I feel for men who struggle with being the Bride of Christ. I am thankful that analogy brings me comfort and peace. It has, in fact, brought me MUCH comfort and peace over the years. I understand what Paul is teaching through that analogy in Ephesians, and I am blessed by it. I am sorry that for a lot of men that analogy is uncomfortable and even threatening.I wonder how many Christian men actually do struggle with this. I've heard many preachers refer to men and women collectively as the bride of Christ and have not detected any uncomfortable squirming. Perhaps this is an insensitive conclusion to draw, but if a guy has a problem with hearing that he is the bride of Christ, he's got to be suffering a serious, er, manly man complex.
I daily have to wrestle with God to submit to His vision for me when it conflicts with my own for myself. Respect? Submit? You can try to paint them in glorious tones but the truth is that these are hard, hard concepts for women to embrace. Yet embrace them we must for our good and God’s glory. There’s a part of me that feels like telling men to just “man up” when it comes to dealing with the imagery from Ephesians 5.Wendy makes me laugh.
This post also made me think about how even though God does mainly refer to himself in masculine terms, there are so many instances where He does adopt a feminine description. Nobody could ever accuse God of being sexist, not if they actually knew their bible. Gosh, Claire's words keep ringing in my head. So much of our own personal gender confusion skews Scripture and if we'd just let God speak, I think life would be much easier.
I definitely definitely agree with your last paragraph (and Wendy's comical 2 cents :P)! But... hang on, do you mean that individuals are the bride of Christ - or the church, collectively? Because as I understand it, individually we're not 'brides', as there is only one church and one Bride, (and one Bridegroom) ...the analogy can't be stretched too far either. But I get what you mean, I do think guys struggle with that. And there's a lot of men out there struggling with the songs that we sing at church in particular, which tend to be very feminine, and often we don't sing the warlike battlefield hymns of old that the men would pipe up for. Mark Driscoll reckons in America the pastors tend to femininity and 'real men' don't feel at home at church but i wouldn't say that's the case here in Aus?
ReplyDeletehmmm, good food for thought. Thanks for posting!