Book Question: Sacred Marriage

[Kliska]

I'm seeking a review on the book Sacred Marriage by Gary L. Thomas. I have a friend looking for some good books about Christian Marriage, perhaps in a workbook style or with a devotional. This book has high reviews on amazon, but told her I'd check with y'all to see if anyone's read it and if you'd recommend it, or another book. I've not read it, nor have I heard of Gary Thomas, so any info I can pass along would be helpful.

(Mods, feel free to move this thread if it belongs somewhere else on the 'boards...)

Thanks ahead of time! :heythere

[wife]

Nobody???? I just heard about it and came for opinions...

[Kliska]

My friend wound up reading it, but I haven't had a chance to see how she really liked it or how it lines up with scripture...

[wife]

From the description on Christian book it sounds really good.

Your marriage is more than a sacred covenant with another person. It is a spiritual discipline designed to help you know God better, trust him more fully, and love him more deeply.

Scores of books have been written that offer guidance for building the marriage of your dreams. But what if God’s primary intent for your marriage isn’t to make you happy . . . but holy? And what if your relationship isn’t as much about you and your spouse as it is about you and God?

[Kliska]

I read over some of the reviews at amazon, and they were mainly all positive, for whatever that's worth. I just had never heard of the author before either.

[Sing4Him]

Please take a look at his website and notice that he has a book on spiritual formation.

Gary Thomas is Contemplative--http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=1041&c=1


http://www.garythomas.com/html/articles/articles.html



Did God design marriage to "make us holy"?

6. Gary Thomas writes, “The thought that God wants me to serve him by concentrating on making my wife happy was extraordinary. Can it mean, then, that if my wife is unhappy, I’m failing God?” What are two things you could do regularly that would make your spouse happy, strengthen your marriage, and please God?


Holy Honor:Marriage Teaches Us to Respect Others


The Soul’s Embrace:Good Marriage Fosters Good Prayer

The Cleansing of Marriage:How Marriage Exposes
Our Sin

Sacred History: Building the Spiritual Discipline of Perseverance
1. What strikes you as being true about Nietzsche’s description of marriage as a “long conversation” with a good friend?

8. Personal holiness is not an overnight achievement. How might the concept of perseverance and persistence enrich your notion of holiness? How might actually persevering through temptation and difficulty enrich your experience of holiness?

9. Every marriage constructs its unique sacred history. That sacred history is aborted when one partner gives up on that marriage. What would each person lose if the sacred history of your marriage were interrupted?

7. Fellowship is fostered by three spiritual practices: learning not to run from conflict, learning how to compromise, and learning to accept others. Which of these disciplines is your strongest? Which is your weakest? How does your marriage give you opportunities to improve in the latter important discipline?

5. With reference to both Passover and Easter, the Harts refer to the “paschal mystery” of marriage -- the process of dying and rising as a pattern of life for married people. What does your own marriage call you to die to? What might it call you to rise to?

Sexual Saints:Marital Sexuality Can Provide Spiritual Insights and Character Development

Sacred Presence: How Marriage Can Make Us More Aware of God’s Presence

4. Gary Thomas imagines the presence of God between the cherubim facing each other on the mercy seat of the ark as a picture of the sacred presence uniting a wife and husband as they face one another in marriage. How has the presence of God united you and your spouse? How do times of disunity affect the presence of God in your marriage?

Sacred Mission: Marriage Can Develop Our Spiritual Calling, Mission, and Purpose and Epilogue: The Holy Couple



This week, the Awaken 2008 with Erwin McManus is taking place at William Carey University in Pasadena, California. Many of the event speakers (called “Thought Leaders”) promote contemplative mysticism, but one in particular, Mark Batterson, points readers on his website to Eckhart Tolle, a New Age guru who is currently being heralded by Oprah Winfrey. Batterson says that Tolle’s book, Practicing the Power of Now, is “instrumental in the way I think about life.” His public reading list also includes several other New Agers and mystics: Jack Canfield, Daniel Goleman (The Meditative Mind), Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage, Sacred Pathways), Leonard Sweet, Tony Jones, Brian McLaren, and several others.Other “Thought Leaders” at the Awaken 2008 who are contemplative proponents are Willow Creek’s Nancy Beach, Bill Hybels, Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus, and Rick McKinley.

[Sing4Him]

Why Focus on the Family Should Not Promote and Sell Gary Thomas' Books


Sacred Marriage, Sacred Parenting, and Sacred Pathways - Most likely, you have heard of at least one of these books. The author, Gary Thomas, is touted by Rick Warren, Focus on the Family, and a host of other Christian well-known ministries. Last year, Lighthouse Trails wrote a special report on Focus on the Family because of their promotion of Thomas and his book Sacred Parenting. FOF answered Lighthouse Trails stating that they saw nothing wrong with Thomas, and they were not interested in looking at the documentation that proved otherwise.

As we have shown in the past, Gary Thomas is an advocate for mantra meditation. In his book, Sacred Pathways, he states:
It is particularly difficult to describe this type of prayer in writing, as it is best taught in person. In general however, centering prayer works like this: Choose a word (Jesus or Father, for example) as a focus for contemplative prayer. Repeat the word silently in your mind for a set amount of time (say, twenty minutes) until your heart seems to be repeating the word by itself, just as naturally and involuntarily as breathing.(p. 185)
It is important to note here that Rick Warren also resonates with Thomas and his spirituality. Warren states: "Gary has spoken at Saddleback, and I think highly of his work ... he tells them [readers] how they can make the most of their spiritual journeys. He places an emphasis on practical spiritual exercises.2

But more research has shown that Gary Thomas' spirituality and his devotion to mystical practices delves into an area that could have significant ramifications on countless families. In his book Sacred Marriage (a book that FOF also stands by and sells on their website)3, Thomas introduces the reader to a woman named Mary Anne McPherson Oliver. It is Oliver's book, Conjugal Spirituality, that Thomas favorably referencing several times throughout the book. Thomas also references Oliver on his website in a Sacred Marriage study guide.4

Who is Mary Anne McPherson Oliver and why should Christians be concerned about Gary Thomas' promotion of this woman's book, Conjugal Spirituality?

On the back of Oliver's book, it states that "[r]eligious practice as we know it today remains, in effect, 'celibate.' Mary Anne Oliver proposes an alternative ... she examines the spiritual dynamics of long-term relationship." Some may be wondering, "What does that all mean?" To put it simply, Oliver believes that sexuality and spirituality go together and that couples are missing out because they have not incorporated the two but rather have practiced what she calls a celibate spirituality.

Oliver received her doctorate in mystical theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and her book permeates with her mystical persuasions. She describes her "discomfort" regarding present views on sexuality and religion and says she hunted for answers by talking to monks, going on retreats and even spending an entire ("liturgical") year at Taize, an ecumenical, meditation-promoting community in France. Eventually, she came to identify what she termed "conjugal spirituality" (p. 1).

Oliver says that "negative attitudes" and "walls" toward sex have inhibited people and says: "Although the walls are coming down, the separation of sex and spirituality which has been operative since the 4th century has yet to be completely eliminated" (p. 16).

What exactly is Oliver proposing couples do to remove these "walls"? Very clearly, her message to couples is to turn to mysticism. In dismay, she says that "spiritual counsellors [sic] and writers" have not begun to teach the "Upanishads and Tantric writings as the basis for moral theology for couples" and that [s]ome still refuse to grant that mystical experience can be associated with erotic love" (p. 18). Oliver says that changes in mainstream theology have prepared the way for "the emergence of conjugal spirituality." She adds: "An upsurge of interest in the spiritual life and a renaissance in mystical studies have widened the domain of spirituality" (p. 27).

This mysticism that Oliver encourages is experienced through "bodily exercises" that the couple practice together, "creating one spiritual space." Listen to some of her instructions in what she describes as "intercourse on all levels of consciousness":

1. "Center 'that whole human reality which some people are beginning to call bodymind'" (p.85).
2. "Two basic movements in which each can contact the core energy of the other and experience the enlarging of the oval inhabited by the divine presence" (p. 91).
3. Yin and Yang movements
4. "Concentrate in the stillness and silence" (p. 93).
5. "Center yourselves."
6. "Meditate using the five senses. Experience the circuit of energy circling slowly through the joined bodies" (p. 93).
7. "Focus a few minutes on the breath as a sign of the Spirit's activity within yourself" (p.102).
8. "Repeat name or "I love you" as a mantra" (p. 102).

In Conjugal Spirituality, Oliver talks favorably about mystic Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point and the "Indian Tantric Yoga tradition ... spoken of as kundalini potential energy" (p. 97). She describes public sexual ceremonies in which couples practice "Taoist visualizations and meditations, accompanied by breathing exercises" and talks of "nvoking the gods and goddesses." Oliver says that society may frown on such public displays of sexual mysticism at this time and couples may have to improvise until restrictions are lifted. She says that "sexual union celebrated [is] an eschatological sign of God's kingdom where all will be one" (p. 101).

In the book,[I] Oliver refers to Carl Jung and states that he "predicted that the West would produce its own yoga on the basis laid down by Christianity." She adds: "I believe conjugal spirituality to be just such a distinctively Western yoga" (p. 109).

For those who do not understand the significance of Gary Thomas' promotion of Conjugal Spirituality, perhaps a brief lesson in tantric sexuality (an underlying theme in Oliver's book) will help to illustrate it. Ray Yungen explains:
Tantra is the name of the ancient Hindu sacred texts that contain certain rituals and secrets. Some deal with taking the energies brought forth in meditation through the chakras and combining them with love-making to enhance sexual experiences.

Once completely off-limits to the masses of humanity, tantra, like all other New Age methodologies, is now starting to gain increasing popularity. A Google search on the Internet showsShows-First-Seen-Online Jan-08 6,600,000 entries for the word tantra! This union of sexuality and Eastern spirituality is a perfect example to illustrate just how much the New Age has permeated our society as it has affected even the most intimate areas of people's lives.

The potential to impact a very great number of people, especially men, was brought out in an article by a sex worker who incorporates "Tantric Bodywork" into her services. She paints a very sad portrait of the dynamics of the "enormous sex industry" in which millions of stressed and unhappy men seek out "erotic release" from women who are just as unhappy and stressed as their clients. She observes that there is a "culturally rampant phenomenon that spouses are disconnected from each other."

To remedy this tragic interplay of exploitation, she has turned to Tantric Union to give her clients what she feels is not just sex but "union with the divine." After she read a book called Women of the Light: The New Sacred Prostitute, she turned her erotic business into a "temple." Of this temple, she says it is:
...dedicated to being a haven of the sacred, a home for the embodiment of spirit, filled with altars, sacred objects, plants, art, dreamy sensual music, blissful scents. My space is home to Quan Yin [a Buddhist goddess], crystals blessed by the Entities of John of God [a Brazilian spirit channeler].
Now the "multitudes of men" who come to her get much more than they bargained for. In the past, wives and girlfriends needed only to worry about sexually transmitted diseases from cheating husbands and boyfriends, but now their men may instead bring home spiritual entities!

Most readers might think that tantra is something exceedingly obscure that would never attract average people. But the movie industry thinks otherwise. In a 2003 movie, Hollywood Homicide (starring Harrison Ford, one of the industry's leading men), viewers were presented with a brief snippet of tantric sex in one scene where fellow police officers opened the locker of Ford's rookie detective partner and out falls a book (which the camera focuses on) about tantra, revealing the side-kick's spiritual/sexual affinities. (from /For Many Shall Come in My Name, chapter 8)
In light of Gary Thomas' promotion of mantra meditation in his book Sacred Pathways, it makes perfect sense that he would be quoting from someone like Oliver. Now the question is, will Focus on the Family continue selling and promoting Sacred Marriage (Zondervan) and pointing people to the spirituality of Oliver, or will they finally realize Gary Thomas' books do not belong in a Christian bookstore and on the website of a Christian ministry.

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=844&more=1&c=1

[Kliska]

I may see if she'll bring it to me so I can read through it to review it. (I'll just add it to my summer reading stack; including Planet Narnia that I'm supposed to be reviewing too...good thing I like to read....)

[sandylion]

In light of everything said about Gary Thomas and his contemplative leanings, I read that book a number of years ago and found it excellent advice for all types of marriages, good bad and ugly. I would recommend it to anyone looking for christian council for their marriage.

Having said that, I will NOT recommend his book Sacred Pathways, which I also read way back when and was "puzzled" by it. Needless to say, now that I know what the words Emergent, contemplative, spiritual disciplines etc mean, I am no longer "puzzled" but well informed to refute what bothered me about that book. There was nothing in the marriage book that gave me the same sense that I got with the second book.

Hope that helps. :hat

[BlessedinHim]

http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=39939