This weekend we watched "Mirror Mirror," featuring Julia Roberts as the queen/witch in a different take on the classic fairy tale, "Snow White".  It was quite entertaining, with a gorgeous setting, a beautiful young Snow White, a handsome prince and seven midget dwarfs. Yet like the majority of movies and TV shows today, it totally flips the model when it comes to gender identity.

Spoiler alert...
The prince was humiliated multiple times throughout. The dwarfs robbed him and hung him upside down half naked; Snow White found him and rescued him. He was later defeated in a sword fight by Snow White herself, and sent back to the queen, half naked and defeated. The queen gave him a (puppy) love potion that turned him into a lap dog in love. Snow White locked him in the dwarfs' house in effort to protect him and the dwarfs from the monster in the woods. She says that in all of the stories she's read up to that point, the prince has been the one to save the princess, and that it's her responsibility, not his, to take back the kingdom.

This is a continuous model of gender reversal that prevails in our entertainment industry. Our morals have been so corroded by its continuous pounding in our psyches that we're blind to its effects.

Do we even need to wonder why when living in such a society as this most men are incapable of true leadership in their homes and in life? Should it surprise any of us that in the majority of relationships men and women are in constant battle, each trying to one-up the other? Many men just give up and let their women take on God's intended role for the male in the family, making the majority of the decisions while he functions more or less on the same level as the children in the home.

Why is this wrong? It's wrong because it will never work. It's wrong because it is totally contrary to God's intended plans for our lives. It's wrong because, even though the needs for mutual respect and honor go both ways in a relationship, for order to be maintained and for marriages and families to stay intact, one's level of power must be a step above the other's. And it must be understood in order to prevent constant bickering and striving, and to keep order and peace.

We understand the necessity of leadership in our government and workplace for these same reasons. Yet because of our prideful sin nature and this broken society in which we live where people have little care for God and His ways, we continue on this steep moral decline.

For those of you who perceive that there is something wrong with this picture, I encourage you to be deliberate and intentional, honoring, loving, and interacting daily with your spouse within the framework that God provides for us in His Word.

Ephesians 5:22-33 says it well...
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Additionally, we must be intentionally teaching our children about heroic men and women of God, who have embraced the gender roles that God has given them, living lives of honor, and glorifying Him through their accomplishments and in their relationships. 

Be sure to discuss with them how God's intended roles for men and women have been muddied by the brokenness and blindness in our society. Help them to perceive in movies and TV shows all of the ways that men are presented as incompetent, powerless, and incapable, and the ways in which women are taking on the roles that God intended for men. 

Because of society's relentless efforts to confuse these issues, we must be vigilant in these areas. If we are not, the costs will be incalculable.