Disillusioned with women
Eternity Online: John Edmiston (Editor)
Eternity-Inspiration for Thursday 4thd December 1997
Disillusioned with women
(Ecclesiastes 7:25-28 NIV) So I turned my mind to understand, to
investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and to
understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly.
{26} I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose
heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God
will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare. {27} "Look," says
the Teacher, "this is what I have discovered: "Adding one thing to
another to discover the scheme of things-- {28} while I was still
searching but not finding-- I found one upright man among a
thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.
What must have happened to take Solomon's view of women from the joy
of Song of Songs to the praise Proverbs 31 to this sombre angry
passage in Ecclesiastes? Solomon married pagan women who worshipped
other gods and let his heart be turned from God as a result. His
experience was not of beautiful godly Christian women but of the
attractive high-born idol worshippers who ruined his faith in God.
In Christ women are upright and are surely as upright as men. Solomon
is talking about women without God in their hearts, before the cross
and without regeneration. Scripture records that there were very many
godly women such as Sarah and Ruth and Esther. It also records some
very bad women such as Jezebel.
To Solomon's eyes women were incapable of true righteous living. Why
did he arrive at a perspective which is so at odds with what he
wrote earlier? I think it is the effect of sin and sexual
over-indulgence. Solomon was clearly breaking God's law with his
lifestyle. (Deuteronomy 17:14-17 NIV) When you enter the land the
LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and
settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the
nations around us," ..... The king, moreover, must not acquire great
numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to
get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back
that way again." {17} He must not take many wives, or his heart will
be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and
gold. .....
Solomon broke all these rules about the king's lifestyle and in
accordance with what was predicted "or his heart will be led astray"
Solomon's heart was led far from God. He became a jaded and bitter
king with a venomous outlook towards those things he once most
cherished. His promiscuity backfired on him and left him
empty. As God left his life a dark cloud seems to have come over
his mind so that instead of noticing the good in women he only
notices the bad. He thinks he now "sees them as they are" but
this is the "objectivity" of despair not the eyes of Christ. His
disillusionment with women was the result not of truth but of a
darkened soul. How easy it is to think we now "see things clearly"
when in fact we are seeing them bitterly and angrily and ignoring all
the good.
Today I see a similar phenomenon in many of the covers of the
prominent women's magazines. The more they become preoccupied with
sex the more they blatantly despise men. Its almost as if the
promiscuous sexual life-style eventually self-destructs into
dissatisfaction and mutual despising. Godlessness leads to
unhappiness. Solomon's promiscuity led him into despair and whether
you are male or female if you do what Solomon did you will get what
Solomon got and feel how Solomon felt - and that was awful.
Prayer:
Lord help us to really appreciate others and not to despise people
because of their gender. Help us to lead godly lives and marry godly
partners and live lives of deep joy in the person you have given us.
To You be the glory. Amen.
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