Marriage

Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.  Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  Matthew 6:2

We say things like, “If my teenager wasn’t rebellious, I wouldn’t have to raise my voice.”  “If my wife would give me the respect I deserve I wouldn’t be angry all the time at home.”  “If I didn’t have the whole weight of the family finances on me I wouldn’t worry so much.”  “If it weren’t for this lousy job, I would be a lot easier to get along with.”  

When we respond in anger, rage, slander, worry, and obscene language to these situations, the Bible calls it sin.   

Some people like to call it denial.  Some people say we’re blind to our own shortcomings.  Some like to pretend that it is “righteous anger” any time they get mad about something.  These rationalizations deny the sin nature.   

We are a people who like things to go the way we want them to.  We want every minute that we spend with others to be about us.  We want our family to respect, love, and honor us – no matter how we act toward them.  We are a selfish lot.  Jesus said that we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. (Matthew 19:19)  He is God.  He knows exactly how we feel about ourselves.  We love ourselves (we all have a problem with pride and selfishness).  If we think we don’t then we are deceived and far more likely to fall into the sin of pride. 

When we blame others for our own bad reactions and behaviors, we are sinning against God.  For a husband to blame a wife or a wife to blame her husband for their own bad behavior is to deny God’s word about what is in our own hearts.  Again the words of Christ from Matthew 15:18, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.”  Our sinful words and attitudes come from our own hearts.  Though the behavior of others may be horrible, we can only be responsible for our own actions and for the way we respond.  

The saddest part of this to me is that our families are often the ones on the receiving end of the bad reactions and behaviors.  We want that perfect Christian– or near perfect – appearance at work and in the church so we fake it there.  We bring out the kindness, the compassion, and the generosity for others to see.  We get home and what is really in our hearts gets stirred up because things are not as peaceful there.  There are emotional and financial pressures there that don’t exist at work and at church.  There are expectations of mothers and fathers, irritating and frustrating actions from children and spouses, even extended family issues that can create the less than perfect environment and give the excuses we hear too often in the church for bad behavior at home. 

There is no motivation to change a behavior or an attitude that we fail to see as God sees it.  If we truly feel that our actions are justified because of the bad behavior of someone else we will remain in sin.  Often, our sin in response to someone else is worse than their sin against us in the first place.  As Christians, are we even aware of how our actions and words affect those around us?  

Part of the deception of these actions is that the person who acts one way at home and another when they are in more public settings, like work or church, seem to think that they are really the person they are in public.  The truth is that we show our true colors in the more difficult relationships at home.  That kindness, compassion, patience, and generosity that we show the world is not real or we would do them at home.  We are far more concerned about the thoughts of other men than we are about what the Lord God Almighty thinks.  We love the world more than we love Him when we fail to take His word to heart.  

In Deuteronomy 6:5-7 God’s people are instructed like this: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 

One way that we teach our children is by example.  After Jesus had washed the feet of the disciples He said to them, “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”  Think of the humility involved in the feet washing of the man who would betray Him and of those men who had shown little real understanding of all He had tried to teach them.  He humbled Himself to wash their feet.  

As I think about the next generation of children, looking at the example we set for them in the way we treat them, their mothers or fathers, maybe even their grandparents, what example have we set for them to teach their children from?  

If we think that we can be conformed to the image of Christ at work and church but not at home, the accolades we receive there will be our reward.  We have a God-given responsibility – a command to obey – to teach our children the ways and words of God and if we fail to do it we are dooming them to a life of repeating our sin.