“Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.” —Proverbs 14:1 KJV
This week we’ve been discussing how women “tear down their house with their hands,” today I want to explain how a woman can tear down her house with just one finger.
I have been thinking throughout this series about those hands.
The hands that can work, cook, nurture, clean, mend, comfort, serve, pray, and build can also become instruments through which disorder enters the home.
Sometimes tearing down looks obvious.
Other times it appears in habits that have become so normal we scarcely recognize what they are doing.
Pointing is one of them.
I have watched women speak to their husbands in ways they would never speak to another grown man.
A wagging finger.
A sharp little “come here.”
Instructions issued across the room.
Corrections given publicly.
A tone that carries the assumption that she is the competent adult and he is another person under her management.
Sometimes everyone laughs because the husband has learned to laugh too.
The wife jokes that she has “trained him well,” or tells another woman that her husband knows better than to do this or that, and perhaps she has repeated it so often that neither of them hears the disrespect anymore.
Yet Scripture gives order to the home.
“For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.” Ephesians 5:23.
That order does not give a husband permission to become harsh, selfish, lazy, or tyrannical.
Ephesians immediately lays upon him the enormous responsibility of loving his wife “even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.”
The authority God gives a husband arrives joined to sacrificial responsibility before Him.
A wife also has something to answer for in how she treats that authority.
If I spend years correcting my husband like a child, ordering him around, overriding him whenever his judgment differs from mine, and making sure everybody within earshot understands who really runs the house, I should not be surprised when the order God designed begins to feel confused.
The temptation toward control can become stronger when a woman is naturally capable.
She may organize more efficiently, remember details more readily, or notice needs before her husband notices them, and before long competence begins whispering that leadership naturally belongs to the person who can do things fastest.
That thought needs to be handled carefully.
Marriage is not a contest to determine which spouse can manage a household most efficiently.
God established an order that asks both husband and wife to walk in humility, and sometimes submission becomes most meaningful when a wife knows exactly how she would do something and still makes room for her husband to lead.
There have been moments in my own marriage when the words leaving my mouth sounded far too much like instructions given to one of my children.
I have heard the tone after it was already out there and realized I had crossed some invisible line between speaking plainly to my husband and speaking down to him.
That deserves correction in me.
A woman does not strengthen her marriage by making her husband feel small enough to manage.
Her hands can tear down in another direction too, especially when the pointing finger moves beyond the walls of her own house and begins keeping a running inventory of everyone else’s shortcomings.
Some women seem to know exactly what everybody at church is doing wrong.
They notice whose children behaved badly.
They know which woman dresses improperly, whose house is disorderly, who missed too many services, whose marriage seems strained, which family spends money foolishly, and who appears to be getting a little too much attention lately.
If the pastor makes a decision she dislikes, the commentary may last all the way home.
His sermon was too long.
His sermon was too short.
He did not address the right issue.
He handled that situation poorly.
He should have done this.
He should never have done that.
By the time Sunday lunch is served, the children have learned far more about criticizing spiritual authority than they learned from the sermon itself.
That matters.
Children hear what we say about their church family.
They hear the names spoken over dinner.
They notice when mother’s favorite pastime becomes inspecting everybody else.
Years later we sometimes wonder why our children grew suspicious of church, cynical about Christians, and unimpressed with spiritual authority, though they spent eighteen years listening to the people around them be picked apart at home.
James asks a searching question about the tongue:
“Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.” James 3:9.
We can sing hymns beside people on Sunday morning and dissect them before Sunday afternoon.
Pointing rarely remains factual for very long because criticism eventually begins wandering into surmising.
We move from what we know into what we suspect.
“She probably did that because…”
“I guarantee you he thinks…”
“I just have a feeling…”
“They only came because…”
“She wants everyone to notice…”
We begin assigning motives to people whose hearts we cannot see.
Paul warned Timothy against “evil surmisings” in 1 Timothy 6:4, and I think that phrase describes something remarkably common in human relationships.
We gather three pieces of information, fill the empty spaces with our assumptions, then react to the story we constructed as though we witnessed the entire thing ourselves.
A household filled with that kind of conversation becomes an unhealthy place.
Suspicion grows there.
Gossip becomes ordinary there.
Children learn that people’s motives are fair game for family discussion.
A husband may gradually stop sharing things because he knows every person mentioned will eventually be analyzed.
Meanwhile, the pointing woman often believes she possesses exceptional discernment.
That is one of the dangers.
The more she points downward at everyone around her, the higher she must imagine herself standing.
Eventually she becomes the standard against which everybody else is measured.
She knows how marriages should operate.
She knows how children should behave.
She knows how churches should be run.
She understands motives nobody has actually confessed to her.
She has an explanation for everyone else’s failure.
And because so much of her attention is directed outward, there is very little left for honest examination of herself.
Jesus spoke directly to this tendency.
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Matthew 7:3.
There is almost humor in the picture because of how absurd it is.
A person with a piece of timber protruding from her own eye is leaning toward someone else, deeply concerned about a speck.
Yet I have done versions of this more times than I would like to admit.
Somebody’s fault becomes obvious to me while my own response escapes examination.
I can see their pride while remaining convinced my criticism is discernment.
I can recognize their harshness without noticing the edge in my own voice.
I can explain exactly where they went wrong while giving myself an entire library of reasons for why my own behavior was understandable.
And when the pointing finger finally turns toward us, some of us immediately point somewhere else.
That instinct is old.
Very old.
It appeared almost immediately after sin entered the first home.
God asked Adam about his disobedience, and Adam replied, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” Genesis 3:12.
His finger went toward Eve, with enough blame left over to reach toward God who had given her to him.
Then the Lord questioned Eve.
“The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” Genesis 3:13.
The finger moved again.
Neither answer changed what had happened.
The garden was already broken, and blame could not put innocence back into their hands.
I find that scene painfully familiar because human beings have been pointing ever since.
I spoke that way because you made me angry.
I withdrew because you hurt me first.
I overspent because we never have anything nice.
I gossiped because somebody needed to know.
I embarrassed you because you were behaving foolishly.
I would have handled things differently if everyone around me had done what they were supposed to do.
There is always somewhere for the finger to go.
Repentance begins when it finally turns inward.
David reached that place when Nathan confronted him and he said, “I have sinned against the LORD.” 2 Samuel 12:13.
There is an honesty in those few words that leaves little room for escape.
No explanation.
No list of contributing factors.
No mention of what Bathsheba had done, what Uriah had failed to do, or what pressures accompanied being king.
David owned David.
Every woman needs the ability to do that.
When was the last time I listened to correction without immediately preparing my defense?
When did I last apologize for the effect of my behavior without explaining my intentions?
Have I created an atmosphere in my marriage where my husband feels respected, or does he regularly feel managed?
Do my children hear me speaking generously about the brethren, or have I trained their eyes to hunt for flaws?
How often am I discussing motives I cannot possibly know?
When conflict follows me repeatedly, am I willing to consider that some portion of the problem may be attached to the hand doing all the pointing?
Those questions make me uncomfortable, which is probably one reason they are worth asking.
Psalm 139 gives us a better posture for the hand.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.”
Hands open before God instead of pointing at everyone around us.
There is a tenderness that can return to a home when a woman stops feeling responsible for correcting every person within reach.
Her husband receives room to lead and grow.
Her children learn that authority can repent.
Her church family becomes a collection of brethren to love rather than specimens to inspect.
And the woman herself experiences something freeing when she no longer has to sit as judge over everyone else.
She can be wrong.
She can learn.
She can apologize.
She can receive correction.
She can discover a beam in her own eye without believing the whole world has collapsed.
Grace makes room for that.
When’s the last time your finger pointed at yourself first?
Biblical Womanhood
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