Quoting Quiverfull: Emotions Fickle?

February 16, 2013 By 12 Comments

by Johnathan Lindvall at Bold Christian Living – The Dangers of Dating

Today we believe young people should marry the one they love. Does the scripture ever support such a notion? The Bible teaches us to love the one you marry. Aren’t these the same?

God never intended our emotions to lead us. Emotions are a wonderful blessing but they can be extremely fickle. We can easily be deceived by our feelings. This does not deny their delight, or imply they are to be avoided. God wants us to experience intense emotions, we are simply not to allow those emotions to dominate us. Rather than leading us, our emotions are to follow us.

Comments open below

QUOTING QUIVERFULL is a regular feature of NLQ – we present the actual words of noted Quiverfull leaders and ask our readers: What do you think? Agree? Disagree? This is the place to state your opinion. Please, let’s keep it respectful – but at the same time, we encourage readers to examine the ideas of Quiverfull honestly and thoughtfully.

NLQ Recommended Reading …

‘Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment‘ by Janet Heimlich

‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland

‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce

 

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About Suzanne Calulu
  • http://lyricalpolyphony.blogspot.com Mary

    One of these things is not like the other…..

    Are emotions changeable? Yep. Does this lead to, imply, or indicate an idea that marriage should EVER be entered into without feelings/romantic attachment? In a word…..NO.

  • http://Alisoncummins.com Alison Cummins

    The first thing that comes to mind is the story of Jacob and Rachel. He definitely loved her first.

  • Sarah

    It’s like these people can’t conceive of a middle ground, in which people take their emotions into account, but still make rational decisions. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that accounting for one’s emotions and the information we can have IF we pay attention to them leads to BETTER decisions than if the emotions are ignored.

    • Persephone

      Thank you, you’ve hit the nail on the head. They are extremists in everything; no such thing as moderation in their worldview. This extremism is why they fail, over and over again.

    • http://www.facebook.com/lucrezaborgia Lucreza Borgia
  • http://followingontoknow.blogspot.com Just Me

    It’s also like they think arrogance and self-righteousness, not being emotion-based but simply egotistical, are okay, whereas love being an emotion is somehow less pure and needs to be conquered until it loses emotion. Gross.

  • http://concerningpurity.blogspot.com Lynn

    This kind of talk is what leads people to make horrible decisions one after the other. When you stop trusting your gut instinct and when you allow your self to choose things that don’t feel right to you, you end up being led by some other authority that doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Which is exactly where these authoritarian religious nuts want you.

    • Jewel

      Exactly, Lynn. It’s exactly the kind of teaching (along with desperation and thinking I was an “old maid” at 22), that lead me into a loveless marriage and kept me there for 16 years. I remember a friend asking me before we married, “Does he give you butterflies when he walks in the room?” and I stared and her and answered, sort of disgustedly, “Well, no, but that’s not important”. What an idiot I was.

      • Evelyn

        So true. I could have written what you wrote. Only now, when I am significantly older, have I discovered how wonderful it is to be with a man who gives me butterflies when he walks into the room. I had no idea what I was missing.

  • thalwen

    His advice is perfect – for a society that has arranged marriages as the norm, which is what existed in Biblical times. The chances of you marrying someone of your choice, or even having the opportunity to meet them was something most couples did not get. But, since we no longer live in those times, we have the opportunity to make informed decisions, based on love, emotions and other factors we find important. His advice is the anachronistic equivalent of asking sailors to forgo radar and GPS and rely on star charts.

  • Saraquill

    Do these people ever get tired of writing hurtful things to their audience?

  • Verity

    It bewilders me when people like Lindvall take ordinary, sometimes necessary parts of life and turn it into a terror and a pit of despair. Does he really believe that emotions will destroy us if we can’t control them? Or does he say this to make his followers so focused on suppressing his own emotions that they don’t realize how badly he’s duping them?

    After wasted decades trying to “love” unpleasant and rude people because I was “supposed” to, “Love the person you’re married to” sounds to me like another emotional manipulation to make people feel guilty for not “loving” certain persons as much as they’re supposed to. It creates the false impression that feelings can come and go on command (which they can’t), which allows less-than-ethical persons to blame others for not “feeling” the way they should.