Calling women a “HelpMeet”
If you’ve ever referred to women as a “help meet” for men you might be a fundamentalist.
The use of this phrase is an odd phenomenon pulled from Genesis 2:18 where the Lord says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” Translated in other ways God is saying that He will make man a helper “fit for”, “corresponding to” or “suitable for” him. But one supposes calling a woman a “help corresponding” just doesn’t have the same ring to it and more importantly those phrases do not imply that a woman’s main function is to meet a man’s needs.
There’s no record of who started using “help-meet” as a noun but it’s clear that fundies think that’s what the King James Bible intends for us to do. It’s hard to say what they’d think of husbands being called “lover submitters” per Ephesians 5. I’m sure they’d consult the Greek and find it lacking.
Posted by Darrell
I was married once to a fundamentalist. He loved to quote the “woman submit” verses to me, but managed to forget the “husband love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave his life for her” verses.
I don’t think fundyland knows what to do with divorced single women. Who are they supposed to submit to?
Yup! I think somewhere deep down it pisses them off royally…
My extremely Fundy father always quotes that to my mom, who was born and raised Fundy and is used to abuse. Misery all around. Ticks me off. LOVE her, you idiot. Nope that ain’t important..SUBMITTING is! Ugh.
Don’t forget the frequent mispronunciation: help-mate! (I’d hazard a guess that the corrupting influence of the Southern constituency of Fundamentalism is partly responsible for that.)
Aww, yeah – my suggestion got used
Seriously, it seemed like 3 out of every 5 preachers that spoke in chapel at MBBC used this non-word. Drove me CRAZY!
Help-meet Requirements:
*wearing a dress or culottes at all times
*having as many children “as the Lord allows” (since the King James Bible never condones birth control!)
*Always greeting your husband at the door after work with a smile and his dinner on the table.
*Letting your husband relax after work (after all *HE* worked all day, you merely relaxed as you cared for his twelve lovely children, cooked, cleaned up the house, did laundry, etc. . .) while you continue your “household duties”.
*Never speaking up in church or Bible study, because you wouldn’t want to “usurp authority over a man”.
*Submitting diligently to your husband (translation: letting him make all the decisions, and never questioning any of them).
There are probably more requirements–I’m sure I’m forgetting some.
I cringe every time I hear “help-meet.”
I love proper grammar (I know. . . weird personality quirk of mine). Connotations of the phrase notwithstanding, you’ve managed to point out one of the biggest errors in it: did anyone think about what they were doing when they turned “meet” into a noun?
I’m so thankful I’m married to a man who puts more importance on loving me the way he should than how submissive I am to him. He makes it so easy for me to be submissive by the way he respects and honors me.
I think the helpmeet idea is great, if used properly. If the husband is a jerk, he doesn’t deserve a submissive wife. He’s already making it impossible for her to submit properly if he isn’t loving her the right way.
I just found this site and I hope its what I think it is. I am a pastor of a Southern Baptist church. Do I need to be here?
On the lighter side, during my years as a fundamentalist, I noticed this trend of treating “help meet” as a noun. My own little way of countering the bad grammar bound up in this phenomenon was to, when praising my wife for something she’d done and done well, I would tell her, “Thou art an help MEET for me!”
On the more serious side, now that I’m Reformed (yea, Presbyterian even) and my wife remains IFB in her convictions, the Lord is using the tension between her responsibility to submit and my responsibility to “lovingly lead by example” (my summary of the biblical role of the husband) to work the rough edges off of both of us. What I’ve come to learn over the years that we’ve spent at this stalemate is that, I believe, ideally, I am to see to my own role without regard to how well she is performing hers, and vice versa. Basically, it’s the crucifixion of the selfishness of both the husband and the wife.
Another thing I’ve been learning is that crucifixion is not an instantaneous death, but long and drawn out. The ancient Roman method sometimes took days, the spiritual application for me is that it will last my entire life.
Dwayne – if you can think for yourself and tie your own shoes….then welcome aboard.
I just found a nifty blog explaining this odd term in some detail
Helpmeet, Or Can Stillborn Words Prosper?
http://blog.oup.com/2009/01/helpmeet/
Since I’m a nerd with OCD-like research impulses, I looked up “helpmeet” in the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED describes it as “A compound absurdly formed by taking the two words help meet in Gen. ii. 18, 20 (‘an help meet for him’, i.e. a help (HELP n. 2) suitable for him) as one word. Already in the 17th c. the Scripture phrase is found with the two words improperly hyphened; which led the way to the use of help-meet, helpmeet, without ‘for him’. But its recognition as a ‘word’ is chiefly of the 19th c.: it is unknown to Johnson, Todd, Richardson, and to Webster 1832. In the 17th c. they used more grammatically meet help, meet-help: cf. sweet heart, sweetheart.” Turns out it’s been used as a word in non-biblical literature since at least 1673 when Dryden said, “If ever woman was a help-meet for man, my Spouse is so.” (Yes, I know I’m a nerd!)
Amanda, you are my hero. The OED rocks.
I think this whole thing could have been cleared up with a comma–”an help, meet for him.” Another example of how much fundamentalist absurdity it due to ignorance and linguistic carelessness.
Jordan, if the Holy Spirit wanted a comma, He would have written a comma. I, of course, do not try to correct the KJV. Sheesh. I thought you were saved. (shakes dust. walks away.)
I hope this means that the husbands are helping their wives with the dishes, laundry and the kids.
Thank you, Jordan and Amanda. You are both phenomenal people.
Whatever you do, don’t say “help-mate” around a fundy. They’ll go into overload.
http://nogreaterjoy.org/blogs/createdtobehishelpmeet/excerpts/
Ew.
Yuck, that was disgustingly fundy, nauseating. Here is how this kind of man is and here is what you should feel about him you stupid woman. Especially gross is the “Steady” man section. Just shut up and accept him as he is you controlling hussy! Sorry, I divorced him instead!
Yeeeesh, I think that one hit a nerve….
That passage in Ephesians also says to submit to one another.
I’ve heard it said that single women should submit to older, spiritual men in the church. So should a seventy year old widowed woman submit to a ninety five year old man?
BTW there’s a button down here that says submit! subliminal message?
No, the person a single woman, regardless of age, needs to submit to is God. Not a man. Not ever.
So, one year the Fundy ministry I worked at gave this book to all the staff ladies – singles included. We wondered if that was supposed to be some sort of hint …
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/01/30/top-5-most-ignoredhated-bible-passages-of-the-religious-left/3/
This book nearly broke me with improper use of God’s LAW, man-made fear tactics and promised quid pro quo that if I followed their advice(equated with Scripture) that I’d have a happy marriage. Bottom line I nearly lost my faith, almost ruined my marriage and had health problems for a year until Jesus opened my eyes when reading Matthew 11:28-30 and pulled me out of their thicket. I realized they’d imposed a different yoke for wives and lead you to follow THEIR teaching. Jesus gives us what we need and changes us with love but the Pearl’s motivate with fear and lies. Bottom line this book uses the law WITHOUT the Gospel, it’s creepy and God does not promise that we can have a better marriage by being a godly wife, period. This is an old post but thought I’d give my 2 cents. Here’s a great review of this book by a concerned pastor. http://responsivereiding.com/2008/03/01/created-to-be-his-help-meet-a-review-sort-of/
That review made me feel a whole lot better. Thanks for posting the link. That woman should not be writing books…
“If you’ve ever referred to women as a “help meet” for men you might be a fundamentalist.”
You MIGHT be? Seriously, have you ever heard anybody other than a Fundamentalist use this term? I haven’t.
I actually came across it in a Mark Twain story a couple months ago. It was in a book of short stories though so I’m not sure which one off the top of my head.
Someone tried to tell me that the Bible says that ‘women are supposed to submit to men’ with regard to his dating relationship. I corrected him on this count, saying that the Bible actually says that the wife is to submit to the husband (and that the husband has a further obligation to love his wife as Christ loved the church–i.e., sacrifice for her, not exploit her, treat her with due consideration, etc.)
He still pushed the issue, so I asked him if, by his reasoning, his mother should submit to him?
He had no answer to that. I never spoke to that guy again. No loss.
I really hate that idea that some fundys have that all women should submit to all men. Bull puckey! We are only required to submit to one man, our husband, our “own” husband. (which rules out polygamy as well but that’s another topic). Where do these men (and sometimes women who seem to hate themselves) get the idea that we have to submit to every man?
I also hate the term “help-meet” as it seems so limiting. If a man refers to his wife as his help-meet it seems he’s only referring to what she does for him. How about referring to her as his wife, the woman he loves, or the love of his life? A whole lot more romantic than help-meet and one she will be more inclined to reward him for in private.