Male-Female Relationships

If we had a clear vision of what true manhood and womanhood should be, both of ourselves as we ought to be, and of other people (whether our own sex, or the opposite sex) as they ought to be, we would not sink down so easily to the level of society around us in our tastes and expectations. Is this idealistic? Christian idealism is good, when it guards us against settling for the junkiness of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

I think we men need not only to reform our concept of ourselves, so that it comes into alignment with God's plan for manhood, we also need to steadily reform our view of women. This can be hard to do if you were raised surrounded by vixens, hysterics, and shrews. But, if that is the case, then it becomes even more important. So Christian men shouldn't excuse themselves from sitting in on teaching-series like "God's Plan For Womanhood", on the ground that it's a women's topic. It's the man who inherited a confused or horrible view of women who most needs to learn about women from God's Word.

There are people in terrible relationships who suffer from those relationships, but they have no real idea what a God-made relationship could be or should be, so they accept behavior that should be unacceptable.

Even we who have been Christians for some time are still only drawing closer to a full understanding of what a normal, God-formed male-female friendship should look like (such as between a brother and a sister), or a God-formed girlfriend-boyfriend relationship, or a God-formed marriage. We underestimate how much our expectations and tastes have been poisoned by sin and the world. If we could see with perfect clarity of insight what a normal human relationship looked like, according to God's design, we would desire it, since our hearts have been regenerated by the Spirit of God to like the right things.

Men and women, because of our lack of faith and knowledge, look to each other to fulfill needs in ourselves that God alone can ever meet. The need might be loneliness, or the need to feel like we matter, or that we're valued, or the fear that we could be abandoned, or that there's someone in the world who understands and sympathizes with us. Likes us. Other people become frustrated with us because they can never -- never -- satisfy those God-given needs, and we are not satisfying those needs in them, and we never will. So we all become infuriated or depressed by each other, unless we lift up our eyes to the hills of Heaven, from whence our help comes. Children look to their parents, for example, to be their rock of stability and compass of moral orientation. How disillusioned children must be when they realize that even the best parents can only approximate what they, the children, need. But then how comforting it can be to realize that , behind the wavering and inconsistent parent, is an unchanging and rock-steady God. Only this faith can mend the heartache and confusion caused by divorce.

Satan deceives us to confuse bad qualities with good, then cuts us with the jagged edge of the false. We mistake sarcasm for wholesome wit, a rebellious spirit for objective strength of will, contrariness for independence of judgment, seductiveness for modest beauty, parasitic neediness for the normal interdependence that any human being should has for another, or cold detachment for a healthy sense of balanced composure. If we could grow in discernment, we would recognize (applying discernment first to ourselves) that many of our personality qualities that we think are good, or at least benign, are not as innocent as we think they are. We would also begin to appreciate people that perhaps we did not appreciate before as much as we should.

I pray that the Lord would continue to give me the eyes to see what is truly good, in myself and other people.