[Megenoita]

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Once again, you have dodged the question. Not ONCE have you addressed my original question. Let me rephrase it for you a bit.

How is a marriage where the womand does not trust her husband ever going to work? How does a woman that lives in constant fear "for their husbands' eyes not to sin" ever trust her husband? Can you truly love someone (in the manner a person should love a spouse, not in the "love the sinner" sense) that you don't trust? Equally importantly, can you love someone that doesn't trust you?

In short, is trust not a component of love for you?

If you want to keep going in the "if you only agreed with me, then you'd see what I'm saying" circle, then fine. I suppose if I read long enough I can get whatever interpretation is needed for a given situation.

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I'm going to give you a thorough explanation now that I have time. Up until now, I haven't had a chance to sit down really go through everything you've written and address each aspect.

Your original question was:

"Where in the bible does it say that wives should distrust their husbands and follow them around constantly to guard against possibly coming within viewing distance of harlots?"

My answer to you was Titus 2:4 where wives are instructed to love their husbands. What you call "distrust", I am calling love. I was preparing to expand from there if you continued the discussion.

To that, you responded,

"2:3-5 is clearly instructing older women to teach yonger women to be respectful of their husbands. I don't see anything about keeping your husband's penis on a leash in there. In fact, it seems to be instructing women to stay out of their husbands' business.

Unless your friend's wife is going to the casino to admonish the hos (and let her husband play poker in peace), you'll have to find something better."

You missed the point, thinking that I sent you that verse as a proof that wives should distrust their husbands. I was simply displaying a verse that says that wives should love their husbands, and later I was planning on showing you why this is biblical love, and not distrust.

Here is my explication:

"Titus 2:4a says for women to be instructed by older women in the church to love their husbands. Where I'm going with this is that love in the Bible is ultimately rooted in Christ, for God is love (I John 4). And love all throughout the Bible, especially in Paul's espistles, is the act of seeking to help one another become more like Christ, i.e., our helping each other be conformed to the image of Christ. This image is one of purity, the opposite of an act like lust. When Jesus says in Matthew 5:27-30 that lusting with our eyes is really, really bad, any wife who reads that who wants her hubby to be more like Christ will naturally wish upon him Philippians 4:8, 2 Cor. 10:5, Col. 3:2 type of thinking, and she will hope to help guard his mind from what Matthew 5 talks about.

In other words, biblical love is seeking for all people to think and be like the One who saved us, and a wife's role is especially strong in that way because she is "one flesh" with her husband."

To delineate the above:

1. Wives are to love their husbands (Titus 2:4).
2. Love is rooted in God, in Christ (I John 4).
3. Love all throughout the Bible, especially in Paul's epistles, is the act of seeking to help one another become more like Christ, a.k.a. helping each other be conformed to the image of Christ.
4. The above mentioned image is one of purity, the opposite of an act such as lust. Matthew 5:27-30 demonstrates why lust is so bad.
5. A loving wife will wish upon her husband Phil. 4:8, 2 Cor. 10:5, Col. 3:2 type of thinking, which is the pure thinking of Christ, and she will seek to guard him from the damage of disobeying Matthew 5.
6. A wife's role is especially strong in aiding her husband's conformity to Christ because she is not only his sister in Christ, but also his own flesh. This is why she would have a greater influence on his eyes than anyone else; they are her eyes, too.

I don't think this line of argument is unclear, and it's certainly logically consistent. My only worry is that I am not communicating it clearly.

Next, you responded:

"You've got to be kidding. If a woman trusts her husband enough to be a responsible gambler, she should trust him enough to be in the same building with young nubile females. Period. What you describe in the original post ("his wife really doesn't want him to play live poker because of how women around him would be dressed") isn't loving concern, it's paranoia. Nothing you can quote from the bible is going to justify that IMO."

Notice that you didn't respond to the construction of the logical argument from the Bible. You didn't contend the verses or any of the connections to the reasoning I offered. You didn't say, "The Bible doesn't say that." You made no attempt at refutation whatever. All you did was disagree, defining trust in your own terms and defining what I called love as "paranoia". Since this is all you did, my response was:

"I understand that you disagree. But the Bible says what it says."

In other words, as you did not contend the logic from the Bible, all you did do was say, "I don't agree", at which point I simply say, "Okay, we agree to disagree."

I decided to add another response because I noticed where our point of disagreement was, and that is the area of trust. What is trust, and what isn't it? I said:

"The Bible undermines your statement that if Roy's wife trusted her, she would have no problem with his being in a place where women are dressed all crazy. The Bible teaches that a person isn't strong because he or she is impervious to a temptation, but because one is wise enough to flee from it. This is what the verse "Let every one who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall" means." (I went on...)

You replied:

"OK, this is the point at which I plonk you. When challenged to provide a cite where the bible says what you say it does, you throw something out. When it's pointed out that what you cited does NOT in fact back up your point, you make up a cover story and throw out some vague references. When pressed further, you simply respond "it's in there, trust me, QED.""

This bothered me because you rejected the biblical argument I presented, but with no reasoning other than, "I disagree. I don't think that's what love is." You're not disagreeing with my presentation of the Bible, but with the Bible itself. And if you are disagreeing with my presentation, you have not argued any consistent argument as to why my presentation is off. You called my references "vague", but they are very specific to the mindset of Christ and pure thinking that He desires in us. If you want dozens of more verses that say that if we care about a person, our number one goal should be to help them obey God, then I can offer those, but I really don't think that's what you're looking for. I think you just disagree with what the Bible calls "love", and why the Bible doesn't support your notion of "trust".

What does the Bible say about trusting people? It's very harsh--not at all what one might expect to hear. It actually teaches that humans by nature are not trustworthy; we cannot even trust ourselves! A man's heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. No one can understand it (Jeremiah 17:9). The Bible says that he who follows his own heart is a fool (Proverbs 28:26). There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end is the way of death (Proverbs 16:25). Even the great Apostle Paul said that he knows there is nothing good that dwells in him, in his flesh (Romans 7:18). This is why he taught that Christians must walk by the Spirit, meaning obey God's word, so that they will not carry out their natural desires, the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). "For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these two are in opposition to each other, so that you may not do the things that you please." What Gal. 5:17 means there is that Christians have an inner war going on, and they must constantly be guarding their minds against what they are naturally inclined to do (sin). The only way that man can keep his way pure is by obeying the Bible (Psalm 119:9). Men pray that God will not let them wander from His commandments (119:10); surely a wife would also try to help in any way she can, being one flesh with her husband, his helpmeet (Genesis). And he would seek to help guard her mind as well.

Interesting is that in Galatians 5, the first three "deeds of the flesh" mentioned are sexually related: immorality, impurity, and sensuality.

As believers in Christ, God and the Bible, our trust for another person comes from knowing their relationship with God is strong and growing, and if we are related to them, which we are at least as "brothers in Christ", then we naturally desire to help them along the path of obeying God. This is what Roy's wife is doing.

M