The Most Weird Advice Joel Osteen Has Ever Given – Don’t Be Alone With A Woman Other Than Your Wife – Powerful Message

Joel Osteen told The Christian Post he follows the Billy Graham rule, which the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association defines as a mandate. The Billy Graham rule is a practice among some male evangelical Protestant leaders, in which they avoid spending time alone with women to whom they are not married.

This essentially mandates that a man can never be alone with a woman other than his wife. Some see the practice as respectful to marriage. Others find it regressive.

It is adopted as a display of integrity, a means of avoiding temptation, to avoid any appearance of doing something considered morally objectionable.

The rule has been named after Billy Graham, who was one of the early proponents of the practice. More recently, it has also been called the Mike Pence rule, after a US Vice President who also supported the idea.

Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse thinks the rule indicates weakness on the part of the man, suggesting that actions are taken to avoid temptation “don’t honor your wife,” adding, “They just presume that your marriage vows are so flimsy that you can’t be trusted to uphold them unless a babysitter monitors you.”

Of course, as Christians, we need to live with the utmost integrity in our relationships. Of course, we need not just to live that way, but also clearly to be seen by the outside world to be living that way. We’re called to be chaste, to be pure, to be above reproach. The Bible calls married people to live faithfully within marriage, and single people to be celibate.