I came across something online that stunned me.  I’m not going to share the specific name of it because I don’t want anyone to go look it up. But I’ll say this: there seems to be a small sector of a peculiar type of Christianity where husbands punish their wives. As in spank. And it’s acceptable to both of them.

Umm, yeah.

I spent about a half hour reading up on it – not enough to fully understand it (I’m not sure there’s enough time in existence for me to fully understand this) but enough to get nauseous, cry, and then go on to have horrible dreams.

And though there are about a zillion things about this that make my skin crawl seem wrong to me, there was one sentence that stopped me in my tracks.

One gal was asking on a blog something like, “But what about the husbands?” Meaning, we get consequences when we do something wrong but what about when our husbands do something wrong?

If you’re not sitting down, sit down.  Heck, if you’re sitting down, you might want to lie down.  Because here was the answer given to this sincere woman’s earnest question of what about the husbands and their possible errant choices. Wait for it…

Men self-correct, she answered.  Let me say that again.  Men {supposedly} self-correct.

On a very personal level and for a few very personal reasons, I almost threw my laptop across the room and yelled things I wouldn’t normally yell.  But I’m not even going to touch on it from that perspective.  And I won’t even bring up all the hurting women I know whose actual lives would disprove that ridiculous sentence.

I want to touch on it from a theological perspective.

This statement implies that men self-correct and therefore don’t need outward correction but women do not self-correct and therefore do need outward correction from another person.  Huh.

The Bible I read talks about both man and woman being created in the image of God. Equal in his sight.

The Bible I read talks about both man and woman being recipients of the curse, albeit in different ways.  But equal recipients, nonetheless.

The Bible I read talks about all of us being sinners, all of us falling short.  Equally.  Women did not fall more short.

The Bible I read talks about Jesus coming for all of us.  Equally.  He didn’t come a tad more for us silly, undisciplined women.

And in not one place do I intuit that the Bible is saying, “Men self-correct. Women need a bit more extra help. You know, because they’re girls.”  (And don’t you dare throw “women are the weaker vessel” at me because Peter would more than likely be none too pleased to know people are misconstruing his words that way…)

I believe that both genders have the ability to self-correct and yet at the same time both genders totally mess up everything all the time and need the huge, perfect grace of God to help us turn things around.  Equally.

Sometimes I self-correct. And then on the times that I don’t, loved ones – without hurting me physically, for crying out loud – can gently correct me.  But bottomline, we are all God-corrected.  Equally.

If this post helped you, I would encourage you to check out “Surviving in a Difficult Christian Marriage”, found here.