If you haven’t read Part 1, find it here.
“For this is the way the women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.” (1 Peter 3:5-6)
Submit to your husband
This is not easy to do, especially when pride gets in the way. We live in a day and age where the idea of women submitting to men seems old-fashioned and misogynistic. But this is God’s design, and God’s design always works best. This means adapting ourselves to our husbands and sacrificing our own will and desire to be right by making an effort to do what will please him, learning to enjoy the things that he loves and accepting his God-given authority and leadership in the marriage. This is a biblical principle which will only ever lead to good things in your marriage. If you feel that your husband’s will is outside of the will of God, the best remedy is to pray that God will show him any error in his thinking.
Do not give way to fear
…a woman who is worried and fretting all the time is no fun to be around. She will drive her husband away and will become less attractive to him. Equally, do not allow your fear to cause you to distrust your husband, as this is the opposite of love. Give over any anxieties to the Lord in prayer and do not allow them to affect your countenance and burden your marriage…if we keep our eyes on Christ and continually draw from the power of the Holy Spirit we will begin to cultivate the gentle and quiet spirit which is of great worth in God’s sight…
My response as follows:
Your latest blog reminds me why the world is so lost. It saddens me deeply.
I wish that our “relationship” could’ve lived in that moment when i first smiled at the melodies of your old cover band. However, that was so brief that it’s more logical to say that we (including your husband) have never gotten along. But i had, sincerely, hoped that we all would one day. Not just because our [beautiful!] town of Knysna is so small, or we have/had people in common, but because i mistakenly saw a spark in you that i thought would take fire. I’ve wanted to overcome your christian hypocrisy that i’d experienced. I tried making steps in that direction. Have you ever asked yourself why i made (albeit small) positive gestures this past year…or, conversely, asked why you, and your inseparable religion, made none? Whatever your attitude sums up to, it isn’t a cure…”it amounts to the same – absolutely nothing”.
Maybe i should’ve begun with: Lately, i steer clear of the majority of probable complications in our Recession-savaged town. Since i believe in fighting for what’s right, it’s likely cowardly or selfish of me that my effort has diluted. I’ve been banging myself up about it but life has been so hard, and near collapse, every month possibly the last, that i’ve felt the need to breathe more for myself the past 2 months. What i’m trying to explain is that this mail isn’t for aggravation’s sake. It sat smelly in my draft box for half an hour whilst i debated to send it [it spent another 2 hours as a draft here]. In fact, i sincerely wish that i’d never read your latest blog (but only Cher can turn back time). Your message was so powerfully negative that i’m compelled to respond for inaction would be a crime making me a bad person.
Your Submit to Your Husband point is one of the worst things i’ve ever read. It screamed at me. It screams at decency. It’s evil. To blanket all women is akin to returning them to the stone age (except that there they’d probably have had more rights). You play a part to hurt womankind. You are a christian burka.
If any man believed in this, he would not be human…and certainly not a man.
Peter [not his real name], since you’re likely reading this too, where do you stand? I don’t want to generalize. I don’t want my emotions to get the better of logic so that i wrongly think ill of you. Even if we’re at a distance, i’d much rather think better thoughts.
I believe that being a good person is more important than being a religious one (no modern reinterpretation can change that word “religious”). Arrogant religion that believes in fire and pain will never encourage people to be good, only alienated or hateful, both promoting fear. Those who practice fundamentalism would have been slave to whatever religion predominated their geography. If you were born Iranian, you’d have become Muslim. If Tibetan, then Buddhist. It’s biological or psychological inclination, not faith. If Jesus existed, and was a good man, he’d unlikely have intended christianity as ignorance and self-righteousness.
I’ll change your names…similarly, i won’t comment on your website (and i’m about to delete you from my websites and address book) but i’ll blog this (you may have stimulated me to do more than that). This topic is bigger than you and me. It is a part of what makes an imaginary god into the very real monster that stalks, hunts and possesses our world today. It’s a god that says don’t use the brain you’re given (strangely and perversely, you act as if it’s not god-given). It’s the same god of the suicide bomber. The only capitals it deserves is as the God of Hate.
I fear that you will simply see this as your chauvinistic deity challenging your faith with a heathen or a devil but i can hope that you’ll eventually experience a life of truth and find a path to kindness and compassion, not only for others but especially for yourself – believe in yourself, believe in your womanhood!
Until then, this is goodbye.
