Ran across this question on one of the RP reddits.
For example, a guy I know from college went into a STEM field. He is now married and working a steady 9-5 job that he likes. His wife owns a photography business, and he has become a significant partner in her business, assisting with shoots and stuff in his free time. Additionally, they are raising one biological child and several foster children, and any free time not spent with his wife’s business is completely consumed raising the kids. Unfortunately, I don’t know him well enough to get his honest opinion of the situation, but does this sound like a man with a solid frame? Or is he living in his wife’s frame?
To put it another way, what would have to be true for you to be the guy in this situation and not be living in your wife’s frame? Is it a matter of him making the choice vs her making the choice? (“You run your business and I’ll help out”) Or is being a “helper” of this sort not acceptable in any circumstance?
Frame is not what you do. It’s the meaning behind what you are doing. Frame is driven by mission and purpose.
If a man thinks it’s important in this stage of life to focus on growing multiple streams of income (one of which is growing his wife’s started business) and raising the kids in a godly manner to leverage that for God in both short and long term that’s a great thing.
If a man is pressured by his wife into doing stuff he doesn’t want to do but does it anyway, that’s a bad thing.
One is putting God first and being the head and the other is going against that.
If we want to understand this more thoroughly we can go back to some of Jesus’ analogies. It’s out of the heart the mouth speaks or that we do anything. There’s many people in Church that are there that “do the right thing” but their hearts are not in it or they are doing it for the wrong reasons (e.g. they are fearful of going hell and trying to work for their salvation). If we contrast this to a true believer, they would know that they are justified through their faith in Jesus and that God wants us to do good works to model His love for us (e.g. Romans 5:8 God shows His love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us).
Of course, we can generally judge a tree by it’s fruit, but it’s always a good thing to dig into the underlying motivations and desires of why we are trying to do something. Does it align with God’s Word or not? Are we living in fear or are we living in God’s peace and joy?
We always want to align with God and the right things for the right reasons. The right thing for the right reasons are always grounded in mission and purpose. Without those two things, you are going to be blown here and there by the wind as motivations easily change without that deep seated purpose driving everything.
