This post is a 3 in one: one lecture, one question and answer, and another lecture – all on different topics. My friend Neil S. requested this so I’m posting it.
I got this lecture from the Reasonable Faith web site.
Dr. William Lane Craig is the top living Christian apologist and debater in the world today, and has 2 Masters degrees and 2 Ph.Ds. He also has scores of academic publications including books from Oxford University Press, etc.
The MP3 file is here. (14.5 Mb, about 41 minutes)
Topics:
- the stresses of ministry on marriages
- the Christian position on divorce
- balancing marriage with academic pursuits
- the importance of marrying the right person
- Dr. Craig’s politically incorrect advice for choosing a spouse
- Advice for men: Marry someone who believes in you and who supports you in your calling
- Advice for women: Be the kind of person who can commit to being a helper and supporter
- Advice for men: Beware of the career woman who will put their career over supporting you in your calling
- Advice for women: Be careful about marrying if you think that your goals are more important than your husband’s goals
- Advice: Don’t try to find the right person for you but instead focus on learning about marriage and preparing for marriage
- Advice: Flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, love and peace
- Advice: God intends for sex to be within the bounds of marriage, so you need to guard yourself against unchastity
- Advice for men: be careful what images and movies you see with the goal of keeping your chastity
- Advice: your highest responsibility after your relationship with God is your spouse, and your studies are third
- Advice: it’s better to drop classes or give up your graduate studies entirely rather than destroy your marriage
- Advice for women: understand that you have to work at the marriage in order to help your man finish his studies
- Advice: set aside a period of the day for communicating and bonding with your spouse
- Advice: cultivate the ability to talk with your spouse on a personal level, and maintain eye contact
- Advice for men: do not break eye contact with your wife, and also hold her hand when communicating
- Advice: do not be embarrassed to seek out a marriage counselor, but make it a good counselor
- Advice: don’t just be doing stuff for your mate, but also be vulnerable and transparent with your mate
- How your relationship with your wife helps you with your relationship with God
- How do you handle the rebellion of children without being overbearing and authoritarian?
There is a period of Q&A at the end. There is another piece of advice that comes out in the Q&A for women: take an interest in your spouse’s work even if you don’t care about it, and ask him about it every day and try to understand it. Go to the man’s workplace and see what he does. Go to his presentations. Get involved in the man’s ministry and help him in practical ways. Another piece of advice is to not paper over the differences – it’s good to argue, because it means that problems are being confronted and worked through. Husbands should have a good male friend to talk to, and wives should have a good female friend to talk to.
I like how Dr. Craig has thought about how to have a successful marriage, how to choose the right woman, and how to love his wife. I like how he calls out men on the chastity thing. I think that chastity is more important for men than for women, because it’s the men who take the lead in choosing and pursuing the right woman for their plan.
Secondly, here is my previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for married couples, where he gives 5 points of advice for married couples.
Here are the main pieces of advice Dr. Craig gives:
- Resolve that there will be no divorce
- Delay having children
- Confront problems honestly
- Seek marital counseling
- Take steps to build intimacy in your relationship
And here’s the controversial one (#2):
2. Delay having children. The first years of marriage are difficult enough on their own without introducing the complication of children. Once children come, the wife’s attention is necessarily diverted, and huge stresses come upon you both. Spend the first several years of marriage getting to know each other, working through your issues, having fun together, and enjoying that intimate love relationship between just the two of you. Jan and I waited ten years before having our first child Charity, which allowed me the finish graduate school, get our feet on the ground financially, establish some roots, and enjoy and build our love relationship until we were really ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. The qualifier here is that if the wife desperately wants children now, then the husband should accede to her wish to become a mother, rather than withhold that from her. Her verdict should be decisive. But if you both can agree to wait, things will probably be much easier.
Third and finally, here is a previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for choosing a good spouse, with illustrations from his own marriage.
For example, Bill’s first story about Jan occurs early after their marriage while he is working on his first Masters degree at Trinity:
And it was also at that time that I began to see what an invaluable asset the Lord had given me in Jan. I remember I came home from classes one day, and found her at the kitchen table with all the catalogs and schedules and papers spread out in front of her and she said, “look! I’ve figured out how you can get two Masters degrees at the same time that it would normally take to get one! All you have to do is take overloads every semester, go to all full-time summer school and do all these other things, and you can do two MAs in the time it takes to do one!”
And I thought, whoa! Are you sure you really want to make the commitment it takes to do this kind of thing? And she said, “Yeah! Go for it!” And it was then I began to see that God had given me a very special woman who was my supporter – my cheerleader – and who really believed in me. And as long as she believed in me, that gave me the confidence to dream bigger dreams, and to take on challenges that I had never thought of before.
If you want to hear another Christian husband talk about how his wife supports him, listen to this lecture called “Giants in the Land” with Dr. Walter Bradley. It’s actually my favorite lecture. I also really like his testimony lecture. If you’re looking for guidance, these are some of the people I would recommend.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
And then there’s the other part about having children later: it’s a bear (ask me how I know). I think there’s a golden mean for having children, not too soon so you don’t suffer what Craig rightly describes and not too late so you don’t get set in your ways of independence.
LikeLike
WLC has some good advice on marriage. However, I disagree with what he says on delaying children and what he says about arguing.
On delaying children, there may be certain circumstances when a couple can and should delay children, if possible, but I don’t think this is good advice across the board for every couple. Yes, children introduce more complications and take time, but they are also blessings. Couples should be careful not to allow any children they have to come between them – but that is true no matter when in their marriage they have them. The marriage relationship should come first, even before the kids. It’s best for the kids that way because they need a mother and father who exhibit a strong marriage in front of them and who will stay together to raise them.
However, what I more often see than having kids “too soon” is that couples delay children until some magical “readiness” point (buy a house, have savings, etc) – which often doesn’t come until years into the marriage. At which time, the couple has become so set in their ways that kids are simply added to their already busy lifestyle and not given the time and attention they need.
Or, the couple may find that once they finally reach their chosen readiness point they have trouble conceiving and can only have one or two kids, if any. The idea that you can put off fertility and still have it around when you want it later is false. You can’t count on future fertility. Even with our modern medicine, there is no guarantee that you will be able to have kids later when you decide you’re ready.
The other thing to consider is that all married couples need to at least be open to having children. No matter what kind of birth control method you use, it can fail. Sex produces babies. So if couples are convinced that they aren’t “ready” for kids for a while, they may be tempted to abort if they get pregnant. I have even heard a story of a couple who aborted when they got pregnant 6 months “too soon” for their perfect plans. The idea that fertility is completely under our control is a misconception. Couples need to beware of the consumeristic mindset when it comes to children. And couples need to be aware that, regardless of their efforts to have or delay children, such things are not entirely up to them and be willing to change their plans accordingly. Using wisdom about when to try for children is one thing. But children are a gift from God, not just a piece of property that you can order when you want one or avoid when you don’t.
As for arguing in marriage, I disagree that it is a good thing. Yes, conflicts need to be resolved rather than ignored. But arguing is not the best way to go about that. It is far better to resolve conflict through a calm, rational discussion and by having a plan in place beforehand of how to resolve conflicts. Having an argument means having an emotional struggle where each person is pushing for their own way. And when emotions get involved, rationality tends to be absent. That’s not good is the goal is to come to the best decision together. Thus, I think arguments should be avoided by striving for a logical and non-emotional discussion where both parties keep the focus on coming to the best solution together rather than fighting to get their own way.
LikeLike
Hey for the arguing, I think that it is going to happen, and what Dr. Craig is arguing for is that people will be able to argue rationally and productively. He’s not saying that it should be done on purpose, just that you should get good at doing it well so that it’s short and productive.
I think regarding the marriage thing, he would urge people to marry younger as he did and then wait for the “gelling” period to expire so that there is still lots of time to have children.
LikeLike
I don’t think arguing is inevitably going to happen, especially if you don’t go into marriage thinking it is inevitable. Disagreements are inevitable, but they don’t have to degrade to arguing. My husband and I have been married more than 3 years and have never had an argument. We discuss things calmly and rationally when we disagree. I highly recommend that as opposed to arguing. We went into marriage with a plan in place for settling disagreements rationally and it works.
LikeLike
Holy snouts! Well, if you can do that, then there is no need to learn to argue well.
LikeLike
3 whole years? …….I don’t even own a shirt that is that new. :-)
LikeLike
I think we may be quibbling over the term “argument”? Lindsay, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m guessing when you say argument you mean something along the lines of two people speaking to each other emotionally (perhaps raised voices), not listening to the other and basically grinding whatever issue is going on out in a battle of wills and pride.
What I say when I think of the “arguments” I’ve had with my husband, is it usually looks something like this:
The discussion can be emotional, but both of us our working on figuring out exactly what we’re upset about and why and what the solution is. Voices are hardly ever raised.
Maybe one of us says something heated in a burst of emotion, but it is almost always immediately retracted as unfair. If it isn’t, the other person calls them out on it, and then it has always been retracted.
The conversation usually involves a lot of those “I messages”.
I would actually say that we have “emotional conversations” more often than we have what I would call disagreements. Most of these conversations are not actually about a disagreement (that does happen, but tends to be less emotional) but that one person has felt hurt by the (unknowing) actions or words of the other. And all that really needs to happen is to sort that out.
LikeLike
Children compose a good strain on marriage. Anyone who doesn’t think so is lying to themselves. Craig is spot on: children will tax a relationship. WK’s thinking about young marriage is a good one, I think but so also is Lindsay The Non-Arguer’s about fertility (of course, it’s female fertility, just so we’re clear :) which is why I suggested a golden mean.
As for arguments, it is a healthy thing to have them from time to time. Then again, there’s research that shows that on intractable subjects related to simple preference, best to simply stay away from them altogether and increase harmony.
Now to work on never arguing with my wife.
LikeLike
I kind of feel though that I would like to see how a person argues before I marry them. Because I think that arguments are inevitable at least sometimes, and then I want to argue with someone who is calm and reasonable. Not like that “I want to go the lake” woman, if you know the video I mean.
LikeLike
Hm.
On 2. “Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their opponents in court.” (Ps. 127:3-5)
Raising children is indeed a challenge to parents. Disagreements that lead to arguments WILL happen, despite our best efforts to head them off. That’s life. But notice I don’t say that children *themselves* are a strain on a marriage. That is unfair to children. Strain on marriage comes from the parents learning to overcome the difficulties, and that happens no matter how many years a couple has been married prior to having children.
True, having a few years behind you in marriage has its advantages. However, “not a lot of time together as a couple” is not an excuse for crap behavior from either spouse (or both) just because babies and children add stress to life. Know what? An ailing parent or in-law can do the same thing, but a couple’s moral obligations are no different. The bottom line: don’t blame the kids or anyone else for the failings of the parents.
As Providence would have it, my husband and I had a surprise pregnancy with our first child only six months after our wedding. Our second child was also a surprise, so see, we have not planned either of our children’s existences. One of my good friends has six children with one on the way, the last five ALL surprises. For both our families, it is stressful, it is chaotic with frequent bouts of unpleasantness. But it is not BAD. The Bible tells us specifically that life is an intrinsic *good* and that children are a blessing. The question then becomes “Do we *really* believe it?”
It turns out that now I have a health condition that would make another pregnancy inadvisable. It is strange as I reflect on 13+ years of marriage that in year 3 if you would have told me that I would not regret having a child early in marriage I would have doubted it. If you would have told me I would be thankful to have another at year 6, I would have been undecided. Now, having been told that I probably won’t have another even though I kind of want to, I look at my kids as the blessings they always were and repent of my former inability to appreciate that fully. You never know that the children that God gives you are exactly who you need to have in your life until you realize one day you might never have more.
Children can enter a marriage at any stage, and no stage is the wrong stage or a bad stage to have them. Maturity can sometimes take time, but often, maturity is called out of a couple when it’s time to ‘man up’ and ‘woman up’ to do right by the children they produce. The Word of God exalts parenthood as a blessing, and children are an intrinsic good, but even believers have bought into the societally-encouraged self-serving narcissism that marriage is to make oneself happy, and children are mere biological accessories. In philosophical terms, children aren’t just children; they are other minds.
This is no slam on Dr. Craig’s advice, who is a man God has blessed with a very specific plan for his life. There is wisdom and truth to what he says, particularly from his perspective. However, most of us live in under different circumstances than he, and his advice on delaying having children should not be taken generally. I go back to the bottom line question above. Children are a blessing and an intrinsic good. Do we believe it? Do we truly believe it?
LikeLike