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Making Progress on the church acceptance front

I told Mr. B that I was appalled to hear that so many couples in our church were going through marriage counselling. He nodded, but when I asked him why the divorce statistics in the church are not much better than outside the church, he replied that we have too many hypocrites in the church. I told him that that can't possibly account for the statistical similarity! We in the church should be somewhat different! There may be hypocrites in the church, but non-hypocrites should far outnumber the hypocrites, at least compared to the ratio of followers to Christ vs non-followers of Christ that are not in a church! I told him that by allowing wives equal footing with their husbands, and I understand that they are equal in inheritance as it talks about in I Peter, but by allowing this notion of equality in decision making, to invade the church, we have basically inverted the authority structure in the home. I really enjoyed watching him squirm when I said that.

Hypocrites? What a damning indictment of his church. That only accounts for it if his whole church is lost.

The divorce rates ought to be an order of magnitude lower in the church. That they're not is a scandal. But one no one is talking about. I can only conclude things are working as intended. And to hear all the justifications churchians give when a woman divorces, I think that's a sound conclusion.
 
I am not a lawyer, but I believe this part of the law is unconstitutional. The facts of the case (more than two people cohabitating in a marriage-like relationship), differing only in what it is called (marriage vs "living together") makes this a free speech issue, especially since there is no associated fraud claim. Given the way this part of the Utah statute was struck down, and the way the Supreme Court has been ruling lately on speech, I expect this only needs one solid case to get the "purports" statute tossed out.

For that matter, given that the last couple PM cases were tossed for lack of standing, not on merit, I think we could win the brass ring of full decriminalization if we could only get one solid case all the way to the SCOTUS. We need our Rosa Parks.

Absolutely. I agree 100%. Which is why they will not charge you for it. That would give you standing and in today's climate it would get over turned.

So instead, they will not charge anyone for it, leave it on the books, and then take your kids away using the CPS because you may be "involved in a felony", etc.

It is against Texas law right now, and there are other ways that they can use it against you, other than directly charging you with a crime.
 
Nathan, and you're probably going to say that's someone famous or something so it's irrelevant. Don't worry about the details, I'm talking a basic principle.
I have seen multiple occasions when people have shared a lot of information about their interactions with others on here, and then when the people being discussed found out how much had been said about them on a polygamy forum in public but without their knowledge, all hell broke loose and it caused a lot more damage to their personal relationships on top of the problems they already had in their lives. It is just a caution based on long experience. Feel free to disregard it.
This is a good conversation, I'm enjoying reading it. But I do feel the need to post a slight caution for your consideration.
Fair enough!
 
Well, I exchanged phone numbers with the first chair violinist. He still wants to get together with me. This should be very interesting! I intend to bring up the pastor's message where he indicates that we can find truth by how much peace we feel about it. I find it interesting that the pastor mentioned that this might be an acceptable practice whenever someone introduces something in Scripture that you have never seen before! The way I see it, the pastor knows that no one can refute the Scriptures that I have presented, and he is trying to "protect" his flock from this so-called "heresy". I intend to go to the class get-together again tomorrow night as well, and I will most definitely bring that sermon up, when I do.
 
Hypocrites? What a damning indictment of his church. That only accounts for it if his whole church is lost.

The divorce rates ought to be an order of magnitude lower in the church. That they're not is a scandal. But one no one is talking about. I can only conclude things are working as intended. And to hear all the justifications churchians give when a woman divorces, I think that's a sound conclusion.
You know one other possible nefarious reason they could be OK with the marriage problems in their congregations, is the amount of money they charge for counseling services, and the number of people willing to pay for it. I would prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt, and suggest that they really believe that what they are teaching folks, is "God's Way", and they simply have failed to do introspection on how the results are turning out. When our Bible Study class morphed into a "He Said, She Said, God Said", study on the book "His Needs, Her Needs" written by Dr. Harley, I asked how many long term studies had been done, and of course they noted that he didn't really use Scripture to back up his suggestions, so they were going in and finding Scripture to fit his suggestions. Well it turns out, there have been no long term studies on the effectiveness of that book, but he sells it with a bunch of subjective anecdotes AKA testimonials. Needless to say, I had my "Balderdash" detector on high alert during that eight week period.
 
I feel that most of the reason for the churches present moral bankruptcy is simply the frog in the pot syndrome.
There is no slow conversion to polygyny, so the intense cultural change causes an awakening against moving away from “what we’ve always believed “. Meanwhile, they accept bit by bit the other garbage.
 
I feel that most of the reason for the churches present moral bankruptcy is simply the frog in the pot syndrome.
There is no slow conversion to polygyny, so the intense cultural change causes an awakening against moving away from “what we’ve always believed “. Meanwhile, they accept bit by bit the other garbage.
The other problem, is that most followers of Christ, have never really developed their critical thinking skills. Too often, we parrot what we hear from the pulpit! There is some good stuff parroted, to be sure, that came from many good thinkers and scholars of the past, but we run into trouble when we encounter responses to that, from people who have read books written by Dawkins and other skeptics, that we are not familiar with. Now there are good men like Ray Comfort, who have developed excellent responses to those arguments, but I say all that to point out that we don't really study to show ourselves approved. Paul told Titus that he should be able to silence the opposition. It is for this very reason though, that we also allow false teaching to creep into the church. It is so seductive, and sounds so similar to what we have become familiar with, as you said, like the frog in the pot, that we fail to see how we got off the narrow path in the first place.

The slow conversion, happened early on in church history, when they gradually started making claims that polygamy was wrong.
 
In 1 Thessalonians 5:21 is the command for Christians to test all things. Most Christians fail to obey this command so ideas and teachings that come into the churches go untested; there is no scrutiny by the people of what they are hearing, no critical thinking. This has resulted in the all but total lack of spiritual discernment evidenced in the lives of the people. The flip side to this problem is that the preachers don't want to have what they are teaching put to the test. Therefore people are discouraged from being critical thinkers and the problem persists. And this lack of discernment involves all aspects of life, not just marriage/polygyny. **big sigh**
 
In 1 Thessalonians 5:21 is the command for Christians to test all things. Most Christians fail to obey this command so ideas and teachings that come into the churches go untested; there is no scrutiny by the people of what they are hearing, no critical thinking. This has resulted in the all but total lack of spiritual discernment evidenced in the lives of the people. The flip side to this problem is that the preachers don't want to have what they are teaching put to the test. Therefore people are discouraged from being critical thinkers and the problem persists. And this lack of discernment involves all aspects of life, not just marriage/polygyny. **big sigh**
WOW! Just WOW! You said it brother! That right there!
 
You know one other possible nefarious reason they could be OK with the marriage problems in their congregations, is the amount of money they charge for counseling services, and the number of people willing to pay for it. I would prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt, and suggest that they really believe that what they are teaching folks, is "God's Way", and they simply have failed to do introspection on how the results are turning out. When our Bible Study class morphed into a "He Said, She Said, God Said", study on the book "His Needs, Her Needs" written by Dr. Harley, I asked how many long term studies had been done, and of course they noted that he didn't really use Scripture to back up his suggestions, so they were going in and finding Scripture to fit his suggestions. Well it turns out, there have been no long term studies on the effectiveness of that book, but he sells it with a bunch of subjective anecdotes AKA testimonials. Needless to say, I had my "Balderdash" detector on high alert during that eight week period.

“Balderdash detector” lol! that’s a good one
 
You know one other possible nefarious reason they could be OK with the marriage problems in their congregations, is the amount of money they charge for counseling services, and the number of people willing to pay for it.

They charge?

You know, at first I'd say that's unlikely to be the case; they're just going along with the usual cultural stances. But they charge?

The love of money corrupts.
 
They charge?

You know, at first I'd say that's unlikely to be the case; they're just going along with the usual cultural stances. But they charge?

The love of money corrupts.
Yes and no. For us, it was no charge, bc we were involved in leadership in the church I suppose, and they knew I had no intention to pay, and our finances somewhat dictated that. At another place we went to, they gave us a discount, and when the counselor we were working with at our church, and he was really good, left to pastor another church, we stuck with him, and he gave us a huge discount. That was his source of income, since that church was much smaller and couldn't afford to pay the minister. So yes, they charge and there are couples who pay, who are in much better shape financially, but not always. Indeed the love of money doth corrupt, but again, I am only throwing that out there as a potentially nefarious reason. I am inclined to believe though, that they have convinced themselves that what they promote, is "God's Way", and have failed to see that what they are actually promoting, God detests.
 
So yes, they charge and there are couples who pay,
Now there is a cash cow that I hadn’t considered milking.
And @rockfox , we don’t even have to provide fodder. Although most couples bring their own silage.
 
Now there is a cash cow that I hadn’t considered milking.
And @rockfox , we don’t even have to provide fodder. Although most couples bring their own silage.

It really is a 'good' synergy, since most people in church are there because they have Sunday School aged kids. Perfect timing with the 7 year itch.

Brilliant marketing play. And since every other churches ideas and teachings are equally toxic to marriage; you won't stand out as particularly egregious. You could probably dial it back a bit and come off as pro-men and still be effective at drumming up business.
 
I say that, because when I first reached out to Andrew, it was right after I told my wife what the Bible has to say about polygamy. She wanted counseling, and I told her that I was willing to see a counselor who was hostile towards polygamy, as long as we could also see one who was at least neutral on the topic. I didn't know of any who wouldn't be hostile towards it, so I asked Andrew if he knew of anyone. At the time. I didn't realize that @cnystrom lived only a few blocks away from us. I'm still wondering when we can get together with them and Andrew and his wives and one of the brother-in-laws who happens to be Romanian. Andrew told me that he would do it for free, but would ask for consideration to donate to this ministry. I'm still trying to work that out, but my wife isn't all that concerned about our marriage right now.
 
Now there is a cash cow that I hadn’t considered milking.
And @rockfox , we don’t even have to provide fodder. Although most couples bring their own silage.

I can totally picture the scenario with Steve as a church marriage counselor...

Husband: sitting there sheepishly

Wife: I caught him noticing a single woman from our church!

Steve: So?

Epilogue: Steve is thrown out of the church

The end.
 
I can totally picture the scenario with Steve as a church marriage counselor...

Husband: sitting there sheepishly

Wife: I caught him noticing a single woman from our church!

Steve: So?

Epilogue: Steve is thrown out of the church

The end.
Now THAT is the empowering difference that understanding the truth about Biblical Marriage makes! I can honestly say, that in not ONE of my marriage counseling sessions, have I EVER been the slightest bit sheepish!
 
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