Emotional Blackmail Order Printed Copy

Author: Susan Forward
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About the Book

"Emotional Blackmail" by Susan Forward explores the manipulative tactics used by individuals to control and manipulate others through guilt, fear, and obligation. The book provides insight into how to recognize emotional blackmail and offers strategies to set boundaries, assert oneself, and break free from toxic relationships.

John Newton

“Amazing Grace” is one of the most beloved hymns of the last two centuries. The soaring spiritual describing profound religious elation is estimated to be performed 10 million times annually and has appeared on over 11,000 albums. It was referenced in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin and had a surge of popularity during two of nation’s greatest crises: the Civil War and the Vietnam War. Between 1970 and 1972, Judy Collins’ recording spent 67 weeks on the chart and peaked at number 5. Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Elvis are among the many artists to record the song. Recently, President Obama burst into the familiar tune during the memorial service for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, a victim of a heinous church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. The song was written by a former enslaver Ironically, this stirring song, closely associated with the African American community, was written by a former enslaver, John Newton. This unlikely authorship forms the basis of Amazing Grace, a Broadway musical (written by Broadway first-timer Christopher Smith, a former Philadelphia policeman, and playwright Arthur Giron) which tells Newton’s life story from his early days as a licentious libertine in the British navy to his religious conversion and taking up the abolitionist cause. But the real story behind the somewhat sentimental musical told in Newton’s autobiography reveals a more complex and ambiguous history. Newton was born in 1725 in London to a Puritan mother who died two weeks before his seventh birthday, and a stern sea-captain father who took him to sea at age 11. After many voyages and a reckless youth of drinking, Newton was impressed into the British navy. After attempting to desert, he received eight dozen lashes and was reduced to the rank of common seaman. While later serving on the Pegasus, an enslaved person ship, Newton did not get along with the crew who left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, an enslaver. Clowe gave Newton to his wife Princess Peye, an African royal who treated him vilely as she did her other enslaved people. On stage, Newton’s African adventures and enslavement are a bit more flashy with the ship going down, a thrilling underwater rescue of Newton by his loyal retainer Thomas, and an implied love affair between Newton and the Princess. Newton converted to Christianity after a miracle at sea The stage version has John’s father leading a rescue party to save his son from the calculating Princess, but in actuality, the enterprise was undertaken by a sea captain asked by the senior Newton to look for the missing John. (In the show, the elder Newton is wounded during the battle for his son’s freedom and later has a tearful deathbed scene with John on board ship.) During the voyage home, the ship was caught in a horrendous storm off the coast of Ireland and almost sank. Newton prayed to God and the cargo miraculously shifted to fill a hole in the ship’s hull and the vessel drifted to safety. Newton took this as a sign from the Almighty and marked it as his conversion to Christianity. He did not radically change his ways at once, his total reformation was more gradual. "I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterward,” he later wrote. He did begin reading the Bible at this point and began to view his captives with a more sympathetic view. In the musical, John abjures slavery immediately after his shipboard epiphany and sails to Barbados to search for and buy the freedom of Thomas. After returning to England, Newton and his sweetheart Mary Catlett dramatically confront the Prince of Wales and urge him to abolish the cruel practice. In real life, Newton continued to sell his fellow human beings, making three voyages as the captain of two different vessels, The Duke of Argyle and the African. He suffered a stroke in 1754 and retired, but continued to invest in the business. In 1764, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and wrote 280 hymns to accompany his services. He wrote the words for “Amazing Grace” in 1772 (In 1835, William Walker put the words to the popular tune “New Britain”) It was not until 1788, 34 years after leaving it that he renounced his former slaving profession by publishing a blazing pamphlet called “Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.” The tract described the horrific conditions on the ships and Newton apologized for making a public statement so many years after participating in the trade: “It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” The pamphlet was so popular it was reprinted several times and sent to every member of Parliament. Under the leadership of MP William Wilberforce, the English civil government outlawed slavery in Great Britain in 1807 and Newton lived to see it, dying in December of that year. The passage of the Slave Trade Act is depicted in the 2006 film, also called Amazing Grace, starring Albert Finney as Newton and Ioan Gruffud as Wilberforce.

who is the fairest in the land - lessons for young men on attraction

Some single men miss wonderful women because they’re fixated on all the wrong things. Whether suffering from worldly ideals or an inflated sense of self, somehow all of the Christian women they meet are never quite their “type.” This is not all men, to be sure, but it is some men. I was once one of them. I wrote before on the possibility that the woman some men hold out for does not actually exist. Some responded, wanting to lay aside their search for the full-time Christian, part-time model — who is nothing less than exotic, enchanting, ethereal — and come to appreciate the imperishable beauty of the existent, born-again daughters of God around them. These men wanted to know how . How do you begin to change the eye’s definition of beauty or shape the heart’s attractions? They wanted to break free from the pit of unrealistic expectations. They no longer desired to keep as many doors open as possible, and wanted to lay aside their fear of “forsaking all others.” They desired deliverance from that subtly dangerous question: “Who is the fairest in the land?” The following counsel, by no means exhaustive, may offer helpful steps in the right direction. 1. Live for Something Higher Than Her Men should not spend more energy looking for the perfect spouse than they do on becoming a godly future husband. If they have no garden to tend, why would they need a helper? If a man has no vision for his life, why would he invite a woman to sit idly next to him on a bus traveling nowhere? At different seasons of my life I lived as though marriage was my mission. With nothing higher to put my hands to, I could sculpt many romantic fantasies. Godly men, however, invite women into a mission bigger than the relationship itself; they seek a helpmate to adventure with in service of Christ. This need not mean a clean and tidy ten-year plan, but it is nothing less than knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, following him, and desiring to win souls and advance his glory in our spheres of influence. And living for Christ always entails putting to death our lust (Colossians 3:5). A man who consistently indulges in pornography and gives himself to sexual fantasy endangers his soul and anyone close to him. He also inevitably develops expectations shaped not by God and his word, but by the collage of digitally-enhanced images swimming around in his head. His “type” will gravitate more and more towards lust than beauty, more toward the physically distorted than the spiritually attractive. His “love” will devour for its own gratification rather than sacrifice for a bride and children in the name of Christ. If you want to be attracted to the true and imperishable beauty in godly women, live for the glory of Christ and give up the fleshly drug that fills the mind with prostitutes (Psalm 101:3). God places emphasis on a woman’s godliness far above her physical appearance. He cherishes the beauty that does not fade or wrinkle. And so can you, if you are his son. Instead of only inquiring about a woman’s spiritual character after we are attracted physically, intentionally search out the inner beauty in the Christian women around you, ask God for help to love what he loves, and then see if they do not become more and more attractive to you. 2. Anticipate the Loveliness in Possession Men who sit in the restaurant looking meticulously through the menu, for hours and hours, drinking the free water but never ordering, do not know the pleasure of God’s covenant meal. They do not eat from the table of marital love. Perpetual daters have never savored the rare sweetness of these words: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:3). They pass, like I once did, on the three-course meal of possessing, belonging, and enjoying a creature fit for them within the safety of commitment. Solomon addresses his bride saying, “O most beautiful among women” (Song of Solomon 1:8). As a single man, I often wondered if I would ever be able to truthfully say that to my wife. Surely, I will eventually meet another more physically beautiful. Time catches up to us all, even the most beautiful faces. Surely he flirted with flattery , I thought, when he said, “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” (Song of Solomon 4:7). No flaw? Of course there was. She herself bid him not to gaze at her imperfections from the very beginning (Song of Solomon 1:6). I was ignorant of how covenant enhances the beauty of the beautiful, how her being his made her fairer than any other, how covenant changes the lover himself, even as his beloved ages. He spoke to her, “ My dove, my perfect one, is the only one” (Song of Solomon 6:9). She wasn’t someone else’s; she was his and he was hers (Song of Solomon 1:8; 1 Corinthians 7:4). What did he care for flowers on other hillsides, flowers he could not hold or enjoy, while this one, unlike any other flower God ever made or gave, now grew on his hill? “Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?” (Song of Solomon 6:10). His wife. His wife, as should be the case with all men, was the most beautiful woman in the world to him , for she was his. And he was hers. If God gives us a wife, she is our one lily among the brambles (Song of Solomon 2:2). She is the one we walk with, talk with, laugh with, cry with, make memories with. She is our lover, our companion, our crown. There is no other. And this love ages well. Even when we can no longer walk, we can still rejoice in the wife of our youth, “a lovely deer, a graceful doe” (Proverbs 5:19). Others may not look at her weathered skin, grey hair, and changed body as the fairest in the land, but we still do. We have changed with her. After years of setting our hearts on her, our one, our ideals conform to who she is, to the woman God’s grace has made her. And on that day, I am credibly told, we delight in a beauty whose physical allure is merely a petal. 3. Ask Instead “Can I Love Her?” A paradigm-shifting question for young men to ask is not whether they already love the girl they see, but can they love her — until death do you part. Tim Keller writes, “Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love” ( Meaning of Marriage , 79). I admit this is baffling to today’s conceptions of dating and romance. It is old advice given by many others, including the Puritans. Puritan love . . . was not so much the cause as it was the product of marriage. It was the chief duty of husband and wife toward each other, but it did not necessarily form a sufficient reason for marriage. . . . The advice was not that couples should not marry unless they love each other but that they should not marry unless they can love each other. (Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Family , 54) Love can be the product of marriage, not just the cause of it. I knew enough about my wife to know that I could love her (largely, because I knew God did). We did not have years of history together. We married after only knowing each other for nine months, half of which was spent continents apart, but I knew the quality of woman she was and everyone in her life corroborated that beauty. After following Christ, it was the best decision of my life. Once you and your wife have answered the question of can with “I do,” the question for husbands becomes: “Will you continue to love her?” And by God’s grace, our answer will most certainly be, “Yes, with all my heart.” This is something you can resolve and pledge. That’s what wedding vows are. In Love with a Shadow In the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King , the warrior-king Aragorn says of a girl who fell in love with him, or rather the ideal picture of him as king, In me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far. . . . Men, do not fall in love with thoughts and shadows, of great romance, mighty deeds, and lands far away, all while unthinkingly passing over future queens of heaven and earth. Retain standards that God calls you to have, and question the rest. Make war on rebel lusts. Consider the beauty a covenant bestows. Begin asking, “ Can I love her?” And above all, get serious about living for Christ.