Another Look: BEYOND Traditional
Here is another look at a proposed program for strengthening marriages that we suggested a few years ago. We don’t just promote traditional marriage, we recommend going BEYOND traditional marriage and taking up these tried and true practices that are fully Biblical™ and forever enshrined for us in the pages of Holy Scripture.
Here are some sample lessons. I’m sure you’ll see how practical and helpful they will be in advancing the cause of Biblical™ marriage that goes BEYOND merely traditional:
Lesson One: Garden delights (Genesis 2-3)
Let’s start where the Bible does: with husband and wife frolicking about naked in a garden. If you want your marriage to be Biblical, outdoors nudity is essential. This lesson will give practical suggestions for creating your own private, outdoor retreat where the neighbors can’t spy on you, where you can play au natural to your hearts’ delight. Nothing will free you to express love, devotion, and commitment like walking, talking, eating fruit and gardening with each other in the altogether. Don’t be ashamed. Forsake those fig leaves that have kept your marriage from being all that it can be, and go BEYOND!
Lesson Two: But what if I married a Nephilim? (Genesis 6)
No marriage is perfect, but sometimes you wake up and wonder if the person lying next to you is actually some fallen angel with demonic intentions. The Bible affirms that this is indeed possible. Perhaps you think you missed God’s will. You never found your “Noah” even though you dreamed of a righteous and blameless life partner with whom you could weather the storms of life. So you settled for someone who called himself “a son of God,” but now you realize he was really an alien giant with a heart as dark as the depths of the sea. This lesson explores how you can manage those pesky human/alien incompatibility issues. It will also reveal how God wants to flood your life with blessings BEYOND what you think you can hope for, in spite of the bad match you made.
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Lesson Three: Creative ways to pass on your heritage (Genesis, Ruth)
God designed marriage to be his chosen method of producing a godly line of descendants. This can challenge a marriage, and sometimes, we have to work extra hard to make that happen. We want to encourage you to get creative, and go BEYOND!
We’ll study Lot, for example, and discuss the daughter-father connection. And then we will look at Tamar, who illustrates the more complex but explicitly commended Biblical principle of “my husband’s dead and my brother-in-law won’t sleep with me and I don’t have kids so I guess I’ll become a prostitute and seduce my father-in-law so I can become a mother.”
As a bonus, we’ll discover how we as parents can be like Naomi, and encourage our daughters to go lay naked at the feet of drunk wealthy landowners until they wake up, fear the worst, and agree to marry them. The possibilities are endless!
Lesson Four: Developing a way with words (Song of Solomon)
Ladies, ever wish your husband would speak more lovingly to you? That, for example, he would tell you your hair is like a flock of goats, your breasts like towers, your belly like a heap of wheat? Or at least that your feet look great in sandals? And men, wouldn’t you love to hear your wife compliment you for those ivory abs, those alabaster pillar legs you have? Wouldn’t you just love her to praise you as a gay gazelle, leaping over the mountains? Then you won’t want to miss this lesson. We’ll divide up into couples and challenge you to find creative ways of describing your partner’s body parts. Then we’ll come back together and share what we’ve come up with! It’s loads of fun and not embarrassing in the least. Then we’ll send you home so that you can practice naked in your garden.
Lesson Five: Marriage as Evangelism (Hosea, Esther)
God may sometimes call you to marry someone you would never naturally consider, just so that you can win them to the Lord and be an example to others. This was Hosea’s calling, and in this lesson we’ll help you men learn how to identify which broken, fallen women are just right for you. We’ll discuss strategies for the ladies too, taking our cues from Queen Esther. You’ll learn how to work up the perfect erotic dance moves so that you can capture the heart of the evil monster you’re eager to reach. Who knows whether some of us will be called to this kind of marriage in “such a time as this”? This is the time to go BEYOND!
• • •
Our crack staff will be hard at work developing other Biblical lessons too. We’ll suggest survival tips for concubines and demonstrate the best use of mandrakes to foil your sister-wife from sleeping with your husband tonight. We’ll show you how to keep a Levitical calendar and checklist to make sure your sex life doesn’t break God’s rules. For those of you forced to live with contentious spouses, we’ll show you how to make a corner of your attic into a proper place where you can hide, as Proverbs instructs. We’ll also study the prophets to see when it is appropriate to talk dirty and examine why Paul would rather stay single than go through all this hassle.
In every way possible, we want to encourage you to go BEYOND in your marriage! So watch for more lessons in this ground-breaking marriage program in days to come!
Take a stand for marriages that are BEYOND traditional — Be thoroughly BIBLICAL™!
The Internet Monk Archives 
She is sadly missed.
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🙂 🙂
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Yep. Matthew 23.
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It is a pot-shot at a certain way of reading Scripture. That you make this mistake is an indication you hold to this mock-worthy hermeneutic.
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Martha of Ireland once speculated about doing a comedy where some Christian girl takes Song of Solomon WAY too literally and tries everything described in the book to attract a future husband. Including finding out the hard way that she couldn’t grip a doorknob after Biblically oiling her hands.
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I remember one reaction to that verse was “Get Some While You Can, Because You Won’t Be Able To Afterwards!” Sort of a weird-ass Christianese version of “I Don’t Wanna Die A Virgin!”
Can’t remember the blog (it was so many years ago) but the blogger related that during the 88 Reasons Rapture Scare, a lot of the local Bible College’s student body got married en masse to beat the date. Same reason.
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I especially like the RHE pic with her standing by her hometown’s city limit sign in a Biblical headscarf waving a “DAN IS AWESOME!” sign.
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In the early years of the Web, my writing partner came across a website that not only BE-LEEEEEVED in Nephilim, but called for armed resistance against them. (What’s now called “Second Amendment Solution”.) Including how to ID someone as Nephilim. (I think Nephilim had two rows of teeth and were all Homosexual.)
My writing partner left a comment where he told them in no uncertain terms that someone could wind up on murder charges if they followed the calls on that site. (Which probably meant to them that he was a Nephilim.) And warned everyone he could (and he was mod of a couple Yahoogroups at the time) about that site. He said it was actually dangerous.
Again, Bad Craziness.
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I get my Weirdness fix from a couple YouTube fringe channels these days, and Nephilim seem to be on an upswing there. Especially as a connection to Cryptids. Not sure how the two fit together, but somebody’s trying to make them fit.
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Thank you for doing all that ‘cuz you have a real life too and I know this blog takes a lot of time.
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The Gospel According to Hal Lindsay, back when the Bible only had 3 1/2 books (Daniel, Revelation, the “Nuclear War Chapter” of Ezekiel, and (superseding the others) Late Great Planet Earth).
According to “The Plain Meaning of SCRIPTURE(TM)”, the Demon Locust plague in Rev 9 was Plainly helicopter gunships armed with chemical weapon “stingers” and piloted by long-haired bearded Hippies.
Bad Craziness, taken as Inerrant and Inspired.
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I pick Ed O’Neill and Katey Sagal…
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I’m glad to see someone put the Nephilim to good purpose.
Decades ago, there was a Pentecostal sect (“The Walk”) that took the idea of marrying a Nephilim quite seriously. As I recall, if you were married to someone in the group and not a member, or, were married to someone in the group and questioned the group’s teachings, you were a Nephilim.
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Thanks for the Chrysostom quote. Nice.
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If Jesus is, as He claimed, an exact representation of God, then His diatribe against people who added human convolutions to the Law and laid heavy burdens on others proves that they do NOT get God’s approval.
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Hippie-flown Helicopters in the Bible??? Explain.
Mike’s scenario might be something like Rachel Held Evans’ book A Year of Biblical Womanhood.
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Of course, you’re right Mule, but today is simply a day for grace to work in us so that we might laugh at our moralistic ways a bit.
Church Lady, anyone?
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Freeing posts from the filter is usually my job, and the length of time it takes depends completely upon how often I am able to check the site. I’m sorry that it takes awhile at times.
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“Oh, dear” and “LOL.”
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+1. (And Daniel Jepsen, too!)
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–> “Is this a pot-shot at Scripture?”
I see it more as a pot-shot at people who will feel persecuted because they’ll take it as a pot-shot at them.
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(meant as a joke, sorry to make light of something that must’ve been awful)
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The question is, would you recommend it?
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Chaplain Mike, if Internetmonk ever goes under, you have a definite future at The Babylon Bee.
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–> “Bill Gothard actually taught this. I can’t remember exactly which of his publications/curricula it was in, but he definitely had a whole system worked out for Christians to keep the Levitical laws relating to marital relations & childbirth.
Oy vey.
So the real question then becomes, is God up there applauding this type of portrayal of Him and His Law, or face-palming?
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If mine have any HTML code, they take an hour or an hour and a half. If I have a link, fuggedaboudit
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I get posts caught in limbo too. They usually end up appearing sooner rather than later.
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I continually get moderated.
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Ok, I got the joke. God didn’t have Donna Reed and Carl Betz in mind when he wrote the Scriptures, and anyone who holds up ol’ Donna ‘n’ Alex (or Hugh Beaumont and Barbara Billinglsey Or Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. Or, well, take your pick) as the ne plus ultra of Biblical marriage is being a Bad Republican and needs to go sit over there until he recovers from his fit and can rejoin the good children.
Honestly, there is an enormous amount of work to be done in this arena, and it looks as though it is going to fall to the generation of Christians least equipped to do it.
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“We’ll show you how to keep a Levitical calendar and checklist to make sure your sex life doesn’t break God’s rules.”
Bill Gothard actually taught this. I can’t remember exactly which of his publications/curricula it was in, but he definitely had a whole system worked out for Christians to keep the Levitical laws relating to marital relations & childbirth.
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AKA “The Plain Reading of SCRIPTURE(TM)”.
“YOU DOUBT THE WORD OF GAWD?????”
(And I thought the Hippie-flown Helicopter Gunship Plague of Rev 9:7-10 was stretching it…)
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“Does God have a sense of humor? I think so, just look at a platypus!” – Gallagher
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Definitely not a pot-shot. This is scriptural textualism. The text itself is used to determine the meaning. Another way of interpreting a passage is originalism. Or research what the Church has taught about these passages.
But it might also be called “having fun.” In case you’ve forgotten fun is defined as follows by The Oxford English Dictionary:
“Light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment”…
This is the obvious intention of these texts. When the text was being inspired word for word by God, He had a lighthearted moment and was tired of talking about “justification by faith” and so we have some merrymaking. Or the prophet or apostle who was taking notes as God spoke grew weary, fell sleepy, and made some unintentional errors. Or decided to have a little fun at the expense of future biblical literalists.
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But really, barefoot down on the farm is a bad idea.
At least get your tetanus booster first.
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It is a recognition that most of the characters in Scripture would fit right in among the Kardashians.
No, I take that back, the Kardashians are more ethical than many of the characters in Scripture; AFAIK they haven’t raped or murdered anyone, or arraigned for either to happen to someone. Kim, I apologize for implication, my bad.
The ‘straight’ reading of Scripture is seriously twisted.
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I married a Nephilim once upon a time, I volunteer to write that section.
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+1
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It’s a potshot at people who blithely assume that it is easy to pull a “Biblical Teaching on (insert topic here)” out of Scripture. In this case, (insert topic here) is “Traditional Marriage”.
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INITIALLY, I read a couple of paragraphs then went back to the beginning to see if C.M. wrote it. It didn’t quite seem Chaplainesq but apparently it is.
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Is this a pot-shot at Scripture?
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Interview starts at 14:05
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Some great ideas!
Interesting podcast on the subject;
https://www.nomadpodcast.co.uk/vicky-walker-sex-relationships-and-religion-n208/
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I’ll see you and raise… 😉
Lesson Six: Marriage as Historical Baggage (Gospels/Paul)
“For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven.” (Matt 22:30) “I wish that all of you were (unmarried) as I am.’ (I Cor 7:7)
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I admit to starting to read it straight until I got to the ‘what the ……’ stage and then I started laughing. Oh goodness, this post will certainly wake you up better than strong coffee!
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I’m wishing I wasn’t 81 anymore, and just 24 — or with all this instruction, I might marry at 18. We had some cornfields to cavort in, and the woods — after hunting season is over.
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I’m just waiting for someone to take this dead serious and try it all for real.
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Wow! This should really be developed as a series of instructional videos.
I want to see what the art department comes up with for the DVD pamplet and cover art.
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