It’s one of the most exciting times of your life. It’s when you, as a young person seek a future spouse. Eventually you grow to love someone, and decide to be married. Someone that you think is terrific thinks you’re terrific. And that’s pretty terrific.
Choose Wisely and Treat Kindly
There are various things that attract you to him or her during the dating era. Looks play a part. Personality plays a part. Sense of humor (or lack thereof) plays a part. These are external things, and there are internal things that also play a part in choosing a spouse.
Here are some tips:
Guys. Does the car have an engine? Don’t marry a beautiful girl who is empty on the inside. It would be like buying a red corvette only to discover that the engine (heart) is missing. Look for inner beauty along with external attraction. Pick someone with a heart.
Don’t marry a social justice warrior.
Girls, don’t marry the guy who has slept with half of the cheerleader squad (or various other people). Why? Because he won’t know how to love you, he has lost the ability through repeated sexual failure. He can resolve it from his heart through Jesus Christ, if he chooses; most don’t. And you will be left in a lonely marriage with someone who can’t love you emotionally (until he or she biblically resolves it).
Guys, don’t marry the fast (immoral) girl. Why? Because the more sexual encounters she has, the more sex becomes meaninglessness to her. It becomes a tool to get attention (or ‘love’).
Marry someone who treats their opposite parent (or both) with respect. Why? Because that’s an indicator of how they will treat you eventually.
Marry someone whose heart is open to Christ. Why? Because it will be easier for them to open their heart to you. That makes for a fun relationship.
P.s. Don’t marry a social justice warrior.
Don’t marry someone who has been on anti-depressants for five years. Why? Because their depression will eventually become yours, and all the energy will drain out of your marriage.
Marry someone who can control (and resolve) their anger. Otherwise they will turn their anger on you.
Marry someone that you want to be like. Why? Because you will absorb some of their qualities, both good and bad.
Don’t marry a rebel. Why? Because if you are attracted to a rebel, that means you’re one too. You will have a lot of fun rebelling against authority together for 60-90 days. Then you will both turn your rebellion on each other. That leads to an evil for evil relationship. That doesn’t make for a fun marriage.
Marry someone who believes that the world was created in six literal days by God. That means they have convictions. And if they have convictions about our origins, they will likely have convictions about biblical morality.
And, don’t marry a social justice warrior.
A True Story
‘Jason’ went to college as a young believer, supported by his faithful Adventist family.
In college, he found his beliefs challenged in ways that distanced him from the faith that he had when he went to school. In his sophomore year, he met a fellow student named ‘Sarah’.
They became friends, eating together and occasionally hanging out. Although she had no Christian upbringing, Sarah showed a superficial interest in Jason’s religious background at first, going to church with him occasionally and spending Sabbath with his family. What Jason didn’t know was that Sarah had seeds of social justice planted in her by her mother.
These seeds sprouted into full blown social justice activism in college. Sarah became a warrior for political causes. Jason got pulled into it as well, and they eventually married. Church was soon dropped, their shared religion became wokeness and social justice. The foundation of their relationship was rebellion, temporal values, idolatry and bitterness. With no Christ in their relationship, their marriage failed, after 24-months. Where did they go wrong?
Don’t Marry a Social Justice Warrior
I have a goal to help you understand what is happening in the culture and in the church. We are at a critical juncture in history.
Social justice is not an idea, it is an agenda—a disruptive destructive agenda. Secular colleges are rampant with it because they teach it there. And it is being brought into the church under the guise of fairness, justice and doing good. So how does this come in to Christian circles?
It starts under the rubric of fighting oppression. Someone stands up and says “I want to fight oppression.” Well, the last thing a Christian is going to respond with is "No, we love oppression." So, it comes in under the shadow of fighting oppression.
If you do not have a firm commitment to the Word of God as the rule of faith in your life, then you are absolutely vulnerable to the deceptions of critical theory, because it sounds almost biblical with its emphasis on oppression, freedom, justice and repentance.
Social justice warriors will share stories of racism, (which we should all be able to say “We support you in anti-racism in this regard”). But people get sucked into a dangerous system through these innocent channels. Then they (SJW’s) go on to say that to truly be anti-racist or feminist or socially just, you have to get rid of capitalism. You have to see capitalism as an enemy. That is a political agenda, and antithetical to the Everlasting Gospel.
Many Adventist pastors and laymen have bought into critical theory/social justice as an effort to meet the needs that they perceive, and once they have bought into the theory, they begin to use secular materials to address it. There are woke Adventist pastors who are attempting to use the Bible to validate social justice, but ultimately they begin to use secular material and in time they will shift towards godless humanism.
The only way to find what you’re looking for—it’s not through critical theory or social justice. What you and your children are looking for is the Everlasting gospel. And the gospel does not start out with justice, it starts out with injustice--yours. And it offers a way for you to be justified through repentance in Jesus Christ. That is a crucial difference. That’s why you should not let your children marry social justice warriors.
Overreacting to The Religious Right
Social Justice is an overreaction to the moral majority fundamentalists, and the religious right of the 1980s and 90s. Some of those guys (Falwell et al) would stray from biblical wisdom at times, and were way too much into politics. It’s OK to care about the direction of politics as it impacts our lives, but it is too easy to make that into an idol. Like social justice does...
What happened in the aftermath of the moral majority, is some pastors and churches determined to just not talk about politics and cultural issues altogether. And so the children of these churches grew up and went to school and colleges where they were taught a Critical Theory narrative about injustice and then they graduated and came home. And their parents were like “Wait a minute, what happened? When you came home, all of a sudden you are supportive of Antifa and social justice and black lives matter? What happened?”
Well, what happened is that their Adventist parents didn’t teach them the biblical truth about those things. They just didn’t talk about it, leaving their children to be empty sponges in a leftist college soaking up worldly values.
Black lives matter, social justice and Antifa are very much in the forefront of modern education. And it is just now beginning to be dominant in our culture. But it first started in our schools, even some Adventist schools.
Politics Comes Into Church
During the last half century there were many black converts who began to join Christian churches (praise God). These were individuals who were predominantly politically liberal, and the white rural churches tended to be conservative. And we were all united by the Everlasting Gospel at first. But, because these cultural issues were never discussed, when the black lives matter movement occurred in our culture, it begin to polarize people in our colleges and urban churches. You had black people saying “You know I’ve been at this church for 20 years, and I loved my pastor and now I’m discovering that he might be a racist! Now I’m discovering that deep down he’s probably in favor of slavery.” No, you have bought into a false cultural narrative. Embracing worldly philosophies is not love, it is hatred (1 John 2:15-17). And that is hurting people’s souls.
These things became very divisive issues. And we had some white pastors—generally progressives—who began to come down on the side of social justice and black lives matter in order to demonstrate that they were not racist. A lot of pastors throughout the NAD began to conclude that the Everlasting Gospel by itself wasn’t enough for black members; they had to mingle it with social justice and/or critical race theory in order to reach people (Pioneer Memorial Church is an example of this).
Social Justice Warmongers
The woke social justice movement in its current incarnation is a religion. In other words it has an intrinsic zealousness about it, a certain zealousness because it brooks no dissent whatsoever. It seeks to forward an idea of ideological purity, it is convinced of its own unshakable worldview.
Why are young people so susceptible to this social justice narrative coming into the church? That’s easy, because they are wanting a new religion with a new Bible, the culture. Social justice and critical theory has become their new religion.
This new religion of anti-racialism also has their elect—people who have accepted and bought into social justice ideology are the elect of this new religion. That goes for both white and black people, although lately it’s been more white than black.
It seeks out heresy, and that’s why you have these cancel culture warriors trolling through everything you have ever said on social media in order to destroy your livelihood. And they do it in the name of compassion, legitimizing attacking and bullying people online. These superwoke people are religious priests and parishioners of a new religion. Do not marry one of them, and don’t let your children marry one.
Social Justice Damages Relationships
Social justice is destroying genuine relationships in the church. There are people who are, as we say “Brothers from another mother.” But if you say or believe the wrong thing, if you come down on the ‘wrong side’ of some of these issues, then you are anathema. That destroys the relationships that God has given each of us. Recently, I learned that a professed Christian (Adventist) from the west coast had sifted through the voting records of another person back east to see if they could find partisan evil against them. This is where politics is taking the church. It’s wrong, it’s sinful, and it brings grave dishonor to the Lord.
A relationship where you are not free to question or make observations in communication is not a genuine relationship. That is what social justice, cultural Marxism, and critical theory have taken us to. They hinder genuine relationships. They unite people by grievance instead of by hope, joy and faith. They destroy marriages and biblical faith and friendships.
The Bible Unites Us
Social justice warriors go from one outrage to another, they are constantly changing. But what a relief that we have Jesus Christ Who never changes, He is the same yesterday today and tomorrow.
There is only one right side of history and the truth is we are all on the wrong side by virtue of being sinners. God alone is on the right side, and He is willing to bring us to Himself through forgiveness, justification and restoration in Jesus.
The truth is if you want people to join your church, then just preach the Bible truth. It is God who saves people, not cultural ideas or our capitulation to it. And certainly not politics, in fact politics will cause millions to be eternally lost.
In the book of Ephesians we are told that it is the gospel that breaks down the middle wall of partition between us. It was the gospel that reconciled Jew and Gentile together in the body of Christ. In Romans 1, Paul says “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation for both Jew and Greek” (v. 16).
Because of the fall and sin on the earth we have a yearning for that which is broken to be repaired. But we cannot do that with human effort, it is the Second coming of Christ and it’s fullness that we are waiting on. He will make all things new and bring heaven’s justice to the world.
Conclusion
No single ethnicity has all the strength. Together as the human family we each have strengths and weaknesses that the Everlasting Gospel calls us to join together under Christ. The gospel also cleanses us of our sins and shortcomings, aligning us with the Bible, not a culture.
Dear misguided SJW, while your thirst for justice is commendable, the truth is, outside of Christ you are unjustified and just as bad as the people you condemn. Jesus told a very important story about a Pharisee and a tax collector to illustrate this truth. Go learn what that means, and never ever marry a social justice warrior.
Choose wisely and treat kindly, that makes for a fun life.
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