Spousal Support

Dear Fellow Seminary Students,

My wife just headed out the door for her daily bike ride. I wonder how many young seminary students help their wives (watching the children) to have time for regular exercise. I believe that would be a strong part of the import we get from Ephesians 5:25. I believe Mark Driscoll spoke at SEBTS this past spring semester in a chapel message about how Christian women "let their bodies go" and thus make it more difficult for their husbands to cleave to the straight and narrow and maintain a good relationship.

If women have a duty to keep their bodies clean and pure, like a temple, then we husbands have a duty to help make that possible, watching the children, while she goes out to exercise. I am doing that right this minute, as my one-year-old son peacefully sleeps across the hall. So, yes, it is easy now, while sometimes it is a bit more demanding. But that's OK. You deal with whatever comes up.

What Mark said kind of rubbed me the wrong way. And let me preface this expression of disagreement by saying that I agree fundamentally that he was right, that there is some effect that wives can perform in being "better sexual partners," more willing to "tame the inexorable male desire," with more regular, devoted care. However, I just believe that pointing it out is not necessarily the best way to inspire women to perfect their duties in this regard.

My father was true to my mother all of his life, and my mother was fat. Some people are just fat. That did not stop my father and me from urging her to get out and walk, do some daily exercise, try to trim that belly and boost her health and extend her life. Some people are just tubby, and are going to stay that way, it seems. I realize it is not ideal, but how much do you judge another, or shift blame to another?

So serious is marital infidelity, I can't help but believe that we need to be very careful when we propound any truth which may easily be distorted to lessen the possibility that each wayward wanderer, philanderer might quickly and clearly accept the full responsibility for his sin in infidelity.

A smoker once told me that there are umpteen reasons given by smokers who continue to smoke, for their continuance, while there is just one reason given by those who quit, as to why they quit: they just decided to give it up.

I took my daughter to a park today to read together. She wanted to do that yesterday, and attempted it on her own, only to fall and injure herself. I understood she was headed out the door with a friend. Today I went with her. We had a good time, and I got some good quality reading done on my course. Tomorrow if we go, we will need to bring our mosquito repellent, a spiral-shaped material which you burn here in South Korea to keep mosquitos away. It works pretty well.

Love, Nathaniel