Love and Respect


"However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband." — Ephesians 5:33

OK, I get it, men and women are wired differently. It doesn't take a genius, a Bible passage, or a world renowned speaker for me to believe this. I have eyes and ears. Also, I've been married about nine months, so I don't think I'm an expert on marriage, but I think I have observed a few things about communication.

But when I was watching the Love and Respect video series on marriage, I couldn't help but think this has been a bit oversimplified. I can read the passage above and see that it commands men to love their wives and women to respect their husbands. It, quite literally, says that. But how do we interpret that passage?

It seems to me an oversimplification to say that all men need is respect and all women need is love. Maybe, because of our differences, we lean toward those ends. But I don't think the Bible is trying to say it in quite those black and white terms.

For example, am I to take from this that as long as I love my wife it doesn't matter if I respect her? Or if she respects me, does that mean she doesn't have to love me?

I gathered that, in the video, the speaker thinks men are naturally inclined to respect their wives and women are naturally inclined to love their husbands. It's the flip of those that we have to work on. Maybe that's true, maybe not. I just get a little uncomfortable when people try to offer a simple, can't miss formula to make a marriage happy.

I suppose the flip side of this is that anything you do to think about your marriage, improve your communication, and endeavor to understand what makes your spouse tick is a good thing. After all, we seem to live in a disposable culture. If it's not working, drop it and move on to something else. That isn't the Biblical model for marriage. It's hard. It takes work. It takes patience.

So from one standpoint, anything that gets you thinking and working on your marriage is good. And I am sure this formula is helpful to a lot of people, and I didn't see anything particularly wrong with the idea.

I'm just not sure it's that simple. Nothing in life is.

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