This is the article that I was fortunate enough to be able to publish in Elevation Church's magazine a few weeks ago. Hope you like it!
-Matt
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Nodding heads. A disarming amount of nodding heads.
My initial interaction with the work of Dr. Emerson Eggerichs was interesting, to say the least. Many soberly nodding heads. Instant agreement. It was like a super power. Anywhere I went, I could simply rehearse the major points of any chapter from whichever Dr. Eggerichs' book that I was currently reading and skeptically petrified heads would instantly bob up and down in unison, as if they had hit a speed bump on the same mental dashboard. While it's possible that I may have abused this newly discovered power (in hindsight, the dramatic wand flourishes and black top hat may have been overkill), I was naively surprised to find that these specific (and therefore paradoxically universal) truths were impacting me just as dramatically.
I was reading Love and Respect as I prepared to interview Dr. Eggerichs for this article. He was scheduled to visit Elevation as a guest speaker and, even though I was newly a writer, I had boldly volunteered to be the literary emissary representing Elevation Magazine. But, to be honest, despite my freshman enthusiasm I was still a little skeptical about reading the book. Why? Well, for starters, I was single. For me, the idea of reading a book on marriage problems was about as appealing as running through white-hot sand without wearing any shoes; just let me get to the beach first, then we'll talk sole ointment. Secondly, I was a single guy. While a single girl might receive a good-natured ribbing for daydreaming about the future, if I was caught reading a red and white striped book called Love and Respect while there was something even remotely manly going on, I was in real danger of having a bonnet duct-taped to my head. Thirdly, I was a single guy with a girlfriend, a sister and a mom. I was convinced: if there was a way to figure out a woman, it was beyond any normal human experience.
Dr. Eggerichs has that experience. I had finished reading his work; as I spoke to him over the phone, his twenty years of experience in church-pastoring and couples-counseling flowed over the conversation and filled in the many cracks that I found I had in my reading comprehension. His message is a simple one, in the vein of simple concepts that are able to slice through misconceptions like butter and completely change the way you act and think; yet this simplicity is at once strongly compelling and inherently frustrating, in that it takes real purposefulness and discipline to engage it. Centering around what he calls “probably the greatest treatises in the New Testament on marriage,” Ephesians 5, Dr. Eggerichs goes against the modern cultural grain in his ardent exhortation of husbands and wives: the summary verse, Ephesians 5:33, says that a husband must love, and a wife must respect.
“So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” -Ephesians 5:33
Realizing that while there was no debate on the first part of the verse, Dr. Eggerichs explained to me that the idea of a wife respecting her husband simply because he is a man was one that had gone largely unexplored, despite a clear context in scripture (as you might imagine, the “patriarchal nature” of the sentiment doesn't exactly warm the cockles of most popular political persuasions). But Dr. Eggerichs argues that despite the reactive nature of the idea, this differentiation between love and respect is a key insight to the marriage relationship (and male/female relationships in general).
“A wife has one driving need – to feel loved. When that need is met, she is happy. A husband has one driving need – to feel respected. When that need is met, he is happy.”
I can hear your head nodding. Even to a single guy, it's so obvious... once you see it.
Having spent nearly twenty years as the senior pastor at Trinity Church in East Lansing, Michigan, Dr. Eggerichs counseled an innumerable amount of couples, listening closely to their issues. After identifying the love/respect difference and finding the funding for a full academic exploration of the topic to be politically verboten, he created Love and Respect Ministries as a means by which men and women can learn to “decode” one another, using the trove of stories from his experiences to poignantly illustrate the ways that every relationship (even a good one) expresses conflict. Their website, loveandrespect.com, further extends support by providing forums on which couples can have questions answered and can find personal support through difficult times.
As our conversation began to wind down, I became acutely aware of the extent to which my own perspective filtered the way that I interacted with life. I found that my own story was intertwined with the stories of thousands of other relationships around me. That maybe the beach is not the only (or best) starting point for decoding my barefoot walk of respect into one of love. That perhaps a good-natured ribbing might possibly be a transliteration of a duct tape bonnet.
I remember how blessed I am to attend a church like Elevation Church. My perspective might be (quite) limited to that of a single male, but I have constant contact with thousands of other people who have perspectives that can inform and strengthen my own, from wildly varied backgrounds and life-experiences. I have access to amazing small groups that can give me direct personal support. I can sit under wise counsel like Dr. Eggerichs and Pastor Stephen. I have a tireless church staff that is ready to give everything in order to help me figure out this love and life thing. This love and respect and life thing.
As the interview coasted to a close, I caught my reflection in a mirror and noted, with little surprise, that it was nodding, too.
