We are dealing with a real situation here not hypotheticals, do you think it is right for a man’s wife to side with her Father over her husband after her Father has has threatened to murder her husband?
Was that a real murder threat or just an alcoholic’s babbling?
Did the wife demand the husband to apologise to the father?
Remember you said we’re dealing with facts here, not hypotheticals. Hypotheticals are always hypotheticals, regardless whether they benefit the husband or the wife.
I never said that though did I, nor did the OP do that from what I can tell, again we are talking about this situation as describes by the OP. He did give his reasons, the car he believed was overloaded and would therefore be dangerous to drive, she wasn’t wiling to accept that and made an argument out of it.
At first glance from the “letter” of it, that is true. If you dig into it, the husband was telling the wife to pick something to leave behind if she wanted to take that one thing. That’s a perfectly logical approach, except not very considerate and there were heated situations that evening already. Also, didn’t the Opening Poster write that the wife actually accepted his position in the end without fighting him, anyway? Looks like we don’t have enough facts here and the facts we have aren’t being particularly clear, if you ask me. My point of view is that we can’t make any presumptions against the wife just because the husband is the head and supposed to be obeyed.
God has given that authority to the husband that does not mean you cant have a discussion, but if something becomes an argument it is generally because one side is not wiling to back down.
It’s not a Roma locuta causa finita thing like with theologians flying off the handle. Yes, by “law” she should have backed down. But try submitting to someone who’s not listening to your arguments and reducing them to absurd, making you look like a child, someone who’s supposed to love and cherish you, all this in your family home and in front of your parents. In short, put yourself in the wife’s shoes.
Not if it was self defence, it all depends on how much the OP believes the threat to murder him.
Not true. You only have the right to hit someone if he’s already in the act of assaulting you. If you had reason to think he would deliver on his threads and you proceeded to incapacitate him before he could harm you, that would probably be morally fine and you could get away with that legally. But you never acquire the right simply to give someone some pain. You don’t get the right to land a couple of free punches. That’s not defence. Defence is what it says: defence. De-fence. Fending off an attack. Not punishing someone for threatening you.
He wasn’t giving a opinion he was giving a dressing down of his Son in Law and I would not believe a word he he said because it sounds like he is not a man of his word.
So basically it doesn’t matter how the husband was treating his wife because the only people complaining are 1) an alcoholic father whose opinion on anything matters nothing, 2) a wife who’s by definition required to obey, 3) a mother in law who’s no business the quarrel is. Wrong. It is important how the husband treated the wife regardless of the shortcomings of the beholders.
Whether it is right to beat him up would depend on whether he is a threat or not,
Untrue, you are never justified in beating up anyone preventively, beating a person into submission, beating a person into knowing better than attack you. There is only one application of violence which is allowed if someone attacks you: you repeal the attack and that’s the end of it. You use only the amount of violence which is necessary to repeal the attack and no more. You do not acquire a moral right to deliver additional blows, to make that person hurt, to show him better and so on.
Whether it is right to beat him up would depend on whether he is a threat or not, personally I would have felt pretty threatened in that situation.
Just because a drunk person told you next time you’d do something bad to his daughter he’d kill you? Did you notice the “next time” part, or the fact that he was drunk and rambling or that he didn’t even clearly state a serious threat of murder? Or the fact that he was physically weaker than the person he threatened?
Let me tell you I would not feel meediately threatened (in the present) if a twice older, visibly weaker than I and drunk and rambling man with poor health told me he would do something bad to me if I did something wrong
in the future.
And no matter how you look at it, if there is no
presentimmediate threat.
- Father-in-law and mother-in-law should be treated with the same respect and love as one’s own father and mother.
Fine. So if your father, older and weaker, told you he’d do something bad to you if you, say, mistreated a family member again, then you would beat him up. Or maybe not? Hmm?
Children must patiently bear the faults and shortcomings of their parents, especially the bodily and mental infirmities of old age, and give them support if necessary. Very likely they will be treated by their own children as they have treated their parents.
So, beating up a drunk father-in-law, who is to be treated like a father, because he rambled while drunk?
Through the years, through prayers, and him dealing with people who have had alcohol issues, he can now admit that his dad had a severe drinking problem. To this day, though, many of his siblings act like he never did anything wrong.
