I’m no Dear Abby, but I’m playing one on the blog today. A reader recently sent me an email saying: “I quit going to the church that my husband feels called to go to. It’s a VERY small church & I’ve felt judged by several people there because of struggles I’ve been having in my spiritual life. The sermons also often make me angry…perhaps because they touch on things about God & Christianity that frustrate me. Anyway, me staying home has made our home WAY more peaceful on Sunday afternoons. My husband thinks I should submit to his authority (like a good Christian wife) & go to church anyway. What do you think?”

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Dear Reader,

Your question reminds me of that old entrapment trick question “Have you quite beating your wife yet?” Either answer indicts you, and so I suspect that any answer I give to your question could subject me to similar danger. So, here goes…..

You reference a struggle in your marriage and frustration with God and Christianity. Don’t feel special. We all have marital issues, and either things about God and faith matters that confuse or frustrate us. The first thing to realize is that you aren’t by yourself. You should also know that all around you are dozens of like minded people of faith who are stumbling in a similar manner. The sooner we are all honest about that and live out our faith in honest community with one another, the better marriages and more grounded spiritual lives we’ll have.

Here are some thoughts about your specific query.

First: I suspect that this really isn’t about going to church. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing there is something else going on within your marriage relationship that is just erupting at this particular point. Infection is like that. It’s contained within your body, it finds a stronghold somewhere, and then the infection grows until a boil erupts through your skin. So I’d be asking myself some honest and heartfelt questions about the state of my marriage first.

Second: You speak of struggles in your spiritual life. There’s nothing shocking or shameful about that. Let me ask: If you were having a struggle with your vision what would you do? If you were having a struggle with your plumbing at home, what would you do? In both cases you’d seek help. So have you sought help from a skilled and wise practitioner regarding the spiritual things that nag you?

I’ve learned—mostly since my own crisis going on two decades ago—that our spiritual strengths, weaknesses, and problems have much to do with our nutrition, digestion, and exercise. Are you ingesting the right things? Are you practicing the disciplines of sound-minded “Right Thinking” that produce a harvest of right behaviors, right attitudes, and right actions in your life? And finally, what are you doing to become stronger spiritually?

The first thing I recommend you do is give up! You and I both come from a religious tradition that emphasizes that salvation is Christ’s work alone, but our church tradition is full of good-sounding but guilt-inducing mechanisms which lull us onto a treadmill of praying more, reading our Bible more, volunteering more. It’s “works-based salvation” by a different name. Give it up!

I read my Bible a lot, virtually every day. I pray throughout many of my days. But I’m not reading and praying and doing because I “ought” to. Instead its like eating and exercising to me. If I don’t do it, I’ll grow weaker, less flexible, and unable to function as I was intended. If I do, do it. I grow stronger and my life works better. I engage in spiritual disciples because I need them and they work, not because I ought to.

Thirdly: People’s judgements don’t matter, unless you empower them. As you know, I’ve experienced my share of judgement. It always mattered to me A LOT because I craved approval. But when you figure out that your value was totally and solely determined by what Jesus did for you on the cross (stop and read that statement again), then what other people think about you really doesn’t matter. In fact, the older and wiser I grow the less I feel the need to judge others. I recognize their shortcomings as the product of their nature, environment, decisions, and information. So if I judge them its on whether they are seeking to learn more (starting with God), think better thoughts which produce better decisions, and submit themselves to people and an environment where they can grow. To hell with what people think about you!

Fourthly: By all means you should submit to your husband…and…he should submit to you. Husbands who employ caveman tactics of clubbing their wives over the head, and wives who kick like jackasses at their husbands merely prove they don’t get it. It’s about mutual submission. My wife will submit to me, but I won’t ask her to submit to anything that she stridently disagrees with. Similarly, if she was reluctant to do what I asked, she’d still make every effort to cooperate with me because its me and she loves me. We move toward each other. And we find happiness in the middle.

Incidentally, this moving toward each other starts in the bedroom, but that’s fodder for another day. I’ll just say this: throw yourself more enthusiastically into sex, and you’ll be surprised how he’ll come around to your way of thinking. And guys should know if they’ll spiffy up and demonstrate more gracious thoughtfulness—and listen, wow, they like to talk. You gotta listen—-she’ll be more interested in the bedroom. It’s about each giving what the other wants, instead of withholding it selfishly.

Fifthly: I think this struggle is evidence of Satan’s work to destroy you, and neutralize the positive impact of your marriage. When I mention something like this, many people bristle or wave me off as old-fashioned—like I believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. But the simple truth is evil exists. It is rooted in the person of Lucifer. You and I came of age in a time when “God is Dead” was popular. In our church tradition we never bought into the myth that God was dead, but we more or less allowed the notion of Satan to expire. As a result we weren’t taught much about how to deal with spiritual oppression despite the fact that Jesus repeatedly taught that our enemies were spiritual forces working through humans, and the Bible is full of teaching on spiritual warfare. Why would that teaching be necessary if there weren’t indeed a battle going on for the lives of men and women, boys and girls, and marriages? When my wife and I are engaged in marital warfare, I eventually always get my wits about me and realize that it’s not her, its satanic or demonic interference to destroy the fabulous thing we have.

I don’t see a boogey-man behind every bush, but as long as you and I deny, ignore, or remain oblivious to the work of the Devil, he’ll continue to successfully impede our experience of the abundant life that Jesus promised in John 10:10. Remember, Jesus himself said “The Devil seeks to kill and destroy.”

Recognizing who and what your enemy is—thinking rightly—is one of your first steps to finding healing.

Finally: You need the church. You may not need what is offered at the gathering your husband wants to participate in on Sunday that refers to itself as “church.” But you need the companionship, encouragement & accountability of the people who know Jesus’ power to change lives and who are living in pursuit of Him. Whether you get that down at First Assembly of Whatever, or in a small group that meets regularly to focus on spiritual growth, you need to be with people and share Jesus-centered community. It’s in those groups that four things happen: #1. You can know, and be known. #2. You can love, and be loved. #3. You can serve, and be served. #4. You can celebrate, and be celebrated. Worship and teaching in an environment organized around those four things creates an atmosphere where you, your mate, and your family can work out the issues of abundant daily living empowered by Jesus in you.

Every man should be so lucky as to have a wife like mine. I’d rather hang out with her than anybody in the world. Often I’ll ask her to go do something with me when I have no need for her assistance, but great want for her companionship. I love her so much!

It’s 7:00 a.m. I’ve been awake for an hour, blissfully happy after seven straight hours of good sleep—unusual for a male on the backside of 40. And I’ve been lying there in my warm bed beside Kelly, just pondering as I drift in and out of sleep.

I am so happy. I am so blessed. I am so grateful. I have such a wonderful life and a big part of that is a wonderful wife. As I lay here my mind drifted back to a conversation we had yesterday out at the barn where we’d gone to get the heating pad so we could plug it in on the porch so the cat could stay warm—a story digression just to demonstrate what an exciting and exotic life we live!—a conversation which she started by saying “You’re a very lucky man. The girls have practice for two hours tomorrow and I thought…….” (I’ll let you fill in the blanks while I pray that her creativity is as powerful as your imagination.)

My wife is a wonderful help to me in so many ways. She listens (though she’s kind of a busy, flitty, type so I have to catch her sometimes). She gives me good counsel. She works really hard just keeping our home up. She mows, farms, plants flowers, does laundry, keeps the books (at the office), runs the taxi for the girls, and……she’s enthusiastic in the bedroom. And I’m truly grateful, for ALL of that and more. She’s an incredible woman and I stopped her yesterday, gazed deeply into her eyes, and told her how much I appreciated her; both the bedroom her, and the everywhere else her.

I’m convinced there are many marriages that have dutiful spouses filling roles, but based on experience as a pastoral counselor and conversational observations through life, my guess is that alot of couples miss out on the bedroom bliss. A gynecologist friend discussing marriage confirmed that anecdotally when he commented recently (anonymously, of course) on an exam he’d performed on a married woman. He said “I could tell that nobody had been there since her exam last year.”

That’s such a shame! It’s more than a shame, its a travesty. In some cases its a sin. It seems like such an easy thing to fix, and yet people struggle so much. Why?

Intimacy. Oneness. Knowing and being known. It scares people. There is something in the human psyche, placed there by Satan when Adam allowed him to corrupt that prototype human hard drive, that alienates us. It causes us to fear one another, to fear discovery, to fear judgment, and we miss out on something that my physician described as “heaven—as close as we’ll get until we get there.” Indeed, the notion of oneness, acceptance, fully knowing and fully being known is part of the steamy imagery of the Bible. What we can have with our mate in marriage is SUPPOSED to portend what we can also have in our relationship with God. Marriage can be a taste of Heaven, in advance.

I think people miss out on this aspect of their relationship because their “intimacy program” is corrupted. But Kelly has a different view. She says there is no exuberance in the bedroom because there’s no kindness in the kitchen.

Hmmm.

I get her point, and I can agree with it (isn’t that smart of me—wink, wink—did I mention how brilliant my wife is).

In reality, I think it’s all the above and much more. Men and women do crave intimacy, but don’t understand it and struggle profoundly to find it—and it really isn’t about being naked between the sheets. And, there is a lack of kind sensitivity in how we treat our spouses that bleeds over into the bedroom. Boorish behavior, gentlemen, doesn’t make her want you.

Unfortunately, this is an area of life we don’t discuss much in polite company. It’s everywhere on TV, and in locker rooms. But the things we hear and learn there have little bearing in reality. Rarely do we get the chance to talk with real couples about real things…..”Do you……..?”……….and so our education and information about how to relate in this vital area comes from the Stepford Wives or the latest edition of Cosmopolitan magazine: hardly reliable sources.

It’s been our good fortune to talk with a few couples about this sensitive area, and reports that came back were that those conversations had helped improve the quality of their lives. Awesome! So, until we might someday have a chance to talk, I’ll leave you with a few things I’ve learned that might be helpful:

• Ladies, he really does need you sexually, often. Not just “available” as a tool, but engaged enthusiastically. Take the initiative in this area and you can lead him around by the……………nose. Nose. What were you thinking? You can lead him by the NOSE.
• Guys, take a bath and shave.
• Girls, he is visually stimulated. God made him that way. Take advantage of that, and feed it.
• Guys, She’s not visually stimulated. She’s emotionally stimulated. That happens through talking. She needs to talk. Listen.
• Guys, did I mention she needs to talk?
• Guys, take out the trash. Speak with kindness. She needs to feel loved and valued as a person and a partner, not just as a sex object. I know. It’s hard. She’s got breasts. But really, if you can learn to engage and communicate your appreciation of the total package, you’ll get more access to the parts you so physically enjoy.
• In the bedroom, judgment is suspended. Just have fun, go all in, and be as silly as you wanna be. (And keep the lights on for goodness sakes.)
• Turn off the damnable TV and talk to one another.
• Make sexual jokes with each other and cultivate innuendo. It creates a tension that makes life interesting and keeps you engaged with each other. I make the stupidest jokes with Kelly, and she laughs every time. I don’t even think the jokes are funny. They are so predictable. But that’s kind what makes them work. She knows I’m gonna go there, and she laughs when I do, and I laugh at the fact that she laughs. And that’s what makes us work.
• Seek to serve and help each other in every room of the house. It really is all about the other person.

There’s a lot more I’d love to share and frankly, I could write this better if I had time to go back, edit, and reorganized my thoughts. But, I’ve got a big day ahead of me. I’d better get going. I’ve got to take out the trash, shower, shave………..

If you are looking for strippers, sex and drunkenness you’re in the wrong place. Move on. (Well, actually, there are strippers and sex….you’ll have to read on to get the rest of the story.)

Your heart may be in the right place, but you can still fail if you don’t have the right tools. In order to illustrate that principle I need to tell you about my bachelor party.

Twenty-four years ago I got married. On the night before the wedding, my best man and I had a party. It was a wild one; out of this world you might say. After the rehersal we went back to my little one-bedroom apartment number “A” at 401 N. Ann Street in Columbia, Missouri and had a prayer meeting. Oh, we talked some, and I’m sure we drank some lemonade or ice tea (not the kind that comes from Long Island, either) but mostly we prayed about my upcoming marriage. Same goes for the wedding night. I knelt beside that bridal bed and asked God to bless our union.

Fast forward nine years and you’d have found me in the abyss of the greatest and only significant failure in my life as I signed the papers allowing a judge to dissove that marriage. I still reflect on that today—15 years later. Most recently it occurred to me that you can have the best, most honorable, and most noble intentions (and I promise you I did) and still fail if you don’t also have the right tools (and obviously I didn’t).

Today, my life and work is really about helping people find the right tools to succeed, in business and in life. In the process we buy, rehab and sell hundreds of properties, while also designing financial plans, loaning money, making an occasional speech, leading a couple of small groups, and a variety of other things. But the focused intention of that effort is giving people the right tools for success.

I got to this little parable by thinking about a friend of mine. His marriage is on the rocks. A quarter of a century ago his bachelor party included strippers and all that comes with that. Hmmm. Mine started nobly, his in sin. But the result was the same. Neither of us had the tools.

I know that you largely have good intentions. But do you have the tools to deliver on that intention? If you don’t, what are you doing to get those tools? Somebody said “You are who you are because of the books you read and the people you hang around with.” What are you reading? Who are you hanging with?

The road to Hell is paved with good intention. You’ve got to proactively reach out and grab the tools for success.

One of the wonderful things Kel does for me just occured to me as I took a nap this afternoon.

You know that wonderful feeling of sliding into a set of crisp, clean, fresh sheets? Awesome! Well, everytime I travel out of town she makes sure that when I come home she’s changed the bed and it has crisp, fresh, linens. She’s done that for years.

It’s a simple thing. I wouldn’t die without it. But it is wonderfully refreshing and welcoming to me. Travel is hard even when its easy, and I so appreciate this little thing she does to welcome me home.

Just another reason my wife is wonderful!