Response to "The Desire to Control."

Do women naturally have a desire to control their husband? According to Genesis 3:16, they do and it happened right after the Fall. When I teach women to not deprive their husbands sexually, they come up with all types of excuses why they shouldn’t have to do this. The majority of these excuses are simply another way to control their husbands.

Here it is, one of Lori's favorite claims: that women desire to control their husbands. The only problem is...it's not based on a shred of truth, biblical or otherwise. No, Genesis 3:16 does not say this. In nearly all translations it says Eve would desire her husband. A couple translations do add the word "control", but the word for "desire" is the same word used to describe the mutual feelings of the lovers in Song of Solomon. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a desire to manipulate and control is not what the author of Genesis had in mind, and yet Lori pushes this meaning because it fits her agenda. 

       Ironically, Genesis 3:16 is one of the strongest verses against everything Lori teaches, because it declares that men ruling over their wives is part of the curse. In other words, precisely the opposite of what God intended! I could give Lori the benefit of the doubt and assume she just hasn't noticed this, but I don't think I will. 

When I teach women to submit to their husbands, they will come up with all types of exceptions that will allow women to decide that they really don’t need to submit to their husbands in everything as unto Christ.

The "excuses" toward which Lori shows such contempt are actually attempts to understand what the Bible really is saying, rather than trying to make it say what we want. When Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands, he uses the same Greek word he had just used to say that all believers should submit to each other. Mutual submission could not be more clearly taught by the Bible, and yet Lori doesn't like it, so she ignores it. 

When I teach women that God commands them to be silent in the churches, they twist and distort Scripture and then give me all of the reasons why women don’t need to be quiet in the churches.

It is Lori who twists Scripture by refusing to respect it enough to truly study it. When Paul said women should be silent in the churches, he used the Greek word that simply means "converse", even though there were other words for "talk" that implied teaching. Paul was simply addressing the fact that the women in that culture were seldom in public and didn't know not to visit with their friends during the church service. He was saying nothing more than "don't talk during the service," which would apply just as much to the men (the men simply already knew this). That was all Paul was saying, and yet Lori thinks he should have been saying more and has distorted his words for her own agenda. 

When I teach women to be keepers at home, there’s always a huge outcry of why this couldn’t possibly mean that God wants women literally at home raising their own children, after all, the Proverbs 31 woman was a career woman!

There are only two verses in the Bible that even seem to be a command to women to be keepers at home, and the context of both reveals he was simply telling the Christians to follow social customs. Nothing more. In that culture, women were either keepers at home or prostitutes, so of course he told them to be keepers at home. Does Lori need yet another reminder that the Bible wasn't written in America in the 21st century? 

No ifs, ands, or buts. Just obey God! It’s really that simple. Satan’s grand scheme is to cause confusion with women. He wants them to think that God must mean something other that He commands. Stop listening to the enemy of your soul!

This is a perfect summary of Lori's tactics. She tries to scare women out of thinking for themselves and pressure them to mindlessly obey whatever she tells them. As we've seen, if you question her, she accuses you of questioning God. Of course, if she were asked about the verses that appear to condone slavery, or when Jesus seems to say we ought to hate our families, suddenly she would become quite interested in context and the real meaning of the Greek words. But she doesn't truly want to understand or to obey God. She simply has more reverence for the controlling men in her life than for God. 

       And let's not overlook the ultimate irony of declaring that men should have complete, unconditional control of women, but trying to sell us the idea that it is women who desire to have control!  

Link to the original blog: https://thetransformedwife.com/the-desire-to-control/