We know what the word says, as you said, to “love your wife like Christ loved the church” and for the wife to “submit to your husband, as unto the Lord. We know what it says, but it seems to me we’re filtering it through our “Everybody Loves Raymond” lenses.

We haven’t begun to deny ourselves just yet and therefore, we’re still not living the life he designed us to live. We’re still living life as the “old man”, not “walking in newness of life”.

You’re right. We’re trying to peel the orange, not the banana. It’s time for the people of God to deny themselves as they take up their crosses to follow him.

My struggle isn’t so much with being obedient to that, but knowing what I’m supposed to do so I can be obedient like that. I assume I know what that means and what it looks like to love my wife, but looking at it from the outside in, its plain to see that I can’t even recognize the banana most days. I insist that the orange in my hand is the banana.

I’ve found that without time in the Word, prayer, quiet time, I don’t have a chance, because our society sells us the orange with the banana label telling us that it’s the real deal. A man looks like “Everybody Loves Raymond” and so forth. Society isn’t going to tell me what a man looks like. I have to let God show me.

If I insist that I know, then I can’t be shown, and refusal to stop to allow myself to be taught is much the same as rebelling against the truth. It’s saying, “I don’t need you God.”

So then, the beginning of being a man and the rest of the family being who they were designed to be stems from the man’s willingness to submit himself to the Father, who will show him what it means to love his wife, in the context within which he lives.

I need God. I need God to show me the difference between a banana and and orange, because for me it’s not just peeling a banana from the right end, it’s knowing what to peel in the first place.