I have a theory.
If a husband can’t tell his wife she is ugly, the marriage must need help.
Can I prove this? Of course not. What would the point of that be anyways? But consider this…
There have been a whole pile of books written about how men and women relate to each other. Most of them are trying to provide some answers to why it can be hard to be in a relationship where you are so close to someone else. In some instances these books just give men and women the permission to basically just be the way they are with no concern for what parts of their make up are actually changeable. Yes, we all know now that women are feel-ers and men are not. Men are from one planet and women are from another. I could go on and one, but hold on a second. Men ARE feel-ers, they just don’t see the need to talk about it. Oh, and while I’m at it, men and women are actually both from earth. No, I’m serious on this one, we really are. I haven’t seen ANY interplanetary transport ships delivering the latest immigrants from various places in our universe.
Why is it, that we so often entrench ourselves in the “way we are” and just give up trying to improve upon ourselves to become someone who is better at being around other people? All of these books spend so much time defining everything they can, from what personality number and color you are, to what jobs you should be doing, to how your genes can be blamed for pretty much everything.
I would agree that understanding is important and helpful, but it just can’t stop there. We need to apply that knowledge in such a way that we can actually tolerate and become more tolerable to people who are different from us. The goal isn’t to become the same. It’s to simply realize that we are here to co-exist and co-existing is easier when we understand one another.
So that brings me to my theory.
Before I get started I just want to say that this theory hasn’t come from a frustration from within my own marriage. It’s more something I’ve observe from past relationships and relationships between people I know. Another thing I’d like to point out is the fact that I’m not a sexist. I just believe that both sexes have things about them that identify themselves. Over the past few generations I seems to be noticing more and more that the things that are accepted about women that make them a woman, are strong and worthy things (which may bery well be true) . Meanwhile, the things about a man that make him a man are becoming unimportant and foolish. I think it’s a shame we can’t just celbrat ethe differences instead of using them to try and squash the other sex. Yes, there was a time when women were squashed for nothing more than being who they are. Sometimes I wonder if the pendulum has swung. Instead of women getting bashed by a man’s extra strength, men are getting bashed by women’s extra emotion. There will always be wife beaters out there, and they should be held accountable for SURE. Please don’t take that last comment as a justification for abuse, or as a indifference to the abuse that still goes on today. I know the problems with abuse of both men and women are far from gone in our society. (I believe that even if we don’t get to the abusers with our various ways, God will hold them accountable. They won’t get away with it in the long run.)
Now. Onto my point.
There IS a place in a marriage for sarcasm. I’ve read in The Globe and Mail that a man by the name of Alberta Katz from the University of Western Ontario has found that men make roughly twice as many sarcastic remarks as women do. He goes further to report that this is no surprise to most of the population as most people say that they think men are more sarcastic that women. Personally, I appreciate sarcasm. Humor that is based around sarcasm is especially appreciated. I think it can be over used, but a well placed and timely sarcastic jab is fine by me. And let’s face it, we’ve all laughed at more than a few jokes built on sarcasm.
So why is it that in some instances, a man who tells his wife he loves her every day of his married life simply can’t be sarcastic about his wife from time to time without getting into trouble? Why is it that a man can pledge his undying love to his wife and she’ll be tickled, but the moment a joke comes out, she takes offense? Is marriage so sacred a thing to women that it’s can’t stand a joke now and again? I personally feel that if a married couple can’t be sarcastic and laugh together in that way, then there is a breakdown underway.
Ok, let’s assume I tell my wife she’s ugly. What are the reasonable and logical outcomes of this comment? (Of course, I’m making the assumption that women are reasonable and logical, which I know as well as any other married man, that the jury is most certainly still out on this one. :) ) So what could I mean:
- I mean it: It’s something that I’ve been harboring for some time. Ever since I proposed marriage, endured the wedding plans, and commenced telling her that I love her every day, I have been REALLY thinking, “My God! I can’t stand this woman.”
- I don’t mean it: I actually meant what I said when I stood at the front of the church in front of all my friends and family and my daily “I love you”s are the real thing.
So let’s look at the first, well this would truly be a tragedy of a marriage gone wrong. Something was amiss. Perhaps we got married for the wrong reasons. Perhaps we were just not being honest with each other from the start and something like this was bound to happen. Basically, what I’m saying is that this does happen and when it does, it’s a real shame. Men just shouldn’t say their wives are ugly and mean it.
Ok.
Let’s proceed forward from here with the understanding that there are still marriages out there that can go the distance. Let’s also say that my marriage is one of those. The truth is, I don’t think my wife is ugly. And yes, I have actually called her “ugly” on more than one occasion.
So we’ll look at option 2: I don’t mean it.
I actually think that this is the one that most women would believe deep down anyways. Even when they are acting like they’ve been hurt, they know it’s a joke, but for some reason, they just can’t bring themselves to react that way. They choose to take offense and hold their husband responsible for having said a horrible thing. He then gets frustrated and mad that she can’t take a joke. She then basically role plays within herself and says something like this, “Oh, I’m supposed to laugh when my husband says I’m ugly? What kind of a husband says that?” (Remember, she knows it was a joke, but just it’s playing it that way)
Well if you know your husband doesn’t mean it, which later in the argument you are likely to admit anyways, why raise the issue? She’ll often say something like, “Well, I know you didn’t mean it, but if you didn’t mean it, why would you say it?”
By this time there are tears and the husband is in disbelief that a simple joke has become the issue of the day. He wants to answer the question honestly and say, “I said it because it’s funny.” But he knows that the response will be “You think my sitting here crying is funny?”, so he instead starts disarming this whole thing by saying, “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I meant it as a joke and I guess it just didn’t come across this way. Of course I don’t think you are ugly.”
She becomes satisfied with that and everyone’s friends again.
Ladies, why not just laugh? If you want a healthy and vibrant relationship, recognize your husband’s sarcasm for what it is and laugh. Yes, it’s possible he can over do it and joke too often. You can tell him when it’s too much. Until then, just laugh. You probably need a good laugh anyways. Consider that perhaps your husband married you because he really does love you. If this is the case then probably all his negative comments are supposed to be funny. Seriously, what man in his right mind would say something negative about his wife’s appearance anyways?
Guys, your wife needs to know she is loved. She needs to know it on a regular basis. If sarcasm is the only way you talk, you need to fix that. Try sincereity once in a while. It will work wonders in your marriage. No, her birthday and Christmas are not the only times in the year that you are expected to be expressive about how you feel about your wife. If you find it hard, try thinking of all she does for you and your family and remember she does it because she loves you. Then imagine it all stopping. That process often puts me in a place where I can tell her how I appreciate her very easily.
I tell my wife that I love her. She believes me. From time to time, I tell her she’s ugly. She laughs along with me. She knows it’s a joke and we enjoy the joke together. The day we can’t laugh about it, is the day I know my marriage has developed a problem.
Too many marriages are void of laughter. This simply can’t be good.
If you want a great example of a fun and sarcastic relationship that is obviously filled with love at the same time, watch “Nothing To Lose”. It’s a movie. The opening scene is awesome and inspires me to have fun with my wife.
So I end with this… If you can’t tell your wife she is ugly, you need to find out why not and get it dealt with. If this kind of fun is missing it could be a number of things.
- Men, maybe she’s suffering from love starvation. Maybe she doesn’t hear the words enough. If she KNOWS she is loved, then she’ll be secure enough to be able to enjoy sarcastic humor with you.
- Women, he’s only joking. Laugh and let that laughter become a piece of your marriage that you will both appreciate as the years pass. If you’re feeling insecure, tell your husband. He probably feels a little insecure too. Remember, he just made a joke that no one laughed at. If that doesn’t make you insecure, then I don’t know what would.
After flying a very long way from Calgary to Warsaw, Poland, three of my team mates and I finally sat down in our compartment on a train from Warsaw to Sosnowiec. This was the last leg of the journey with the exception of a short drive to the place we would sleep. It had been an arduous journey, yet it was an exciting time for me. I had never been to Europe before and now I found myself on a train in Poland. A new world entirely - or at least it felt that way. The compartment we sat in had 6 seats in it. There were four of us and one of the other 2 seats in our compartment was empty but the last seat, the one by the window, was occupied. The man gave us all a smile and a friendly nod as we took our seats. He didn’t say anything, which was great because we probably couldn’t have understood him anyways.
For the most part our cabin mate took in the journey by simply sitting and watching as the landscape passed underneath us. He was an old man. I’ve never been good at age guessing, so I won’t try, but his face was furrowed with age. He was tanned and his face looked almost leathery. I thought to myself that this is one of those faces a photographer would take a close-up of and then get published in National Geographic. He really did have a beautifully aged face. Pleasing to look at. The man looked like a happy man. He looked like a passive man. I would think he would be a nice person to know. It was funny…I found myself respecting the man, and I knew nothing about him. I almost wished I could tell him that. That, of course, was out of the question for me as I would have been at a loss if he only spoke Polish. So he just looked out the window.
Have you ever had those times when you look at someone you don’t know and wonder what they are up to? You look at them drive past you and you wonder what their life has in store for them. Do they consider how large the world is? Do they ever think about people who are outside of their own immediate influence? Does this person realize that the world is full of people all going about things they consider very important while taking almost no notice of all the other people doing their own things. At the same time most of us are actually doing different things entirely. How can our lives be so different, yet we feel basically the same as everyone else. Well I had one of those moments. I looked across the compartment at the man and wondered what this man’s story was. I wondered if he realized the significance of meeting us on that train. This was my first time on a train in Poland and I’d probably not ever see him again. It was a pretty big deal to me, but he likely didn’t give it a second thought.
What should we do with those instants? Well, we’re taught to love people. I considered that on that trip. I asked myself, “Do you love this guy?” To my surprise I found that I could indeed love him. I already respected him and that’s a part of love. My first visit to Europe was fascinating to me. I have always been interested in World War II. I have grandparents who were involved in one way or another with that war. I often wonder what it must have been like. I often wonder if I might have been able to fight in it. Would I have what it takes? To fight? To survive? To lead? And so to be in a place where this truly epic event took place was striking.
Poland is of particular interest because it was the first place Hitler occupied at the onset of the war. What’s that like? I mean, can you imagine it? It’s such a foreign concept to me. How does a country be free one day and then occupied the next? How does a person who lives there deal with that? Could you? Super time rolled around and the man took a brown paper bag from his jacket that was hanging on a hook on the compartment wall. His meal consisted of a cheese sandwich and a tomato. The man ate the sandwich as he watched the countryside recede into distance. He began carving the tomato and carefully taking the slices off the blade of the knife with his lips. It was then I began to wonder…
This man would have been a child when the war ended. He may have even been around when the war began. He very well might have seen some of the most unbelievable things a person could see. Did he watch friends get taken away to Nazi camps? Was he in one of those camps? I found myself respecting him all the more. You see, I’ve been fortunate to have never had to worry for my life in the kinds of ways people who are surrounded by war do. I’m very aware of what it must be like. I mean at least I consider the fact that I’ve can’t fully appreciate what life is like in those situations. Some people these days don’t give it any thought at all. We should though, shouldn’t we? I mean the world wars impacted just about every country in the world. For those of us in the west, the fact that the wars were not in our own backyards is very significant. Because of this, as the soldiers from those wars pass on, what is left here is a people who just can’t relate to what it took to build our countries and how important it was to stop what Hitler was doing across the ocean.
I wonder what the man on the train was thinking while we steamed southward. I wonder if the pleased look on his face was because he knew how hard life can be and train rides are easy. I wonder if he was thinking about how much better things are now that Hitler was gone, or now that Poland was no longer communist even? Maybe he was just looking forward to seeing someone he loved. Maybe there was a leathery-faced old woman somewhere that was patiently awaiting his return home. The point is that we all feel for the most part that we are a relatively insignificant part of a huge human race. I mean we all have our place and we can all make a difference, but for the most part we realize that we are one of very many people on the this planet. Our feelings in this regard are usually rooted in modesty and the knowledge that there have been greater men than us. The interesting thing is that it’s not just the man who freed Poland from Nazi occupation who is important and worth remembering today. The man who saw it with his own eyes and knew the hardship that came with it is almost more important. That man’s life is far from insignificant. He is the evidence of why the war needed to be fought. He is the reason why someone chose to send people to a battlefield where men and boys faced the very real possibility of having to pay the ultimate price. It is vitally important that we remember these things.
So we need to respect those who have suffered at the hand of the unjust. We need these people to know that we haven’t forgotten that there is something worse than taxes and having to go to work each day. We need to let these people know that their suffering has truly earned them a place of honor in our minds. The sun began to set as the train drew ever-closer to Sosnowiec. Not long now. I couldn’t help but think about the finality of our disembarking the train. If I was to have any impact on that man who sat across from me, I would have to say something soon. I knew I wasn’t going to say anything though. Even if we could communicate in the same language, I still probably wouldn’t say anything. I mean, have you ever had a complete stranger come up to you and say he respected you and thought you had a pleasing face? I haven’t.
Even though I said nothing at all to that man, isn’t it interesting that many people would say that to have sat in a compartment with a strange man from another country was rather non-interesting. That experience could easily have gone by without a person giving it a second thought. It could have gone down in my life as one of the many insignificant things. You know, one of those times that just go passed that we just don’t think really matter at all. Months later I sit down and write about it. What you are reading now is the result. I come to realize that through that seemingly un-eventful meeting of that man and me, a connection was made. At least it was for me. Regardless of how limited my connection with him was, his sitting there across the compartment ultimately got me to write this. It was a catalyst and all that was needed was for me to open my eyes and look.
Watching the world pass you buy can actually be a good thing if you open your eyes to see it.
Allow me first to introduce you to someone I know. He is Dan. Dan and I have many long conversations about all kinds of things. Usually we discuss ourselves into a place where we basically both agree that the world is a mess. Often our discussions are about the state of the church and our place in it. What is the church meant to be doing? Are we doing it?
Dan and I also spend a lot of time talking about music. He and I are both musicians and aspiring song writers. We are both members of a song writer’s guild and so we often ask questions about the types of songs that we should be using and therefore writing in our churches. Today, the question was posed…
Should the word “Christianity” EVER be used as an adjective?
Well I think that we can all agree on it’s noun-ness. It’s cretainly a noun. I am a Christian. A Christian by definition is someone who strives to be Christ-like. That means like a million different things. Basically by calling myself a Chrsitian, I am saying that I’m a follower and/or a disciple of Christ. Thus the term “Christian” can easily be used as a noun.
Now what about it’s use as an adjective. What do I mean? Let me give some examples…
- Christian Radio Station
- Christian Music
- Christian Magazine
- Christian Bookstore
Obviously I could go on and on. The use of particular interest to me is the “Christian Music” one. Well, first of all music can’t be christ-like. It can be Christ centred. The real use of that term is meant to say that this music overtly expresses and promotes Christianity. Ok. So whats the point in that lable in the first place?
I’m a married man. I don’t cheat on my wife. So that’s established. Now consider this. Uncle Kracker has had a song on the radio called, “Fallow Me”. The song is basically the singer trying to convince a married woman (or maybe an engages or otherwise committed woman..or man I suppose) to enter into an affair with him. So that’s what the song is about. Unfaithfulness in a relationship. So do we refer to that song as a part of the genre called Cheater Music? Or what would be even more parrallel would be to call it Cheater-like Music. That doesn’t make sense.
Further to that, if I listen to that song, does that make me a Cheater? No. By listening to it and even enjoying it, am I any more likely to cheat than I was before I ever heard it? No. Was it put on the radio because it was a good Cheater Song? No - at least probably not. The song would have fit into a radio mold. It’s a simple song with a nice “feel” to it. It fits really well into the “pop” genre we’re all so used to being forced to hear. (At least it feels that way some times.)
So Uncle Kracker can write a hit song about cheating but he doesn’t have to seek out a Cheater radio station???
So why the hell, are there Christian radio stations?
If I got in my time machine I got off ebay and went back in time to just before that song was release and replaced the lead vocal track with an equaly well performed vocal that expressed christian views and was even a song in praise of Jesus, would the song still make it on the radio? I submit that it would not. Why? Because thought it doesn’t make sense, there IS such a thing as Christain music. Its the label given to music that is about Christianity. For some reason out of the millions of topics that songs are about, this one topic is assigned it’s own genre, thus alienating it from mainstream radio.
It shouldn’t be this way. It defies logic. It’s crazy.
I can write a rock song and it only “counts” if it’s not about Jesus.
Of course, this is not always true. There are bands like Lifehouse and Creed that each have Christian members and sing about Christian morals and so on, but if you consider worship songs, or songs that basically just extol Jesus using direct Chirstian language, it’s true almost all the time.
Do you know how I think it should be? Genre should be a musical style thing only. (i.e. rock, jazz, rap, ska, metal, etc.) Chirstian should not come into it.
As a christian musician, I should really be standing against Christian radio and any other area where my music will be labelled as Christian. That will only limit the places my music can go. I’ll sell less but what me more unfortunate is that non-Christians will not hear my music and there will be no chance at all that they might learn about why I have chosen Christianity. How is that Ok from a Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20) perspective?
I would be fulfilling the Great Commission better if I avoided letting my music from being flagged as Christian. Seems ironic, hey?
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