On Saturday, my friend Dina asked me to do a Bible study with her, and she chose Ephesians. I decided that if I read it right away, it would give me more time to think about it. So I was on the treadmill today listening to all six chapters of it, and listening to some parts over. I have an NIV dramatized Bible on my smartphone, so it’s super easy to listen to. Something stood out to me when I was listening to Ephesians 5 though, so I wanted to write about it.
Look at this from Ephesians 5:25-31:
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
30 because we are members of his body.
31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
I have always tried to apply this verse when dealing with women, and even when mentoring men. In my relationships, I try to listen to the woman’s story and then try to think of where she is trying to get to in her life as a Christian. To help her along, I try to engineer activities that will allow her to grow in strength and confidence by achieving better and better things. There is no shortcut to confidence based on mere words, you have to help her do hard things so she has the experiences of feeling scared, failing, practicing more, then finally succeeding. Although a woman might think that it’s fine to study English for a year, then drop out and sit around the house drinking beer and watching TV, a good man will not think that’s acceptable. If a man loves a woman, then he wants to build her up into something nice for God. And in truth, that will be more fulfilling for her in the long run, although it might conflict with her feelings in the short run.
C.S. Lewis makes the same point in “The Problem of Pain”:
Finally we come to an analogy full of danger, and of much more limited application, which happens, nevertheless, to be the most useful for our special purpose at the moment—I mean, the analogy between God’s love for man and a man’s love for a woman. It is freely used in Scripture. Israel is a false wife, but her heavenly Husband cannot forget the happier days; ‘I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thy espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness.’ 6 Israel is the pauper bride, the waif whom her Lover found abandoned by the wayside, and clothed and adorned and made lovely and yet she betrayed Him .7 ‘Adulteresses’ St James calls us, because we turn aside to the ‘friendship of the world’, while God ‘jealously longs for the spirit He has implanted in us’.8 The Church is the Lord’s bride whom He so loves that in her no spot or wrinkle is endurable? For the truth which this analogy serves to emphasize is that Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere ‘kindness’ which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved; his ‘feeling is more soft and sensible than are the tender horns of cockled snails’. Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.
[…]We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”
Imagine that you have signed up for swimming lessons and then your instructor takes you aside and says “listen, you really have talent at swimming. I think that you could compete in the Olympics if you apply yourself. I want you to work harder than everyone else here, and practice more on your own.” How would you feel? The extra practice is going to cut into your TV and popcorn eating time. You are not even sure that you want to be an Olympic swimmer. What good is it to you if you are one? Why can’t your instructor just accept you as you are and leave you alone to do whatever you want? If he loved you,wouldn’t he just let you do what you wanted? Well… that’s the challenge of letting yourself be led; recognizing leadership as love, and submitting to it.
Choosing a good leader
I have some advice for women who encounter men who believe that they have talent and who try to get them to grow into something better. A good man who wants to marry you is going to audition for the role of husband by trying to lead you upward. That’s what love is, self-sacrifice designed to help the other person grow. It can be scary to let a man lead you. Letting a man lead you is especially hard if you have been indoctrinated by feminism to not trust men, or if you have had experiences with bad men who abused your trust and vulnerability. What if what he wants you to do is hard, and exposes you to failure? That won’t feel good. Would he reject you if you failed? That wouldn’t feel good. How can you tell if this man can be trusted when so many others have failed to be trustworthy? Aren’t men all the same?
So here is some advice for picking a good leader. You can look around at some of the other people that this man has tried to lead, and see how it has worked out. Are the other people that he’s mentored happy with the results? Did they achieve more with his mentoring than without it? Has anyone he mentored been left in a worse state than they were in when he started investing in them? Were any of the people he mentored rejected for not being good enough? If they tried but failed to be perfect, did the man give up on them or was he delighted that they tried and achieved something less than perfect? Does he try to surround you with other people who are older and wiser so that they can mentor you and support you as well? I think that answering those kinds of questions can show whether the leading is meant to help you or harm you. The answers to those questions counterbalance the feelings that we all have when someone tries to love us upward.
And if a man isn’t trying to audition for the husband role by leading you, then you should ask yourself why.
Clarifications:
- this doesn’t apply to dating, only courting. Also, I don’t believe that men should not be allowed to ask women out until they have a degree / trade and a job and some job experience
- this advice only works with men who are capable of leading, it’s not some sort of given that all men get to lead without qualification
- when I am talking about leadership, I mean leadership before marriage in order to improve a woman’s skills so she can serve God better, e.g. – improving apologetics or public speaking or teaching
- the goal of this is for the man and woman to experience how a man leads before the marriage, so that there are no surprises after the wedding
- leadership to me is the same as leadership in the corporate world, it means providing a vision, building consensus, enabling others to do their best, and motivating them with rewards and/or recognition
- examples of me leading a woman are: leading her to complete her undergraduate degree, leading her to start a masters, leading her to pay off her debts, leading her to teach in church, leading her to give lectures on apologetics issues, etc.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
The biggest part of trust, leadership and submission seems to be knowing when to let go, regardless of what end you’re at. If you’re being led, but deeply doubt a decision the leader made, when do you try and stick to your guns and when do you let go and see where it takes you? Not everything is as clear cut as “follow me off this cliff” vs “just try one day of art class”, not every leader is a perfect leader or a failure, there is so much middle ground. If you’re leading and are concerned about your follower’s position, when do you try and enforce leadership and when do you let go and let them rest as they please? Not everything is as clear cut as “I’m feeling too lazy to workout today” vs “I’m in genuine pain and need some space”, not every follower is always stubborn or always wise.
I think that’s what you meant when you said “It can be a dangerous thing to let a man lead you. It’s definitely a mistake to trust the wrong man with leading you.” After all, a man who is a poor leader can rarely be entrusted with someone’s safety and all leaders can slip up and make a wrong decision. But that’s where the trust comes in. I trust my choice in partner. I trust his leadership. I trust that his decisions will not harm me, ultimately follow some sort of plan and are grounded. I trust myself as being able to tell when his decision comes from a place of fear, misinformation or any negativity and I trust him to listen when I voice these concerns. And I’m sure that as he makes his decisions he is trusting me in various ways as well, such as trusting me to believe him, to follow through, to speak up if I’m scared, etc.
Ultimately, someone must lead and someone must follow. Having a partner you can trust, being willing to trust them and knowing when to back down and let things go can really help that dynamic establish itself without much pain. Confusingly, though, it seems you need a dynamic of leadership and submission to preexist in order for that trust and knowledge to manifest. Life is strange.
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When I say leading, I really just mean things like “I’m going to give you books to read, like ‘Cold Case Christianity’ and I’m going to give you DVDs to watch, like ‘The Truth U’ DVDs, and then I’m going to support you in teaching apologetics in the church, as a way of getting you teaching experience, so that when we have kids, you will be able to guard their faith from the culture by answering their tough questions.” So it’s not really leading by making decisions and asking her to submit, it’s more leading by saying “I have a plan for you to be awesome, please do these activities with me so that God will get the benefit of your effort”. I think that God likes it when parents raise kids who keep faith with him, and that’s why I try to lead women to grow their skills to raise those kids.
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I see what you’re saying, but leadership also extends beyond education. From something as simple as choosing where to eat on an outing to something as complicated as buying a new vehicle, someone has to make the final decision. Input from the other party should be considered, but ultimately, one will be the decider, the leader, and one will follow. If it’s always a coin toss as to who makes the final decisions and decides the direction of the family, conflicts always seem to arise and they only get worse when children are added to the mix. In terms of society, the more educated group or the assigned people should always seek to educate those they were assigned to. But in terms of couples and family, it seems unwise to lead in one regard and adopt a lassaiz-faire approach towards other things.
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“Love me as I am” – “Don’t try to change me.”
We often hear phrases like that from people who want to receive unconditional love.
But TRUE love means the other person cares enough to want us to reach our full potential. When a parent pushes a child to excel in school, when a wife encourages a husband to get an advanced degree, or when God tells us to shed our bad habits, we should not assume it is because they can’t accept us for who we are – maybe it is because they see the potential for greatness and want us to experience more.
Thanks for the excellent article.
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This is a tricky one actually, for both men and women, because the last thing you want to do is go into a relationship thinking you’re going to grow someone into a better person. It’s far more likely they’ll actually get worse, once the initial honeymoon phase is over, once the bloom is off the rose. So what you have to do is to love someone flaws and all, because those flaws are only going to get bigger.
The premise of your article is quite good however, and that is exactly what love calls us to do. You want to bring out the best in another person, you just have to be extremely careful because it’s very easy to send the message that you think they’re somehow lacking, defective, and then you wind up creating resentment and contempt.
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