In the 1970’s feminist Gloria Steinem popularized the quote “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. It represented the growing notion that the traditional role of man being a leader in the home and family was outdated and absurd. Since then we have seen a reduction in the role men play in American family and with that the many social ills that accompany this philosophy. We shouldn’t be surprised with this. All we have to do is look to the Scriptures to see when men don’t take on their God given responsibilities as leaders, tragedy follows. When Adam didn’t take the moral lead when his wife was tempted, it got them kicked out of the garden. When the great man of God Eli didn’t restrain his sons, it caused misery for his family and Israel. Almost without fail when you see families struggling in the Bible, it comes from a man not assuming the role God had intended. It doesn’t matter if it’s in society, the church, or the home, when men don’t take on the responsibility of leadership that God has appointed them, bad things come about!
Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
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