Written by Jerrold H. Lewis |
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Being a person of character and marrying a person of character makes the hard work of life more bearable. Plus, these traits also point to a greater probability of marital success. That’s why marital happiness transcends economic strata, culture, and country.  

Looking Around
A recent study conducted on a dating site (with 7 million users) reported that American women find 80% of men “below average” when looking for a husband. Unattractive was the word actually used, but below-average works too. Granted, this study was not conducted by the European Institute for Gender Equality. But 7 million users? That’s a deep pool. If this study is accurate, it means eight out of 10 men are not “husband material” in the eyes of single American women. This also means that 100% of women compete for 20% of the male desirables. Men who “pass the bar,” so to speak. Which, in turn, means that 20% of desirable men get the opportunity to advance with the very best of the ladies. But what about the losing majority on both sides? The 80%-ers. A terrifying statistic was released, which states that by 2030, nearly 50% of middle-aged women in the USA will be husbandless career women. That’s ok if the woman desires to remain single. Single life is as praiseworthy and rewarding as married. In 1 Corinthians 7:7, Paul said, “I wish you were all as I am,” single. We don’t speak enough about the praiseworthiness of singleness. We should. Excellent benefits and blessings for the kingdom of God and man have been accomplished by single people. So this data only poses a problem for those that want to marry. Similar numbers show that many men have given up on finding a wife, or are looking for one in other countries. Think Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines, Taiwan, etc. The statistics of mail-order brides in the USA are astounding.
Some of this seismic shift has everything to do with the predictable stupidity of many young men. They refuse to grow up. Never in the history of mankind has a generation of males been so enamored with staying a child. All previous generations would gladly stand in line, to take this generation out behind the woodshed. The amount of time a young man (even if married) spends in front of a screen pretending to be someone he’s not, is astounding. These men find it hard to manage typical adult responsibilities such as chores, paying bills, keeping a job, and maintaining healthy relationships with those around them. They are at their personal “best” when they have a headset on and are yelling and laughing with their buddies in a make-believe world where they project, by fantasy, everything they are not in real life (the hero, the winner). This phenomenon has been dubbed The Peter Pan Syndrome by psychologists. Young men who refuse to grow up. The low stock value of some young men has everything to do with poor life choices and refusing to turn themselves into their best version. Sensible, intelligent, spiritual women shake their heads. Understandably. And it’s causing women to give up on countless men, or at least begin to weed out the undesirable from the chosen few. The truth is, some very good women are opting out of “settling.” Hence, 80%.
Husband Material
Psychology Today says most young men are single and feel (romantically) lonelier than ever. A real possibility of forever-singleness has settled over many hearts like a fog. It is also why so many men are busy working for “gains” in the gym. They want to somehow break into the top 20% of desirables. Or stay there. If they only knew that modern women of substance want more. Sure, there is a well-deserved component to maintaining a healthy lifestyle and personal grooming. Still, boys’ preoccupation with their looks and physique has everything to do with a warped understanding of what makes a man a man, and what a woman wants. This also explains why many young women are so discouraged! These men are shallow. There’s no mystery, no complexity, no depth. Think about it…if 100% of women compete for 20% of desirable men, then 80% of women are left with the 80% undesirables. What’s the result going to be? They will choose singleness over settling. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s a love-starved-trapped cycle with no end in sight. These women keep picking up frogs, hoping to get a prince. But they never “kiss” one (friend zone); they never try. And these aren’t frogs anyway; they’re tadpoles.
Young men can fix this. It’s not rocket science, but it is hard. Be better. Find your best expression, and work like a dog to attain it. And maintain it. This does not mean just a career, either. More profoundly, work on those things that will make you even more valuable to a godly woman:

Spiritual depth and growth
Personal character development
Education (however formal or informal)
Steadfast commitment

Take Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 13 to heart, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Then do it. Young men are in desperate need of growing up. Even a generation ago, every man knew these things to be true. Whether he was a Christian or not. Today, it’s a forgotten art. I guess that’s our fault as fathers. Which could be another article. The point is, invest in your whole person.
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For de Sade culture is relative. You can trust only yourself and your feelings – especially your sexual desires. They are your authentic self so you must do what you want and live your own truth. Freud accepted Sade’s proposition that sexual identity is fundamental to your identity and that it is bad to suppress it. We have now so adopted this as state ideology in the Western world, that to seek to suppress any one’s desires is regarded in some states as a hate crime. Whereas de Sade went to jail for sexual perversion, soon we will be sent to jail for calling it perversion!

Note: This is this week’s article on Christian Today….see the original here.  I think this is a really important insight – if you agree feel free to share it…
The Marquis de Sade – the Progressive Prophet?
In order to understand the times we live in, it is essential that we know where we have come from. While this is true of personal history it is also true of our collective history – which is perhaps why The Rest is History, fronted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, has become one of the most popular podcasts in the English-speaking world. The mixture of deep historical knowledge, contemporary application, British humour and joyful camaraderie make for a wonderful listening experience.
Every now and then they come up with an episode which is revelatory – almost prophetic. A recent example was on that unlikeliest of historical subjects, the infamous Marquis de Sade. In less skilled hands the temptation to turn this into a kind of mocking sleaze fest would have been too much, but not to our two intrepid presenters.
In fact, what transpired was enlightening. When we find ourselves wondering how the Western world has ended up in its present state of confusion and disintegration, the Rest is History’s analysis of de Sade helps us to the answers. In summary, Holland and Sandbrook argued that the ideologies and ideas of Freud, Darwin and Nietzsche were there in seed form in de Sade.
De Sade, a Frenchman, was born in 1740. He was a writer, philosopher, politician and playboy. He lived through the French revolution and even became a key participant in it, becoming an elected delegate to the National Convention. He died in September 1814 having lived a life of debauchery, sexual perversion and violent abuse. He recorded his ideology in various writings including the books Justine and The 120 Days of Sodom – works that are so grotesque they were banned in the UK until 1989.
They are horrific – so horrific that Tom Holland records that though he had tried to read The 120 Days of Sodom several times, he gave up. He described it as literally “unreadable”, because of its evil and sickening content. It is an interesting observation that websites like Amazon feel quite free to offer this book for sale (and Penguin are now quite happy to publish it as a ‘classic’) but dare to misgender someone and your books could be banned! At a personal level I would strongly discourage people from reading this dark perversity – I know of people who have been severely harmed by reading it at university.
His promotion of what became known as sadism, as well as masochism and homosexuality was, for its day, so extreme that he ended up in prison for over 30 years of his life. But as Holland and Sandbrook point out, much of his philosophy would today now be regarded as ‘progressive’. Here are his principles which sound so modern.
1. All Is Naturalistic Materialism
He was a social Darwinist, believing in the survival of the fittest. He had faith that everything was material. All are molecules and molecules are endlessly turning. Therefore, war and murder are natural and desirable. It is natural for wolves to eat lambs – and we should never oppose nature.
2. Reject Christianity
It is not without significance that de Sade was a committed atheist, who like Nietzsche, rejected not only the religion of Christianity but also its values and virtues. De Sade hated and despised Christ and the Church. He continually blasphemed against all aspects of Christianity and attacked Christ, as well as portraying the clergy as perverted hypocrites. He regarded Christianity as a slave religion which was fit only for the weak.
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Written by John G. Grove |
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Do politicians in pulpits, megachurch campaign rallies, Bible photo-ops, and governors “claiming” their states for Jesus make it more likely that the American public will express “humility and gratitude before God,” as the National Conservatives hope? Or do such public displays merely signal all the more clearly that the religion being practiced is a creation of partisan politics; a human instrument crafted “for the purposes of a moment”; a “state engine” that will be of no efficacy?

During his first few years in England, Edmund Burke compiled essay sketches and fragments in a notebook published only in the mid-twentieth century. One of the entries in that notebook, possibly co-written with his distant cousin William Burke, is entitled “Religion of No Efficacy Considered as a State Engine.” It is fairly straightforward and not particularly developed—it takes up a mere three pages of the published version. The pithy insight it contains, however, is notably lacking in many contemporary calls for more religion in our politics.
The premise is simple: Religion has salutary benefits for social and political life. But once it is seen primarily in a political context—when it becomes merely a “state engine”—it fails to provide those benefits.
If you attempt to make the end of Religion to be its Utility to human Society, to make it only a sort of supplement to the Law, and insist principally upon this topic, as is very common to do, you then change its principle of Operation, which consists on Views beyond this Life, to a consideration of another kind, and of an inferior kind.
Burke certainly had in his sights “enlightened” clergy who were uncomfortable defending the faith on the basis of the old dogmas and so instead stressed its moral dimension and necessity for peaceful civil life. But he may also have had in mind utilitarian and political understandings of pagan religions. And the general reflection on the outward, social effects can be useful in many contexts.
If he meant that one ought never to speak of the social benefits of religion, there would be ample evidence that he abandoned this view later in life, when he had much to say on the subject. But there’s no reason to think that’s what he had in mind. Rather, his comment is about the way religion is publicly presented and understood.
The social benefits of religion come precisely because it is something that transcends the political, and they depend on the manner in which religion is approached by the people. When we come to think that eternal rewards and punishments are aimed primarily at the immediate, political “purposes of a moment,” they become less impressive to us: “We cool immediately, the Springs are seen; we value ourselves on the Discovery; we cast Religion to the Vulgar and lose all restraint.”
In his later life, as a staunch defender of the established church, Burke would identify the social benefit of religion as its ability to overawe all other social calculations and considerations. It reminds us that all we say and do has cosmic significance. Placing all human endeavors next to the sublimity of God, as he noted in his Philosophical Enquiry, has the effect of diminishing our opinion of ourselves and our capabilities: “Whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of almighty power, and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated before him.”
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