What men really want
June 23rd, 2005The previous post was a joke…
Mostly.
If you want to land a man, find a good one (easier said than done) and then be supportive.
Real men don’t care about money or power or fame or looking good. Men seek money and power and fame and good looks because they truly desire the unconditional love of a woman.
Eve was created as a help-meet. Not a nagging, whining pain in the ass that is never satisfied. Ladies, you wanna know how to please a man?
Serve him. If you chose well, he’ll return the favor. That’s biblical marriage.
Twice, Paul said that a woman is to submit to her husband. (Ephesians 5:22 and Colossians 3:18) More precisely, he said “wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.” The word “own” there seems important, as does the final phrase of the verse. Fundamentalist preachers and other chest-beating Neanderthals love to preach on that. What they often fail to note is the balancing references.
Ephesians 5:25 says:
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
(Colossians 3:19 also speaks of a husband’s responsibility.)
Hey boys, did you lay down your life for her? Are you willing to? If not, then you have no right to expect her to serve you or submit to you. And you should note that it’s much easier to physically die than to be a living sacrifice.
Ladies, will you take his life and flush it? You don’t have to physically kill to murder. Murder is simply the taking of another’s life.
Love gives. Until you’ve given, you have no right to expect.
Love gives. Until you’ve given, you have no right to expect.
That’s the crux of the issue with most women, I’d say. God’s been trying to teach me this lesson for a LONG time. “Give, Elena, and do not expect the return from the human. You cannot depend on the human to return your love. But you can depend on Me. Your expectation of Me does not insult Me, because very few expectations of Me are unrealistic. The limit is don’t expect Me to follow your timetable. But you can expect Me to listen, to smile at you, to hug you, to laugh with you, to cry with you, to defend you, to teach you, to sing with you and to you and over you, to inspire you, to correct you, and so much more. I will be there when humans cannot. I will be there when the humans are there too. Let Me truly become your #1, and everyone else will take his or her rightful place in your life. When you seek from humans what ultimately only I can provide, you will be disappointed every time.”
The woman who places God first will be enabled, equipped, and emboldened to love a man in such a way that her love creates a safe place for him…a wide open space in which he delights to respond by laying down his life for her…and I think this kind of love points the man back to God. (Nagging is not nurturing!)
Both persons in a marriage should fulfill Christ’s command regardless of whether the other is doing what he or she is supposed to do. The wife should submit, unless she would be disobeying God or allowing injury to herself, even if he is not loving her as Christ loved the church. The husband should lay down his life, even if she is not submitting to him. Christ did what was good for us, even before we were doing right by Him. So…fulfilling our roles in a Christlike manner, whether or not the other person first acts in a way that encourages us to do the right thing, is living out Christ’s life.
Expressing love without succumbing to fear of reprisal, of rejection, or of meeting with blankness or coldness is the challenge.
I believe that Jesus can teach us when the kind word will be timely and will be well received (that the person will take it in and be blessed by it, even if you see or hear no outward sign of the kindness being appreciated) and when the person is being like hard ground and cannot receive what you are wanting to say or to do bless him or her.
Lord, let me see the other person’s need truly, not merely an opportunity to have my need to help be fulfilled. Let this be about You and this person, not about me.
I think that kind of attitude and prayer is CRUCIAL to relationships, especially marriage.
(I think I’ll post this at my blog!)
Hey DC, did I tell you I saw “Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood” on TV last weekend? It rocked! Starred the old cast, made in 2000, loved it. Got to seeing the South for the things it is known for, like the secret BBQ sauces, and being a good shot – the northern states like Montana and Wyoming get a nod too (they give respect to these states for being good shots). They still kick arse, can’t wait for the movie to come out. It better be good, I don’t want them ruining the legacy and all that.
Nicely argued, DC.
“If you chose well, he’ll return the favor. That’s biblical marriage.” And even if he doesn’t, you still serve. That’s also biblical marriage. The other Sunday we had a “lively” discussion on this topic. Women arguing that their husband’s failings were excuse enough for them not to be submissive. I thought it was interesting to note the couple dynamics of the most vocal. Shriek #1 is married to an unbeliever. Granted that makes everything more than a little murky and difficult (I can’t imagine). Shriek #2 has a husband who is a bitter mouse of a man who covers it nicely with smiles and ingratiating friendliness. Don’t have this one nailed myself, as the Mr. would say. He laughs at me when I talk about submission. I was a wannabe feminist who “demanded” equality and found only resentment. 11 years later… Better, but as God said in Genesis, my “desire would be for my husband.” That doesn’t mean the good kind of desire either. What I found of the original was “that of beast to devour”. Man eater anyone? I think I’ll muse about this for awhile.
To clarify, the man-eater comment was me before. I do try a lot harder now, and with grace and the help of the Holy Spirit, the failures are less frequent now.
Very few American “christian” women are able to accept Ephesians 5.
Athor,
Then there are a lot of “American christian women” who pick and choose the Word to suit their own paradigm. I wonder how much of the blessing of marriage I have missed out on by that very same inclination. How I must grieve the heart of God!
Athor,
Very few ‘American Christian men’ seem to even know that verse 25 of Ephesians 5 exists. I’ve heard a lot of preaching, teaching and talking about a wife’s duty to be submissive and respectful, much less said about the husband’s duties. Keep that in mind. Women are the way they are now in part because men failed in their duty – first, when Adam failed to step in as his wife fell to temptation and joined her instead – a pattern we see continually repeated, in things such as feminism. I’m grateful that DC pointed out both sides of this equation in his post.
Elena’s dead on though when she says that our duty is to God, first and foremost, regardless of how our spouse behaves. (It is a heck of a lot easier when both spouses seek to place God first.)
1 Peter 3:8-10, and probably onward, comes to mind. Also 1 John 4:10-11 and Romans 5:5-8. (The Amplified Bible and The Message are good translations/versions to put alongside your preferred translation…to point toward the richness of the original Greek.)
Hmmm.
Elena, I think you may be confusing the issue a bit now. There are three different kinds of love. All three should certainly be present in marriage, but I Peter 3:8-10 is speaking of philadelphos. (Or did you mean I Peter 3:1-7?) Romans 5 and I John 4 speak of agape and Ephesians 5 uses the very similar (in fact, root) agapao.
Then of course there’s eros, but we won’t go there right now.
On a related note, check the definition for agape. Part of it is a “love feast.” Now that’s descriptive.
Oh…
I second the Amplified Bible suggestion. I haven’t spent much time with The Message so I haven’t yet formed my own opinion on it. But I always tell people who are wanting to learn how to study the Bible, “The first two things you need after a KJV is a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and an Amplified Bible.”
Incidentally, the reason(s) I recommend the KJV to newbies is because any other translation as a primary text makes Strong’s ineffective. Also, it’s the version most often quoted, so it will be much easier to recognize/find verses heard or seen elsewhere. Most translations are fine for reading, but I think that for in-depth study one should use the KJV as the primary text and then augment with other translations. It’s flawed, but not too badly and it’s been entrenched for so long that it’s the standard.
KJV English can be a stumbling block for people’s reading comprehension b/c so much of the terms are no longer used and the connotations do Mach 5s over people’s heads. But I use it on our online search engine–the Strong’s concordance is hyperlinked to the KJV text. I now have two concordances at home. I’m becoming a Bible study resource junkie! ;o)
I think the Bible’s descriptions of how we are treat people in general are also applicable in marriage, so 1 Peter 3:8-10 still applies in marriage, although it primarily was talking about how to treat other Christians and how to respond to mistreatment in a Christlike manner.
Hmm…love feast? Wow…that is vivid. And interesting…because the same term is used to refer to the Lord’s Supper at some point in the Bible, isn’t it? Or was that some Bible commentator’s idea that I’m remembering? Hmm…
I’ve heard that C. S. Lewis’s books The Four Loves and The Screwtape Letters have interesting commentaries on love and marriage. I need to read those.
Yurgh…that reads as rather random, scattered thoughts… I’m sure you’ll decipher what I meant.
It read just fine. You need to stop being so hard on yourself, dear.
Athor Pell, the reason, IMO, is that “today’s women” do not understand the meaning of Ephesian 5. They think that they must be submissive to the man. But then the man thinks he must lord over his wife. Nope. Not what it means. It means that his needs come last in the family structure, the same way that Jesus gave his life the church.
As I have said, the bible was written by men who may or may not have been trying to share God’s word.
A husband and wife should serve each other, and should protect each other from harm, physical or otherwise. Be the person you are, protect and parent yourself, protect, and serve your partner, not because (s)he is incapable or inept, but because you love and cherish that person, and (s)he wants to do the same thing for you.