Monday, June 30, 2014

Preparing to Be a Help Meet: The Prophet - Part 4b

I'm gonna keep slogging through this chapter.

He will easily pick up and relocated without any idea of what he is going to do for a living at the new location.

That ended really well for the Pearls.

In his zeal for the truth, he may end up splitting the church.  He may be fanatical in his demand for doctrinal purity and proper dress and conduct.  Like a prophet, he will call people to task for their inconsistencies

I'm descended on both sides from a long line of stubborn opinionated people.
We have our quirks, but we've never split a local church apart in order to bring everyone to the truth.  Plus, if your children are hungry, doctrinal purity should drop to the bottom of the list of important topics.

Seriously.  Do not marry a person like this unless you enjoy poverty, loneliness and drama.

I am sure it was men of this caliber who conquered the Wild West.  They would have been the mountain men and explorers, going over the next mountain in search of knowledge and adventure. They would not be farmers who settled in one spot.

This reminded me of the less heroic stories that came from European expansion across the Plains.  I'm remembering stories of families whose husband was described as a 'drifter' or 'wild one'.  The family would start  farming somewhere with decent land.  The family would start having bad crop years which the husband blamed on bad land while the neighbors blamed it on the husband's sloth or incompetence.  The father would hear about better land in some western state, sell out the farm and move.  The cycle would repeat from the crop failures over and over again. 

It never ended well for the family.


Often the difference between a productive Prophet and a destructive Prophet is a good, supportive, stable woman.An unwise wife with negative words can turn a Prophet into an antichrist, an inventor into a destroyer.  Every...I say every Prophet needs a good, wise, prudent, stable wife who has a positive outlook on life.

Oh, great!  If your husband is a crazed lunatic, it's YOUR fault.

No, I don't buy that at all.  


Come to think of it, my husband is a little like a Prophet. [She then repeats the house = scraps = trailer = cows story, but removes the details.]

Debi, your husband is an abusive, narcissistic psychopath.  We'll learn more about those types in the King chapter, I know, but let's not kid ourselves. 

Your husband has never been counted among the 'productive' Prophets and never will be.

Greatness is a state of soul, not certain accomplishments.  Thomas Edison was great after his 999th failure to make a light bulb, though not recognized as such. The Wright brothers were great when they neglected their  lucrative occupation of fixing bicycles and 'wasted time' trying to get one of them to fly.  If the light bulb had never worked and the plane had never flown, and no one remembered their names today, they would have been the same men, and their lives would have been just as full and their days just as challenging.  Did Edison's wife think him great when he used his last dime on another failed idea?  If she didn't, just think of what she missed.

*slow claps*

Nice punt attempt, Debi.  Too bad it went out-of-bounds.

Edison had TWO wives - which is obvious from a cursory search on Wikipedia.  I'm assuming from a series of Rutgers articles on the subject that Debi is talking about his first wife Mary.  His financial troubles didn't come from his experimentation - that was completed by 1879.  His financial troubles came from trying to defend his patent - which took until 1889 to get straightened out - and prevented him from moving forward on producing the light bulb.
Who knows what Mary thought about the light bulb fiasco?  It's hard to say since Mary died in 1884 - and most likely was far more disturbed by the idea of leaving her three children under the age of 13 than anything about the light bulbs.

His second wife Mina also complained about Edison's long hours away from the house.

Why are we using Mary and Mina Edison as examples again?  


In a canny move, Edison teamed up with the British inventor who had a pre-existing patent for a similar light bulb to prevent an additional patent war.

Does that sound like a man who would tear a church apart over doctrinal purity?

What about the Wright brothers' wives?  Oh, wait.  They never married.



The Prophet man needs his woman's support, and he will appreciate it when it is freely given.  Without her, he feels alone.

Spouses like getting support from each other.  This is not ground-breaking news - or limited to Prophet-types.

This guy will be a little hard to live with at first.  Big, wild fights are the usual beginnings if a nice, normal girls marries one of  "the weird ones".

No.  That's NOT normal.  If you are in a relationship that has 'big, wild fights', please seek professional guidance from a licensed therapist.

Best case scenario is that you both learn better communication skills and enjoy a long, mostly happy, married life.  

Worst case scenario is that you married Michael Pearl and need to extract yourself ASAP. 

Either way, get help. 

I had really hoped I could finish off this topic in two posts, but Debi's got some bizarre pieces of advice in the next section and they deserve their own post....

AntiPearl: An actual Thomas Edison quote - "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration."


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