This came across my desk today: https://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2022/02/why-is-marriage-advice-aimed-at-healthy-couples/
The last straw for me in the RP church was a video series by Tedd Tripp based on his book What Did You Expect? Tripp created analogy after analogy to explain marital principles. Most of the analogies were dishonest at best and destructive at worst. This specific Sunday was about our idolatrous nature, and the object lesson was a bagel. He explained that he walked into the kitchen one evening and spotted a bagel. He decided that would be his breakfast the next day and proceeded to picture himself devouring the bagel. He has ABSOLUTELY NO CLAIM TO THIS BAGEL. He didn't buy it, he didn't even put a note on it saying it was for his breakfast the next morning. He just imagined it would be waiting for him the next day.
So, what happens? The bagel is gone the next day, and he is angry. He turns this into a discussion of idolatry and selfishness - his selfish claim on the bagel. That then turns into a claim that "marital anger = selfishness."
This is when I flipped out.
At the end of the class, I explained how harmful this teaching was to couples who were not in perfect marriages. That anger itself was a signal, and sometimes the anger is righteous, but if church members and church leaders assume that anger always comes from idolatrous selfishness, then what will they do when a battered wife has had enough and walks into the church? So, we turn a bagel into a culture of victim blaming, because, obviously, the person who goes to the Session for help is going to be the one who is idolatrous and selfish, wanting the Session to manipulate and control the other.
I was silenced by the pastor during the class, and then the pastor and an elder came up to me after the class to tell me that Tripp is right. The elder chipped in that "obviously you need this teaching because your marriage isn't good". An elder who barely knows my name is telling me about my marriage. Great!
My marriage WASN'T good, but that was long before I started attending that church. What made my marriage not good was a message of idolatry and selfishness. I was taught that, like Jesus, I needed to place my wife and my marriage above myself and that just like Jesus gave up everything for us, there should be essentially no boundaries for me in my marriage. I came to a place where there were essentially two choices, divorce or boundaries. I decided that I had nothing to lose trying to establish boundaries. Thankfully, my wife was healthy and I was able to set boundaries and find a voice in my marriage.
But, I recognized that Tripp's teaching is destructive. The idea that any anger or boundaries are by definition idolatrous and selfish left me with really no options for a healthy marriage.
There's much more to say about this, but it's not just that RP teaching is only designed for healthy marriages, but that RP teaching is designed to destroy healthy marriages, and then blame the destruction on everything but the teaching itself.
