Let's remember what the ultimate expression of love was by God. It was unconditional love, that is without condition. There is nothing we can do to prevent, alter, influence or change God's love us. We can reject his love, but that diminish his love in any way.
If this is the epitome of love, then this is what we all should strive for (man and woman). Let us free ourselves from such outdated indoctrination that suggests that only women are capable of understanding emotions. What a joke. We worship a mind-bogglingly sensitive God, an extremely emotional God whose enormous heart cannot be contained by his righteousness and holy judgement.
Jesus seemed perfectly capable of understanding and expressing emotions. Whenever I hear men act as if emotion is something that only humans without a 'Y' chromosome can understand, I shake my head a bit.
I would be satisfied if I could achieve one-one billionth of such unconditional love...not that such a statement has any real quantitative value. To be able to honestly tell a man who is about to shoot you in the face that you love him...wow that's just incredible, but that's EXACTLY how Jesus was dying on the cross. He loved literally to death the men who killed him. We have our example of unconditional love, now men and women, let's attempt to emulate it.
I think there is a certain stigma out there of online dating being "joke dating" or "hook-up dating". So you have a lot of jokers like that running around, even on a site like this.
Then you have the ones who aren't just looking to get in your pants, but still don't aren't really looking to settle down yet (especially if they are young). These people might be looking for good, honest fun with christian ladies, but are not looking for anything that serious.
The irony of the situation is the people who are looking for serious relationships tend to scare people away, as a result those people become frustrated with it and those who are left are the non-serious ones. That said, there are keepers out there for sure, just hard to find. But that's a needle worth finding in our great haystack :purpleangel:
Men have an enormous spectrum of directness and indirectness in communication. Some will walk up to a physically attractive girl and tell her "You're beautiful" while others might literally just hold a gaze with her a second longer than expected. Winking on a site like this just might be a low-committment way of saying "you are interesting". Type 2 males will be much more likely to do this than type 1, that's for sure, haha.
Then of course, as said above, you have the kind of guy who shotguns 100 winks and hopes at least 10 reply, using winks because it's time efficient. This method is less...romantic to say the least, but I cannot deny it's practicality!
It's also worth noting that just because it's the social norm for boys to chase girls doesn't mean that some percentage of boys actually want to be chased by girls. Such a gender role reversal isn't particularly surprising considering the enormous personality spectrum and there are certainly girls out there who enjoy doing the chasing.
Needless to say, these are only some ideas. It depends on the guy individually.
What I'll do is make sure that the God-given talents that we have been entrusted do not go to waste. The woman who has extraordinary knowledge of Astronomy and Quantum Mechanics ought not let it go to waste. For those to whom God has given much, he expects much. All women have been given certain physical attributes, but not all have been given certain mental abilities. To not properly use these would be spitting on what God has given to you.
I absolutely agree that women on average are more nurturing than men. I am not arguing for a total gender reversal, on the contrary I am simply criticizing the gender stereotyping in general. I have met women who have not been blessed with much nurturing and I have met men who have been very blessed with it. We must not allow our gender stereotypes to let these talents go to waste. Instead of saying "Oh you're a man! Thus you MUST be good at these things" simply analyze people on an individual level to learn their specific talents and then use them for the kingdom. It is an oversimplification to assume that every single woman in the world is more nurturing than every single man in the world. This is an obvious falsehood and from a statistical standpoint makes zero sense.
To re-emphasize, I have absolutely nothing but the highest respect for women who stay-at-home and raise kids. I am not the person who scorns those who do. There are obviously biblical as well as scientific reasons to support this. As I said, it is my opinion that at least one parent ought to stay home and raise the kids.
My only issue is the idea that it can't ever be men. I simply find this outdated and arbitrarily sexist, especially now when the woman's ability to breast-feed a child is not required for a young child's health (as it can be stored/bought etc.) If the woman has the God-given talents to better financially provide for her family, than I would argue it would be sinful not to let her do it on no other grounds than her being the female of the house.
Of course we see in the bible men being dominant and breadwinners...because women weren't allowed to work and were treated as property. Women biblically weren't allowed to have political power, should we remove all political power from women simply because women didn't have it in the bible? It's an argument which is ignoring the societal context of the bible, and it's the same awful argument which racist white pastors used countless times to defend slavery. "Oh, well, it's in the bible. Therefore it's the right thing." Wrong. Just because a practice occurs in the bible does not make it ethical. Misinterpretation of the bible has caused countless harm to millions of people over millenia. Understanding the bible is as important, if not more important, than actually memorizing it.
We must not forget that the bible is full of horrible things, it is full of slavery, rape, incest, murder, war, adultery, prostitution among many, many others. Just because it is in the bible, does not in any way mean God supports it. There is no reason not to believe that sexism is just another one of these things that occurs in the bible, but ought to be avoided.
First of all, it says widows which weakens that passage's relevance to a married couple having children. Secondly, women could not have jobs in ancient times, so Paul telling the women to take care of the house isn't so much rebuking those who have a job, but telling them to do what they are allowed to do. Paul didn't say "don't get a job" since that would be the equivalent of telling a modern person not to take a hike on the sun. He's giving solid advice to women who have a family, but are in need of source of income.
It was fantastic advice for women 2000 years ago. Since then, society as a whole has accepted that women ought not be treated like dirt and thus they make (nearly) as much money as men do in the same job.
Some advice simply carries out regardless of time. The ten commandments and the virtues will never become outdated. These are intrinsic moral ideas that do not age, but financial advice to people living 2000 years ago is not likely to be relevant today. I don't believe in any way that Paul truly believed that it was intrinsically wrong for women to work, it was simply unheard of.
"Listening to our wives then listening to our ego and pride."
It's more important to be egotistical than to be kind and empathetic? That's not biblical. You might have switched the order there :stop:
At the end of the day, if man treated woman as man would like to be treated, the majority of marriages would be fine. Instead man treats woman how man wants to treat woman out of a disillusioned sense of superiority and sexism, and lo and behold women don't like that. Woman finds out man expects more than he is willing to give and she moves on... to the surprise of nobody.
You want your wife to obey you? Then obey your wife.
You want your wife to be sympathetic to your problems? Be sympathetic to hers.
You want your wife to be more energetic about your interests? Then be more energetic about her interests.
You want your wife to express her love for you more? Then express your love for her more.
Ultimately the issue here is the sexism involved. If one parent is to stay home, why must be the woman? Just because she lacks a 'Y' chromosome? Is that it? Old fashioned people tend to extremely exaggerate the differences between the genders. Some men (who are not gay) are far superior to homemaking than women are. There is a wonderful God-made diversity in the personalities and abilities of both genders and believe me we are better off for it. If the woman has a better paying job than the man, and it is decided that one parent needs to stay home, why would the wife stay home? It's totally illogical and harmful to the well-being of the family. If the male is more nurturing and supportive and the wife is more authoritarian and goal-oriented, why should the woman be with the children more?
I would say that having a parent at home is a huge plus, especially when the kids are young. As to which parent it is, use logic and reason to determine which one would do better.
I mostly agree with what you are saying, especially regarding the oneness of marriage and the sacrifice of only thinking as an individual (ideally rarely thinking about oneself). Your mention of trust is also incredibly important to the strength of any marriage. However, there are a couple things I must disagree with:
1) I am constantly bewildered by the notion that making decisions off of emotion is inherently flawed or bad. Throughout scripture, our greatest role models have make decisions off of emotion. Anything involving faith is emotional, as faith is not logical, but even beyond that one can look at the good Samaritan who acted out of pity, not practicality, to care for the man on the road, or even our Lord God who out of his incomprehensible love for humanity, irrationally sacrificed his son on our behalf. How can one rebuke the idea of allowing emotion to guide our actions when the very one we worship does just that? God did not need to save us, he had no logical reason to do so outside of his intense love.
Now, that doesn't mean that one should throw logic out of the window, clearly a God of math like our God likely has much value for logic and reason. I can imagine him constantly smirking in heaven when we figure out something about the universe.
2) I am not sure I understand you correctly here:
"A husband is to see his bide as spotless. If a husband thinks his wife is always thinking his wife is always trying to undermine his athority he is not seeing his wife as spotless."
Are you implying that women who think are rebellious? Not only is this the same kind of thinking that prevented women from having access to education for millennia, but it also seems strange to me relative to your previous point that I addressed. You mention how women act on emotion and feelings and that needs to be correct by someone thinking logically, but then you likewise complain when women think logically? It's a loss-loss situation it seems. Women cannot lead because of their strong emotions, but when they are strong thinkers it's also bad too.
To me at least, I would want my wife to think all the time. A woman who does not think is a woman who does not grow, does not learn and instead stagnates. Jesus taught us to use our talents wisely, and the mind is certainly one of a woman's great talents. Similarly, I would want my wife to correct whenever I make mistakes.
What if I am trying to repair our car and am about to smash my fingers because of a mistake I am making? Would I not want my wife to challenge my authority? What if I misquote scripture in a philosophical discussion? Would I not want my errors to be challenged in place of the truth? Is my personal sense of pride more important the the truth in any form? For me it is not. For me to allow myself and my position to get in the way of growth and knowledge would itself be a sin.
I hope I haven't come across as abrasive or condescending, I am merely expressing my opinions and how they differ with others. Like I said, I mostly agree with your points, but I must respectfully disagree with these two.
I would argue that the philosophical difference from appreciating physical beauty and lust is not quite as clear as most would like to believe and that physical attractiveness is inherently linked to lust (whether conscious or unconscious). Human beings are extremely visually based creatures.
Now that doesn't mean that you cannot fight against the more vulgar part of yourself, but like sin in general, we can only fight against it. We cannot make ourselves live perfect lives.
However, it's only natural to want to marry someone you are lustful for. Lust is what has driven the success of the human race from its infancy after all! We simply need to limit it.
