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Recently, I suggested our wives deserve grace from us. I received several comments saying that, by definition, grace is never deserved. I agree none of us deserves the unmerited grace of God. Note, I modified the word grace there with the word unmerited.
When I speak of grace to others, I mean being loving, kind, generous, and forgiving. I think my wife deserves those things from me. If nothing else, she deserves them because God has commanded me to give them to her.
However, I’m not going to win a war of words here, so let’s ditch the word grace and focus on that other troubling word – “deserve”. The start of the first definition for deserve found on dictionary.reference.com is “to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to because of actions, qualities, or situation”. Additionally, the etymology of our English word is from a Latin word meaning “to devote oneself to”.
I suspect more than a few marriage problems boil down to husband and/or wife giving their spouse only as much as they think is “deserved”. They keep a mental record of rights and wrongs and give only what they feel they must, what they think is required by what their spouse has and has not done. Such people also calculate what they deserve from their spouse based on what they have and have not done. Aside from the fact that this seems unbiblical, it is based on the false premise that we are a fair judge of both ourselves and our spouse. Human nature means we usually overrate ourselves and underrate our spouse. If both husband and wife are giving only what they calculate is “deserved” then both will be giving less than their spouse feels they deserve. It’s easy to see how this ends, and it’s not pretty.
My choice, and it is a choice, is to see my wife as deserving the best I can give her, all the time. Even when she has been ugly, or I’ve had a long day. I don’t always succeed, but I do better and better as I keep working on it. Is my choice the best way to go? Frankly, I think the Bible more than hints it’s how we are to treat others. Not just our spouse, others in general and our spouse in particular. That aside, it’s certainly a more marriage positive and marriage building choice than trying to discern what she deserves.
[This post first appeared Apr 18, 2012.]
A post worth reading:
Seth’s Blog | The sportscar quadrants ◄ Interesting applications to marriage. And sex.
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