Guidelines

I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :








Sunday, September 10, 2023

Who the Heck is the Real Andrew Tallman "McKay?"

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If your name is really Andrew Tallman--why the heck do you tell everyone it is Andrew McKay?

Who the heck is Andrew McKay?

He's a local entertainment, morning radio host that loves to lionize disgraced former commissioner Doug Underhill, loves to perform for a fringe group of tin foil hat wearers on a small facebook chat site, and loves to to attack the BCC, individual members of the board, and me in particular, with smears and BS garbage.

Recently, Tallman hosted a podcast for disgraced, former D2 commissioner Doug Underhill's secretary, Jonathan Owens.  And on that show, he seemed to support and condone the unlawful theft and possession of confidential, exempt county files by Jonathan Owens. 

And he never misses an opportunity to attack me and two other members of the board.

So I was reminded of the fact that this guy, Tallman, is a real fake, a fraud. That's my opinion of him.

Apparently he moved here a few years back under a cloud of suspicion from Arizona when his show there went sideways and he "changed" his name.  And he is working under this fake name but many people just swallow the "Andrew McKay" schtick----- hook, line and sinker.  I don't.

So who is the real Andrew Tallman anyway?  Hold your nose and get ready...  from a former city council woman's blog, Maren DeWeese's Blog--comes all of this below information....



"On Andrew McKay (Real name Andrew Tallman)
  • This week I will explore a bit of Andrew McKay AKA Andrew Tallman's extreme views on the following topics
    • HOW HOMOPHOBIA IS HEREDITARY
    • HOW HOMOSEXUALITY IS A CHOICE AND NOT HOW SOMEONE IS BORN
    • HOW HOMOSEXUALITY SHOULD GO BACK TO BEING A CRIME
    • HOW THE MORE MONEY A MAN MAKES THE MORE HE HAS DONE FOR SOCIETY


"Thought of the Day
The worst threats to what is good in life do not come from obvious fakes which are easily spotted. The real danger is from the high quality counterfeits which imitate the authentic so well that they fool many people. 

Andrew Tallman

Truer words have never been spoken.  Think back in Pensacola's recent history as to all the high quality counterfeits that have come to Pensacola, reinvented their entire life and rapidly risen to the top of their fields unchallenged and really...unknown.

Who is Andrew Tallman?  
He is a High Quality Counterfeit!
We all know him as Andrew McKay of Newstalk Radio 1620.

https://www.facebook.com/AndrewTallmanShow/


Yes, the Sun of Fire is not who he portrays himself to be on the radio nor does he share his true views on the air.

    Haven't been on this facebook account in a while. It's so weird to see my real name on fb...and all the people who know me by my real name.

Why does someone hide from their real name.  Especially, in the news business.  The answer may reside in some of the opinions he has espoused in the past.

Over next week I will be sharing many of these opinions with you in detail.  They are shocking!

If you are interested in Andrew's views on life, faith, sex, racism, marriage and politics and just can't wait for Tuesday, just Google his real name Andrew Tallman and the subject.  He has a large body of work to read.
But beware, here is just a taste of his offerings for wives:

"So how do you keep a man from thinking about other women? Lower the incentive to cheat, and raise the cost of cheating. Fortunately, you can do both at one time by meeting his most important needs in such a generous way that you give him something monumentally worthwhile to lose by acting on any such thoughts. Make yourself the source of such bodily pleasure (food and sex) and such ego satisfaction that he never wants more from anyone else."



Tuesday, May 31, 2016

NewsRadio AM 1620's Andrew McKay (actually Tallman) on How Homophobia is Genetic

NewsRadio AM1620's morning radio host Andrew McKay (real name Andrew Tallman), you know, the one that interviews the Mayor each week in an exclusive interview wrote the following concerning homophobia.

"I believe that any sexual activity other than that between a man and his wife is illicit. This includes adultery, premarital sex and, of course, homosexuality.

But I’ve also been doing what my parents always taught me to do: listen to those who disagree with me. And I think I’ve discovered something rather shocking: opposition to homosexuality must itself be genetic.

For as long as I can remember, homosexuals have been explaining why gay people have no choice about their orientation. And it finally dawned on me that their arguments explain why being anti-gay is also not a choice but an innate predisposition beyond our power to restrain. This led me to embrace my convictions and stop trying in vain to repress who I am.

Since millions suffer from this same condition, I’m hopeful that my epiphany will help others accept themselves and their convictions, too."'


"I now know that my passionate anti-gayness must also be impossible to control."

"But then I realized that I have been ridiculed, called intolerant and fired from an academic post for my beliefs on this subject. "

perhaps_homophobia_isn’t_a_choice_either

Fired for his intolerance. 

Hired by Newsradio AM 1620.  http://newsradio1620.com/andrew-mckay-2/


Thought of the Day
The worst threats to what is good in life do not come from obvious fakes which are easily spotted. The real danger is from the high quality counterfeits which imitate the authentic so well that they fool many people. 
Andrew Tallman AKA Andrew McKay


Perhaps Homophobia Isn’t a Choice Either

Andrew Tallman | Aug 21, 2008
Andrew Tallman

As a Christian who takes the Bible seriously, I believe that any sexual activity other than that between a man and his wife is illicit. This includes adultery, premarital sex and, of course, homosexuality.

But I’ve also been doing what my parents always taught me to do: listen to those who disagree with me. And I think I’ve discovered something rather shocking: opposition to homosexuality must itself be genetic.

For as long as I can remember, homosexuals have been explaining why gay people have no choice about their orientation. And it finally dawned on me that their arguments explain why being anti-gay is also not a choice but an innate predisposition beyond our power to restrain. This led me to embrace my convictions and stop trying in vain to repress who I am.

Since millions suffer from this same condition, I’m hopeful that my epiphany will help others accept themselves and their convictions, too. Here are insights that helped me, in no particular order.

Insight 1: You cannot control whom you love

Although there are different kinds of love, some of which involve choice and some of which do not, this realization about passion led me to a very liberating conclusion. If we can’t control whom we love, that’s because we can’t control our strong passions. But passions can be both for and against. And, just as gay love is a passion which is impossible to control, I now know that my passionate anti-gayness must also be impossible to control. I might wish I could change, but it’s hopeless. My judgmental tendency draws me as irresistibly as their same-sex affection. 

Insight 2: People shouldn’t have to restrain acting on their innate desires

I used to think that restraint was the key differentiator between animals and men. But then it was explained to me that sexual urges are such a deep element of real human nature that it’s wrong to suppress them. This led me to realize that moral urges are an equally deep aspect of human identity, and it must be unhealthy to try to suppress them, too. Just as someone may feel a deep desire to have same-gender sex, I often suffer the seemingly irresistible urge to espouse my views on sexual ethics. In fact, my desire to express my beliefs is so deeply human that even the First Amendment to our Constitution explicitly protects it. So it must be truly unhealthy to try repressing something as innate as opposition to homosexuality.

Insight 3: If one identical is twin gay, both are gay 50 percent of the time





Andrew Tallman Show Thought of the Day

...because life doesn't ask trivial pursuit questions.

Is baptism necessary?

When you read the book of Acts, you see a simple thing over and over: the apostles take the Gospel to new people, bringing them to confess faith in Jesus Christ and be baptized. Taking this as a cue, therefore, you would naturally think that baptism is a vital, normal, essential part of the process of Christianizing people. And you would be right.


Unfortunately, you wouldn’t be right for the right reason and the people who disagree with you wouldn’t be wrong for the right reason either.


See, there are several sorts of arguments which commonly arise over the place of baptism in the Christian faith. People argue about whether one can be a “real” Christian without being baptized. People argue about who is “authorized” to perform a genuine baptism. People argue about whether baptism is symbolic or sacramental. And people argue (endlessly) about what particular details are essential to a proper baptism. Sadly, although these questions make wonderful discussion topics, those discussions wind up being most successful only at leading the participants away from the truth for the simple reason that they miss the whole point.


In Matthew, there is a very famous passage called the Great Commission, where we are instructed to “make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that [Jesus] commanded [us].” One of the more common observations about this passage is that we are told to “make disciples” and not mere converts.” A disciple, we are then usually told, is a “serious” Christian who “really commits” to following Jesus by studying the Bible and obeying God’s commands. This is a fine observation cautioning against a real problem of one-night stand evangelisms which leave abandoned newborns strewn about the sidewalk. But it again misses the big point staring readers right in the face.


Why does this passage (along with all the events in Acts) connect discipling so closely with baptism? Not because of what discipling means, but because of what baptism is. The problem is that baptism isn’t about water or what words get said or by whom or even the metaphysical reality underlying it (or not). Instead, baptism is the rite of indoctrinating a new believer into a support and identity structure which Christians call a church. Baptism makes you part of the family. Not in a vague sense or part of some general family, but in a very specific sense and part of a very particular family: the one which surrounds you as you are baptized.


Just as children are born into a family, newly born-again Christians are baptized into a church. And when you start to think of baptism this way, you suddenly realize what’s really going on in both the book of Acts and in the Great Commission. The point about disciples is that they differ from “mere converts” not by sincerity or knowledge but instead by the fact that they can only become fully mature and healthy Christians by being part of a discipling community. And whereas for us baptism has all-too-often come to mean some individualistic ceremony, baptism for the early Christians (and for most of the centuries of Christians after them) meant incorporation (literally “to make part of a body”) into a particular group of the faithful.


That’s why I have to laugh a bit at the mischief I intended in selecting the title for this thought. The people who read it probably assumed I was going to offer some semi-definitive answer about whether baptism saves or not. Perhaps, already armed with their own answer to that question, they hoped I would finally align myself with them (or else with those they can safely dismiss as heretics). Shouldn’t the recognition of such impulses alone concern you?


The fact that we are inclined to take such an essential feature of Christianity and turn it into a pretext for theological squabbling should serve to reveal the big problem we should really be addressing: our concept of Christian salvation itself as an individual matter. We want to know which particular mechanisms or tests to perform so that “I” can know that “I” am saved or that “he” is not when a much better view would notice that the Bible is saturated with the notion of “us” being a holy community, “a city on a hill” if you will, who (as a group) will show that we are Jesus’s disciples by our love one for another.


So is baptism necessary?


Of course.


For what?


For the fulfillment of God’s basic purpose for all human beings: being tightly connected to Him and to each other as bundles of loving interaction, bearing burdens, sharing treasure, and functioning as an organism (or body or house) rather than as bits and pieces of random Christian flesh distended from each other by the thought-habits of a culture virtually incapable of thinking about human nature communitatively.


And lest some of you reading this develop a false sense of comfort from the fact that you “attend” church regularly or even “belong” to a congregation, allow me to notice that these are not the Biblical standards at all. Family is what family does, not just the shared name on legal forms or an address held in common. Family involves service and heartbreak and intimacy and proximity and interaction and history and a whole host of other things that offer a comparative test by which far too many “churched” Christians seem far more similar to the “unchurched” than they do to truly integrated members of a Biblical community.


Can a person be a Christian without being baptized? The question you should instead ask is whether a person can be a Christian by himself, to which the Bible gives a resounding denial. And if you think salvation entails anything less than membership in a robustly flourishing community of believers glorifying God by their society rather than merely their individuality, you have been sold a line of theology so thin it will barely hold the weight of even the most miniature Bible.


That’s why I say that baptism is necessary for salvation, neither for the reasons you normally hear nor in refutation of the denials you often encounter, but because of what baptism fundamentally is and how it fits Biblically with the entirety of the Christian message about God’s plan and purposes for humanity.

What is brave?

I recently watched for the very first time an extremely famous Western, “The Magnificent Seven.” It was excellent from beginning to end, but, as those who’ve seen the film (most of you, I expect) it is precisely the ending which both infuriates the audience and makes the film so special.

See, after they heroes talk themselves into going back into town to help the peasants and kill the bandits, Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen ride off into the sunset, leaving the town. What’s frustrating about this is that only minutes before they had both been vowing to give up their gun-slinging and settle down in the town as farmers themselves. It was this dream which seemed to motivate their odds-defying reengagement with the bad guys. So why the course reversal?

Well, one answer is that in the end, these “real men” realized they were just that, masculine archetypes who know at some level that they are unfit for the effeminate domesticity of farming and will never be fully satisfied outside a good fight. So the one temporary (and dubious) member of their posse returns to his agricultural roots and settles down, the four others die fighting, and these two ride off to further future do-goodery. “After all,” the audience is invited to wonder, “aren’t their services going to be wanted elsewhere? The world needs good cops, right?” But this interpretation misses the entire point of the movie and woefully demeans it in the process.

Who in this movie is a hero? Who is brave? Who is a man?

Although the answer seems obvious, it turns out to be exactly the opposite of what it would appear. And this isn’t idle speculation by some film critic me. Embedded within the movie is everything we need to solve the riddle, and solve it we must or risk seeing this as merely another reluctant-American-warrior-saves-the-day epic.

At one vital point in the film, the three young boys who (not coincidentally) have settled on Charles Bronson as their masculine idol come to him bemoaning their sad fate as the children of cowards. Their fathers, you see, have decided to cut a deal with the bandits in exchange for avoiding the risk of an all-out gun battle whose outcome is uncertain but will inevitably mean many peasant casualties. And so the boys want Bronson (the real man) to take them away from such a humiliating society. His response to their plea is swift and stern.

He smacks them around and adjures them to never call their fathers cowards, and then launches into a soliloquy contrasting the apparent courage of gun-fighting with the true courage of fatherhood. Their fathers, he explains, are the truly brave ones who make themselves vulnerable to the needs and the tremendous responsibilities of caring for their families. Gunslingers by contrast are cowards who neither attach themselves to anyone nor make themselves responsible for anyone. “You think I am brave because I carry a gun? Well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility! For you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do this because they love you and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage! Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee [that anything] will come of it. This is bravery. That’s why I never even started anything like that. That’s why I never will.”

The clear implication is that the men who decide to lay down arms and swallow the bitter pill of looking weak or cowardly because it is the prudent thing to do are in fact the brave ones. Reinforcing this point is the earlier speech Brynner makes when Horst Buchholz tries to duel him in the bar, saying that it is the foolish pride of young men that leads them to die so frequently over matters of honor. Clearly, the pride of the Magnificent Seven isn’t much better in the end, and all the fine speechmaking about settling down in town afterwards was merely a persuasive ruse toughs use on themselves to reenter the fray. They would rather die (which most of them do) than run away and live to fight (or farm) another day. That their ego-drivenness happens to benefit the villagers in this case is mere good fortune.

So in the end, this is a film which actually inverts the standard thinking about machismo in an entirely Christian and family-values sort of way, even daring to reveal the adrenalin thrill-seeking behind the thin veil of faux heroism. In this way, the Magnificent Seven is in a far subtler precursor to something like “The Hurt Locker” than to any of the less honest modern “hero” films.

But having seen all of this, one significant question lingers for me…a question which isn’t just about which way to come down on assessing a historically important film. The question, if the film’s embedded morality is true, is whether all those men (and women) who deliberately refrain from having children, for all their sincere-and-responsible-sounding reasons, aren’t at heart just cowards unwilling to participate in the world’s oldest and most terrifying mission of courage: parenthood.

Say what?

As most of you know, I’m pretty good at giving people the benefit of the doubt whenever that’s possible. It’s an essential part of approaching others with charity and humility, in addition to being an obvious implication of the Golden Rule. But sometimes, well, there just isn’t enough room to do anything other than describe a massive problem.


Yes, I’m talking about yesterday’s daily White House press conference wherein Jay Carney now infamously claimed the Bible says, “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” which it doesn’t. But Jay Carney isn’t the story. The fact that one staffer, even such a prominent one, would attribute an aphorism from Ben Franklin to Scripture is purely uninteresting, precisely the sort of blunder we are in fact called to overlook or forgive. Besides, it’s probably the most common erroneous attribution people make to the Bible, so the fact that Jay did so doesn’t bother me a bit.


What flabbergasted me was the fact that the entire White House press corps didn’t catch the error. It took Politico several hours later to notice that the White House transcript issued for the event had noted the error. That means that there wasn’t a single reporter in that room yesterday with enough exposure to Christian teaching to recognize Carney’s mistake on the spot and call him on it.


See, Evangelicals pretty regularly complain that the media or the leaders of culture don’t really get us. Sometimes that’s a fair complaint and sometimes not. But in this particular instance, I know I could go to any Evangelical church in the country and expect at least half of the attendees to correctly know this particular piece of religious urban legendry. So what I’m guessing half of all Evangelicals know, not a single major news reporter in a room of a hundred knows. And for a group of people who generally will pounce like piranha on even the most minor gaffe, their silence symbolizes a tremendous disconnect.


The good news, such as it is, is that the White House itself made the correction. They may have been prodded by outside sources, but a self-effacing government is always better than the alternative. But the White House hinting at its own errors is still quite some distance from a coalition of major news sources first admitting and then rectifying their vast ignorance of mainstream American religion.

What is mine?

Due to the blessings of ridiculously generous relatives, our boys are regularly showered with gifts and money for Christmas, birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Presidents Day, Valentine’s Day, and “Third Tuesday Fest” which I don’t even think is a real thing. Ever the diligent family accountant, my wife keeps close track of each boy’s individual bank balance whenever they go out shopping for toys. Well, an interesting problem has started cropping up.


Whereas Spencer and Ethan (7 and 5, respectively) always have consumer appetites which exceed their savings, Sage (3) has the reverse problem. As the beneficiary of two older brothers’ toys (and a dubiously grown-up father with some lingering childhood artifacts), Sage luxuriates in a continuous toy surplus. Having no real needs, the result is that Dani never has anything to buy for him with his money. Since the others will always be older and passing their former toys down to him, this problem seems likely never to fade. But it raises an interesting philosophical-economic question.


If the flow of toys is all Sage’s way but the dispersal of money is equal to all three, why shouldn’t some of that money go to benefit the undersubsidized desires of Spencer and Ethan? To put the matter more politically, Sage is the undeserving beneficiary of our family’s societal infrastructure the creation of which was not due to any merit on his part. So, even though the gift money is his, it seems only fair to spread it back up the inheritance chain a bit.


Now, I understand that a country is not the same thing as a family, and I understand that confusion over this distinction is near the heart of most of the mistakes of modern liberalism. That being said, isn’t there something here to support the idea that maybe some factions of our current political landscape are slightly excessive in their demand that citizens of a long-established society unequivocally deserve to keep every last scrap of anything that comes to them?

The gold-digger in me

No one likes to see his own flaws. This is what makes Christianity so fascinating. On the one hand it says your flaws don’t matter so long as you have Christ, but on the other hand it then entices you to look unabashedly at those flaws and eradicate every last one of them. The beautiful importance of this process should be obvious since even a casual survey of common human practice reveals a robust set of tactics for hiding our ugliness from ourselves.

Consider what I’ll call defense mechanism number 84, in which we soothe away the awareness of our own moral decay by finding a more extreme version of ourselves, labeling it as a special category of evil, and then castigating it as some unimaginably sub-human horror. Today’s case study: the “gold-digger.”

This woman is despised by society because she marries entirely (or even mostly) for the purpose of financial security, perhaps hoping (with enough age disparity) to become a surrogate heir to an existing male fortune. Evil, right? Sure. But for clarity’s sake, let’s rephrase. Described less pejoratively, isn’t she really marrying for the purpose of getting something from her spouse that she wants? The problem is that she wants something from him rather than wanting him.

But when you put it that way, it seems rather ordinary for the simple reason that we all marry for this reason. We marry in hopes of sexual pleasure. We marry to get entertaining companionship. We marry because our beloved is pretty, or accomplished, or appealing in some other way and thus an effective proof to others (and ourselves) that we are the sort of people who can bag off such a trophy. To put it bluntly, don’t we all marry primarily for the most selfish of reasons?

Oh, sure, we love the other person, but would we marry them if they were uglier, stupider, meaner, and more irresponsible? We may say “for poorer…in sickness…and in bad times,” but we don’t cherish those possibilities, and we strive valiantly to date around them. So unless I’m performing logic poorly, this means we’re all basically gold-diggers at heart, a conclusion our security in Christ permits us to face without the risk of psychological self-destruction. But there’s a silver lining to this precious metals analogy. None of this is a surprise to God. In fact, one might even suppose He knew it some time ago. And in response, He crafted the institution of marriage.

Now as anyone knows, marriage has a funny way of exposing your flaws and then cultivating your undeveloped virtues. You see, although she might resist it, I suspect that even the schemingest gold-digging sexpot discovers during the course of her matrimony that this man is worthy of love and that she cares for him as a man rather than as a means. That’s just what marriage does to you. And although I may have married for what I would get from my wife, over the years I have learned how to gain the most joy from being married for what I can give to her. Yes, it’s a practice I am still learning, but I learn it every day from the God whose pattern I am following and in whose marital health club for the soul I am growing.
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Who is this guy?

A philosopher and former agnostic who hosts a Christian talk radio show on AM 1360 KPXQ weekdays from 6pm to 7pm in Phoenix, Arizona.



Five Logical Errors of the 'Born Gay' Ideology

Andrew Tallman | Jul 31, 2008
Andrew Tallman

It is core doctrine of pro-gay orthodoxy that homosexuals are born gay. Though science has yet failed to affirm or deny this, the vast majority of gays and their supporters are convinced of it. Sexual orientation is seen as something discovered, not chosen. Instead of debating the merit of this assertion, let’s grant the premise that sexual orientation is determined prior to birth by genetic, gestational or other factors. The question is whether any valid conclusions flow from this. I don’t think so.

Error 1: Sexual orientation cannot change

If present at birth, sexual orientation could come from either biology or psychology. If biological, then a medical procedure may be discovered to alter it. Science gushes with the ability to change things we were born with, especially conditions which past generations considered permanent. We can treat genetic diseases, repair cleft palates, perform height-enhancing surgeries and even perform sex-change operations.

Similarly, if the issue is psychological, treatments may be possible. Many traits and behavioral patterns people believe ought or need to be changed can be adjusted by good counseling or psychopharmacology. Simple induction concludes that if medicine goes looking for a treatment for homosexuality, it might find one.

Many gays will be outraged at this line of reasoning. But why? We’ve been told that homosexuality can’t be a choice—apparently because so few would choose it. Clearly some gays would relish the power to turn their unwanted condition into an optional one. And why shouldn’t other gays be happy for those who would then be truly free to choose? After all, they’re happy for sex-change operations, which make it possible for transgender persons to undo the birth nature they think was mistakenly given them. How can gender be so fixably wrong but sexual orientation so unfixably right?

Error 2: I have no choice about how I behave

There are two kinds of inborn behavioral tendencies: the resistible and the irresistible. Unless we are supposed to believe that homosexuality is so involuntary that every gay sex act is literally a matter of biological determinism, we are left with the more plausible alternative: the desire to have gay sex does not compel anyone to actually ever have gay sex. One may not be able to control who attracts him, but he can certainly control who he has sex with. Consider the non sequitur of a gay man offering to explain last night’s particular sexual encounter by saying, “Well, I was born gay, you know.”


Here's How to Have a Great Wife
By Andrew Tallman
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the Lord,” and he who nourishes a wife preserves a good thing and maintains the favor of the Lord.

God allowed you to find your wife because He believed you would take good care of His precious daughter. This is why you obtain the dual blessings of having her and pleasing Him. But what happens when you don’t take good care of your wife? A man who neglects his wife makes her miserable and then she makes him miserable. As the saying goes, “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” But she isn’t the only unhappy one. I believe you also anger God by betraying His confidence in trusting you with her. After all, what father is happy when his son-in-law fails to keep his darling content?

I’ve been to many weddings, and I have yet to see a woman stand at the altar promising to “love, honor, and obey so long as you both shall live” while thinking to herself, “I despise this man, and I expect this marriage to make me miserable.” Not likely. She stands there with hope, anticipation, love, admiration, and the expectation of great joy in her heart. Unfortunately, if you fail to meet her needs and fulfill her hopes, she will not stay that way. The best way to ruin a good woman is to marry her and then fail to give her what she expected to receive.

Oh, sure, perhaps she exerts a tremendous effort and manages to stay sweet and wonderful in spite of you neglecting her. Even the Bible teaches her to love you into being a better man. But to expect or demand this from her is naively optimistic and, quite frankly, unfair. There is a much better way: the Biblical way.

When we quote Ephesians 5, men often emphasize the wife’s duty to submit. Okay, fine. But the husband’s duty is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church, His Bride. In thinking about the relationship between Christ and the Church, who has the greater challenge? Who does more? Who is primarily responsible for the ultimate success of the relationship? Your obligation to represent the love of Jesus in your marriage is a monumentally greater task than your wife’s obligation to represent the submission of the Church.

So, what does it take to have a great wife? Simple. Be a great lord. And what does it take to be a great lord? Equally simple. Know the needs and desires of your wife and meet them. If you don’t, she will become just the sort of wife you don’t want: nagging, withholding, bitter, and frustrated. God gave you a beautiful flower. He does not expect a dead thorn bush in return. You’d have done better to remain single than to so ruin the beautiful human rose He entrusted to you.

That’s the simple part. It may be unpleasant to ponder, but it’s simple. Your job is to nurture, cherish, love, honor, serve, provide for, lead, impress, and protect your wife. And if you never stop doing this, the chance that she will be a great wife is very good. Yes, she retains free will and may fail on her part, but, when you do your part, it becomes much easier for her to do hers.

So how is this to be accomplished? This is where things get dicey. Willard Harley wrote a very helpful book called “His Needs, Her Needs,” in which he outlines the top needs of women. They include affection, conversation, honesty and openness, financial support, and family commitment. This is all true. Gary Chapman wrote another helpful book called “The Five Love Languages,” in which he talks about giving love through gifts, quality time, words of encouragement, physical touch, and acts of service. This is also true. Gary Smalley has written books. James Dobson has written books. Ellen Kreidman has written books. And all the books in the world are helpful and at the same time not. Here’s why.

Women aren’t a formula.

Every woman is different. Every woman is complex. Every woman is mysterious. And just about the worst thing you can do is think that she can be solved like some math equation. Men, by contrast, are not all that complex. This is why men and women don’t understand each other. Women often refuse to believe men are so simple. Men often can’t grasp that women are so complicated.

Yet God is represented in both of these. He is at once both absurdly simple and astoundingly complex. He is straightforward and mysterious. In other words, God made it so that women could learn about Him by understanding men and that men could learn about Him by understanding women. That’s why marriage is such a rich theological gift.

And your part, husbands, is the harder one. Though the task is simple (to make her feel loved and precious beyond comparison), the method is not simple. Although I can confidently tell her what to do in general to make you happy (see my previous article), I cannot tell you the same about your wife. You have to figure that out for yourself, and, even if you figure her out today, it may be a new puzzle tomorrow or the next day.

That’s okay. That’s one side of God’s nature you’re experiencing. If it frustrates you, you’re really just admitting you’re frustrated with God. But if you take it as the greatest challenge with the neatest reward, then you’ve suddenly discovered something far more interesting than fantasy football ever can be.

But if I can’t give you a formula, why did I bother writing this? Because if I can merely get you to recognize the nature of the challenge and stop thinking that there is a four-step plan you can follow to nurture a great wife, I’ve already helped you immensely.

Let me conclude with a personal example. Most women like surprises. My wife hates them. Most women like to be given sweets such as chocolate. My wife likes it once but then gets angry because she worries it will make her fat. Most women like to be given lavish gifts that show their value. My wife considers that a waste of our carefully managed budget. Most women like to celebrate anniversaries. My wife couldn’t care less. So what do I do?

Well, I could ignore everything I know about her by surprising her with an expensive chocolate extravaganza on our anniversary. Then I could pride myself for having followed a set of rules that would apply for most women as I sit back to enjoy the fruits of my stupidity. Or I could let her purchase season 10 of Little House on the Prairie on DVD for herself at Target on sale two months before our anniversary. Guess which one I did? And she was quite satisfied with that. We must give our wives what they truly want, not what we think they want … just like God.

So, what’s the lesson? Learn what YOUR wife needs from you to feel loved, and then give it to her. Pay attention. Really pay attention. Try some experiments, and see how it turns out. If you find something that works, try it some more. Never stop trying to impress her with the things you will do to make her feel loved. But also never forget that she’s a woman, not a formula…just like God.

And if you follow this simple (and completely unsimple) advice, I suspect you’ll find yourself married to a great wife. At the very least, she’ll appreciate you trying so hard to understand and satisfy her … just like God."





5 comments:

Mel Pino said...

Absolutely unreal. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. At least it solves the problem of what his deal is--he's totally off his rocker, and just hiding it better than he used to.

I wonder how his formula of homophobia being genetic works in his brain for gay people stuck with homophobic parents?

Pro tip Andrew: no adultery required for that scenario. Cause, ya know. Bigotry and hatred ain't genetic--they're taught.

Anonymous said...

Its a common practice for radio and TV personalities to use stage names. So the public name is a brand and has a ring to it

Robert said...

*Yawn* Wow. I hope your constituents read this so they can realize how big of a moron you are. LOL. I don't follow your politics, because you're small time & think you're bigger than you are. You're a nobody. I don't really listen to Andrew's show much because he focuses too much on small time losers like you. No one cares. However, now I realize how ignorant you truly are it makes me laugh. And I mean you're ignorant in the literal sense of the word. You don't know what you're talking about.

You're ignorant because I know for a fact that the owners of the radio station FORCE their on-air personalities to use a "stage name" even despite their resistance to do so. So, Andrew isn't hiding behind a name. Also, if you ever actually listened to Andrew's radio show, then you would see how very UNEXTREME he really is. He doesn't purposely try to ruffle feathers like many other hosts & he does try to give an equal opportunity to everyone to share their thoughts. If you have a problem I guarantee you he'd get you on his show to express your views. Have you even tried? Doubt it - because you're clearly a coward hiding behind your lame blog & your select "yes men" type of supporters.

You're also manipulative. You cherry picked old articles that you deem as homophobic. Although people's thoughts can change over the years, I don't know if Andrew's has, but the articles you picked are also shared opinions by THE MAJORITY OF YOUR CONSTITUENTS! But I guess the majority don't realize you post your ignorant thoughts on this blog - otherwise you wouldn't get re-elected.

Grow up & educated yourself more & stop being a coward & go on Andrew's show you big baby.

Jeff Bergosh said...

Tallman is a fraud and a fake. I know you're a super groupie for him----but most of us spotted him long ago. Maybe you're a weirdo like him too--with whacked out weird beliefs and opinions that are way out of touch....Is that why he hustled out of Arizona? Ask him, fanboy. Meanwhile---yes Rick's show is the class of morning drive talk locally--everyone knows this---even Tallman knows. Now, get yourself really triggered and lathered over my factual response to you, "Robert, from Pensacola" LOL

Robert said...

Not a groupie 😂. As stated, I don’t really listen to Andrew’s show much. I don’t even think Andrew is that conservative yet he leans that way more than Rick for sure, but not near a level of controversy that you accuse him of being. And I don’t know why he left Arizona - but once again, it’s common in radio.

But thanks for responding.