“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

-Matthew 6:24, NIV

10 Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: “Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.” 11 Yet we hear that some of you are living idle lives, refusing to work and meddling in other people’s business. 

-2 Thessalonians 3:10-11, NLT

For young husbands trying to launch their careers, this can especially be a vulnerable matter. Their struggles can turn into the shame point used to target them by their Cheater and emotionally harm them.

Being poor isn’t fun.

In some Christian circles, the amount of money that the husband earns becomes a barometer for whether or not he deserves to stay married. This is paganism disguised as Christian thinking.

The pagan idea is that men are only as valuable as the money they earn. You see this in the classic work(s) of Jane Austen where bachelors were assessed as suitors by the money they had. For our God who loves the poor, nothing could be further from His heart!

Money becomes the god in these scenarios as money becomes more important than the covenant made with God at the marriage altar. It is wicked.

Should we work? Yes, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 instructs us as much.

However, the context of 2 Thessalonians 3 suggests more than simply not making “enough” money. It suggests a social situation where unemployed people were being busybodies with too much time on their hands. (This more accurately defines some Christians interfering in young marriages where the husband is struggling to launch his career.)

Another reason I raise this as a gendered thing is how it is used to attack a husband’s masculinity.

This goes back to very rigid gender roles. The man being the “provider” and that role being the totality of his masculinity.

Can you imagine husbands denigrating their wives for failure to produce heirs? When she miscarries, he gets angry with her and suggests she is defective. Is this godly behavior?

How about a whole church leadership cheering on such behavior and telling the husband to divorce his wife for failing “as a woman” to produce a child?

Such would be evil.

Yet this behavior IS often sanctioned towards men as it comes to providing financially.

He misses out on a promising job after a series of interviews, and his wife suggest something is wrong with him in that moment of loss and disappointment. Instead of supporting a husband during a difficult time of learning how to job hunt and launch one’s career, some wives use that time to spend their energies (plus limited finances) on affair partners. It is cruel.

In the end, the cheating wife leaves him. Why? Because she was never in the marriage for honorable, godly reasons. She did the calculus that he was no longer of sufficient use to her, and so, she leaves.

No godly pastor ought to support this behavior, but some do.