)

Keller then interacts with the article to underscore his point that “marriage is essentially a covenant” (p. 90). Here are some excerpts from Smedes’s article:

Some people ask who they are and expect their feelings to tell them. But feelings are flickering flames that fade after every fitful stimulus. Some people ask who they are and expect their achievements to tell them. But the things we accomplish always leave a core of character unrevealed. Some people ask who they are and expect visions of their ideal self to tell them. But our visions can only tell us what we want to be, not what we are.

Maybe we can best find out who and what we are by asking about the promises we have made to other people and the promises we are trying to keep for their sakes.

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When I married my wife, I had hardly a smidgen of sense for what I was getting into with her. [Read more…] about “My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me.”

Some Practical Counsel for Marriage Seekers

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Tim Keller has been pastoring Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City since he planted it in 1989, and the church reflects the city’s demographics: over 80% of the people are single. So Keller has a lot of experience shepherding singles.

His new book The Meaning of Marriage  includes a chapter entitled “Singleness and Marriage.” It concludes with “some practical counsel for marriage seekers,” which unpacks eight guidelines (pp. 207–18):

  1. Recognize that there are seasons for not seeking marriage.
  2. Understand the “gift of singleness.”
  3. Get more serious about seeking marriage as you get older.
  4. Do not allow yourself deep emotional involvement with a non-believing person.
  5. Feel “attraction” in the most comprehensive sense.
  6. Don’t let things get too passionate too quickly.
  7. However, also don’t become a faux spouse for someone who won’t commit to you.
  8. Get and submit to lots of community input.

Related:

  1. “You Take Me the Way I Am”
  2. “My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me.”

You Take Me the Way I Am

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I recently heard Ingrid Michaelson’s catchy pop song “The Way I Am”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt1Ny_rLp74

It encapsulates the “I love you because you make me feel good about myself” idea that Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage  repeatedly refutes (see especially chapters 1 and 3). Keller rejects the contemporary idea that love means finding your perfectly compatible thrill-inducing soul mate:

[S]exual attractiveness was not the number one factor that men named when surveyed by the National Marriage Project. They said that “compatibility” above all meant someone who showed a “willingness to take them as they are and not change them.” “More than a few of the men expressed resentment at women who try to change them. . . . Some of the men describe marital compatibility as finding a woman who will ‘fit into their life.’ ‘If you are truly compatible, then you don’t have to change,’ one man commented.” (pp. 30–31)

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It would be wrong to lay on men the full responsibility for the shift in marriage attitudes. [Read more…] about You Take Me the Way I Am