Husbands and Wives

 

This is probably going to tick quite a few people off but hear me out with an open attitude and lets see where this goes.

I want to talk about the roles we have as husbands and wives. There are set roles we play when it comes to God, Christ and the Church. God is the Father, Christ is the Husband and we , the Church, are His bride. Now, when it comes to our relationships with each other here on Earth, it seems as though these roles are getting mixed up. They are supposed to be a direct example of what is going on with Christ and the Church but we've gotten it very wrong. 

In Ephesians 5:21-33 it says

21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her 26to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to Himself as a glorious church, without stain or wrinkle or any such blemish, but holy and blameless.

28In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29Indeed, no one ever hated his own body, but he nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. 30For we are members of His body.

31“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32This mystery is profound, but I am speaking about Christ and the church. 33Nevertheless, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

You see, throughout the centuries from Christ's resurrection till today, women have been treated as, property, inferior, and objects of desire, ridiculed and persecuted. It is because of men that women have been mistreated, used and abused in our society. When we read, submit to one another, what do you think that means. If I live in a lopsided relationship with anyone, the one giving will always feel used by the one taking. In a marriage, the two are supposed to give and take equally so as not to upset the balance of things. It astounded me when I read an article about the 1950's housewife. Below is the article as written:

• Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.
• Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
• Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
• Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.
• Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper, etc. and then run a dustcloth over the tables.
• Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.
• Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer, or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.
• Be happy to see him.
• Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.
• Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.
• Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home later or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax.
• Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.
• Don't greet him with complaints and problems.
• Don't complain if he's late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through at work.
• Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie him down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.
• Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
• Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.
• A good wife always knows her place.

If your not appalled by that, then you may be the problem. Nowhere does it look like the man attempts at helping his wife in her needs at all. I especially like, "He is the Master of the House" and "You have no right to question him" or "if he goes out without you don't complain." From what Ephesians says, Husbands are to love their wives as they love their own body. Yet in this article it reads, the man has his needs, wants and desires and woman, you better be there to fulfil them when he needs you for whatever he needs. So it seems as though women were treated like housemaids, sex objects and mothers but not equal partners. I'm not gonna even touch on the voting issue because that's a man-made construct. I want to talk relationship here. If I was belittled like the women were in the mid-century I would have done the same thing. Women went to work when the men went to war. Women were expected to do the men's jobs, the men's sports and then when the men came back, they wanted them to drop the job they were doing and go back to being what they were before. 

Women got a taste of freedom and of being important when they got jobs. They're sentences as prisoners of marriage came to an end and working was their ticket to freedom. Previously, if they needed money, they would have to go to their husbands for it, now they we're making their own money and money creates freedom in our society. It gives a person a sense of power to have their own source of income. 

As women became more liberated from men and the restraints they had been under, the woman became empowered and with that a gender reversal began. Now the roles had been reversed and women all over started to feel in charge and able to live without a man. Divorce rates shot up, because there was a power struggle going on. No longer did women submit to their husbands and be women, they instead looked to the man as stupid, ignorant lumps of testosterone that couldn't do anything right. As we have progressed through the decades, men are now looked upon as inferior and weak and incapable. Their viewed as toxic and overly masculine if they even mention being the one who's supposed to be the head of the household. As gender roles have switched and women want to be like a man, it has forced men to be more like women, sexual confusion has now become pervasive throughout as neither gender know what they are or how they are supposed to act. 

Men are the root cause of all of this as they abused their role as men. Instead of doing their part to make a woman feel loved, treasured and special, he treated her like a slave, lording over her and making her feel trapped. Christ does not do that to the church and men should not do that to women. It says love and cherish her, make her feel like she's more than just a wife, cook and mom to the kids.

The pendulum of power has definitely swung the other way when it comes to marriages. So much so, every marriage now is a struggle for power. Men know in their hearts their role in a marriage. God has placed the desire for men to be respected and to be the head of the household. When women challenge that authority, it creates tension in that marriage. Women have now been taught by society that they need to be independent, strong and self supported. They are taught that they don't need a man telling them what to do. However, God also gave them the desire to be cherished and loved, so the power struggle in them causes issues in the marriage. 

This tension between men and women has resulted in men and women looking for love and respect in all the wrong places. Men with men and women with women or gender changes or gender confusion in general. It's all been created from a very confused and very dysfunctional struggle for power. As children are raised in a continuingly messed up society, they lose sight of God's original plan He had for men and women, to the point where the mention of the original plan sparks anger, hate, outrage and contempt for anyone suggesting it. God's original design is mocked, ridiculed and met with hatred because of the past hurts felt by men and further more, the church. We'll get more into that tomorrow.

How do we fix it? It started with men and it needs to be fixed by men. No matter how you were raised and what you were told, men are the head of the household and women are not the neck either. Men need to resume their role as God intended. Women must resume their role as being submissive. However, men cannot be masters over women. Read Ephesians at the beginning again. Men love their wives as they would their own bodies. 

For men and women to get back to God's plan, men need to stop treating women as sex objects. Men need to stop looking at or having sex with other women while married. Men need to be a man and not a child. Women need security. They need to know men can be in charge and trusted. They need to know if they stop being the man, are the real men going to be real men. It's a trust issue, again compounded by deadbeat dads, fathers, brothers or uncles through out history. Resetting everyone's role is the only way we can move forward.

However, it cannot be done unless it is done under the authority of the Holy Spirit. If we try and fix this in our own power or through our own nature then we are doomed to repeat the problem. We must hit our knees and ask God for the ability to become the men and women He intended us to be. We cannot continue on this self destructive path because it will end with our demise. We must tear away at our upbringing and claw at what society deems to be truth in order to for things to be put right. This is not a "right" by any historical standards either. We cannot look back into history and try to mimic the actions of anyone as they too were under the influence of our human nature. Hurts came through human nature, the selfish nature, but healing comes through the Spirit of Christ who is selfless. There is no way to turn this around except through Him.

So, men, I challenge you to drop what you know, drop your pride, drop your way of thinking and come to Him with open arms. Let Him purge you of every wrong thing in your heart so you can reclaim who you are in the household and in Him. Realize you have a great responsibility to the women and children in this world. Ask God to make you a piece of soft clay so he can mold you into what He sees you as. 

Women, drop your pride and distrust and come to God as your Father. Give Him all your hurts and insecurities so He can restore your proper place at the man's side. Let yourselves be cherished, first by God, then by a man who is seeking this very thing. Let yourselves be loved and pampered without the insecure feeling of being Lorded over. 

It's all possible through Him who came to give us redemption. It can only be done by losing our life and obtaining His. 

Originally, this post was going to stop here but then I realized, they won't understand unless I bring myself into this. You see, in my relationship with my wife we were both pretty messed up emotionally. She came from a divorced family and so did I. Her dad cheated on her mom. My parents split, my dad left to live 45 minutes away, my mom took a night shift job working from 3p to 11 or 12 or sometimes 1 in the morning. My wife had trust issues, I had abandonment issues. She wanted a man that she could count on and trust. I needed someone who would spend time with me. Long story short, it came very close to divorce. The only thing that saved us was our son. It was for him I wanted to make our marriage work and I'm not talking tolerate each other. I'm talking head over heels in love and living a life together that would be a good example for our son. I knew the divorce chain needed to be broken but how to make it work. In my first post, I talk about how I came to God. That was the first task. A great marriage always has Christ at its center. The second task was talking through our issues together. It is amazing what kind of facades we put up in front of those we love. If they really have a Godly love for you, they don't care how ugly you are. While you're divulging all your insecurities to each other you find out just how horrible you really have been and are. When you look deep into your heart and you quite blaming others for your actions, you come face to face with the nastiness dwelling in you. That monster in you must be gotten rid of in order for a marriage to work because it will always be about you, your hurts and your issues instead of caring for your spouse. Once the source of damage is found, that source must be forgiven. All sources of damage comes from someone else. Mine was my mother and she passed away before our differences were resolved which caused even more resentment. It took years before I could forgive and let go of all that crap. Meanwhile, she had to forgive her dad. It was a long road and we both knew we had to work with each other to mend our hearts with our pasts and simultaneously mend the hurt we caused each other. Looking back I saw how much damage we dealt to each other but I also see that as a gift. I would do everything all over again to reach the point we are at today. God was there the whole way. It was Him that first convicted my wife about going to church. It was Him that fought with me on that pew and excepted me as I was. It was Him who revealed our problems and Him who helped us change. It was Him the whole time up to this moment and beyond. To say we could have been OK without Him would be a ridiculous statement. We owe Him everything. So, speaking from experience,  I know people can change. Men can seek to become the men they need to be, like I did, and women can learn to be in submission without losing their independence like my wife did. It takes a tearing apart though, so God can rebuild you in His image. It takes a forgiveness of past and present hurts. It takes forgiving yourself and learning to love yourself. It takes realizing you need help from one another and God. It really takes one thing though, a desire to change and to be changed.  Without that, no matter how many people try to move someone,  if they don't recognize they need to change and that they can change, then all efforts are lost on them. Both parties must want change and know change can take place.

To God be the Glory for everything I am and have!