Pulling down Strongholds

Guest Writer, Moabi Makara

“Casting down imaginations and every high thing that that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 10:5

We are victims and captives of our past experiences, our upbringing, our cultures, and most of all how we were socialized. I have tried all my life to be a model husband. I would like to believe that I had a bit of an advantage because I got married to my best friend of a good seven years. And my social life basically revolves around her. We enjoy each other’s company; she gets me, and I get her. When we got married the expectation was that this was going to be a walk in the park, a bed full of roses. I vividly recall in one of our conversations after we started courting, she was saying she had always been so jealous of the girl who gets to be married to me because I am such a gentleman! And boy I was, especially with her! I used to open doors for her wherever we went. When we were in varsity, I would pick flowers for her every morning on my way to her house, it was always my first stop before anything. I basically lived there because I would leave when time for visiting was over. We would take walks at night around the campus. Everything was so effortless, easy and the spontaneity was on another level. We got married and there was a big shift, more like a big drift. To what used to flow nicely and harmoniously, discord and misalignment started creeping in, to a point l that I thought getting married was the worst thing that we could have ever done to our relationship.

When we got married our relationship took a turn, it was not a good one. We both thought , “what happened to this person, what’s happening to me?”. I stopped being the person I used to be (the person I liked for that matter), and this new relationship was requiring more effort than I used to put in. Everything used to be so effortless, now it started to feel like hard work. The spontaneity disappeared and we started pissing each other off. In our friendship days there is no one occasion that I can recall when I was mad at her. Marriage brings in a new dynamic in our lives. It’s a completely different ball game. I think not enough is being done to prepare us for the mammoth task/ responsibility or change that comes with marriage. To make matters worse there are bottlenecks and limiting factors that we import/ inherit from our culture that hinder us from being the spouses that God designed us to be.

There are a lot and very beautiful parallels between the ministry of Christ to the church and the marriage institution. I think the design of marriage can be well understood from that perspective. The church (body of believers) is likened to a bride and Christ to the husband. As husbands we are given the mandate to love our wives as Christ loved the church and wives are instructed to submit unto the husband as the church is subject to Christ, who is its head. There is even a beautiful instance or illustration where Sarah calls her husband her Lord. Lord is someone whom you are subject to. My interest however is with the charge upon the man. The man was instructed to love his wife. Somewhere else he is even instructed to submit to his wife as well, Eph 5:21. I think between the two, the hardest role is that of the man because love is the embodiment of all the good qualities or attributes that are required even before adding the issue of submission on the man’s part. This simply means a man must be everything to his wife, a servant, a friend, an advocate, and a stronghold. Most of all he ought to be willing to die for her.

Women want to know and feel that they are the most important and valuable thing in our life by theoretically demonstrating that we could die for them. Theoretically because obviously women want us alive, we are good to them alive. Now, this notion appears to be weakness in our culture and any man who was seen to display such behavior was greatly stigmatized as bewitched and all those things. However, this should not come as a surprise to us because the enemy of our souls would not have us doing that. He knows that the whole world would be evangelized and converted if every man were to love his own wife as Christ loved the church. It is his working to use even our culture as a stronghold against ourselves. My honest opinion is that culture never intended for women to be oppressed by men. I believe that culture is dynamic and very contextual. That it develops as a response to what is taking place at a certain point in our lives as a people. Unfortunately, we cling on to these and want to identify with them and set them as our ideals and standards, even when they are eating the life out of us.

The bible describes a woman as a weaker vessel, but our society has created strong women (against their will) and excuse weak men. Men are supposed to shoulder the heavier burdens of life. I believe that was the case when men were bread winners tilling the ground and working in the mines. When women were housewives and could keep the home and rear the children. Fortunately, or unfortunately the narrative has changed and the culture around such issues needs to evolve. The principle is the same. Love your wife as Christ loved the church, understanding that women are not made for the heavy burdens. Our women are mere helpers not our slaves. Unless it has to do with breast feeding and giving birth, there is no work in the home that is for the woman. The direct version of the statement above would read: all responsibility in the home is the work of the husband unless it has to do with breast feeding and giving birth.

When things went south in the garden of Eden God spoke to Adam about it. It was Adam who was forthcoming with answers and explanations. Even when it is our wives who blunder, we become accountable for their actions simply because we are one flesh, and the husband is the head of the wife. The paradox of this is that it does not make the husband superior to the wife as much as it makes the wife less of a human being capable of making her own sound decisions. When God looks at a man and a woman, He sees equal beings. The love and submission element in the instruction of a couple is more of their roles so that there are no blurred lines between the two. A fitting example would be the head of an organization is no higher (as a person) than all his/her subordinates except in terms of responsibilities. Plainly put no individual is higher than another and no individual needs to worship the other.

We can never truly understand someone’s journey or behavior if we have never walked in their shoes. It has somewhat become a universal concern that the libido of man and woman in marriage appear to be mismatched. Married men want more sex than women feel like is fair/acceptable. They want sex all the time and men do not understand why women want sex less. The answer lies in our topic sentence. Other than the fact that men are easily stimulated and like to indulge in pornographic content men have more energy left at the end of the day than women usually have. I have had the experience of my wife wanting sex when I didn’t (I was just spent from the day’s work). It was the strangest moment of my life for me not to want sex. Usually that would only happen when we are not on good terms. Let me just say, I began to understand what we put our wives through. After a hard day at work (for both of us) women are expected to work ’their’ magic and fix the whole family something to eat or do the dishes while we relax and regain our strength on the sofa in front of the tv, not realizing that it is that very same act that will demoralize them for the activity later. Men who are not conversant with home chores will not understand how frustrating it is. Home chores will literally make you angry, you become irritable and by the time you are done with that pile of dishes you will not be in the mood for anything else.

We often set ourselves up for failure because of the ideals and standards that we place upon our lives, most especially when they are contrary to heavenly principles. It is our duty by the aid of the Holy Spirit to cast down all imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, 2 Corinthians 10:5. It is only the law of God which is eternal and unchanging, the rest changes and evolves. We need to learn the game and how the rules have progressed and play accordingly in order to win, be it in politics or business and most certainly in our relationships.

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