I’d been offline for several days and was a bit intimidated to come back to my email and see Sharon’s comment about submission in the Christian marriage. Jonnelle has an excellent answer, and at first I was tempted to just leave hers out there. But I truly feel called to answer this question even though my answer won’t win me any friends and may earn a few hurled tomatoes in my direction.
I’m a feminist. Even though my membership in NOW was short-lived and my subscription to Ms. ran out several years ago without being renewed, I still claim the mantle. I’m a libertarian. I believe in every person’s right to be governed by his or her own mind and to exercise free choice in so far as those choices harm no others.
First and foremost, though, I am a Christian. I made the choice to become a Christian when I was four years old. Many times since then I’ve had the opportunity to choose to leave that life but I have chosen to stay. Being a Christian is a life-long exercise of choice. God gave us free will to shake things up a bit, to keep us interesting. In fact I believe that God’s greatest three gifts to us are Life, Salvation and Free Will. Hence my strident adherence to the libertarian dogma.
I emphasise choice because one of my seemingly contradictory positions in life is that I am a believer in that passage in Ephesians everyone hates. The one about wives and husbands.
When people hear about wives submitting to husbands they get up in arms because it sounds backward, backwoods and baffling. It sounds like a sort of slavery where a woman is robbed of her mind and dignity, forced to live life on her knees with the heel of oppression on her neck. What most people forget, though, is that passage is written to Christians, about Christians. Which means–as with most things Christian–that we are through the looking glass.
Christianity is a world where nothing makes sense. When we are struck we turn the other cheek. When we are angered we forgive those who anger us. We actually believe that some homeless, jobless tramp in a tiny desert country 2000 years ago was God and that when he was put to death by the Romans he came back to life, hung around with his buds for a bit and then jumped back into the sky. We believe all of that. We’re a fairly weird people on the whole.
So it should surprise no one that our attitude on marriage is a bit odd as well. After all, who else would say that you should love your wife even if she’s a whore? That you should be willing to die for your wife no matter what–even if she cheats with another man. Just us, really. We also say that women should treat their husbands as their leader and guide.
When I was younger I thought I’d never marry. I only wanted to marry if I found a man who was my best friend, who was good with his hands, who was forgiving and had a good sense of humour. My ideal husband was a mashup of Jesus, Bill Cosby and John Wayne. So of course I wouldn’t marry any time in the future. So I was surprised when God put such a man in my path at 19.
We talked alot about what Christian marriage and family meant. When he asked me to marry him it was clear that he was asking me into a Covenant marriage as described in that dreaded passage. I made the choice to marry him. In that choice was also the choice to accept him as my spiritual leader, my teacher and my guide. Of course, Christ is first and the teacher, leader and guide of both of us.
That means that if my husband were to tell me to do something unlike Christ I would not be bound to his direction, because Christ’s direction is first. But insofar as the things of life are concerned, I obey my husband’s direction. I’m sure it chafes people to hear this, and I’m sure that eyes are rolling. It IS strange, I admit. But it’s the way of my weird people. It works for us and we are happy.
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Two N’s…. Jonnelle… or you can call me PK or PKs…
Crap. See, I should just stick to PK. It’s easier to spell.
My ideal husband was a mashup of Jesus, Bill Cosby and John Wayne
And, of course, Harold Ramis.
Yes! How could I forget Harold Ramis.
Of course, he was funny like Bill Cosby and Jewish like Jesus. So that covers some of it.
After all, who else would say that you should love your wife even if she’s a whore?
Well, there was that Hosea guy.
Kat, I’m trying to figure out what this means to you: if you thought your husband was mistaken on some action that was going to have a big effect on your household, would you argue with him and try to convince him that he was wrong? Would you not argue, but ask him to consider alternative actions/ideas?
Fascinating.
My take has been the same as the one I have on “works”. I don’t look at the passage as a command so much as I do a description of how things turn out if one is following Christ.
I’m not a very follow-and-submit-worthy man. Yet, amazingly, Lintilla still takes cues from me, especially in spiritual matters even though I have not asked that of her. To be quite honest, as a flesh-and-blood man, I don’t relish the responsibility. Yet, here we are.
BUT, it’s also important to remember that this arrangement does NOT mean we have to agree. We disagree on abortion and the death penalty, for instance. And that’s OK.
But that may ust be the Methodist in me.
Well, there was that Hosea guy.
Exactly. I may be mistaken about the Judaic interpretation of Hosea and Gomer and I would like you to enlighten me further, but I believe the Jewish faith interprets that prophet’s actions as God’s pledge of faithfulness to Israel.
Christians interpret that passage in such a way, but also further extrapolate it to mean that God is faithful to the Church Universal in the same way he was faithful to Israel. It is further extrapolated to mean that is how a man should be in marriage. The reason I said that we are the only ones–and didn’t include the Jewish faith–is because I understood that Judaism doesn’t require covenant marriage. I could be wrong.
Ooops. I accidentally hit “submit” before I was done. Sorry.
f you thought your husband was mistaken on some action that was going to have a big effect on your household, would you argue with him and try to convince him that he was wrong?
Well, because of the relationship we have worked on–nobody has a perfect covenant marriage from the outset–it doesn’t work out the way some outsiders understand the “submit” doctrine.
There’s a lot of mistaken belief that the Submit Doctrine (hereinafter SD) means that the wife just bows her head and does whatever her husband says. However, in practical SD relationships that isn’t the case. Part of the husband’s unconditional love for his wife is to see her as his helpmeet–the Proverbs 31 woman. So major decisions that will affect the family are discussed and prayed over.
I’m not a very follow-and-submit-worthy man.
Slarti, no one is. That’s part of what it means to grow in Grace.
In Rocking the Roles: Building a Win-Win Marriage, by Robert Lewis and William Hendricks, I read a terrific explanation of submission. Leader is the husband’s role; helper is the wife’s role. Submission is her response to his leading; praise is his response to her helping. Submission is a function, not a role, which is a freeing thought! You choose to submit.
It is as Slarti and Kat state/imply — when one is following Christ, submitting becomes second nature. (It is part of the new creation, the Spirit-born nature, which is the Christian’s second nature.)
Kat, I know you, which is why it’s obvious that SD could not, in your case, mean just bowing your head. But, if a husband is accepting his wife’s knowledge, abilities, desires as part of the basis of a decision, how then is the wife submitting to the husband’s will? Or, rather, how is that a unilateral submission by the wife to the husband? It looks to me, from the outside of such a relationship, like each of the two submitting to each other’s judgment depending on the situation. And I could see someone describing a lot of marriages that way, including my own, but my husband and I would both laugh at the idea that that means I am obeying him. Frankly, I see the woman of valor as someone who couldn’t possibly be constrained by her husband’s will tout court. And I’m never sure whether we are talking about what is basically the same sort of relationship using different language, or whether you see another element in SD that places it somewhere in between the reciprocal partnership I see as the ideal to be striven for and the head-bowing you agree it isn’t.
As for Hosea and marriage, yes, that is how we read him. He’s not a model of human marriage for us, and some legal schools in some periods would, in fact, have forced him to divorce her.
Kat et. al.,
There’s absolutely no way I could have said it any better.
Slarti,
I’m not a very follow-and-submit-worthy man, either…Something I’ve been praying about and trying to work on since, oh, I guess since before I got married. Needless to say, I’ve got a long ways to go (and I know I’ll never get there, because I’m not perfect.)
Wow. One day (hopefully this weekend) Imma gonna sit down and see if I can answer Sharon’s comment as well.
It isn’t only a Christian idea, either… there are plenty of dom/sub relationships that are actually much more stringent than your average Christian dynamic.
For what that’s worth.