-Merry

So I said to myself, “That isn’t what I’m talking about.”   Which is why I left the Greek wholly out of it.  I stuck with the term “gentleness” because I wasn’t dealing with anything as broad as “self-control.”  (Modesty is also a sort of self-control, as are temperance, fasting, slowness-to-anger, and a host of other things.)  Also, although “gentleness” isn’t a completely precise term, I was bouncing off of Dr. Hake’s definition, and gainsaying Hake is always a dodgy proposition at best.

Furthermore, plain ol’ self-control doesn’t really have anything peculiarly masculine about it, which is (sort of) what this particuar blog is interested in.  But we’ll probably get to self-control anyway….

Speaking of which: I’m really actually going to stop defending myself against any and all comments.  You people fight this out amongst yourselves.

So I said to myself, he said himself that isn’t what he is talking about. Maybe one of the other fruits of the spirit works better here. I turn to Galatians and look. Bingo, there’s something called self-control here! But what does it really mean? After all, Ben isn’t talking about anger issues here. The word is ‘engrateia’. It means “self control”. Quite helpful. So I check and find that it comes from the more general ‘engrates’, which means:
1) strong, robust
2) having power over, possessed of (a thing)
3) mastering, controlling, curbing, restraining controlling one’s self, temperate, continent

en means “in”, “with” (& a bunch of other stuff); kratos means force, strength, power, might, dominion

So Ben.. I hate to be picky, but I think you really ought to retitle this entry and try for gentleness again at some other time.. not that mildness of disposition doesn’t have a lot to do with what you wrote about, and neither that it is something we men don’t need to practice, but rather that self-control is something we really need and this would really help us in that area

I suppose I really did mean “showing love” more than “loving”: certainly women struggle with being loving.  But the practice of showing love towards those they love comes more easily to them, I think (at least in many scenarios), than it does to men.  Husbands don’t feel “unloved” nearly as often as wives do, unless my information is very wrong.  (They may feel snubbed or held in contempt by their wife-of-the-rapier-tongue, which might actually be worse than feeling unloved–but they’re never in doubt about her love.)

Loving may not come “naturally” to women, but I think that showing love does–or at least, more naturally than it does to men.  It’s not that we don’t want to; we’re just not very good at it.  [I'm pulling a lot of this out of the book "Love and Respect," by Emmerson Eggerich.  I recommend it.  http://www.loveandrespect.com]

And, yes, there are different ways of showing love (the “love languages”). I didn’t want to muddy the issue by dragging those in, and I still don’t.

There is perhaps nothing more impressive to a woman than perfect strength under perfect control–a man who is strong through discipline and work, physically and spiritually, and a man who is self-controlled and gentle, who uses his strength for creation and redemption and not for destruction. Right now in our culture many men swing to one extreme or the other–strong in a selfish, violent, destructive sense, or weak and effeminate in an effort to be sensitive. True gentleness avoids both extremes and captures what true manhood really means.

It is good for a man to be strong enough to kill you, yet use that strength to protect you. And it is good for a woman to be strong enough to lead, yet use that strength to support the leadership of another.