"So God created man..."
"And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him..."
"And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man..."
Before a woman was created God assigned a role to her: to be a help that would meet her husband's needs. This is what Debi Pearl wrote her book about - the book that was translated into 12 languages and is well-known among women worldwide.
About the Authors
Except for this book, Debi and her husband Michael Pearl wrote books for husbands and single men and women. Their names are similar to this one: Created to Need a Help Meet, Preparing to Be a Help Meet, In Search of a Help Meet, and The Hidden Help Meet. Besides that, they also wrote other books on marriage and bringing up children and started a website on those topics. The website is called No Greater Joy.
But the most popular book by Debi Pearl is Created to Be His Help Meet. I've read the 10th Anniversary Edition which was revised, expanded, and updated ten years after the original version was published.
About the Book
Created to Be His Help Meet is a book that consists of two parts: a theoretical one and a practical one. The theoretical part reveals and explains the main principles of "a glorious marriage" in fourteen chapters talking about what wisdom is, why you need to have a joyful heart, how to understand your husband, and how to serve him well.
The second part is a little more practical - it's literally called "Eight Practical Game Rules" and it's based on two verses from the letter to Titus. In that extract, Paul tells Titus what older women are supposed to teach young wives. Debi dedicated a whole chapter to each word of this verse, explaining it to her readers with vivid examples and illustrations.
"That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed" (Titus 2:4-5, KJV)
Pros and Cons
As an advantage, I want to mention that the book is easy to read. It's not written for psychologists or theologists - it's addressed to young women that want to be better helpers for their husbands.
Moreover, the author supports all her ideas with examples from the Bible (explaining all the texts in detail) and from the lives of different women she talked to. This allows us to see how biblical principles can be applied to everyday lives and imagine how we can relate them to ours.
The disadvantages of these books were seen by many readers so I can't say that the book is perfect either. To my mind, many of the author's opinions are very radical. If she doesn't agree with something she expresses her disapproval in a very harsh form, blaming her readers for everything. Moreover, as her main reasoning for why we need to work on our marriages, she describes the suffering of divorced women and the question "do you want to be like her?"
In stories and examples, we can see that the author is an older woman who grew up in a different time, so some of her advice should be updated for modern readers (such as cooking tips). But you also need to understand that many of her ideas seem controversial not because they are but because our minds have been changed by feminist thinking!
My rating is 8
This book made me rethink my relationships with my husband, realize his need for respect and reverence, and pointed out my mistakes. While reading this book I started working on myself and serving my husband more, and he noticed it! Regardless of the book's disadvantages, if you have the right attitude, it can definitely bring fruit. So I would, without doubt, recommend this book to new (and not so new) wives!
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