There is a competition going on   There are many people ouf there, many forms of entertainment, that want us to concentrate on them.  Some of these are greedy, some are encouraging our desires (Food TV and home remodelling would be safe for work examples) and some are sheer gossip and salaciousness.

And that is before we come to sport, beer and sex. Now, there is nothing wrong with food, a home, sport, beer or sex if in their place. But we are to seek Christ first.

Romans 8:1-11

One of Dalrocks comments, in his reply to DarwinCatholic… said this

I put the question to one of the saintliest people I know, a 97 year old blind Pentecostal woman. She just smiled and said “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The radiance on her face convinced me that she was talking about a present reality, not a future hope.

 

There are people among us whose righteousness leaves us both priveledged to witness. Their life convicts us without them speaking a word. They are not merely concerned with what is going on here.

The question is where to find them. Well, if you live in the States, and you have money, you can do what DarwinCatholic did ) from the same thread)

So just to clarify: when I talk about what I’ve found looking for a spouse to be like in conservative Catholic circles, I’m talking way, way conservative: Opus Dei, Communion and Liberation, the big homeschooling and traditionalist networks, Theology on Tap, and the very conservative colleges like Steubenville, UD, Thomas Aquianas, Ave Maria, etc.

In a culture in which 50% of marriage fail, you have to be pretty damn counter cultural to put yourself out side of that world.

Yeah. I’d add the Navigators, the more hardline presbyterians, Tandem ministry, in New Zealand Laidlaw College… but the main universities in NZ are secular. Way secular. Studied in them. Work in them. In my field there is no religious university that offers training — and the two schools recruit after an intermediate year.

For most of us, isolating ourselves in Darwin’s darn counterculture is not going to work. We are not Amish. We have to live in the usual world.

Now… there are Christian fellowships and ministries attached to our universities. They need our support — to nurture our students get them in a group where they can meet each other while doing silly things. (much of this should be single gender. The girls will be playing with hair straighteners and other things I do no try to understand while the boy swill be playing touch league or world of warcraft. The only thing that has changed is that WoW does not need 20 sided dice and that girls can now post photos of their new home making projects).

If a young couple meet because they are involved in helping at youth group, or tramping, or playing elite sport, or studying a hard course, or playing in an orchestra… then they are doing a task. You can find out if you like them, and if they are sensible. You can get a sense of their taste.

And if that matrix of shared interests includes the church, a few Sundays spent arguing theology does not hurt.  But all those structures, which existed when I was young… have been alienated from my sons.

I agree that we have to be counter-cultural. We need to subvert the courts, and treat child protection with great suspicion (For they truly treat us the same way). The task for religious men is to remake these structures for the young people who follow. Then let them fly — into secular vocations, to the mission field, and to their homes.

Gotta love the Traditional Catholics. They hold as tightly to doctrine as the most ardent member of the “Wee Free” (in Ulster). I agree completely with what Darwin Catholic is saying here…

The message that we keep putting forward is that sex belongs only in marriage. If you are not married do not have sex. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, if you think of yourself as an “alpha” or a “beta”, if you think you are deeply in love and committed or if you are just out for a good time, sex does not belong outside of marriage and violating this moral law is not only a sin but (and for those with an understanding of moral law this is an obvious corollary) it will also end up causing short and long term problems for your current and future (if any) relationships. While I’m stating the unpopular, let trot out the point that really gets scorn heaped upon us traditionalist conservatives: Not only should you not have sex outside of marriage, but sex itself is inextricably linked with procreation. So even after you’re married, if you don’t want to get pregnant at the moment, there are going to be periods of time when you need to abstain from sex even though you’re married

This is one of the reasons for modesty. Us single men are not dead, yet, and some of us are straight, and will be (ahem) distracted. Keep that for your husband, woman. You are allowed, indeed commanded, to distract him.

On procreation, since I’m not Catholic, I’d argue that one can licitly use contraception. But… you have to be aware that the pill has side effects, as do IUDs… or barrier methods. (Some of the side effects are useful. I understand that the Mirena(TM) IUD has markedly decreased the amount of surgery for menorrhagia (if you are male, look it up) and this is a good thing. Some women simply have a horrible time and sometimes this can be ameliorated by a combined oral contraceptive. Don’t work in that field, but my GP friends tell me this).

But Darwin continues…

In this day and age, not having sex till marriage (which these manosphere types seem expect of women, though I’m less clear whether they expect if of themselves) and remaining married until death after marrying is very, very countercultural. Why would you go through the work? For us, it’s because we believe that acting otherwise would be a mortal sin — a sin for which, unless truly repented of, one goes to hell.

If you believe that too, you’re a good part of the way there. Now just find a woman who shares that belief just as deeply as you do. It is, to my mind, far more important that a potential wife truly shares your deepest beliefs about what marriage is than how old she is or what her sexual history is prior to reaching those beliefs — if you are dealing with a woman who routinely violates her own stated beliefs, as opposed to having had a history prior to reaching those beliefs, you may well have a problem on your hands and should do some very, very serious thinking.

Yes, it is. And DC met his wife when they were 18 and married at 22. I met my (then wife) at 24 and married her at 28… but when you have people saying one should routinely wait into one’s thirties you need a really firm religious basis. I clearly recall a colleague saying I would never go with a Christian as they would not have sex with me and what’s the point of that?.

Now, Divorced, no relationship with anyone for three years, and my friends are saying I’m too snarky and need to find someone. Yeah… but finding such a woman is hard, really hard. Most church women are simply not serious enough about this. Again, it is not necessarily their past but (and this is a point that does not get hammered their repentence of their past. I am not perfect: my number is not one, but if I am in a relationship again I want to not jump straight into bed even though I will probably want to. Because you lose discernment.

So I am looking for advice, wisdom if you will. Darwin describes the problem thusly

If you have a highly counter-cultural idea of what marriage is, your pool of potential mates is far, far smaller than the average. Especially if you’re spending a lot of your time moving around mainstream circles, most of the people you’re meeting simply aren’t marriage material for you. But even if, like MrsDarwin and I, you spend most of your social time in a sub-culture of like-minded people, who share your beliefs and desire in regards to marriage, finding someone you want to spend the rest of your life with and raise a family with (and who shares the feeling) is often going to take a lot of searching.

Yep, correct. but he loses it when he describes the manosphere in this way.

Dalrock accuses me of being in the “man up and marry those sluts column”. I suppose it’s one of the contradictions of true Christianity that it scandalizes both those who hate the fact that we believe that the moral law exists in the first place (this would be the people who are always telling us we need to get out of their bedrooms and stop judging) and also scandalizes those who’ve endorsed a sort of post-Christian (or for the Christians, perhaps neo-Puritan) shame-society — these folks are shocked that we actually believe in forgiveness

Well, I’m not Dalrock. I have a past, and I am quite aware that I have tendencies to sin. I have no difficulties about being held to account — and at times the manosphere does commit the feminist error of “boys are stupid throw rocks at them” — but both parties need to be repentant.

Skipping a bit of a straw man argument around repentance, he continues with something that is wise…

It’s not enough to just be sorry for past sins. Virtue is a habit towards the good. If your virtue muscles are underdeveloped because you haven’t been living according to the Church’s moral principles, the only way to get back into shape morally is through rigorous practice. Like any kind of strenuous training for those who aren’t fit, it takes a lot of time, effort and pain. And it’s not something you can just quit once you’ve gotten in shape if you want to stay that way.

If you’re trying to decide whether to marry a woman who has engaged in sexual sin in the past, but who now says she shares your beliefs about sex, then the obvious question is: How long has she been living according to her new beliefs, and how successfully has she done so? Sexual immorality (like any other kind of immorality) is habit-forming, and breaking habits takes time and hard work.

The same thing, of course, applies to me. I have to work at virtue. There is a reason I blog the lectionary daily. It’s quite selfish. It forces me not just read the word but think about it.

However, I’m going to add a gloss. This is more for people like me… looking at women who are not 20, but a decade or two older because you are a decade or two older and you have families, responsibilities, and an aversion to living a standard marriage 2.0 life.

1. You may be celibate for a long, long time.  You have other responsibilities. Your children need your input. You have to get your own life in order. The number of frogettes in the church is huge, and finding godly women ain’t easy. (Finding women who talk churchspeak is.
2. You have to think about the real difficult issues. I. Am. Not. Talking. About. Sex.  There is little difficulties talking about that. Rather, budgets. Finances, Provision for other children. Careers. The mission field.  And theology.
3. You better agree on a Pauline model.  That means you need to talk about the submission word, and how you think it will work.
4. She better have a clue. Silliness is cute in a young girl, but irritating in a woman. Competence is attractive. If she wants to be a homemaker, she needs to have the crafts down — can she clean, sew, decorate? Can she work with me? Can she live small, and moderate her lifestyle when those around are living large?
5. (Acid test question) Will she move to follow you? This is where submission hits the road. Example. I get an offer to move to Australia and we pray about it and it is the right thing. Will she move with me?
6. (Finally) does she understand the venusian arts?  Does she understand that us men are visual? Does she enjoy male sexuality? Is she “cute”? — not just lust, but aware that there is a sexual nature to marriage and will guard you and her bed jealously?

If so…. and the families agree… then sort out the financial situation, organize a small wedding, and make a strong marriage.

If not… bread and water in peace is better than a vexatious woman.

______________________

PS. The title — wisdom has no owner, and even though I consider the Roman Church is greivously in error, there is practical truth to be extracted. Hence this anti-Fisk.

My ex is visiting town to spend time with son two, attend the school play (the kids did great. The play, however, is not great, and the sound people need to learn to turn down the mikes on trained singers). The “fun’ bit, for the boy, was that the music pages were printed out of order… to the point where his music teacher, sitting in the chair next to him, said “pages are more important than bowing“.

But, from the second she came down, we have been in the land of snark.

Today this resonates. I want to curse the fig tree, and scourge out the temple.

Mark 11:12-25

12On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

15Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

20In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” 22Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. 23Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. 24So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

25“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”

My household is all male: may daughter is married and lives in the frozen northern prairies, while we survive in Dunedin (which gets the occaisional snow, not feet of it. There is a reptilian reason I do not live in Canada. I like being warm). The amount of anger in the house last night… was defused by humour.

But this morning I need to forgive her for yesterday, and beg forgiveness for when I entered the land of the snark. Because there are no fruit there. In fact, the play reminded me of this: Sweeney Todd gets his revenge, at the cost of his love and his life.

Living in sarcasm and snark is attractive to the verbal and clear eyed, as a bleak position is currently the accurate one to take of the world. But down that path lies despair. I must not enter the land of snark.

Incendiary Insight. A little cynical. He misses the fact that most of the people he is talking about are the sons of Mary

Every single group in this country outside of white, right-leaning Christian men wants to win. What do I mean by that? They take their fight seriously, they’re willing to protest, riot, make others lives uncomfortable, loudly announce their goals, and demand laws that support their beliefs be passed without hesitation. The most that Christians will do is send in angry letters to….somebody. Republicans will promise to vote for whoever the Republican nominee is, and men will continue going to work and upholding a system that does not believe it needs them. One side fought for victory, another didn’t fight at all.

Feminists hysterically emote and rage like the good little cultural Marxists that they are, while the Men’s Rights Movement angrily blogs about their divorce experiences; young men shun marriage in favor of hook-ups, high-definition porn, video games, and getting stupid drunk on the weekends. The modus operandi for white, right-leaning Christian men nowadays is basically to react to changes of society, not to influence or cause certain changes. When was the last time a large number of men got to together and demanded that a law be passed? Yet, not a day goes by where we can turn on the news and not see some left-wing retard demanding some new law that enriches herself or her friends.

Ah. This quote expresses some of the issues that keep coming up. We are listening to the whiners and not to those who fix things. There is a certain nobility in being one of the workers. Those who know their Kipling

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a
little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop
their job when they dam’-well choose.

And in a rational society, the productive people are listened to, and the drones ignored.

While we are thinking of production tools, my mate Grant has a new version of Sofa Statistics up. This is one of the simplest cross platform analysis tools out there for doing basic analysis, and I recommend it as a replacement for excel/gnumeric and SPSS. If you need to program, use Rkward as a frontend for R.

On the economic front, the stockmarket has rallied, but this has to be looked at with caution. In the US, $270 billion of student loans are delinquent. Greek bonds are paying 22c to the dollar. The market still works –Nikon has increased the price of it’s newest camera in the UK to ration demand for it –but that is a toy for photogs. For those on the margins, the price of bread is more important.

On that subject, good bread is expensive. But flour is cheap, and this recipe is reliable.You need to read the article and then follow the recipe. Mark Bitman is a one of the few American food writers worth following, because he keeps it simple and fresh.

Recipe: No-Knead Bread

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

Dinner was fresh bread (not done this way: I kneaded a loaf in the conventional manner) and cheese. You can also form the bread into standard tins and bake it that way. I find about 170 Celsius works on my oven (I don’t think in Fahrenheit).

Yesterday the anti abortionists stood outside the hospital where I work. They always do on Friday, for that is the day when the termination (abortion) lists are done. Abortion is not a woman’s right in New Zealand, but in effect any woman can choose this: the doctors who certify abortions (for a fee) rarely disagree with a woman’s wishes. Those of us medics who see this as anathema (such as this Presbyterian) opt out — there is a conscience clause in the legislation.

Now… the protesters have an agreement hasbed out with the hospital as to where they can stand, and what they can do. Which is stand there.

But Sam Shepherd has decided to protest the protestors.In the course of my week, I generally am not in the hospital on Friday mornings. I am up at the suburban campus, where the acute psychiatric ward is. But I had to perform the ECT list — which is at the .main hospital. After that had finished, I left  and witnessed this protest.

The people who protest abortions were standing silently with their placards.

Next to them was a man with a placard that said “Dicks”. (that is the equivalent of “Prick”. Call someone that in a pub and you will be in a fight)

There were a group of people standing directly in front of the protestors screaming at them.

As I moved past one woman yelled “The Church loves infanticide, God loves infanticide”.

I’m afraid I got angry. I went back and said that somebody had just been rude. Unacceptably rude. Offensive.

And I thus offended the lovers of evil and murder.

This looks like it will be a weekly event If so. Sam Sharpe is a fool. Because the word will get around.  When I talked about this in the tea room, most of my colleagues — and this is Dunedin, which is quite progressive/red — were appalled.

The anti abortion protests have come down to the die hards. I predict that there will be more anti abortion protesters the more this happens.

Me? next time I’m down there on Friday, I’m bringing a camera.