John Piper on Wife Abuse: Did He Retract His “Smacked One Night” Advice? A firestorm broke out when John Piper's video mentioning a wife "being smacked one night" was released....
Christians and Divorce
John Piper’s This Momentary Marriage Review: When Staying Married Becomes the Goal
Photo note: These are the two photographs published together in John Piper’s own article, “For Noël on Our 39th Anniversary.” Piper introduces them with the words, “As you can...
Why Does My Husband Stay Married If He’s Always Criticizing Me?
Why Does My Husband Stay Married If He’s Always Criticizing Me? From time to time, confused wives say something like this to me: “He says I’m selfish, lazy, disrespectful,...
Gary Chapman Once Told a Better Version of His Marriage Story. Why Did He Stop? (Part 3)
Gary Chapman Once Told a Better Version of His Marriage Story. Why Did He Stop? For decades, Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Languages, has been treated as one of the...
3 Ways the Trad Wife Ideal Can Make Women Vulnerable to Abuse
3 Ways the Trad Wife Ideal Can Make Women Vulnerable to Abuse I understand why the “trad wife” ideal appeals to many Christians, because it appealed to me for most of my life. My...
I’m Having Second Thoughts About Filing for Divorce—Is That Normal?
I’m Having Second Thoughts About Filing for Divorce Yes. It is completely normal to have second thoughts while moving toward divorce—and to keep having doubts for months after...
The Day A Young Pastor Told Me I Haven’t Counted the Cost of Divorce
A young married pastor recently wrote to me as if I had not weighed the cost of divorce carefully enough. Here's my message to him: Young man, devout Christians in horrific...
The “Easy Divorce” Myth: For Many Christian Survivors, Divorce Took Years
Divorce Wasn’t “Easy.” For Many, It Took Years. When policymakers talk about making divorce harder, they often seem to imagine careless people casually walking away from decent...
His Needs, Her Needs Review: Helpful Advice, Dangerous Framework
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in His Needs, Her Needs Willard F. Harley Jr.’s His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage includes the typical good advice for...
7 Dangerous Teachings in Lies Women Believe That Can Harm Abused Wives
Seven of the Most Troubling Teachings in Lies Women Believe, by Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth The book Lies Women Believe is not dangerous because of one isolated sentence. It is...
7 Shocking Signs Your Pastor Is Helping Your Abuser
7 Shocking Signs Your Pastor Is Helping Your Abuser How to Know You’ve Got a Bad Pastor When You’re in an Abusive Marriage A good pastor does not need to be perfect. He does not...
If Divorce Ruins Children, How Did Jim Daly Become Focus on the Family’s President?
Jim Daly’s Life Exposes the Problem with Focus on the Family’s Divorce Narrative By Gretchen Baskerville Focus on the Family often warns that divorce devastates children for...
Hosea Is Not a Marriage Manual for Betrayed Spouses
Hosea Is Prophetic Symbolism, Not a Marriage Manual When I post about some divorces being biblical, I get comments such as this one: “Read the Book of Hosea,” as if Hosea’s...
Divorce Is Good Sometimes: Biblical Covenants, Bondage, and Deliverance
Divorce Is Good Sometimes Most of us wish divorce were never necessary. I certainly do. Marriage was meant to be loving, undefiled, protective, and lifelong. But sometimes a...
Open Letter to Russell Moore: Why Some Divorces Are Acts of Biblical Deliverance
Open Letter to Russell Moore: Divorce as God’s Protection of Abused and Betrayed Spouses This is an updated version of the email I sent to Russell Moore two weeks ago. Dear...
Do Children Resent the Parent Who Leaves a Destructive Marriage? Not Necessarily.
Do Children Resent the Parent Who Leaves a Destructive Marriage? What Two Community Polls Can—and Cannot—Tell Us We've always been told they do. But these two polls suggest the...
Judith Wallerstein, Wayne Grudem, and What the Divorce Study Really Said
What Wayne Grudem Overstates in Judith Wallerstein Thirty years ago, in 1996, Wayne Grudem did an analysis of Judith Wallerstein’s second book, Second Chances, one of three books...
Wayne Grudem Supports Divorce and Remarriage after Abuse, Adultery, Abandonment
Wayne Grudem Changed His Mind on Abuse, Divorce, and Remarriage Dr. Wayne Grudem’s acceptance of divorce and remarriage after abuse is revolutionary precisely because he is Wayne...
Romans 7 Does Not Teach “Marriage Ends Only at Death”
Romans 7 Does Not Teach “Marriage Ends Only at Death” One argument against divorce that I hear occasionally goes like this: Romans 7 says a wife is bound to her husband as long...
What Many Christians Were Never Told: The ACE Study, Abuse, and Divorce
What Many Christians Were Never Told About the Large 1998 ACE Study Many Christians have never even heard of the Adverse Childhood Experiences study published in 1998, much less...
The Marriage Looked Fine from the Outside—So Why Was It Killing Me?
When a Marriage Looks Fine but Is Quietly Destroying You Sometimes the marriage that looks “fine” from the outside is slowly crushing the person living inside it. Not because...