Men and Women wrap up

Over the last couple of months, Mark Halvorsen and I have been talking about Larry Crabb's book Men and Women. We have spent three hours discussing it on his show, Front Page. If you haven't had a chance to listen in, here are the three parts.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

One of the things that I pointed yesterday on the show was that although the book is called Men and Women, it should not be thought of merely as a marriage book. The topics that are discussed, particularly in the first half of the book hold a broad importance.

Dr Crabb opened his book with this quote from Fredrick Buechner: "'Original sin' means we all originate out of a sinful world which taints us from the word go. We all tend to make ourselves the center of the universe." Anwounded, and people are self-centered. We must decide which is the greater problem." It is easy to consider our woundedness, which should not be discounted or avoided, yet we are all deeply self-centered as well, which has a significant effect on relationships.
d so Dr Crabb begins to address how self-centered each of us are.  In our first show, we spent quite a bit of time discussing Dr Crabb's idea that "people are

In the second show, we spent time talking about justified anger. Each of us has a tendency to find ways to justify how we think and behave in self-centered ways. When we become angry at others, we make it seem like we are the victim and so feel righteous in becoming angry. Unfortunately, this "justified self-centeredness" blocks relational formation.

Yesterday, we made it through three chapters, which was amazing for us! The fourth chapter is entitled "surely I'm not that bad". Most of us, if we are honest believe that the way we act and behave is "not that bad."  Just today, I was convicted of a sin that I didn't make much of before hand, though today, I was confronted with the depth of my sin. The fifth and sixth chapters move into discussing that "change is possible" through the "celebration of forgiveness." 

It was a blessing to talk about this book and these important topics. I would highly recommend the book and I look forward to discovering what we will discuss next!