Archive for the 'marriage' Category

The Dweam Wifin a Dweam

Published
by
Mike
on May 11, 2006
in marriage
. 56 Comments

It’s wot bwings us togeder today.

It’s that bwessed awangement.

It’s that dweam wifin a dweam.

Mawage.

And for me it all started 28 years ago today.

I’m still surprised by her beauty, still amazed by her faith. The journey has been full of joy, pain, ecstasy, grief, hurt, and forgiveness. We’ve welcomed three children into this world, buried one, and come frighteningly close to losing another.

I can’t imagine my life without her. I can’t wait to see what lies ahead in the next 28.

So here’s my wise advice for today: tweasure your wuv.Mike&DianeMike&DianeHawaii

Good Sex and Ordinary Marriages

Published
by
Mike
on May 2, 2006
in marriage
. 38 Comments

More from Lauren Winner (Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity):

As theologian David McCarthy argues in his provocative book Sex and Love in the Home, a Christian ethics of sex, love, and marriage needs to reconceive sex and love as practices that exist ideally only within the basic prosaic rhythms of house and home: candlelight, long-stemmed roses, and lingerie can’t sustain love, but domestic economies can. This is not, at root, an argument based on realism or expediency. Rather, the point is that it is only through household practices that Christians come to embody the Christian virtues of mutual care, forgiveness, generosity, community, interdependence, and reconciliation. Our humanity cannot be separated from the moments of joy, anger, friendship, sadness, attention, confusion, tedium, and wonder that unfold over time and in specific places. Human intimacy is hammered out on an anvil made of nothing more, in McCarthy’s phrase, than the “day-to-day ebb and flow of common endeavors, joys, and struggles of love in the home.” Love, sex, and marriage, to be theological, must drink from the very same wells. Love, sex, and marriage, to partake in their transcendent mission of revelaing God’s grace, must embrace life’s decidedly untranscendent daily goings-on. In a Christian landscape, what’s important about sex is nurtured when we allow sex to be ordinary. . . .

Secular culture, after all, has made a fetish of sexual technique, suggesting that if we just follow the steamy tips of experts, sex will be frequent, and always a fantastic production that culminates in astonishing multiple orgasms. This is the message that creeps into our e-mail inboxes in the seemingly incessant unsolicited ads for potions, pills, and devices that will “increase sexual performance” (itself a disturbing phrase suggesting that sex is a theatrical production to be enacted according to the dictates of a director, a play cloaked in costumes and props.) Glamour fills readers in on “11 Sex Moves Men Wish You’d Make” and “9 Sex Moves Men Wish You’d Skip.” In a recent issue of Maxim, I saw an ad hawking a pillow designed to promote a greater variety of sexual positions; the pillow, tellingly, is called The Liberator. It is meant, I suppose, to liberate us from the natural constraints of our limbs and mattresses. And on and on. According to books like The Sex-Starved Marriage (and according to shopworn jokes about marriage being the great guarantor of chastity), married couples are in an outright crisis of libido. Twenty percent of married couples have sex less than once a month. Couples are harried, busy, stressed, exhausted. They’re clinically depressed, or their hormones are out of whack, or they’re dealing with childhood sexual abuse. Whatever the cause, married folks don’t seem to be having much sex.

To be sure, one hopes that satisfying sex characterizes the majority of American marriages. But the tips and steps and easy how-tos for married folk seem to misdiagnose the problem. The problem is not only that new moms are exhausted and collapse into bed at night wanting only sleep. The problem is also that we think we need to aspire to Hollywood sex; we think husbands and wives, when they’re doing it right, will approximate the unbridled passion of Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in Monster’s Ball. We’ve defined sex as something unsustainable — bodice-ripping, stupefying, and nightly. It is not only insatiable, it creates the desire for more sex. It is adventurous, not habitual, and happens best during romantic weekend getaways, after candlelit dinners that recall the restaurants you frequented on dates before you were married, before you were plunged into routine.

Good sex, to be sure, is characterized by physical pleasure. It is also conditioned by moral context. And, as I suggested in the last chapter, it is inextricable from domestic routine. Moms and dads do need to be intentional about making time for sex, but Christians can perhaps remind the broader culture that good sex, by definition, is part and parcel of, not antagonistic to, ordinary marriages and domestic life.

Saturday, March 4

Published
by
Mike
on March 4, 2006
in family, marriage and prayer
. 26 Comments

Here is the picture that was supposed to go out with a Christmas letter. It’s from our trip to Estes Park last summer. So “Merry Christmas from the Copes” (either very belatedly or very early).

I’ve been working with a lot of old pictures, getting a presentation ready for a family gig. Here is my beloved’s high school graduation picture (posted withOUT permission):

And here she is a couple weeks ago in Kauai. (Time has been very kind to her.)

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Someone told me they heard people discussing my blog on an Abilene radio station earlier this week–people speculating as to why I pulled last Saturday’s post. I’ll drop it back on later. But I wanted OUT of that discussion. At least I didn’t want some Abilene residents’ first exposure to my blog to be over that discussion that began in the comments section (while I was out of town doing a very difficult graveside service).

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Tomorrow I’m preaching from Matthew 6 on the Lord’s Prayer, which we have prayed almost every Sunday since 1995.

The buzz over “The Prayer of Jabez” has died down, it seems. But right in the midst of that Buzz, James Mulholland wrote a book which begins by contrasting the prayer of Jabez with the Lord’s Prayer.

Here’s what Eugene Peterson said about Mulholland’s Praying Like Jesus: The Lord’s Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity: “An astonishing number of Americans these days are being taught a prayer that is little more than being selfish on their knees. When they stand up and go about their work, they are more selfish than ever. James Mulholland will have none of it. With urgency and clarity he sends us straight to the Prayer of Jesus, the prayer that clears the air of all illusions so that we can breathe pure Spirit.”

Here is some of what Mulholland wrote:

“Across America, hundreds of pastors are being pulled aside by excited church members who are saying, ‘You have to pray this prayer. It’s changed my life.’ Such a testimony is hard to dispute, especially when it is a prayer that includes the requests ‘bless me, enlarge my territory, keep your hand on me, and keep me from pain.’ In a materialistic, self-centered culture, such a prayer will always be attractive.Many pastors will embrace this prayer wholeheartedly. They will incorporate it into worship and preach a sermon series on each phrase. They will give copies of The Prayer of Jabez to their entire congregation. They will ignore the warnings of the author that his book was not intended to justify selfishness. They will encourage their church members to begin every morning with this prayer.

Unfortunately, they won’t reflect on the dangers of teaching self-centered people to begin each day with the chant, ‘Bless me!’ They won’t worry about the compromises inherent in a marriage of prayer and prosperity. They won’t consider the consequences of making prayer into a device for getting what we want. In the midst of this frenzy of egotism, they will overlook the obvious–the Prayer of Jabez isn’t the prayer Jesus taught us to pray.

Indeed, in significant ways the Prayer of Jabez is counter to the heart of the gospel and the priorities of Jesus. It represents the advancement of self and the resistance to self-denial Jesus confronted in his day and God continues to challenge within Christianity. And, although Mr. Wilkinson has tried to redeem the words of Jabez, he has only succeeded in fanning into flame the embers of a prosperity theology many had hoped was finally dying. He forgot the reason Jesus didn’t teach his disciples the Prayer of Jabez.

Jabez got it wrong.

In fairness to Jabez and to the Bible, neither suggest his prayer should be the model for others. This honor is reserved for another short prayer located in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray. We call this prayer ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ though I prefer to call it the Prayer of Jesus.”

Well, I won’t be picking on Jabez tomorrow. But I will be trying to help us imagine that counter-cultural world of this prayer–a world where the dominion of God has broken through, where his reign comes crashing through into our lives.

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[Added at noon] - There is an AP article all over the internet today about the work my brother and my sister-in-law are doing to help bring an extremely sick orphan to the States from Vietnam. You can read about it here, for example.

Valentine’s Day

Published
by
Mike
on February 14, 2006
in faith and marriage
. 21 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day, my dear. Our first date was 29 years ago today. “Through it all, love remains.” L, M.

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If you want to know more about why I think Albert Pujols is the greatest player in baseball (besides sheer talent), check here.

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For today, a classic piece from Henri Nouwen, taken from his “secret journal,” written during a difficult time in his life:

“Giving yourself to others without expecting anything in return is only possible when you have been fully received. Every time you discover that you expect something in return for what you have given or are disappointed when nothing comes back to you, you are being made aware that you yourself are not yet fully received. Only when you know yourself as unconditionally loved–that is, fully received–by God can you give gratuitously. Giving without wanting anything in return is trusting that all your needs will be provided for by the One who loves you unconditionally. It is trusting that you do not need to protect your own security but can give yourself completely to the service of others.

“Faith is precisely trusting that you who give gratuitously will receive gratuitously, but not necessarily from the person to whom you gave. The danger is in pouring yourself out to others in the hope that they will fully receive you. You will soon feel as if others are walking away with parts of you. You cannot give yourself to others if you do not own yourself, and you can only truly own yourself when you have been fully received in unconditional love.

“A lot of giving and receiving has a violent quality, because the givers and receivers act more out of need than out of trust. What looks like generosity is actually manipulation, and what looks like love is really a cry for affection or support. When you know yourself as fully loved, you will be able to give according to the other’s capacity to receive, and you will be able to receive according to the other’s capacity to give. You will be grateful for what is given to you without clinging to it, and joyful for what you can give without bragging about it. You will be a free person, free to love.” (The Inner Voice of Love)

KAUAI: Someone Had to Do It

Published
by
Mike
on February 10, 2006
in Church of Christ, marriage and travel
. 29 Comments

All abuse coming to me is richly deserved. A pastors’ conference in Kauai?

Those Christian Church guys know how to pick a conference site. In Churches of Christ, we usually go for exotic places like Abilene, Lubbock, and Midland. (Well, there is that annual pilgrimage to Malibu.)

Actually, I think this was exotic even for them. They went there because this is the last year for Bob Russell (who I think maybe started the group many years ago) as senior pastor of the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville–a church of about 19,000. This year is the 100th anniversary of the formal division between Churches of Christ and Christian Churches, so it’s one of many activities planned together.

Building megachurches is no longer a big vision for me. I more prefer the idea of sending out Christ-followers who will seep into every crevice of society as they participate in the mission of Jesus. This may result in large churches, small churches, cell churches, etc.

Having said this, it was wonderful to meet so many of these men and women who have given their lives for evangelism. Very inspiring. (Some of the specific lessons I learned I’ll try to come back to later.) They have built churches that have preached and lived the good news.

We come from different backgrounds, different schools (theirs tend to be Bible colleges and ours tend to be universities), different conferences, different churches, etc. But we have so much heritage in common. One of their ministers told me that it seems to him that they were trained to be evangelists while we were trained to be theologians. That’s exaggerated, of course. But it does indicate that we could certainly use the help each group could offer the other.

Now — about Kauai. What can I say? (Unnecessary note to Highland members: yes, we paid our own way.) Diane and I love to hike together, so we hiked all over the canyon: on the stunning Kalalau trail (with views of the Na Pali coast), to the top of the Sleeping Giant on the west-side trail, to the bottom of Wailua Falls, and on parts of several trails through Waimea Canyon. I also snorkeled a little, but Diane thought the water was a wee bit cold. Against my best judgment (with a touch of acrophia that only kicks in with tiny aircraft, bridges, and some buildings — all things made by people — I feel pretty good on things that God made like mountains), we took a helicopter ride that is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done for sheer beauty.

We missed the last part of the conference. A 7th grade basketball game to get back to, you know.

Supporting Our Marriages

Published
by
Mike
on December 12, 2005
in family and marriage
. 39 Comments

George Barna has documented this fact: the divorce rate in this country is the same for people who claim to be Christians as it is for people who don’t claim to be Christians. (I just read a summary of a Barna report that now says it’s higher for Christians, but I can’t locate that report.)

Without stomping on those who’ve already suffered through divorces, isn’t there a way we can address this? Is there a disconnect between our calling to follow Jesus and the high failure rate of our marriages?

Doesn’t the demand for family-friendly legislation and family values lose some steam when the people who claim to be Christ-followers have a higher divorce rate than those who don’t?

How can the church be hard on divorce while being gentle with those who have suffered through divorces? (They don’t need to suffer again, made to feel like second class citizens of the kingdom!)

What’s the disconnect here? And how do we help local church leaders who are forced to deal with these issues all the time? Honestly, it’s one of the most difficult parts of being a leader.

What I’m especially interested in is how the church, the community of believers, can be more helpful in supporting one another’s marriages.

These ten thoughts come to mind quickly:

1. By faithfully holding marriage in the realm of discipleship (i.e., we keep our vows as a part of living out the deep inner goodness that comes from following the Way of Christ — Mt. 5:31-32);

2. By refusing to make marriage a place where all needs are supposed to be met (which is idolatrous and forces it to bear a load it can’t);

3. By learning to be more open with one another — confessing, sharing, and praying — so that we aren’t afraid to say “we need some help”;

4. By fostering a greater sense of “first family” where the church — married, divorced, single, children — is seen as our primarily relationship;

5. By reminding each other that we relate to each other in marriage as brother and sister in Christ as well as husband and wife;

6. By offering whatever resources are available for prevention and intervention: wise elders, insightful therapists, caring friends and guides;

7. By encouraging each other openly to resist materialism and out-of-control debt;

8. By opening ways for conflict and conflict resolution that involve true listening, affirming, exploring, and forgiving;

9. By helping people to pursue a path of spiritual formation, expecting people to change through time into the image of Christ; and

10. By keeping alive and open the stories of older believers who can share their journey, thereby offering hope and guidance for troubled times.

What other suggestions do you have?

Real Sex

Published
by
Mike
on November 14, 2005
in Books and marriage
. 33 Comments

Real Sex: the Naked Truth About Chastity, Lauren Winner’s newest book, is wonderful. It’s edgy and insightful, fresh and biblical. A convert to Christianity, Winner is coming to terms with the Christian story of sexuality, explaining her journey toward chastity. A few selections today.

Winner scours through studies and anecdotes trying to discover why some teens find the courage to hold off on sexual intercourse:

“One might hope that the strongest predictor of teenage virginity would be church involvement–but it’s not. A recent study of teenage girls shows that the strongest predictor is actually participation in team sports. The girl who plays lacrosse or soccer is more likely to remain chaste than the girl who attends church and youth group.”

Why?

“At first blush, team sports and sexual abstinence seem to have nothing to do with each other. But in fact, the relationship makes sense: through soccer and tennis and field hockey, those girls are learning how to inhabit their bodies in good, robustly physical ways. They are seeing their bodies change and excel and face challenges and, sometimes, fail them. Their sports teams are communities that are teaching them how to live–not as sex objects, but as bodies that are graceful and disciplined and strong. They are learning, through those tennis matches and lacrosse games, that their bodies should be celebrated, because their bodies do great things. This doesn’t mean, of course, that if only the church sponsored more softball leagues, everyone would stay on the chaste straight and narrow. But it does mean that the church ought to cultivate ways of teaching Christians to live in their bodies well–so that unmarried folks can still be bodily people, even though they’re not having sex, and so that married people can give themselves to sex freely.”

It’s so easy for the church to slip into a bit of Gnosticism–sending signals that the body is evil, or at least mostly problematic. These signals just don’t fit the Christian story: of bodies being created by God, of Jesus coming in a real body, and of bodies being raised and glorified to live forever.

About communal sex:

“But the Bible tells us to intrude–or rather, the Bible tells us that talking to one another about what is really going on in our lives is in fact not an intrusion at all, because what’s going on in my life is already your concern; by dint of the baptism that made me your sister, my joys are your joys and my crises are your crises. We are called to speak to one another lovingly, to be sure, and with edifying, rather than gossipy or hurtful, goals. But we are called nonetheless to transform seemingly private matters into communal matters.”

About how we dress:

“There is, it seems to me, a certain power in modest dressing, an assertion that though my body is beautiful, I am more than a sex object designed for your passing entertainment. But the power of dressing is also the power of narrative. For our clothes tell stories, and it would be naive and irresponsbile to pretend otherwise. Clothes tell stories about sex and chastity, to be sure, but they also narrate a stance toward our environments; our dress suggests a set of priorities. That is why we enjoy clothing so much, of course–because we reinvent ourselves and our narratives when we try out a new look. So the question for Christians is not an absolute one about skirt length, but rather something about communication. What stories do we want to tell ourselves and others through our choices of clothing?”

About sex in marriage:

“One hopes that satisfying sex characterizes the majority of American marriages. But the tips and steps and easy how-tos for married folk seem to misdiagnose the problem. The problem is not only that new moms are exhausted and collapse into bed at night wanting only sleep. The problem is also that we think we need to aspire to Hollywood sex; we think husbands and wives, when they’re doing it right, will approximate the unbridled passion of Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in Monster’s Ball. We’ve defined sex as something unsustainable–bodice-ripping, stupefying, and nightly. . . . Good sex, to be sure, is characterized by physical pleasure. It is also conditioned by moral context. And, as I suggested in the last chapter, it is inextricable from domestic routine. Moms and dads do need to be intentional about making time for sex, but Christians can perhaps remind the broader culture that good sex, by definition, is part and parcel of, not antagonistic to, ordinary marriages and domestic life.”

Winner discusses four lies that our culture tells about sex: it can be wholly separated from procreation; you shouldn’t marry for sex; how you dress doesn’t matter; and good sex can’t happen in the humdrum routine of marriage. Then she covers three lies that the church sometimes tells about sex: that premarital sex is guaranteed to make you feel lousy, that women don’t really want to have sex anyway; and that bodies (and sex) are gross, dirty, or just plain unimportant.

Remembering 1956 & My Beloved

Published
by
Mike
on November 8, 2005
in Church of Christ and marriage
. 39 Comments

Remember When

Yesterday was my beloved’s birthday. I won’t say how old she was, but my birthday card was a little booklet called “1956: Remember When . . .”

It listed others who were born that year: Joe Montana (greatest QB ever), Carrie Fisher (AKA Princess Leia), Bo Derek (numero diez), Kenny G, and Sinbad. The hit tunes were dominated by Elvis (”Don’t Be Cruel,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “Love Me Tender”). The Evil Empire won the World Series.

More significantly, Martin Luther King organized a boycott of public buses in Montgomery, the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in instrastate public transportation, and Dwight Eisenhower was reelected.

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Religious Porn

Two different people told me the same story in the last two weeks. They were in churches that had magazines out, happened to pick one up, and saw something about me.

The first was in a Christian Church in Kansas where they saw an article I’d written on Christian unity. Must have been in Christian Standard or, perhaps, One Body (another journal that picked it up from the Standard).

The second was in a Church of Christ somewhere. They told me they read an article that was attacking me for what I’d written on unity in the Christian Standard. It was in the Spiritual Sword, they said! Are you kidding me? I had no idea it was still being published.

There was a time that I couldn’t resist peeking at the heretic-detecting, faith-contending religious pornography that came through the office. But it’s been a long, long time. I guess I hoped they’d gone out of business. But no — someone brought me this copy back. It was strange holding it my hands, since I’ve sworn off religious porn for so long.

Don’t get me wrong: there are undoubtedly some edifying articles that have appeared in all of these. (Little known fact: long ago Contending for the Faith picked up something I’d written and published it. That was about 1979. So yes, I’m one of their writers.)

But overall, the tenor of these rags has been so sour and arrogant.

And by writing this little blog, there’s a chance I’ll reappear again soon in a magazine near you. But please . . . don’t tell me about it.

Happy 50th!

Published
by
Mike
on August 28, 2005
in family and marriage
. 10 Comments

Today is my parents’ fiftieth anniversary. (I’ve been around for all but eleven months of it!) Congratulations, Mom and Dad.

They decided a couple years ago that they didn’t want a big reception. Instead they wanted to take their kids and sons/daughters-in-law on an Alaskan cruise. We cashed in on that decision in June with a wonderful trip.

Cruisin’ Alaska

Published
by
Mike
on June 30, 2005
in family, marriage and travel
. 11 Comments

As Jimmy Buffett puts it, “It’s been a lovely cruise.”

We just finished a week aboard the Carnival Spirit (without ever seeing Kathy Lee), sailing from Anchorage to Vancouver. For my parents’ 50th anniversary, which they celebrate this summer, they wanted to take their children and spouses on an Alaskan Cruise. We have been surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation — animals (bear, moose, bald eagles, otters, whales, etc.), mountains, glaciers, and ocean — for the past week. Nothing restores my spirit like mountains. The rest was bonus.

And we ate . . . and ate . . . and ate. Like hobbits.

My parents were married in the summer of 1955. Eleven months after they married, I arrived. Their first year of marriage was spent in Pittsburgh, PA, where Dad was stationed. Then after a brief stay in Neosho, MO, we moved to Austin for two years, where they finished their degrees in journalism (Dad) and English (Mom). The other 47 years of their marriage have been in Neosho.

I’ll probably write more about it in August when the actual anniversary date arrives. But needless to say, I’m very thankful for their love that has survived and thrived through the past five decades.