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Healthy Relationships

National Faculty Leadership Conference, Washington, D.C.

Time : 00:41:27

William Lane Craig speaks at the National Faculty Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. As part of a workshop specially geared to grad students, Dr. Craig shared practical advice on preserving a healthy marriage while in grad school and career.

Transcript

When my wife Jan and I were beginning to contemplate seminary studies we decided that we would go to visit the campus of the seminary and try to meet some of the students that were there to find out what some of the challenges of being in seminary were like. And so we arrived one day on the campus and decided to just knock on some doors of the campus apartments and meet someone there. And we knocked on one door and a young woman came to the door and we explained to her why we were there and wanted to find out what seminary life was like from her standpoint, and so she invited us in and proceeded to give us an earful of what it was like being married to someone in seminary. And she was filled with bitterness toward her husband and toward his theological studies. She felt so neglected, so lonely, you could just feel the anger and the estrangement in this young seminary wife. And we listened to this not knowing what to say and finally near the end of the conversation she said, “Well, my husband is going to be graduating soon and then he’ll be going into the pastorate, and then I hope he will have more time for me.” And our hearts just sank within us because we knew, of course, what it would be like for someone in the busy pastorate. And we could just imagine the shipwreck that lay ahead for this couple. And it was so sad to have to leave there, and together we purposed that this would not happen to us, that we would do everything that we could in our power as a young couple to preserve our marriage through graduate school and beyond.

When we did begin to study in seminary, we became good friends with other fellas and their wives in the philosophy of religion program. And there were about four couples that we hung around with as regular friends, and not within many years after graduating, two out of the four couples were then divorced. One was a pastor with his wife, the other was a missionary and his wife, and they soon divorced. One other couple went through tremendous stresses at the University of Chicago trying to do doctoral work in philosophy, but this fella had a deep commitment to his wife and purposed to work through their struggles and problems together and their marriage was preserved and flourishes today. I don’t know what happened to the fourth couple, I know they had some real difficulties, too. But it is sobering when you think that maybe 50% of you here in this room may be headed toward divorce. That is what the odds are. And it’s so sobering because the Scripture says very clearly, God hates divorce, that divorce is not an option for the Christian, except on grounds of adultery, according to what Jesus said. And yet in our day and age of serial marriages, it seems that so many people betray Christ and disgrace him in this way by pursing a divorce. And I want to just say to you as straightforwardly as I can that if you succeed academically in graduate school at the expense of your marriage then you have failed. You have failed in God’s sight because you are a personal failure if you have not managed to maintain that most important relationship that God has given you. And your academic success really counts very little in the scale compared to the failure that is represented to preserve your vows and to preserve that marriage that God has given you for life. And so it is just very critical that we think hard about maintaining and preserving marriages in this very stressful time of graduate school.

Now, for those of you who are still single I want to say just a couple words about the importance of marrying the right person, because that is just key. If you do not marry the right person then you are bound for either divorce or a life of misery, trying to live with the wrong person. And that will just be a burden on your heart that will be an albatross around your neck, to mix metaphors. It will weigh you down and crush you emotionally, and you don’t want that. You don’t want either a life of misery or to end in divorce and so it is just critical that you marry the right person.

Now, I want to share just a couple personal pieces of advice that not everybody is going to appreciate. These are rather politically incorrect, and so I want to say as Paul did, not the Lord, but I, offer this advice. This is what I say; I have no commandment of the Lord on this but this is just my advice to you. [1]

I would advocate or recommend to you that you marry someone – speaking especially to the fellows here. I tend to think of this from a male-oriented perspective because that is my perspective. Sorry ladies, but that is the way that I look at it. I want to say to you guys first, and then there will be something similar for the women. But for the guys – I would encourage you to marry someone who believes in you and who supports you in the calling that you feel God has given you. Someone who believes in you and supports you in that calling that you have. I remember when I first married Jan, I said to her, “I feel like I can do anything if there is just one person who believes in me,” and she said, “I want to be that one person,” and she has been all these years. And I owe a lot of any success that I have achieved to her. And I would covet that for you, that if you could have a women who believes in you, who thinks that God is speaking through and using you, and who wants to support you, this is the most wonderful relationship and asset that you can have.

Now, the other side of the coin would be you gals – can’t you be that woman to some man whom you feel God is asking you to marry. Can you be that person who will be his cheerleader, his ally, his advocate, rather than his critic, or person who doesn’t care about what he does. I remember in Philosophy of Religion in seminary, we would have a Monday night colloquium at Norm Giesler’s house and all the students in the department were invited including their wives. Jan was the only wife who came to those Monday night colloquia. And she didn’t understand everything that went on, but she was interested in my work, she was interested in what I was learning as a philosopher and so she wanted to be a part, and she would come along on Monday nights. And one of the other philosophy students, in fact he was one who eventually got divorced, said to Jan, “Oh, how I wish that my wife were as interested in what I am doing as you are in what Bill is doing.” And so I would hope that you gals, should you marry, you would marry someone who has a calling that resonates with your heart and that you want to be a part of and that you want to support. Now that would mean that you see it as your mission to be his helper. Remember how Eve was created to be a helper fit for Adam. That is the role that God had intended for a wife, to be a helper fit for her husband, to help him and to support him along. And that would mean to share a common calling. Now the implication of this is, as uncomfortable as this may be, and again, this is just my personal advice, I would really beware of the career women, the women who sees herself as having an independent career from your own and a separate calling from your own. Or, if you are a gal who has that independent calling and career, you have got to be really careful about marrying someone whose career you don’t feel any interest in, or any calling to support. Because, what you will find is, in marriage, the thing that you have to fight against more than anything else, is growing separateness. That as the years go on you grow more and more and more apart, and one of the great things that can combat growing separateness is this unity of calling and mission, where you are both partnered together in the came calling, and it is hard to do that if he feels called to, say, be a philosopher, and you feel called to be, say, a medical doctor, or something of that sort. That is going to create lots and lots of difficulties for the marriage. So, again, that doesn’t mean that God prohibits such a thing but it is just advice that I would give you, is to beware of that and instead to seek to marry someone whose calling and mission in life is the same as your own.

Now, having said that, the more fundamentally important thing is not finding the right person to marry; rather, it is becoming the right person yourself. Your focus should not be on, “God, lead me to the right mate; help me to find the right person for me,” rather your focus ought to be, “God, shape me and transform my life to become the right person.” God and his providence can be counted on to lead you to the right person when you are the right person. [2] I think the Bible teaches the sovereignty of God and his providence over everything that happens in the world. And so your marriage is not a matter of indifference to him; rather, he will bring you to the right person when and if you are the right person at that time.

So, in the interim, your goal should seek to be to live a pure and Godly life; to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and to make that your focus. 2 Timothy 2:22 says, “Flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace.” Flee youthful lusts but pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace. That ought to be your focus as a single person becoming a Godly individual and not just pursing your passions. Remember that God has, in particular, intended sexual activity to be practiced within the security of the bonds of marriage, and so the Bible is very clear on its condemnation of fornication, which is any sexual activity or sexual intimacy outside the marriage bond, and that would include premarital sexual activity. And so you need to guard both your body and your mind until God unites you in marriage with that person that he has intended for you, and to keep yourself pure. And therefore, especially you men, you have got to flee pornography, you have got to not allow yourself to look at this stuff, much less to become addicted to it. Indeed, I would say that you need to be very careful with your eyes about what magazines you read, what television programs you watch, what movies you go to. I would encourage you just to quit watching that stuff; just don’t go, it is not worth it. All it does is make you frustrated anyway. So why arouse those passions by going and looking at such things? Rather, if you will keep yourself pure for your mate, I think you will be far happier in the end than if you go into your marriage having indulged in sexual activity of various sorts and coming into the marriage tainted in that way. So I would encourage you in preparing yourself for marriage to keep yourself pure in body and mind so that when you do marry you will have kept yourself pure for your mate.

Now, if you are married and you are in graduate studies then I think one of the key things to keep in mind is your priorities, and I believe that your mate is more important than your studies. Your first and foremost responsibility, after God himself, is to be faithful to your spouse. If you are a guy, to love her as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. If you are a gal to submit to your husband and to respect him as the church does to Christ. And what that means is, again, if necessary, you must be willing to give up your graduate studies for the sake of your spouse. If your marriage has come to the point where it can bear the stress no longer, then love requires that you abandon your graduate studies and your dreams of a degree and post-doctoral work and so forth for the sake of your spouse. And so when Jan and I began graduate studies in seminary I said to her, “All you have to do is say the word, and I’ll drop out.” And she knew that I meant it, that I did mean it, I would do it, I would have dropped out if she had said, “I can’t go on, this is too much.” But, you know, knowing that my commitment was real, and that I would do that for her, gave her extra strength to endure, so that she put up with a lot of stress, anxiety, pressure, and schedules, and so forth, because she knew there was an out if we needed it. That escape valve or hatch can be helpful to strengthen your spouse during these graduate study times.

Covenant to spend time with one another. Set aside certain hours of the day that are sacred times that are devoted to your spouse where you will not study and keep that time inviolate. [3] This was what we did in graduate school, both in seminary and then in my doctoral work. I set aside time for Jan when I said, I will not study during this time no matter what, and again that was time for her, and she knew that was her time. And I would encourage you to do that as a demonstration in a very tangible way of the priority of your spouse.

And then, during that time, communication is really key with your spouse. You need to be able to talk with each other on a very personal level, and I will say something more about this in a second, but, making eye contact with her. You know, when two fellas, when they speak, you know sometimes they kind of stand side-by-side with each other – kind of like this. When you talk with a spouse, with a women, you need to look her right in the eyes and talk to her like this; make eye contact with her. Jan has said to me, reach out and hold my hand and that will help to make contact.

I shared this with a student once in one of my classes and he said he went home that night, and he knew he had been taking an overload of classes, he had been neglecting his wife, and he said, “Dr. Craig, I couldn’t even lift my eyes from the dinner table to look her in the face, I felt so ashamed.” He could not even make eye contact with her, and he said he knew then that he had to retrench. And so he told her what I had shared in class, and he was bringing in a slip for me to sign – he said, “I am dropping your class.” And I said, “Great, that’s a good decision,” and he said, “Yeah, my wife said that any professor that would encourage you to drop his class for me is alright in my book.” So it was a victory in his life.

But actually this stuff about communication and spending time is really, in one sense, not the key issue; it is not really the central issue as one might think.

The central issue we first encountered in going to a marriage counselor named Duane Law. And I can say, just as an aside, don’t be embarrassed to seek out a marriage counselor. I hope that everybody at periodic times in your marriage would take the advantage of going and seeing a counselor. And there are good counselors and there are woefully bad ones, and if you are wasting money on a bad one just get out and try to find somebody new. But if you can find a really good marriage counselor who sees into your heart and sees things that you don’t see in those blind spots it can be very, very helpful in your relationships. Well, we were going to a counselor. We had actually been married a long time, but we were having real trouble with our kids. They were so disrespectful and sassy and snotty and just really unpleasant to live with, and so we thought, well, we’ll go to this counselor and get these kids straightened out, what is the matter with them? And Duane kept talking to us about ourselves, and after about three times, we said, well when are you going to get to the kids? And he said you have got to work on the foundations before you work on the walls of the house. And he saw things in me that I didn’t see in myself that he said was important to understand. And the thing that he kept emphasizing was the distinction between being and doing. I am very goal-oriented. I have such a need for a sense of accomplishment. I am so goal-oriented that I noticed the other day that I even get pleasure from finishing the bottle of shampoo in the shower. And I thought, man, I am in trouble. And Jan said, it is even worse than that because these are little bottles from the hotels. So I am really goal-oriented. One of my friends in college once said to me, he said, “Bill is the kind of guy who wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Today, I am going on work on love.’” And what was embarrassing about it is that it was true! I thought, how did he know that that is what I do? But what Duane was saying is, you can be doing all of the right things and not really being the person that you need to be. [4] And what that means is that you can be following the advice in all of these marriage books that you read and you hear about: compliment her every day with some compliment, tell her you love her, spend time with each other, communicate. You could check all of those things off your list and still not be engaged in what he called “being” as opposed to just “doing.”

Now what does that mean? I kept trying to understand, what are you talking about, being? Sounds very existential, doesn’t it? Well, what I determined he was talking about is, I think being is lowering one’s walls. We all have these sort of walls up, I think, to kind of defend ourselves or to protect our vulnerable points. He said, being is lowering one’s walls with the other person, having permeable boundaries. Again, we all have boundaries that we often don’t let people cross but with your mate these boundaries should be permeable boundaries. That is to say, to have vulnerability and transparency with your mate. And this is very hard to do; I find this very difficult to do. And it is a blind spot for me. And, in fact, the Bible talks about this notion of self-deception, that we can be self-deceived in what we think we are doing. And who can see this, that we are actually in self-deception, that we are blinded? Well, your spouse sees it. And so we need to allow her or him to be a sort of mirror to us. And if there is anger there, or resentment or estrangement, that is a mirror that something isn’t right in the way that I am relating, that I am not being, I am just doing.

One barometer that I found for detecting this in yourself, if you are not being but just doing, is, if in moments of introspection, you feel resentment toward the things you do for you spouse, like, “Man, I am knocking myself out trying to spend time with her, trying to take a vacation, trying to compliment her everyday.” If there is that feeling of resentment that you find welling up in your heart and you suppress it, let yourself feel it, let it well up, and if you had that you’re probably engaged in doing rather than being, you are probably just going through the motions. And you need then to have the courage to confront this in yourself and then to open up and be vulnerable and transparent with your spouse.

What is interesting about this is that this is also true of your relationship with God, I think. God is also relational, God is a trinity, He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and God is in eternal relation among the persons of the Godhead. And he created us to know him, to invite us into the fellowship of the Godhead as adopted sons and daughters of God. And so the greatest commandment, what is the greatest commandant? To love the Lord your God. Notice the greatest commandment is not to serve the Lord your God, isn’t that interesting? The greatest commandment is not, serve the Lord your God with all your strength and hear and mind, it is to love him. He invites us into relationship with him. And so doing the right things can actually become the enemy of being. You can be so focused on doing that you forget about the being. Remember the story of Mary and Martha in Luke chapter 10 where Martha is so busy serving the Lord and she says to Jesus, “Tell my sister to help me.” And Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are so busy and concerned about many things. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her.” And so we have got to be careful that all the doing doesn’t become the enemy of being in our relationship with God. What can be the barometer here? Well, just as a feeling of resentment toward your spouse can be a barometer of doing rather than being with her; the barometer, perhaps, in relationship to God is when God is seen as a task master. And I have noticed that many of those who have committed apostasy on the internet infidels, and you see these testimonies of people on the internet who have been Christians, very often the God that they have deserted or apostatized from is seen as the task master whose burden was too heavy to bear. And if that is the way that we see God then we are not loving him, we are just serving him, and we need to confess and try to reorient our lives in the appropriate way. So when you think about it, loving persons is the most important thing in life, because God is personal. [5]

So loving God, the three divine persons, and then loving one another is the priority in life. And there will be varying degrees of intimacy of course in our love relationships. First our spouse, where we need to talk and communicate with each other and to connect emotionally with each other, and then, secondly, after that will be children.

Now let me just share a piece of advice with you about children, that also was very helpful to us that came from Duane. And that is, it is not enough just to have consistency in dealing with your children. I thought that what you needed to have in the home was high love, but then also high consistency; that it is the inconsistent discipline that confuses the child and creates rebellious behavior and things like that. So, boy, for me consistency was really important, no compromise. And what Duane said this creates when your kids become adolescents and begin to break away and become independent is an attitude of rebellion because they rebel against that. And that would result in a clash of wills where I would not back down because I thought I had to be consistent, I had to win this battle of the wills. You couldn’t let the kids win. But they were not going to give up either and so there was this tension in the home. And what Duane gave to us was a piece of advice that really changed our relationship with our children that I want to pass on to you and it is so simple, but it is very empowering. And it is this: he said don’t just give them commands to do something, like I would, “John, you need to clean your room.” And then if he wouldn’t do it then I’d say, “You will clean the room, so clean it!” Or, “you will mow the lawn,” or “it is your turn to do the dishes tonight, you must do the dishes.” And then you have that inevitable tension and fighting. What Duane said is, give your kids choices to do. Give them an either-or whenever you want them to do something. So say something like this, “John, you can clean your room now, or else you can not go to the basketball game on Saturday, and it is your choice, either clean your room or stay home from the game on Friday.” Now, that sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, but it actually works! Because what the kids will do is they will test you then to say, “I am not going to clean my room,” and then you say, “That’s fine John, that is just great, we’ll spend Friday night here at home together.” And then when Friday night comes around and he starts complaining he can’t go to the game, “Well, but John, that was your choice, you chose to stay home tonight, you didn’t have to stay here, this was your choice.” And after this happens a couple of times, they begin to feel empowered to make choices. And you have got to really mean it. You can’t make silly choices like, “You either clean your room or you’re out of here, I am kicking you out of the house, you’re are out the window.” You have got to give them realistic choices and then give them the right to make that choice. If they would prefer to live in the pigsty but not go to the basketball games then you have got to be happy with that and let them make that choice. And it just diffuses the rebellion enormously because they really do have genuine choices to make and they feel empowered as a result. And so in dealing with your children, who can be a tremendous source of strain on your marriage, I would advise you to give them these either-or choices.

Well, I think that pretty much wraps up what I wanted to share with you. There is a whole lot more that one could say but I wanted to not diminish the key points by proliferating other minor points. I think these key points about the distinction between being and doing and setting these priorities is the key thing, and if you do that and make this commitment with your spouse that there will be no divorce, that no matter how hard it gets, you are going to work through it, you are going to work it out, you are going to get help if you need to, that that will help you to sustain your marriage through these times of difficulty and on into the career God’s given you.

So we have some time for discussion, and I would like it to be discussion, rather than just questions. I felt a little bit insecure giving a talk like this because one is aware of one’s own feet of clay in this sort of subject but any discussion or advice or helpful hints that others might have that you’d like to share. [6]

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DISCUSSION

QUESTION: [off-mic]

DR. CRAIG: I don’t know what to say to that. [7] I mean you would obviously have to be pretty close to them to interfere in another marriage, unless you were just to say, you guys really need to get some counseling, and here is a name of a guy who is really great, why don’t you see if Joe would go to counseling with you. You could do that, but unless you know them really well, I would be really afraid of trying to insinuate yourself into that relationship as the counselor.

COMMENT: I was just going to say, sometimes, especially graduate students who are in tough situations because they are married with children, and sometimes, practically speaking, just making sure they have a baby sitter. I know it sounds like a silly thing, but it will help them do what they want to do which is spend time together makes it a possibility. And so there are practical things you can do, but it is person specific.

COMMENT: Yeah, I think that is a good thing for single graduate students to do. I mean, it is good to raise awareness, and that is something that I try to regularly do, is just babysit kids for my friends who are couples so they can get out. So Gene told me this a long time ago so I just stole it, but it is a really good thing to do.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, especially if you volunteer and don’t wait to be asked.

COMMENT: Absolutely, you have to do that because they won’t want to intrude, and you have to be insistent, “No, I want you guys to go out.”

COMMENT: It won’t solve the problem but it might get them talking.

QUESTION: You mentioned that your wife would come with you to the colloquia at nights. What other practices did the two of you employ so that you were continuously rededicating yourself to a common good rather than pursing separate objectives.

DR. CRAIG: Well, she would come with me, or does come with me, on trips, for example. And again, a lot of the philosophers go to the conventions and things by themselves and Jan would typically come with me, and she would like to meet “the boys,” and she would get to know the boys, and she would always just be there and be a part. And I got to emphasize, she is not a philosopher. It is not as though she is doing this herself, but she can appreciate the importance of it, and get to know other people relationally. And so she goes to conferences with me, she takes the initiative in asking me about my work. She’ll say, “What did you study today?” and I will talk to her about some article that I read. And I will try to explain it in a simple way, and sometimes I will ask her for her opinion. I will say, “What do you think, honey? Do you think that the number 2 exists?” And she’ll think about it and then give me some opinion on the number 2. Or I remember when I was contemplating the idea of the infinite past, I would talk to her about Zeno’s paradoxes and whether you can traverse an infinite, and things of this sort. And it was just fun to talk about what we were learning and so there was that. And that is another piece of advice for those of you who are spouses of someone who is doing graduate study: take an interest in his or her work and say, “Explain to me what you do.” Somebody was mentioning the sciences – ask them to show you their lab. “Show me your lab, show me what you do, your nuclear facility where you work or something.” That kind of interest, boy, that just means so much. And yet how few spouses ever do that? We were in Hong Kong recently with my wife and my mother. And we were visiting a guy who does some kind of nuclear physics and he had some device in his laboratory, and my mother said, “I want to see it, take us to you lab and show it to us.” You cannot imagine how much it meant to this physicist that we would actually be interested in seeing his machine, and he just loved it that my mother cared about it. And he commented that his wife really had never expressed any interest in seeing his machine, whatever this thing was. It was kind of sad. So that would be something else.

QUESTION: Does Jan type your papers too?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, now that’s true. [8] I married an executive secretary, you know, who can type 90 to 100 words a minute, so I write everything long hand and she typed all my papers, my dissertations, my MA theses, my books, and my articles, and so in that sense she has been very, very involved as my right arm in the ministry. She wants to be a part and has been involved in very practical ways. And so that is another thing, as I say, not just sharing a common vision, but saying, “How can I help. Is there something I could do, even as a bookkeeping nature or something I could do to ease the burden on you?”

COMMENT: I actually wanted to insert something like a dissenting opinion on this other question, it is not necessarily related, and I don’t think you will disagree, but, I spend a lot of time with grad students who are married, and one of the problems is that they were not expecting to run into difficulties and so it doesn't seem to them like there are any atmospheres where they can just safely talk to someone about it. And so one of the things, and again I don’t think this is to the heart of what you are doing, but I do think, kind of lending a helpful ear, in providing a safe atmosphere to talk about the issues helps. I mean, I have seen a couple places where it never got talked about and so it become much more worse. And so it seems that one thing you can do is just talk and or maybe talk to them as couples.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, and we have done that. When we have had difficulties sometimes we have gone to an older married couple whose marriage we admired and said, “We are struggling, can you help us?” And that has been helpful, to talk with another couple. And the other thing I want to emphasize which Luke brought up is not to sweep these little difficulties under the rug, because you may think, “oh this is just a little triviality, it is a little thing.” But these little cracks grow over time and become crevasses eventually. And so if you are young or new in your marriage and you are arguing with each other a lot, that is hard, but it is good that you are doing it. So rejoice and be glad that you are arguing with your spouse because that means that you are confronting these problems rather then sweeping then under the rug. And it is painful to do this, but you will be much happier in the end that you did do that rather than sweeping them under the rug.

QUESTION: [inaudible]

DR. CRAIG: This is a very serious point. I think that the question betrays a misunderstanding of what I said. Jan wasn’t interested in philosophy; she made herself become interested in philosophy because she was married to a philosopher. I am not suggesting that you marry people with the same interests, I am saying you make a commitment to say, “I am going to be interested in molecular biology,” or “I am going to be interested in Russian literature, even if I don’t care about it, because I am married to you.” And so that is what I am talking about; precisely, you may not have a natural proclivity but you do it, you make yourself do it because you love the other person.

QUESTION: [inaudible]

DR. CRAIG: It is wonderful. I think it is rare to have that kind of friend. But, boy, if you do, I think you are absolutely right. For a man to have a male friend that he can talk to about these things, and a women to have a female friend that she can open her heart to, I think you are absolutely right, that if you can find that kind of person you are fortunate indeed.

QUESTION: When you spend that time with your wife or your family, let’s just say there is a problem in your research or something. You can be present with them, but not really mentally present, and so do you have time between time with the family and time that you have been working on, say, your research where you wind down?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, this is a good point. I have often been told that I am checked out, that even though I am there, my mind is somewhere else thinking about Zeno or something. So you are right, that can be a problem. It is especially a problem if you have an office in the home, like I do, because you just come upstairs and you are there. [9] Whereas if you can work outside of the home – in the library or an office on campus or something – and then drive home, that can become you transitions time during which you might pray or just listen to the radio to just free your mind and to have that transition time. And I think you are right that that is good. For me, when I was doing my doctoral work in Birmingham, it was the long bus ride home from the university out to where we lived that gave me that transition time. Otherwise you are right, it is hard to turn off the mind, and what one could do is just quit a few minutes early and just have some down down time even right there, just doing something else or thinking about someone else or just doing something mindless, so that you build that transition in before you come into the room where your wife and children are. Have you experiences this problem yourself? Yeah, it is hard, your mind can be racing and it is very difficult, but that is what I would say, I suppose.

OK, well this is a great challenge and I hope that all of us who are married will be able to honor the Lord in the relationships that we build. [10]

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    Total Running Time: 41:27 (Copyright © William Lane Craig 2008)