Phony Proverbs 31 Women

The heart of her husband safely trusts her;
So he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.
Proverbs 31:11-12

Introduction

This article calls out some women, so there will be the inevitable knee-jerk reaction that it is misogynistic or discriminatory. No, it is just a pattern that I have observed repeatedly. Countering it with emotion, while often effective in the court of public opinion, does not disprove it. Furthermore, I have written many articles calling out men for far worse things, among them the corruption or passivity that is destroying families, religious organizations and entire nations. This is all happening on men’s watches and they are the ones ultimately responsible for it all. It is men, who are lazy, corrupt, or asleep at the wheel, causing this and allowing it to happen. If men were doing what they are supposed to do, we would not even be discussing this.

A religious group to which I belonged performed blessings on both the women and the men prior to worship meetings. The blessing for the women, taken from Proverbs 31, was performed by the pastor who heaped glowing superlatives upon the women. Then the blessing for the men, taken from Psalm 1, was performed by his wife who browbeat and castigated the men for not measuring up, then exhorted them to do better. Western cultural misandry wrapped in false piety.

The Smokescreen

Proverbs 31 contains 21 verses outlining the traits of a virtuous wife. I am not disparaging these verses. They are divine truth and wisdom. I am disparaging people who use these verses as a smokescreen to portray themselves as someone they are not, claim the status and protection they afford, and then acting in a completely contrary manner to hurt others and destroy families. I outline below a common way that I saw this smokescreen implemented in religious groups.

The wife loudly proclaims her submissiveness to her husband, then:

Requires him to solve an unsolvable biblical problem, perform an unperformable biblical task, or nitpicks him on some small biblical fault he has
Berates him as weak, sinful, or not obeying God when he fails or she determines he has failed
Uses this as an excuse to do whatever she wants, including divorcing him

Some women will even fabricate false standards, claiming them to be biblical, thereby ensuring that the man will fail no matter what he does. It often appears to be just a tool used to justify discarding a man they no longer want.

My Personal Experience

Here is how it worked on me personally. My former wife demanded that I, as the leader of the family, talk to God to find answers to a variety of problems and issues. She was very aggressive in demanding that I do so and then asking what God told me. I naively endeavored to inquire of God and listen for answers. Of course, having God talk to you is not at all valid except for some rare cases of actual prophets, most of whom lived thousands of years ago. Clearly, I am not a prophet. When I could not deliver, she vilified me as a poor leader of the family and stated that it was my sin and incompetence that prevented God from talking to me. She mercilessly beat me with this to gain leverage in any decision-making area, from raising the children to finances.

She further leveraged this manipulation to start travelling unannounced for days at a time to undisclosed locations under the guise of “missionary work” or helping others. I discovered much later that she was having sexual trysts with a variety of different men during these travels. Was I naïve and stupid in how I handled this? Possibly, but I was making a genuine effort as a new Christian to be the type of man God wanted me to be. My naivete was that the type of man I was trying to be was not at all godly by biblical definitions. I was fed this lie of a “real man” by my wife who frequently claimed to be a “Proverbs 31 woman.” All the while she was doing this, she received enthusiastic support and accolades from people in our Baptist church. She was heralded as a strong woman who stepped up when her husband could or would not. It is true. I did not step up. I should have stepped up to either put a stop to her godless nonsense or remove her from my life. The latter eventually happened anyway, by her own doing, when she ran off with another woman to join a cult. I never saw or heard from her again.

The Repeating Pattern

While my personal experience was unfortunate and painful, I chalked it up to bad luck and choosing poorly. I considered it an aberration until I witnessed the same dynamic repeated in various different congregations. Below are some reasons women gave for divorcing their husbands:

He will not lead the family
He violated one of God’s commandments
He will not love me in the way God commands
He chooses his job over his family, and in the same breath, he will not work to support his family
He does not have a heart for God (how can this possibly be verified?)

Most resulted in divorce, with the women leaving the men, claiming they did not “lead” their families. This begs the question of why these women married men in the first place who they felt could not lead effectively? What I personally witnessed was many of these women actively and vocally coming against what their husbands said and did. It was not a matter of the husbands not leading. It was a matter of the women themselves either wanting to lead or not liking the way the husband led. Not liking the way a person leads is not the same as them not being able to lead. I knew of many very able leaders in the military whose methods I did not like. Once again, why did these women marry a man whose leadership style they did not like? This is all good and well. To each their own, but stop pretending you want a man to lead when you have no intention of ever letting him. Just be one of the scores of strong, independent, single women in this world.

Not a Call to Submission

This is not a call to women to be submissive. This is a call to women to stop acting like they are submissive, stop acting like they want a man to lead, stop tricking men into thinking they want them to lead, and then using the bible as leverage to kick the man to the curb when they tire of him. This is relationship fraud while hiding behind false use of God’s word. You are portraying yourself to be someone you are not to trick a person into committing to you. Even worse, are you doing so deliberately with the intent of using that person and then discarding them later? Judging from many of your actions, it sure looks that way.

The Men’s Role

On the other side of the equation, I do not feel men are innocent victims of all this. Many men are passive in choosing a woman and then even more passive once they get into the relationship. They will do anything to keep the peace, no matter how outrageous the demands or actions of their partners. I certainly fell into this category during my earlier years. Modern Western men have become legions of simps who have abdicated their responsibilities. Is it any wonder that women move into that vacuum and take over? Granted, modern culture heavily influences this with the simp being declared a good man and the strong man being declared toxic. This culture exists within modern churches a well.

Many church men are acutely aware of this dynamic and kiss their wives’ posteriors to keep the peace, giving them whatever they want. They then claim that they still lead where and when it really counts. Believe me buddy, you do not lead at all and everyone knows it, especially your wife. A man who will not lead earns the condescension of his wife, further increasing the likelihood that she will leave him.

Do Men Have Any Real Choice?

Having said all this, is it any surprise that more and more men are abdicating their familial roles and responsibilities in a world where a woman can on whim use the legal system, culture, society … and now the church … to discard him and take away his resources and children without him being able to do anything about it? Some of the men to whom I witnessed this happening were completely blindsided, never suspecting it was coming. Their wife was affable and seemingly cooperative one day, and filed for divorce the very next day. Many of you religious leaders standing in the pulpit and railing against secular godlessness are enabling that very thing by encouraging and lifting up women for destroying marriages and families. Look in the mirror. You are part of the problem. Explain that to God when you face Him, claiming to be a shepherd of His flock.

Counter-Argument

A common counter-argument to what I state here will be that “not all women are like that.” Correct. Even most women are not like that. However, every woman has the opportunity to be exactly like that, backed and encouraged 100% by the government, legal system, society, media and church. Enough of them are like that to have established a familiar and common pattern. Here is the real kicker. They are rarely, if ever, held accountable for their twisting of the Bible to manipulate or even divorce their husbands. It is just another tool in their arsenal to use in a legal system that is already very heavily weighted against men. Nobody, man or woman, calls them on it. Women, hold your sisters accountable and perhaps you will not be tarred with the same brush. Your continued tacit approval just makes all of you look like opportunistic hypocrites.

If a man talks biblical trash that he cannot back up, he is usually ostracized or called out. I’ve seen it happen many times. Most men will not tolerate another man who does this. Even if they do not call him out directly, they will not associate with him. Contrast this with a woman who does it, and is then glorified and elevated by the congregation and her friends. Secular Western misandry has crept into and corrupted many religious congregations.

Conclusion

Between 40-50% of married couples in the United States divorce. About 70% of these divorces are initiated by the woman.¹ That is over twice the rate of initiation by the man. This increases to up to 90% for college educated women.² There is less than a 1% difference in divorce rates between religious and non-religious couples.³ It is a statistical impossibility that all these divorces initiated by women in religious families are for valid biblical reasons.

The bottom line is that many women (and some men) claiming to follow and obey God have the same regard for marriage as their average, atheist counterparts. Biblical marriage vows mean nothing to them, just as they mean nothing to the 70% of women overall who divorce their husbands. And why should it mean anything to them when they stand to gain 50% or more of the man’s assets, all the children, a monthly check, plus government support programs and societal glorification after the divorce? Indeed, marrying a woman today who claims to follow God runs the same risk for a man as marrying an atheist radical feminist.

This is not a call for women to submit. That is up to each individual woman and cannot be commanded or legislated. It is a call for them to stop claiming they submit when they do nothing of the kind. Godless, radical feminists have more integrity, because at least they practice what they preach.

The writer of proverbs was King Solomon, who many claim was the wisest of the wise, given that wisdom by God Himself. He stated in the very first verse describing the virtuous wife:

Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies.
Proverbs 31:10

The tone and wording of this verse indicates that finding such a woman is uncommon. Modern society and the modern church have made it even less common.