Category Archives: Lost culture

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Open Letter to All Self-Appointed Marriage Theologians

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Response by Standerinfamilycourt

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.    –  James 3:1

A covenant marriage stander recently posted an urgent request to a marriage permanence Facebook group to “set her straight”, referring to a young lady with close to 2,000 followers who posted a “Note” entitled as above.      Most of us know that no other topic on the face of the planet today generates more instant theologians.    The transformative power of this topic on just about anybody and everybody is legendary, to say the very least.

It’s not that “standerinfamilycourt” believes someone must attend or graduate from bible school or seminary to write authoritatively on the indissolubility of holy matrimony.    On the contrary, the more typical experience, over the past 150 years or so, is that such an educational component actually ruins its graduates and steers them far away from the Spirit-driven biblical truth, unless the Holy Spirit is very persistent in pursuing them and changing their heart.    However, it seems reasonable that a person needs to either come from an exceptionally excellent discipling home in their youth, or they need to have lived long enough in adult life to have taken on some significant discipleship challenges before they are very likely to know whereof they speak.    A fair impression concerning a young person, therefore, who has 2,000 followers and no other disclosed connection to ministry or background is, more likely than not, she’s doing a whole bunch of ear-tickling.    The last thing we need in Christendom is an Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez personality creating a fifth gospel, lecturing and labeling as “legalist” anyone who declines to adopt it!

SIFC told this complaining stander that, after having read the Note, it is indeed erroneous on most of its points, but with no prior connection with this young lady, and no indication (since she lists herself as “single”) that her soul is in imminent peril from being herself in an adulterous legalized union, it does not seem appropriate to invade her wall for the purpose of spanking her in front of her followers.   Now, somebody with a very public ministry and half a million followers, which merchandizes heresy and pockets the proceeds, is definitely a different kind of case.    In this complained-of case, this open letter will need to suffice.

Dear Amateur Theologian:
Social media is a wonderful thing, affording opportunities that many of us would never have, otherwise, to make our voice heard to the masses.    “Standerinfamilycourt” is not going to say that’s a bad thing, necessarily, but rather, that when it comes to our parallel life in the kingdom of God, it is a fearsomely responsible thing.
Our response to your Note of January 1, 2019 will linger in Luke, chapter 12 where Jesus says this:

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

One advantage of youth and lack of experience is that more often than not, youthful exegetes will fit into the second grace category, but not indefinitely.     That you can persuade close to 2,000 people to read your personal Note on your Facebook wall is very impressive, indeed.   It would be even more impressive if that influence could be harnessed for the kingdom of God to pull people from the broad path that everyone wants to be on, but whose destination (Christ tells us) is destruction, over to the narrow path which requires us to lay our own lives down in this life, so consequently few want to be on that path but nevertheless its destination is eternal life.   Even so, you clearly have a bright future as (perhaps) a writer for a “Christian” publication like Crosstalk where you can secure an even larger audience, as you hone your excellent writing skills and increase their commercial circulation.   Indeed, most of us would say that you have been given much.
“I’m not writing this note to espouse an opinion.   My heart is simply to bring some clarity to what the Scripture actually says, means, and requires of us”,   you say. 
You’re way ahead, my dear, perceiving already that popular Christian writers aren’t so presumptuous as to share truths or, even worse, moral absolutes.   No, they’re endlessly humble and so they share “hearts”.    That alone, will take you much further than someone who says, “thus saith the Lord.”   However, we’d respectfully challenge that anything that doesn’t actually line up with “thus saith the Lord” is by definition…an opinion.   Clarity is as clarity does, after all.
In addition to your very correct observation that … “It is too important a matter to leave to some surface, passive reading of scripture and neglect the diligent study required to come to an accurate understanding of God’s original intent”, you deserve additional kudos for recognizing the continuum between antinomianism and legalism (“So, it was no surprise to see both legalism and antinomianism manifested in many views concerning marriage. “)   This (accused) “legalist’s” main contribution to this conversation will be to hopefully bring your understanding of legalism more into alignment with what Christ told us the spirit of Phariseeism is.    We’re quite sure that you wouldn’t want to fall into antinomianism unintentionally, by misunderstanding what actually constitutes “legalism” in the kingdom of God!   
If it won’t overly offend you, we won’t directly link to that Note of yours, since attempting to refute hermeneutical errors point-by-point would make this post very long and boring , but we would like to give our readers a rough overall outline of its contents and, speaking as an unabashed “legalist” by your measuring stick,  answer a few of your main points.  Fair enough?
“Note” High-Level Outline:
(1) SAMT’s notion of covenant, and assertion that the marriage covenant is conditional and can be “broken”
(2) SAMT’s notion of marriage rights & duties / Failure to fulfill these
(3) SAMT’s notion of “biblical grounds for divorce”
(4) SAMT’s application of Deuteronomy and other Mosaic laws to marriage and divorce today
(5) SAMT’s assertion that there’s a difference between biblical references to divorces and “sending away”
(6) SAMT’s inferences from Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well
CONCERNING BIBLICAL COVENANT (Point 1):
Our young Note-writer (hereafter, let’s call you “SAMT” : self-appointed marriage theologian) spends considerable time in the Garden of Eden recounting the creation basis of the first wedding, and asserts that the essential element of covenant is, therefore “do not be unequally yoked”, citing  2 Corinthians 6:14-18.    You show in your version of this, “SAMT” that you profoundly misunderstand who the respective parties to the biblical marriage covenant actually are.  “SAMT”, you imagine that the parties are simply the husband and the wife, which is the humanist view and is natural enough if you weren’t paying any attention to what Jesus, and the prophet Malachi said about that.
Jesus told us that entrance by consent into a holy matrimony union by witnessed vows results in God’s hand creating a new entity, declaring they are never again two but one-flesh, and closing off any human’s ability to dissolve or sever that entity other than by physical death.    This new entity is the inferior party to the holy matrimony covenant.   So then, who exactly is the superior party?   Malachi informs us that the superior party is God Himself.
So where, then, does the notion come from that there’s a superior and an inferior party to every biblical covenant?    It actually comes from ancient near-eastern culture, where covenants were absolutely binding on the more powerful of the two parties, even if the less powerful party had difficulty honoring their end.    In fact, that was the whole point in making a covenant in the first place, there was a weaker party who might not keep up his or her end.     In Genesis 15, Moses gives the account of how God illustrated this to Abram, just before he got his new name, Abraham:

And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.”  He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”  Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds.   The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him.    God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.  But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age….It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.   On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,
“To your descendants I have given this land,
From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates…”

Obviously, God deliberately yoked Himself with an unequal covenant mate here.   He did not require terrified Abram to walk between the split carcasses – He had to do so Himself!  Later, He commanded Hosea to be unequally yoked to a prostitute in holy matrimony, although the walked-out marriage was anything but holy until Hosea redeemed Gomer, his God-joined one-flesh off the slave block.   Hosea serves as a type, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ role.    “SAMT”, if you’d like to learn more in-depth about biblical covenant,  and about the nature of the God-joined one-flesh entity, please click here, and here.    Your version is taken out of context, “SAMT” and in fact is a subtle mix of Christo-feminism, and long-winded excuses not to obey Christ’s most basic commandments, which do not actually exempt our one-flesh spouse and which include:
– do not take your own revenge
– do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
– if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven
– do not live for self
–  do not drag a fellow believer before a pagan court
The upshot of all of this, “SAMT”:  since God is one of the parties to the marriage covenant of our youth, and He has never once, in all of biblical history, ever failed to uphold His end of an unconditional covenant He was a party to, the marriage covenant can certainly be violated by the inferior party (and perhaps even by both husband and wife), but it is absolutely not possible for the marriage covenant to be broken, contrary to your humanistic assertion.    You say you are “single”,  and do you plan to exchange conditional wedding vows someday?   “I might”, rather than “I do”?  If that’s your plan, you are not actually consenting to holy matrimony, and as a consequence, God who knows your heart, will not create sarx mia , the supernatural one-flesh entity of holy matrimony.   That might sound good to you, since you’d apparently rather shuck an unsatisfactory spouse in the name of Jesus, but your union will be no better than married gays or than today’s abundance of remarriage adulterers.   If this is “harsh” and “judgmental” to you, then take it up with Him.    The people you disagree with didn’t write the bible!

Picture Credit:  Sharon Henry
MARRIAGE RIGHTS, DUTIES AND DEFAULTS (Point 2)
Says “SAMT” of this topic:
“God’s intent for marriage is that the two become one, and that they love and care for their spouse. Under the old covenant law, a husband had the responsibility to provide for the basic needs for his wife. If he did not do so, but he withheld any of these things from her she was free to go. She was released from the covenant because he did not keep it.” 
As if Jesus never bothered to deliver the sermon on the mount, “SAMT” you look to the Mosaic law to define the rights, duties and remedies for defaults in marriage, and you insist that this remains the standard for Christ-followers.   Your theory shows a considerable misunderstanding, even of Mosaic law.   The above quote, taking scripture seriously out context, does not refer at all to God-joined holy matrimony.   What you have latched onto refers to Moses’ attempt to regulate the practice of taking a concubine slave in addition to a God-joined covenant wife, in other words, the concurrent form of polygamy.   You quote Exodus 21:10-11 :
If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights.   If he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
What was the “money” involved?   Her usual slave price to go free was waived.   Our budding theologian somehow infers from this that a contemporary covenant wife may divorce her husband, despite everything both Christ and Paul clearly, specifically and repeatedly said to the contrary, after Jesus completely abrogated the Mosaic regulations for His higher law, and despite the fact that no woman under the Hebrew patriarchy ever had any right to divorce her husband for any reason.    In doing this, “SAMT”, you ignore the effects of testing your theory by applying the hermeneutical principles of Culture and Comparison, and you twist the Content to suit your desired outcome.   You did not Consult the writings of the early church fathers to see what they said to the contrary because they were echoing Christ and Paul.   “SAMT”, it can’t be said often enough, that anything at all written about MDR isn’t even worth reading unless it is written in such a way that it demonstrates that these principles have been faithfully applied.   Otherwise, the integrity of this topic soon gives way to feelings, emotions, lust and ideologies, typically humanism and feminism.
Do we have something that resembles the concubinage situation described in Exodus 21 today?   Yes, indeed we do!   It’s the consecutive polygamy of remarriage adultery, in fact.   Today’s  equivalent instruction for regulating this immorality, with the exception of “conjugal rights” (since Jesus made clear that such relations were continuously sinful):  voluntarily provide for this adultery partner and any non-covenant children when you must separate from him or her to end the ongoing sexual sin.
We have to agree with you, “SAMT” in what you say next.   Indeed, 1 Corinthians 7 is the “go-to” chapter in the New Testament for the rights and duties of marriage, with three important caveats, which we hope you didn’t miss:

(1) the rights and duties are strictly to one’s own spouse, the one God inseverably joined you to for life, not somebody else’s

(2) there is a male and female in each status being addressed, with this symmetry continuing throughout the chapter and four or five different statuses.   We must not attempt to transfer the advice from one group to the other for our own convenience.  Not one of these statuses addressed, however is a “divorced” category, only “married but estranged”.    Paul believed Jesus that all divorce was man-made, and not only immoral, but impossible between a one-flesh covenant couple.
(3) any separation between God-joined spouses was to be aimed at reconciliation when possible, not permanent severance.
You dish out some pretty good marriage advice from this point in your Note, “SAMT” (for a single person, anyway).     But then you launch into a fiery manifesto on domestic abuse, with the peculiar bias that it’s always the man beating on the woman, and you declare:
“Many women who seek counsel from the church regarding their abusive situations at home are told that they still need to submit, or they are accused of being the cause of the abuse because they must have failed to be submissive enough. The stories of what women have been instructed to endure and sent back home to in the name of holiness is honestly disgusting.”
(Any chance that you go around beating up on pastors who don’t toe your ideological mark, “SAMT”?)
Instead of lingering on 1 Corinthians 7:11, where you just were, as the biblical remedy for an unsafe home,  you’re then diving back into Mosaic law faster than you can say “Zipporah”!   Your tone and ideology sound identical to the subject of an earlier blog of ours.   In case it isn’t clear from scripture, nowhere does Christ or any of the Apostles give any permission to divorce for abuse or adultery or abandonment, but more about that when we get to your theories about “biblical grounds”.
Says “SAMT”…
“God designed marriage to be a blessing to both the husband and wife. It is really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation to live under the same roof regardless of how the other party treats us.”
Says “SIFC”:
God designed His relationship with us to be a blessing to Him and to everyone around us.    It’s really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation for God to let us into heaven anyway regardless of how we treat Him.
And, oh “SAMT”, what have you done to the context and tone of Malachi 2, my dear?    You have stood this poor prophet on his head!     You drill right in on verse 16, “God hates divorce”,  but this context of this is impossible to get right without starting at verse 13 and understanding who exactly the prophet was addressing when he spoke for the Lord in declaring that fellowship was broken with the priest of God who had divorced his wife and married another.   You go into a litany of reasons why God hates divorce, but skip right over the one He forthrightly declares:  it corrupts our offspring and our generations.   You do this because you speak as more of a feminist than a disciple.   No form of humanism is ever compatible with discipleship.   They are polar opposites!   
Next you say:
“However, when one party has broken covenant, God does not hold the innocent party to a broken covenant, and God does not call them a sinner for issuing a bill of divorce to someone who has broken covenant with them.
We’ve already covered the biblical fact that the marriage covenant can be violated but never broken due to who the covenant parties to holy matrimony actually are.  So, let us ask you this, “SAMT”:  does God ever call someone a sinner for disobeying Him?
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate.
– Matt. 19:6
But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.
– 1 Corinthians 7:10-11
No, He actually likens the rebellious to a witch or a sorcerer, my dear.
“So, we can’t accuse everyone who has been through a divorce of being a sinner for having gone through it!”   say you.
Very true, “SAMT”, but only if the person did not initiate the lawsuit before the pagan court,  and did not even consent to it.   If they did, they have practiced the sin of witchcraft and they need to repent.  Even then, unless the marriage was biblically invalid from the beginning because of the existence of a prior living estranged spouse, they are still married in God’s eyes. If that seems like an “accusation” to you, then there’s something very wrong with your heart toward God.
God hates divorce but He Himself had one! “
No, “SAMT”.   If you trouble to read just a bit further in Jeremiah 3, you soon find God saying, “return to Me, for I am married to you.”    For more about the rampant abuse and proper exegesis of that particular scripture, please click here.
PRESUMED “GROUNDS” FOR DIVORCE ,  ATTEMPTS TO APPLY MOSAIC LAW TO CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE,  WITH OR WITHOUT “PAPERWORK”
(Points 3 , 4, and 5)
From here, we’re about to dive into some heavy-duty scripture abuse debunking, “SAMT”.   Scripture abuse always results when anyone fails to apply all five principles of disciplined hermeneutics before they make personal decisions and, even worse, presume to teach others:  Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation.   There’s nothing worse than treating the word of God like a bag of trail mix, latching on to things out of context and discarding or ignoring the bits you don’t like.   Next you say….
“This verse [referring to Matthew 19:3-10] is often quoted to claim that divorce is only permitted in cases of adultery. Others claim it means divorce is only permitted in cases of fornication, meaning only when a man discovers his bride was not a virgin when they married. Some claim that even if divorce is permitted in the case of adultery or fornication, remarriage is never permitted. All of these opinions are wrong.”
Just as your own opinion is equally wrong, “SAMT”.  Unfortunately, all of the above is both unsupported and directly contradicted by scripture, and more specifically, by the very words of Christ which we’ve already cited above, in verse 6, which is the only verse that deserves any focus in this passage, until we get to verse 12, where Jesus speaks of living as a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God, after forbidding anyone to marry a divorced person.  This, “SAMT”,  makes everything you go on to say about what question the Pharisees actually asked amount to a  total red herring.    It doesn’t matter what they asked, only what Jesus said in response.  Ditto for your leap back into Deuteronomy 24, since Jesus chose instead to quote Moses’ better word in Genesis 2:21-24, rather than Moses’ ill-fated attempt to regulate sin and hard-heartedness on the trail to the Promised Land.
Contrary to your assertion, adultery has never been biblical grounds for divorce from a God-joined union either in the New Testament, nor the Old Testament.   Under Mosaic law, sexual sins against betrothal and marriage were punishable by stoning, not divorce.  That’s because the one-flesh entity had to be severed somehow to allow for remarriage.   Nobody can say with certainty what Moses wrote Deuteronomy 24:1-4 concerning, but it’s far more likely that this regulation was covering one of the many non-capital reason why a betrothal contract could not be consummated under Jewish rules of ceremonial cleanness (“some indecency”)–and so, the reason for defilement of the land existed both before and after the severed union.   Whatever the reason for the Deuteronomy 24 passage, there is not a single Christian today to whom it applies, because Jesus abrogated all of the Mosaic regulations when He said of several things where the prior moral law was simply not worthy of the kingdom of God, “it is written, BUT I SAY UNTO YOU…”   He also clearly commanded us to live reconciled lives.
This really gets people’s knickers in a twist throughout Christendom, but no other context is possible after the sermon on the mount, except that Jesus was disagreeing with both Hillel and Shammai.    And it’s not a matter of “paperwork”, either!
“….MOSES allowed you to divorce your wives, BUT FROM THE BEGINNING, IT WAS NOT EVER SO!”–  Matthew 19:8
Which brings us to debunking the definition of “legalism”…. The first thing to understand, “SAMT”, is that this is not a biblical term any more than, say, “homophobia” is.   You will not find it in any translation, because it is the jargon of “Churchianity” .     When Christ and Paul rebuked the behavior of the Pharisees, there are four key points:
(1) they were the ones pushing man-legalized immoral abandonment of covenant
(2) they were the hangers-on to Mosaic regulation after Jesus abrogated all 613 of them in favor of a higher moral standard
(3) Per Jesus, the 10 Commandments remain in full effect
(4) If the word of God makes clear that dying in a certain state of sexual sin will cost us our inheritance in the kingdom of God, obeying is never “legalism”.
“Legalism” to Christ is applying any part of the Mosaic regulation that lies outside the 10 Commandments (you know, stuff like Deuteronomy 24:4).   “Legalism”, therefore, excludes urging obedience to the direct commandments from Christ’s ministry.   Around here, we call “legalism” Judaizing heresies, such as Paul spoke of to the Galatians.    So, the solution to antinomianism is obedience to Christ’s commandments, not accusing those who do obey and who urge others to obey, of somehow holding people to (inferior) Mosaic standards.    In fact, it’s usually the very same accusers like yourself who want to do that, in lieu of obeying Christ.   Moses after all, was considerably more lenient in matters of marriage than is Christ.   Almost everyone instinctively knows this, and that’s why they can’t seem to let go of Moses.
READING INTO JESUS’ CONVERSATION WITH THE SAMARITAN WOMAN AT THE WELL
“It is sad that so many so often misrepresent the heart of God. They read things in Scripture that are actually full of love and grace and the beauty of God’s heart towards the hurting with such jaded eyes. The story of the woman at the well is a prime example of this. “
What’s really sad is that some who would deign to teach others imagine that God’s “heart” is any different than what repeatedly came out of His Son’s mouth.    That’s either blaspheming the Father or it’s accusing  the Son.    Which brings us to another red flag “no-no” of unsound hermeneutics — the negative inference, or what Jesus “didn’t say”.   In this young lady’s defense, though, it’s quite common to see middle-aged seminarians do the same thing, though they should certainly know better.
In the case of the other scarlet lady with whom Jesus was merciful, the woman taken in adultery, here’s what Jesus didn’t say:  “neither do I condemn you because nobody is without sin, and it’s impossible to live a holy life which is why I’m about to die for you.   Stay away from those hypocritical Pharisees next time.”      No, Jesus gave her a commandment: “Go and sin no more.”
Why would we imagine, that just because we don’t see the words captured in John’s account of the exchange at the well,  Jesus did not tell this woman who was shacking up with a boyfriend the same thing He told the other adulteress?    What Jesus supposedly “didn’t say” is no proof of anything!     For a more in-depth discussion of what was actually going on at the well, click here.
“SAMT”, we’re just about done here.   You spend the rest of your Note in righteous indignation, accusing biblical truth-tellers of “picking up stones”  when they tell people what scripture says, while it’s clear that feminist  ideology has a stone or two in your own hands.    You make it sound pious by going on and on about God’s “heart” and your “heart” as if He’s schizophrenic and you’re not delusional.    We hope you learn one day that words like “grace” and “love” cannot be limited to temporal matters and people’s feelings – since that’s actually not very “loving”.    If your definition of “love”, “grace”, “mercy” doesn’t include an eternal dimension, you are at risk of “loving” people straight into hell.   If you don’t believe us, try substituting other sins, ones that make you recoil, and see if it’s “unloving” or lacking  “grace” to urge them to repent with their feet, at the risk of their feeling “shamed” and  “condemnation”.
Here’s another side of God’s “heart”,  SAMT… back to Luke 12:

I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.But I willwarn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!

Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

 
Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Of Antinomians and Panderers Thereto

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by Standerinfamilycourt

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.   – Jude 4

Not for the first time have we blogged about this, but it seems so-called “blended families” are all the rage with anyone who wants to sell lots of “Christian” books these days.   We’re told that these “families” are “blessed” (and just for good measure, the author will “bless” them), which is a bit strange since they are snapping up all of these books as a growing demographic: “– and their numbers were added to daily by the “family courts” of the land.”
 It’s kind of predictable that the targeted market won’t learn much from these books, however, so they’ll buy more to see if the advice works out any better.   But what if….God doesn’t want these books to work any magic in these unbiblical living arrangements and immoral relationships?   What if…the cost of “blended families”, who come together for reasons other than widowhood, is too eternally high to bear?   What if… a truly loving God splits these “families” up out of eternal mercy for every member of that kind of household?

Very recently, both Ryan and Selena Frederick of Fierce Marriage.com and Kris Vallotton have posted blogs with sure-fire marriage advice for those who purportedly “didn’t plan” to wind up in an adulterous remarriage by Christ’s standards, but now need to find a way to “thrive” (rather than repent).    Ministry people who publicly spread soul-endangering heretical material to make a person feel better about remaining in their state of sin require somebody to make an attempt at an equally public, respectful response, supplying the biblical truth.   Both of these ministries produce especially effective memes that are highly encouraging to those standing celibate until the Lord restores their God-joined, covenant union and removes their prodigal spouse, in true grace and mercy, from the legalized adulterous relationship they’ve fallen into,  which they pray everyday their prodigal will live long enough to repent of — from the heart.    As with RepentanceCry.com, whose divorced pastor/founder is currently “betrothed” to a younger woman who will (unless God intervenes) sinfully supplant his true estranged wife who is still living, SIFC is left with a  dilemma over the rightness of continuing to use their materials on our pages.     Unlike the case with RepentenceCry,  neither of these other two ministries seem to be blocking dissenters at this point, so members of the marriage permanence movement are still able to exchange with them.

So….exchange several of us attempted to do!

The tennis involved with commenters, who can’t abide anyone so confronting the ministry owners who have tickled their ears and validated their sinful choices, typically goes like this for anyone determined enough to sustain the online engagement:

Lob 1 : (aimed at page / ministry owners) straightforward Matthew 19:6 / Luke 16:18 appeal that God-joined holy matrimony is not dissoluble by anything but death, and that all non-widowed remarriage was consistently called adultery by Jesus.

Return 1:  MIsuse of some combination of Matt.5:32, 1 Cor. 7:15 and Matthew 19:9 to “prove” otherwise, and point out the “error” of the lob.   (They don’t know what to do with the actual scriptures in Lob 1, but they’re certain that theirs must override.)

Lob 2:  Patient, hermeneutical explanation why the Returner’s interpretation of those scriptures to justify marrying again, while having an estranged spouse still living, is not hermeneutically correct, and suggesting that they study it further for a period of time.

Return 2:  Projectile vomiting of everything the discarded spouse did, and / or what the true-spouse-of-the-new-spouse did, that God would surely not expect anyone to stay in the marriage and tolerate… these outrages against their happiness.  (Optional insistence that Lob 2 is an untrustworthy  “private interpretation”  with denial that the Lob 1 scriptures say what they say and mean what they mean.)

Lob 3:  Reminder from Matthew 19:6, 8 that Christ didn’t leave us with a choice whether to “remain in” such a marriage, but that He said we simply are in such a marriage until one of the original partners physically dies.

Return 3:  Indignant playing of (you guessed it) – the Pharisee card, accompanied by various Pauline scriptures cited to purport that nobody is capable of living by the ten commandments, and any effort to do so is “salvation by works” and deceitful, self-righteous “boasting”.
The truncated form of Romans 8:1, quoted to omit “who walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh…” is especially popular at this juncture, accompanied with “by grace we are saved through faith, not of our own works lest any man should boast.”     This, of course, is presumed to override anything Jesus ever said directly to the contrary of their sexual ethics, and asserted only to apply to those who are not “saved” yet, because those people don’t have their ticket punched by belief that their ticket is punched.

Lob 4:   A friendly reminder about the sermon on the mount, concerning obedience to Christ out of a grateful heart, and that the 613 old rabbinic regulations to which Paul was actually referring as “the law” are only suspended upon our surrender to Christ’s lordship,  perhaps quoting Luke 14:26 or Hebrews 10:26-29 or Matthew 7:21-23.  (The 10 Commandments remain in full effect, notwithstanding Luther’s objections thereto.)

Return 4: (now growing demonstrably more heated, can go two different ways – path 1,  revert to Return 1 and mechanically parrot this point again and again for the rest of the conversation, alternating this with vicious ad hominem slurs….or… shift into sorrowful-pious-humility mode with an offer to “pray” that the lobber will “get saved for real some day” – path 2, depending on the personality of the remarriage adulterer on the other side of the net, and assuming Lob 4 didn’t horrifically draw one of each, in tandem!)   It tends to get really ugly from here, but four things are clear from both types of tennis partners:

(1) what they were once sold as the terms of salvation is not matching up with what’s now being presented…

(2) who they thought they were in Christ is now being shaken to the marrow of their bones (with which we should all achingly and deeply empathize)…

(3) if it means they can’t have their “salvation” on the terms they were sold, they’re not about to take our suggestion to study up to make sure they’re as “saved” as they think they are.

(4) they must have a full retraction and apology from you, and they will stalk you by tagging, with repetitive points and demands for “answers” to extraneous questions, day and night until they get it (or you decide life’s too short and block them), even if they happen to presently be separated from said legalized adultery partner.

By this point, there is zero question that we are dealing with one or more antinomians in the conversation.  Antinomianism (from the Greek: ἀντί, “against” + νόμος, “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and is against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so.[1] The term has both religious and secular meanings.  In Christianity, an antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments.[2][3] The distinction between antinomian and other Christian views on moral law is that antinomians believe that obedience to the law is motivated by an internal principle flowing from belief rather than from any external compulsion.    What they don’t take into account is that if you don’t obey, you can’t really claim to believe.    The eighteen inches from head to heart has not been spanned.  They’re stuck on simple mental assent which fails to engage their feet, in the way that the tax collector Zachheus’ feet were engaged when he came to saving faith.    Following the ten commandments is an essential element of following Christ that precludes our own presumptions about what He “would want” for us which they were hoping might suspend one or more of those “impossible-to-follow” commandments.  Jesus died, they insist, for our past, present (unrepented) and future sins!

If the site owners are paying attention, and booksellers good enough to make a living at it always pay attention, we’re about to find out if they, too, are antinomians.   All too often, booksellers appealing enough to the masses to have half a million people following their facebook  page, are almost always antinomians, not just people who honestly don’t know any better.    The exchange with the Vallotton page has not been that contentious so far, and nobody was “unduly” triggered there by the truth-tellers.    Vallotton, who has slightly under 400,000 followers seems to have a loyal opposition consisting mainly of the LGBT community and their sympathizers who are among the most vocal on that page, and that’s where most of his attention seemed to be going.    Some marriage permanence disciples had already been there, challenging the premise that “blended families” are covenant families and are holy matrimony unions, before SIFC  arrived there to comment.    This was also true on the FierceMarriage page,  where the owner’s response to the weekend proceedings arrived around noon Monday, as follows…..

“Hi everyone,
Ok, this is a very nuanced topic, and perhaps we didn’t do the intro justice. I’ll modify the introduction of the blog post so it’s not misleading, but I do want to address some things here about assumptions we’ve made—we’ve (wrongly) assumed that you know where we’re coming from and the premises we had in mind when posting this content.

“For clarity:

1: Divorce is never God’s best for any marriage, Christian or non-Christian alike. In fact, the Bible says that “God hates divorce”. (Malachi 2) It’s never His best for any marriage.

2: As a last resort, and “because of hardness of hearts”, the Bible gives two clear grounds for divorce: (1) sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32; 19:9) and (2) abandonment by an unbeliever (1 Corinthians 7:15). There is nuance to what constitutes “abandonment by an unbeliever” that can only be discerned on a case by case basis, with pastoral care, prayer, and biblical counseling.

3: The two grounds above shouldn’t be construed as situations “requiring” divorce. Divorce is not required or even encouraged in the above cases. They’re exceptions made, not imposed requirements. Repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation are always the best possible ways forward.

4: If the divorce was for unbiblical reasons, there are no grounds for remarriage. If there are instances where divorce occurs and it’s biblically justified, remarriage is acceptable for the innocent party. (Matthew 19:9) But even then, we encourage couples to fight hard for their marriage (see #3 above) through prayer, counseling, and pursuit of each other.

5: This is a very sensitive and nuanced topic for many that requires speaking “truth in love” in a relational context. We must speak truth, yes, but we must do so in a way that encourages others in Christ, builds each other up in him, and lovingly urges holiness in light of God’s grace in Jesus. For this reason, we urge you to only post comments if you can be lovingly truthful without being brash or harsh.

6: There are other questions like, “can I remarry if I got divorced while I was an unbeliever”. This, and questions like it, are complex questions that are very hard to answer quickly. For that reason, we urge you to get biblical counsel from a pastor who knows you and can read God’s Word with you to find the answer.

7: Finally, a divorced and/or remarried believer should not feel any less loved by God. This is not to condone sin, but rather, to reiterate that our being loved by God is a GIFT (“so that none may boast” Eph 2:9) despite our sin, and is good for our salvation in eternity and our sanctification until we get there.

(Uh-oh!)

“standerinfamilycourt’s” response:

Ryan and Selena, a growing number of pastors and other serious disciples who are familiar with the history of bible versions and revisions over the last 150 years, who are familiar with church history for the first 400 years, and who faithfully apply sound principles of scriptural hermeneutics in studying this topic deeply, must respectfully disagree with several of your points.

Overall, a couple of great books by faithful men of God would be a good read for the two of you.

“One Flesh” by Joe Fogel
“Have You Not Read?” by Casey Whitaker
“Til Death Do Us Part?” by Dr. Joseph Webb

Briefly answering a few of your points:

1. God has *commandments*, not “bests”, “ideals”, “purposes”, “designs” or the like. When Jesus said, “what God has joined, let no human (anthropos) put distance between (choresthetai)”, this was in the imperative mood. This is a commandment with eternal consequences if it goes unrepented. Further, Malachi 2 is (in full context) a rebuke of his priests who divorce their God-joined wife and marry another. God makes clear this breaks all fellowship with Him until repented, because HIs covenant remains with the still-living spouse of his youth. God does not hate the divorce out of remarriage adultery with some other living person’s God-joined spouse.

2. Since when has “hardness of heart” been an acceptable attribute in a Christ-follower? This makes the very dangerous assertion that God is obligated to make allowances for our unholy attitudes. This is not scriptural in any sense. Most of us have bibles that read: if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven (Matt. 18:23-35), do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Matt.5:38), do not take your own revenge (Rom. 12:19), and unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter heaven (Matt. 5:20). On the contrary, Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 describe what happens to an indulged hard heart in a disciple.

3 and 4. Studied deeply and responsibly, we find that the so-called “biblical grounds” for divorce simply don’t exist once principled hermeneutics are applied to the scriptures relied upon. Historically, they are the invention of the homosexual humanist Catholic monk known as Erasmus Desiderius, who was unsavory company for the likes of Martin Luther and other Reformers. All of the above 3 books address this in detail, as does our blog, www.standerinfamilycourt.com. The only biblical ground for divorce is to get out of a biblically immoral relationship with somebody other than your God-joined one-flesh original mate. The only biblical ground for remarriage to somebody other than that person is widowhood (Rom. 7:2-3; 1 Cor. 7:11,39).

5. Since on three separate occasions Jesus stated, with no exceptions, “EVERYONE / whosoever / whoso marries a divorced [person] enters into an ongoing state of adultery”, and since at least twice Paul warned, “do not be deceived…adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of God” (speaking only of those who die in that state), “speaking the truth in love” requires speaking the truth in eternal terms that lead to actual repentance – the cessation of the sin in order to recover that inheritance.

6. This question melts away once the evangelical myths of 5 centuries are dispensed with. Getting saved does not sever the one-flesh entity created by God’s hand with one’s true spouse, nor does it dissolve the covenant between that entity and God. Matt. 19:5-6,8 The truly regenerated person, properly discipled, should long to reconcile with their true spouse and should get out of their legalized adultery. Many manage to do so despite being discipled by hirelings, because the Holy Spirit directs their path, as Jesus promised He would.

7. It is definitely true that no sin, including even homosexuality, diminishes God’s love for us, but if we reject His commandments as regenerated people, the indwelling Holy Spirit (the main manifestation His enduring love) will drive us toward repentance. If we instead choose to grieve and quench the Holy Spirit instead of choosing to obey Him, we would be miserable in heaven for all eternity even if we arrived there, because we’d still resent moral absolutes just as we did on earth. He’s too loving to allow that. By contrast, there’s conclusive documentation from the minutes of annual conferences that many denominations in the 1970’s voted to officially change their marriage doctrine to accommodate the civil enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce in order not to lose finances and members, much like what is happening now with the homosexual community in the wake of legalized gay marriage. This is not soul-care in either case. Would you not make every effort to warn the homosexual that if they persist in their legalized sexual sin, they will not see heaven?

For about 4 years, your excellent memes have encouraged covenant marriage standers who follow our page, to obey Paul and remain chaste or be reconciled to the spouse of their youth. God has convicted many prodigals to exit their civil-only “marriage” and reconcile with their covenant spouse – to His great glory. If you persist in encouraging households that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous to remain in their sin, we will be compelled to blog an explanation as to why the fans of our page can no longer rely on your ministry. Precious souls are on the line here. You have used a public platform to advance a dangerous heresy (albeit you likely didn’t know any better). The godly response, therefore, needed to be equally public. Now you have ample basis for our suggestion that you study this a bit more purposefully, and we pray that you do.

We truly wish there was a “loving, nuanced” way to warn people that what they thought was holy matrimony, Jesus actually regards as ongoing adultery, and that it’s a heaven-or-hell matter. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; although the kisses of an enemy are profuse.” Prov. 27:6

“Let not many become teachers, for they will incur a harsher judgment.” James 3:1

 

Nobody relishes rebuking a ministry leader, or even an individual, in front of 500,000+ followers, and it should never be done lightly.   The starting presumption should always be that they didn’t know any better, and the rebuke should never be more public than their infraction was — but the people to whom false doctrine was disseminated need the faithful biblical truth, even if unpleasant exchanges with “triggered” people must be endured, and even if it means the page owner cuts us off as “divisive”.     There has been no further response all afternoon from the Fredericks, who seem to have become the infallible dispensers of marriage wisdom after less than 15 years’ experience.    By the grace of God, may they remain so, in a world where “gray divorce” is the only growing category, and the church is growing increasingly immoral in all things marriage. That they have not been so quick to respond the second time seems like a good sign of character.   Hopefully, they’re on Amazon right after dinner, looking for those three excellent books “standerinfamilycourt” recommended.   “Standerinfamilycourt” was once a notorious antinomian, too, mentally equating all sins great and small, until the great and eternally merciful shaking came!

More probably, something needs to be said privately to Kris Vallotton, in light of his restrained response to those correcting him, but whose closing words in his blog piece go so far as to formally “bless” households Jesus called adulterous, and to encourage the divorced that “they can love (somebody other than their estranged, true spouse) again”:

“If you have been through a divorce and remarried, I bless you today. I bless your family and your children— both your biological kids and your step-children! I encourage you to say out loud that you receive this blessing for yourself and for your family!

“If you’ve been through a divorce and are single, I want to tell you today that you will love again.

(   SIFC: People who have “been through a divorce” are NOT “single” unless their spouse is dead, or their spouse was already someone else’s spouse and not actually theirs in the first place.)

“Hear me: You WILL heal, and you WILL love again! God’s redemption is bigger than anything in your past and He can do miracles that we never even dreamed of before!”

“Standerinfamiycourt” would just love to be able to influence 400,000 or 500,000 souls all at once, given what we’re trying to accomplish in amassing enough support and influence to overthrow the unilateral “no-fault” divorce regime that brought us to where we are with the harlot church of today.    But this will likely never be, because the moral price of discouraging anyone living in this sinful state from full, physical repentance is just too high, and Jesus has already prophesied otherwise:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.  For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

“Standerinfamilycourt” Responds to Dr. Hilary Towers and Author Leila Miller

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Our response to this article,
Are the Church’s Teachings on Sexuality Still ‘Good News’ for the Divorced?
…which is (in part) about Protestant covenant marriage “standers” and their example to Roman Catholic divorcees.

There’s much to say here.  Bottom line: Jesus told us in Matt. 19:8 that all “divorce” is a man-made fabrication “from the beginning”,  a violation of the created order (Gen. 2:21-24; Matt. 19:4-6), and the only “marriage” God recognizes is both complementarian and life-long indissoluble by any acts or paper of men.   He and Paul both go on to say that dying in the ongoing state of adultery – that is, “remarriage” after man-legalized abandonment of a God-joined spouse, sends people to hell (Matt. 5:27-32; Luke 16:15-31; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).
The only people, therefore, who are actually “divorced” are the subsequent spouses who were never married in God’s eyes to begin with. True God-joined spouses are only immorally abandoned, according to the word of God, because only D-E-A-T-H ever dissolves those marriages.   Jesus mentions NO religious test for this that is recorded within the four canonized gospels, nor do any of the Apostles reference such.    Bluntly, all Christ-followers should vehemently object to Roman Catholic doctrine that waters down this truth via the papal contrivance of “nullity”, which today amounts to little more than revival of the vile medieval practice of selling indulgences.   

By the “church” the obvious reference in this article is to the RCC, who since the 12th century has progressively watered down this hard truth with “annulment” (extra paper), a practice which is now almost universal in this country.  The Protestant church, on the other hand, watered it down by ignoring / reinterpreting / obfuscating the scriptures, fraudulently handing jurisdiction over to the civil state by the Reformers, and by casting inexcusable doubt on the Apostles and early church fathers who unanimously confirmed the hard truth for 400 years–until history’s last “Donald Trump” came along (namely, the Emperor Constantine).

Under the concurrent polygamist, Constantine, the church took its first Leftist turn, in gratitude for being delivered from Roman persecution.

We saw this wicked cycle being played out again at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, where in addition to the longstanding violation of Matt. 19:6, the largest evangelical denomination in the U.S. is now paving the way for sanctioned violation of Matt. 19:4, rather than repent of BOTH forms of marriage desecration, and rather than patiently endure the resulting persecution of staying true to biblical sexual ethics.    Possibly the recent spectacle of human street torches on the big screen in the movie “The Apostle Paul” didn’t bode well, but there also seems to be increasing evidence of dirty money making its way into both the RCC and the SBC. The objective of the outside financial largesse, of course, is to complete the decades-long orchestrated political extinction of the biblical family.

“Irregular circumstances” need to be repented of by severance.   This is a euphemistic canonical term for immoral life choices that Jesus and Paul both repeatedly tell us destroy the souls of those involved.   Jesus couldn’t have been more clear that this is ongoing adultery in every case where there is a living, estranged spouse on either side.    We can all empathize with the desire to lessen the stigma and trauma for the children of such illicit unions, but we must never lose sight of the betrayed children of covenant, and must never favor the illicit children over the covenant children (and covenant generations).    God never did this.   Jesus was graphically clear in Luke 16 when describing the eternal fate of such “married” people.     We presume that then, as now,  there were non-covenant children involved — just as there are children made in God’s image today being raised in sodomous unions.

In fact, while it’s great that this article highlights and praises the “standers” who endeavor to live chaste lives following man’s divorce, it’s also true that the only pure motivation for standing that goes the distance is the consuming and enduring desire to keep family members and our one-flesh mates (as well as their legalized adultery partners) out of hell by leaving the door wide open to their physical repentance.   Any church that recognizes “irregular circumstances” and gives that any other treatment than what was prescribed by Paul in 1 Cor. 5 is directly stoking the demand for the rising, overwhelming incidence of divorce.   We don’t need family flowcharts, we need on-our-face repentance in the holy fear of God!

The authors write:

“Protestants have a term for those spouses who remain true to a wayward spouse even in the wake of what may be a necessary separation and/or civil divorce: “standers.” Absent clear and enthusiastic support for this approach (both from within the Church and without), it simply does not occur to many faithful U.S. Catholics that ‘standing’ might be the most compassionate option for the abandoned spouse and his or her children.”       (We standers certainly believe that the Apostle Paul would agree.)

This is an excellent observation, with a couple of caveats.  First, most standers who are true Christ-followers do not consider civil divorce “necessary” under any circumstances, because they know it is of no effect in the kingdom of God.   The obvious exception is, of course, divorce out of a “marriage” that Jesus repeatedly called ongoing adulterous (non-widowed “remarriage”) — a union which God is always precluded from participating in at all.    This differs not one whit from a sodomous, legalized union for all the same reasons.   Disciples in covenant marriages should endeavor not to participate in the civil system, and should be willing to endure whatever hardships necessary, rather than disobey 1 Cor. 6:1-8.

If the authors are under the impression that standers are ever civil divorce initiators, they are only fractionally correct. There are a handful of these who went from prodigal to stander after learning the truth, and then repenting (by leaving adulterous subsequent relationships, legalized or not).  Separation without civil involvement may indeed be necessary for original marriages — and this is consistent with the instructions of the Apostle in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, not to divorce, and if divorced, to remain celibate until reconciled.

Secondly, local Protestant churches typically consider standers “pariahs” and a threat to the “unity” of the church.  Some false shepherds will even carry out “church discipline” on vocal standers (instead of on the legalized adulterers whose souls are actually on the line).    Of course, one does not necessarily need to have an estranged marriage to be a stander in the larger sense.  

Thankfully, God is raising up a growing handful of Protestant pastors, with and without congregations, in an encouraging variety of evangelical denominations, who are coming into the biblical truth in the last few years, Berean-style, through deep study of original language scripture manuscripts and the writings of the ante-Nicene “church fathers“ (whereas their faithless peers would prefer to discard this valuable historic evidence in order to please and appease the religious humanists filling their pews)–and these true shepherds are coming into the unpopular truth by the wooing of the Holy Spirit.    These men have determined to suffer the economic consequences and the censure entailed in refusing to do adulterous weddings, in attending marriage permanence retreats to encourage standers, in writing truthful books, and in preaching the truth without fear of the temporal consequences.   SIFC and the angels in heaven can’t sing their praises loudly enough!

SIFC believes it was Dr. Towers who recently suggested that the effects of the standers’ movement on their children should be studied when there is a large enough sample size.   Amen!  At present, SIFC blogs anecdotally on this topic quite frequently.   We would all hope that unilateral divorce will be abolished nationwide, well before sample size  “n” can occur and before longitudinal results would ever become available.   SIFC has historical doubts that the Lord will tarry that long in these Days of Noah, but absolutely applauds Dr. Towers’ desire to see this topic studied.   Let’s be thankful that the Lord has orchestrated that Catholics and Protestants work together to turn the moral tide in church culture before it’s apocalyptically too  late for our country.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
But He does according to His will in the host of heaven
And among the inhabitants of earth;
And no one can ward off His hand
Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
– Daniel 4:35

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Substantive Due Process

Dear Texas Lawmakers: A Guest Blog

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– by Kristi  Davis

Dear Members of the Texas State Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues:

I came before you in March of 2017 to testify for HB93 for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws in Texas. My testimony can be viewed online on your website.

Now I would like to present to you an analogy to help bring better understanding of what you are allowing when you have allowed no-fault divorce to continue in our state.

You received your privilege of representing people of our state when those people exercised their privilege to vote and voted for you. You chose to run; they chose to vote. The result is the seat you are now sitting in. All this took place because there are rules in place to create a healthy environment for us to “do government”.

So please imagine this chaotic scenario:

What would you think if one of your constituents walked into the Capitol Building one day and declared that you were no longer their choice for office and must be removed?  This person is not just any constituent; this person voted for you.

And what would you think if they had the erroneous right and ability to remove you simply by making a subjective statement on how they no longer like this relationship you are now in, as voter and representative?

Imagine they could simply file a complaint at the information desk which would guarantee the issue be brought up on the House floor in front of everyone. There really is no need to discuss the issue on the floor, after all, because they need no reason for your removal.  And you will have no opportunity to object to their statement because your side of the story need not be heard. How can you defend yourself, really, when you have not been accused of doing any wrong? The situation has nothing to do with your work performance, anyway. It all comes down to their whims and singular feelings about your relationship. They no longer want you in your seat. That is all that is needed.

What if you wanted to keep your seat? After all, this one voter does not represent your whole constituency; others are involved!
I regret to tell you, the rules were changed years ago that allow one voter, any one voter, to remove you at any time for no reason other than their feelings, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once the voter objects, your job is gone and your career is over. The entire process can be completed in as little as two months’ time, because we wouldn’t want to inconvenience the public with the legal bill to defend your job.

Please remember: this voter also has access to everything you own and all your private information. They can walk into your office at any time and take your computer, read your emails, force your aides to speak against you, even take over your office and lock your door! They can force your aides to become their aides and work for their campaign to elect someone else in your place. You cannot stop it. But then again, why would you? Even though they voluntarily entered this relationship and chose to vote, you wouldn’t want to force someone to stay enslaved in this voter/representative relationship, would you?

This process could take place at any time, with any representative, as many times as a person would choose, ad nauseum.

Representatives could be shuffled in and out of office the whole session long. I know that making laws is why you are in office, that’s your job, but it’s ok if your job never gets done due to these personal whims of one person. Sure, the whole of the public would pay the price, but aren’t this individual’s desires more important? The courts say this is in the best interest of all your constituents, though years of research would say they are exactly wrong.

Would you think this public policy is not such a great one and needs to be amended or removed?

What would you do if the media folks showed up and opposed your efforts to change these policies? They would make a handsome living off broadcasting these voter objections at the Capitol, after all. But they would not say that out loud; instead, they will tell you that you are being selfish and old-fashioned. They would say that the law is now in the eye of the beholder, subject to redefinition by anyone living under it. Would you be “ok” with that?

Chaos.

Can you imagine this sort of logic applied to every area of law? If it can happen to the most fundamental and important of relationships- family ties, human beings- why not apply to it to everything else, because everything else is less important?
This matter could not be more serious.

Where do we draw the line? Where do you draw the line?
You may think my analogy sounds impossible, but that is what people of 50 years ago thought of the idea of a society where people dissolve marriage and family with the click of a button, literally.
If you do not stop this nonsense here, this analogy that sounds impossible today could be the way of life tomorrow. You are in the position to draw the line.

Let’s reestablish a healthy environment to “do family”; support healthy family relationships by requiring contested divorce cases to be brought for real reasons and every case to be heard thoroughly by a judge. If doing what is in the best interest of the children is really valued at all in this legislature, I implore you to leave hypocrisy behind and protect family by repealing unilateral divorce.

Most sincerely,
Kristi Davis
Texas Citizen
3-Time (Generational) Divorce  Sufferer under No-Fault Divorce in Texas

(    SIFC:   Kristi Davis testified on March 8, 2017 before this Texas Legislative Committee where at least three committee members actually derive income, either directly or indirectly, from unilateral divorce laws.   She has recently launched a blog page called  Healing and Repealing for Strong Family Trees – www.healingandrepealing.com  )

 

 

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Who’s That Back-Door Funding the Southern Baptists These Days…(And WHY)?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
It’s good enough for most

It was good enough for the mainstream Methodists
Good enough for the Episcopalians
Good enough for the leftist Lutherans
It’s even good enough for this Pope   

Yeah!….( okay, “SIFC” will behave now.)

In the not-so-humble opinion of “standerinfamilycourt”, it’s way past time to recognize that the bride of Jesus Christ is not some sort of demographic-sensitive, finger-to-the-wind organizational hawker.   Her Husband never did allow one single soul to come to Him on his or her own terms while He walked the earth, not even the man who wanted to go home first and bury his ailing father.

It has been hard to miss the leftward drift over the past 3 or so years of The Gospel Coalition publication (TGC) and the related Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), both of which are Southern Baptist-affiliated organizations.    What do we mean by “leftward drift” ?    It’s easily recognizable to some of us with adult children whom we raised in conservative evangelical homes, or in traditional Catholic homes, but those big kids are now thinking Jesus died for “social justice” –  and they choose their current church accordingly, leaving some of us grateful that our grandchildren are in church at all, but….

Did Jesus die for “social justice” ?

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.
Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.
– John 18:36-37

Jesus laid down His life to bring the poor and lost into a future kingdom.    Yes, He taught us to do unto others as we would have done for us,  but the temporal (as He demonstrates Himself) is only PART of the equation, and it is, in fact, by far the lesser part.

While it might seem comforting to reason that the SBC is doing what all major organizations do in the 21st  century,  especially after losing a million members over the last decade, and they are appealing to what they perceive as their future demographic to try and recover the loss, yet there may possibly be a little more that’s afoot along with the demographic appeal, and it just might be a bit sinister.    This may seem a crass suggestion, but once the choice has been made to shift (or drift) mission from the eternal to the temporal, is not such discernment fair game?

In the fall of 2015, TGC contributor Joe Carter did an excellent three-part series of articles on the Communist roots of the U.S.
50-state unilateral divorce laws, and the deleterious impact they have had on the civility and stability of our society.    He promised a fourth installment which the marriage permanence community eagerly awaited, but for some reason, he has not delivered it –almost three years later.    Why?   Some have sought to find out, but Joe’s not saying.   (More about the reinvented Joe Carter below.)

As the Southern Baptist Convention gears up for its annual convention June 10-13 in Dallas, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it appears the agenda will be heavy with more of the same.   The media has managed to keep the national attention riveted on “racism”, despite a rash of multi-racial school shootings, carried out by fatherless young men.    Denominational leaders are tripping all over themselves to “apologize” for our “segregated” churches, despite the fact that people quite freely make their own choice where they feel most comfortable attending, and you never see a “blacks only” or “whites only” sign in front of any church in this country.    Likely to be ignored (again) in the agenda is the fact that the 2018 host state and the neighboring state both have unilateral divorce repeal bills pending on the floors of their legislatures, and it’s a prime opportunity for the SBC to act on its year 2000 resolution — that is, presuming the denomination ever meant a single word of it.

The PMS Pasting of Paige Patterson

The family-friendly year 2000 SBC resolution entitled, “The Baptist Faith and Message” was presided over by the man who this week lost his job as head of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary over allegations that he is a “misogynist” and “patriarchal”, guilty in the first-degree of the unspeakable crime of counseling a physically and emotionally battered woman, some years earlier, in the identical fashion the Apostles Paul and Peter would have.   As described in the preceding blog post,  homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt brought a Y2K radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson to Spiritual Sounding Board, a blog site that “exposes” traditional biblical church conduct and morals (and especially, church leadership that cultivates this) as “abusive” and “controlling”.  SSB then proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women.    This inflamed the likes of leftist-leaning Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition garnering over 3,000 signatures demanding Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post.   The undersigned claimed to “affirm”  The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 principles (we’d beg to differ), which reads, in part:

“…All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society….In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth…

“Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race….The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation…..Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.”

Given that Jesus was abundantly and repeatedly clear that all “divorce” is man-made rebellion against the created order (Matt. 19:6,8), representing an un-Christlike and deliberate decision to take one’s own revenge, to never forgive, and to covet a different spouse, is it not at least possible that what really offended these women on Patterson’s part, is that many of them actually are adulterously-“remarried”, and therefore, Paul’s instruction for abuse found in 1 Cor. 7:11 casts an implicit moral judgment on their own unbiblical life choices, when counseled and publicly endorsed by a seminary head?    Around this blog, we call that the “shoe fits-syndrome”; nobody likes to be exposed, by the double-edged sword of God’s word, as a hypocrite – even indirectly.    This tragically-successful petition treats the socially conservative SBC year 2000 Resolution as though it were a bag of trail mix, because these same women (and possibly their pastors as well) have grown accustomed to treating God’s word the same way.   Don’t think for a moment that the well-financed globalist players pushing the Marxist breakdown of the family aren’t intimately familiar with the utter hypocrisy of the contemporary adulterated church (as well as the 50-year advanced pastor-intimidation-factor which unrepentant congregation members routinely wield), or that these globalist malefactors would even hesitate to “play” these gullible women, along with their horde of well-meaning sympathizers!

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.   For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.   – 2 Timothy 3:1-7

Swallow-Prior has also been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men.    Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.

(     SIFC:  Regrettably, Karen Swallow Prior was reported to have been hit by a bus on Wednesday in Nashville, one day after Patterson’s removal, and suffered serious injuries requiring emergency surgery.    Please be upholding this confused lady in prayer – Matthew 5:43-48 – for a healing from head to heart to toe, as God is gracious to deliver and instruct.   She reportedly is recovering well, according to an update from the same source.)

In the four-minute “smoking gun” audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused.   Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”,  and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce.    Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing Dr. Patterson could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries” — already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth.    From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about on occasion.   (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact).  He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady–rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as.    One has to seriously question the born-again experience of histrionical critics whose words and conduct show they do not trust the ability of God to supernaturally protect those who obey Him, and even worse, who cast aside as inconsequential the kingdom fruit of a former abuser being transformed, regenerated and born into the kingdom of God.

He counseled this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’….   Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but  SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard.   He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken.  He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.  Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’  Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Additional audio “skeletons”  came out of the closet where Patterson either showed some bad judgment in sheltering sexual offenders, or related some anecdote in a way sure to inflame the “feminists-for-Christ”, who insisted he was “objectifying” women and girls, including this audio from 2014.  Lastly,  a late-breaking claim from a former seminary student who reportedly told blogging Enid, OK pastor Wade Burleson just this week that she had been raped on the campus of another Baptist seminary in 2003, and she alleged that Patterson had counseled her not to report it to the police.    This last story literally broke via the Washington Post (given by Burleson to young religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey) just as the deliberations for Patterson’s job were getting underway on Tuesday this past week, and this 11th hour story pretty much sealed his fate.   Since Patterson had earlier removed Burleson from a job on a missionary board, the latter was hardly a “disinterested party” when he took the tasty morsel to WaPo.   Snarks the previously-vanquished former underling of Patterson’s:  “A woman divorcing a man is far worse than a woman enduring physical abuse.  A single woman inviting a man into her apartment is a far worse sin than a single woman being raped by the man she invited over.”     Tell me this false shepherd Burleson isn’t  a cultural Marxist–and one with a festering personal vendetta, at that!

( SIFC:While any failure to timely report a felony crime to law enforcement officials is seriously unacceptable on the part of any school official — or any Samaritan with firsthand knowledge, for that matter, what was conveniently left to the side by Burleson, Dreher, et. al. in their screeds was any mention whether this perpetrator (another student) forced his way into the victim’s [apparently] on-campus living accommodation or was invited there, in violation of campus rules.   These schools typically require all students to sign their pre-consent to strong morals agreements as a condition of remaining a student in good standing.   Critics like journalist Rod Dreher, a former evangelical converted to Roman Catholicism, are decrying that the female victim was put on probation… while the male student was expelled and permanently barred from attending another SBC seminary.   While not completely conclusive, this strongly indicates that the victim violated the campus moral policies by inviting him in, and she received a proportionally lesser penalty that at least allowed her the opportunity to complete her studies if she was so-inclined.   The real question is whether the disciplinary actions were appropriately documented by school officials and whether those files still exist 15 years later.   Apparently, normal seminary disciplinary policies, formally pre-agreed by the students, aren’t supposed to be enforced, under #churchtoo ideology, against victims who suffer crime as a direct result of themselves violating school morals policies, because “it adds to their trauma”.   This, as concerns a seminary student, is supposed to be the moral equivalent of blaming a rape victim who–proverbially–had dressed like a streetwalker, according to the social justice ideology.)      

Ironically, the only story we’re aware of about Patterson’s leadership malfeasance that doesn’t seem at least questionable by objective biblical standards never even surfaced during this food fight in Fort Worth, but was well-known to SBC leadership for years.   We come by it due to a brief mention by relatively sympathetic Pulpit & Pen, who thinks disciplinary action against Patterson should have occurred ten years ago, and that he was politically singled out while other known bad and worse actors have come away unscathed so far.  The others, apparently, are lesser-known to the noisy outside social justice warriors–and they don’t run the institutions that influence church doctrine and shape future pastors.

We’re Being “Played” : Abuse As a “Silver Bullet”
Many believe the bottom line was that unless a way was found ahead of the conference to shove Patterson to the side, there was a reduced chance of carrying off a social justice theme at the June conference.   “Abuse” is one (but not the only one) of those potent, emotional core themes of the Left, right along with “bullying” — one that even the most ardent social conservatives will cast aside years of professional expertise in evidence and due process to treat an allegation emotionally if a painful personal experience stirs up those emotions.   As we saw with the successful last minute smear of former Chief Justice Roy Moore (who was for years an active advocate for intact, biblical families in carrying out his duties on the bench–in addition to his powerful opposition to the LGBT political agenda) prior to the December, 2017 special election in Alabama.     It is a signature trait of Soros interference with democratic processes that unproven (or unprovable) allegations will indeed carry the day if  visceral human emotions are skillfully played ,with inadequate time  or means to investigate allegations.   It has become an article of Leftist faith that to call man’s divorce immoral, and to require a man or woman to remain in a marriage they no longer want to be in is “social injustice”.

The Gilyard debacle could have been spun as precisely what it looks like: insensitive and negligent failure to protect female members of the congregations and staffs of a succession of churches from an obvious sexual predator.    One who was convicted, went to jail, and was installed in yet another pulpit as soon was he was released, as a matter of fact.   Why wasn’t it spun this time?  Perhaps the issue is that this sexual predator, apparently sheltered by Dr. Patterson for a couple of decades, is black.    Not good for the narrative.  The operatives knew that predominantly-female emotions were high enough  over uninvestigated and questionable charges, that it was unnecessary to hang the man over a real crime which didn’t fit the narrative.   And who was sheltering Dr. Patterson in the nine years since Gilyard went to prison –  any of the board members who voted this week to depose him, perchance?

(  SIFC:  Update,  June 1 ,2018 –  documentary evidence has now been made public by the wife of Dr. Patterson’s chief of staff, showing that it is likely that the 2003 “rape victim” at Southeastern Baptist Seminary was actually caught in consensual fornication, and more recently lied to the media about it.    This includes correspondence the “rape victim” sent to Dr. Patterson in 2003.

This should not be at all surprising, given the highly political rush to judgment, the revenge factor of some of the players, and likely outside meddling.    As the actual facts come to light, the Patterson proceedings bear even more resemblance to the politically-pivotal Roy Moore incident in December, 2017, where unsubstantiated allegations cost a Senate election.   Regrettably, on May 30 a faction of the Board of Trustees voted to reverse their May 23 decision based on continued feminist pressure, and vindictively stripped Dr. Patterson, age 75, of his retirement benefits, while he was out of the country, claiming, there was “new” – but undisclosed – “urgent” evidence.)

Another pastor from Oklahoma, Grady Arnold, was interviewed this week on the Janet Mefferd podcast show.    Pastor Arnold has written a resolution, discussed at the 20 minute mark, which he will be presenting at the conference to try to turn the SBC back from formally or informally embracing  cultural Marxism.    May the Lord put the wind at his back, but the resolution’s prospects don’t look very good at this point.

Rent-An-Evangelical
Mentioned earlier was the connection between removal petition instigator, Karen Swallow-Prior and the ERLC, between Jonathan Merritt and the George Soros-controlled secular publications that frequently carry his work.    Independent journalists such as Pulpit & Pen have been alleging for the past three years that one or more of the complex funding networks of Mr. Soros has been donating to both the ERLC and to The Gospel Coalition, which has manifested in the leftist undertones both have been steadily taking on.    In fact, Pulpit & Pen asserted on an April 10 facebook post that Soros / Riady-placed board members run the ERLC, but did not name any names.   The ministry website names only a massively large “Leadership Council” but does not disclose the names of ERLC board members.    This information is also unavailable on either Charity Navigator or Guidestar.     Presumably,  this board would include the likes of Tim Keller, and others involved with the Acton Institute.


Source:  Full length video, American Association of Evangelicals, 2016

Another Janet Mefferd podcast on May 18 featured an interview with Tom Littleton, another Southern Baptist pastor and writer, where Soros funding of SBC entities was discussed at the 20:30 mark. where Littleton says, “at some point I think that’s [the dirty money] going to surface….and it’s going to be a really damaging thing for some of these leaders when we see where some of this money is coming from.”

Unfortunately, conclusively proving the money trail is not so straightforward, because both of these SBC “suspect” organizations are able to classify themselves as disclosure-exempt religious organizations according to IRS rules for nonprofits.  That means the IRS Form 990 information returns that disclose financials and major donors which we might otherwise be able to look up on sites like Guidestar and Charity Navigator are not available to the public.    That said, the serendipity of a 2016 hacking and leaking incident resulted in access to strategy documents of the (Soros)  Open Society  Foundation that at least provide some pretty good circumstantial evidence.    The first “rented” evangelicals were already liberals, such as journalist Jim Wallis of Sojouners, who was forced to admit in 2011 to taking Soros money after originally denying it.

This is a map of the various locations for Soros funding organizations in the U.S.  — showing plenty of them in and around the SBC’s operating hubs.  Most deal with open borders immigration initiatives (which is how the first financial involvement with the ERLC was orchestrated), but not all do.

Source:  Soros FY2015 Reception and Placement Program Affiliate Sites

(    SIFC:   Here’s a quick guide to those Soros-funded organization acronymns on the above map illustration:

CWS*~^  –  Church World Service (open borders)
EMM*~ – Episcopal Migration Ministries (refugees)
ECDC* –  Ethiopian Community Development Council (refugees)
HIAS*  –   (refugees)
IRC^ –  International Rescue Campaign (refugees)
LIRS^ – Lutheran Immigration and Rescue Service (refugees)**
USCCB*~^ – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (ecumenism)
USCRI* – U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (open borders)
WR*^ –  World Relief (“human flourishing” – a.k.a. humanist responses to human suffering)

* Eight of these “social justice” organizations have a presence in the Chicagoland area, home to The Gospel Coalition.
~ Three of these have a presence in the Louisville, KY vicinity of the SBC /  ERLC national headquarters
^  Five of these have a presence in the Dallas / Fort Worth area where important SBC seminaries, including the one Dr. Patterson was just deposed from, are located.

** One of SIFC’s adult children is presently part of a liberal Lutheran church located in a university town in a Deep South state–which is also gay-affirming, divorce-and-remarriage-affirming, and deeply involved with this Soros-funded organization.    The church’s local leadership consists largely of liberal professors from the nearby secular university.   SIFC has attended services there numerous times and is quite familiar with the liberal culture of that church, where gay literature is displayed on the reception tables in the church lobby.)

Says Pulpit & Pen,  December, 2017:
“THINKING THIS THROUGH together for a moment… Joe Carter came to the ERLC soon after Russell Moore’s ascent and radical altering of the standard conservative Southern Baptist messaging on key topics, especially LGBTQ issues.  Carter serves as ERLC “Communications Specialist” while he still holds his Senior Editor job with Rev. Robert Sirico – the once radical left wing, Marxist gay activist Pentecostal (later) gay church pastor and founder of Metropolitan Community Churches (the world’s first gay denomination), who conducted some of the nations first gay marriages and boasted he would perform exorcisms to rebuke the heterosexual spirits from his opposition – who is now a Catholic Libertarian priest.  If that is not disturbing we are simply NOT paying attention!  Carter has also worked in high level editing positions with at least two other Catholic publications according to his biography….

(  SIFC:  This blogger personally became aware of a sodomy-affirming MCC evangelical “church” during the 1980’s while residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the “buckle of the Bible Belt” and sequential polygamy capital of the nation–and considered both very disturbing!)

This December, 2017 article continues….
“Civil City Utopian Prophets and The Funding Machine
The following collaborations outlined as bullet points show the depths of Faith-Based involvement of Tim Keller and other evangelicals and institutions.  Several have been mentioned in previous articles without mention of the role Acton played in them.

  • Leading up to the 2009 infusion of untold billions of tax dollars by the Obama administration into the Faith Based Partnership overhaul – Tim Keller (page 80) and Friends, including the Acton Institute, worked with a Faith Based Partnership model in Orlando called “Seeking the Welfare of the City” (STWOTC) which resulted in the Polis Institute.  Richard Florida’s pro homosexual ideology was promoted by the Human Rights Campaign and Albert Mohler played a key role (page 76) as has the Acton Institute.  Acton still heavily promotes the “Welfare of the City” concept which centers around Faith Based Partnerships.  If participants like churches and ministries want to find funding to “save their cities” through Community Development grants, they must be inclusive and welcoming of one of the more destructive influences within the communities they are asserting they wish to help.  The erosion of the family and sexual liberation are two of the most compelling issues urban centers face.
    ……….
    “Are Money Changers Funding Acton and an Evangelical Deep State?

    • Another major player in what appears as an Evangelical Deep State is the National Christian Foundation of Alpharetta GA.  According to its history with Conservative Transparency and a 2016 990 forms /report, the NCF has brought about $6 Billion into its Christian philanthropy circles since 2011 (page 15 of the 990 shows $1,396,381,203 in 2016 alone.)  On requesting NCF to provide its donor and recipient list and history, the organization refused to supply any information whatsoever.  Various philanthropic sites do track some of the money and its sources, but given that NCF is a “Donor ADVISED fund,” the agreement upon giving is the intention of the donor is to be recognized but not required in the distribution.  What the Conservative Transparency tracking shows is that NCF giving in large part goes to political organizations like Acton Institute, Heritage Foundation, and a variety of organizations, many being Libertarian like Acton instead of conservative Christian organizations or ministries.  NCF helps coordinate giving for the Frankfurt School / Marxist-inspired Civilitas Group in which Tim Keller and Rick Warren serve as Board Members…..Since 2012 a marked departure from classic Evangelical conservative stance has taken place and Russell Moore, Tim Keller and others have been peddling the new, more civil, culturally relevant tone on social issues.  Given that their partners, like Acton and Sirico, all share the goals of harnessing Christian giving while  promoting a  Social Gospel and Faith Based Partnerships (FBP) it is fair to ask, “WHY?”Marvin Olasky, crowned the father of the Bush FBP agenda, later heavily funded and loaded with LGBTQ activism in the Obama years, provides conservative Christians with unquestioned news “from a Christian world view” in World Magazine.  Perhaps he should answer for his Fellowship with Acton Institute and Father Sirico knowing the LGBTQ infiltration of these circles and the programs he (Olasky) promotes.  Would Albert Mohler, the highly regarded head of Southern Seminary and SBC/ TGC/ evangelical leader clarify exactly what part of Richard Florida and HRC’s pro gay urban planning he believes is so vital for the church that he endorses it along with other strategies of the homosexual agenda.  There is little else in the Florida rhetoric except a heavy dose of Cultural Marxism. So what is the Appeal and what part of the ideology are we as the church to follow if NOT its push for LGBTQ “inclusion”?”

Another Christian journalist, Brannon Howse (World View Weekend), echoes this history and web of sinister connections between TGC and ERLC principals in his two-part series, “Exposing the Religious Trojan Horse of the Globalist Deep State” (March 28, 2018).    Presumably, these leaked documents enabled the reporting that was coming to light in 2017 and 2018 by these sources.

(  SIFC:  While Howse’s documented fact-gathering is indeed very useful, we put a heavy “disclaimer” on the toxic Calvinism that intrudes at the halfway-point of the Part 1 video.    Obedience to the commandments of Christ is not “salvation by works”, as Howse wrongly contends while critiquing Dr. John Piper as a “neo-Calvinist”.)

There are documents dating from at least 2008 to 2016. In June, 2016 the Open Society Foundations also had several documents leaked by DCLeaks. Bloomberg reported that the foundation notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the hacking.   DCLeaks.com link was provided in a PJ Media article, but no longer works.  One leaked memo posted by DCLeaks.com from Soros’ “Open Society” Foundations, for example, outlines a plot to co-opt Catholic officials and push Soros’ views within the Catholic Church and within the Christian world more broadly. To do that, Soros provided funding to two so-called faith-based organizations, PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing), and Faith in Public Life (FPL) that would advance his extremism against a “faction of the church” that does not support it.

Among other schemes, Soros provided “essential resources” to secure the “buy-in of individual Catholic bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages.” The agenda was to create a “critical mass of bishops” to promote Soros’ interpretation of Pope Francis’ perceived anti-free-market activism and “racial justice agenda.” Numerous prominent Catholics have said Soros is radically distorting the pope’s message to further his own fundamentally anti-Catholic agenda.  Debatable, since the pontiff and the financier actually appear to be significantly aligned on matters of relativistic morality and “social justice”.

Soros money was used to help create an advanced propaganda campaign to promote one of Soros’ “Christian” puppets as a “leading commentator in high-profile outlets, such as USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, NBC, NPR, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.” Of course, if a “commentator” agrees with Soros, by definition he or she disagrees with the bible   Possibly five of these bad actors, who were key in the removal of Dr. Patterson last week, seem to fit this pattern very well:   Jonathan Merritt, Ed Stetzer, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Karen Swallow-Prior, and Beth Moore.   This 2014 Gospel Coalition video involves three of these individuals, and it accurately foreshadows (at about the 38 minute mark) what unfolded in 2018:  learning how to “play church nicely”, removing any obstacles to doing so, so that we can grow at the expense of souls and, if necessary, while setting aside the word of God for “pragmatism”.

The Hard Facts about Declining Baptist Church Membership
This whole conversation has been far more about heat, rather than light.   What gives any group of people the right to demand that church leadership move away from biblical practice and principles?  Or the right to murmur about everything else, short of whether Dr. P’s wife uses bagged salad greens in her submission to the “troglodyte” she married?   One of these days, either SIFC or somebody else is finally going to prove the unsavory, undisclosed financial connection between this whole initiative and the demonic pocketbook that has successfully “rented” evangelicals over the past few years in the SBC, RCC, and even in other countries, for immoral political ends that go well beyond the church.  Such would never be enabled if individuals claiming to be Christ-followers possessed the personal integrity to match their level of popular cultural influence.  Identity politics and victimhood doesn’t look any better on well-published  “Christians” than it does on anyone else.  
 
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
 

To be fair to the Southern Baptists, there needs to be some acknowledgments:  the Assemblies of God reportedly picked up 1 million members after they liberalized doctrine and practice in the area of marriage permanence.   The Roman Catholic Church also appears to be gaining members after a long drought which let up after the death of conservative John Paul II, and liberalization of sexual morality commenced in earnest under the last two popes.   The “social justice” gospel is attracting millennials and their young families back to mainline churches some four decades after their conservative evangelical parents once derided them as “dead churches” whose remaining members were primarily the elderly.  Even so, God does not care at all to have pews packed full of spiritually dead and morally lost people who are “compassionate” in the temporal sense only.    The Baptists and Catholics are about to find out what’s already evident in the resurgence of the mainline churches:  the “social justice” pact-with-the-devil contains a price tag out of which the homosexual agenda cannot be “line-item vetoed”.     That makes ERLC head, Dr. Russell Moore’s famous last words in 2015, “Evangelicals Won’t Cave”, (likely written while that SBC pact was being made with OSF) laughable only three years later, as we predicted at the time in our rebuttal.

While it’s strategically tempting to hope to fill empty pews by opening the U.S. borders and becoming gay-friendly, if the SBC doesn’t get back to true biblical bearings, and tell all opposed critics to take a hike, what we’re going to have is a strengthening in an already-strong, growing movement inside and outside the churches, to dump the corrupted denominations and opt for small house churches / lay pastors, which nobody can argue isn’t a 1st century biblical model.   In other words, a continued loss of membership despite “inclusion” (heretical liberalization) efforts.   I’d personally hate to see that transpire at this nasty and pivotal point in our national history, because we really need the GODLY political power of the collective church to restore a little of the kingdom of God in our nation for everyone else suffering from 50 years of Leftist misery, most especially the poor, during which the salt lost its savor.  Instead, we’re squabbling about whether the Apostles and church fathers were “misogynists” in the clear instructions, presumably God-breathed, they left today’s leadership to follow.   SIFC’s current young pastors would call this contemporary vexation a “first world problem”.

 

Yes, the SBC has lost a million members over the past decade, while the liberalizing RCC seems (temptingly) to be picking up members the past few of years, with their Leftist, gay-affirming, “annulment”-expediting, communion-adulterating Pope.  AOG likewise picked up members like nobody’s business from 1971 to 1984, adding 1 million members (far fewer souls, I daresay) as a direct result of voting to desecrate heterosexual marriage in the wake of unilateral divorce enactment in the early 1970’s.  The price they paid was the swift exit of the power of the Holy Spirit, as numbers grew by yet another million to-date, and it gradually became acceptable to haul exposed cleavage, drooping pants and the “spouse”-du-jour into church.  I know because I was there for most of it.  “Come as you are, stay as you are” does indeed work wonders for membership — until it doesn’t.   In this case,  the Southern Baptists can be presumed to be on the same side of “until it doesn’t” as the Pentecostals.   Tulsa didn’t get to be the divorce capital of the United States due to Catholic dominance.    It’s small wonder some SBC leaders are so keen to import potential new members through open or porous borders, rather than set a godly example that gains power over the “nones” as our godly forebears did.   

Teaching unbiblical, culturally-popular pseudo-values (including, never piss off the women) to future pastors also works – until it doesn’t.  The fixed moral wall that has been hit a couple of times previously in church history is Islamism (and its ancient predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar), a reprise of which would be perfectly fine with Mr. Soros.

Many of the lost members from these denominations and from the RCC are legally-discarded spouses (and their children) whose pastors failed in very significant ways to honor and uphold the lifelong sanctity of their biblical, God-joined covenant marriage, their numbers being added to by perhaps 400,000 to 500,000 a year in the U.S., based on current unilateral divorce rates.  Nobody at a major evangelical publication ever writes a single word about these disciples (except to insinuate that there’s something “wrong” with them), though the conservative Catholic publications increasingly connect with “standers’ ” obedience to biblical instruction.  Perhaps 25% of the disaffected women find their way into Anabaptist-heritage churches, or a few of the dwindling number of virtuous Catholic parishes.   The rest, including most of the men, join the virtual church, house churches or settle for spiritual isolation, if they want to obey the Lord and not take a replacement “spouse” adulterously. 
 

Women like Beth Moore and like Karen Swallow-Prior, who claim that Jesus prescribed marriage dissolution for all manner of perceived and actual abuse, as opposed to chaste separation with rehabilitation in mind and appropriate reliance on the criminal justice system (where warranted)–are hussies and Jezebels, no matter how many books they sell.  They will be found “correct” the day that Jesus accepts hard-heartedness, unforgiveness and self-promotion as acceptable attributes in His disciples.  And those who become so presumptuous as to build “abuse ministries” around the same ideology,  are apostates misleading others toward moral destruction.   Quite amusingly, the hard-Left feminists have recently expressed their extreme displeasure with the nouveaux “conservative” feminists who promote the judicial murder of God-joined covenant marriages; who promote sequential polyandry in the name of domestic “justice” — but still won’t give their unqualified endorsement to abortion on demand for all.    

Dr. Stephen Baskerville (May 3, 2017 – How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution, Crisis Magazine) :  “The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice. “

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.   – Revelation 2:4-6

Will the Southern Baptist Convention not even measure up to the Christ-rebuked Ephesian church, by the time this story of shameless social pandering and denominational prostitution ends?   Will there be anyone left in power to “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans”  by the time of the 2019 annual conference ?

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

“Abuse” Lies Under Every Rock: Exposing An Abusive Abuse Ministry

11 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19

Can a ministry that seeks to speak out on behalf of physically or emotionally-battered spouses be abusive in their own practices?Due to the extreme political sensitivity of this topic, and out of a sincere desire to do no further harm to a priceless, real covenant family, this blog has been over two years in the writing.   Current events, however, are causing this unresolved, mishandled, and highly-politicized abuse issue to fester in a way that is about to be very bad for a couple of states that are in an earnest-but-neglected battle to repeal their unilateral divorce laws. “Standerinfamilycourt” will explain a bit more about that later in this post, and in depth in another post which is in the works, scheduled for release in about another week.

We all rejoiced when the good news came a little over two years ago that Pastor Saeed Abedini had at long last been released from the Iranian prison that had held him for nearly four years.     His wife, Naghmeh, put up a tireless effort to enlist those who could campaign for his release.   Shortly before the harvest of her efforts, she took to her Facebook page to disclose to her more than 85,000 followers that Saeed had developed a pornography addiction prior to being detained in Iran, and that he had physically and verbally abused her since early in their marriage.   She implied that her husband had been abusive and controlling in his most recent communications with her just prior to his release.    Upon his release, the Abedinis and Franklin Graham announced that they would be spending a few days with the Grahams in North Carolina to try and reconcile the issues in their marriage.   Yet, barely within two days of Saeed’s landing on U.S. soil, Naghmeh filed a petition in an Idaho court for a legal separation, explaining that the action was necessary to protect her children.    Since it’s hard to imagine that she could have made these arrangements while across the country in North Carolina, it seems apparent that she had pre-arranged this filing some time well-prior to Saeed’s release.    What was going on here? 

On January 24,  about a week after Saeed’s January 16 release,  a couple of months after she had publicly disclosed Saeed’s alleged abuse, this pseudo-ministry made contact with Naghmeh on her Facebook page.   She indicates that she had been reading their blogs.

Naghmeh_ACFJ

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
1 Corinthians 15:33

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC Note:   It is obvious that if physical abuse endangers a spouse or children in the home, separation for a season is absolutely necessary, and reporting it to the criminal justice authorities is equally imperative.    The latter seldom happens, however, since it’s cheaper and more private to run to the so-called “family court” system, and since almost nobody in our culture today buys into the unchangeable biblical truth that “remarriage” constitutes soul-destroying adultery in God’s eyes, with no excuses and no exceptions.  Emotional abuse, however, can be “in the eye of the beholder”,  and is difficult to objectively assess, measure or prove.     This is all the more reason why Paul’s inspired instructions to the church in
1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 is timeless in its remedy for domestic violence cases (which didn’t suddenly arise in the 21st century, most likely), especially against the backdrop of biblical truth– that man’s civil paper does not unjoin what only God can unjoin, and does not dissolve the unconditional covenant with God, in the case of the original marriage of our youth.   Nor has a piece of civil paper ever “protected” anyone from any form of abuse.

The unilateral divorce laws were driven by a desire not to have to prove marital fault for this very reason, i.e. that there’s an expense to do so along with ugly public airing of personal misconduct, and attempting to do so might still fail for lack admissible evidence, etc.    The mantra about “forcing women to stay in an abusive marriage” (even if it’s for only a slightly longer period) is an overblown, emotionally-driven exaggeration, but it becomes irresistible to the economically-hurting, and to the emotionally-wounded.

This reckless “no-fault” ideology, however, ignores the equal protection and due process obligations that the civil authorities also owe the accused under our Constitution, including all state constitutions.   Current law, as well as these “ministries”,  presume the accused to be guilty based solely on the allegation, and in effect, deny the accused  even a trial, before parental and property rights are cut off.     They are hugely responsible for toxic impacts on the very children they claim to protect, by using the state as a vehicle to allow the petitioning party to alienate the accused party from their God-given parental rights.   All too often, the “abuse” that is alleged is never objectively examined, and on this slippery slope it sometimes amounts to little more than individual perception, out of a self-focused spirit and with the egging-on of financially interested “professionals”.

We’ll spend a little time extracting from the web page of this “ministry”,  and a similar one,  Spiritual Sounding Board, which is currently at the center of a Leftist move to remove a conservative Southern Baptist seminary president who related in an interview that he had refused to counsel divorce in a mild (and quite brief) domestic abuse case that occurred when that pastor-molder served decades ago as a pastor himself.    We will come back to that particular incident, which is being developed more fully in a blog post, to follow.

From one of the “abuse ministry” websites, referring to a post on the other website (click through to SSB’s link):

Abusive abuse “ministries” trade on emotions and biblically-false doctrine, hoping that anyone who calls out their wicked aims and antichrist direction will be censured for “adding to the suffering of the abused”.     Their ideology castigates churches who are faithful to the word of God, accusing them of “devaluing”  and “objectifying” women.   They “cry wolf” at all churches who follow the precepts of Jesus and Paul, with the effect that where there truly is a questionable church, such as the one that unsuccessfully sued Spritual Sounding Board’s Julie Anne Smith for defamation in 2012,  or Greg Locke’s Tennessee church,  the broad paintbrush stroke they employ intimidates many other pastors into appeasing this Jezebel spirit instead of following the way of Christ.    Worst of all, they add to the spiritual delusion of the abuse victims, steering them away from the biblical instruction that is truly available for them, and which truly works, both in the temporal life and with souls in eternity.     When God delivers supernatural protection and miraculous transformation of the abuser, birthing him or her into the kingdom of God, they discredit even that, because it conflicts with their pro-divorce, feminist narrative.    These “ministries” would have considered the Apostle Paul a “misogynist” (to the full extent they couldn’t get away with misquoting him, and with “sanitizing” his instructions to wives).

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband  (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.

The Apostle Peter,  similarly “misogynistic”….

In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, 2 as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. ….

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;  not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.  For,

“The one who desires life, to love and see good days,
Must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
“He must turn away from evil and do good;
He must seek peace and pursue it.
“For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous,
And His ears attend to their prayer,
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?  But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.


The above-posted  February, 2016 article by Spiritual Sounding Board,

Saeed Abedini and Franklin Graham Promote “Couples Counseling” to Reconcile the Abedinis. Because of Saeed’s Abuse, is This Counterproductive?

raises a few valid points:

– the offender (if he / she is actually such) must want to change before change is possible

– the victim(s) and offender do need physical separation for the necessary season

– individual counseling is typically necessary before couples-counseling is likely to succeed

…but the article reaches a destructive and unbiblical conclusion that jeopardizes the souls of everyone involved: husband, wife and children.    It also adds to the lethal effects on society as a whole, because it rushes the parties into the immoral, permanent abandonment of their marriage (unless the Lord intervenes some years later) under man’s false paper.    In some cases,  namely, the great many cases where the “marriage” was biblically unlawful at inception, this is an eternal mercy.    But in every case where God-joined holy matrimony was involved between some combination of a widowed or never-married man and woman,  this wicked, murmurring spirit is an abomination for which God will hold these practitioners responsible.

On the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,

So they are no longer [never again] two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate…Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

The Greek word for the Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus used in Matt.   19:6  is “choresthetai”  which referred to the furrows between rows in a plowed field.   An effective translation of this word is, “to put distance between.”   That is a very apt description of how these groups operate.   In Proverbs 6, God calls that an abomination.

These “ministries” actively foment and promote biblically-forbidden hard-heartedness, using clever labels, slanderous emotions and caustic publicity.   Here, they arrogantly presumed that Franklin Graham would not have steered the Abedinis to the appropriate resources, had he been free of their own salacious publicity and interference.   Spiritual Sounding Board (incredibly) asks why Franklin Graham didn’t defer to the Abedinis’ home pastor in Idaho for the counseling, but a look at the facebook traffic and the writings of these groups just prior to this 2016 post makes that a hypocritical charge.  The ugly reality is that the avenue of working with the home church was effectively foreclosed because, long before Saeed’s plane from Iran had even landed, they had already demonized that Utah home church as “hiding” and “enabling” the abuser, until Naghmeh was rendered unwilling to submit to that pastor’s legitimate spiritual authority.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones     Proverbs 12:4

 

WHAT DOES A GODLY, SCRIPTURAL ABUSE INTERVENTION EFFORT LOOK LIKE?

When banks train their staff how to recognize counterfeit bills, they are said to have them spend some time closely studying the real thing.    We can profitably do the same here.    These are the traits of a biblically-faithful and effective abuse and endangered-marriage ministry:

(1) It prays that the justification and sanctification experience will be genuine and renewed in both marriage partners (Luke 13:3; Matthew 7:21-23)

(2) It counsels a sole regenerated partner in servant-leadership and seeing their offending spouse the way Jesus sees them (1 Peter 3:1-7; 1 Corinthians 7:12-13, 16)

(3) It refrains from suppressing the uncomfortable truth about the eternal and societal consequences of our individual choice to obey or disobey God’s commandments (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Galatians 6:7-8; Hebrews 13:4)

(4) It banishes the evangelical weasel-words:  “ideal”, “design”, “purpose”, “intention”, “best” (etc.) from reference to marriage indissolubility, and replaces those words with REALITY, and COMMANDMENT.  (Matthew 19:6; Malachi 2:13-15)

(5) It draws a scripture-based distinction between lawful and unlawful marriages, and counsels accordingly, with souls and generations in mind (Matthew 5:27-32; Luke 16:18-31; Matthew 19:9b-KJV; Mark 10:11-12; Malachi 2:14-15)

(6) It recognizes the spiritual warfare, demonic nature of holy matrimony destruction, and trains the believing spouse(s) in the spiritual weapons (in a separate session with the believing spouse, if necessary) –  Ephesians 6:10-18; 2 Corinthians 10:4-6

(7) Where criminal behavior is evident and provable, it counsels toward criminal court, not “family court”  (Romans 13:1-4; Matthew 22:20-21; 1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(8) It frankly warns that a holy God recognizes neither man’s “divorce” nor attempts to “remarry”, despite the widespread iniquity they observe in the church  (Matthew 19:8; Matthew 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b; Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39)

(9) It builds a deliberate knowledge base about the biblical validity, theology, practice methods, track record and faith of other marital therapists, and makes that available

(10) It attempts to advise against and mediate with authorities to eliminate relationship-hindering elements such as objectively-unnecessary no-contact and restraining orders

(11) It attempts to mediate with the pastor if there is an unbiblical element of the home church’s doctrine on marriage, divorce or remarriage, and it encourages submission to the leadership of the home church unless there is a biblically-solid reason not to (for example, unqualified pastor who is divorced and remarried)
– 2 Timothy 2:15; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6

(12) It teaches the biblical authority / responsibility structure of the home  (1 Corinthians 11:3)

(13) It cooperates with biblically-administered church discipline, and it helps to bring either or both spouses back into soft-hearted submission to valid church authority (Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5; James 5:19-20)

(14) It organizes essential material resources that enable the spouses to follow God’s instructions to separate chastely, and remain married (James 1:27; 1 Timothy 5:3-8; 1 Corinthians 7:11)

(15) It hones a skill set in defusing unhelpful, divisive emotions on both sides, and models longsuffering (Jeremiah 17:9; Galatians 5:22; Matthew 16:24)

(16) It leaves the control of the timeline in God’s hands, honoring Christ’s commandments not to take our own revenge and not to resort to pagan courtrooms (2 Peter 3:8-9; Romans 12:19;
1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(17) It operates under the fruit of the Spirit, and educates everyone involved about the works of the flesh, including the fact that all forms of humanistic thought directly conflict with following Christ, and examines common wrong assumptions and motives for humanistic thought.  (Galatians 5:22-23;  Matthew 16:24-25)

Of course, these steps are the very antidote to secular humanism and temporal values that today masquerade as “discipleship”.    Several of these elements expressly conflict with the feminist ideology of these groups.   “Standerinfamilycourt” makes no apologies for any of them, however “enabling” and “misogynistic” they may be deemed to be.    Most importantly, several of these ministering essentials cannot be accomplished in the virtual world, nor by buying the hawked publications on offer.   Hence, these “ministries” have virtually no biblically-valid role in the kingdom of God.

Now that we have a picture of what a biblically-valid ministry to physically and emotionally-battered spouses looks like,  we’re ready to meet the people and examine the philosophies behind Spiritual Sounding Board, and A Cry for Justice, while holding their characteristic dogmas and practices up to the light of scripture.

Julie Anne Smith, owner of Spiritual Sounding Board is a Washington resident who began blogging a few years ago on what she views as “abusive churches”, following an incident in 2010 or 2011 that affected her and other friends and family members at Beaverton Grace Bible Church, where the pastor at the time was Charles O’Neal, who remains the current head pastor.    Unlike her former pastor, Julie Anne doesn’t really tell us too much more about her own background, except that she was a home-schooling parent for 23-1/2 years.   Presumably, she’s been a homemaker for the bulk of her pre-blogging career.    She does not disclose on her site her education, professional experience, or even her account of coming to faith.    The summons of the dismissed suit quotes several online statements by her and various co-defendants, but none of the allegations are specific enough to cite any biblical authority to substantiate those opinions.     She apparently gets extensively interviewed around the Pacific Northwest area as a result of the dismissed lawsuit, but to her credit, she is apparently not hawking books.   A defining quote from her “About” page gives an idea of what she defines as church-orchestrated abuse:

“Another part of my story is connected with the Homeschool Movement – the subculture within the fundamental Christian homeschool group which includes practices such as: full-quiver, courtship, Patriarchy, stay-at-home daughters, modesty/purity teachings (the church/pastor who sued me also was connected with the Homeschool Movement).

“As a long-time homeschooling mother (23+ yrs), I have seen how some of these practices, especially the ones that devalue/depersonalize women and girls, have caused great harm, physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. We have a big problem with abuse in our Christian groups!”

While the primary purpose of this blog post is not to critique churches, we must start by saying that just because disaffected congregation members may personally disagree with biblical concepts such as encouraging large families, modest dress, chastity, honoring homemaking as a career choice, submission to the biblical family-structure, discouraging contemporary dating practices, none of this automatically renders a church “abusive”, unless members are chained there and not permitted by some strong mechanism to “vote with their feet”–or there is substantive evidence of financial abuse of church resources, or perhaps sexual immorality in the leadership.
The church’s website does not make any disclosure of a church board or plural leadership, which discerning folk should probably take as a potential “red flag”,  especially where there is more than one campus–which appears to be the case here, but this is the typical operating model for that denomination.     There seems to be pretty good disclosure of these facts on BGBC’s web page, which should best be left to the judgment of the public, in the absence of non-public malfeasance that could not be resolved according to biblical principles with Pastor O’Neal.    If there is any scriptural authority for any of Mrs. Smith’s opinions, she does not seem to cite them in her blog posts (even though she does appear to provide an extensive list of links to the work of others on a separate Resources tab).   Indeed, even when she is citing “experts” in her own writings on handling marital abusers, the typical link is not to a social science publication, but to a newspaper summary of an emotion-gripping incident, itself having no links to social science support.

The best that can be said of the 2012 lawsuit incident is that both sides seem to have behaved unbiblically.    The fact that the suit was dismissed, while the outcome seems correct and just, does not exonerate the public slander, reviling and lack of submission on Mrs. Smith (and company’s) part to biblical authority while voluntarily a part of the church.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality,  idolatry, sorcery, ENMITIES, STRIFE, jealousy, outbursts of anger, DISPUTES, DISSENTIONS, FACTIONS, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The fact that Pastor O’Neal felt compelled to bring the matter before pagan judges to protect perceived financial interests does not speak very well of him, either, by biblical standards.   Neither party seemed to have acted in a way that was a good witness to the community.    Smith does not give a “what we believe” section, and  tells us nothing further that creditably justifies her site, but she does provide what looks like a good resource list to help individuals decide for themselves whether they are involved with an abusive or controlling church, and ought to simply move on quietly.    Smith’s motives, however, seem vengeful and controlling (at least, intimidating) in their own right.   It should go without saying that church discipline and biblical admonition are valid and scriptural in the absence of any factors indicating mistreatment of those elements, and are not, in and of themselves, “controlling” behavior, as Spiritual Sounding Board frequently alleges.

Mrs. Smith goes on to tell us about her association with another blogger on the topic of church abuse, by the name of Brad Sargent, who goes by the moniker, “futuristguy” .     His role in this site does not seem extensive, but he’s described as having compiled the library of links to the lawsuit documents, and as a “survivor of church abuse”.   Evaluation of his materials will be outside the scope of this blog, while noting that he did write a blog on the Mars Hill Church controversy that led to the litigious 2014 removal of founding pastor, Mark Driscoll for pastoral misconduct.    Sargent’s own blogsite does not seem to be fixated on interference with families, but he did also weigh in separately on the recent Paige Patterson controversy.

It was to Spiritual Sounding Board that Christian homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt reportedly brought the year 2000 radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and scheduled speaker for the mid-June annual conference in Dallas of the Southern Baptist Convention.   In magpie fashion, Mrs. Smith proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women.    This inflamed the likes of Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition with over 3,000 signatures for Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post, which is scheduled to be discussed tomorrow, May 22.    Swallow-Prior has been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men.    Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.   There are suggestions that various Southern Baptist arms, including the ERLC, have benefitted from the largesse of George Soros’  Open Society Foundation,  and this Dallas seminary coup, if successful, has strong implications for the unilateral divorce repeal debate in Austin that resumes with the 2019 legislative session.

In the four-minute audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused.   Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”,  and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce.    Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing he could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries”, already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth.    Not that Dr. Patterson should be required to bow and scrape before these militant hussies, it is an important point of chronology that this interview pre-dated the inception of these groups by several years, so it is a bit unreasonable to even accuse him of “insensitivity”.   From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about.   (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact).    He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady, rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as in their smear campaign.

He told this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’….   Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but  SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard.   He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken.  He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.  Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’  Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Folks, that’s how it’s supposed to work in the kingdom of God!
In fact, something similar happened nearly 40 years ago in SIFC’s home.

...Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.
– Matthew 21:31

That formerly abusive man will get into heaven before any of these harpies trying to remove Dr. Patterson will, trust me.   No civil paperwork needed.    In fact, the rebellious filing of a divorce petition, in direct violation of 1 Cor. 6:1-8, is the trigger that tends to create much of the violence, along with the illicit presence of an immoral relationship which an insecure woman who is not submitted to Christ will often herself introduce, in her own abusiveness toward the marriage.   On the other hand, a biblical, chaste separation, where the abuser knows and trusts that their spouse remains committed to the home and to reconciliation, will often lead to genuine repentance.
I find a little bit of flaw with Dr. Patterson’s articulation, but no fault whatsoever with his conduct.   The fact that these condemning women have so much open disdain for God’s word and for His ways tells me all I really need to know about their characters, and about their qualification for the “ministry” they claim.

In contrast to Spiritual Sounding Board,  the “ministry”  A Cry for Justice is a bit older and more established.
(Note: we have removed the earlier reference to tax-exempt nonprofit status  which was in error, after ACFJ advised this was not correct.)

When founded in 2012, it was run by Pastor Jeff Crippen, of Christ Reformation Church in Tillamook, Oregon, and by Barbara Roberts of Australia, who claims to have come out of an abusive marriage, and is presently in a biblically-adulterous remarriage with a man she also says has come out of an abusive marriage.    Both have written various books on the topic of domestic abuse / violence and the “acceptability” of divorce, since 2008-9.    Crippen is a former law enforcement professional, and bolsters the “authority” of his books with that background.   He appears to be in a 40-year covenant marriage.   Crippen makes various charges in this 2012 post against conservative Christian denominations and fellowships, some biblical, and some not-so-much, for example:

“Taking Stock

Therefore, if your church:

  1. embraces a theology  that presumes a church member/professing Christian really is a Christian, regardless of how they are living,
  2. emphasizes the headship of the husband and father and the submission of the wife and mother without getting right down to the “nitty-gritty” of what abuse of headship actually looks like, so that the men in the church even “squirm” in the pew if they are guilty,
  3. does not, like we used to, permit women to vote or to pray aloud,
  4. teaches that the marriage covenant is not to be broken, that divorce is wrong (that sounds biblical, but what it usually translates into is the clear implication that abuse is not grounds for divorce)
  5. teaches that abuse victims, normally women, are pleasing God and suffering for Christ by remaining in a marriage to an abuser,
  6. discourages (in some cases forbids) a wife from saying anything negative about her husband (this is often expressed as a discouraging ‘gossip’)

…then I suggest to you that it is not fundamentally the troubled marriage that is threatening the health of your church, but it is the climate that has been created which inevitably deals injustice to victims.”

“Injustice Destroys Unity

“As more and more people in the congregation begin to realize this injustice, unity is destroyed.  As we, pastors and leaders, dig our heels in further, all the while telling ourselves that we are standing faithful for Christ in this, we only add fuel to the fire.

“There was still another hard thing that I had to face:  just what do we think of women?  The fact is that most conservative, Bible-believing pastors like ourselves actually look down upon women.  We see them as inferior beings.  We object to this charge, but our actions betray our real attitudes.

“I had to ask myself, “Jeff, just exactly what is it that is going on in your head when a woman walks into your office and asks for help?”  The answer I ultimately saw was “I see her as an inferior being and I talk down to her.”  Really, and with ruthless honesty – “What does Pastor _________ think about a woman who walks into his office?”  “What does he think about his wife?”  Don’t rush to answers.  The first responses we give are usually wrong.”

(Extracted from “An Open Letter from a A Pastor to Pastors”,  September 6, 2012)

Crippen reportedly stepped away from the  ACFJ “ministry” in 2017, leaving it in the hands of Barbara Roberts and her assistants.   Roberts was the author of the decidedly unbiblical book, “Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion”.

Of course, the very title of this tome suggests a reliance on the too-common eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:15, which itself relies on an abusive translation of the Greek term “douloo” to include the marriage bond, and in so doing, fabricates an out-of-context “exception” for both divorce and remarriage based on a spouse’s desertion.    No one-flesh supernatural, inseverable joining for this bunch — that “demeans” women and “enables” abuse!    This book was written in 2008, and Ms. Roberts entered her adulterous union in 2011.     While our Lord says all divorce is man-fabricated, Roberts claims there is a “distinction” between a “treacherous divorce” and “disciplinary divorce”…

“Disciplinary divorce is permitted by the Bible. It applies in cases of abuse, adultery and desertion, where a seriously mistreated spouse divorces a seriously offending spouse.

“Treacherous divorce is condemned by the Bible. It occurs when a spouse obtains divorce for reasons other than abuse, adultery or desertion. I did not invent those terms by the way, I got them from another author. To explain the scriptural basis for the distinction between disciplinary and treacherous divorce took a whole book, so I’d best not try to go into it here!

“Understanding the biblical principle of disciplinary divorce is liberating, especially for the victims of domestic abuse, who have been the Cinderellas in the divorce controversy for centuries. God doesn’t say that abused spouses have to stay, put up and suffer. They are free to separate, divorce and, if they choose, remarry. They don’t have to be sacrificed on the altar of the institution of marriage, at the hands of a cruel spouse and a judgemental [sic] church. They can seek freedom from bondage and rebuild their lives, without guilt or condemnation.” 

(We would add…without much of a healthy fear of God!)    So, this brings us to the nitty-gritty of the issue to remove a seminary head who is committed to biblical marriage permanence and whose actions reject the falsehoods of the “social justice gospel”.    The full (and grossly errant) ACFJ  “Position on Divorce” can be read here.

ACFJ defines “abuse” that justifies divorce as follows:  “A pattern of coercive control (ongoing actions or inactions) that proceeds from a mentality of entitlement to power, whereby, through intimidation, manipulation and isolation, the abuser keeps his* target subordinated and under his control. This pattern can be emotional, verbal, psychological, spiritual, sexual, financial, social and physical. Not all these elements need be present, e.g., physical abuse may not be part of it.”

ACFJ goes on to claim on their site (without biblical authority) that the marriage covenant is “broken” by this “abuse”.   On the contrary, our bible states that, although many things violate the marriage covenant, only physical death actually breaks it.     Somebody’s obviously lying here:  either it’s Barbara Roberts, the self-interested, legalized adulteress, hoping to sell her apostate book, or it’s Jesus and Paul.    What do you think?

There is some misapplied-but-interesting lore behind ACFJ’s iconic Facebook cover:   “Saint Lucy was a rich Christian woman of Sicily who refused marriage and gave her money to the poor. Her rejected suitor (a pagan fellow to whom her mother had betrothed her) denounced Lucy to the authorities during the Diocletian persecution. The Governor of Syracuse ordered Lucy to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. When she refused the Governor sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel. Christian tradition states that when the guards came to take her away, they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, but would not burn. Finally, she met her death by the sword in 304 AD.   A later legend says that Lucy’s eyes were gouged out as part of the persecution but were miraculously restored at her death.  In the painting Lucy is standing before the Governor who condemned her at the behest of the abuser who sought to marry her. She is pointing upward to Heaven, warning the judge of the wrath that will come upon him for siding with the ungodly. The Holy Spirit hovers over her.”

If the Holy Spirit is hovering over this (purportedly, persecuted) organization, it is a grieved and quenched one.   

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to conclude this post with some balancing thoughts by Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College, and Research Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, The Independent Institute, and the Inter-American Institute, from his 2017 article, “How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution”:

“The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally, fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice.

“Even more serious are fabricated accusations of domestic violence, a well-known weapon in divorce courts and a tool of the feminist lobby for creating single-parent homes and depriving children of fathers. They constitute another clear and direct attack on justice. Some Christians have indeed weighed in—unhelpfully. 

“In ‘Freeing the Oppressed: A Call to Christians concerning Domestic Abuse‘, Ron Clark parrots standard, patently preposterous feminist claims (“every 15 seconds a spouse kills his wife”). His personalized definition of “domestic violence” bears no relation to plain English, with “manipulation,” “self-pity,” and even “apologies” classed as “violence.” His books are a litany of government falsehoods that are used to exacerbate the family crisis and augment government power. But even if Clark is right, then why are the other churches so silent? Here too, the church should have something to say, one way or the other.  But here too, as with divorce generally, as with rape accusations, they are silent.”

 We note that Dr. Baskerville is a tireless critic of our immoral and unconstitutional unilateral divorce laws, whose proponents are constantly seeking to justify with “straw-man” arguments, such as claims that stripping ALL (offending and non-offending) divorce defendants of their basic Bill of Rights protections is imperative to reducing spousal suicide from “feeling trapped in abusive marriages”.    While correlation studies have indeed been done that show a slight drop in spousal suicide rates with the rise in states that have passed unconstitutional “family laws”, those studies ignore important resulting factors like the hefty social costs, the suicide, homicide, physical and sexual abuse rates of children in the resulting broken homes, and the suicide rates among legally-abandoned spouses, especially those alienated from their children due to no fault of their own.

You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.   – Deuteronomy 16:19

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

How Do We Know that God Created Indissoluble Holy Matrimony to Mirror the Gospel?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

From a recent facebook exchange about John MacArthur as a purported gospel “truth-teller” (versus the alleged “distorters” of the gospel), on the Pulpit & Pen facebook page post:

SIFC:  “MacArthur is himself a Gospel distorter because he refuses to tell the truth about the no-excuses lifelong indissolubility of holy matrimony. Piper does tell the truth, but then he turns right around and tells people to stay in their ongoing man-legalized adultery, as if Paul didn’t warn at least twice that doing so will land them in hell. God designed holy matrimony as the very image of the gospel.
It cannot be desecrated the way the Mac-Man promotes, without pulling all of society down in 3 or 4 generations.”

JAB: “I actually agree with you on the permanence of marriage, but how is disagreeing distorting the gospel?”

SML: “[SIFC], please answer Johnny Benson’s question. I am interested”.

SIFC:  “Excellent question, Johnny. I have a male blogger friend who, upon learning the biblical truth and becoming convicted, removed himself from his biblically-adulterous “marriage” to another man’s discarded covenant wife several years ago, encouraging her to reconcile with her true husband. One of his blogs expresses this so much more eloquently than I ever could, but I can’t seem to find it right offhand, so we’ll have to make do with my attempt at it. You are right, this aspect of comparison to the gospel could fairly be construed as “opinion”. It is one of those truths that is Spirit-imparted, but I believe there is ample evidence that Jesus modeled this many times Himself. I think misappropriated Lutherism and Calvinism (“insurance policy Christianity”) tends to blind most of us to this pervasive truth, especially in our adultery-steeped church culture.

“I think the biggest clue that Matt. 19:4-6, 8 indissoluble holy matrimony is God’s first-created symbol for the gospel is the fact that Jesus was one of the two witnesses at history’s first wedding (the other was the serpent) where the very first mini- “church” is created, is repeatedly referred to as the Bridegroom throughout the OT and NT, ending with Rev. 22:17,20:  “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost….He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra and Malachi all testified to this (ironically leading to some of the most egregious hermeneutic sins imaginable in our contemporary churchianity, but I digress)…all of them comparing covenant-breaking with idolatry.  Jesus echoes this in His fiery rebuke of the Pharisees in Luke 16.

“Most people don’t know it (because they deliberately aren’t taught), but the comforting words with which Jesus opens the last supper would have been instantly recognized by the twelve, because they are the ancient, ceremonial words of the Hebrew betrothal ceremony, such as Joseph would have repeated in front of Mary’s family just before His conception….”In My Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you…I go away to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, you may be also….I will not drink of this cup again until I drink it anew in My Father’s house..” (and so forth). The bread symbolizes “sarx mia” (supernatural, instantaneous, inseverable one-flesh) and the wine symbolizes unconditional covenant. His very ministry began at a wedding, where He turned an ordinary element necessary to life* itself into a flow of unconditional covenant.

“When Jesus says, “I will never leave nor forsake you”,  He is referring to all of this, and it is the primary reason He demands unconditional forgiveness of our neighbor as a condition of inheriting the kingdom of God. When Paul says in Galatians 4:22, “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman (Hagar) and one by the free woman (Sarah). But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise”, he is referring to the kingdom difference between a God-joined partner and a carnal-but-legal counterfeit.

“Piper also makes the case for holy matrimony reflecting the gospel (as contrasted with our post-modern redefinition of “marriage” to include legalized adultery and legalized sodomy) so very eloquently and accurately, but then he wrongly believes that dying in an ongoing state of covenant-breaking will only result in the “loss of rewards”, despite Paul’s repeated clear warnings to the contrary.
He wrongly claims that full repentance from such is “repeat sin”.
In doing so, he morally equates God-joined unions with those that Jesus repeatedly and unequivocally called ongoing adultery, as if God’s hand would join someone to more than one living spouse or go back on His own unconditional covenant with the existing one-flesh entity He already created. I’ve not personally read Piper’s book, “This Momentary Marriage”, but my blogger friend has reviewed it:
http://genesistwo24.blogspot.com/…/a-book-review-this…”

………………………………………………………..

If only this Facebook exchange had ended right there, but alas, nobody says to a “TULIP-merchant” something like , “[Piper] wrongly believes that dying in an ongoing state of [marital] covenant-breaking will only result in the “loss of rewards”, without getting the authenticity of one’s salvation questioned, do they?    The conversation went on in that tedious vein for what seems like hours afterward, but the readers will here be spared.   “Standerinfamilycourt’s”   prayerful view of that errant dogma can be read here, for those interested.   (Meanwhile, “SML” above went in a different direction of challenge:  “are you really saying there is no divorce for cases of abuse and abandonment?”   Yes, ma’am, but I didn’t write the bible.)

The point “JAB” pushed is nonetheless relevant because someone who views their “salvation” as a guaranteed, punch-card past transaction instead of an unconsummated ongoing betrothal is going to say something similar to what “JAB” refused, after all the above discussion, to budge from:   “marriage is a picture of the relationship of Christ and His bride the church, but it’s not the gospel.   That’s ‘idolizing’ marriage.”     Salvation, for “JAB” and adherents, is strictly the transaction (which the right-minded more accurately call justification), but for him, “salvation” doesn’t seem to entail any of  the details about becoming sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit, or learning how to live with the Bridegroom in eternity, ahead of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.    In other words, it’s a pared-down gospel that makes our sanctification seem “optional”, leading to the Calvinist’s (false) allegations of a “works-based” gospel if it is based in any way on obeying the commandments of Christ.    Yes, we are indeed free of any requirement to follow the Law of Moses, but obeying Christ from the heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is worlds removed from that!   We cannot equate the commandments of Christ with the defunct Law of Moses.

According to the referenced sermon by Dr. MacArthur, “false teachers”:

(1) hinder believers from obeying the truth by falsely claiming the authority of James, the head of the early church, and attacking Paul’s authority
(2) “obeying the truth” is to believe the gospel (circular argument, as presented by Dr. M, if it excludes obedience to Christ’s direct commandments in purported “legalism”)
(3) do not represent God (in “legalistic lies“)
(4) contaminate the church – “a little leaven…”
(5) will face judgment (SIFC: indeed!) because they are in it for money (SIFC: beginning at 38:25 the irony of this sermon really comes to a crescendo)
(6) persecute the true teachers (perhaps by calling them “graceless legalists” and “Pharisees”?)

The hypocritical application of what, on its face at least, is biblical truth is what most tickles carnal ears (contemporary “Nicolaitans”) these days.   Biblical “grace” never focuses on the temporal while completely ignoring what the bible says about eternal outcomes.    Refraining from disobeying Jesus by the act of “marrying” someone else while having a living, estranged spouse is not “legalism”, any more than refraining from sodomy, incest or concurrent polygamy is.     Indeed, James, the head of the church officially required the converted Gentiles in Acts 15 to refrain from sexual immorality.   Elsewhere, Paul tells us our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.   Refraining from, or physically repenting from, remarriage adultery is akin to refraining from touching the Ark of the Covenant — another of God’s most sacred symbols.   No, there isn’t instant death any longer for violators, but only because of Christ’s resurrection, and because God is not eager to instantly dispatch people to hell while Jesus is advocating for their souls that they would fully repent.   (“JAB” made a big deal that this was so they wouldn’t actually need to repent, other than from alleged “unbelief” in “grace”.)

By the Spirit of the Lord, there are a few Calvinists who “get” marriage permanence (Dr. “Mac” not being one of those).    SIFC hangs out on pages like Pulpit & Pen because the page owners are outspoken critics of a wide variety of the worst enemies and abusers of the sanctity of marriage within the evangelical church today.     At the same time, they seem to be boosters of the good doctor, despite his apostasy concerning marriage, and it’s not very clear why that’s the case at this point.   Perhaps it was good to get a word in on the subject, because not just any marriage, nor the institution of marriage reflects the gospel, that is, the husband laying down his life, and the wife submitting to her husband under the Lordship of Christ, both parties forgiving each other as Christ forgives us, seventy times seven, and the preparation for heaven.  How can much of what passes  for “marriage” these days, either in law or in practice, possibly do any of that?    No, it’s only God-joined, indissoluble unions that actually mirror the gospel.  Neither can be counterfeited by caving to an evil contemporary culture.

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.

Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Then he said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.”  Then I fell at his feet to worship him. But he *said to me, “Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”    –  Revelation 19:6-10

(* Sorry, we couldn’t resist the well-timed jab by the satire page, Babylon Bee.)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Fiery Furnace : Covenant Standing and Our Adult Children

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short. – Romans 12:12

For many of us who obey biblical instruction to stand for the wholeness of our families, to treat an involuntary or our own sinfully-initiated civil divorce as a chaste separation of the indissoluble, no matter how long it takes, no matter what pseudo-authority an immoral civil law system attempts to exert over us, no matter what we suffer at church as a consequence of this biblical obedience,  we yet find ourselves in a very long journey that increases the number and sharpness of the rocky shoals we must now figure out how to navigate.   As the journey lengthens, we often lose the support of others after a long season, based on circumstances we can’t control.  We’re hard-pressed, even so, to point to a single hero of the bible who didn’t also experience this, but it seems really hard when it’s us;  when it’s our kids inflicting some of the cultural persecution and suffering their own mortification over our convictions.

Along with the long road comes the intensifying spiritual warfare, because what we are daring to do is shake the very beams and timbers of the world’s oldest and most powerful satanic stronghold. We are generally a pretty strong lot, if our motives for doing this are what they should be. We can’t be “taken out” permanently by our own covetings and lusts, even if our foot might slip on occasion, and we can’t be shamed out of it, even by close friends or disgruntled family members, if our worst terror is that our prodigal spouse faces an eternity in hell if they die before repenting, or that our children and grandchildren might be deceived into emulating him or her some day.   We bear up, some of us, through intense economic hardship, lonely illnesses, the slander and accusation of others in the body of Christ, whose own carnal choices make our contrasting choice seem threatening. When satan knows, after years and sometimes decades of trying, he can’t get to us any other way, he often doubles back around on efforts to get to us through our children. There are several forms this can take, and though “standerinfamilycourt” has blogged on this before by way of personal tales, this post will try to take a look at how this commonly develops, share some things that might be helpful to think about, and finally share some encouraging outcomes.

Catholic author, Leila Miller has written a highly-praised book called Primal Loss, in which she asks a set of questions to seventy adult children of divorce about their feelings and experiences, which she captures in the book.    Most were accounts of parents who, for the most part, remarried and would never have considered standing for the indissolubility of the only marriage God recognized as such.    The parents largely went along with the culture, and had no godly input to do otherwise.   The kids mostly say their adult life has suffered in various ways.

These accounts captured in Primal Loss make a good contrast against which our own choice to obey God’s commandment throughout unwanted marital estrangement can be compared to the emotional impact on our adult children of our not doing so, for a little balance and perspective.   The whole premise of Miller’s book was the grievous temporal emotional impact on the adult life of these casualties of the popular divorce culture, especially where society expected them not to contradict the conventional wisdom about their “resiliency”.   Her premise is true enough:  our culture deeply frowns on adult children of divorce speaking up about how the selfishness of man’s divorce has impacted them as adults, and this expectation is no different for children of standers from the perspective of virtually everyone around them, except us standers.   One of the most repeated (and striking themes) as stated by many of the adult children in this book is how much they truly resent having to explain to their own children Nana and Papaw’s estrangement.

“standerinfamilycourt” has two adult children of the covenant marriage.   Both were young adults when the marital issues first surfaced. Both were raised all their lives in an evangelical home, where they were not even allowed (by their prodigal parent) to spend the night in a home where there was a biblically-adulterous “marriage”, even if the offending couple was part of our church. Both are now happily married, attending church regularly with their young families, and teaching their own children marriage permanence. Both stood firmly, along with their respective spouses, with this covenant marriage stander for nearly a decade leading up to the unilateral civil divorce action, and for at least a couple of years until a prodigal husband legalized his adultery, almost a dozen years into their ordeal.   SIFC is well aware that many standers have a very different personal situation with regard to their children’s ability or willingness to support their stand.

All this said, SIFC has been violently thrown out of the house of each of these adult children at least once in the past 3 or 4 years, for a reason directly related to pressures from the covenant marriage stand, and has been threatened with never seeing the grandchildren again if it continued, and if SIFC didn’t quit the “cult”.

What are some of these pressures that we wish we could spare our kids (and their kids), which inevitably result from the only choice we can righteously make before God?

(1) The adulterous prodigal and their new spouse are relentlessly pouring on the emotional pressure to validate their “marriage”.
This is an all-consuming, driving force among those who know their relationship is invalid and immoral in God’s eyes.    In fact, the more they knew this before they entered into pseudo-marriage, the more intense the effort becomes to gain acceptance.    Cards, bribes, invitations and pleas will proliferate.  Scripture will be twisted to call into question the kids’ “unwillingness to ‘forgive’ ” or their “failure to honor their mother and father”,  or their “disrespect for the authority of civil government”.    They will be pointedly reminded that their own current church would recognize this new “marriage” (too often true enough).

If those measures don’t succeed, the grandchildren will often be contacted behind the backs of their parents.    The child’s conscientious spouse, who never asked for any of this ongoing conflict, will start to fear for their own marriage due to the household turmoil all this lobbying causes over an extended period of time.    If not properly navigated, the adulterers eventually “win” from the simple grind of wearing down family members, and they know they can easily deflect the blame at the same time, preferably onto the stander.    The problem is not their immoral betrayal of their own flesh and blood progeny, it’s that irksome covenant marriage stand, and an “ex”-spouse who is “deliberately prolonging the pain” for all, by “using the kids”, instead of “getting help” or “moving on”.

(2) The children were not raised with the idea of marriage indissolubility, and they support the adulterous union because that’s what peace with our culture dictates.    It usually takes two firmly-convicted parents to raise up children who would fit into the first description discussed above.    Given the apostasy of most churches and the widespread legalized immorality in most extended families and friends’ families, this stands to reason.    Beyond this is the fact that many abandoned spouses come genuinely to Christ only as a consequence of the marital rupture, and did not raise their children with biblical marriage concepts.    In this latter case, the kids come to associate the stander’s sudden “fundamentalism” with all the prevailing lies of the culture about following Christ.

This really puts the stander in a serious pressure-cooker, and can result in much greater actual isolation from children and grandchildren than the first group of circumstances.    These standers often find themselves suffering in silence as their grandchildren are exposed to one or more normalized immoral relationships that they know imperil two generations of souls.    They also suffer much humiliation in these circumstances.    They  suffer almost irresistible fear and a sense of helplessness to do anything about it, even to the extent of fearing to wear their wedding ring in front of the family.    To them, I offer an encouragement from the recent film, “I Can Only Imagine: The Bart Millard Story”.    Bart’s mother left her abusive covenant husband for good cause, and formed a series of immoral relationships soon after.  Bart’s dad, long  before he came to Christ toward the end of his life, never took off his wedding ring.   He, too, was a stander even as a pagan.   Even as a drunk, he was having one of the most important silent influences a man could have on his son’s future life.

(3) The adult children have their peers to appease (and you’re embarrassing them; putting them on the spot).   They go to work, to dinner parties, they’re on facebook and at soccer practice and scouts.   It’s sharply painful to them to be asked how their mom or dad is doing.   Social media exposure makes this circumstance particularly painful for both the stander and the children who feel “trapped” between their parents, in front of their friends, no less.     It’s not uncommon for adult children of standers to “unfriend” one or both parents because of this, particularly if there is any activism involved on the stander’s part, or bragadocious posts on the prodigal’s part – both circumstances being very common.    They dread being asked by these friends if they (like us) think that they or their divorced-and-remarried parents / aunts / uncles / siblings are living in sin.    Even the most faithful of born-again adult children may not be very comfortable with thinking about these matters in eternal, heaven-or-hell terms.    Their focus tends to cling tightly to how people are made to feel in all of the swirling circumstances.   This concern often extends to what they fear your grandchildren might let slip to their own young friends, because so many of those children’s parents are divorced and remarried, as SIFC’s daughter once protested.

(4)  There’s a ninety-five percent chance they are not comfortable with talk of hell, nor of remarriage adultery sending people to hell, especially by the millions.   The very thought that it could be true is even more terrifying to them.    God bless the Francis Chans and David Pawsons of the evangelical world who are now setting the example that’s giving us permission once again to talk about hell, after a decades-long church taboo against it!    In the meantime, we’ve been up to our eyebrows in toxic Calvinism and toxic Lutheranism, with extrabiblical statements like: “He died for our past, present and future sins”, or “God looks at our sins, no matter how bad, through the shed blood of His Son, and He has thrown them as far away as the east is from the west.”  (Presumably, without any repentance required other than “in our hearts”).    Our kids are tempted to presume that just because a couple came together in “remarriage”, and a sovereign God didn’t stop it, He must have “joined them”.     Most contemporary evangelical pastors look right past Matthew 19:4-6, 8 (and related passages) to presume that God “provided for” divorce, and that all civil marriages other than homosexual or incestuous ones are morally interchangeable.    Against that backdrop, linking Luke 16:18 with 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 seems almost sacrilegious.   However, we need to be mindful that Jesus and Paul each made that linkage twice.
Empathetically, can we blame an adult child for feeling intense alarm and strong denial at someone / anyone saying out loud that a parent they always thought was “saved”, who may have even baptized them, is now headed to hell just for choosing the same serial monogamy that everyone around them chooses?

Let’s face it, if we didn’t know there was a biblical hell-penalty for dying in unrepented remarriage adultery, we might still stand celibate out of our first love for Jesus, but we’d have far less company in doing so.   Furthermore, we’d be unloving not to give our blessing to the remarriage of our born-again one-flesh partner, knowing that the “loss of rewards” the Calvinists like to say they will reap in eternity makes their happiness in this life all the more important to them.    We’d be downright cruel to keep calling it adultery, even though Jesus repeatedly did.    It would be harsh on our children and grandchildren not to do whatever we could to ease the intense stress they are already under, if there were no risk of hell for children and grandchildren who go along with the immoral culture and who someday emulate it.    But the biblical fact is what it is, so we “soldier on”.    Jesus never promised us bloodless spiritual warfare.

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.   For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;  and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.   –  Matthew 10:34-36

Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.   Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.   But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.  – Matthew 24:11-13

The Apostles instead promised us we’d be surrounded and outnumbered by desperately wicked people in the last days.   There is no way a serious stand can impact our children and grandchildren for the good unless the taboo against talking frankly about hell is gone from us.   If we give place to the taboo out of fear of man, satan wins.    

(5) Their spouse isn’t onboard, including the spouse’s parents or siblings.   Perhaps your child’s in-laws are living in the sin of remarriage adultery themselves, or some of their other children or other relatives are.  Perhaps they are a clergy family in a church where adulterous weddings are routine (or denominationally mandated), and “blended” families are typically the most productive members of the congregation.    Or perhaps your child married an unbeliever, either equally or unequally-yoked. Perhaps you are a serious threat to your son-in-law, or daughter-in-law, because they actually have a living, estranged spouse.    Whatever the reason, expect your adult child to be impossibly-torn in such circumstances, and always make your own choices that protect the sanctity and irreplaceability of their marriage, unless that marriage is biblically-adulterous.

(6) You were once the prodigal, now repented and standing, but your kids still don’t trust you.     I am talking here to the one who divorced a faithful, godly spouse to “marry” someone else you were attracted to, rather than stay and persevere through the issues in your God-joined marriage.   The Lord has brought you back from the Far Country, given you godly sorrow over what you’ve done, but your kids are applauding your spouse’s new relationship(s) because they don’t want to see the other parent hurt again, and aren’t ready yet to buy in to your repentance.   You don’t understand how they’re not persuaded by the years you’ve chastely waited for the Lord to put your family back together since the day of your genuine repentance.  From their perspective, the years they thought they could count on their intact family before it got disrupted by your change of mind (and heart) still speak louder than anything that’s happening now.    That’s a really hard place to be, but not beyond the Lord’s touch.

So, what do we DO as standers with all of this?
To be honest, it seems easier to talk about what we don’t do, first.

– However tempting, and however much legal or informal alienation has developed, we don’t “write them off”.    This is especially crucial for men to understand, in their God-assigned role as the patriarch of the family.   God did not let Eli off the hook when he sinfully abdicated his role as the moral shaper of his adult sons.    Giving in to this abdication urge is an affront to God’s design for the family, even in the extreme situation of legal restraining orders, and even in the second generation.   Whose authority trumps here, God’s or “Caesar’s”?    Be bold, and ask God to bring the children / grandchildren to you, and to remove that restraining order, in Jesus’ holy name!

– Don’t lose sight of the fact that the baseline battle is for souls, not circumstances.

– Don’t forget that the battle is ultimately the Lord’s, but He still needs kingdom soldiers (in their full armor) to carry out spiritual warfare.

– Don’t be the “cobbler whose own kids (and grandkids) went without shoes”.   (This is for the street preachers, etc. out there who think it’s OK to not expect wholeness for their covenant family, as long as they’re “doing something for the kingdom of God”.)

– Never lose sight that NO prodigal mate “divorces” ONLY their covenant spouse, they also “divorce” their entire covenant family, spiritually and practically, especially if they then enter into legalized adultery.

– Don’t be so presumptuous as to give GOD a time limit.   His singular will IS for ALL your covenant family to be whole in this life and to make it to heaven.   Yes, we know it doesn’t always happen that way, but Abraham wasn’t lauded in Romans 4 for comparing himself to others.      

  • DO be so bold as to stare satan down after a discouraging incident with the kids.    You’re a King’s kid, and it’s your birthright, as well as your calling to do so.   Balance that with the other piece of advice given to “King’s kids” (Luke 6:35) by Jesus Himself.   Imagine if God treated us like we treat Him, or if He was intimidated from coming after us in spiritual warfare out of His weariness or fearfulness!
  • DO ask the Lord for special Spirit-revelation about the specific people causing the conflict, and pray for a unique opportunity to be a blessing to them.   Follow through when it turns up.
  • DO prayerfully ask the Lord to pour His peace over the conflicts your kids are experiencing, and a hedge of protection over their marriage, that they would feel His presence and instruction navigating these difficult conflicts.
  • DO accurately walk in your Kingdom marital status 24/7/365, shutting out all resulting intimidation as “noise”.    Paul never once spoke of “divorced” people in 1 Corinthians 7, nor did he actually speak generically of “single” people (despite the bad translations).    If Paul believed one single word of what Jesus told him, which led to his instructions in Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Cor. 7:11 or 39,  why in the world would he?   Paul spoke of the widowed and the never married (“virgins” – parthenos), and the married.    When he spoke of the unmarried (agamois – / agamos: without a[nother] wedding), he was usually speaking of widowers like himself.   To Paul, there were no “divorced” people, only legally estranged, married people.
  • DO pray about wearing your wedding ring and using your married name without apology.    Yes, it’s probably going to threaten your counterfeit replacement and irk your one-flesh spouse.   But who is it who is guilty of the covetousness, theft and falsehood?   Certainly not you!
  • DO remember how loudly your celibate stand is already speaking to everyone around you.   This is for when you’ve shared a deep, essential truth (such as ongoing adulterers going to hell without exception), and you feel the need to “lay low” until the kids or grandkids come to you again.
  • DO ask the Lord to raise up supernatural barriers to exposing your grandchildren to the legal-but-adulterous (and legal-but-sodomous) unions in their lives, the best of which would be firm conviction in their parents about how morally damaging the exposure is.   Yes, SIFC’s prodigal was spot-on all those years ago, and the kids have never forgotten it (to his current chagrin).
  • DO use bible stories (open bible) to straightforwardly communicate unpopular truths to the grandkids in an age-appropriate way, and pray with them.   This is not a guarantee that you won’t incur flak or passing wrath as consequence of doing so (including from your spouse when it gets back to them).   It is best to do so as a response to a conversation the grandkids initiated, and it’s best to make this an occasional, infrequent occurrence rather than a constant one.  You are NOT out of line, and your ARE under God’s covering.   If your spouse reprimands you, treat it as another (rare) opportunity to emphasize souls, eternal destinations, and the impact of the example we set before our children and exposed grandchildren.
  • DO ask the Lord before fully taking onboard their perspectives about the “damage” you are “causing” their children, your grandchildren.   In 2016, my daughter claimed that my reading the John 6 account of Herod, Herodias and John the Baptist to the two elementary-aged granddaughters caused the older one to “wail in despair” about her Papaw going to hell “if she didn’t pray for him”.    I had led this granddaughter to the Lord two years earlier, and knew she was comfortable with prayer.    If there had really been such a “damaging” reaction, it would have been far more likely come from the younger one.   We had prayed together with our arms around each other that day, and they had come to me.
  • DO be purposeful about spiritual disciplines, including prayer in the Spirit, fasting, devotions, scripture memory.   We don’t operate in this kind of realm apart from spiritual warfare, and we don’t “dabble” very safely in it, either.    Do them enough that the odds are your kids and grandkids will frequently “catch you” at them.
  • DO understand “standing” to include standing firm (holding our ground, occupying our God-assigned space).    Try a word search in biblegateway.com on the word “stand”, and see how consistently this concept is associated with the word “stand”.                                                                                                                                         Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
    –     Ephesians 6:13-15

Early on the morning of  “Boxing Day”, December 26, four months ago, SIFC was thrown out of our daughter’s house and sent home early on an 11-hour northerly journey in hazardous weather as a result of answering a question her husband had asked the Christmas night before.    The culprit?   On the surface, it was radical feminism, but on the inside, it was the Holy Spirit challenging her ideologies that are in conflict with the kingdom of God, and which if not repented, are quite likely to seriously threaten her own marriage down the road.    The question posed by her husband was not even directly on marriage, but it was on politics.   In retrospect, after the explosion that occurred at her house in August, 2016,  SIFC should have demurred from engaging, since both granddaughters, ages 7 and 9, were again in the room, and because the topic area, involving a Trump administration nomination, was highly likely to drift into marriage ethics, were I to give a frank, honest answer about this morally  unsuitable nominee.    (SIFC is only a lukewarm Trump fan for morality and character reasons, and these kids both detest him for defeating Hillary.)    Unavoidably, the conversation did drift into marriage permanence and the immoral living conditions of the nominee, who was also not pro-life, as I recall.   Because my views were “polluting” and “confusing” her daughters by opening them up politically to “abuse” in their mother’s estimation, it was urgent that I be out of their house forthwith, our daughter declared (to the utter shock and dismay of her husband).    Day older, day wiser.   It was I who had played into that demonic trap, for the Holy Spirit did attempt to warn me.   I spent the drive home pleading the blood of Jesus over their marriage, after thanking them sincerely for including me in their Christmas.

There was never any apology (except from me for not having the discernment to tactfully change the subject from politics), but by early March, our daughter was texting me about the younger granddaughter’s April birthday party, and the older one’s starring role in the annual school musical, scheduled ten days after that birthday.  It appears that I had correctly discerned the demonic nature of that December setup, and correctly responded to the harsh treatment that resulted.  A week ago I returned from spending a week in their home, this time without conflict, even though our granddaughters were bringing me their bibles and asking for bible stories, and even though they again asked me about Papaw, wanting more prayer for him.   I had stared satan down, had shouted to him on the way back that he cannot have any part of my covenant family, in Jesus’ name, and I didn’t have to worry about creating conflict by wearing my wedding rings because the whole extended family knows they never come off.    After all that had happened, I got to be the one that was there for them, doing practical things to ease stresses currently in their home, that for once, I have nothing to do with contributing to.   Strangely, the other set of grandparents, who live only an hour away, weren’t even there or in touch, as far as I know.

Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.
– Deuteronomy 31:6

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Substantive Due Process

SCOWI’s For Sale – So Who’s Buying?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

The wicked accept bribes in secret [well…obscurity, anyway]
    to pervert the course of justice.     –  Proverbs 17:23

A bribe is a charm in the sight of its owner;
            Wherever he turns, he prospers.   – Proverbs 17:8

And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.    –  Exodus 23:8

“standerinfamilycourt”  moved a couple of years ago, compelled by financial circumstances imposed by a “family law” court, to the neighboring state, where the cost of living is considerably less than the state of our now-sold marital residence.    This state has a news organization that believes in sponsoring and televising political debates between judicial candidates, in this case, for a 10-year re-electable seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.   The politically-correct line about this office is that it is “non-partisan”.   However, one did not need to watch much of this debate to quickly identify the “liberal” and the “conservative” candidates, as it were.    The sad fact of our crumbling democracy and society is that many judicial decisions are made ideologically, regardless of the traditional lore, rhetoric and precedents to the contrary.

It also appears that in the last few years, the decisions are moving in the direction of becoming more ideological rather than less ideological.    According to the public interest organization, Justice At Stake, from 2000-2009, fundraising by state Supreme Court candidates soared to $206.9 million, more than doubling the $83.3 million raised in the 1990s.   Note that this measurement period ended just before SCOTUS handed down the landmark big money decision,  Citizens United v FEC, which is discussed below.   While this blog post is a fairly detailed discussion of the skunkworks in one  particular state, it is likely that any of the 20+ states with elected judges and justices will have the same special interest obstructions to true constitutional justice for the average citizen, to the extent that the remedy sought would conflict with the special interests of the donor class inside and outside that state.

Being a firm believer (from hard experience) that these days, there cannot possibly be “too much” light shed on the judiciary and on the dubious process of electing its “public servants”, this voting citizen dutifully watched the entire hour of debate very attentively, and was quite grateful, if woefully disheartened, at the rare opportunity to do so.   The dominant issue in this debate was, who all was buying the most influence, and from whom.     Some may “take issue” with the notion of a political donation being compared with a bribe, and in fact, many donations do not function as bribes.   The problem is with the concentration of those that are clearly so, in this climate of the past few years, where most of the integrity of the judiciary has been steadily evaporating to the point where most key decisions, especially those touching the Sexual Revolution are indeed ideological.     We in the marriage permanence community need to also keep ever-mindful that some of the most key decisions are hidden, and not even required to be published or justified with a stated reason:   quite notably, whether or not to even hear an appeals case brought before the highest court in the state.    

There have been calls for SCOTUS  Justices to have their life appointments curtailed, and even for them to be elected rather than appointed, especially in the wake of corrosive and overbearing decisions like Roe v. Wade,   Lawrence v Texas, Citizens United v FEC,  Employment Board v. Smith,  and Obergefell v Hodges.   which legalized all of the following by high court ideological fiat:

– abortion
– sodomy
– money as “speech”
– countermanding the 1st Amendment fundamental protection of free religious exercise on the state and Federal levels, leading to the need for individual states to adopt RFRA’s, which directly resulted in state-by-state inequality of that Bill of Rights protection
– gay “marriage”

As frustrating as these ideological travesties of justice were (some of the very worst of them conservatively-decided, by the way), a better solution needs to be found that does not hamstring or sabotage the separation-of-powers our founders so wisely designed-in.    My theory is that elected judicial candidates provide no advantage over appointed candidates, and may have effectively placed the latter for purchase by the highest bidder, especially in the wake of Citizens United, which declared inanimate greenbacks to be 1st Amendment-protected “free speech”.    That’s right, since 2010 the “green stamps” in the corporate and PAC wallets have been deemed more worthy of 1st Amendment protections by the highest court in the land than human Respondents in a unilateral divorce lawsuit (since SCOTUS has a long history of refusing to hear constitutional challenges of unilateral divorce laws in the decades since their state-by-state enactment).

As noted earlier by the organization Justice At Stake, most states which have an elected, term-limited judiciary created this special-interest situation long before 2010, and to be transparent, the big donors to these elective offices didn’t have many limits that the Citizens case materially changed (at least in Wisconsin), as we shall see in the process of breaking down the donor-categories and amounts given to these two competing “non-partisan” candidates in the state of Wisconsin.   As responsible citizens, however, we still need to be aware of the increasing potential for big money from in-state and out-of-state special interests to literally purchase a state judicial election, since the door has now swung wide open for them to do so:

The United States Supreme Court held (5–4) on January 21, 2010 that the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for communications by nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.  –  Wikipedia

As recently reported by Matthew Rothschild -Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Executive Director,

“Before  [2015 legislative change], the most a candidate for the state supreme court could receive from all committees combined was $140,156. So the candidate could accept $140,156 from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, but then the candidate could not accept a single dime from any other committee.

“Now the sky is the limit. Political parties can now give unlimited amounts of money to candidates of their choice.

“To make matters worse, before the 2015 rewrite, the most that a rich individual could give to a political party was $10,000. Now a rich individual can give unlimited amounts of money to a political party.

“With both of these ceilings torn down, a billionaire could give $10 million to a political party, and that party could then turn around and spend that $10 million on the billionaire’s favorite candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

“This makes a mockery of the limits on direct donations to candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court, which used to be $10,000 and now is $20,000 (itself a ridiculously high sum).”

So, whose bidding will the two opposing candidates be doing, once elected?     For those who didn’t take time to watch the debate video linked above, here’s a brief synopsis (financial figures are from the site Wisconsin Democratic Campaign, a follow-the-money disclosure site, as reported through March 11, 2018):

“Non-partisan” Progressive –  Rebecca Dallet*  (please click to enlarge detail)

*Note:  Dallet donated $200,000 to her own campaign, $35,000 more than her opponent’s entire fundraising result, to-date.   These funds have been excluded from the analysis for a fairer comparison of supporters.     Even so, her overall donated funds are more than twice her opponent’s.   Close to $200,000 alone has come from the practicing or retired legal community, easily 50% of her outside fundraising, with the biggest firm donors in the personal injury, energy or corporate practice areas.    Her other major special interest donor categories include commercial business interests in Real Estate, Banking and Non-Profits. All of the donations for Dallet in the “Political / Ideological” category were $500 or under, except for the Brico Fund – $5,000, which appears to be a feminist organization focused on girls, and more recently, environmental and “social justice” issues (excluding, of course, Bill of Rights protections of unilateral divorce Respondents and the right-to-life of pre-born citizens).

PAC contributions to or expended on behalf of Dallet appear to be immaterial, but tellingly there’s one special interest group who is spending significant money in her behalf based on a perceived need for her support:

Note:  the first group listed has expended 40% more in favor of her opponent’s campaign.   The second group has expended $116K and is the subject of heated controversy in the state, justifiably so.

Overall, about $32K or about  9% of Dallet’s fundraising came from out-of-state sources.    Note: On April 3, 2018, Dallet did emerge as the successful candidate in the General Election.

“Non-partisan” Conservative –  Michael Screnock (please click to enlarge detail)


Between 30 and 40% of Screnock’s coffers have been filled with donations from the active or retired legal community, but this is not as easy to gauge because Dallet’s retired donors were listed as such, example: “retired judge“, whereas Screnock’s retirees and public servant donors were not.    His largest direct campaign donor was his father, who is a currently-practicing family law attorney in Wisconsin, contributing just under the $20K current legal limit established in 2015 by the legislature.    A corporate law firm contributed another $15K.

Unlike the case with his liberal opponent, G.O.P. PAC contributions were significant and helped make “non-partisan” Screnock’s primary campaign financially competitive with Dallet’s mega-war chest.    About $5K or about 3.5% of Screnock’s fundraising came from out-of-state sources, compared with Dallet’s 9%.

The current controversy involving SCOWI (and specifically, candidate Dallet) is over the toothless Justice recusal policy, given the large campaign donations by a PAC interested in the state redistricting / gerrymandering activities.     As it stands, there is nothing except honor or integrity to compel a Justice to recuse themselves from a matter directly involving a campaign donor entity, even right after they have made a very large contribution.    What if a serious challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s unilateral divorce law came before SCOWI, and some of the Justices had taken campaign donations from the American Bar Association?  Or from the ACLU, or the Lambda Foundation?    Wisconsin reportedly has the weakest recusal policy in the country, so this begs the question of why?    If Justices recused themselves, as integrity truly demands, from cases involving the interests of large donors, would those campaign finance contributions continue to flow?   One good way to find out is to reform the recusal rules.

 

Have we structurally landed in a place where only certain citizens are entitled to constitutional fundamental protections, regardless of the liberal or conservative makeup of the court, specifically, those who don’t oppose the fee-rich business-as-usual operation of the Sexual Revolution?

So, how much impact has the Citizens United decision actually had on judicial campaign funding in Wisconsin?    Is there a reasonable way to measure?     For example, can we get an idea by comparing the reported campaign finances of Justices first elected before 2010, and re-elected in 2010 or after?

For each of the three sitting Justices first elected prior to 2010, then re-elected after 2010, an analysis similar to those presented above on the candidates was done, but contrasting the earlier election funding and donors with the most recent funding and donors.    This is also contrasted with the funding and donations for the 2009 last campaign of the only Justice who hasn’t stood for re-election since 2010 because her term isn’t up until next year.    A summary of observations and trends is given based on the individual analysis, for each Justice examined.    In all cases, the Justice’s personal funds donated to the campaign was removed and disregarded in the overall figures so that only external fundraising in considered in the analysis.   Those self-contributed figures also tell an important story, but need to be examined separately.

Chief Justice Patience Drake Roggensack*, 2003/2013
(Conservative)
Summary:  2013 fundraising was nearly six-fold versus 2003, or $688,000 versus $119,000.  In 2013, just under $38,000 (under 2%) was raised from out-of-state sources, and did include business interests, compared with a little over $16,000 (13%) in 2003.  Law firms and lobbyists (yes, I did indeed just say, lobbyists) accounted for 25% of fundraising in 2003, which was similar proportionally to 2013.  The next largest 2003 donor category was Manufacturing at 17% but reduced in 2013 to only 8% of the total figures.  After that, Banking, General Business, Construction, and Health Professionals each accounted for 10%-12% of fundraising in 2003 – and each of these reduced their share by roughly half of the 2003 totals (proportionally) in 2013 while actually donating 3 or 4 times as much in 2013 as in 2003.   Donors categorized as Political / Ideological interests, primarily “school choice”, donated 13% of the total in 2003 versus only 3% of the total in 2013.  Aside from the six-fold rise in campaign costs and fundraising, the other big trend in the post-Citizens United election was the dramatic increase, from 6% to 13%, in donations from the Retired/Homemakers / Non-Income Earners, only $6,000 in 2003 but $91,000 in 2013.  In other judicial campaigns in the state, this group tends to be dominated by retired attorneys and their wives.  The final observation is the emergence of eight new industries donating to the 2013 campaign that were not present in the 2003 campaign, none of which accounted for more than 3% each, including Agriculture, Defense, Education, Insurance, Institutional Health, Natural Resources, Real Estate, and Transportation.
Finally, it should be noted that Justice Roggensack was the first Chief Justice selected by her peers on the court following a law change (2015) that allowed it, instead of the role falling to the most senior justice, prior to that year. Roggensack’s last re-election fell two years prior to her selection as Chief Justice.   In perspective, her 2013 war chest almost twice that of first-time successful 2018 candidate Rebecca Dallet, and was more than four times greater than the unsuccessful 2018 candidate.  Both women donated about $200,000 to their own most recent campaigns.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley* 1985 / 2015
(Liberal)
Summary:   Again, we see a $600,000+ campaign for 2015, versus only a $29,000 campaign in 2005.   Bradley donated none of her own funds to her 2015 campaign and only $500 to the earlier campaign.   Out-of-state funds, mostly from retired attorneys and spouses amounted to $12,000 in 2015 and none in 2005.    As was the case with the liberal 2018 candidate, Rebecca Dallet, law firms and retired attorneys made up approximately 50% of total outside donations in both the early and the more recent campaign.    As we also saw with the 2013 Roggensack campaign, several industries significantly ramped up their contributions, as did the labor unions and other liberal political causes in 2015.    Contributions by law firms seem to be escalating as an indirect effect of Citizens United in an effort to proportionally maintain their accustomed pre-2010 level of influence, with all the new special interests entering the campaign funding arena.

Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler*  2007/2017
(Conservative)

Annette Zeigler’s initial SCOWI campaign costs apparently topped $1 million way back in 2007, and she contributed $840,000 to her own war chest, while raising over $500,000 from external donors.   Since she only raised $360,000 for the 2017 reprise, without having to contribute any further personal funds, it appears she was able to carry quite a surplus over from the prior campaign.    Still, her 2007 initial campaign was far more expensive than any of her peers to that point, and more expensive than any since.    Unlike most of her judicial peers, practicing attorney firms did not dominate her fundraising (just 8% and 9%, respectively), but there’s a strong likelihood that the retired, out-of-state legal community made up for it, and may have brought the legal community’s stake to something more like 25% or more in both campaigns.

The other Justice (Rebecca) Bradley was first elected in 2016 on a $900,000 campaign of which (rather oddly) nearly $200,000 was raised from retired and non-income-earning citizens, and Justice Kelly was appointed to fill an unexpired term, so their campaigns were not studied.    Dallet replaces a conservative retiring Justice Michael Gableman, elected in 2008, whose campaign was not studied, since Abrahamson’s 2009 campaign serves as the pre-Citizens United comparator.    Overall, his 2008 campaign ran slightly more than $300,000 of which only about 15% was funded by lawyers and lobbyists.   He contributed less than $1,600 to his own campaign, mostly in petty cash items of odd amounts.

Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson**, 1979/2009
(Liberal)
On the heels of  Annette Ziegler’s  $1 million + run in 2007, former Chief Justice Abrahamson raised nearly $1.3 million for her third (and by far, most expensive) re-election campaign in 2009, the year before the Citizens United decision was handed down by SCOTUS.    Of this, Justice Abrahamson contributed nearly $100,000 of her own funds that year.   Out of State contributions amounted to about $35,000, from mostly businesses and political interests. The term for this successful run expires next year, 2019.    This data indicates that rather than Citizens United being the cause of the ramp-up in special interest funding of judicial campaigns, this democracy-toxic SCOTUS decision may have, in part at least, been actually driven by these conditions.

(please click to enlarge details)

From this, we clearly see that the trend toward domination by law firms (and legal industry retirees) of the overall campaign funding had its explosion prior to Citizens United, especially for “progressive” candidates.    Could it have been that the landmark SCOTUS decision was a reactionary move on the part of the conservative Justices to this trend in Wisconsin and other major states?    There was an abundance of twists, turns, reassignments and re-arguments in this case, including (or possibly accommodating) a very controversial reversal of process by the conservative majority to broaden the scope of their ruling from the narrow question originally brought before them, and profuse, circular, contorted reasoning to justify doing so in the final Kennedy majority opinion, which could hardly be in reference to anything but the impact on judicial elections and the separation of powers overall.

There is certainly plenty of evidence in Justice Stephens’ dissenting opinion that the impact on judicial elections was indeed debated among the Justices:

“ And it underscores that the consequences of today’s holding will not be limited to the legislative or executive context. The majority of the States select their judges through popular elections. At a time when concerns about the conduct of judicial elections have reached a fever pitch, see, e.g., O’Connor, Justice for Sale, Wall St. Journal, Nov. 15, 2007, p. A25; Brief for Justice at Stake et al. as Amici Curiae 2, the Court today unleashes the floodgates of corporate and union general treasury spending in these races. Perhaps “ Caperton motions” will catch some of the worst abuses. This will be small comfort to those States that, after today, may no longer have the ability to place modest limits on corporate electioneering even if they believe such limits to be critical to maintaining the integrity of their judicial systems. …”

Quoting former SCOTUS Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s 2010 unofficial commentary (she left the court in 2006),

“[After Citizens United], we can anticipate labor unions’ trial lawyers might have the means to win one kind of an election, and that a tobacco company or other corporation might win in another election. If both sides open up their spending, mutually assured destruction is probably the most likely outcome. It would end both judicial impartiality and public perception of impartiality.”

Stepping back for a look at the “big picture”, it almost goes without saying that if massive special interest donations deliberately and intentionally (according to the SCOTUS majority) drive judicial elections, particularly dominated (as it apparently stands) from the practicing and retired legal community, calling these judgeships “nonpartisan” is a sham that borders on insulting the intelligence of the citizenry.    Indeed, “standerinfamilycourt” is a very new resident of Wisconsin, yet was able to reliably tell whether each candidate was conservative or liberal just by looking at the donor list.   Furthermore, the  “donor class” forking over the big money didn’t exactly get where they are today by personal oblivion and recklessness with their money.   If they didn’t firmly believe, despite the rhetoric and propaganda, that all judges and justices these days “legislate from the bench”,  and (even worse) uphold constitutionally-offensive legislation regardless of the merits of the case before them, they would keep their wallets and purses firmly zipped.   Even more telling is the staggering amount of money successful individual judicial candidates contributed to their own campaigns, particularly re-election campaigns, sometimes amounting to almost three times the amount that their entire first campaign took in from all contributors.  Who would do this if they didn’t realistically expect a serious financial return on those funds over the course of their 10 year term?

Indeed, the separation-of-powers damage left in Wisconsin in the wake of Citizens United is further exacerbated because SCOWI has installed some of the most toothless recusal rules in the entire country — and the majority on that bench has the final say, despite two enacted statutes intending otherwise.    A group of retired judges brought a petition in 2017 for reform of the recusal rules.  Emboldened by the constitutional hijacking in the Citizens United case, conservatives who control the Wisconsin court said the proposal would “interfere with the free speech rights” of those who run ads and engage in other campaign-like activity.

“I believe as a matter of law it cannot stand constitutional or structural scrutiny,” Justice Annette Ziegler said of the proposed rule. ,

“The petitioners here have asked us to do something that does not comport with the constitution as I view it.”     As she views it: that is, through the fouled lens of her nearly $1 million 2007 investment in her own career, upon which it “isn’t constitutional” to deny her the maximum pecuniary returns that the market will bear.  But Ziegler here goes a step further than even Anthony Kennedy, since the issue she so glibly applied Citizens United to is recusal: in so doing, is she not intrinsically saying that not only must the political bribes be protected as “speech”,  but the eventual effectiveness of the quid-pro-quo (from her contributors) must also be guaranteed through her own actual speech?   Is it rocket science to predict what would happen to the level of those donations if their degree of illicit influence was diluted?  It is against this kind of backdrop that the arrogance of the court is unmistakable in the further comment by the conservative majority that the petition for reform was “disrespectful” of the foxes guarding the henhouse.

 

Solutions, Anyone?

As we’ve seen,  there is no longer any such thing as a “non-partisan” judicial election (if there ever was), just as there is no such thing as a “no-fault” divorce.    Both are political myths that the public swallows without much insight — until they and their family personally get burned.    Those states who have such systems, or have partisan elections, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Washington, have effectively waived the separation-of-powers check and balance, until they take action to adjust to Citizens United, and to any additional damage their legislatures may have done in response under the “guidance” that “money is speech”.      Twenty four states were reported as of 2016 to have an appointment system for selecting judges and justices and / or retention elections.   California, New York and Utah are among these.

 Justices should be appointed, according to Justice At Stake, at least at the top level, making it likely this would require some states to amend their constitutions.   The fact that lower appellate court judges (who are required to hear all appeals), currently know that big money is going to dictate who’s on the state’s highest court, and it inevitably reduces their independence and objectivity as they would normally seek to avoid having their decisions overturned can now predict ahead of time where they will not be overturned, just by who campaign donors were.   Ditto for trial judges further down the chain.

The policy think-tank, the Brennan Center contended in a 2010 white paper that the most effective national remedy for self-dealing, in a “money is speech” world, is public funding of judicial elections.  Wisconsin seems to be a classic case study in why this recommendation actually resolved very little.   That very year, Wisconsin enacted legislation doing just that.    A 2011 paper by The Brennan Center extols the reduction in such contributions afforded by the availability of public funds that resulted from the reform, which provided $400,000 to candidates voluntarily availing themselves of those funds, touting the 2010 contest between incumbent Justice Prosser and challenger Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg.   We’ve seen with several examples where actual partisan contributions in the seven-figure range in Wisconsin dwarfed that amount long before enactment of public financing.    After enactment, the availability of these modest public funds indeed reduced partisan donations from the typical seven figures to  the high six figures in most races that followed.    It seems a bit more of a stretch to argue that this modest result changed too much, in the scheme of things.  Citizens United, after all, guaranteed that the two systems must now coexist, and independent direct media spend by special interest groups favoring a candidate outside of campaign contributions can easily dwarf both categories.

Wisconsin media liberals have a different “fix” to tout, namely a sixteen year term with a one-term limit.    “standerinfamilycourt” fails to see where this proposal addresses any of the underlying evils that result from the current scheme.    Although sixteen years might reasonably occupy one half to one third of a jurist’s remaining career, will it improve his or her independence in a world where, even without re-election pressures, half of the funds that won the seat came from fellows in the legal profession?    Unlikely.

Judicial corruption amounting to the breakdown of constitutional separation-of-powers impacts the integrity of the biblical family more severely by far, and with far more lasting national consequence, than arguably any other area of life or commerce.    Unilateral family-shredding for profit is a sadly bi-partisan affair, since legal practitioners on both sides of the political aisle profit handsomely therefrom.    Law firms dominate the election funding process only  to a slightly greater degree for leftist jurists than for “conservative” jurists, and one does not need to favor a traditional family structure to still be deemed a “conservative”.    Finally, unlike virtually every other kind of constitutional violation under the sun, no-fault marriage “dissolution” cases are effectively cordoned off from recourse to the Federal courts unless there are homosexuals involved.

Given that the checks and balances in our constitutional republic functioned fairly well for the 200 years before the moral breakdown of society rendered it substantially less able to raise unselfish citizens who are motivated by the long term public interest, national repentance before God, and according to His standards, is likely to be a necessary part of reforms that will ultimately succeed.    When a nation persistently thumbs its nose at His commandments, He simply removes His hand of protection, and after many opportunities to repent, He finally gives them over to their own self-destructive ways.

The elders are gone from the city gate;
    the young men have stopped their music.
Joy is gone from our hearts;
    our dancing has turned to mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head.
    Woe to us, for we have sinned!
– Lamentations 5:14-16


www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

 

 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

How Discern We The Various Covenant Marriage Ministries?

18 Comments

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.
– John 7:24

…and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.  – Matthew 5:22

Who are you to judge the [household] servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 

….But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.   For it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me,
And every tongue shall give praise to God.”

 So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.

Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this—not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way.
– Rom 14:4, 11-13

Last week,  a deeply-respected ministry leader in the marriage permanence movement reposted an earlier-year piece that showed a photo with various faceless members of the marriage permanence fellowship he had founded, whom he said had given up on God to restore their covenant marriages, and were “no longer standing” (whatever that means in practical terms),  while blaming a range of other marriage ministries for the “confusion” that allegedly caused these folks to stray from purpose.      In so doing, he lumped several ministries, good, bad and ugly, all together in one all-encompassing “heresy bucket”, and quite possibly complained prematurely about some redemption stories that were not yet fully written by the Author.

A comment to this gentleman’s post, challenging this ministry leader to provide example evidence of unbiblical public teaching and conduct for one of those denounced ministries was  quickly deleted, and a late-night PM exchange, initiated by the ministry leader, ensued about the commenter’s alleged “disrespect” and “anger”.    In his estimation,  his own ministry audience wasn’t entitled to objective support for his position, and asking for it on his ministry wall was (in his estimation) “slander” of his integrity which constituted “accusing him of lying”.    It is always tempting to put a time and means limit on God in our human impatience.

(Furthermore, we might all be eerily reminded of one other prevalent human authority that  claims the right to press unsubstantiated charges and impose non-objective labels that require no evidence to establish–and where the slightest dissent or challenge causes immediate out-of-proportion backlash: namely,  “family court.” )

SIFC has often blogged about the intense, wearying spiritual warfare that constantly dogs the covenant marriage movement.
At our best, satan finds himself unable to assail either our theology on the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony, or our personal integrity in walking joyfully in its truth over the long term–and I do emphasize the latter.     So, the next best thing, and the low-hanging fruit for the demons of hell, is to constantly introduce endless internal wedge-issues and jealousies that discredit the movement and make it appear to be a reactionary “cult”, majoring in the minors (with our own tendency to fully cooperate, sadly).

Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me,  for whoever is not against us is for us.  Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.   –  Mark 9:38-41

The offending, deleted facebook comment which was deemed “slanderous, angry and disrespectful” in the estimation of this ministry leader went like this:

“Too broad a brushstroke, my brother. Some of these “ministries” are rightly associated with each other, and in some cases it is shameful slander to associate them. We should “judge” each of these solely by what they actually teach and by the personal example of their leaders.

“You say, ‘I have personally met [the founding couple of the ministry] and have exchanged numerous communications with [the restored, repented formerly prodigal husband, now deceased] before he passed, as well as various others at all levels in their organization over the past 15 years.’ …..

“But, in fact, this is saying nothing at all that is of discernment. You are not the only one who has met and corresponded with the [extended ministry family].

“I am asking you to please stop slandering Rejoice Marriage Ministries unless you can prove that they teach falsehood or prove they live ungodly lives.   I am proud to be a monthly supporter, as I have been for over 10 years.”

Although this particular post (and others like them) have been repeatedly reposted,  the virtuous leaders of the maligned marriage ministry have never, to the best of my knowledge, chosen to answer back or retaliate in any way —  something which is very much to their credit.    Instead, they forgive, overlook, and allow God Himself to defend them, just as most individual standers must do with respect to their prodigal spouse and the sinning allies of the prodigal in their extended family.  Perhaps an argument can be made that SIFC should best follow their example (which is ultimately following Christ’s example), and this is not without biblical justification.    Unfortunately, as described in an earlier recent blog,

“On the other hand, outright slander against a very effective and godly pioneering marriage restoration ministry was actively defended by the [separate] site owner when interjected by another commenter, interfering as she was with help SIFC was attempting to provide to a new [group page] member in the crisis of his wife leaving him.   Nope, this site is clearly not safe for referrals from Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional as originally hoped. ”

….these unsubstantiated allegations are directly interfering with actual instances where opportunities to minister to real, hurting people, according to their core needs at that point, have suffered as a result of inflated egos and unfair biases.     And this disappointing public conduct is well below the normally high character of some of the players involved.

In the humble opinion of “standerinfamilycourt”, it is most just and most helpful to look at some objective attributes of these ministries and recognize that each ministry falls along a continuum, in terms of faithfulness to the kingdom of God with regard to marriage permanence.   In such a framework, we can put into perspective the really flawed ones that God nevertheless finds a way to use to His purposes, the ones in the middle that are biblically faithful but whose structure and kingdom strategies we might not personally find to our taste, and (finally) those we are most aligned with.     Attempting, as the offending post did, to put them all in one bucket is divisive at best, and ineffective-to-slanderous at worst.

Some key marriage permanence ministry attributes, from SIFC’s perspective:

1-  How consistently are their public teachings perfectly-aligned with God’s undiluted word, after applying rigorous hermeneutics?

2- Are any of their leadership, board members  or featured public  “restoration testimonies” objectively in a marriage that Jesus would call continuously-adulterous according to Luke 16:18?

3-  Do they pre-screen members according to whether they are standing for the God-joined marriage of their youth, or (instead) have an estranged, living spouse somewhere in the picture?

4-  If the latter, what is the evidence of their motive or objectives for not screening out people in who are in legalized adultery?    Is the motive godly, on balance?  (Note: this is closely tied to the first attribute.)

5-  Do they teach that dying in an adulterous remarriage is a heaven-or-hell issue, either directly or indirectly?   (Note: this is a reliable proxy for whether or not they counsel people out of their adulterous civil subsequent unions, but not necessarily a direct proxy for their beliefs.)

6-  Do they believe in and teach the concept of inseverable, instantaneously-joined one-flesh, which can only be created and terminated by the hand of God?

7- Do they believe and teach indissoluble, unconditional covenant, including God’s participation in that individual covenant?

8- Do they explicitly understand that there is a massive difference between “marriage permanence” and “holy matrimony indissolubility”  according to Matthew 19:8 ?

If we were to assess each ministry by assigning “kingdom faithfulness points” on a scale of 1 to 10, most faithful to least faithful,  for each separate attribute suggested above, this continuum would emerge on an fairly objective basis that is far better than smearing “anyone who is not us”.    We thereby avoid the stain of judging “another man’s” house-servant unjustly within the household of God.   We give a more appropriate and measured weight to things that are more a matter of preference, rather than true doctrinal or practice issues. We also see more objectively the degree of difference between the least faithful “ministries” and the most faithful ones.   A perfect score – most faithful –  on this test is (8), and the worst possible – least faithful – score is (80).

There are some additional criteria crucial to marriage restoration ministry that are more difficult to assess and objectively measure for comparison purposes which have been excluded for this reason in the (8) criteria chosen above.   The most important of these is the rate and extent they are leading those  they attract, and to whom they minister, to saving faith in Jesus Christ.    A ministry that decides as an operating principle to screen out those who are in estranged “marriages” Jesus called adulterous (but they are not ready yet to admit it) is quite likely excluding the religious unsaved to a large extent, given how pervasive divorce and remarriage is in the cultures  of all western nations.  Therefore, the testimonies of people who say they authentically came to the Lord as a result of their marriage crisis, and learned to stay in Him regardless of the marriage outcome, are important.

Catholic-based ministries have proven, in “standerinfamilycourt’s” opinion and experience, to be very effective at  influencing the broad culture for marriage permanence.   However, because by official doctrine, they weight the guidance of their human leadership as equal to or above the actual canonized word of God, it is not really an apples-to-apples comparison to rate them, under these eight criteria, against evangelical Christian marriage ministries who claim to hold themselves directly responsible for operating according to God’s written word alone.    Hence, Mary’s Advocates, The Ruth Institute and National Organization for Marriage can probably be compared with one another using some of these guidelines, but they will be excluded here, since they are not part of the divisive controversy that keeps surfacing in the permanence of marriage community.

Here’s an example of scoring outcomes for ten evangelical ministries that in some way help people fight for what they perceive to be their marriage – with a brief description of each, their score, and the main factors influencing each score.   Each of these received either a “10”, a “5” or a “1” on each of the 8 criteria, to keep things simple.    Long-term consistency of practice, or official public statements in a given criteria resulted in either a “10” or a “1”, while observed minor inconsistencies in specific criteria resulted in a “5” being assigned.   These are arranged in descending order by raw score, from most-to-least supportive of “marriages” called adulterous by Jesus, Paul, the other Apostles, and the early church fathers prior to the Nicene period:


Family Life Today (score: 80) – Founded by covenant couple Dennis & Barbara Rainey, this ministry holds to the traditional unbiblical Protestant “exceptions” for adultery and abandonment.   It also employs Ron Deal, the infamous “blended family pastor” who is divorced, with a living true spouse, and remarried, who is prominently featured on most of their broadcasts and special events.   Hence, they are misaligned with scripture in several crucial heaven-or-hell matters, and register negatively on all of the other biblical faithfulness criteria.    Any claim on the part of this ministry to preserve “covenant” marriage is based in part on a faulty definition of what constitutes a covenant marriage.
Scale:  this ministry’s facebook community page has about 450,000 followers.


Focus on the Family (score: 80) –  James Dobson-founded evangelical and political organization with some leadership and board members in adulterous subsequent marriages following man’s divorce from their true spouse. Similar theology to Family Life, and they regularly feature the “blended family pastor” as a guest on their broadcasts.     This broadcast ministry regularly glorifies adulterous remarriage and features theological guest interviews with such enemies of covenant marriage indissolubility as Dr. John MacArthur, where extra-biblical “exceptions” to the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony are emphasized above the bulk of what Jesus had to say to the contrary.
Scale: their facebook community page has 2.85 million followers.


N.A.M.E.  (score: 80) – National Association for Marriage Enhance ment is a church-based network of marriage counselors founded by the late Dr. Leo and Molly Godzich, and currently run by Pastors Arnold and Gwen Tackett, who are professional counselors and hold credentials with the Assemblies of God.   This organization holds large conferences, and established local church-based chapters.   Their score reflects the errant theology of the 1973 Position Paper of the Assemblies of God on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage, and the fact that N.A.M.E.’s 20th annual conference in 2015 featured — guess who?   Ron Deal, the “blended family pastor”.    Some of the “marriages” they attempt to save are adulterous remarriages, which hinders the reconciliation of the true covenant marriages that were displaced by the adulterous civil unions.   There does not seem to be a central facebook presence for this ministry, only local chapters.


Covenant Keepers International (score: 70 ) –  This is a very large international ministry with many local chapters with local leaders.   Unlike N.A.M.E. it is not primarily church-based, nor focused on professional counseling.    It was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Marilyn Conrad, a stander whose husband passed away before there was an opportunity to reconcile.  Current directors are Rex and Carolyn Johnson, a restored covenant couple.    This ministry reportedly has some local leadership in marriages Jesus would call adulterous, and they do not screen such couples from their ministry,  but this can vary by chapter location.   Their statement of beliefs on marriage indicates belief in an “exception” for “sexual immorality”, hence their doctrine appears to have some serious gaps, and they do not believe in no-excuses indissolubility as part of their conviction on marriage permanence.  CKI got 5 split points each for criteria 2 and 7, otherwise scoring was the same as for the three organizations listed above them.    Standers involved locally with CKI give them high marks for focusing on basic discipleship, the priority of each person’s direct relationship with Jesus, and these particular standers would avoid an adulterously-remarried chapter leader.    Scale:  the central ministry does not seem to maintain a facebook page, allowing the local chapters to do so, with typically 100-200 followers each.


Desiring God (score: 55 ) –  This ministry was established by Dr. John Piper and is an extension of Bethel Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.    Dr. Piper is faithful to the teaching of Christ concerning the indissolubility of the covenant marriage of our youth, but the Calvinist nature of this church prevents the full biblical belief that believers can fail to inherit the kingdom of God after professing Christ, even if they divorce, remarry, and die in that state.   He and his associated pastors teach against remarriage after divorce, but if those things do occur, they teach that repentance from those subsequent unions is “repeat sin”, and that those second vows supercede the original vows.  Based on these facts, criteria 1, 2, 4, 7 and 8 were rated at 5 points, reflecting assumptions that there would be some leadership and membership in adulterous unions in this large, Calvinistic ministry, and Piper’s teaching on the covenant nature of marriage is watered-down a bit from the true biblical standard, with basic doctrine skewed by their belief that rewards may be lost from remarriage, but not one’s entrance into the kingdom of heaven.    Finally, there would be a belief in permanence, but not indissolubility, if second vows can be deemed to supercede original vows.   Scale:  This ministry’s facebook page currently has just under 1 million followers.


Rejoice Marriage Ministries (score: 25 ) –  This is probably the oldest ministry dedicated to supporting those standing for their authentic covenant marriage aside from Covenant Keepers.   It was established in the early ’90’s by restored couple, Rev. Bob and Charlyne Steinkamp.    In the early days they say they interacted with Covenant Keepers which was also in its infancy and hadn’t yet expanded into geographic chapters.    Unlike CKI, Rejoice has never done so, and in fact, for many years (notably, until a bit after former prodigal, Rev. Steinkamp passed away, and the adult children were added to the leadership of the ministry) they actively discouraged standers following their ministry to develop contact with one another.      For this reason, the “levels of leadership” their determined ministry critic claims to have corresponded with, simply don’t exist.   Since this critic refuses to disclose any details about that, it’s difficult to comment further.   Nevertheless, this remains a very flat and closely-held leadership structure consisting of all born-again family members, all of which reflect God-joined, original covenant marriages.    There is some paid office help and web administrators, some volunteer prayer warriors who have been with the ministry for many years.   They publish and distribute a wealth of free and low cost books, audio and video content, prayer cards, bumper stickers, and the like, to support covenant marriage stands.

Rejoice does not have a fixed annual conference schedule. They take their ministry “on the road” for conferences periodically, as and when the Lord leads, and they conduct large monthly bible studies locally which are now live-streamed and recorded.    They periodically hold large, international conference calls when they have covenant stander testimonies to share, but not on any fixed schedule. “Standerinfamilycourt” attended the December, 2010 funeral of Bob Steinkamp,  has personally met the family members, and has been by the very modest longtime home of founder Charlyne.    On a separate occasion, SIFC attended a 3-day road conference live and on-site.

As noted, Rejoice is followed by many who are estranged from remarriages and who prefer to stand for the wrong prodigal partner.  This is a direct consequence of a longstanding ministry philosophy of not screening out those whom they might potentially lead to Christ for the first time.    It is very important to note that SIFC has not, in more than 12 years, ever seen one instance of this ministry compromising, diluting or suppressing the word of God to attract or retain anyone.    They strongly emphasize personal discipleship as the stander’s highest priority, and provide them significant aids to assist in this.    While it is certainly possible for determined non-covenant standers to tune out the portions they don’t want to hear, SIFC’s suspicion is that over time, they either repent or depart.    (We should note that the late Rev. Steinkamp’s pastoral credentials came from the Assemblies of God, and most likely before the 1973 man-voted doctrine change with which his writings make crystal-clear that he never agreed.    In SIFC’s opinion, this still had the effect on him to be careful in his published writings to tell everyone in an adulterous remarriage to “seek the Lord” about what they should do personally, but in general terms he unequivocally called all such unions sinful and in need of termination.)     Scale:  this ministry’s facebook community page has about 19,000 followers.


7 Times Around the Jericho Wall (score:  17) – as we all know, this is “standerinfamilycourt’s” own outspoken ministry, started a little over three years ago.    The original intent of the blog and facebook pages was to try and pull together a legal, constitutional “class” of disenfranchised Respondents in unilateral divorce cases to aid in a constitutional challenge to the Illinois “no-fault” law.    The Lord, however, had a different vision and took these pages in the direction of pulling together various parts of the marriage permanence community who would not otherwise be aware of each other, so that they may work more effectively together as a voice of conscience to the clergy, to lawmakers, to national pro-family voices who routinely give the indissoluble side of “biblical marriage” the short shrift.    There is significant ministry to individuals occurring behind the scenes, but not constantly.    SIFC’s professional training and background is in financial and legal matters, not formal bible training.    The Lord has provided in such a way that no donations are necessary at this time to sustain the ministry, but in the future, a taxable nonprofit (501c4) may be formed for the purpose of assisting lawmakers and constitutional challengers of unilateral divorce laws, as political opportunities come about by the Lord’s hand.   (Or the Lord may again have a different vision, to which SIFC would definitely yield).  People contacting our pages for deep ministry are typically referred with recommendations to other ministries, according to the person’s particular need, after receiving prayer here for their situation.   As is the case with Rejoice discussed above, there is no practical vision or intent to screen out people estranged from adulterous remarriages, but neither is there the slightest compromise with the undiluted biblical truth about non-widowed remarriage in anything we publish.     People who follow these two social media pages either get convicted and repent, or they “unlike” and “unfollow” us (possibly cyclically).     It has been our consistent “run rate” over the three years of our existence to lose two “likes” for every five that we gain weekly, so we grow slowly but steadily.    Our score consists of seven “1’s” in all of the criteria except #3, as it does not fit our operating model or ministry objectives to screen out anyone from participation and interaction with our ministry.    Scale:  our facebook community page has about 600 followers.


Restoration of the Family (score: 17 ) – this biblical ministry was started by another constitutional challenger of unilateral divorce laws, Judith Brumbaugh of Florida who is an older widow, and her low-key ministry has been in existence since the late 1980’s, supported by donations and sales of books.   While there is occasional involvement in some family-related Florida political issues, the primary focus is discipleship materials and biblical teaching.   As with Rejoice Marriage Ministries and 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall, there is no known pre-screening for interaction with the ministry (mailing list inclusion, etc.)    There is here a strong emphasis on personal discipleship.    Their scoring is identical to 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall on all eight of the criteria, and differs from Rejoice only in that they do consistently tell people to exit adulterous marriages as a direct heaven-or-hell matter.   The founder of this page maintains only a personal wall on facebook rather than a public page, and does not classify herself as a “public figure”, so her ministry scale based on facebook’s count of followers is not available.     She shows, however to have just under 500 “friends”.


Christian Principles Restored  (score:  17 ) – This ministry was established by Dr. Joseph Webb, also of Florida.   Dr. Webb is a seminary-trained, righteously-married pastor who came under conviction through a journey of self-study about the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony.    He has written several books, done interviews, and spoken at conferences and retreats.   CPR’s scoring is identical to 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall and Restoration of the Family on all eight of the criteria, and differs from Rejoice only in that they, likewise, do consistently tell people to exit adulterous marriages as a direct heaven-or-hell matter.   CPR’s pages show no evidence of pre-screening their participants so long as they are receptive to the strong truths coming out of their ministry.    Scale:  this ministry has a couple of infrequently-updated facebook pages with a following of under 200.


Theological Foundations / Spirit of Hosea (score: 8 )- Founded in the late 1990’s by Rev. Stephen Wilcox of New Brunswick, Canada, who has stood for his own covenant marriage for over 30 years, and became an ordained pastor during this time.    His ministry encompasses a large fellowship of standers and people who have repented to exit the adulterous remarriages they became involved in, and includes the information page cadz.net which carries testimonies of repentance from adulterous remarriages, a ministry web page marriagedivorce.com and a YouTube channel carrying his audio sermons.   He has an outreach to other pastors to encourage them in adopting a fully-biblical view and practice around marriage indissolubility.     In addition, he serves as the general online chaplain to the marriage permanence community, including the many who were pushed out of their churches, or who cannot find a church sufficiently supportive of marriage indissolubility that they feel comfortable in.     Scale:  this ministry runs facebook group pages to which members must be admitted by an administrator, rather than community pages open to everyone.    The Theological Foundations facebook page has just over 100 members, and the Spirit of Hosea facebook page has just over 70 members, neither of which is indicative of the very high volume of traffic on the pages outside of facebook.

Please note the vast score gap between the five ministries most supportive  of remarriage adultery and the five who are least supportive of continuing in (or attempting to restore) 2nd or subsequent “marriages” where there is one or more estranged spouses in the picture.  Note, too, that the only ministry with a “perfect” score does deliberately screen out people from fellowship who are standing for the restoration of non-covenant marriages.   The next cluster do not, to the best of our knowledge, do so but neither are there biblical gaps in their consistent teaching, either by error or omission, and they rely on this biblical  integrity to naturally winnow out non-covenant standers over time, while getting the essential message across to more of those who need to hear it.
None of this cluster of five ministries has any leadership in such a non-covenant marriage.  (Some have leaders who have repented and removed themselves from such.)  The four ministries in the cluster with a score of 17 or less actively and consistently tell one and all that dying in such an arrangement is a heaven-or-hell matter, hence, everyone needs to exit those arrangements in all cases.

Rejoice falls in between the two clusters with a score of 25, but this is not due to error or biblical omission in their teaching.  The main difference between their score and the cluster of 17’s is due to the fact that they don’t actually tell everyone  to get out of their adulterous unions (while still regularly teaching with full biblical accuracy what constitutes remarriage adultery).    Instead, they tell their readers and subscribers to seek the Lord about what to do.  They also do not directly teach that dying in such a union costs people their souls in eternity.  They do teach in general that remarriage adulterers forfeit their inheritance in the kingdom of God, but they don’t emphasize hell.    Rejoice is materially more faithful in discouraging and opposing adulterous remarriage than Covenant Keepers because Rejoice has no leaders at all in non-covenant marriages, and would never allow such.   On the other hand, none of Covenant Keepers’ founders and current central leaders are in non-covenant unions, but some of the regional leaders reportedly are.    Rejoice, on the other hand, never features non-covenant restorations in any of their teachings or events, but Covenant Keepers reportedly does.    Rejoice does regularly share audio and video testimonies of people who have penitently come out of adulterous remarriages and reconciled with their true spouse.

(Please click the graphic to enlarge in your browser.)

Sometimes, differences in ministries were actually put there by God Himself to accomplish a specific kingdom purpose.   This is true even in the least faithful of them!    This is due to cross-pollination, where a faithful ministry is provided an entry-point for conversation with the multitude of followers from something which that less-faithful ministry has published, and also through the mutual “friends” (policy-makers and national influencers among them) who are following both the pure and the popular corrupt ministries.   This is true also because of what we call “critical mass” that comes with some of these ministries that tell people what they want to hear.    While it is never appropriate to form a direct alliance with unfaithful ministries, it is appropriate for faithful ministries to speak into them opportunistically, as Jesus and the Apostles frequently did.   That said, it is never appropriate to label a ministry as “unfaithful” unless they are specifically not faithful with their public handling of the word of God.   If they are unfaithful in that way, then the clear evidence of it should be easy to produce.   If they are not, then we are accountable to the kingdom of God for slandering them as if they were.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.  So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.  Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
–  1 Corinthians 3:6-8

We might examine some of the persistent reasons why some in the stander community propagate the impression that Rejoice  fosters adulterous remarriages, and promotes their “reconciliation”, given that their teaching is fully biblical on a consistent basis, and there is no remarriage adultery at all in their leadership.   One key reason is that non-affiliated sites that are known to be run by site owners who have “married” the spouse of another living person (and are “standing” for that remarriage due to some unbiblical excuse or “exception”) extensively promote their materials.  These sites, run by non-covenant standers, regularly  redistribute Rejoice’s posts because they admire the ministry’s principles and methods.   This, of course, is beyond the practical control of Rejoice Marriage Ministries. Two examples of such non-affiliated sites with owners either in or divorced from non-covenant “marriages” are Malachi 2:16 and RMM Fan Site (which looks quite deceptively like the authentic  Rejoice site).   They are attracted by Rejoice’s  hopeful, positive salvation-and-discipling message, and the fact that non-covenant “marriages” have the (volume-based) appearance of reconciling much more frequently than God-joined unions, since this can happen over and over again in the counterfeit cases.
(Jesus, too, was accused of “apostasy” simply because the sinful followed Him, and because up to a certain point, He did not discourage them.   The actual engagement point came for Christ’s sinful followers where He made clear that what He was teaching and commanding made the difference between heaven and hell, invoking a choice.  Still today, many think they are following Him who consider obedience to be “optional” in this matter.)  

But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.   So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’   But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”  –  Matthew 13:26-30

Another important reason for the erroneous perception that Rejoice Marriage Ministries promotes the reconciliation of non-covenant “marriages” comes from the tales of those standing for true covenant marriages who attend Rejoice live events and who wind up in a prayer circle next to someone who is “standing” for an adulterous remarriage.   Since Rejoice intentionally does not have a policy to screen such people out from their ministry events, this does happen.   It is natural (and certainly expected) for those who are standing for authentic Matt. 19:4-6 unions to feel queasy about “agreeing in prayer” for the restoration of a biblically adulterous relationship, but there are certainly reasonable alternatives to so praying, and these prayer circles do not necessarily translate into “support” for such unions, on the part of the ministry or anyone else, IF biblical teaching is never compromised in their publications and events, nor shied away from by that ministry in their one-on-one encounters.

Yet another reason Rejoice is lumped in with unbiblical ministries by some in the marriage permanence movement is that Rejoice strongly encourages all standers to remain accountable to others in flesh-and-blood, brick-and-mortar church bodies, however difficult and uncomfortable that might be (or might become) in a given situation.   This runs directly counter to the wounded places that never healed in some individuals, and sometimes even, counter to the desire not to be accountable (on a long term basis) that is harbored in the true hearts of some in the movement, along with their deep desire to avoid the face-to-face conflict that always results from keeping up our responsibility to be salt and light in the world.    While there certainly does come a valid time to “shake the dust off our feet”,  many would prefer not to get their feet dusty in the first place.  To these folks, it becomes very tempting to slam a ministry whose faithful teachings bring conviction about this particular matter, while it offends their own rigid ideology which even has a label in the movement:  “pulpit-pew“.    Indeed, one ministry that keeps fostering these accusations is a virtual / online church (and a very good one, at that), which is sustained by the donations of people in the marriage permanence community.    By defending not only one but two potential “competitors” for those donations, it’s little wonder that this ministry leader subconsciously felt that SIFC had “attacked” his ministry with the brief and bland facebook comment that ended by disclosing longterm financial support for Rejoice.    He of little faith!

Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, “I am of Paul,” and “I of Apollos,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.”   Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?     – 1 Corthinthians 1:12-13

 

“Standerinfamilycourt” can be humble enough to admit that the selection of different criteria, or perhaps disclosure of some privately-learned facts we are not privy to, might change this illustration and comparison, so we won’t presume to call it an analysis.    No deep interviews were conducted to obtain confirmation of various surface observations made in the scoring.     A few of the ministry leaders who have gone on record with their broad-brush criticism of Rejoice Marriage Ministries are from the same southern Florida region where the family ministry is based.
I do believe I have related everything these local critics have told me to-date that is verifiable.   Rejoice, meanwhile, does not make a practice of having much public interaction with other marriage ministries, choosing not to use their donated resources in that thankless, bottomless manner.   As a continuing donor, quite frankly, SIFC appreciates that.   The point of this blog post is to offer some calm perspective and good reasons to stop the senseless carping, to encourage the refocus of everyone’s time and energy within the marriage permanence community to our own assigned role, since there’s plenty of work for everybody.    Or we can just continue to play “cult” on some kingdom-inconsequential level, proving our worldly critics absolutely correct!  Our choice.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!