Charis

Dave,

Correction in 439
I don’t agree with Dave on the hierarchy part.
should be
I don’t agree with nn on the hierarchy part

OK, Dave, I found this in my writings. Perhaps its a bit clearer about the direction of my thinking regarding the intersection of eros with the latter part of Eph 5? Several of the comments I read are reading my words in a way which takes the concept waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy too far (I don’t have time to correct their assumptions).

Why is the instruction to “nourish and cherish as your own body” given exclusively to husbands, never to wives?

My theory is that a married woman would presumably become a mother (barring the tragedy of infertility) and a mother nourishes and cherishes another as her own body by NATURE and by DESIGN. GOD KNOWS that she will not be able to be selfish when it comes to her own flesh and blood baby (unless she goes against nature, not unheard of among humankind)

Whereas, men are universally deprived of this experience. A man has no “maternal instinct” driving him to self sacrifice in order to nourish a baby at 2am. His “death to self” must come about as a decision of his will.

This is from “My spiritual autobiography: or, How I discovered the unselfishness of God” By Hannah Whitall Smith

My children have been the joy of my life. I cannot imagine more exquisite bliss than comes to one sometimes in the possession and companionship of a child. To me there have been moments, when my arms have been around my children, that have seemed more like what the bliss of heaven must be than any other thing I can conceive of; and I think this feeling has taught me more of what are God’s feelings towards his children than anything else in the universe. If I, a human being with limited capacity, can find such joy in my children, what must God, with his infinite heart of love, feel towards his; In fact most of my ideas of the love and goodness of God have come from my own experience as a mother, because I could not conceive that God would create me with a greater capacity for unselfishness and self-sacrifice than he possessed himself; and since this discovery of the mother heart of God I have always been able to answer every doubt that may have arisen in my mind, as to the extent and quality of the love of God, by simply looking at my own feelings as a mother. I cannot understand the possibility of any selfishness on the mother’s part coming into her relation to her children. It seems to me a mother, who can be selfish and think of her own comfort and her own welfare before that of her children, is an abnormal mother, who fails in the very highest duty of motherhood . . . Since I had this insight of the mother-heart of God, I have never been able to feel the slightest anxiety for any of his children; and by his children I do not mean only the good ones, but I mean the bad ones just as much.