Never has a more damnable thought ever been conceived in the mind of man than that which says some good within a movement, cause, or entity makes all the bad therein right and acceptable. The wife who says her marriage is acceptable because her husband only beats her on Friday night and Saturday, but he's loving and a good provider the rest of the week is saying just what the Christians (?) who feel it acceptable to be a part of Promise Keepers are saying.
While Promise Keepers does promote good thought on some subjects, it promotes gross doctrinal error (heresy, if you will) on other vital subjects! Paul, in the long ago, urged ... "Be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;" (Ephesians 4:14). "Sleight of men" and "cunning craftiness" well-characterizes the man-made movement named by itself as "promise Keepers". "But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (Matthew 15:9).
In the second article, we considered the first three of the "promises" of a Promise Keeper. The fourth of these promises is a classic example of what we said at the outset of this third installment. It reads, "A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong marriages and families through love, protection and biblical values." What wife or what child (children) would not say, "Hooray!" to that? In a day when the marital relationship and the home (generally speaking) are in dreadful disarray and look more like a battleground with the remnants and relics of war scattered about, families and marriages are in obvious need of some serious help! But, what is it they need? Some just born, man-made organization that attempts, with infirm tongue, to restate what Inspiration said no the subject in the long ago? Why not simply accept what Inspiration said?
Paul, the Inspired Apostle, said in a short, well-worded statement ... "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; ... So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. /// For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. ... Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself;" (Ephesians 5:25-33). Could anything be plainer and more easily understood? Can the Promise Keepers say it any better?
What is needed is not the Promise Keepers but Christian men who can live up to their promises and their vows because they love their wives and their Lord and because their sense of honesty and integrity would have them keep their vows. Certainly if a relationship with the Lord and a relationship with a good wife is not enough to assure the marriage vows to be kept inviolate, then a relationship with a few other men will not assure it. "Honey, I love you and will not break our marriage vows, not because I promised you I would not break those vows, but because I made that promise to a few other men." It would seem that such an idea would cause a wife not to grow closer to her husband, but to wonder about him and the relationship she has with him.
In Ephesians 6:4, again the Apostle Paul speaking, we learn, "And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." If the Lord can say that and men not heed it, what suggests that fathers will heed it if the same things is said by other men?
What it boils down to, Promise Keepers is about as needed as a two-headed golf club. No! Christians should not be a part of the Promise Keepers movement, for a variety of reasons!
In the fourth installment, we will look at other "promises" advocated by this group.
--Charlie T. Garner |