You know, it really makes me mad when a fellow Christian man refers to his wife as his better half. I usually internalize it because it’s usually said as an offhand comment and to be honest, I don’t really feel like being a dickweed when I don’t have to be. Yeah, that usually restricts me to this blog, but hey, at least I get to talk freely here, for now. That is assuming that the FCC doesn’t just take over the Internet here and quash my one reason for not rising up in arms (they may want to take note of that).
So when a Christian man refers to a his wife as his better half (and in one case I heard “better three-quarters”), which is really a mathematical impossibility), I make a slight cringe and take pity on the poor deluded moron. It’s not because I necessarily believe that he is pussy whipped, as one might assume, but it runs much deeper than that.
The whole concept of your spouse being any kind of half is something I take offense to. As someone who has accepted Jesus’ salvation and is currently awaiting a charge in orders, so to speak, I know that there is no other living human who can possibly compare to that. In Him, I am made whole and I am brought before God as one of His children again, as it was intended from the beginning.
When you say that your spouse is any kind of a half, you are implying you are imperfect because you lacked your spouse’s companionship, not because you are a sinner. We are never made whole (at least not in the spiritual sense) by our spouses. If you a man, your Christian wife is your helper and not your better half.
God never calls Eve to be Adam’s half of anything. Instead, he considered her a good helper for Adam, filling in the areas that Adam lacked, because even though they were made in His image, they were not made to be perfectly capable of everything like He was. And so Eve was given the glory of childbirth and nurturing and Adam was giving the glory of watching over the world. As men, we are called to look after the world and as women are called to manage the household. It is what we were both blessed and cursed with.
Being a helper doesn’t mean you are slave, however. Just as men are the head of the household, a woman is the crown.
Does this mean I’m a crazy misogynist? Hardly. My wife can testify to how I am a good husband over all. She’s dated a lot of scum in her days and she can say that with confidence. And I don’t take crap from her. She’s a great wife because she knows her own vices and bad habits she’s picked up from her mother and she knows that they are damaging to our marriage. Most women won’t admit that jealousy is a sin. Or gossip for that matter.
I’m not a perfect individual and I didn’t get perfect when I married my wife. I did not achieve some permanent state of bliss nor did things get easier. In fact, things probably harder over all. It’s nothing she did wrong, just the natural collision of two lives merging into some coherent synergy.
So please, if you are a Christian man, don’t ever say your wife is your better half. You are committing a wanton act of idolatry when you do so by declaring that it wasn’t God who made you whole, but a fellow sinner.
If you are not a Christian man, well, I recommend that you not get married in the first place, especially in America. It’s better to have your testicles slammed in a door than to marry someone who could easily walk off with half your stuff and tell lies about you to your kids.
If you are a woman, especially a Christian woman, don’t think so highly of yourself. Without Jesus, we all go to Hell, after all.