The Deification of Wives

One constant that seems to come out when I’m reading about relationships between men and women, specifically husbands and wives, is that husbands are debased and wives are lifted up. This has shown itself in the widespread culture and within Churchianity in the form of Marriage 2.0. Wives are lifted up into the position of headship and the one to be respected. This is done through various methods, such as routinely cutting the men down publicly to make them fail, not allowing him to stand up for his interests in marriage when the wife is in the wrong, setting conditions up for a husband to fail in his marriage, predicating sexual access on whether the wife feels sufficiently loved, and other methods.

Ultimately, the conversation relating to wives are driven to a level of worship in several circles. They are put into a position by the false doctrine of feminist Churchianity where they can possibly do no wrong in the sight of God and man, and set up their own Personal Jesus in the place of the true Jesus. The uniform enforcement of this false doctrine allows them an out from following any of the objective doctrine laid out. The women follow the Personal Jesus, and the doctrine follows her, demanding the Church and the men involved to follow as well. Hence woman becomes her own God.

This comes out most notably in the attributes that Churchians place upon women. In this graphic Bskillet81 originally posted to his blog (RIP), we have:

We see the net effects of the evolution to Marriage 2.0, and the results, which is the free and total support of divorce outside of Biblical guidelines in support of this deification. While much has been addressed regarding the specifics of this graphic here and elsewhere, of interest is the lower-left hand corner. The bottom of the graphic has already been addressed above: The Personal Jesus is YOU, when he is worshiped. So in reality it becomes “Christian men aren’t loving their wives in a way that she feels loved.” In not enforcing objective standards on women and allowing them to be feral, this turns complete control of the marriage over to her emotions, whims, and desires and completely casts the true God aside.

Marriage 2.0 stems from this required reframing of marriage to allow women this illusion of godhood, placing her at the head of everything. The left hand side of the graphic is where things get interesting. The solution is not putting Christ as the head of the marriage, but putting her Personal Jesus (her) as the head of the marriage. In effect, the wife is to supplant the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian man’s life.

There are numerous examples of language that deifies women into godhood. Numerous authors have described the “inner beauty” of women, assigning many different attributes. John Eldredge describes Eve (and by extension the sisters of Eve) as “the crown”, “high-point” or “climax” of creation (1), while others describe women as the “height of creation”. A review of Eldredge’s book explains the problem well with such an outlook, though fails to see the seriousness of such claims:

A final little nitpick which I might point out is Eldredge seemingly placing Eve on a higher level than Adam, with Eve as pinnacle of creation, almost as if she were made of a higher quality than Adam.

Another example provided us in a more direct fashion is Gordon C. Bals writing here (H/T Sunshinemary, by all means read this too):

In fact, whenever I began to talk about the quality of love in the marital relationship, most husbands began to act ashamed. They were like Isaiah when he saw the Lord sitting on his throne, “high and lifted up” (Isa. 6:1). It seemed like their wives were so good at love.

It’s true. In almost every case, a wife approaches marriage with a deeper understanding of and passion for loyal love. I consider this a God-given gift, one way she reflects the image of God (Gen. 1:27). I began to identify this as an aspect of a wife’s inner beauty.

This inner beauty exposes areas where a husband is lacking. Just as Isaiah encountered the Lord’s beauty, I heard husbands echo his response: “My destruction is sealed, for I am a sinful man and a member of sinful race” (Isa. 6:5).

But unlike Isaiah, who was reduced to humble contrition in the presence of such loveliness, husbands tend to fight back. “My wife wants too much from me,” they declare. The wives counter with a long list of their husbands’ failures. This tension increases because neither the husband nor the wife responds well to her gift of inner beauty.

Dr. Bals compares this “inner beauty” of a woman to the effect that the holiness of the Lord had on Isaiah. In effect, Dr. Bals invents this unbiblical idea of “inner beauty” in a woman, then replaces the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian husband through the Holy Word and personal sanctification with his wife’s “inner beauty”. Thankfully, a number of the sites’ commenters saw through it (the ones that weren’t deleted like SSM), and Dr. Bals tried to clarify himself, but only took up more rope to hang himself. While backing away from indicating that women are sinless or near sinless, he continues on pushing that this part of her dignity is a gift that “reflects God’s image”. Commenter David gets it right with respect to Dr. Bals:

This article seems to be an attempt to window dress some secular therapy-speak with a few out of context quotes from scripture.
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In the article the author uses this as a comparison where the husband is the prophet and the wife is God. This is virtually blasphemous.
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1st Peter 3 isn’t about telling wives to “rest as their husbands learn how to make room for the ongoing conviction of sin that comes with marriage”. It is instead telling wives to submit to their husbands. It is interesting that this act of submission is the nearest to “inner beauty” that you will find in the Bible.
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I am quite unpleasantly surprised by the entire tone of the article above which seems to assume that wives are some higher form of spiritual life. God commands both men and women to repentance.

Ultimately, we have women being built up in their feral natures, and placed into the position of gods by such language, paired up with things such as Glenn Stanton’s pronouncements. This requires the complete ignorance of the true qualities of women. It requires whitewashing their sins and unconditionally placing them as above reproach. It requires placing them into a position where they are the head, conscience, and Holy Spirit.

In raising up women, it also requires the complete denigration of men and the laudable qualities that they possess in order to make it passable to the uninitiated, along with enabling compliance to the new order of Marriage 2.0. The methods involved have been chronicled above, as well as in numerous places as the standard operating procedure of feminism. The effects of such things will be chronicled next time.

(1) Wild At Heart by John Eldredge, p37, 38