Please allow
me to rant a little bit, but do read on.
I have a problem with hypocrisy in an example that I will provide:
A friend of
mine traveled to a local ball field to watch a softball game. He went with his wife and his little baby
girl. They arrive at the field and the
husband gets out of the car, he grabs two lawn chairs and places them where
they will sit together, he then proceeds to sit down. He leaves his wife to get the child from the
car seat, grab to stroller from the trunk, set up the stroller, put their child
in it, and then bring the stroller to where her husband is already seated.
To all you
women out there thinking “Who would marry him?” Yeah he made a bad
decision. He made some dumb mistakes,
especially when confronted. Another
friend of mine confronted him and asked, “Hey are you going to go help your
wife?” To which he responded that, “She is fine.” Again a very bad
mistake. I could write numerous negative
comments on his character and mistakes that he made, that go completely go
against what Christ and the Apostles taught a husband should be and do towards
his wife. But that will be for another
time.
So I talked
to the individual, a female by the way, the neglecting husband. She replied, “If my husband did that to
me. I would smack him.” I quoted her verbatim. Albeit she was sarcastic, but I confronted
her on that. I told her she shouldn’t hit
her husband. She replied that she
wouldn’t and she couldn’t hurt a fly, then said she would verbally abuse her
husband. Again she was sarcastic. I replied to her that two wrongs don’t make a
right. She says that she has a “right”
to be upset, too which I immediately responded “NO!!!” We don’t have a right to be upset. It is not her right to respond in a negative,
sinful way to his neglecting manner. Let
God judge him and confront him. Too
that, she scoffed and walked away.
Alright, my
example is finished, let’s get to the point.
Scripture is Ephesians 4:26 says, “Be angry and do not sin.” Does this passage give us a right to be
“upset” when wronged by another sinner? No, I don’t think so! When we are angry, the likelihood of us not sinning is slim to none. We are sinners, no getting around that (Rom.
3:9-18, 23). No, I think that this
passage in Eph. 4 does not give is a right to be angry. I think it’s a statement of when you do get
angry, because you will, don’t sin! Can you get angry? Yes! Will you get angry?
Yes! Should you get angry? No! I don’t think we have a right to anger or to
being upset because anger leads to hate, but love covers a multitude of sins.
This is my
first point. (Really this whole post is
in response to the conflict I had with my friend, this is not entirely
concerning the neglecting husband). There
is no right to be upset.
Secondly, I
want to move onto the sarcastic replies, “I’ll smack my husband”, “verbally
abuse my husband”. Okay sarcasm, I get
it, I really do. I’m trying to have a
serious conversation, but she is trying to be funny. But saying is the first step towards doing it
and she is a sinner so it’s very likely she would do it too!
“But Jakob,
she was sarcastic!” No I get it, I really do! But I really want to think about
it. If you are in Christ, He never tells
you to repay evil for evil. No, He tells
you to repay evil with love. Romans
12:9, Love must be without hypocrisy.”
By getting
angry, or upset, at your spouse due to their negligence, it won’t help the
situation at all. It will probably, more
than likely make it worse. There are
much better ways to address the problem, ones that involve love and don’t
involve repaying sin with sin.
One final
thing I’d like to address is gender roles.
The big bad word: Feminism. My
friend, though she will deny it vigorously, she has a very similar mindset to
what would be dubbed an ‘evangelical feminist”.
Basically what that means is a woman claims to be of Christ, but she
disregards the Biblical basis of the gender roles.
Why do I
bring that up? Because if I ever said anything like, “I would smack my wife” or
“verbally abuse my wife”, the things that would and could be done to me are so
numerous because of the society we live in of “women’s rights”. Even if I did so sarcastically like my friend
did, it wouldn’t matter. As males, as a
gentleman, we just don’t say stuff like that.
Is it too much to ask the same of the females?
“Dude you are
totally over-reacting!!!” We complain
about how much the church is conforming to society’s ways and conforming to
their standards. Let’s take a step in
the right direction and follow after God’s way.
Let’s listen to what Scripture has to say about gender roles and here I
am trying to take a stand.
Ladies, if
you don’t like being treated or joked about being treated negatively, than
please do not do it to us men. Men the
very same applies to you and treat a woman right!
Treat others
as yourself!
That is
all!!!
