My People Perish For Lack of Knowledge
The words in the title are the words of God spoken through His prophet.
These words ring true down through the ages and are just as timely today as they were three thousand years ago.
Look into almost every family and you will see misunderstanding, resentment, judgment, anger, suppressed rage, cruelty, and suffering.
Every time you turn around, there is another divorce. And when there is trouble in the family, those who hate traditional values and those who hate the family use the trouble to proclaim that family doesn't work. Every time a father falls, it is used to say that men are no good, that traditional values are just hypocrisy.
Every time mom or dad, husband or wife have problems, there are experts to step in and take away authority from the home.
The media, especially television, has for the last 30 years been mocking father, mocking the home, mocking old fashioned values.
The church is under attack. And because some of the people who supposedly represent the church have made mistakes, it empowers those who would get rid of religion all together.
The knowledge we need is of the mystery of the relationship between the sexes. It is an ancient and reoccurring cycle of rebellion against God. Just as in the Garden of Eden, the woman is used by the serpent to entice Adam to turn his back on God. And both the man and the woman are then used by principalities and powers to rebel against the Creator and bring suffering on humans. Without understanding how they are being used, people continue to hate and blame each other.
Forgiveness is truly the answer. But we also need insight into the spiritual reason behind all the squabbling we see in families.
The family is the bedrock of civilization. The family is under attack. And the institutions that once supported the family, such as the church, have grown weak and decadent. And the government, which once supported family, now has a welfare state in place that actually supports the breakdown of the family.
The relationship between the man and the woman, within the institution of holy matrimony ordained by God, holds the key to happiness, prosperity, and domestic tranquility. The family is the matrix in which the next generation comes forth, and it is the family which supports, nurtures and maintains the best of what it means to be a human.
But as I said, everywhere you look in the world--you see families boiling over with intrigue, betrayal, cruelty, suffering, and misery. Each and every couple started off expecting to be happy. But something goes wrong. We need to understand why.
Our families suffer for lack of knowledge. The one who is most responsible is the husband. It is his job to be the leader, the Moses, the David of the family. It is his job to be a man of impeccable honor, courage, patience, understanding, kindness, forbearance, and graciousness.
There is no way that he can be the man he needs to be unless he finds an invisible bond with the Creator Within. He must be so grounded in principle and faith, that there is no wavering, no failing, no room for a lack of commitment to what is right.
He must be stronger than the world. But if he is woman centered, if women are the ground of his being and if his wife is his boss (or she lets him be the boss), then he will not be grounded in good. Instead he will be a beast man, violent or wimpy, grounded in the woman, and beyond her in the serpent of old who tempted man through Eve.
My heart goes out to the decent women everywhere. They are tempted to take charge because of the weakness of the man. They are tempted by his weakness to support and console his prideful ego. Men require it of women. And when she gains power because of his nothingness and growing weakness, she is then called upon to nag him to get him to function.
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When he greedily goes for her love offerings, first with excitement then with resentment, he becomes enslaved. And when he is enslaved by the temptation that he wanted from her, he is full of rage. The weak angry man goes off to another woman or to the bottle. The man who takes on her nature marries his work, money or becomes a seducer.
All the while, the children are suffering.
Men need to have a thorough knowledge of their own weakness. They need to see just why they must not fail. They need to see why they must be principled and honorable.
And women need to see that the Adam and Eve story is recreated over and over again. They need to see that, yes, most men are weak and failures. But she must learn not to resent them for it. She must see her own role in tempting him and rising to the occasion of his need to gain power over him. She must see why she must not support him in his wrong, on the one hand, but must also not give him such a hard time that he doesn't have the space to find himself.
Perhaps a good starting point would be to just realize that your husband is just a man, and judging and nagging him will only stand in the way of his finding himself.
Men, you must see that you must not look to your wife to support your ego. You must look to no one except your Creator for the strength, wisdom and understanding that you do not now have but will need if you are to be the kind of husband and father that your family needs.
And here's another tip: regardless of what your situation is, begin right now to be more forgiving. Drop your grudges. If others are wrong, see their wrong, but don't hate them for it. Let go of judgment. Make it unimportant. You yourself are wrong through your judgments and grudges. When you let go of bitterness and blame, you will then be free to see what the real truth is.
You may even discover the love from the Creator which becomes available when you no longer look for love from others and hate them when they fail you.
