A while back I wrote a post called Cultivating Honor. What is honor? It is, “to regard with great respect.” Here is the deal however, honor is an internal thing. In a Christian context it comes from having a right relationship with God, from recognizing your own worth and value. From being forgiven, redeemed, and held in such high esteem, you were actually worth dying for. Worship, praise is really just about reflecting the love God has shown us, back to Him.
Honor is an internal thing, meaning it comes from inside of us and cannot be filled with external things. Nobody can really hand you honor. Nobody can really make you “feel” respected. Nobody can make you know your own worth and value. In a Christian context, honor, self-worth, comes from surrendering to Christ and having a right relationship with Him. If you have Christ’s approval, The Blood of the Lamb, God’s favor, you need no other. Seriously, if the Creator of the universe sees your worth and value, then you simply do not require The World’s approval in any way. That is a powerful position to be in.
The entire world could disrespect you like it disrespected Christ Himself, and it would not matter one bit. Your honor and sense of respect comes from Him, not from others. Not from women. Not from men.
So, Sunshine has written a post called “What Would it Look Like for Christians to Honor Fathers and Husbands?” partially in response to Dalrock’s lamentation about how the church disrespects husbands and fathers. I don’t disagree with anything she’s written, I do believe we should pour respect over husbands, fathers, cover them with praise and admiration, honor them with encouragement. I think women, wives, daughters, especially, are called to bless them so. Lavishly! I think there is scriptural precedent for that. Men really do need respect in order to truly feel loved and there is no doubt that the world beats them down daily.
Here is the catch however, women cannot give men a sense of honor, a sense of self-worth, we cannot pour enough respect over them to fill an abyss that may reside in their souls. Trust me, this is the height of co-dependance and many women have actually died trying. In fact, the more praise and respect you try to pour over a broken man, the emptier he will feel. You are trying to fill a hunger in him with empty calories, to plug a hole within his soul that only God can fill. A God sized hole.
Pastors, churches, cannot fill that hole either. There is no human pastor in the entire world that can fill that God sized hole for you, no matter how perfect his words are, no matter how much respect he pours over you. The bottom line is, you must take responsibility for your own relationship with Christ. Pastors are there to try to point you in the right direction, to offer some words of wisdom and encouragement. They cannot make you feel respected. The cannot hand you a sense of honor.
Neither can pop culture or The World. In fact, in a Christian context you shouldn’t be looking to the world for approval and respect at all. Actually, if you find yourself receiving too much of the world’s approval and respect, you just might be straying a bit off course.
I realize this is an especially sneaky deception for many men, because often it is their relationships with women that provide them a sense of self-respect, that help them to cultivate honor, that fill their desire to feel respected. Nor am I suggesting that there is anything wrong with asking for or desiring women’s respect, but flat-out that is only the icing on the cake of life. There is not a woman in this world that can hand someone a sense of honor, that can make men feel respected, without that core foundation, that right relationship within their own souls.
In fact, when women try to pour respect over broken men as if our love can cure and heal them, that is actually a sin, a quirk of female pride. We believe our love should be so powerful, that we should be able to reach men in ways that even God cannot. We are actually trying to fill a God sized hole with our little human hearts, as if our love is somehow bigger and badder than God’s.
The problem with broken men with a God sized hole is that you can lay beauty at their feet and they will still feel disrespected. They will still lack a sense of honor. In fact, they may well feel even more dishonored and disrespected. That hunger inside of them becomes ravenous and the more you try to pour respect into it, the hungrier it gets. You are trying to apply an external solution to an internal problem. Women really have died trying.
All in good humor here, but you know what the Christian women bloggers are mud wrestling with each other over? How best to love men. How to effectively help them feel respected and honored. How to love and encourage our brothers.
A while back Dalrock said, regarding churchian respect for husbands and fathers, What would that even look like?
That’s what it would look like. Like I said however, you can lay beauty at the feet of broken men and they still will not see it. They cannot even recognize it for what it is, because their eyes are elsewhere.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Thank you for such a respectful rebuttal. I don’t know why some of the people in the manosphere are so rude to you; though you and I often disagree with one another, I have never found you to be anything but polite and pleasant, if rather passionate.
But honoring husbands and fathers is really more for the benefit of the women and children doing the honoring. It isn’t intended to fill any holes in the men really. Jesus insisted upon being honored – respected, receiving loyalty, being obeyed – by the Apostles not because HE needed to receive it but because THEY needed to do it. And he didn’t throw their asses under the bus when they failed to honor Him properly, as some in the manosphere seem to think men should do to women, but neither did He sweep their sin under the rug. He rebuked them, and this is what Christian men ought to do when they are treated with dishonor…not because THEY need the honor but because the ones who should be giving the honor need to do it. It is the way God ordered both human and divine relationships.
Yes, when it is in the context of “He’s just misunderstood! He just needs a good woman to love him! I can change him!” In that way I agree with you. But that is not the only way to pour respect over a broken man, according to God, Who says this:
We are to submit to our husbands as unto the Lord, which should take care of that sinful, prideful sense of “I can fix him!” No, it is God alone who can “fix” anything that needs fixing in him, but He may very well choose to use the pure, respectful conduct of the woman for His purposes.
Yes. Amen to that. We may disagree with one another but we ought to keep it polite and respectful. Far more is accomplished in that way.
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Thank you for your kind words and for keeping this discussion interesting. There are certainly more unpleasant things to be doing besides debating the nature of love 😉
There are some men who use 1 Peter 3:1-6 to attempt to justify and excuse their own poor behavior. Since those wives were married to non believers, likely worshipping other gods, the theory is that women must submit to men no matter what sinful behaviors they are pursuing. “Must submit,” no, not necessarily, that is a voluntary gift that represents a women’s relationship with Christ, it is a reflection of her and her values. This is advice being handed to wives about how to cope and deal with non believing husbands in a Christian way. Her softness and gentleness may indeed win over husbands, that could well be God’s way of using a wife. However, there are some men who really pervert that scripture, who use it as justification for having for affairs, for behaving pretty much any way they want, and feel as if they are entitled to demand their wife’s compliance and acceptance because she must submit. That is where things become complicated and that scripture becomes twisted and used as a weapon.
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Where fear is banished there is no will to power. Love does not conquer fear and fearlessness cannot be given to someone. Where fear exists humans will play out their dramas. No amount of love or respect will change this. With love you can stunt the growth of need for competition but you cannot effect anything with love where fear exists. Just look at human dramas – where fear motivates humans become vicious and violent animals with no need of pride or love or self respect.
Eliminate fear and you have good chance of changing the future. Ignore fear and you’ll be killed by one of those you wish to save.
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Well said IB. I follow an Irish blogger – Jean – who is a big fan of Wimbledon, which just finished this weekend. https://socialbridge.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/no-ordinary-sunday-part-2/ At the end she included a video of Federer and Nadal reading a Rudyard Kipling poem “IF”. It’s been decades since I read Kipling so I looked up the lyrics at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772
When I read it, it struck me that this well described honor and Godliness.
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Perfect, Paul! That really is lovely poem and captures the whole concept.
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There this sci-fi TV series called EXTANT starring Halley Barry that has a few very interesting themes running through it.
One of the themes pertinent to this post is extremely sophisticated artificial intelligence placed in an extremely realistic artificial human body of a child, a boy.
The “boy” is raised by his human mother (an astronaut) and creator father (a cybernetics engineer and researcher).
And as the series progresses we begin to see the psychological twisting and bending that begins to deform the “boy’s” personality.
It is absolutely strange to see a child’s critical need for traditional family values portrayed so graphically in a postmodern, Hollywood, TV production.
CAUTION! Content given a RESTRICTED rating due to the graphic portrayal and disturbing nature of traditional family values.
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Ah, very interesting, Silence. I haven’t seen it, but it certainly is a fascinating theme to contemplate.
Not long ago I watched a show about a dog that had been rehabilitated and rescued. They made this huge effort to place him in a two parent home with a father who was going to take an interest in him, because without that male influence the dog was going to regress to his former ways and become aggressive again. So apparently we’re willing to recognize some of the characteristics of wounded doggy psychology, but people not so much.
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Insanity,
My first reaction to the idea that a dog needs good old fashioned human family values was, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Unfortunately, the ridiculous is now what passes for mainstream intelligence.
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Reblogged this on A Regular Joe and commented:
“In a Christian context, honor, self-worth, comes from surrendering to Christ and having a right relationship with Him.”
Great Article about Honor and where we should get our self worth from.
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Thank you for the reblog, much appreciated.
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No problem 🙂 Really liked the read
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InsanityBytes,
Great post – I can see where Sunshine is coming from and I agree with her, and I also agree with you that we cannot based our sense of worth and honor from anyone in this world, as everyone around us is going to let us down. God is the only one who can give us a continual and lasting sense of honor and worth.
Would you agree that sometimes a Christian man can lean too much on everything his wife does to give him a sense of respect and honor in the same way women lean too much on their husbands to give them a “feeling of being loved, beautiful and adored”?
What I mean is – should a husband tell his wife he loves her? Absolutely her should. Should he tell her he thinks she is beautiful? Yes! Should he praise her for the wonder things she does as a wife and mother? Most certainly. But how many Christian women place their value, their feeling loved by how often their husband says the “right things” or “does the right things” towards them?
Just a thought.
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Oh yes, amen! Wives can indeed turn to husbands expecting them to fulfill us in ways that only God can. When that happens the expectations and demands become a burden and sure to lead to endless disappointment. You hear this sometimes when wives say, “he just doesn’t make me happy,” as if another person is actually responsible for your own level of happiness. Women actually get divorced because they weren’t “feeling fulfilled, I wasn’t happy.” It is far more pleasant to come at marriage from the other end of the spectrum, expecting nothing and then taking note of every little thing and cultivating gratitude. Then you really do start to feel loved.
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Such wonderful comments. But, we shouldnt teach women to base their salvation on how submissive they are to their husbands. Our human purpose is to worship the Father God in Heaven, and love Him with all our might. We are to serve Him.
Now,for those of us who marry (All people do not marry) God wants husbands to be the leaders of the family and the wives to submit to the husbands’ leadership. These are the positions of husbands and wives. But, married people are both to honor each other. Husbands want dignity and so do wives. God told wives to respect the husbands and told the husbands to love their wives. And wives also want to be respected, husbands also want to be loved.
We must not twist the Word of God and deliver the wrong messages, about boosting anybody’s ego. We are not placed on this earth to exalt anyone. We are only called to exalt God. Now, we should encourage one another and show appreciation for the things he does and tell our wives, we appreciate them for the things wives do. My wife has a practice of reminding others that, ” When both spouses work, that means both are contributing financially, and so both are helping to put a roof over the family head.”
She cooks, works outside of the home, leaves after she has dropped our two off at school, then she comes home to do laundry and mows the lawn. Should I as the husband be the only one who gets appreciation?
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Oh, amen to your lovely comment!
“But, we shouldnt teach women to base their salvation on how submissive they are to their husbands”
Agreed! Submission can be a reflection of that relationship with Christ, it can be a way of bringing peace and love to a marriage, but it is flat out not the path to salvation. Thanks for saying that, it’s a concept I’ve been having a hard time trying to communicate 😉
“Should I as the husband be the only one who gets appreciation?”
No! One of the awesome fruits of submission however, is often a great deal of appreciation and encouragement from husbands.
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