Category Archives: Marriage

Misunderstanding Mrs. Proverbs 31

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The woman described in Proverbs 31 is meant to be an ideal. But in practice, she’s almost an object of ridicule among dedicated Christian women.  Who could do all that?!
At the same time, we don’t dismiss her. We ask her to wear a lot of our hats. She is called upon to endorse our preferences.

I have heard too many times from well-known pulpits and theologians and from other women, that the woman in Proverbs 31 is an ideal picture of a woman who has it all. She had a fulfilling home life and a career outside the home. I cannot find the evidence.

I certainly do not object to wives having careers. But let us refrain from misusing Biblical text.  Let’s let Scripture say what Scripture says, and not press it into our service. There may be Scripture to support our career choices, but I do not find that support in Proverbs 31.

Does the woman in Proverbs 31 have a career? Can we take a look together?

A wife of noble character who can find?
    She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
    and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
    all the days of her life.
She selects wool and flax
    and works with eager hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
    bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still night;
    she provides food for her family
    and portions for her female servants.
She considers a field and buys it;
    out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
    her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable,
    and her lamp does not go out at night.
In her hand she holds the distaff
    and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor
    and extends her hands to the needy.
When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
    for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She makes coverings for her bed;
    she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate,
    where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
    and supplies the merchants with sashes.
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
    she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
    but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Certainly no one can deny that this woman works. She is incredibly busy at home. She is such a diligent, efficient, committed worker that she seems to do the work of several people. Mentally walk through her day. When exactly do you find time in there for her to go to a job between “…she gets up while it is still night”…and “her lamp does not go out at night”?

Where is the career in this proverb? Is it this?

She considers a field and buys it;
    out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.

She is the wife-manger of her husband’s estate.  An estate would include a home and the land where all that the man owns is located: the fields where food is grown, animals are pastured, and other agrarian products produced, all for the provision and wealth of the owner’s family.

She is the manager of all she surveys.  She possesses the trust of her husband and her household, and the prerogative to increase the wealth of her estate. She buys more property to add to her family farm.  This makes her an independent real estate agent?

Or is it that we’re so addicted to the trope that says that ancient women were subservient and socially powerless that we are blind to the plain meaning here: she is a respected woman of social standing with perfect freedom to manage the household estate and broker a land purchase in the marketplace?

Is it this the career?

She makes linen garments and sells them,
    and supplies the merchants with sashes.

I use some skills I picked up in art college to create handmade books, which I sell. I do it all at home. I do not receive a paycheck. I do not spend my days assigned to a different location than my home. I do not observe company hours. And most importantly, I do not work for a boss.

Mrs. Proverbs 31 does not answer to any “boss” but her husband.  

The woman in Proverbs 31 excels at sewing.  She creates garments for everyone in her household so that they are properly, modestly dressed and warm in winter. In addition, she is such a diligent worker that she designs and sews sashes which she then sends to the marketplace to be sold.  She ingratiates herself with the merchants who will offer her products for sale by gifting them with these beautiful sashes. This has been a common practice of homesteaders and farmer’s wives throughout human history. This makes her a businesswoman with a career?

She sees that her trading is profitable,
    and her lamp does not go out at night. 

Picture her sitting in front of the household accounts at night after everyone else is in bed. 

This woman is a wife and mother who works tirelessly for the benefit of her family’s estate. She feathers her nest, she builds up her home. I  do not see any evidence in the passage which places this woman under the authority of a boss not her husband, or transplants her effort to another sphere outside her home, non-inclusive of her home

I just can’t find that outside-the-home job in Proverbs 31. If you find it, please let me know.

She opens her arms to the poor, and extends her hands to the needy.

This woman, and by extension her family, profits from the overflow of her domestic activity.  She is doing all these things for her household, and she is so diligent that she produces a generous surplus and God rewards her industry. This is the home overflowing out into the world, not the world — a job—inserting itself into the home. Nor is it her leaving her home to be profitable for another’s interest.

Charity begins at home; her generosity sends her wealth out into her community. Missions begin at home; her abundance sends the next generation out into the world and into the future.

Generosity, charity, philanthropy, obedience to the Lord’s commands to love your neighbor. Call these a career if you like but I don’t see it.

Don’t we have to devalue her hard work at home in order to insist that she have a career in addition to her homemaking?  If so, is that because the work done by a woman in her home, for her home, isn’t perceived as being “real” work? Or significant work?

Let’s find other sources of blessing on our lifestyle choices. Proverbs 31 Woman is busy enough without putting on all the hats we need her to wear.

Regarding “Women’s Day” and Similar Stunts

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“A Day Without a Woman.” Are we still doing this or did it flop?

So my new feminist overlords want me to be a woman who refrains from:

Paid job (Ah–but not the unpaid job!)

Emotional Labor (What does this mean)

Childcare (Please arrange for a competent substitute before you do this. And do explain to the children that, on every other day, you are being forced to care for them by your patriarchal oppressors.)

Diapers (Please don’t make the babies suffer. Secure a competent substitute.)

Housework (No complaint here. But can’t you refrain from this without an international event?)

Cooking (No eating.)

Sweeping (Why precisely sweeping…?)

Laundry ( Because men never do laundry.)

Dishes ( Because men never do dishes.)

Errands ( Because men never run errands.)

Groceries ( Sure– buy your groceries another day.)

Fake smiles (Only women have fake smiles; and all women’s smiles are fake. So no smiles — take that.)

Flirting (Awww. Because we’re so dumb we want permission to feel alright about not being forced to flirt.)

Makeup (Because every other day I mindlessly obey male-dominated societal expectations by applying the slave-paint as expected. We all know the fashion industry, the make-up industry and popular women’s magazines are totally male owned and operated.)

Laundry ( I get to not do laundry twice today.)

Shaving (It’s March. Not a problem.)

The women most likely do be excited about not doing these things probably aren’t doing them already.

So my niece is supposed to abandon her 14 month old son for the day? Her cousin, who cares for him on weekdays should refrain from caring for him also?

Are these the things which make me a woman?  Are these things exclusively feminine? Are these the things that oppress me?

If all the women who keep our society rolling every day really did strike, the results would be bad indeed. I don’t mean the few who will actually take a paid day off from their jobs, or the few who will pass off their childcare to another woman. Or that dishes will not be done. I mean the things women do that really make this world go around.

 Do we achieve peace and harmony through anger? Do we change minds by taking our ball and going home? Also,  if you think you need someone’s permission to strike, then aren’t you admitting that you’re a puppet every other day?

As a mere homemaker, I do what I do intentionally. No one forces me and I don’t need anyone’s permission to stop.

The most embarrassing aspect of an event like this is that it can only appeal to 1%-ers; meaning all of us in the first world. People with leisure, time and money to play at it. It accomplishes nothing for the woman who is actually poor, hungry or powerless. You couldn’t promote a movement like this in places where there was actually a problem. If you have the opportunity to choose to take the day off and shop at only small, female-owned businesses, you are one of the privileged, not one of the oppressed.

That being said, I’ve read some commentary from people who ought to know better along these lines: Even if women really struck, the world wouldn’t fall apart. Now if MEN went on strike, everything would grind to a halt.  An unfortunate sentiment which would encourage some to say we need a women’s strike.

Please, think about the women in your life refraining from the things they do every day which keep your world running smoothly. Think about what you wouldn’t know without what the women in your life have taught you. 

Let’s not confirm the division. Anything which is about dividing the sexes, about pitting them against one another, including the championing of one sex at the expense of the other…all of it tends toward destruction, conflict, tragedy. Nothing good can come of it.

Why? Because we were meant to be compatible, complementary, supportive of each other, invested in each other’s well-being, health, wealth, progress, and good outcomes. We were meant to do things together which neither of us could possibly do alone. Rather than seeking the destruction of one another, we were meant to build together.

And it unwittingly confirms the predictions God made about us at the beginning of human history. Men and women would struggle with each other for supremacy. We would perceive inequality where there was none and fight for our turf.

I think of myself as a human being. We human beings need to love each other, support each other, strive for better things together. If I divide myself from half of the planet, and half of the people in my life, I suffer for it, and so do they.

Gimmicks accomplish little, and division is nothing if not destructive.

 

 

10 Ways Large Families Save the (Earth) World

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1. I just finished wiping the icing off the bottoms of a bunch of birthday candles. I’m going to need those again in ten days, and again less than a month later. Why would I buy new ones when these still have a good inch and a half? Crumbs of old homemade icing never hurt anyone yet. I bet moms of two kids buy a new set of candles every birthday and throw them away.

Also, homemade-from-scratch cake costs about 1/20th of a bakery cake and tastes 20x better. Hydrogenated shortening kills; real butter doesn’t.

2. My son needed to do zero adjusting when he went to college and shared a room with two other guys. He shared a room with two guys at home too. Maybe my boys were unusual, but they never fought over territory. So at college my son was perfectly content with his bed and his desk; he let the other guys vie for lebensraum.

3. It is essential to learn patience when eight people share one bathroom. It is equally essential to learn sympathy and consideration for others (‘ bladders).

4. Bags and bags of clothing used to show up on our porch. We had never asked for hand-me-downs; people just assumed we could use them. They were right and we were thankful. It would have been difficult indeed to buy new clothes every season for every child. Most of the clothing we received was in like-new condition, and a lot of the items had price-tags.

Perhaps the most valuable component of these acts of generosity was that my kids learned that a second-hand item in good condition does not differ one iota from a brand-new one. There is shame neither in sharing nor receiving, and there is nothing which so inspires giving than receiving.

5. My kids are now adults who don’t expect the world to hand them all the amenities– partly because we didn’t teach them to expect gifts except on Christmas and their birthdays. They didn’t expect candy except on Christmas, Easter, and Halloween.

My oldest daughter was honestly judgmental about her friends expecting big gifts for Easter and lesser holidays. My kids know how to delay gratification, and although they do not always practice it, they know how to be frugal.

6. Reduce, reuse, recycle. It was our lifestyle before the motto was coined. I was raised by children of the Depression and learned to make my spending count. When I was growing up, we didn’t spend money on non-essentials but we had all we needed. We weren’t used to vacations and we were usually the last of our friends to get the latest tech like color TV.

We raised our kids with the same mindset: one not deprivation but careful frugality. Spend when you need to without regret, but save whenever you can for future needs. We didn’t spend much on vacations. We drove our cars until they were junk. Eating out or ordering in was a rare special occasion.

7. Contrary to popular assumption, big families have small footprints. We eight use approximately the same resources that the four of you, or the two of you, do.

At the same time they condemn parents of several kids for selfish and wasteful American materialism, my childfree acquaintances espouse the superior lifestyle of spontaneously flying the globe, to stay at the priciest family-free resorts, indulging themselves in only the finest and most select perks that the self-absorbed can devise. Driving further to shop for only the trendiest fair trade items.

I’ll compare my eight-person staycation expenses to your two-person dream trip any day you like. Guess who comes out using up more of earth’s precious resources? Virtue-signaling and Childfree -signaling don’t mix.

8. Happy families. Positive family experiences. Fostering a concept of unconditional belonging. We believe that being plunked in the middle of a bunch of other difficult human beings is actually according to a wise plan; we are each more or less compelled to learn how to live in peace with these other people, which teaches us valuable lessons about how to get along in a world full of other people.

9. Raising people who want to have children and build families, and who see the importance and enduring value of pouring their lives into others and investing themselves in creating a unique family culture which will continue to influence after they are gone.

In other words, small footprints may lead to small footprints.

10. Today, a large family orientation usually develops within a faith orientation. Our society has moved toward smaller families with the advent of birth control and the cult of personal fulfillment. I might also say with the de-emphasis of faith culture and the growth of materialist culture. It is counter cultural to have large families and, counterintuitively, large families very often happen due to deliberate choice. That choice usually derives from faith in the intrinsic value of each person, given by a gracious God.

Because of this faith orientation, the lessons of other-centeredness, the value of family, the hope of enduring heritage, good stewardship of material wealth, sustainability, recycling and reusing–all part of a whole.

Bonus reason: I love my big family.

 

 

 

 

 

Hero Fathers

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I attended my aunt’s funeral recently. She was the last of her generation in my mother’s or my father’s family.

Two of her children and one grandchild eulogized her and spoke of her affection and her infectious love of fun. It was acknowledged that she had had an unusually tragic childhood.

My uncle, her husband, passed away about fifteen years ago. Only honor was spoken for both parents. Yet I know there was such turmoil in that home. How does it all add up?

An extremely conflicted marriage which bore legendary stories produced five upstanding, moral, faithful, loving people. And each one produced functional homes and happy families of their own. Such is not always the case.

Somehow a couple who clashed tragically, worked together. They persevered to guide five children to responsible adulthood. The kids had two models who together covered most of the bases and who somehow taught them well to discard the bad examples and to emulate the good.

He was everything good in this world and protection from everything bad.

My cousin had this to say of her Dad. She borrowed it from her brother who wrote it for his eulogy.

It was certainly true for them and their siblings. I knew that he stood in the way between his kids and a lot of negative outcomes. The fact that all five turned out well is the proof of his success.

I knew him as a guy who had a way with stories, who loved to visit his elderly mother (my grandmother, who lived with us) on Wednesday nights for a glass of wine and a lot of laughs. According to his kids he was also a rock-solid course-corrector. In the face of nonsense, he was no nonsense. He poured out his whole life, all of his energy and time, for his family and for his kids.

And here is the thing that I think makes him truly remarkable: he stuck with a marriage that most today would have abandoned. This marriage was not one in which he found comfort, peace, or support. Clearly there was nothing in it for him for many years.

He stayed with his children.

Would anyone say this about him:

He was everything good in this world and protection from everything bad

if he had not chosen to stay and face the conflict every day, and owned the responsibility to keep his family on a straight course?

Today we are encouraged to live our own lives, to pursue our own particular brand of happiness, and to let go of what–and who–makes our lives anything but happy. Just walk away if you perceive another person as “toxic.” In other words we are encouraged to jettison difficulties, and to exclude what–and who–does not serve us.

How will we ever know what kind of people we are? If my uncle had not lived in the crucible, would he have known the steadfastness of which he was capable? Would his children know he was a hero?

It was a different time. He lived by an old code. Men were men. He stood up and did his duty. You can say all these trite things.

But it seems to me old codes and doing one’s duty, being a man and living according to a different time…knowing how men are expected to behave and committing to being a man…are all things that work. Thank God there are people who fulfill their promises, no matter how much it takes from them, who commit without turning back, who endure no matter what comes.

Fathers can be heroes, and my uncle was one.

 

 

Return to Respect for the Marriage Bed

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I am appalled when I hear of a young married man and woman being asked to spend nights apart because of ministry duties.

God created human society. At humanity’s core is the intimate relationship between man and wife.  It is the nucleus of the relationship between man and woman; it is the Big Bang which creates the family; it is the center of all human relationship. Church, village, nation, world–all human society springs concentrically from the source of this physical/spiritual union between man and wife.

God designed the marriage relationship as a human mirror of His most intimate, unconditional and expressive love. His love for His Bride.

The marriage bed is respected and set apart — or made sacred — by God the Creator. Have we bought into the world’s evaluation of married sexual relationships? The newly married couple–wink wink–now can have some legal fun. No big deal if they have to put other priorities before this bit of self-indulgence.

No, no, no. This is what God has to say in His Word about married sex:

Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Hebrews 13:4

Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Proverbs 5:15

Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth. Malachi 2:15

God designed the first years of marriage as a special time when a couple nurtures and builds their love. He knows that physical expression binds the two together in a connection so close that we can hardly comprehend. It is a mystical union meant to reflect the faith, constancy and intense affection that He has for us. It is how we seal the ownership of one another, heart, body and soul. It is a time to develop a new wordless language unique to each relationship. It takes time, intentional effort, and self-sacrifice.

But I’m in a struggling ministry and I’m needed, you say. If you are married, you will never have another ministry which supersedes your marriage. It is your Number One Ministry Priority. The cultivation of your marriage as an expression of God’s gift, and its maintenance as a representative of God’s unbounded love, far surpasses any other ministry goals over time.

We are here to represent God to a world which needs Him. We are here to love God through loving (verb) His other human creations. How better to do that than to live out a marriage as He designed, since your marriage is an example of how God loves each of us?

The marriage bed is not to de slighted. It is the far more important than the world knows. Let’s be the ones who respect the marriage bed. The freedom of the married man and woman, particularly the newly married couple, to cultivate this most vital foundation—unhurried, unhampered, undistracted—should not be infringed by anyone. No one should tempt a newly married man or woman away from the marriage bed, from the right to spend private time together overnight in their own home. The marriage bed takes precedence over other relationships. The marriage bed comes far before any other ministry responsibilities.

And no man, and no woman, having recently married, should submit to a request to spend an overnight apart from his or her spouse. To do so is to slight the other, and the marriage, and the Lord who sealed your union.

How do I know? This is what God has to say on the subject of young marriage:

“When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out with the army nor be charged with any duty; he shall be free at home one year and shall give happiness to his wife whom he has taken.” Deuteronomy 24:5

God is not winking and nudging at honeymoons. He does not think the man and wife self-indulgent who enjoy their new intimacy. Even our Creator respects the marriage bed and tells us that it is of first priority over virtually all others.

Who Will Stand?

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We are lost in an unfamiliar town. We are–all–looking for familiar reference points. But in our search for home, we are only getting more lost.

The world where we grew up is long gone. The world we felt we had mastered as adults is past. The world we recognized as changing quickly–but still secure–is quickly vanishing. The world you depended on just last year, obliterated by a furious need for quixotic social micromanagement, gone.

The culture of the left is imploding. Hollywood, no longer content with lecturing the Man and its audience, has turned its newfound strident sanctimony inward and is cannibalizing itself.

And the sanctimony will not be satisfied until every molecule of what we called culture–sports, entertainment, social media–is policed, weighed, and certainly found wanting. According to whose scale no one really knows.

Many commenters left and right have observed that progressive culture is eating itself as well. Upholding unexamined faith in a hundred contradictory premises is exhausting. The political left is splitting into increasingly smaller and increasingly self-important factions. Substitute tribes for families, congregations, and communities–and you get war.

Washington culture is sick and highly contagious. The political right is ineffectual because it is complicit.

Some on the right may cheer the downfall of the culture of the left. But let’s think about this for just a minute. What will replace it?

If it is true that our progressive elites are going down, if we are about to enter a new paradigm…what will that be? If it is true that the chickens have come home to roost, that the world that the change agents worked for is unsustainable, that the practically-atheist context is about to collapse under its own weight of illogic and to vanish in its thin moral vapor…

Are we who watched and shook our heads and abstained, we who prayed and criticized from the margins, we who talked good games about the world we would prefer…are we prepared to come into the vacuum and be what we were meant to be?

We gratefully accepted those margins because that little space gave us cover. It’s much easier to feel righteous when you can shake your heads at the unrighteous from the CCM-approved safe space.

Are we, the faithful, ready to take dominion over the earth, not in any political or socially-engineered sense, but as living representatives of the Creator? The people whom He has redeemed and called His own, the people who are called by His name, the people who He has commanded to represent who He is to an uncomprehending world—we have a calling. And it may be that, instead of hiding our lights under bushels in our contemporary Christian ghetto, we will soon have an opportunity to refresh the culture with His presence.

Are we ready?

 

 

Wife Receiver, Part 2

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Wife Receiver

Men. You like football! You think about sports all the time. Maybe you should think about your wife a little. Think of her as a football. Don’t leave her laying on the Astroturf; hold her next to your ribs on one side.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of creature is making editorial decisions. If my husband uses “porcupine” and “pigskin” in one sentence in which I’m the subject, and then sends out the video for all the world to see, I’m filing for divorce.

How did we get here? You start walking down a hall to get to some place. The hall goes on and on, it turns and meanders. You lose sight of your destination. You vaguely forget where you came from. You keep adjusting your context. Eventually you’re creating a pseudo-reality almost completely disconnected from where you began, or from the reality outside the hall.

The Christian media culture is desperately irrelevant. This is cultural dementia. A piece of video like this actually speaks to almost no one. But the tropes are so deeply etched in the unexamined narrative that they take on a kitschy facsimile of reality. Something once real was conformed to the trendiest version of popular culture, stylized again and again, frozen in trope and repeated for a couple decades until it seemed like truth.

Dementia creates its own narrative, tenuously connected to reality. Hunks of memory are lost, the blanks are desperately filled in with invented content, accommodations are made to the newly invented parts. This cultural narrative is deconstructed and postmodern at its core.

We could study the regression of the sitcom husband over the last 60 years from all wise father to dumb self-absorbed fratboy-in-recovery (recovery supplied by long-suffering bitchy wife). Sometime in the 90’s, translate that caricature to the Christian media culture. Plunk that boy down in “teaching” videos and  use him as a don’t-be example. Then have famous sports figures and media-culture leaders themselves assume the caricature in confession sessions meant to relate and instruct all their bros, who are assumed to have the same issues that swollen-headed celebrities do.

How many times am I to be “taught” how to be married by someone who nearly wrecked his marriage? I was an adult responsible for my actions but I chose to be a complete jerk to my wife for 25 years. But then I suddenly understood something obvious. Learn from me.

Those are your problems, buddy. My husband never fell for such stupidity. Why don’t we hear from people who’ve had good marriages all along? Might they not have some wisdom?

I think the essence of marriage is that you do not “come at” one another. My husband is the one person in all the world whom I can expect will be with me, on my side. If, in your marriage, someone is still coming at someone, you have not earned the right to instruct me on marriage.

The Christian media culture requires little any more but a very, very simple analogy to go to the presses or the cameras. When this one appeared in my Facebook newsfeed I knew I had to speak up. They’re getting worse– insultingly dumb, almost completely lacking substance, and in this case, difficult to find useful.

What can this analogy mean? How is one to apply this piece of wisdom? Should you compare your wife to a tightly stretched pigskin filled with air? Should you express your love by running up a field with her, forcefully knocking people over if they come close? Should you pass her to another receiver so he can get her over the goal?

Is there some mystical knowledge about “receiving” the ball that only your sportball brotherhood understands?

My husband suggests: Finally! Now I can be a wife receiver! I can’t wait to tuck you under my arm and cross the goal line, then watch the place kicker boot you through the uprights for the extra point! YAY!!!

Football is pretend war. It’s a game; it is not designed to reflect real life. As such, it does not seem a fitting place to find analogies for marriage.

But the worst thing about the marriage support media stuff is that it has bought into the unbelieving world’s premises. It teaches compromise and patching-up for a relationship seen as intrinsically combative. God has made married men and women one flesh, uniquely united in a way no other human relationship is.  The ideas promoted here serve to  sustain division where we ought to be promoting unity.

 

 

 

Simple Advice

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Be honest about what you ultimately want from your life. This is tricky because we’re dishonest with ourselves about this. And when we’re young we think there’s endless time and endless opportunity to change direction.

But time passes so quickly, along with opportunity.

If you want to look back at your life from the end and see a happy home and family of your creation in partnership with a person of the opposite sex, do not pussyfoot around with politically-correct posturing through your twenties and thirties. Stop trying to impress your peers and social media contacts. Get to work looking for that partner and developing yourself into a person who can create that home.

Decide what you really want from life. Shut out all the other voices around you and think about what you would regret not having done when it’s too late. Too late comes much faster than you expect.

If that’s the career of your dreams, go for it. If it’s public significance and gravitas, go for it. If it’s purpose without recognition, go for it.

If it’s a lifetime working together, shoulder to shoulder, with the person you admire and respect most in the whole world, go for it. Get to work.

Is there a person in your life who is kind, dependable, willing to commit to you? Do you think this person will support you through life’s rocky road? What more do you need?

If it’s you standing at a sink of dishes with a toddler or two roaming around wrecking havoc, go for it. If it’s watching your kids become unique and valuable human beings who better the world by their presence, go for it.

None of the options will just happen. You have to be intentional about what you pursue. Yes, sometimes things mysteriously fall into place, and God does drop things in our laps. But we must be able to discern those things as gifts, and not devalue them and throw them away.

I’m afraid we throw away gifts like garbage all the time.

Do we imagine that God’s methods, the ways he designed us to actualize those chances, are too outmoded for our enlightened times? What pride.

We are made for relationship. There is not one thing on earth more significant than building good relationships. The question is: what kind of relationships do you want as you walk through your life? How deep, how lasting? What will you have when it’s too late to change direction?

 

Marriage is Enormously Beneficial No Matter How You Come to It

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It’s Possible: Gays and Lesbians Can Have Happy Marriages by Doug Mainwaring

Striking down man-woman marriage laws on the basis of constitutional discrimination would thus send a message to the same-sex attracted that there is only one choice for them, that man-woman marriage is unattainable, that they are acting against their nature for desiring it, and that pursuing it will be dangerous for them, their spouses, and their children.

But the opposite is true. The man-woman definition of marriage is not an insult; it is an ensign, beckoning to anyone—regardless of sexual orientation—that the union of a man and a woman is of unique significance in light of its procreative power and complementary capacity.

The man-woman definition of marriage—conjugal, complementary marriage—is an ensign not because it is just a good idea, or the best among many. It is a bright ensign because it is the truth, undeniably displayed in nature and in each of our physical beings. We are made male and female, as complements to each other. And when male and female come together, they unite as one flesh. When two males or two females attempt to join together sexually, they remain two males or two females. To base marriage solely on romantic or sexual interests requires averting our minds from easily discernible truth.

Equality is a Quality of God’s Design for Marriage

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If God-designed marriage’s nucleus is the unique one flesh relationship, then God designed marriage to be a relationship of equals. Here is my proof-text:

 …Each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband.

In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.

Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.  I Cor 7: 2-5:

Here we see total equality and parity. Both people are equally accountable to render to the other (nothing less than) his/her body, and it is to be done freely and consensually. Both benefit equally.

(I like these two definitions of parity: 1. the quality or state of being equal or equivalent. 2. the symmetry of behavior in an interaction of a physical entity (as a subatomic particle) with that of its mirror image…)

And please notice: here the roles are exactly the same.

What else do we see?  Clear suggestions of ownership. Like this:

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm;

for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.

It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.

Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.

If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love,

it would be utterly scorned. 

Song of Solomon 8: 6-7

Yes please, that kind of ownership. My seal on your heart is a sign that your heart is mine, and only I may break that seal to open. My seal on your arm is a sign to the world that you belong to me. And your seal on my heart means my heart is yours, and only you may break that seal to open. Your seal on my arm is a sign to the world that I belong to you.

This ownership is irrevocable. This love is absolute. It is not a love which is measured in quantity, as in how much do you love? Do you love enough? It is a love that either is or is not. It is as absolute as death and the grave, as inevitable, as unyielding, as eternal.

We also see words like authority and duty. But the authority is mutual; don’t we owe one another something real in such a relationship?

What does our culture’s wisdom tell us?  That even here, especially here in traditional or Biblical marriage, is a negotiation of an intrinsically unequal relationship. Man: patriarch/oppressor, woman: victim/subservient. We must resign ourselves to an inevitable power struggle. And that God invented patriarchy and subservience!

Nonsense. The Corinthians passage was written to first-century A.D. believers in Jesus Christ, long after the fall of man. As such, it confirms God’s original intent for marriage and tells us that we may still possess that graceful, perfect union that He made for us.  In the midst of a fallen and broken world we can live in real equality and true harmony.

What do we make, then, of these passages?

…and you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.
 Genesis 3:16

The husband is the head of the wife. Ephesians 5:23

From Ephesians 5:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her  to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,  and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.  In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—  for we are members of his body.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

The passage containing “For the husband is the head of the wife” begins with “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The first appears to be an expression of inequality and submission, but the topic sentence is an expectation of equal submission, mutual deference, mutual humility. There is no contradiction, only context.

Then in Genesis 3, we see God the Father explaining to Adam and Eve that their choice to sin will result in a chronic power struggle as each one contends for his own interest instead of living for the other. This was not a command; it was a prediction.

God’s predictions: men will raise crops successfully but they will have to sweat and strive for the increase. Women will bear babies in joy, but first will come pain and anguish. The spiritual death you have chosen must manifest in physical death, else humans’ destructiveness to one another will be endless.

I’ve invented for you a mutually loving, mysteriously interdependent, incomparably intimate relationship, but instead you will choose to strive, alone, against one another.

Women will selfishly try to control their husbands, and men will selfishly assert their power over their wives. Each will contend against the other for his and her own desires at the other’s expense, instead of living in the sublime harmony He planned for them.

We always, always do exactly what God predicted. It’s like he knows.

More testaments in the Word of God suggest that mutuality and equity are His ideal.  Many of these passages are directed to all in the community of believers. Wouldn’t they necessarily apply to those within that community who have committed to marriage?

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. I Peter 4:8

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:10

This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  John 15: 12-13

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. Romans 12:8

Here also we see mutuality and equality.

Do we buy into our culture’s misinterpretation? In the evangelical church, we often substitute media-marketed counsel for true personal guidance and we find no end of this sort of stuff: Look at the dopey man; he just doesn’t “get” it. He’s just like clueless Adam, am I right? Men-just don’t be like him. Husbands, taking out the trash counts as foreplay!

And women, the most important thing you can do for your husband is show him respect by forcing yourself to have sex with him when you don’t feel like it!

These “Christian” marriage seminars, courses and books repeat the shallow lie that marriage is a constant struggle for compromise between two people who can never understand each other. They offer only a band-aid, a self-help guide for navigation through the unequal status quo, an eternal negotiation between doomed competitors– rather than two creatures of the same flesh, one created out of the other, who find their fulfillment in belonging together.

Grace upon grace! Even though the world is fallen, even though we are fallen, we still have access to that ideal that God designed.