Biblical Submission?
A young lady who grew up in my church and is doing some great adulting-boy how time flies-posted on Facebook a comment about a website she saw about Christian marriages and parenting. She was not happy with the website because according to her the website advocated men marry women young, I assume in their middle teen years, so that they could raise them up to be godly submissive wives.
I did not read the website to find out if that was her perspective or if that was what they were promoting, but her comment and the issue has me thinking about many conversations my brother and I have had as pastors and husbands about biblical submission. So, at the risk of offending everybody I take pen in hand too dive into this issue because her comment was just too good of a lure for this bass to resist. I will probably end up in the frying pan, but the lure is just too tempting.
In the first place, early marriage, that is in the middle teen years or earlier, is not a biblical concept at all. Any Bible scholars out there can correct me if I am wrong, but even though most of the marriages mentioned the Bible happened when the individuals were at least younger, I know of no Old or New Testament mandate that requires young marriage.
Young marriage for the wife was more of a historical and traditional concept in many cultures, including the Jewish culture, because of practicality and necessity. Younger women are stronger for birth and have the energy needed to raise children and marrying off daughters to start their own homes made for one less mouth to feed in rural agricultural societies where boys can be more productive in the field. So, the fact that some biblical scholars believe that Mary may have been as young as 14 and Joseph as old as 30 when they were married does not make it a biblical mandate. It was simply the tradition and necessity of the culture.
Gene and I have discovered over the last 40 years of ministry everybody manages to get this biblical concept wrong. The apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians does not command the husband to make his wife submissive, he commands the wife to be submissive. He commands the husband to love the wife. That is his duty. And he commands the wife to be submissive to the husband. That is her duty.
The concept of the husband making the wife submissive is neither biblical nor possible because submission by its very nature in the meaning of the word is a voluntary act. The husband that manipulates, emotionally bullies, or physically abuses a wife into submission has not gotten submission at all. She would not make those decisions to do so if those pressures were not on her life. Abused women are not submissive they are traumatized and abused, and it is a great evil. But they are still not submissive.
Biblical submission is a voluntary act on the part of the wife to allow the husband to be truly the leader of the home. She does not manipulate or emotionally bully the husband into getting her way. She allows him to make the decisions even if they are wrong. But she then allows him to suffer the consequences of wrong decisions. This has nothing to do with the equality of the sexes but the offices within the marriage.
I do not believe that my boss is superior to me. We both have talents gifts and abilities that even though they are not the same are equal. We are both respected in the community. We are I believe equal in intelligence. But he is still my boss. Our being equal or close to equal in every category of life does not mean I get to tell him what to do, he gets to tell me what to do because of his office as owner and boss.
In the same way, a wife may be equal or even superior to her husband. My wife is superior to me in many aspects. But that does not mean that we are equal in office. God has commanded the man to be the head of the home and the wife to be his helpmeet. Biblical submission in marriage, or submission in any other form, requires a voluntary decision to not usurp the authority of someone else’s office.
Now why is this a struggle in marriage and in other relationships? It took me many years to figure this out, but I finally understood that the lust for power is as strong as the lust for sex or the lust for money. In the flesh it is just as powerful and insatiable a lust as any of the other lust. Both men and women in the business world and in relationships will do almost anything to keep power. Most marital problems stem with one or the other party attempting to have fleshly power over the other. And power is so addicting that once you get it you do not want to give it up. And you absolutely want to have more.
But back to our marrying women young to make them submissive. From a practical standpoint all I have to say is good luck with that. Even if it were a truly biblical concept, I do not care how early you marry a woman once she gets a certain age your influence will no longer control her, and she will want to expand out and be more of her own person. She will want to learn and grow and experience different things in life and develop her own individuality which should never be taken away in a marriage.
No, I am not talking about sin, such as adultery, but just her becoming the fullest potential that God has created her to be in the context of the marriage. Any marriage where either party loses their individuality is a dysfunctional relationship with codependency and counter dependency going on.
If I have not made anyone mad yet the next few paragraphs certainly will so, hang on. Among American women, not one in a 1000 Christians and not one in 10,000 non-Christians practices or understands biblical submission. They would not know biblical submission if it ran them over on the freeway.
In the media right now men bashing is a favorite sport. The media will find the dysfunctional relationships where women are truly being abused and parade that as the idea that we are a patriarchal society that oppresses women.
This is absolute hogwash. For every situation where a woman is being abused or forced into subservience I could find just as many situations where men are being emotionally bullied and mistreated by their girlfriends or wives.
Except for the business world, we are a matriarchal society. Women have just as much power as men and in some ways more. In any culture where physical force is taken out of the way to decide supremacy, women are equal to men if not more powerful. So, media and women of our culture who are selling that hogwash move on down to the next house, I'm not interested in those cookies.
So, to my young friend who has rightly pointed out the error of this website bravo to you. But that does not mean that Christians nor society is even close to having this one right. We are closer to Alice in Wonderland than we are to reality. Our culture is not brave enough to be honest and self-deluded fantasy is way less painful than reality.
