Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
In the first century, they didn’t wash feet for symbolism. They washed feet out of sheer necessity. And it was a nasty job. One that was saved for the lowest of the low. The bottom of the barrel. Only servants. Only the lowest servants. It’s hard to even compare the job to something equivalent today. I know, I know: Don’t get too attached to the early live version. It’s an unspoken rule of pop fandom. Yet the song’s evolution reflects the guiding impulse on Spektor’s first album since 2016. Working remotely for the first time, Spektor recorded her parts in a converted church in upstate New York, while John Congleton produced the record from California. The songs are among her most memorable since the Begin to Hope/ Far era, yet there’s an occasional disconnect between the songwriting and the arrangements, which are pitched towards bombastic, widescreen gestures. I will do my best to leave actual religious preferences and beliefs out of this, because my concerns for this book come from a different place. Where does Jesus say marriage began? Why is this significant? Why does it matter? Junk Drawer Theology The Q & A at the end was definitely not trauma-informed and one asker was told that wives can help their husbands’ “fight” against lust by giving them lots of sex.
When Jesus had finished saying these things, He left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. Large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there. Some Pharisees came to Him to test Him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” He replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” – Matthew 19:1-6 NIV The intended audience, as I noted earlier, seems to be moderately conservative evangelicals who hold to a more nuanced interpretation of scripture than a strict literalist reading. Those who hold to a very literal reading, and fundamentalists, will have some points of large disagreements. And likewise, as I have described, progressive and liberal Christians will have points of agreement but will likely be turned off by the gender and sexual orientation discussions.
New Arrivals
Our mission is to empower adults through positive, accurate education on love, romance, relationships, intimacy and human sexuality, across the globe. We believe that everyone over 21 years of age should have access to this information, and Loveology University® is dedicated to making a significant contribution to the human race. I used to feel a little bit sad when I realised that in our culture there was a big divide between fiction writers and truth writers,” she says. “To me, fiction is a true vehicle for feelings and realisations about life. Because this place is very weird and mysterious and most of the time we have no idea what’s going on. Every once in a while we get a glimpse and then we realise, oh, actually that was the reverse image of a shrapnel of a tiny mirror that’s a million miles away. It’s very hard to be here, because you’re watching cruelty; you’re watching the next 100 years of war being born. If you wanted, your whole life could be a slow-motion horror. But at the same time it’s just so good here. There are so many wonderful things here and you can fill your days with them.” She takes a giant breath, like she’s just climbed a hill and she’s taking in the view. “I guess all of that ends up being in the music.” Some of the ways he described or referred to girls/women/his wife felt off-putting and disrespectful. I don’t agree with much of the interpretations of the Genesis account nor Ephesians 5 presented in this book. At one point he pulls from the old “chewed up gum” trope from purity culture about people giving pieces of themselves away until they are “hollowed out” shells with nothing left for their spouse. He also references the extra-biblical concept of “soul ties.” It’s a weird vibe—like Tim Keller meets Mark Driscoll meets Josh Harris meets John Eldridge meets Elisabeth Elliot. It was written in 2013, and I can see how it would have appealed to younger evangelical millennials of that time period, but it doesn’t age well and reads as juvenile and under-informed. All of that said, while somewhat disappointing, Loveology is much more balanced and nuanced than most other marriage books of this era, and definitely kinder to women and wives in general.
good book about how relationships/marriage/ romance alllll the things were originally created by God. If u haven’t read John mark comer, he’s a great teacher & author — he’s super wise but teaches in a non condescending and straightforward way. We are all facing abysmal odds when it comes to marriage and love. And many would argue it’s because somewhere along the way we lost the plotline. We’re confused, at best, when it comes to love. Now that she has a family, she has “insane fantasies” about a day spent reading, playing piano and going for walks. “I’ve always felt time, even as a little kid,” she says. “I feel the weight of it: this is it. What a gift! What a responsibility! Things like mortality, myth, the hugeness of humanity, all of those existential things, they’re very present. I’m grateful for art but I will always end up choosing cuddling with my kids instead of running away to make art. That’s probably why I make a lot less of it.” For me, I found about the first half of the book to contain useful elements. The last half, although interesting to read the arguments for theologies of complementarianism and heterosexual-only marriages, it was something that I did not find useful otherwise.Read Matthew 19:1-6 (aloud in the group if meeting as a group). Then answer the questions that follow.
It’s an amazing picture of service and love, but it’s not quite there. You have to understand first-century culture to get the full picture of this practice.
Bibles by Type
It is in this context that Jesus steps into this space. He gets on his knees, takes off his outer clothes, grabs a bowl, and gets to work. Scrubbing. Cleaning. Washing. The disciples didn’t take this as a loving gesture. Read the story. They were outraged! It was wrong. Downright cruel. There was no way they were going to let their master — their rabbi — wash their filthy feet. Our programs are self-paced which means you can take as little or long as you need to complete the program. Take the curriculum during lunch breaks, after work, evenings, weekends, even while you are still employed full-time at another job.
Mr. Comers offers four reasons for marriage as it was originally intended by God: Friendship, Gardening (vocational partnership in the journey of life), Sex, and Family. There may be quibbles about some of the details that are found in the book, but overall these make good sense. What I love most is that he makes reference to the resurrection as our hope as we live in this space between our present world and new creation (hello NT Wright), which made all he had to say compelling for me. Despite those songs’ faraway origins, you won’t mistake Home, before and after for an early Spektor recording. Vocally, this record is more accessible than anything she’s done. There are no throaty gasps, no out-of-nowhere falsetto squeals, no on-off Bronx accent. Her voice has deepened; her range is immense. There's some tried and true wisdom here, and I like Comer. He's warmly pastoral, and I enjoyed his style on the audiobook. I wonder how his views have shifted in the decade since his authoring. If you’re a child of divorce, you feel the tension. You know better than anybody what happens when love breaks down, yet you are drawn to love like a moth to a flame. It’s in your blood. Children grow up dreaming of marriage. Little boys want to marry their moms. Little girls put on white dresses and play “march down the aisle.” You’re no different. But at the same time you live under a dark cloud of paranoia. Will you make the exact same mistake as your parents? Will you become another statistic? Will your dream become a nightmare?In a recent Guardian interview, Spektor reflected on that early-career outpouring of songs that generated “Loveology” and “Raindrops.” “I didn’t have any responsibilities,” Spektor recalled. “I would read a book; I would write a song.” Spektor fled the city during the pandemic and recorded Home, before and after, her eighth studio album and her first since 2016, in a converted church upstate. It’s possibly her best album and certainly her biggest, with a glorious orchestral sound that’s commensurate with her themes. There’s even a tap-dancer on the nine-minute cosmic extravaganza Spacetime Fairytale. So it’s surprising to learn that she recorded it on her own but for producer John Congleton and engineer Ariel Shafir; the orchestra was actually in Macedonia. “This was the most alone recording I’ve ever done,” she says. “I was one of the Covid-safest people that anyone ever met, so I never even set foot in the control room. If the piano tuner came in, I would leave for three hours.” She sighs. “It was a whole thing.” I’m grateful for art but I will always end up choosing cuddling with my kids instead of running away to make art Describe the different words for “love” in Hebrew. How are they different from or similar to our modern view of love?
Related:
Great Deal 
New Comment