"MUTUAL HELP IN EVERY SPHERE OF LIFE"
A friend in Kampala was writing a book on marriage, sex and relationships from an African and Christian point of view. He told me he had come to a halt on the issue of 'complementarity' or mutual help ...
"... that husband and wives were meant to complement or help each other (Genesis 2:18). One text-book I have here says:
'Help should not be limited in any way. It is neither help at work nor help in begetting posterity. It is help in the broadest sense of the word, mutual help in every sphere of life.'
Most Africans understand marriage from the point of view of help at work and begetting posterity. So the expression 'help in every sphere of life' is vague. It needs explanation, and I need a text-book that explains it practically."
It occurred to me that Dooyeweerd's aspects, which are also called spheres of life, might help here. I carried out a very brief analysis of this kind, and it proved so rich and stimulating that I thought I would place it on the internet. The section below is, almost word for word, the text of part of a letter I sent my friend. I trust that it might be useful. If you have any comments or questions or even experiences to relate, please email me.
Andrew Basden.
Below are the spheres of human life and experience postulated by the Christian Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. He tried to understand the diversity in God's creation, and thought that there are fifteen spheres (or aspects or modalities, as he sometimes called them) in which we human beings function. Over the last few years I have found them very useful in helping me to think about things: I would consider each sphere in turn. In what I have written below I have taken each sphere, and asked myself: "How can a husband and wife help each other to function well in this sphere?" So that their marriage relationship might be enriched. These are only examples; please think of others, and do not be ashamed to discard some that I have mentioned. I realise I myself fall very far short of many of them.
The first three spheres are non-physical and I cannot think there would be much mutual help in them, so I do not bother with them, but merely name them for completeness. The next sphere, physical, is fairly simple in terms of help, but I include it for completeness. The others are richer. In each I say what the help is and then give a few examples. What I give are merely examples, and other ideas should be worked out. Note that in each there is both the giving and receiving of help, and so I have added this at the end of each list.
To do with amount. [But see below.]
To do with continuous extension in space. [But see below.]
To do with flowing movement. [But see below.]
To do with energy. Help in this sphere would be physical.
- Help 1: The husband helps the wife carry her load. The husband, because of stronger muscles, does the heavy work such as lifting and powerful digging.
- Help 2: The wife can help the husband in keeping things fixed in place.
- Help 3: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with organic life functions, and health. Help in this sphere would be directed at helping each other to function well in all the life functions.
- Help 1: Reproductive life function. Begetting posterity. This is known about in Africa.
- Help 2: Digestive life function. Sharing in the growing and preparing of food.
- Help 3: All organic life functions. Helping each other to maintain health. Caring for the other when ill. Ensuring that the other does not have such demands placed upon them that they become ill. In some cultures, the man does not see it as his duty to care for his wife when ill, and can sometimes place so many demands on his wife that she becomes worn out. (Note: this is 'physical' illness; psychological illness is below.) (Marriage vow: "In sickness and in health")
- Help 4: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with feeling, emotion, psychology. Help in this sphere would be aimed at helping each other to function well emotionally and psychologically.
- Help 1: Making each other feel good. Being careful about each other's feelings, especially when doing things in the other spheres such as talking or socialising.
- Help 2: Being tender to each other when the other has been psychologically hurt.
- Help 3: Helping each other to maintain psychological health. Caring for each other when psychologically ill. Not being hard-hearted when the other is depressed or anxious.
- Help 4: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with making distinctions. Help in this sphere would be aimed at helping each other make good distinctions.
- Help 1: Being careful to treat the other as special compared with all other people. (This is partly of Sensitive too.)
- Help 2: Helping each other think things out; helping each other see clearly what is important in a situation we are thinking about. Especially when we are trying to make a decision, then the other can help us. Also: accepting such help from the other, even if given by way of criticism. In some cultures, it has been expected that the man does the thinking; this is not God's way.
- Help 3: Helping the other reason things through. (This is probably same as previous help.)
- Help 4: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with human construction, creativity, achivement; includes history, technology and culture. Construction not just of physical things but also of thoughts, plans, songs, etc.
- Help 1: Working together on a project to achieve something. In contrast to many marriages in which one party works on a project with no help from the other.
- Help 2: Valuing what the other has achieved in the past.
- Help 3: Valuing the other's culture and traditions. In Africa I guess this includes valuing the family background of the other. In culturally-mixed marriages, it would involve valuing the cultural background of the other.
- Help 4: Not just valuing those things but seeking to develop them for good.
- Help 5: The above applies not just to culture and traditions, but the habits that the other has formed e.g. before the marriage; these should be valued and developed rather than despised.
- Help 6: On the other hand, I should be willing to give up my own habits and form new ones.
- Help 7: Being willing to receive all such help.
To do with symbolic communication, by speech, writing, signs, song, and anything else. Help here would be of two types: attending to communication between each other, and helping the other to communicate with third parties.
- Help 1: Listening to the other, and trying to truly understand what the other is saying.
- Help 2: Explaining things to the other. In some cultures it is assumed that the wife is not interested in the husband's things, nor the husband in the wife's; this is not right.
- Help 3: Helping the other when they find explanation difficult.
- Help 4: Always telling the truth to each other, even if it is painful to do so.
- Help 5: Helping the other when they are trying to communicate to people outside; working together on written documents for outside use.
- Help 6: In some cultures it is not expected that the wife learns to write or read (though most such cultures are gone now). The husband should ensure that his wife can read and write well. Note Paul's exhortation that women should be taught (when in Jewish synagogues the women were not to be taught).
- Help 7: Being willing to receive such help.
Social interaction; forming relationships and social institutions. Help would involve helping each other in these things. For example:
- Help 1: Being an appropriate part of the other's web of relationships. Rather than, for instance, thinking "S/he has her/his own circle of friends and I find them boring" as happens too often in Britain.
- Help 2: When the other is trying to form a relationship, helping them do so.
- Help 3: Ensuring that relationships that I form with the other sex are open and appropriate, and that my spouse is fully aware of them, so that they do not develop into wrong directions. (That is especially important in the West; in some non-Western cultures, such relationships do not get formed, because of traditions.)
- Help 4: When the other is trying to form some social group or institution, then I could help them in appropriate ways with support and ideas (even if I don't get involved myself). Similarly, accepting such help from my spouse.
- Help 5: The marriage is part of a wider society. Work with each other to ensure the marriage takes the right part. Where marriages are worked at in the West, especially the USA, the focus is only on each other, at the expense of links with society; this is wrong and a kind of selfishness. In African cultures, I think, there is less danger; but maybe there is too much emphasis on the family at the expense of others; see 'juridical'.
- Help 6: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with frugality and skilful, careful use of resources; to do with the household (Greek 'eco' = household). (Note: this sphere is NOT to be seen only in financial terms, as is the common mistake in the West; Africans probably have a truer view of this sphere than do Westerners.) Response to limits in resources can call forth true creativity and beauty.
- Help 1: Working together to understand what resources we have and in what way each is limited.
- Help 2: Working together to work well within those limitations. Not grumbling. "Be content with such things as ye have" - helping each other to have this attitude, rather than the one so common in Britain of grumbling. (Note: contentment does not prevent bettering one's lot; it is about attitude.)
- Help 3: Not being angry when the actions of the other imposes limitations on us, but rather creatively responding to them.
- Help 4: On the other hand, not imposing limitations on the other that are unjust (see 'Juridical').
- Help 5: Working out an agreement between each other about how finances should be handled.
- Help 6: Sharing resources. "All my worldly goods I on thee bestow" (the old wording of the marriage vows).
- Help 7: Help each other in business or whatever work one dues, such as growing the food or tending the cattle. This is the second one you mention that Africans are well aware of.
- Help 8: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with harmony and surprise, also with play, also with the arts. Help in this sphere is to work to live in joyous harmony, and help each other in play, and join together in artistic things.
- Help 1: Sing together.
- Help 2: Work at harmony in living, so that each weaves a symphony around the other. So that marriage becomes a duet rather than a duel.
- Help 3: Have times of 'play' together. That is, times when we are not working or doing what we "have to do". Sabbath rest. In the West we often feel guilty if we are not doing something 'productive' with our time.
- Help 4: If one has artistic talents, then the other should aid and not impede them, doing so for the glory of God rather for selfish reasons.
- Help 5: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with what is due; with 'justice' and recompense / retribution. Law is part of this. Help in this area is around both giving what is due to the other and in helping each other give what is due outside.
- Help 1: Give what is due to each other as husband and wife.
- Help 2: Help the other to fulfil responsibilities they have to others outside. What responsibilities? Well, that must be a matter for discussion and agreement between the couple.
- Help 3: If the other is not receiving what is due to them from outside, then work for this. But not what is due to pride. For instance in many cultures there is emphasis on status, and fighting for what is due to one's spouse is really just fighting for oneself, selfishly and unjustly.
- Help 4: Work with each other to fulfil responsibilities to society as a whole. As said above, much of the West is too selfishly focused on the nuclear family, and much of Africa too selfishly on the wider family, both neglecting our responsibilities to society as a whole. Including the poor and disempowered.
- Help 6: If one or both partners are involved in the legal processes, then help one another in this.
- Help 7: Being willing to receive such help.
(In the philosophy, this is called 'Ethical', but that is too weak a term.) To do with self-giving love; agape. Help here involves first self-giving to each other, and second helping each other to self-give to others. Also involves things like generosity.
- Help 1: "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church." "Wives submit to your husbands." Both is self-giving, as opposed to self-defence.
- Help 2: Work with each other to self-give to those outside.
- Help 3: Being generous to each other, and helping each other to be generous to those outside.
- Help 4: Being willing to receive such help.
To do with faith, faithfulness, ultimate vision of who we are, and with true religion, with spirituality. Help in this sphere involves helping each other maintain good faith, deeply.
- Help 1: "Those who pray together stay together" Sort of. Encourage one another to look to God.
- Help 2: Help each other to get to know God in all his fulness. To get to know the height, depth, length and breadth of the love of Christ, though it can never be fully known. Try to remove all barriers that impedes the other in knowing God.
- Help 3: Keep on checking that we are truly orientated toward God, and not to our own selfish aims or our own view of God.
- Help 4: Join in worship together.
- Help 5: Work with each other to make Christ known.
- Help 6: Being willing to receive such help.
It is important that none of these spheres are worked at in isolation of the others, to the detriment of the others. It is not right if, for instance, we try to correct the beliefs of each other and ignore the Sacrificial self-giving, and do not try to communicate properly about it (Lingual). Nor is it any good just helping each other in economic work and forgetting giving each other what is due (juridical), and working so hard that there is no time for the aesthetic side. And so on. Nobody can say "Well, I'm good at this sphere" and leave it at that; God designed us to function in all spheres equally. Especially it is NOT true that the pistic sphere is 'more important' than the others (many marriages of Christians are sour because husband, wife or both are too tied up with God's work).
The spheres are in the order above because functioning in each one involves functioning in the ones earlier than it. So helping each other in the social sphere involves helping each other in the lingual, formative, analytical, etc. You might notice that from about the lingual onwards, the mutual help is of two forms: one directed at helping each other function well in the sphere towards each other, and the other at working together so that both partners function well towards other people.
"Marvellous piece on that web page! It is very well geared towards husband-wife relations but also applicable to other inter-human relations: a manual for loving thy neighbour as thyself. May be an addition:
- numerical: recognise that man and wife are TWO being ONE in marriage and related to MANY other humans.
- spatial: share space and respect each others (private) space.
- physical: also "interaction": stay in close interaction with each other, one of the foundations for the other spheres.
Kind regards,
Arie."
"I have given a quick glance over your 'marriage page' as I call it. I find it insightful. I thought I would share with you what immediately came to mind with regards to the first three modalities:
- Quantitative: Help as often as needed, without a limit and without keeping track of the number of times one helps the other.
- Spatial: Be available to help as much as possible wherever on is,
whether near or far away, physically.
- Kinematic: Move quickly to help, do not drag one's feet."
[I like them, especially the first. From a 'help' point of view. From an aspects point of view, the spatial and kinematic are probably analogical - but none the worse for that. A.B.]
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This page, "http://dooy.info/using/mutual.help.html",
is part of a collection that discusses application of Herman Dooyeweerd's ideas, within The Dooyeweerd Pages, which explain, explore and discuss Dooyeweerd's interesting philosophy. Email questions or comments are welcome.
Written on the Amiga and Protext in the style of classic HTML.
You may use this material subject to conditions. Compiled by Andrew Basden.
Created:
Last updated: 29 June 1999 Arie D. 7 February 2001 copyright, email. 28 January 2003 corrected links to aspects and a list-end, new ending. 28 June 2011 corrected link aspects, contact; rid unet. 19 November 2022 new .end, .nav, bgcolor, canonical.