Thursday, October 13, 2011

Stepford Wives



Her husband is afraid if she does what Debi Pearl teaches, she will become a Stepford Wife {the kind that is a perfect wife with no emotion or feelings}.

She worries that if she does what Debi Pearl teaches, it may not be genuine.

No worries...she will never be perfect!  She will blow it occasionally...a lot at first probably, but as she practices loving, serving, and pleasing her husband, it will get easier.  It is retraining yourself and your habits. 

She will be renewing her mind with God's truth.  She will still have her personality and opinions.  She just won't have to always be right and she will stop arguing with him.  How can a husband not love a wife that wants to please him and serve him?  He probably has never experienced that, so it may scare him.  I am sure he will change his mind as he falls madly in love with his wife.

On the matter of her actions being genuine, I don't think she needs to concern herself with that.  If we always acted upon our feelings, we would be a mess.  Our actions need to dictate our feelings, not our feelings dictating our actions.  Continue doing what is right and most likely feelings will follow.

She has a teachable spirit.  She is ready to do it right.  She is open to learn.  I predict she will have a great marriage someday.  A teachable spirit that wants to obey God is a powerful tool God can use to accomplish His will.

May God bless her abundantly as she learns to love, please, and serve her husband.

And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another...
I Thessalonians 3:12

Comments (14)

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I'm hoping to get their book soon. I've not read it, but after reading your posts, I really want to! What is the name of the book?
1 reply · active 702 weeks ago
Created To Be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl
Thanks!
Not all husbands want a submissive wife. I do not. My wife and I are equal leaders in our home. We share maintaining our home and raising our daughters. Right now, my wife is a stay-at-home mom. So she tends to do more. But, when I home, I am a full participate. We work together to get everything done. Wives (and husbands) who are at home parents are just as busy as the parent who works outside the home. My wife and I, “serve and please” each other. Sometimes we argue (not often). Sometimes she backs down, sometimes I back down, and sometimes we agree to disagree and compromise. My wife does not need to “serve and please” me for me to fall madly in love with her. I’m already madly in love with her. I pray our daughters turn out to be as strong and confident as my wife.
If you follow the teachings of Debi Pearl and it makes you happy, great. Just know that not every Christian man wants a submissive wife.
Thank you,
Aaron (Amy’s husband)
Aaron, That is great for you but according to the God I love and serve, He commands this of me and every wife that wants to walk in obedience to Him..."Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord" ( Ephesians 5:22), so if you have a problem with that, you will have to take it up with Him, not with me. There are also verses that tell wives to love and please their husbands. The only one I will answer to is to Him!

Blessings,
Lori
I hear what you are saying Aaron, and yet it sounds like you actually have a submissive wife. Does your wife nag you and try to control you? Does she disrespect your opinions and want to always be right? Does she think that her thoughts and ideas are superior to yours? By what you write, obviously not. She knows how to respect her man even if she is not a wall flower.

Submission has a negative connotation, especially in our society, but the HS chose the word precisely because this is exactly how ALL believers are to act towards one another, following the model that Christ set for us. Jesus was completely submissive to the will of the Father, yet he never lost His equality with Him. Is that not the model for marriage? And what does God do, He takes His submissive Son and exults Him "above all things" just as we should do with our wives to "treat them as more important than we are."

You and your wife sound to me like you have a great marriage because you are loving her the way she needs and she is honoring you the way you need. Many women are not feeling that sense of love and acceptance you are giving so they fight for it in all the wrong ways. The result is that many men feel dishonored and like they can never please their gal. When that happens, it turns into a vicious cycle of negativity.

Submission is the command of the scriptures for wives, but a good husband has no problem with his wife challenging him, and rarely if ever does he demand submission. Actually we want the challenge when she feels strongly that we are wrong and most of the time we go her way. She makes most of the decisions about the house, the kids, when and where we go out, and participates in most or all of the other decisions. The leader lays down his life for his wife.

Love and submission looks exactly what you are describing in your marriage. Now what happens when your wife decide she wants to be in control, get bossy and demanding, start nagging you or just think she is right all the time and you are wrong. Then tell me if you don't want a submissive wife, and yet I know you would love her anyway, just as I loved my wife for 22 years before she discovered what it means to be submissive.

I want Lori to be her full personality, and sometimes she gets back into her old ways, which is fine for a time. Then when I feel like it is going too far I simply say with a smile, "You know you have been arguing a lot lately," and her eyes get great big and she throws out her hand to shake mine and says, "It will never happen again!" I know it will happen again, and I do not mind a little of it, but it sure is fun to know that Lori is trying to please me, just as I am trying to love her just the way she needs to be loved... including allowing Lori to be Lori, not a Stepford wife.
2 replies · active 700 weeks ago
(sorry for the delayed response, our family was away enjoying a holiday)____No, my wife does not try to control me or disrespect my opinions. She does not always have to be right. But that does not make her submissive to me. If it does, then I am a submissive husband! I do not try to control her. I respect her opinions and I do not have to be right all the time. We are complete equals in our marriage. Yes, the bible talks about submission in marriage, but the bible also says women should not teach men. Yet, more than half my college professors were women. The minister who leads our church is a woman (best minister we've been blessed with!) I just feel that we don't need/want to take the bible literally. If we did, we would own slaves, bar illegitimate children from worshipping with us, and we would stone people to death. The bible was written years ago, when these kinds of things were acceptable. ____
To take the scriptures literally means to accept what the original writer intended to communicate and this means to understand the Bible in context. The old covenant (old testament) has many laws that were intended for the people of God within the nation of Israel. The new covenant (new testament) is intended for today’s age of the church. So we would accept literally that slaves could be owned in the OT and stoning adulterers to death as it was intended for the nation Israel, but none of those things were written in the NT, so they do not apply to the church. Not allowing “a woman to teach a man” is a New Testament command, so we believe it and so is submission of a wife to a husband. There are few of such commands in the NT that when taken literally create much of any dispute. A literal interpretation of the scriptures in their context poses little risk or issues for most believers, except that that they simply may not wish to follow the admonitions. That certainly becomes an issue between them and God, not an issue of what was clearly said or intended by the apostle Paul.
Your woman minister, no matter how great she may be, is not obeying the scriptures when she teaches in the church. Your professors are not disobeying the scriptures in that they are not teaching in the church. Woman can be fantastic speakers, often better than men, and many men would give up their role of leader if the woman wants to do it instead, but that goes contrary to God’s desire and command. How it affects her overall life and her marriage will most likely be the proof that she was never intended to speak to men in the church. The burden of this responsibility will have its undesired consequences, many of which you and others will never see.
To do things God’s way even when we disagree is to acknowledge that the Creator has a better plan than we do. We are caught up in our culture and in our own desires, and that is why our compass cannot be set by your woman minister, no matter how wonderful she may be. Instead we say to God that we are willing to believe ALL of His Word, in the context and as He intended, and we study His Word to find out the context and what God wanted to say to all believers. If not, we set ourselves up as god, deciding that what I “think” the scripture says is how I will live, and then go about making up our own gospel, “because God could not have really meant what He said.”
Yes, to ask a wife to be submissive to her husband is not something our society wants to hear, but it does say this command in more than one place in the scriptures. Ignore it, say it is not to be taken literally, do with it as you wish, that is your call. But to say it is not a clear command is to do an injustice to God’s Word and leaves you deciding on your own what is truth and what is not truth instead of letting God decide what is truth.
I hope that you are submissive to your wife in many areas of your life. We are told to “submit to one another,” and yet, when push comes to shove, when a married couple cannot decide an issue, or a direction to go, does it not make a great deal of sense that God appoints a leader in the family to have the final say, instead of that issue festering over and over again and creating a rift in your relationship? Hear me out… Your role is to “love your wife as Christ loves the church and gave up his life for her.” Is that not to be taken literally and I am to be the first one out of the house when it is burning to the ground and just hope she can make it out on her own? No, you have the bigger responsibility to love her and adore her and treat her with respect, and when you disagree and it affects the family negatively, you are to step up and be the leader God has appointed and break the tie. Trust me, it will happen very few times in your married life, but when it does happen that you cannot agree… both of you will be very happy that God casts the deciding vote with the husband. Even when the husband screws up the decision, God will honor the family and work all things out for His good. But do not expect to participate in God’s promises in the same way if you are unwilling to do things God’s way. God’s promises are fulfilled in our lives as we walk in His truths.
Tell your wife that she is to be submissive to you, and then tell her that even when she is not, you will love, cherish and adore her as Christ loves the church. Then as each of you walks in God’s ways you can look to His promises filling up your marriage and your lives in a special way that does not come to those who walk outside of God’s clear commands. It does not mean you cannot have a great marriage if she is not submissive, it just means you do not get to participate in all that God desires for your lives, even those things that are hard to comprehend because we cannot see or understand why He would ask the smarter, sharper, better looking and better behaved spouse to be submissive to her husband.
Amen, great post!

Very few seem to understand submission in marriage. It's definition and understanding has been warped severely by feminist influence.

It's the most liberating situation to embrace our God-given roles. It's freedom.
I am happy being a submissive wife to my husband, but what I am not fond of in Debi Pearl's book is that she pushes for the submissive wife to be a stay-at-home wife. My husband requires me to work so that I can help ease his burden with the bills. This also means that my son spends the weekends with me, two days of the week with my husband and three days of the week with my mother-in-law for a few hours.

Does this make me a bad wife and mother?
1 reply · active 702 weeks ago
Dear Sara,

No, it does not make you a bad wife and mother. Scripture teaches the older women are to train the younger women to be "keepers at home"...and to "guide the home". Debi Pearl never says you are a bad wife or mother if you have to work outside the home in submission to your husband but God's ideal is for the wife to spend most of her time at home. She needs to have the energy to take care of her home, children, and mostly, her husband. As long as she can do that, I think it is fine if a woman works out of the home. But NOTHING is worth destroying a marriage over...So we need to leave all the decisions about wives working outside of the home between the individual wives and husbands and allow the Lord to lead them.

Thank you for all your sweet comments! I really appreciate them.

Love,
Lori
Lori,
I love the Debi Pearl, and many of my friends that have read it tell me that the <Lord used that book to save their marriage. So amen, sista! :)
Blessings,
Lisa
Her book is awesome. A joy of mine was reading my daughter's copy with all her highlights, underlines and notes. It thrills me that she is willing to work for a great marriage.
I am just getting acquainted with Debi Pearl's book, but have been 'listening' to you for a long time. I have wondered also how I'm going to manage to 'fake' my obedience until the feelings come. But I am encouraged by the feelings following obedience and I intend to obey and take my place at my husband's side. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." And I'm counting on that!

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