[metmom]

The Bible does not, by itself, teach you everything you need to know about being a spouse or a parent. It does not teach you everything you need to know about HOW to put up with the one person in the group who ruins things for everyone else.

Yes, it does teach you everything you NEED to know.

What it doesn't tell you is all the answers to the want to know questions.

And much of what is needed to know about being a good spouse is not labeled under the heading of *spouse*. There are things that make a good spouse that are covered in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles that are part of the *one another's*.

And of course, Proverbs is a treasure house of stuff for getting along with people.

[Mad Dawg]

So a 19 year old bride, just recently turned to Jesus, will find everything she “needs” to know in Scripture. She will not need any kind of guide? No pastor, deacon, wise friend? Just start at Genesis, and while the baby cries and her husband does the laundry, she should read, meditate, pray, reread, cross-reference, and so forth on her own? The Bible has everything she needs for ... everything she needs?

And her husband of barely a year will also start at Genesis and slowly piece together how to be a husband.

But who will tell them to change the baby's diapers? What will happen to the child while the parents are reading the all-sufficient and perspicuous Bible to learn their duties? No other source, you propose, is needed.

The husband has skipped ahead and now prays only in his closet. Regrettably he's allergic to moth balls, but, hey, the clear and complete Bible... or the part he's read so far ... told him to do that.

And no Christian would presume to advise him. So the baby has diaper rash, the laundry isn't done, the whole family has diet and nutrition issues. But it's all good because they're reading their Bible.

She's reading the Watchtower New World translation, and he's reading the NRSV. But there's nothing in the Scriptures about translations, and the Scriptures have it all — even when praying in your closet gives you respiratory distress. The Bible says closet, so closet it is.

[Mad Dawg]

So a 19 year old bride, just recently turned to Jesus, will find everything she “needs” to know in Scripture. She will not need any kind of guide? No pastor, deacon, wise friend? Just start at Genesis, and while the baby cries and her husband does the laundry, she should read, meditate, pray, reread, cross-reference, and so forth on her own? The Bible has everything she needs for ... everything she needs?

And her husband of barely a year will also start at Genesis and slowly piece together how to be a husband.

But who will tell them to change the baby's diapers? What will happen to the child while the parents are reading the all-sufficient and perspicuous Bible to learn their duties? No other source, you propose, is needed.

The husband has skipped ahead and now prays only in his closet. Regrettably he's allergic to moth balls, but, hey, the clear and complete Bible... or the part he's read so far ... told him to do that.

And no Christian would presume to advise him. So the baby has diaper rash, the laundry isn't done, the whole family has diet and nutrition issues. But it's all good because they're reading their Bible.

She's reading the Watchtower New World translation, and he's reading the NRSV. But there's nothing in the Scriptures about translations, and the Scriptures have it all — even when praying in your closet gives you respiratory distress. The Bible says closet, so closet it is.