Oh good grief! Doug Wilson of Blog and Mablog clearly has the most dirty mind in Evangelical circles. Worse than a 15 year old boy being assaulted by hormones! His reaction to Aimee Byrd’s suggestion in her book “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” that sharing a meal is not a slippery slip n’ slide to adultery. Doug says straight up that a women picking a restaurant is setting up a man for seduction, whether she realizes it or not.
He paints sloppy word picture of candles and roaming violinists, settling the stage for seducing ahoy! Pretty clear he must not ever go to restaurants except for rare special occasions. I can assure him that the vast majority of places women are having friendly lunches with men at are so far removed from his ideas on restaurants. Have you ever seen a romantic atmosphere at the local Panera’s or Sizzler or Burger King? Burgers and candlelight, only in a bad fictional romance or the mind of one sick puppy Doug Wilson.
Childish! Most people are capable of having lunch or dinner with the opposite sex without thinking it’s going to lead to genitalia smushing. For my years in Germany I had lunch at the officer’s club with a Capitain who’d become a friend of mine through my position at the USO. After morning board meetings or briefings we’d met up for lunch. He was married, I was very married and no one even flirted, much less cheated. The officer’s club had white linen tablecloths, candles and flowers but so what? The surroundings were pretty meaningless even if it was the best place near both of our offices to get a steak. No one once even once referred to bumping uglies on those lunches. What we did was talk about our lifes, our hopes, our frustrations. Work subjects, asking about each others families, it was completely innocent, a friendship, something that you cannot do in Evangelical Christianity lest adultery happens.
In my many years of working and socializing with men, including one on one meals, I’ve never seen anything like what Wilson is describing. It’s a view that tells me he does not know what the heck he’s talking about. He’s shut into fundytown with only a warped funhouse mirror telling him what it’s like right outside his window.
I leave you with this, a quote from the book:
“Having lunch shouldn’t feel like a challenge to marital fidelity. Eating together is a platonic practice intended to bring joy to our friendships”
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