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Season: 6 Episode: 080
Summary:
Should husbands and wives keep secrets from each other? What does the Bible say about secret-keeping and how is sex culture impacting how we parent? Shanda and Dean share their thoughts on both and give some advice on transparency and accountability.
Quotables:
“Secret keeping is intentional.”
“Whether you’re a Christian man or not, all men struggle with the same things.”
“A fool utters all his mind.” Prov 29:11
“If you’re married and you don’t understand you’re one, you shouldn’t have taken the vows.”
“If you’re confused by the obvious, you will never decipher reality.”
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Introduction:
Keeping secrets from your spouse is debatable, depending on who you ask. But secret keeping comes down to trust, honesty and transparency in a relationship.
“We can conclude that God does not consider keeping secrets to be sinful in and of itself. There are some things that people should know and some things they should not. God’s concern is how secrets are used, whether to protect others or to hurt them.”
Question one:
Let’s define what we mean by secret …
What does the Bible say about secrets?
Luke 12:3, “Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.”
Jesus is speaking to His disciples about the Pharisees and warning them against hypocrisy. And hypocrisy comes from the Greek word hypocrite, meaning “actor”.
One conservative commentary said, “The heart of being a hypocrite depends on keeping things concealed. When concealment is no longer possible, the hypocrite is unmasked.”
Ecclesiastes 12:15 says, “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.
Hebrews 4:13 says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
It’s safe to conclude that the secrets, or things hidden in these verses, are things we think remain concealed as long as the people in our lives don’t know about them.
Most of the time that’s going to be sins we hide. But it’s clear that God knows everything and there is nothing we can keep hidden from Him.
Question two:
What do you think about secret keeping when it comes to relationships? Red flag? Does it depend? We will lead into keeping secrets from spouses. What does that look like today (cell phone: texts, searches, etc). I’ll provide some statistics on this and it will be more of a chat into the topic. Do you think it’s dangerous to keep secrets from your spouse? We’ve talked before about passwords on phones, checking messages, etc.
Men and women may differ over the kinds of secrets they keep.
For example, women may not disclose how much they spend on shopping. Women also hide food containers when they feel they’ve overeaten so their spouses don’t see it. The obvious are affairs but they’ve been keeping other secrets long before they get to that point. Another one is relationship history and exes.
Men keep secrets about avoiding home after work or lie about how difficult their out-of-town jobs are so their wives don’t get mad about them not being home and helping with the kids. I’ve had several women tell me their boyfriend/partner turn their phones over so they can’t see who’s texting and/or they keep the passwords on their phones a secret so they can’t check messages.
Obviously this is observably fishy behavior and it raises speculation. We’ve talked about this before too. Is there some sort of open-door policy for transparency spouses/significant others should talk about?
What is sex culture?
We’re going to switch gears a bit here, because some of our natural conversations in private lead me to wanting you to come on and talk about them on the podcast, so we’re cramming in two topics today.
It’s no secret that we are living in the age of sex culture in America. On May 6th in the nypost.com, they published an article that said comprehensive sex ed is being proposed in the state senate to teach kids as young as 5 years old about sex.
In NY public schools, kids will learn about gender identification, at 8yo they will learn about hormone blockers before puberty, 11yo would learn about vaginal, oral and anal sex as well as “queer two-spirit, asexuality and pansexuality, as well as other gender identifications.
Question one:
A few weeks ago, you and I were driving around and you noticed something about YouTube and decided we needed to warn our boys about it.
Question two:
When we see entertainment, movies and things like that, we often see men who are after women, and that’s true in some cases. But sex culture is targeting boys by using girls (and even exploiting girls to older men). You heard a quote that said something about our culture is creating unmarriable women. What was that full quote and what is meant by it?
Sean McDowell, an apologist and author of “Chasing Love: Sex, Love and Relationships in a Confused Culture” said …
There are 5 main reasons our culture is sex crazed. Many know we are, but the question is why?
1.Our culture has lost is belief in God. If God doesn’t exist, then anything goes. And sex is a blackhole with no bottom. If sex is outside the bounds of marriage and the way God instituted it, a real dissatisfaction occurs that takes others to multiple partners, pornography, etc.
2. Our culture has lost belief in immortality. If there is no life after death, we can eat and drink for tomorrow we die.
3. Our culture has lost belief in the sacredness of sex. Sex has become cheap, virginity laughable and the marriage bed defiled.
4. Our culture is bored. Gen Z has been raised where they can have whatever they want.
5. Our culture has lost belief that humans are made in the image of God. One of the number 1 ways women are viewed while men watch porn is as an object. Why women want to subject themselves to that kind of viewing is unbeknownst to me, and why men are OK with treating women, image bearers, like objects is a depravity that a sex culture both condones and then condemns at the same time.
Question three:
The most important thing we can do in this time of sex-culture is train our children in it. Because we can’t take them out of it. How do we do that as parents?
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