A pastor friend of mine often tells a story about a man and a woman approaching a building at the same time. When the man notices the woman, he rushes ahead to open the door and hold it for the woman, who was a stranger to him. As she entered the building, she stopped turned to him and said: “Are you holding this door for me because I am a woman?” He responded: “No. I am holding it because I am a gentleman.” Almost every instance I heard this story told by my friend was in the context of working together at a home for kids with emotional disorders. Most of the boys grew up without dads in their homes and had very limited role models as to what it means to be a man. My friend understood this and made it a point to teach the boys about manhood. This lesson is one I have adopted for myself and repeated as often as I can. The essence of the story is: You should be who you are and live according to your understanding of what is right and proper regardless of who you are dealing with and what the situation. Our identity, rather than our reactions to those around us or the situation we are in, should dictate our behaviors. This seems like a simple idea, but it is far more difficult to apply than it immediately seems to be.
In relationships, this means treating the other person according to your standards rather than your mood or their behavior. I have spoken to spouses on many occasions who treat each other in ways that they would never treat a stranger, but behaving that way toward the person they swore before God to love and cherish is acceptable because “they started it.” While it may be the case that they started it, or even deserve our wrath or cold shoulder, it still means that we are the kind of person who believes “an eye for an eye” should rule relationships. We may say we believe in forgiveness, but our actions demonstrate otherwise. Ultimately, who we are is how we act. This is one of the central principles behind Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 5-7. He says some difficult things, like that men should not only obey the rule about not committing adultery, but also not look at women lustfully. This sounds like a hard rule, and it is. But, it’s not just about straining our way through life to avoid breaking rules. It’s about being the kind of person who looks at women respectfully and only cultivates a desire for his wife. This requires more than behaving a certain way in certain situations. It mandates an authentic lifestyle, because it’s very easy to act like we are pure and blameless outwardly, while filling our hearts with junk secretly. Jesus condemned the religious teachers of his time for this behavior by calling them whitewashed tombs, meaning they were pretty and clean outside, but inside they were full of rot and death.
The advantage of an authentic lifestyle that leads to this sort of natural response to the world around us, is that it becomes automatic. I don’t have to work hard to be loving to my wife when I’m tired, sick, or in a bad mood if I’m naturally loving to my wife. The Bible describes this life as being a result of God remaking us into the kind of people we were created to be. It still takes effort and training, but he aids us in the lifelong journey of becoming something better.
