Tag: Wives

A Christ-Honoring Marriage, part 2

On By Dave MallinakIn Family, Marriage

Recently, a handful of preachers have pointed out our generations-old custom of hammering the men from the pulpit while giving the ladies a pass. Nancy Pearcey has done tremendous work explaining the history of this hostility towards masculinity. If you haven’t read Total Truth, I highly recommend it.

To give the cliff notes version of her history (a small part of this great book), the Industrial Revolution pulled men out of their homes and away from their families for most of the day, leaving mothers home to raise the kids. Pastors soon realized that mothers were overburdened with housekeeping and child-rearing and began directing their sermons at the wives to provide spiritual encouragement. The combination of a growing detachment on the part of husbands and fathers and an increasingly woman-focused pulpit ministry caused men to resent what they were hearing at church. Eventually, the men checked out altogether. Pastors gratuitously targeted these detached men as they catered to the women.

Thus, we have developed a 150-year habit of hammering the men annually on Father’s Day while gushing over the Moms on Mother’s Day. I’ve done it for most of my pastoral ministry (to my great shame). But I no longer believe this is Biblical. A Biblical pastor evenly hands out the rebukes and encouragements, not based on sentiment, cultural angst, or the congregation’s felt needs, but on the text’s meaning.

Continue reading “A Christ-Honoring Marriage, part 2” →

A Christ-Honoring Marriage, part 1

On By Dave MallinakIn Family, Marriage

This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:32)

This might be one of the more unpopular passages in Scripture. No doubt it was unpopular on the day it was written, though for very different reasons. Our generation thinks it treats women as subservient. Paul’s generation might have objected that it treated women as if they mattered. In our day, the notion that a woman should submit to her husband is repulsive. In Paul’s day, the thought that a husband should love his wife was revolting.

The Greeks set up temples where brothels formed the central part of worship. Paul taught that women were to be loved and cherished and that husbands were to be devoted and faithful. No doubt, the Greek mind found such instruction abominable. Paul insults our generation by teaching that women are to submit to their husbands and respect them. In fact, the 33rd verse uses the word “reverence.” But in Paul’s generation and ours, the world and the culture line up on the wrong side of the issue.

Besides its unpopularity, Ephesians 5 might be one of the most disregarded passages in Scripture, a fact that is on display in the all-too-common train wreck of the modern family. Speaking of which, Americans binge-watched the very popular TV show with that name for a little over a decade. The kind of “families” that provided the backdrop for this mockumentary depicted many families of our day, the full spectrum of committed, blended, non-traditional, perverse, broken, and dysfunctional.

Continue reading “A Christ-Honoring Marriage, part 1” →