Negative

Negative


As a mathematician and teacher, I have spent many hours with the word negative. Kids struggle to understand the concept. “Negative numbers? How can you have a negative amount of apples?” However, by the time we are grown up, society has inundated us with negative. We now understand, more clearly than we wish, what negative means. It is the opposite of positive. Definitely not the present, positive, affirmative that we hear preached from Montana.

In starting to read and understand the book, Created To Be His Help Meet, by Debi Pearl, I came across the following statements. “This [a helper suited to the needs of a man] is how God created you and it is your purpose for existing,”(21) and “God tells the wives to be subject to their husbands in everything, every decision, every move, every plan, and all everyday affairs.”(54)

What do you think of when you read those statements? You think of all the horrible and negative things that may lead you to accept and do. You don’t think of the Genesis passage of why and how God created Eve for Adam or that in Ephesians 5:24 God says “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” Why don’t we trust God’s plan? As Christians we surely trust Him in other areas of our lives. If we don’t embrace God’s plan for marriage, are we really embracing His plan for our lives at all?

Take this example I received from a source that escapes my memory: Your son comes to you to ask if he can use the car. You give a list of groceries to him and tell him if he does your grocery shopping for you, he can borrow the car. He comes home and you find that he only bought half the list. You inquire and he tells you he didn’t like the other stuff on the list, so he didn’t buy it. Now, did he obey you? NO! He bought only what he wanted to buy. He didn’t halfway obey you; he made up his own list. God did not write the bible solely for our salvation. Let us not be so selfish. He told us how to live our lives for His glory and honor. If we pick and choose what we like and don’t like, we aren’t obeying God at all, we are making our own list.

Biblical concepts may be hard to digest after years of thinking the way the world wants us to think, but that is only a reason why we need to study more of the bible and take in less of the world. Look to God and the Bible first and foremost for your understanding of women, marriage and submission. If we let the world define biblical terms, we will end up confused and eventually in a contradiction doubting God’s word and accepting the worlds. Let us not forget that the Devil asked Eve “Did God really say…” Do not be deceived.

Philippians 2:14 says, “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” When we read something in the bible we don’t have a full understanding of, let us not immediately think negatively about the situation. Let us not jump to conclusions and start complaining of the position that we are in. Let God’s word define itself and read on. We will be pleasantly surprised at the way God’s plan falls into place when we obey Him in every aspect of our lives.