Please, please, please don't do this

It appears that a growing number of marriage therapists are bent on introducing one of Deming's seven deadly diseases of management--number three to be specific--to the marriage relationship.  Yes, they are really advocating that couples have an annual performance review.

One would think that they were paid off by divorce lawyers to recommend this, as in work life, the performance review is at best a nonissue--the manager has communicated his views and feedback to the employee already, so it introduces no new information besides the size of the raise, if that.

At worst, the manager does introduce new information to the employee, and since the manager has waited an average of nine months to give this feedback, it is outdated and invariably negative.  Who waits to give positive feedback, after all?  Attaboys and Attagirls do not cause confrontations.  And in many cases, since the manager has waited a long time to give feedback, the information is false--there have been a couple of cases where I felt downright slanderous.

It also strikes me that, while I do hold to the Biblical doctrine of headship, even the most submissive wives are going to get a touch grouchy (to put it mildly) at being treated as an employee. 

So if you want to have a better marriage, don't do this, but rather simply make a practice of routine self-evaluation and asking your spouse how things are going.  Waiting months to give negative feedback is simply a great way of getting divorce papers served.

But on the bright side, the psychologists are choosing only one deadly disease, which is better than the city of New York can say.  They're encouraging promiscuous Gothamites to get IUDs, which of course exposes them to far more than seven deadly diseases.  #50 Shades of Stupid.

How to prevent drunkenness and alcoholism

According to a recent study, kids from intact families (raised by married biological mother and father) who learn to drink at home have the lowest rates of alcohol-related problems versus those who are not allowed to drink at home at all, and versus those who are allowed to drink at home, but are not from intact families (single parents or parent married to stepparent). 

It is as if parents don't have any wish to see their kids passed out on the couch (or vice versa), and as if kids won't be so enamored of Falstaff and Boone's Farm after they've had something drinkable. I know that Bugweiser had no appeal for me when I returned from Germany, for obvious reasons.

Maybe instead of fighting to keep the drinking age at 21, end the drinking age altogether and stop government policies that effectively promote single parenting and divorce.  Might do us some good.

Blessed simplicity, blessed introspection

I just wanted to highlight a couple of posts which display on many levels a blessed simplicity and introspection--one that I'd suggest all brothers and sisters in Christ ought to share.

First, one from Douglas Wilson regarding why immersists don't understand (from a paedobaptist view) the covenant theology of covenant; well, all too many pastors of his perspective don't exactly understand it, either.  Now Wilson is arguing for something with which I profoundly disagree--infant sprinkling instead of believer's immersion--but he gets a hearty AMEN out of me in noting that those who ought to understand these things, and be able to expound them, cannot and do not.  We have Presbyterian and Baptist pastors watching people flit from church to church in the same town, and they're wondering why a Baptist/Presbyterian could so quickly become a Presbyterian/Baptist.  Now apart from the efforts of those like John Piper who de-emphasize the differences on mode of immersion, there is a reality that all too often, the issue is simply that the leadership does not know how to clarify the issues, either.  Hence, it doesn't matter to those in the pews.

Second, Terri from Breathing Grace tells us "I Think I've Run Out Of Things to Say."  Specifically, she notes that a great portion of marriage is really pretty simple--not easy, but simple--and rightly wonders what else really should, or ought, to be said, as all too often, giving one's own example is interpreted as setting one's own example as THE Biblical example.  Or, worse yet, it becomes the de facto Biblical example without anyone ever stopping to question whether it ought to be normative.

That said, the "Wifey Wednesday" series is one that I think does encourage the fairer sex, but if indeed the man is responsible for leadership, maybe there needs to be a masculine counterpart.  How does "Husbandey Hump-Day" sound?  Like many men, it's clumsy with a hint of a double entendre,  so it just might work.

And of course we would try to drag in as much good theology as possible without getting all Chauceresque.