We have not done enough linkage here lately. And there is some good things out there. Firstly, the cat may delay blogging, but she does not run the house. I do. And this is important. For when you are married initially (at least in my experience, and in the main article, as a man you think you are usually wrong. Because of what we are taught. Which is wrong.
The Bible is very clear that a husband is to be the “head” of the marriage and the wife his loving submissive partner. When this model, given by God, is violated over and over again in Christian marriages, as it was in mine, it is time to go back to God’s Word and try and get things right.You speak only part of the truth in writing: “The relationship between Christ (husband) and the church (bride) is an analogy for the relationship between husband and wife. A husband is supposed to love his wife like Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.”
You have left out the important first part of the equation: “Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband
is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything” (Eph. 5:22-24).And have also left out the second half of the purpose: “so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:26-27).
There is no husband that can do what God is asking of him to both lead his wife and help her grow up into Christ (sanctify her) if he is always playing from the follower position, or if he is trying to chase down her feelings and meet them. Husbands are to live with their wife in an understanding way (I Peter 3:7), but he must learn to do so in a manner that does not make him into a submissive husband, but instead her leader.
Lori Alexander commented in her own place…
Why is this? Why do women think they are always right? Because we think we are the leaders. We want to rule our husbands just as Genesis 3:16 states, “…her desire will be for her husband but he will rule over her.” Our desire is to rule over our husbands. God was right. Imagine that!
Most women think we know better than our husbands. We are smarter and wiser. We are more spiritual, emotional and sensitive. Bottom line, we think we ARE better than our husbands. Ugly, isn’t it? God ordained them to be the leader of the home, yet we take that right away from them, step into their big shoes, and take the lead. Most husbands have NO idea what hit them and I think Sean will tire of it soon, as Ken did.
We are NOT always right. Even if we are right, we end up being wrong since we are taking the leadership role when it is our husband’s role. We are sinning against our husbands and ultimately against God. Our position is one of submitting and following. This is exactly where God wants us to be. This is our safest place to be. God didn’t put us there because He thought we were inferior in any way. No, He built men to be the leaders and protectors. This was His plan from the beginning and it will stay that way until the end of time.
Well, it is the curse of Eve. It’s also economics: raising an infant is a full-time job and while a young woman is doing that — being a mother — she needs the support of a father and the economic resources he brings in. She is hands on most days, he is providing most days, and both are not working a mere eight hour day.
I’m thinking that women need to consider motherhood as a vocation again. It’s not as if the career tracks, even at the most elite level, are human and without abuse.
This leads to debt and despair. Time to bring out a few memes, in part because thinking that the 200 K minimum you have spent of a PhD which is not going to lead to a tenure track is despairing, and we have not had enough gratuitous cat pictures.
So what to do? Young men: easy.
- Get a trade. Medicine and Pharmacy count: Law counts less than carpentry.
- Have high standards. Godly, chaste, virginal, and without debt. Good domestic skills. (this is the hardest task. Requires a lot of prayer)
- Marry young, have kids…. and live out of town.
- Find a conservative church that preachers the gospel and supports Blblical leadership within the family. (this is the second hardest task. requires a lot of prayer)
- Enjoy watching the decline: the city may starve, the country will not.
And many young men are doing this. They are avoiding university. They are keeping their debt low. And they are not prepared to go for second best. Women?
Most will hate my advice.
- Do not go to university. Get a job.
- Work on your domestic skills. I have links on the list (start with HHH) where women talk about this, ask them.
- Keep to a budget.
- Select a tradesman. Better still, read Alte. You want a believer who has a stable job
- Stay married to him and raise the children, attending to your duties to God and your husband
But don’t think that having qualifications and a huge amount of debt is attractive. It is not.
You will end up with a sour face.
And then the wind will change and you will be left with it. Far better live in his world, woman, and learn to bring sun into it.
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Update.
The world hates this advice. It subverts their memes, for they want women educated, unhappy, blaming men, and using divorce to destroy male lives. Without the support of a traditionalist church and the network of women who remind each other that they are wives, and to stay in, it is unwise, without the help of the Holy Spirit this advice is foolish.
Divorce is horrible. I have one, and I don’t recommend it. And if you don’t burn with desire, stay single… but for the 90% of us who do burn, Paul recommended marriage, and the regular practice of the marital rite. (Telling wives that it is their duty to be well and truly “rogered” by their husbands is also against the puritan libidinous culture of our time).
You may be able to people the world with random hookups and unsafe sex, but raising citizens requires a family. The current society is raising a mob, and that has never worked out well.
Good advice if we lived in a legal vacuum, otherwise fatal for men.
The reason is this. Women, like men, are human beings subject to temptation and especially overwhelming temptation. Divorce is a legal action that becomes an overwhelming temptation because it allows a woman to take his house, his kids and half of his income until the kids are raised. If a man’s liberty is dependent on his wife’s ability to control her emotions, he’s 3 different kinds of screwed.
I’ve been married for over 2 decades because I took the advice you gave in the absence of reality and I’m seriously screwed. I deserve it, I was stupid and stupid should hurt so others can see and learn from the mistakes of idiots and avoid stupid decisions.
To put this in perspective, I would never encourage my daughter to enter into a contract that incentivized her partner to dissolve the contract and force her to continue paying into an enterprise with which she could no longer derive any benefit, with the consequence of going to jail or prison if she became too sick to work. And if the contract demanded she lose her house, half of her retirement and allowed her children to be held as ransom, I would do everything in my power to dissuade her.
The cruelest advice to give a young person, Man or Woman, would be to make the financially irresponsible decision to enter into such an absurd contract.
Advice to younger people should be given with prudence, not with irrational zeal, ignoring the environment they’re walking into.
The current legal environment penalizes Christian Marriage and our society abhors it. But our society will fail.
Don’t know if you saw the last couple of posts on HHH – but I have to say, knowing your lines of authority makes life SO MUCH EASIER.
I have things to do, I don’t need to make my life more difficult.