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Not Merely Academics (Endnotes)

1. For more on this, see The Creation/Evolution Controversy, a tape seminar available from Christian Educational Services. Close

2. Other major areas of disagreement are “who will do what” (roles in the marriage), in-laws and child rearing. The difference between the sexes and their sexual/emotional needs has been the subject of a number of books. The chapter titles in Willard Harley Jr.’s book, His Needs, Her Needs (Fleming H. Revel, Grand Rapids, MI, 1986) say a lot, and here are four: “The First Thing She Can’t Do Without—Affection,” “The First Thing He Can’t Do Without—Sexual Fulfillment,” “She Needs Him to Talk to Her—Conversation,” “He Needs Her to Be His Playmate—Recreational Companionship.” Close

3. The difference between fiction and reality is often downplayed in movies, something Christians should expect from the secular world, which has an “anti-God” bias. The are quite a few movies portraying kind and giving prostitutes who render selfless service in all kinds of situations. Police and social workers have a different picture. Prostitutes are generally hard and harsh, which is what happens when they are nothing more than the object of men’s selfish desires. Close

4. Some feminists are waking up to the fact that a sexually free society does not benefit women, but works instead to make men less loving, which then hurts women. The feminist Sally Cline, who refers to this sexually free period we live in as “the Genital Appropriation Era,” writes: “What the Genital Appropriation Era actually permitted was more access to women’s bodies by more men; what it actually achieved was not a great deal of liberation for women but a great deal of legitimacy for male promiscuity; what it actually passed on to women was the male fragmentation of emotion from body, and the easily internalized schism between genital sex and responsible loving.” Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty (The Free Press, New York, NY, 1999), p. 192. Close

5. As society becomes “sexually free,” the respect that men have for women decreases. In a recent survey of Rhode Island teenagers who were asked if a man “has the right to have sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent,” 80% said it was okay if the couple were married; 70% if they planned to marry; 65% if they had dated for six months, 61% if they had had intercourse before, and 25% if they had taken the girl out and spent money on her. Leviticus is correct, sexual freedom leads to wickedness (survey published in A Return to Modesty, p. 40). Close

6. Al Haffner, The High Cost of Free Love (Here’s Life Publishers, San Bernardino CA, 1989), pp. 35, 36. Close

7. It is common to hear that a man and woman become “one flesh” as they live together and become more and more unified in their lives. Although that may be a secondary point made by the phrase, the primary point is made clear by God: it is the act of sexual intercourse that makes the two one flesh. The phrase “one flesh” is used six times in the Bible. The first is in Genesis 2:24. The other five uses are all quotations of, or direct references to, that verse. The only place the phrase is elaborated on at all is in 1 Corinthians 6:16 (quoted in the text), and it says that a man and a prostitute become “one flesh.” There is no textual evidence that the phrase “one flesh” refers to the unity achieved by the couple in marriage. This is an inference not based on what Scripture actually says. Close