| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Unconditional Love vs. Marriage Bondage
00:08:00
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|
| I have a provocative question. | |
| I don't normally describe questions I raise as provocative, but this is, and it's meant to provoke, by the way, not to provoke anger. | |
| It's meant to provoke thought. | |
| And that is, what's better for a marriage? | |
| One in which one or both spouses announce, under no conditions will we get divorced? | |
| Will I divorce you? | |
| Or one... | |
| Where that is not said. | |
| As you will have inferred, I worry about any time people are rewarded no matter how bad their behavior. | |
| That's why I am 100% opposed to unconditional love and unconditional anything. | |
| I don't. | |
| It's not that I don't understand it. | |
| I should be more precise. | |
| I oppose it. | |
| Let's be really direct here. | |
| I don't believe in unconditional salaries. | |
| None of you do, I assume. | |
| Well, that's not true. | |
| There is a big movement for guaranteed basic income. | |
| You don't have to work. | |
| We'll pay you anyway. | |
| I guess a lot of people yearn for unconditional everything. | |
| No matter how I treat you, you won't divorce me. | |
| No matter how I act, God and man will still love me. | |
| Not my cup of tea. | |
| All right! | |
| Oh, I had a terrific call from somebody that I was going to take. | |
| Yeah, it was sad. | |
| Somebody said they've actually experienced that. | |
| Is Line 1 working, Sean? | |
| Do you want to check if Line 1 is working? | |
| All right, let's see. | |
| All right, let's go to Don in Clarksville, Tennessee. | |
| Hello, Don of Clarksville. | |
| Hi, Dennis. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | |
| Thank you for calling. | |
| So I believe it would be more virtuous. | |
| For the spouse to want to honor God who hates divorce and would rather knowing that God only allowed for the hardness of one's heart for divorce to occur. | |
| And I don't believe that the motivation for my staying in that marriage as a result of knowing that would be one of either servile fear, that is... | |
| Uh-oh, I better mind my P's and Q's or she's going to out me. | |
| Or one that trusts her that, wow, you mean to tell me she's actually going to forgive me for what I just did? | |
| That is amazing. | |
| And if you'd allow me two examples. | |
| Sure, go ahead. | |
| One is, you mentioned the other day you were talking about divorce and you were talking about it being... | |
| A person remaining in a marriage, you mentioned slavery or you mentioned bondage. | |
| I would submit to you that the person who remains in prison because he doesn't want to reveal secrets of the United States of America is one for a higher goal or a higher value, willing to put himself under bondage for a greater good. | |
| You're always speaking about... | |
| Right. | |
| What is the greater good? | |
| The greater good is that that bond you've made before God, that you would not break that covenant. | |
| And the greater good could also be that you would want to remain there for the betterment of your children. | |
| I think that's actually a greater goal as well as your own self-serving interests. | |
| All right. | |
| Listen, you're a good man. | |
| You're obviously a good man. | |
| I respect every word you said. | |
| And in some cases... | |
| It works. | |
| I am involved very deeply in religious life, both Jewish and Christian. | |
| It's a very rare life in that way, in other ways. | |
| And I wish that deep religiosity guaranteed a good marriage. | |
| But almost everybody listening who is... | |
| A religious knows that that's not necessarily the case. | |
| Even people who share values may not get along. | |
| Values is like oxygen. | |
| You can't live without shared values. | |
| You can't live without oxygen. | |
| But oxygen is not enough. | |
| You need nitrogen. | |
| You need hydrogen. | |
| You need food. | |
| You need a lot of things to live. | |
| And a marriage needs a lot of things. | |
| Shared values is not enough. | |
| Shared values is essential, but not enough. | |
| This may simply be a theological difference. | |
| As I said, I am one of the greatest proponents living today of Judeo-Christian values. | |
| Look, on the Internet, I actually give example after example of what... | |
| Judeo-Christian values are. | |
| I don't just use the term. | |
| I give example after example of what Judeo-Christian values are. | |
| Type in Dennis Prager, Judeo-Christian values. | |
| I devoted about six or ten columns some years ago to defining it. | |
| Having said that, on rare occasion there may be a difference. | |
| I'm not talking, obviously, there's a difference between... | |
| Jewish and Christian theologically, there's a difference between Protestant and Catholic theologically, but values Catholics and Protestants share, and so do Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. | |
| But this may be an example, the attitude toward divorce in the Old Testament and the New Testament. | |
| The line that God hates divorce, one line out of the prophets, can be certainly compared to God hates war. | |
| Right? | |
| There's no question God hates war. | |
| Sometimes war is necessary. | |
| I worry about spouses taking... | |
| About a spouse, any spouse taking their spouse for granted. | |
| I don't like people taking anything for granted. | |
| Do you know why America is now in danger of being lost as America? | |
| I mean, serious danger. | |
| Existential danger. | |
| Because we took it for granted. | |
| That's why. | |
| People thought you can't lose America. | |
| You can't lose free speech. | |
| Just embedded into our souls. | |
| Anything you take for granted, you'll lose. | |
| And then, all of a sudden, you might know what you had. | |
|
Anonymous Call
00:00:22
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|
| Okay, let's see here. | |
| Anyway, it was an important call. | |
| That's why I started with it. | |
| An anonymous in Northern California. | |
| The famous anonymous of Northern California. | |
| Hello, Dennis. | |
| Hi. | |
| Uh-oh. | |
| One minute. | |