Continued from Part One…

I Pet 3:7  – Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

Eph 5:26 – That he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word,

Does a man need to have self-control? Yup. Do either of these verses mention this? Nope. More interestingly, notice Mr. Gothard’s approach to having self-control – don’t have sex for 14 days out of each month. In other words, according to Mr. Gothard, regular and lengthy periods of abstinence help to promote self-control (he hasn’t explained this yet but will later).

In contrast to Mr. Gothard’s suggestions, notice what Paul has to say about self-control with regards to sex:
a. to avoid problems with self-control, HAVE sex (I Cor 7:2)
b. to avoid Satan’s temptation, HAVE sex – not having sex can makes you open to temptation (I Cor 7:5)
c. don’t have self-control? Then abstinence is NOT the answer (I Cor 7:9)

What about the woman’s need for protection? I am guessing he pulls the protection part from I Pet 3:7. Most likely he is taking the phrase “weaker vessel” and assuming (because the passage doesn’t say it) that this means the woman needs protection since she is the weaker vessel. The passage doesn’t say anything of protection but speaks instead of consideration and respect to the wife. I suppose one could reason that consideration and respect includes protecting, but the concept of protection doesn’t seem to be what the passage is referring to. If it were, then the meaning would be “Husbands protect your wives so your prayers aren’t hindered.” While not blatant twisting, its certainly a large stretch of the meaning of the passage.

And what of the wife’s need for cleansing with the word? This he pulls from Eph 5:26. After his previously only stretching the meaning of a passage, now he is back to his blatant misuse and twisting. Look at the passage…oh wait, Eph 5:26 is the second half of a sentence, so lets give the whole context:

Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, (26) so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, (27) that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.

If we look at vs. 26 it’s talking about “her” and if we look at vs 25 we see there is mention of the wife, so naturally “her” in vs 26 must be the wife, right? In Mr Gothard’s world, maybe. Look at the whole verse as one stream of thought though. In context, it becomes apparent that the “her” in vs 26 (and vs 27) is in reference to the church and not the wife. It is Christ who washes the church with the word, not the husband who washes the wife with the word.

Mr. Gothard would have us read it like this:
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. The husband should give himself up for the wife to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

So, if we extend Mr. Gothard’s rendering of the verse, not only is the wife to be cleansed by the word, she is also to be a radiant church to the husband without any blemish or wrinkle….oh wait, I guess it doesn’t make much sense to say the wife is who is being referred to in vs. 26 unless you RIP it out of context. Again, another example of abusing Scripture to support a claim and hoping people don’t notice.

James 1:3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience

Well…in a sense he is right. We shouldn’t resent hardships in life but grow from them. Not sure how the menstrual cycle automatically qualifies as a “testing of your faith.” But like any physical hardship, I suppose it could be. So, I guess here we have a possible stretch rather than outright twisting. Gothard must be okay after all…

The key to his principle here is this: If were were required (by implication, required against our will/desire) to do something every day, then yes, its almost certainly going to become a labor after a period of time. So yeah, if someone was requiring that you had sex every day, then most anyone is going to lose their enjoyment of sex after a period time. Seems to be a reasonable conclusion.

But then, who is requiring the couple to have sex every day? This is a nice rhetorical trick he is pulling here:
1. give an extreme example which obviously leads to the desired conclusion
2. then sneakily apply the same conclusion to all related cases even though they aren’t as extreme as the original example.
So, demonstrate that sex which is required every day is not going to be joyful, and then use this conclusion to argue that, therefore, couples should have an extended period of abstinence…ignoring the fact that the couple was only having sex WHENEVER THEY WANTED TO in the first place. Consider this logic when applied to some other activity:

Bob: I really love to play tennis so I just bought a lifetime membership to the gym.
Gothard: If you were required to go to the gym every day wouldn’t you lose your joy in playing tennis?
Bob: After a couple months, yeah, I guess I would.
Gothard: Then I think to keep your love of tennis, you should commit to refrain from going to the gym for two weeks out of every month.
Bob: But I only go when I want to go and I don’t when I don’t want to go.
Gothard: You should still not go for two weeks out of every month. It will help you to enjoy tennis more.
Bob: <mystified> But I only play when I want to play and don’t play when I don’t want to…
Gothard: You are just bitter and have given ground to Satan. I have a diagram you should see….

Nice little bait and switch there Mr. Gothard. The sensible answer to his logic is, “So stop forcing yourself to have sex every day, and just have sex when you want to.”

Another tool in the Gothard rhetoric bag is to turn a verse’s meaning on its head. Here Mr. Gothard takes a passage which is about the importance of not abstaining and turns it into a passage about the importance of abstaining. Here is how the trick is pulled:
1. first make the claim that abstaining is the key to maintaining enjoyment of sex
2. then find a verse which talks about abstaining
3. then….whooops this passage is actually about not abstaining (except with consent for the specific purpose of praying and fasting)…okay, well let’s just quote the single verse without the rest of the context and overextend its application.

Voila! Now we have a verse which is actually talking about abstaining for 2 weeks each month…hope no one looks closely at it.

He gets by with it because few people do look at it closely. They glance and see that, oh yeah, this verse has to do with abstaining, must be a good support, moving on…

Also, the verse has nothing to do with abstaining being for the purpose of the spiritual, mental and physical health of the couple. NOT EVEN THE OT LAW PERTAINING TO ABSTINENCE MAKES SUCH A CLAIM. Notice he doesn’t ever bother to give a verse to support this claim.

(Continued here in Part 3)