Know the steps to know the dance - how beautiful it is!!

Men and women today are in a power struggle of epic proportions. Women run multi-billion dollar companies and leave their infants with nannies or stay at home dads.

Women flaunt their bodies all over billboards across the world, selling everything from cars to toothpaste, selling their bodies, and calling it liberation. Calling it power.

Look at popular sitcoms. A thin, attractive women runs the household and tramples all over her husband's life an self-esteem. She impatiently grabs the reins from him every time he screws up, fixes all his mistakes, tells him what to do, and calls him an idiot. Then she criticizes him for not being a "man." For being unable to make decisions for himself.

Did she ever give him the chance to try? Where in their marriage was he given the opportunity t o learn?

We are sold a philosophy that men and women are equal on all terms. Women can do everything men can do. Just as well. Just as legitimately. Women are serving in the armed forces in larger numbers than ever. Know what other numbers are up? Infidelity among soldiers cheating on their spouses while away at war.

We are equal in humanity. Equal in God's eyes. But we are different. How drastic is it really, to think that we can act out our equality in different ways? Wasn't God's established order at creation designed with our best in mind? Weren't the differing roles of men and women designed by the One who is Love and Wisdom Itself?

Here is what John Piper had to say about the directions were are given today, what society has pushed at us as the road map to manhood and womanhood, if such a distinction is even made any more. (It is slightly paraphrased, as I was typing it while listening to the sermon):

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Its like saying to two dancers, ballet dancers or people who are about to perform a drama:

“Now remember when you go out on the stage: you are both excellent dancers, you are held in equal esteem in the guild and respected highly in the world of drama or dance. You must respect each other and be complementary of each other’s movements on the stage. And remember: you will both enjoy the applause and the limelight at the end of the performance.” Now that’s important to say - it will affect how the performance goes.

BUT if that’s all they know -

THEY WON’T DANCE!

To dance or perform the drama, they have to know who’s going where, when!
Who will fall and who will catch.
Who will stand and who will run.
Who will speak and who will be silent.

If all you know is that you are to respect one another – you WILL NOT DANCE.

There will be mass confusion on the stage if you are given only 6 “moral visions” of how to respect one another. You will be up there bumping into one another.

I say these instructions are only part of the answer.

And today they are given as the whole answer.

We have to ask this question: in the drama of life between man and woman, before the fall, as God intended it to be, did God intend for some responsibilities to fall heavier on the man and some responsibilities to fall heavier on the woman, or didn’t he? They are both supposed to be equally respectful of each other. But are they supposed to show respect for each other in precisely the same way? Yes, there should be peace and harmony through mutual servitude. But might there not be forms of service especially designed for harmony from the man, and forms of service especially designed for harmony from the woman?

Do you see how incomplete the answer is, to say, “equal in personhood, equal in dignity, harmony, mutual respect, complementarity and unified destiny.”

It doesn’t tell you much where the rubber meets the road.

I believe the Bible does teach that men have unique God-given responsibilities and women have unique God-given responsibilities.”

They’re not identical; they’re not dependent on gifts. They’re dependent on who we are as man and woman as established at creation. They are not limited to biological functions; They’re deeper, higher, broader, and more pervasive than that. These different responsibilities go right to the heart of the meaning manhood and womanhood as God created us

and these are under tremendous attack from inside and outside the church today

And the result has been what?

Confusion. Mass confusion.

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More to come on this. I realize this posting is horribly devoid of any Scriptural evidences. For starters if you're interested, read
*Genesis 2
*1 Corinthians 7
*Ephesians 5:22-33
*Colossians 3:18-19

Ok, I have to put Ephesians in here, its my favorite:

Wives and Husbands

22Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27so 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.^[a] 28In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30because 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." 32This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.