Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Marriage Anyone?

Think about this. Women are naturally emotional creatures, I don't think that many will argue with that, and men are naturally logical. Lets think on that for a bit:

In the marriage covenant, the Lord places a woman (emotionally driven), with a man (logic driven). Could it be that the woman is representing the unconditional love (although far from perfect), that the Lord shows for us as we mess up over, and over again, and the man to represent his righteous judgment (an even farther from perfection model, but hey this is a fallen world and perfection is going to come on the other side of eternity)?
Now let me break this down:

A woman has a tendency, being the more emotional partner, to be able to hold on to a relationship through many mistakes and hurts inflicted by the male counterpart. Her emotion drives her ability (while at times to get incredibly upset) to also be able, and desire to, reconcile after the painful emotions have subsided. Reversing many of the instances of conflict would probably result in a man leaving and not returning. So, the woman in the end is given a more natural ability to "love", through hurt, pain, suffering, due to the gifts of her emotions. This is a (while at many times muddy mirrored) view to the world of the unconditional and perfect love that Christ gives us.

The man, on the other hand, is given to more of a logical (black and white) vantage point, and from that could be seen as representing the righteous judgment (and like I said, this may in the end, be an even muddier mirrored image) of the Lord to us. A man, more often than not does not let the emotion of the hurt interfere with the justice of the outcome of the incident, ie they can agree to disagree, and also want to punish the opposite side of the equation because in the fallen state of mind they view it as a "just" response. On the positive side, this logical side gives the world a view of how the Lord deals with our actions, with emotion being set aside, there are certain consequences that He allows us to face due to our attitude of sin.

Now lets go even deeper,

In Ephesians 5, God calls men to love their wives as Christ loves the church. This is in all actuallity the complete opposite of the natural way they are created. It lines up much more towards the disposition of woman.

Woman, on the other hand, is called to submit to her husband, as to the Lord, once again, completely opposite of her natural ability, due to the uncontrollable emotions, and desire to love that drives her. This command is much more representative of something that a man naturally does. How? A man, by seeing logic, understands that when someone is put in leadership above them, it is logical to follow because of the position they were given, thus respect is a natural by-product of the position given.

So lets tie it all together. Women naturally are given the ability to reflect the unconditional love of Christ, and men given the ability to reflect the judgement of Christ. We are then given to each other in marriage, and commanded to work on doing the exact opposite of what we naturally are able to do. Now does anyone else see the sanctification at work in this process? No wonder marriage is hard right? No wonder it is also fulfilling! Within the confines of marriage, we are able to exploit our natural tendency (which is the easiest thing in the world for us to do), and at the same time, are constantly being taught how to grow in the opposite of that, the most unnatural thing in the world!(which is one of the hardest things to do!).

Marriage is certainly a "mystery" as Paul writes, but what an amazing thing?

1 comment:

gaela renee said...

i'm confused. ;-)