On Self-Observed Boyishness: Tonka Trucks & Destruction vs. Death

[lhynard]

Sadly, I must confess that I spent at least 15 minutes today right after lunch watching a big, yellow, Caterpillar roll over a mount of crushed and broken brick, stone, and wood and rip and bash to shreds and bits yet another house on 3200 block of N. Charles & St. Paul. Mournfully, I must confess that I enjoyed watching this destruction.

Comments

[sadeyedartist]

??? No clue. This is one that I have accepted but completely without understanding it. Its one of those "what the heck, God?" questions I probably asked repeatedly in childhood while watching my brothers. (Who, as I recall, had at least three Tonka trucks.) I wonder if this is a flipside of loving to build because of the fall or something. I can't tell whether this bent toward distruction is sin-related or somehow naturally good. (Not that I have any first-hand understanding.) When I destroy things, it usually is a. out of frustration (not that this happens often, and the thing being destroyed is generally something that needed to be destroyed anyway--such as excess paper.) or b. am preparing it to be rebuilt in some way/made into art.
It may be related to the mysterious genetic ability that guys have to make truck/gun/motor/explosion sounds whereas girls are wholly inable. (Our attempts are at best laughable.) I'm not sure of the female equivalent. (Or opposite.) "Playing house" is too generic. (And I always wanted to play school anyway, NERD that I am.) Maybe its the obsession that women/girls have with clothes. DRESS UP NEVER GOES AWAY. It just gets more interesting, if the woman has the courage. (I was significantly more timid of a dresser thoughout all of my grade/high school life. Most of college this was also true. Some girl friends have since influenced me and I have gotten comfortable with myself enough to realize that DRESS UP IS FUN. But its even funner when there is someone to dress up for. Dressing up by one's self is lacking in a certain kind of satisfaction. Dressing up for someone else adds a new magic to it.)

[shadewright]

In the same vein as my comment below:

Dressing up is mostly a girl thing because women were created to find great joy in their husbands' joy over them. (Before anyone cries chauvenist, read Genesis 3:16b. Also, the Song of Solomon.)

You were created to be a chaste seductress -- to find in your husband's attraction to you an echo of a holy God's desire for all of us.

The possible perversions of this God-given desire are too obvious to enummerate.

[sadeyedartist]

No idea of chauvanism crosses my mind. Being a girl, you see, I understand this personally from the flipside. One of my deepest desires is to fulfill a need in someone that only I can, and to please him in ways that only I know how to. I think that if I were to modify language, I would make two verbs for "to be beautiful". They would be: "to be beautiful" and "to be beautiful for". These are very different things. An objective beauty can be meaningless. Objectively, I would not consider myself beautiful. On the scale of hotness, I am average to slightly above on a good day. Ironically, though (and although I usually believe in the idea of objective beauty--my sixth graders semi-proved that during a critique. Art has fairly obvious standards when you are dealing with observational work), this does not have the capacity to bother me IF one person finds me specifically beautiful. What do I need with the whole world if I'm only in need of one pair of eyes? If I have "his", I don't need "theirs". I believe this is true of every woman. (Innately, although culture can disrupt that.) Now the problem comes when there is no "he", or "he" is absent. If pleasing and satisfying "him" is a felt need (and one which runs deep), then being in want of (olde English meaning of "want" here) "him" creates a certain kind of disatisfaction and insecurity. Its almost as if part of our femininity is missing. A sense of purpose, perhaps. Sure, we can function as "human beings". We can serve God, fulfil a job or duty, be a friend, even change great things, but for all of that, why be made female? Why not be made neutral or into a soul-bearing machine? There's more to being a woman than JUST satisfying (and I mean that in a wholistic sense, and not just sexually) a man, but we were, as you said, created to be a helper, to fulfill a specific need in the opposite sex. When that's missing, there is a genuine void.

[shadewright]

Yes, there is a genuine void. For guys too.

Let me ask, though:

Would your life and self-perspective be different if you believed deeply that God takes delight and satisfaction in you, that He is inpsired even to song by your beauty? That your every breath gives Him pleasure more surely than it will your husband?

[sadeyedartist]

I'm rather disinclined to believe this. It also seems pretty abstract. (Aren't we made "like the angels" in heaven anyway?) You can't really dress up for God. . . .

[shadewright]

I think that I was trying (clumsily) to get to something broader than dressing up. You said that, without someone to appreciate you, there was a part of your femeninity missing, and that you might as well be a soul-carrying robot.

Do you believe then that God loves only the abstract thing you call your "soul?"

Or is He, like a loving Father, pleased and blessed by everything about you, simply because you are His, and He made you the way you are?

Spousal void

[lhynard]

Even if God is blessed by everything about His children -- and I think He is -- I do not think that appreciation of us, His creations, fills this -- shall we say? -- "spousal void".

God did say that it was "not good" for Adham to be alone, implying that there was a void there even in a sinless world where Adham walked with God, so I am not sure how to think of that when Paul seems to contradict this statement of God's in saying that it is good for single guys and girls to stay single. It is a (seeming) flat out contradiction within the Bible that bothers me. Especially in my "Joshua Harris"-obsessed church subculture, we are simultaneously taught to plan and think about our future marriages yet be content while single with no explanation on how to do the latter. (And frankly, I am still not convinced that the former is Biblical.) If we can be content single, then certainly God can fill that void for a spouse. Yet, if He could, why did he bother making women? Why were we not all made gender neutral (It's not like He had not already invented asexual reproduction). It seems to me that God reaches us men in that way through wives -- and women through husbands -- just as God speaks to me through people oftentimes. Surely, God can fill that void through other means, just as He can speak through many means; yet He seems to say that the void is "not good". Just as if one is hungry -- I mean as in starving -- God seems to very rarely (just a few miraculous fasts -- all of which were due to a particular calling to that fast) supernaturally provide for that person's hunger. No, He provides food, physical food. God rarely ever chooses to fill that void of food with Himself but rather with food -- which of course comes from Him in the long run. Perhaps it is the same with the void for a spouse. God could fill that void, yet He rarely ever does; when He does, He has specifically called someone to be single.

[sadeyedartist]

I need faith to believe this, I guess.

[shadewright]

I would like to see you believe this only because I think a lot of you (you come very highly spoken of), and it is my heart to see you blessed and fulfilled as much as possible this side of heaven.

Let me encourage you to re-read Phillipians 1:3-11. What is the work that God began in you at salvation, that He is even now performing in you, and will only be complete upon the day of Christ Jesus?

Let me also encourage you to re-read John 17:20-25. What do you think it meant when Jesus prayed that we would be one with the Trinity, He in us and the Father in Him?

I'll be praying for you--not that you will agree with me but that, no matter what you decide about the "issue," you will know more deeply that it was God's love for you that drew Him to you in the first place.

[sadeyedartist]

I've never responded to this, but I have oft thought about it. . . .
If I had to pick THE issue that I have been dealing with in the past 6 months, it would be the issue of faith and having faith in specifically this attribute of God. I keep my distance when it comes to God in some respects because I fear that he could not truly love me, but expects me to do what he says. When I was first saved, I had complete faith in the Father-love of God but that has since fallen into the shadow of doubt. Couple this with the fear of how God treats his saints. He tends to throw a major tragedy their way the moment they get really close to him, I guess to keep them humble. But its scarry. Hearing "This hymn of thanks was written after ___ lost his wife and eleven children" is certainly impressive in terms of faith, but its also scarry. I have heard messages like "God isn't concerned with your happiness; he's concerned with your GROWTH" so often that I tremble to place my happiness in the hands of God. I can see how a human loving father would want the happiness of his children but its hard for me to transfer this attribute to God. I feel like Much-Afraid in Pilgrim''s Progress. I feel like I need a Great Heart to chase the bad guys away.