The Curse

I am a 40 year old man who met his wife when he was 15 and married her at 21. I have never really been single and would never claim to be an expert on the subject. However, that did not stop me from going on a rant about singles via twitter a few days ago. Perry actually copied and pasted the rant into a post on his blog, you can see them all here.

I have received many questions in regards to the phrase, “lead her away from the curse”. What does that mean? What curse? The following is an attempt to explain the wisdom that a friend shared with me:

Genesis 3:16
To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

This whole verse is the curse. The specific part to which I’m referring is the second part, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Shouldn’t a woman desire her husband? On the surface that seems appropriate and good. The only problem with that is that God is calling it a curse. So, this desire is something different from a holy desire that a woman should have for her husband… instead, it’s a manipulative, controlling and insecure desire to possess a man and either make him her slave (to worship her) or her idol (for her to worship). So a guy who allows a relationship in which he is the primary desire of the woman has not “led her away from the curse”.

A guy will be naturally be drawn to the outworking of this curse… I mean any guy will love the “he will rule over you” part. But, the man’s responsibility in a relationship should be to point the woman to Jesus… not himself and if he isn’t careful he will place himself in the position in which only Jesus belongs. If that happens, then a woman will be drawn further into the ills of that curse and that plays right into the very thing that appeals to a man. He can get what he wants. Because a woman who wants to own a man and makes him her primary desire will fall under his rule and then do whatever it takes to keep him… potentially to the extreme of giving up her body.

To complicate matters (as if a curse from God isn’t enough) most guys battle low self esteem and high levels of insecurity. So a guy who isn’t conscientious about leading a lady away from the curse will easily start to seek power over her. What I have seen is that a man who flirts with any girl that catches his eye isn’t really seeking affection as much as he is seeking power. This is to combat what he lacks in his view of himself. Even a guy with good intentions will be drawn into the curse and actually start to enable it because the lure of power is strong. That is multiplied when that lure is on the lips of a girl who, because of the curse, will make him her ultimate desire.

Practically, for a guy this would mean he needs to measure every word and he needs to be bluntly honest all the time. He must expect that a lady is a victim of the curse and know he can make it worse… or better. A guy can be a stumbling block by simply being passive and allowing the lady to do what she will do naturally, place her desire for the man above her desire for Jesus. Even on a date, a man should be measuring his every word to make sure he’s not placing himself in Jesus’ place and thereby leading the lady toward the curse instead of away from it. Because, if he views himself as desirable to the lady he may not place forth the effort necessary to serve her and conversely, if he has too low of a view of himself, he will say and do things to sweep a girl off her feet. Either way he ends up leading them both further into the curse and misses out on an opportunity to actually get to know who she really is by focusing on her character.

There you have it… I hope this helps.