You have made some good points in your posts, esp. the one that the Prov. 31 woman is a married woman.
Yet, I do not think that she is an ideal, although I do think that she may be found in strange places. Whoever ordered the books of the Hebrew Bible, placing the Book of Ruth after Prov. 31, seems to think the same.
As to what kind of a man a Prov. 31 woman would find attractive, I would say it would be a man like Boaz.
I totally agree with the way you have described friendship in one of your posts in this thread.
Friendship involves getting to know a person for who they are without necessarily looking forward to anything more then discovering yet another brother or sister in Christ.
This process of getting to know people, as opposed to photos and textual constructions in profiles, is vital because falling in love with a picture is idolatry and so is falling in love with a textual construction.
This is why I insist on being good friends with someone before any further steps towards a relationship are being considered.
Well, I was introduced to these ideas about ten years ago. At the time I believed that giving and receiving gifts was on top with physical touch being rock bottom.
Now I prefer words of affirmation and quality time. Physical touch remains bottom.
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I would just add that if one was to read Exodus from the perspective of Isaiah, then the hardening of heart language is really a language of idolatry. Pharaoh is both an idolater and an idol in Egyptian culture. He has become what he worships. When we have this dangerous spiritual truth in mind (see, e.g. Psalm 115.1-8), there is no difficulty to understand how both God and pharaoh worked together to achieve God's intentions i.e. a clear-cut victory over the gods of Egypt and a strong testimony to the whole world expressed in the repetitive use of the phrase "so that they (Israel, the Egyptians and the nations) may know that I am Yahweh".
Thanks for the post. It is a very good one indeed and it made me think.
Yes, I believe that I am way too busy and that has prevented me from meeting people. Being a young seminary lecturer demands enormous amounts of time to be invested in the preparation of lectures of your own, rather then relying on the notes of your teachers. Last year it truly overwhelmed me so that I ended up staying in the office from 6AM to 11PM just in order to be ready for the next class. Only a good summer holiday with my family saved me from a burn-out.
Well, you can imagine how much time I had to hang out with people my age. Oh, and by the way, it is culturally inappropriate to date one of your students in my part of the world!
So, how do I turn this around. First, I made sure I did some of the class preparation during the summer. Next, I commanded :) myself to stay in the office only from 9AM to 5PM and no more. Thirdly, I will not agree to do any teaching that has not been scheduled ahead of time. So far things have looked better, although CDFF has remained one of the few means by which I meet people. Hopefully that may change some day.
To sum up, I honestly believe that one of the reasons why I am single is because I am to busy.
I would just like to add that Pacifists are by no means assivists! (pun intended) They do many things in order to prevent armed conflicts and bring reconciliation between waring sides.
You were trying to say this in some of your earlier posts here. Shame it did not get noticed and you had to do it in this blunt manner.
I begin to wander weather or not the option on the mail settings which only allow people from a certain country to contact you works in this way as well.
But yes, all Christians are not and must not be like that.
