GENEralities

My Sabbath is on a Wednesday this week. Some interesting bits from my blog reading this morning:

More Anglican good news

…this time from The Rev’d Dr. John W. Yates II who lists the good things about Anglicanism. At its best, Anglicanism:

1. is Biblical
2. is Sacramental
3. is Evangelical
4. is Liturgical
5. is Worldwide
6. is Charismatic
7. is about Accountability (we have bishops)
8. is Musical
9. Engages society and the world us
10. is Prayerful
11. is a Community of Grace
12. loves Children
13. loves Beauty

All here (H/T VirtueOnline).

What Marriage and Leadership Have in Common

In our Sabbath devotional this morning, Jude and I read this:

Contrary to hundreds of Hollywood romance movies, marriage is not primarily designed to make us happy. God is not primarily interested in our happiness, but in something deeper and more lasting: our holiness. Or we might say that God is so interested in our long-term happiness — our eternal joy, which only holiness leads to — that he reserves the right to sacrifice our short-term happiness to ensure we receive it.

Ditto for leadership. Kevin Miller, here.

The Anglican Covenant

The excellent ANGLICAN DOWN UNDER has a good point about the living with an Anglican Covenant and whether or not it can work:

Is homosexual practice compatible with Scripture? Some say No, some say Yes. But together we have not yet agreed to one of two things which would accord with a common approach to truth: either that it does not matter if an open contradiction on this matter is a feature of Anglican life, or that it matters that there is an open contradiction but nevertheless we can live with the contradiction.

That’s the question. Wise Kiwi. All DOWN UNDER here.

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More from her Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life (Riverhead Books, 2008):

And what of the “dead times” in a marriage, when the romance has faded, and “happily ever after” seems a cruel sham? The rock musician Lou Reed once said that repetition was “fantastic,” because it was “anti-glop.” His is an aesthetic concern for shunning the mushy and mawkish by employing repetitive sound, yet the insight might apply to marriage as well. For repetition resists the glop of sentiment, and also tests the spirit. It is easy to fall in love over a meal in a restaurant, where someone else does the cooking and the cleaning up; it is hard to tolerate, much less love, the person who shares our kitchen, bath and bed. How does repetition turn relationships stale and lifeless, so that a once beloved face becomes an object of scorn? What is it about repetitive acts that makes us feel that we are wasting our time? Although it is easy to dismiss our daily routines as trivial, these are not trivial questions, any more than sloth is mere laziness without spiritual consequence. p186

…a recent study that monitored the daily habits of couples in order to determine what produced good and stable marriages revealed that only one activity made a consistent difference, and that was the embracing of one’s spouse at the beginning and end of each day. Most surprising to Paul Bosch, who wrote an article about the study, was that “it didn’t seem to matter whether or not in that moment the partners were fully engaged or even sincere! Just a perfunctory peck on the cheek was enough to make a difference in the quality of the relationship.” Bosch comments wisely, that this “should not surprise churchgoers. Whatever you do repeatedly has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person—even if you’re not totally ‘engaged’ in every minute.”

So there. So much for control, or even consciousness. Let’s hear it for insincere, hurried kisses, and prayers made with a yawn. I may be dwelling on the fact that my feet hurt, or nursing some petty slight. As for the words that I am dutifully saying — “Love you” or “Dear God”—I might as well be speaking in tongues, and maybe I am. And maybe that does not matter, for it is all working toward the good, despite myself and my most cherished intentions. Every day and every night, whether I “get it” or not, these “meaningless” words and actions signify more than I know. pp187-188

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… as someone said in the YouTube comments:

H/T: Peter Ould.

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Come on, you’ve got to at least find out what it means! An interesting bit on vive le difference (or is it la?) by Anthony Esolen over at Mere Comments here.

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I keep an eye on Intellectuelle via Google Reader. Thoughtful, indeed. Consider this: 

woman was made for man not because she needed him, but because he needed her. (I think she does need him, but that’s not why she was made.)

Both man and woman were made that they might look to one another, but first to God. If man depends upon woman to the exclusion of God, then trouble results. If woman depends upon man to the exclusion of God, then trouble results. 

Some wisdom going on over there. Thanks Bonnie.

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H/T Anglican Mainstream.

In an article entitled “Children of unmarried couples ‘twice as likely to grow up in a broken home’” for The Independent, Kate Watson-Smyth reports: 

Children born to unmarried couples are twice as likely to end up in broken homes as those whose parents are married, the first continuous survey of family life revealed yesterday.

The findings from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (Inser), at the University of Essex, disprove many couples’ theory that they don’t need a marriage certificate to prove their commitment to each other, and will boost the Government’s attempts to promote marriage over other forms of family life.

Seventy per cent of children born in marriage will spend the first 16 years of their lives with both natural parents but only 36 per cent of those born to cohabiting couples will do the same, researchers found.

Notice that the study was carried out by a non-religious organization. 

John Ermisch of the University of Essex, who led the study, said: “The temporary nature of many cohabiting relationships means such relationships should not be considered simply as ‘marriage without the vows’. They are a new and relatively unstable family structure, which is leading to a dramatic increase in childbearing outside marriage and significant growth in the time children spend living in one-parent families.”

The analysis of the same 10,000 adults in 5,500 households over a seven-year period found that cohabitation rarely turns out to be long term. Fewer than 20 per cent of couples stay together for more than five years and fewer than 10 per cent survive 10 or more years. Many last only two years on average before deciding to marry or separate.

The numbers are not good. Even deciding to marry is not without its risks, especially when the couple has been living together. See my previous here. 

Some other interesting findings: 

once a cohabiting couple has had children they are just as likely to split up as a childless couple and the chances of them getting married after having a baby are reduced by 60 per cent.

A scary statistic, especially for those unfortunate babies.

Quoting Richard Berthoud, a research professor at the Inser:

“One of the main things this has shown is that people assume cohabiting is as stable as marriage but the figures prove that that is not so,” he said.

“Once children are involved the probability of splitting up is twice as high and that would suggest that cohabiting is not the same as a married relationship. There is no doubt that cohabitation is much more flexible than marriage, whatever the couples involved may say.”

Read it all here.

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My “By the Way” in The Medicine Hat News last Saturday, September 27th:

One of the things I like the most about my job is that I get to preside at weddings (including, wonderfully, those of my two children). 

I’m glad that people still want to get married in a church even when they are not active church goers. They’ve fallen in love, their minds have gone away for a while and they’re really not all that interested in theology. Yet the One who created them and marriage is drawing them closer to Himself.   

While the happy couples are in this state, my challenging but enjoyable job is to prepare them for marriage in such a way that they get to meet Jesus and his church in a meaningful way. I want them to know the God who made them a little better and to realize that He really wants the best for them.

It’s not easy. Our culture’s values have grown a long way from biblical ones. When it comes to relationships and marriage, I’m dealing with a world-view summed up by television shows like Friends. Serial, recreational, sexual encounters is the norm. Marriage is, perhaps, the dream and goal, especially for the women, but it is also, in some sense, a last resort when you’ve had your fill of the other. 

This is the world in which most of couples I see have grown up. When they come to me, most are living together. How do I share biblical, Christian teaching on relationships and marriage (which means not living together) in a way they can hear and appreciate? 

I found some help from an unlikely source. It turns out it’s not just the Church which thinks it a problem. 

In “Till death do us part? The risk of first and second marriage dissolution,” a fascinating article on the Statistics Canada website, Warren Clark and Susan Crompton outline some trends. For example, 

Living common-law is … strongly associated with a first marital breakdown. In fact, the risk is 50% higher among people who lived with their partner before the wedding than among those who did not. 

There. That’s not the Church being “prudish.” It’s fact. The article ends with this: 

In general, however, the predicted likelihood that their marriage will succeed is higher for people who marry in their 30s, did not live common-law before the wedding, have children, attend religious services, are university educated, and believe that marriage is important if they are to be happy.

Want a good long lasting marriage? Grow up, finish your education, don’t live together, get married, have kids if you can, and go to church.  

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