BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Roman Catholic and Protestant divorce and remarriage...

(Tim) Divorce is one of the most difficult questions pastors and elders face as we shepherd God's flock. Providing spiritual counsel in cases where husband and wife don't get along is relatively easy. Much harder are those cases in which husbands or wives physically abuse their spouses, fathers or stepfathers sexually abuse their children, husbands or wives commit serious sexual sin (what Jesus refers to as "porneia" in the exception clause of Matthew 19), or husbands demand their wives and children deny the faith. Each of these matters requires the most careful study of Scripture, prayer, and pastoral counsel. Sometimes the result is a session (board of elders) recommendation of divorce.

In the twelve years since Church of the Good Shepherd was founded, our session has made such a recommendation two or three times, each by unanimous consent. Sometimes it's hard to say whether the believing or unbelieving spouse is the one taking the initiative in the divorce. This is why it's impossible to say precisely how many times we've counseled divorce. We don't make the decision--the innocent party does. Yet neither do we abandon that innocent party to their own counsel. Our Westminster Standards are correct..

Joy tinged with sadness on a wedding day...

As I was in the prime of my days, When the friendship of God was over my tent; When the Almighty was yet with me, And my children were around me; When my steps were bathed in butter, And the rock poured out for me streams of oil! (Job 29:4-6)

(Tim) Lord willing, in a few hours our third daughter, Hannah Marie, will be married to Lucas Dee Weeks, son of Ron and Doris Weeks. This will leave Mary Lee and me with one child still living at home--Taylor, our fifteen year old son.

As I sit here writing the wedding sermon, it occurs to me that the joyful sadness Mary Lee and I feel as our Hannah departs is a graceful sadness...

Preparing for marriage...

(Tim) Of course, Mary Lee and I love our own flesh and blood best, so our third daughter, Hannah, has the jump on our soon to be third son-in-law, Lucas Weeks. Still, there's a certain obligation we feel to this earnest young man as he and Hannah anticipate their special day. Feeling that obligation, some fraternal warnings are in order...

Sadie Hawkins Day: Wooing as warfare's lighter side...

(This from our Denver correspondent, with a link to Relient K's Sadie Hawkins Dance)   In the English speaking world, it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only on leap years. While it has been argued that the tradition was initiated by Saint Patrick or Brigid of Kildare in fifth century Ireland, it is dubious as the tradition has not been attested before the 19th century.

Supposedly, a 1288 law by Queen Margaret of Scotland (then age five and living in Norway), required that fines be levied if a marriage proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to £1 to a silk gown, in order to soften the blow. Because men felt that put them at too great a risk, the tradition was in some places tightened to restricting female proposals to the modern leap day, 29 February, or to the medieval leap day, 24 February. According to Felten: "A play from the turn of the 17th century, 'The Maydes Metamorphosis,' has it that 'this is leape year/women wear breeches.' A few hundred years later, breeches wouldn't do at all: Women looking to take advantage of their opportunity to pitch woo were expected to wear a scarlet petticoat -- fair warning, if you will."

Wooing as Warfare, part 5: protecting our daughters?

(David) A bedrock principle of the modern courtship movement is the father's duty to protect his daughter at the point of marriage. And it's true, fathers are called by God to be guardians of their children. But should fatherly protection take a radically different form for coming-of-age daughters than for coming-of-age sons? Well, yes and no.

Scripture reveals certain fatherly privileges that apply only to daughters. A father can veto his daughter's vows and God will hold her guiltless. More to the point, a father can refuse to give a seduced virgin to her would-be husband:

Exodus 22:16-17
If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged, and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the dowry for virgins.

Wooing as Warfare, part 4: triangulation

(David) Okay, a couple assumptions at the outset.

First, a father has authority over the marriage of a daughter living in his home. This is demonstrated in Scripture by the father’s right to negate a marriage occasioned by a man’s seduction of his virgin daughter.

Second, nowhere ever is sex permitted outside marriage. However, it’s also the case that sex between unmarried adults establishes marriage when promises are exchanged and a father doesn’t veto.

Third, respect for authority is vital. But respect doesn’t require agreement. Nor does it necessitate absolute, unwavering, slavish obedience. Abigail respected Nabal by going to David with her caravan of goods, thus saving Nabal’s life—though he may not have seen it as respectful submission in the midst of his drunken stupor. Authentic authority is not always wise or godly authority. And just as we seek to change the hearts and minds of earthly rulers, so a suitor’s attempts to win a wife don’t necessarily have to come to a clanging stop at a father’s no, though the heart of the father’s authority over his daughter’s marriage must be respected.

Wooing as Warfare, part 3: strategy

(David) In warfare it's essential not to confuse primary and secondary objectives. Stalin's son was captured by the Wehrmacht in World War II. Stalin refused every rescue plan, unwilling in any way to take the focus off the invading Germans.

The primary objective in the war of love is the heart of the potential bride. A suitor can win a father's approval but that's not the ultimate objective. A young man can win all sorts of hearts--his beloved's mother's, sisters', brothers', dog's, even her third-grade teacher's--but if he fails to claim hers, he loses the battle.

One might hope that by winning the daughter the suitor will gain the embrace of her family. But it doesn't always work that way. David gained Michal without ever winning her father's heart; Jacob never truly brought Leah and Rachel's family on board.

Wooing as warfare, part 1...

Three things are too wonderful for me;
        four I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
        the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
        and the way of a man with a virgin.

(David) The way of a man with a woman is one of life’s great mysteries. From every perspective the process is mysterious, resembling a blindfolded sabre dance on uneven ground. The young man who pursues marriage enters a foreign land where he wages war. On the hinges of that battle lie happiness or shame.

But though a potential bride may be deeply loved, she’s also at some level the foe. To achieve victory the young man must not only win her, he must defeat her and her family, snatching her from their bosom, converting her to himself, breaking her natural bonds with father and mother, brother and sister, nurse and friend, dog and home. There’s little that’s tender about it. At funerals we cloak harsh reality in kind words and soft colors. So too, at weddings soft words and vibrant colors disguise a bloody truth. The wedding ceremony is really a mini-Versailles, an Appomattox-in-a-nutshell of capitulation and triumph, the surrender of one woman to one man, the victory song of groom over both bride and family.

Sensitive husbands...

Jokes highlighting the differences between men and women are dangerous, today, but they remain as delightful as ever. Honest and courageous men will not allow the sons of unfaithful women to wear them down (illegitimati non carborundum), but will continue to pass their favorites on to their own sons and daughters as they, in turn, received them from their fathers.

Here's a good one told by a Christian counselor, Dr. Michael Russell. And to the humorless among us, it reflects more negatively on the husband than the wife.

(Thanks, Steve.)

Too cool to marry...

Today's New York Times has an article on heterosexual couples who refuse to marry until homosexuals are granted the "right" to marry as well.

The Times would have us believe it's a burgeoning movement. In fact, as the article itself makes clear, it amounts to a few celebrity couples, several cohabiting engaged couples and a UCC minister, her two-decade boyfriend and their 18-year-old son in Massachusetts.

Interestingly, as the article continues, its fundamental conceit of couples' sacrificial-devotion-to-civil-rights-leading-to-delayed-marriage implodes before our eyes. The husband-to-be of one engaged couple says he'd rather go ahead and marry his fiance--leaving us wondering why his bride-to-be really refuses the formal ceremony. Meanwhile, the UCC minister and her man still refuse formal marriage despite Massachusetts legalizing homosexual marriage two years ago.

The obvious truth, folks, is that marriage has become an effete concept in American culture--an affectation, even a political statement rather than a one-flesh union. And Christians are as guilty of bringing things to this sorry pass as anyone. We have diminished the institution of marriage even as we've sought to aggrandize our individual unions. By delaying our own (and our children's) weddings until bride and groom are finished schooling, financially stable and established in careers, we make marriage out to be a valedictory, a statement of accomplishment rather than merely the first really adult act of most married couples' young lives; the start of life's hard work rather than its end; matriculation rather than graduation.

Even more fundamentally, we have diminished marriage by refusing to acknowledge the truth of God's Word that marriage is not a grand and complex thing uniquely tailored by each married couple to their own desires and circumstances, but instead, a Divinely-established monolith, a foundational institution established at creation by God through which those who marry submit to the will of God by conforming to the wisdom of the ages.

Finally, the insanity of a couple who have made commitments to each other and engaged in carnal union claiming they're not man and wife should be clear to all. That it's not is a serious indictment of the Church which is charged with being the pillar and foundation of God's Truth in this world. God's Truth says that these couples by engaging in sex and making promises have established a one-flesh union in His sight. Whether we call them married or not, God deems them man and wife. They will give an account to Him should they break their union as surely as all other adulterers. We are not promoting marriage by making it something more than it is Scripturally, we are diminishing the reality and danger of adultery.

Single Christian women: how should we then wait...

Note: Here is a comment appearing beneath Marriage, student debt, and motherhood.... My sister in Christ, Jessica, asks a question that is burning in all our churches and I'd like to ask our readers to respond to it here in the comments section of this post. What advice do you have for sisters desiring marriage who are wondering what steps are proper for them to take as women?

You'll see I've put down some preliminary thoughts, but I'm hopeful others will also respond. One rule, though: No one who despises God's command that wives submit to their husbands may respond. This is an in-God's-house conversation that must have as a foundation submission to God's commands to husbands and wives. Thanks.

Tim- I have a question for you... I have many godly single women friends, all of whom would like to be married but are without even a single prospect among them. What is the appropriate role of a single woman, particularly one who is desiring a husband? More specifically, how forward is she allowed to be? I mean, we all say wait for the Lord, His timing is perfect, occupy yourseld with other things, etc. ...and I think most of the time, that all may be fine advice. But I seem to recall a certain woman named Ruth who DID kind of take things into her own hands. Is there a place for women being that forward? Even with a man with whom you've never actually discussed marriage or dated? What are your thoughts on this?

As an example, one of my friends is 35, has been on the mission field for 11+ years, and has a burdened heart for a husband and is waiting ... but should she be doing more?

(Signed) Jessica

This is typical of a number of issues where we should be somewhat hesitant to say what ought to be done because some may conclude the suggestions are law, and thus have their consciences bound where God has given freedom.

Granted, God has not given freedom concerning the relationship between the sexes in matters of authority and purity. But how we work His decrees of father-rule and heterosexual, monogamous, life-long, covenantal marriage out in our lives must involve a large component of personality and culture. What is seen to be a matter of purity in Africa may not be purity here, for instance. Similarly, what might be considered improper female initiative for one woman in one church may well not be improper with another sister in another church.

Let me give an example. In our church, we had a godly older mother-in-Israel who was universally respected. Although there is some debate about this, my wife and I remember her instructing a young woman to go up and sit next to a young man during evening worship. She told the young woman something like this: "You can't take the initiative, but you can go up and help him to notice you."

Early marriage...

This good comment on early marriages by Benjamin Franklin, forwarded by our happily married firstborn, Mrs. Doug Ummel:

I am rather inclined to think that early [marriages] stand the best chance for happiness. The tempers and habits of the young are not yet become so stiff and uncomplying as when more advanced in life; they form more easily to each other, and hence many occasions of disgust are removed. And if youth has less of that prudence which is necessary to manage a family, yet the parents and elder friends of young married persons are generally at hand, to afford their advice, which amply supplies that defect; and by early marriage youth is sooner formed to regular and useful life; and possibly some of those accidents or connections that might have injured the constitution or reputation, or both, are thereby happily prevented. -Benjamin Franklin

Racism and sexism...

Speaking of racism, how's this for sexism? Trouble is, I'm not sure who ought to be blamed--Shakespeare, Emilia, or Emilia's husband, Iago?

'Tis not a year or two shows us a man:
They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;
They eat us hungerly, and when they are full,
They belch us.

-Emilia in Shakespeare's Othello

Categories of unmarried non-virgins in Scripture....

Tim and I usually refrain from placing answers to questions raised in comments to our posts on the main page of this blog, preferring the give and take of the comment section for such interaction. But questions posed by a reader in a recent comment anticipated a post I was planning and for that reason I place my answer here as well....

Objections to my previous post defining marriage as a covenantal commitment leading to one-flesh union have centered on my contention that Scripture defines marriage objectively as hinging upon the one-flesh union of a man and woman.

The marital covenant and sexual union....

I've been challenged on the connection between the covenant of marriage and the marital act. Ordinarily, I don't respond to bald assertions or negations. But because such criticism has been directed at a sermon I preached, I add the following evidence for the covenant at the heart of marriage being effected by the shed blood of sexual union between a man and a virgin....

Marriage, covenant and union...

Over ten years ago Tim and I spent several days with Philip Jensen, currently pastor of St. Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney.

Jensen's bold orthodoxy was refreshing--especially in the setting at which we first met him, a small preaching conference at Parkside Church near Cleveland addressed by Jensen and London Anglican pastor Dick Lucas.

During the course of the conference Jensen was asked how his church dealt with new Christians living with members of the opposite sex.

"We ask them if they are doing this for pleasure or convenience--or if they are committed to each other," Jensen said, "If they have made no commitment we tell them they must separate. If they have made a commitment we view them as married."

Alistair Begg, host of the conference, responded vehemently, "I believe that is a shameful accommodation to the spirit of the age."

Jensen gently defended his position, explaining that what constitutes marriage Biblically is simple commitment to each other combined with the marital act. Over the years since I've become convinced Jensen was right. The following is a recent sermon on this theme.

Hope from grief

One of the joys of the 2005 Bayly family Christmas in Bartlett, Illinois, was the presence of our sister-in-law, Sandy, with her new husband, Joe, and children, Cassie, Sarah, Frances and David.

Sandy is the widow of our brother Nathan, the youngest in our family who died of esophageal cancer at age 39 in 2001.

Sandy married Nate in 1983 fully aware that he would likely die young from cystic fibrosis (the probable root cause of his esophageal carcinoma). I'm sure it was somewhat difficult for Sandy and Joe to come to our family Christmas--the last at the family home in Bartlett--but their presence helped make a wonderful finale to our year.

How grateful we are for Sandy's new happiness, and for the kindness of Joe to Sandy, the children, and our entire family.

I thought of Sandy and Joe as I read this deeply touching article on remarriage after the loss of a spouse in today's Wall Street Journal. Read the article. It tells a beautiful story in which God's grace seems very apparent in the coming together of a 9/11 widower with a friend's widow. (Link is valid only for a week.)

Anglican Bishop Jeremy Taylor on marriage...

(Note from Tim Bayly: I've been rightly corrected by "Thomas C." in the comments below for calling Jeremy Taylor a Puritan. Taylor did, in fact, suffer quite a bit at the hands of the Puritans so he'd be shocked to read me labelling him one himself. Although no excuse, I think of two Anglican Bishops, Taylor and Ryle, as Puritans only because of the content and character of their writing. In that vein I commend them to our readers with the highest praise.)

Years back I ran across an essay by Anglican Divine Jeremy Taylor titled something like, "The Christian Mother's Duty to Nurse Her Own Infant." Taylor, author of one of the most popular works of private devotion during Puritan times, Holy Living And Dying With Prayers Containing the Whole Duty of a Christian And the Parts of Devotion Fitted to All Occasions And Furnished for All Necessities, also said this about marriage:

Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and Heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world. (From his sermon, The Mysteriousness of Marriage, on Ephesians 5:32.)

This week my dear wife, Mary Lee, had a birthday. How I praise God and luxuriate daily in the blessings God has given me and many others through her, not the least of which are our five children and their (so far) three spouses and two grandchildren.

Years after Mary Lee and I were married, I was reading Proverbs and came across this verse I'd never noticed before:

House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, But a prudent wife is from the LORD. (Proverbs 19:14).

Reading it for what seemed the first time, it hit me that in His kindness and mercy God had given me a prudent wife even though at the time my choice seemed entirely carnal.

Now, like my wife's father before me, I regularly pray for my children, that if they're to marry God will bless them as He blessed me, giving them husbands and wives who will lead them in godliness.

Two Types of Polygamy

The latest issue of Atlantic Monthly contains two letters to the editor commenting on a May article on Owen Allred, deceased leader of a polygamous Mormon sect in Utah.

The first letter is from an apparent Mormon, disavowing Allred.

The second is from a South African pastor who writes,

For many people in the world, polygamy is no laughing matter but an accepted form of marriage. Americans need to learn that the customs of "the others" have been adopted for good reasons, which need to be discovered before a custom is condemned or sneered at.

Traditional polygamy is clearly superior to the "serial polygamy" practiced in the West, in which each successive wife is cast out, often with her children, to fend for herself. The situation of the first wife in a polygamous marriage is a good deal more secure and emotionally satisfying than that, and she is spared the psychological and social trauma of divorce.

Rev. Mtumiki Njira
Derdepark, South Africa

Whether Rev. Njira is truly defending polygamy or not, he certainly has taken a great big stick both to America's view of her own innate moral superiority and to self-righteous American Christians.

He's right. Traditional polygamy is better than the serial polygamy of America. And those churches in America which wink at divorce are no better than unreconstructed Mormonism in their view and practice of marriage.

Three Down, Two to Go....

Some of you have wondered where Tim has disappeared to in recent days. Well, part of the reason for his absence from the blog recently is due to an event we celebrated in Nashville, IN, last Saturday afternoon when Tim's third child, Michal, was married.

Michal Louise follows older siblings Heather and Joseph in marriage. Michal married Ben Crum, son of PCA pastor David Crum. The wedding was beautifully simple, with traditional vows and a bluegrass band at the reception.

Members of the family were disappointed that Michal's maternal grandfather, Ken Taylor, was not able to attend the wedding. Mr. Taylor's ill health kept him home--the first of his grandchildren's weddings he has been forced to miss. Tim took Mr. Taylor's place by pronouncing the father's blessing, a Taylor family tradition.

May God add His blessing to Michal and Ben's life together.

Also, pray for God's grace for Mr. and Mrs. Taylor in these difficult days. Mr. Taylor is one of the truly great men of the evangelical movement and his departure to eternity will be all our loss.

A blast from the past

This from a pastor-friend of mine. Note it's dated 1925--a fact I missed the first time around:

The Sanctity of Marriage Association launched a movement yesterday to bar absolutely the marriage of divorced persons in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Sanctity of Marriage Association is headed by the Rev. Dr. Milo H. Gates, vicar of the Chapel of the Intercession, Trinity Parish, and its Executive Committee includes, among others, Bishop William T. Manning, Bishop Frederick Burgess of Long Island and Bishop Paul Matthews of New Jersey.

The proposed law is:

No minister, knowingly after due inquiry, shall solemnize the marriage of any person who has been or is the husband or the wife of any person living from whom he or she has been divorced for any cause arising after marriage. Nor shall it be lawful for any member of this Church to enter upon a marriage when either of the contracting parties is the husband or the wife of any other person then living from whom he or she has been divorced for any cause arising after marriage.

The association gives the following reasons why in its judgment the one 'exception' should be repealed:

Marriage ceremonies that defend the faith...

Note: The following essay is the fruit of research I've done on the history of marriage ceremonies, specifically their liturgy. I've asked the question "How can my work as a pastor officiating at marriage ceremonies be used by God to strengthen the commitment within our congregation to God's Truth in the area of the meaning and purpose of sexuality?"

I've been to too many weddings in which the presiding pastor didn't bother "improving" the time, by which I mean that the very areas of biblical doctrine our culture hates were carefully (or maybe even thoughtlessly) excised from the liturgy--the three purposes of marriage, the warning of the seriousness of vows, the word 'obey' in the woman's vow, any mention of the wife's duty to submit to her husband, and so on.

So this essay is my effort to think through this aspect of pastoral ministry biblically, and to record my new commitments concerning how I will preside at the weddings of our congregation. The essay is published in a collection of essays offered by...

Emotional intimacy and adultery...

With popular social mores widely accepting an attitude of sexual promiscuity, many husbands and wives have asked themselves, "What would I do if my spouse were unfaithful? Could I stand the shock? The pain? The humiliation?"

But too often the really crucial questions are left unasked: "How could this terrible sin be committed by people who love God and one another? Am I capable of infidelity? When and in what ways do I place myself in danger of crossing the line?"

Unfaithfulness in marriage is not just a physical act; it's a way of life. It begins innocently enough--sidelong glances, the light brush of a shoulder, an offer to help put up the storm windows--all little things. But little things quickly grow until we discover we're in a prison built by our own hands. Seemingly without warning, we find that our wife or husband is no longer at the center of our heart; someone has taken their place.

As a pastor I have seen how easy it is for us to convince ourselves that there is nothing dangerous about developing a close personal friendship with a member of the opposite sex outside our marriage.

Some time ago I was talking with a young mother. She told me her husband was threatening to leave her. She wanted him to stay, but she knew she might not be able to convince him. He was ready to walk out on her and on their children.

My initial question brought out the usual reasons people give for breakdown: "We were married young," "We fight all the time," and "He says he doesn't love me anymore." As we continued talking, though, it became clear that unfaithfulness was at the center of their breakdown...