Respect

Where do I start?  I’ve had all these things that I’ve wanted to write, but have been so incredibly busy that I haven’t been able to do so.

Last Friday I substitute taught for a class of fourth graders.  I thought it would be easier than the sixth graders that I had a few weeks ago.  WRONG!!!  I’ll be honest – I had a horrible day.  They were extremely disrespectful, rude, and didn’t care.  I won’t go any farther than that.  In fact, I’m trying to forget that day, except what God taught me through it.

On Friday night and Saturday until noon, my wife and I and a couple we’re good friends with went to the Love and Respect Conference.  I was mentally fried after my day at the school, but I was looking forward to the time with my wife, the time with our friends, and to the conference.  By the time we got to the conference, I was much better.  Anyway, Dr. Eggrichs explained how a man’s deepest need is respect and a woman’s deepest need is love.  We are commanded in Ephesians 5 for husbands to love their wives unconditionally and for wives to respect their husbands unconditionally.  God has to command us in that way because it’s not natural.  Respect is a language that men, for the most part, naturally speak, but love is like a foreign language.  We can speak it, but it will take practice.  Love is a language that women, for the most part, naturally speak, but respect is like a foreign language.  Again, you can learn it, but it takes practice.  God commands us to speak the others language, and it isn’t always easy.  He also talked about how even our churches teach love, love, love, but not respect.  For a woman to ask to be loved and to be upset when she’s not being loved, is common and people come to her defense.  On the other hand, if men are upset about not being respected, it is viewed as arrogant and selfish.  There is much more to it than this, but that is the general idea.

So, I got to thinking about my day.  No wonder I was feeling shot down.  I had not been respected.  I feel respected at home, at church, among my friends and peers, etc…, but this was far different than I was used to.  I’m used to the children at church treating me with respect and responding to my authority.  At our Christian school, the children also respect me.  I didn’t think it was too much to ask for respect in the classroom.  In fact, I told them that respect for me, respect for each other, respect for the other teachers, and respect for school property were my expectations.  Later, as I was licking my wounds while sitting through the conference, it dawned on me that if we aren’t teaching this concept in our churches, our society is certainly not teaching it.  Therefore, these young people probably had no concept of what I was saying.  Where would they hear the message of respect?  Men on television (the only men many of them are exposed to) are, for the most part, lazy, bumbling idiots with no morals.  In other words, they aren’t respectable.  Many of the children come from single parent homes where they live with their moms and their dads aren’t involved in their lives.  At school, their teachers are normally women.  At church (if they go), their Sunday School teachers are normally women.  Women don’t naturally speak the “respect language” so where, I ask again, are they going to learn it?  We men need to step up through teaching our own children and mentoring other children about honor and respect.  It is not arrogant.  It is a God-given virtue.

I wish I could write more right now, but I have other things demanding my attention…

As far as our marriage goes, this past weekend was AWESOME, and I hope to write about it soon.

May God give you wisdom and insight as you love and respect your spouse (and others in your lives).