This morning the Men in the Word facebook page posted some thoughts that got me thinking and I wanted to expound upon them a little bit.
Jesus quotes this scripture from Genesis talking about marriage. He tells us that when we make the decision to become married God makes us no longer two, but one. By doing this He joined us together and man should not separate what God joined. In other words, divorce should not be an option.
However I think there is something else, more practical, that we can gain from this scripture. No marriage is perfect and that means that every marriage has moments of argument where the couple does not feel joined together no matter how much they believe it. This is where, I believe the husband has the responsibility to be the spiritual head of the household. This does not mean that the husband should 'lay down the law' and demand that the wife 'respect him' by agreeing with his side.
I believe that in this moment a husband truly taking responsibility as the head of the household needs to humble Himself and recognize that it is God that joined the marriage together in the first place. If God joined the marriage together at the beginning then God can also restore it regardless of the size of the argument. The husband has the responsibility of humbling himself and going before God to ask for wisdom. This responsibility is true regardless of who is 'right' in the argument.
When it comes to marriage, I think you both need to be responsible for your actions and submit to one another in general. Both people need to be involved and willing to communicate effectively because if one person has lost interest, or no longer wants to be with the other person, you marriage will fail, and no amount of humbling from the husband could get it back together, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it is a responsibility on both sides. I was speaking more to the Bible's description of the husband being the "head" and addressing misconceptions as to what that means, rather than attempting to claim that the responsibility was completely on the husband. I also was attempting to address situations before it gets to the point of one side completely giving up on the marriage. As you said, when it gets to that point often times it takes a miracle to save the marriage. But if we learn to humble ourselves early on often we can save the marriage from getting to that point.
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