If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
Jesus includes emotional ties to wives in with all the other luggage that we must dump before we can properly call ourselves Christians, or disciples of Christ.
We believe in the sanctity of marriage, and we have taught that Jesus never instructed wives to leave their husbands. But we see universal suffering that stems from the inability of men everywhere to forsake their wives for God.
Husbands everywhere end up hating themselves and hating their wives just because they do not have the courage to follow God regardless of marital pressures.
It is noteworthy that we have never had one married couple join our ranks. Of those who married in the community, a high percentage fell away--always because of pressure from the wife.
Over and over we have shared with men who could see the truth in what we were saying. But when a woman came into the picture, the spiritual vision faded.
The problem is not women; it's men. When we become liberated from our emotional dependency on women, then (and only then) can we learn to love them as God loves us.
I challenge every husband reading this to honestly face his own dependency on his wife. That very dependency is the root cause of the war between the sexes.
Emerson once said, "Violence is not power, but the absence of power." Similarly, sexism is an expression of the frustrations both sides feel at not being able to control themselves emotionally, because they are not yet yielded to the powerful will of a loving God.
And we believe the onus is on us men to take the first step in changing this.
The Bible says leaders in the church must first be leaders in the home. Yet preachers traditionally have the most rebellious kids in the congregation. I was told by one preacher that rebellion is 'natural' and that my own children would rebel too one day.
But when I submitted to God's rules, trying never to let my wife stand between me and a clear conscience, I found her (and our children) mirroring that same submission in their relationship to me.
My flesh craved the comfort of having my wife as a spiritual crutch. I married her in the first place because of a deep emotional need. But I prayed for strength to stand alone if need be. And God answered.
Today my wife and kids are so loyal that our enemies call them puppets. Of course we know otherwise. They are the first to speak up if they see me heading into error. Our unity is not based on blind loyalty, but from a common desire to know the Truth and to walk in it.
I forsook my wife and she forsook her children for God. The paradox is that what we turned loose of, God gave back.
This is true liberation.
(See also The Forsake All Principle.)
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