Saturday, February 21, 2009

Day 23: Love always protects

Daily Reading

You must fight to defend and protect your spouse and your marriage. There are outside forces that will come along that will try to weaken you, your spouse, your commitment to each other.

You have to be mindful and aware of harmful influences, unhealthy relationships, shame, parasites (usually in the form of addictions like gambling, drugs, pornography).

And again I'm going to take issue with the text.

Wives- you have a role as protector in your marriage. You must guard your heart from being led away through novels, magazines and other forms of entertainment that blur your perception of reality and put unfair expectations on your husband. Instead you must do your part in helping him feel strong, while also avoiding talk-show thinking that can lure your attention away from your family.

WOW. As a woman, as a wife... I am hugely insulted by this paragraph. Are these authors serious? First of all, they just made it VERY clear that the book was written by 2 men. Second of all, how demeaning is this?? How dare they presume that women are sitting around reading fluff novels or watching chick flicks all the day long instead of "doing their wifely duties."

Highly annoyed. Highly. So annoyed that I can barely tolerate eating any more of these bon bons and peeled grapes.

And the part directed towards the men (and it doesn't say husbands, it says men) just talks about protecting the wife and marriage at all times. That's it.

I'm so annoyed that I don't even want to continue on to the dare part. Thankfully, it's one that really doesn't pertain to our marriage. So I'll share it.

But after the talk that sounds like an excuse for abuse and the heavy handed ramming of God down the throat and now this idiotic and very insulting "instruction" for women... I don't have much interest in continuing.

Today's Dare

"Remove anything that is hindering your relationship, any addiction or influence that is stealing your affections and turning your heart away from your spouse."

Reflections

"What did you throw out first? Are there others that need to go as well? What do you hope the removal of these things will do for you, your marriage, and your relationship with God?"

3 comments:

Mim said...

Oh ICK! :( That really does feel like a kick to the gut to read.

I'm also a bit taken aback by the implication that removal of addiction is simply a matter of deciding to get rid of it. It's a bit simplistic to say the least.

Pass the grapes!

Anonymous said...

Actually this idea of love is far from what we are used to as 'worldly love' and God's love is perfect because he is love. The people who wrote it are merely using God's word to explain how Christ loves everyone and sometimes that is a hard pill to swallow especially when we are used to feminist thought processes. God has a perfect plan for how a marriage should work and if you cannot accept that then you are blatently rejecting God and will not be under his protection. It's not about being fair it's about helping your husband.

Anonymous said...

The authors are just using magazines or whatever as an example of types of things people can be deceived by and can make them distracted from their marriage. It could really be anything that is deterring you from putting God (Jesus Christ) first and then your marriage before yourself. There is no need to be offended because they are not saying hey you, you need to stop doing this. It is just saying protect yourself from satan's deceptions because they can look good. Marriage also isn't about being 'fair' since you mentioned that the men 'only' had to protect their marriage and wife at all times, which in fact is one difficult task. I will pray for you that you will be open to God's plan for marriage and that you don't give up just because of one thing you didn't like.