She: “Men! What is it about men!”
He: “The governor of New York gets caught hobnobbing with call girls and you blame it on all men?”
She: “You know what I mean. How men are.”
He: “I do not know what you mean. And just how ARE men?”
She: “If they could get by with it, every man would do what the governor did.”
He: “Wow. You are really down on men today. Do you really believe that?”
She: “Well, think of the pornography problem. Women don’t buy those magazines and videos to look at men. It’s a male thing. Men are like animals.”
He: “We are all animals, I don’t know if you have noticed. Not plants and not rocks.”
She: “Don’t try to change the subject. I mean men are naturally unfaithful and not very discriminating about who they have sex with.”
He: “You’ve heard me say that the lower nature of man is naturally polygamous.”
She: “I’ve heard you say it, but I’m not sure what you mean by it.”
He: “That the base nature–the Bible calls it the ‘old man’–is unfaithful and promiscuous. But the higher nature, the ‘new man’ he becomes in Jesus Christ–has higher standards and wars against that nature.”
She: “Meaning what?”
He: “Meaning that every man is vulnerable, that every man you will ever meet has it in him to be the worst rat and most unfaithful person on the planet.”
She: “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
He: “That is not what you’ve been saying. You’ve been saying all men are dirty rats and not worthy of their wives’ trust. And I’m saying they are capable of being that way, but their better nature knows a higher way of life. And that to one degree or the other, it’s a constant battle inside every man.”
She: “That’s why I hate to see our little boy grow up. He’s the cutest guy right now, and so full of innocence and sweetness. But he’s going to grow up to be a man, and something in me hates that.”
He: “You might as well try to hold back the sunrise, Honey. That’s the natural order of things.”
She: “I know. I just dread him becoming a teenager and the hormones raging and finding dirty magazines under his bed.”
He: “Listen a minute. Men and women are different. A man is turned on by the visual. He sees a great looking woman and his heart skips a beat. He stands near Miss America and the blood rushes to his head and he becomes a babbling idiot. We did not make ourselves this way; it’s part of our nature.”
She: “Original sin, if you ask me.”
He: “It probably is. But it’s part of the package, Hon, and every man has to deal with it.”
She: “Well, I’m glad women are not like that.”
He: “No, but women come with their own baggage as a result of our sinful natures.”
She: “Like what?”
He: “That’s what we men are still trying to figure out. Who was it–Freud?–who said no one has ever been able to answer the ultimate question ‘What does a woman want?'”
She: “You got us off the subject. We were talking about how men are. You can’t sit there and tell me that all men wouldn’t do what Eliot Spitzer did if they knew they would not be caught or would get a disease.”
He: “I’m telling you precisely that. There are still some faithful men in the world today. But the other thing I’m telling you is that you need to get real about the makeup of the male animal. He is the sexual aggressor, he is turned on visually, and until he is laid out horizontally by the funeral director, he still has to deal with this lower nature that wants the forbidden fruit, so to speak.”
She: “Are you telling me that people like Billy Graham or James Dobson or Chuck Swindoll are still this way, even though they are senior adults? Aren’t they past this stuff?”
He: “I can’t speak for them, but I recall how the young Billy Graham made a covenant with his team members that he would never be in a room with a woman by himself, never ride in a car with one woman, and never have a meal with only one unless it were a family member. He was building these fences to protect himself.”
She: “He knew himself even then, didn’t he?”
He: “He did, and knew he had to take steps in advance to rein in these impulses that were part of his nature. In the Bible, Job said, ‘I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look on a virgin.’ (Job 31:1) I suppose by ‘virgin’ he was referring to the beautiful single young women who were probably in and out of his house all the time, visiting with his sons and daughters, and not just any unmarried woman in the neighborhood. But the point is that he took a preventive measure to protect his heart and mind.”
She: “You’re that way, aren’t you?”
He: “Thank you. I thought for a minute there you were going to divorce me because of what the governor of New York did. And yes, I work at protecting myself in advance. I pray at the start of every day that the Lord will guide my eyes and my thoughts. My words too.”
She: “I don’t mean I don’t trust you. It’s just….”
He: “That we’re all sinners? Oh, yeah. That’s why husbands and wives have to work at keeping close to one another. That’s the best safeguard against foolishness.”
She: “One of the best. The other is staying close to the Lord. In prayer, in worship, in reading His Word.”
He: “Right. Want to go out tonight and work on our relationship?”
She: “I’ll get a baby-sitter.”
I have known some women that felt like “she”, I myself am not one, we are all capable of sin, of any kind. I like the last 2 sentences, hope my husband sees that. Smile!
Heh, I stood next to Miss America once — actually it was Miss USA but I didn’t know that — in line at a lunch counter. All I knew was that I was suddenly a babbling idiot and was about to ask what an amazing girl like her was doing in a average joint like this, but then the blood rushed to my head and… I don’t think I said a word. At least I hope not… I can’t really remember actually 😛
I found out a bit later that Ms. Chelsey Cooley was in town for some special event nearby.
I remember sitting in a doctoral seminar on Biblical Ethics in the mid 1990’s, discussing gender issues, when the professor adamantly exclaimed, “My son is a physiologist, and I’m here to tell me that there is no difference between a man and a woman.”
At that moment, all of us twenty-something year old doctoral students look around the table at each other and shared the same unspoken thought: “Doc, you’ve been married how long?”