Month: January 2017

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When NOT to “Pray about It”

“I’ve prayed about it and I feel at peace.”

Peace about what?

“About filing for divorce.  No—he’s not abusive or neglectful; we just can’t agree about anything.  We fight all the time and the kids are picking up on the tension.  This isn’t what marriage is supposed to be about.  He’s not going to lift a finger—of course—but if I file he won’t object.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“We’ve prayed about it, and it seems like the thing to do.”

What’s that?

“Leaving the church.  Yes I know, it’s only been two years since we formally joined and stood up in front of the congregation and made those promises, but we aren’t happy with the way things are going.  There’s also that one guy that really rubs us the wrong way . . . no, we can’t put our finger on why it is, but they made that guy an elder!  We’re going to start looking around next Sunday.”

But remember, we prayed about it.  It’s always good to pray . . . unless what you really mean is, We talked to God and decided we were all on the same page about what we should do.  But God already has a page, and that’s the one we’re supposed to be on.

How often do you catch yourself trying to get Him to agree with what you want to do, rather than searching out what he wants, and then asking for faith to do it?  Because—let’s face it—what he wants you to do is often going to be hard.  Maybe so hard it seems impossible.  Maybe you even know, way down deep, what God wants, but you personalize it or generalize it or rationalize it or hedge it around with so many qualifiers the central command is smothered.

I know God hates divorce, but— (the bills, the fights, the chill, the drag, the chain)

I know Christ loves his church but— (the leadership, the bad decisions, the misunderstandings)

If you find yourself rationalizing, the first thing to do is surgically remove that three-letter word BUT.  The reason is because it opens the door to every excuse.  So cut it off and kick it out.  When it whimpers and scratches at the door, harden your heart.  Expel the fatal conjunction, invite the conjunctive adverb:

I know God hates divorce.  Therefore . . .

I know Christ loves his church.  And so . . .

Yes, there are valid reasons to end a marriage or leave a church.  If the reason is not so valid, prayer will not get God on your side.  When not to pray:

  • When you already know what the Bible says
  • When you know your own will is leaning against what the Bible says
  • When you’re fishing for justification for those inclinations

Don’t pray about what you already know.  Pray for what you desperately need—the strength, faith, love, and determination to do it.

 

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“Quite Contrary” Females

World subscribers may have read my column in the Jan. 21 issue called “Quite Contrary” (I didn’t pick the title but it’s a good one).  Columns about male-female relationships, especially in marriage, always gets a large response.  None was greater than “Upside-Down Headship” last March, when some men accused me of beating up on husbands while some women shared heartbreaking stories about being emotionally beat up.

The response to “Quite Contrary” was significant though not as great in volume.  The springboard for the column was  an article on the Atlantic blog about a translation controversy with the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible.  Way back in 2000 or thereabouts, the editors of WORLD made a style decision to use the ESV for all scripture quotes used in the magazine.  So the article caught my attention.  Apparently several Bible scholars have protested a decision by the ESV translation team to update their rendering of Genesis 3:16 to read “your desire shall be contrary to your husband” rather than “your desire shall be for your husband.”  To the disapproving Bible scholars, this puts women in an unnecessarily negative light.  I understand that response, but the point is not whether the translation is unnecessarily negative but whether it’s true—both to the original sense of the passage as well as to the behavior we observe around us.

And is it?  Probably not in every single case, but surely in mine.  I desire a loving relationship, but I want it on my own terms.  What those terms look like is often contrary to my husband, and it’s been a source of bitterness.  One little indicator: whenever anything goes wrong in my life, even a small thing like a habitually stuck drawer, my instinct is to blame him.  Not every time, but often enough.  Why? Because he’s not keeping up repairs or he made a bad business decision years ago or—or—  There’s always something.  But on a deeper level, it’s because my desires are so often contrary to his, and even contrary to him.

Some of the women who responded to that column have very interesting insights: “I react to my husband like I react to no one else,” wrote one (meaning, not in a good way).  Yes!   Another says, “[The common translation of Gen. 3:16] has long perplexed me, since by listening to most women, desiring their husband was not their strongest motivation.  On the contrary, his desire for her was more of a concern.” Yes!!  God created women to long for relationship, and we’re better at it—women tend to make friends more easily, bond to their children more quickly, and share their deepest thoughts with their husbands more easily (even if the guys are not always fascinated by our deepest thoughts). But it’s in our relationships that sin rears its ugly head, just as it’s the husband’s natural authority role that Satan loves to twist and corrupt.

Interesting fact: only one man disagreed with me about “Quite Contrary,” and it was more about the Bible translation I was using than the point of the article.  The wives agreed: Yes, that was me until I recognized what I was doing.  Many more men disagreed with me about my “Upside-down Headship” column, or they agreed in principle, but wanted to make sure I gave the faults of wives equal time.

My non-scientific instinct is that men tend to be a bit more defensive about their marriage relationships than women, which bears out what God said back in the garden: Your desire shall be contrary to your husband [relationship is where sin gets to us] but he shall rule over you [authority is where sin snares our husbands, either in the abuse of it or the neglect of it].  All the more reason to be grateful that God’s desire for us is greater than our tangled desires here on earth.

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Don’t Make Your Husband Be Your Best Friend

They were such a cute couple.  He was a youth leader at church, and she was his high school sweetheart.  They tied the knot with style: with singing attendants, recorded expressions of love to each other, loads of family participation, and really nice dresses.  About a year after the wedding, I stopped by with a few friends to visit their little apartment (how we all wanted our own little apartments with that special somebody!).  They were happy as clams.  “Marriage is supposed to be this big adjustment,” she told us.  “But really, we were best friends for so long before we got married, there wasn’t that much to adjust to.”

Best friends . . . that might have been the first time I heard that description of husband and wife.  It made an impression.  Marrying your best friend seemed like a foolproof formula.

It wasn’t too long after that—two years, at the most—when I heard they divorced.  The story was that she’d cheated on him with one of their “best friends” from high school.

Huh.

This little story is probably apropos of nothing, except that “marrying your best friend” is not a foolproof formula.  When it comes to marriage, nothing is foolproof, but here (in bullet points) is why I think we’ve oversold the spousal-best-friend concept:

  • In general, men and women do friendship differently.  Guys are comrades, teammates, colleagues.  They bond over projects or goals.  They are capable of heart-to-heart talks, but only after establishing certain parameters.  The ladies, being more relational, always have their feelers out for attachment and the boundaries are much more permeable.  In a dorm room or a coffee shop or a late-night wine-and-chocolate fest with the gals, we tend to spill our guts.
  • Related to that, men and women have different expectations of friendship.  With guys, it’s working together to get something done or solve a problem.  With women it’s talking through the thing that needs doing or working through their feelings over the problem.  Yes, I know that’s a bit of a stereotype, but stereotypes have to come from somewhere–usually from the facts.
  • From eHarmony radio ads. I gather that everybody’s looking for a soulmate.  Whatever that is.  Soulmates are usually made, not found; made over a long period of time, with lots of patience and shared experience.  If you’re expecting, on the basis of a few deep conversations with your fiancée, that your souls will mate right along with your bodies, you’re probably in for a shock.
  • Marriages are under enough strain without the burden of best-friend expectations.  You’ve promised to love someone for as long as you both shall live, to stay together through all the circumstances of life (good and bad), to go one way even when you both want to go separate ways.  Those are crazy promises and they require crazy commitment.  Sometimes you are not going to be friends.  That person who is thwarting your will, that person you are stuck to for life can sometimes look a lot like an enemy.  Those dilemmas can usually be worked through—unless you convince yourself that since your spouse is no longer your best friend, the whole relationship is built on false premises and is therefore over.
  • Marriage and friendship are different relationships with different structures and purposes.  Friendship is side by side; marriage is face to face.  Friendship is cumulative; marriage is transformative.  One of the most striking insights I ever read about marriage was in a novel written by someone who wasn’t married at the time: “Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions.  Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not.”*  Marriage is enjoying or suffering one another, not necessarily in equal balance.  And speaking of equal, the equality that’s a necessary element of friendship is the last thing a husband or wife should be concerned about.

Of course, friendship is a great thing for a marriage to be; it just won’t always be that, or only be that.  When the marriage is under stress for internal or external reasons, loyal friends outside the marriage (not of the opposite sex) can an indispensable means of relieving some of the pressure.  It’s hard to find such friends.  I’ve written elsewhere how churches that focus so intently on building strong marriages tend to neglect building strong friendships.  But we need a theology of friendship (do I feel a book coming on?) to help build those strong marriages as well as to serve members who aren’t married.  Good friendships may even be rarer than good marriages.  But that’s a subject for another post.

Puppies! Because . . . puppies.

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*C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, Chapter 7 (“The Pendragon,” section 2)

 

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Happy New Year–Again??

Create in me O God a pure heart

And grant a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence

And turn not your holy spirit from me

                                                Psalm 51:10-11

The Hebrew word for “create”—Ba ra’—is reserved for God as something only he can do.  It is not mere making, or rearranging elements that already exist, but bringing about something entirely new and wonderful.  This is what he did “in the beginning.”

Now I am reveling new things to you, things hidden and unknown

created just now, this very moment,

of which you have heard nothing until now

so you cannot say, “Oh yes, I knew all this.”

Isaiah 48:7 (New Jerusalem Bible)

In today’s political speech, when one side makes a bold proposal or pointed accusation, the other side often dismisses it with the charge of “nothing new,” as if novelty alone drove truth or relevance.  It’s a meaningless rebuttal, especially if the original point was never addressed when it was new.  But the terminology reveals something about all of us; we’re always growing weary even while looking for renewal.  We’ve been too many times around this track.  Sin promises the new and exciting but (eventually, at least) leaves us exhausted and miserable.  Sin makes us old.

In our marriages, our compromises, our expectations and disappointments—disillusion starts with sameness.  When will this tired cycle stop?  When will we make some real progress?  The problems are so obvious—why can’t we fix them? How many times must we go around this same old track?

In the presence of all your people I shall work such wonders as have never been worked in my land or in any nation. All the people around you will see what the LORD can do, for what I shall do through you shall be awe-inspiring.

                                                Exodus 34:10

The Old Testament tells of great revivals, massive turning points in history, when a sense of purpose and power swept through the people like a burning wind, setting off spectacular miracles like fireworks (see the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the beginnings of the monarchy and the prophetic era).  The fires quickly dimmed and the winds slacked off, because that’s how we are.  We get old.  Sin makes us old.  Revivals and mini-revivals fail to stick (see the book of Judges).  By the time Malachi appears, the people are set in their ways, petty and argumentative, meeting the LORD’s passionate accusations with a shrug: “Nothing new here.”

I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead . . .

                                                Ezekiel 36:25

Our hearts feel old and tired, even now.  If you’ve seen too many revivals and Next Big Things and This Changes Everythings—where after a few years Everything slides back to where it was before—it’s easy to become disillusioned.  But we must not.

In South Korea an obscure pastor is rescuing unwanted babies through the medium of a box.  In central Texas a former abortion nurse is pulling souls out of that miserable industry.  In the Middle East young men see visions and old men dream dreams.  In Africa, souls undergoing persecution find their faith renewed, contrary to all human reason.  In the well-worn tracks of human failure, bright footprints.

Behold, I am making all things new.   Rev. 21:5

Happy New Year—for real!