This topic has long been on my heart, and even though I’ve addressed it often, there is another angle–a question I’ve been asked many times by different women–and I feel the urgency to post about it. Every time I address the biblical pattern of marriage, I try to emphasize that biblical marriage is not a demeaning relationship where a husband hovers over his wife.
And yet, after hearing from so many, there is obviously a major misunderstanding in the Christian home, and there are lots of hurting women for whom I am deeply concerned.
Let me be clear: men and women, husbands and wives are equal–in every regard to human worth. I and others who embrace the literal interpretation of Scripture have never claimed the Bible teaches otherwise.
We must get past the terminology that rubs us the wrong way and see into the heart of God’s beautiful covenant plan:
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” Ephesians 5
I’ve been asked numerous times, and again, yesterday, the sentiment was repeated: “But what if your husband doesn’t love you like this? What of the wife who feels abused in her marriage? This teaching causes too many men to abuse their authority, so it must be wrong.”
The specific comment from yesterday’s post:
“And, I’m glad your husband never acts unloving. I must be in a very small minority….
My greatest frustration with all this patriarchal stuff (I believe a wife is to submit to her husband etc) is that basically they tell you that if the marriage has any kind of problem, it’s the woman’s fault, because the godly and wonderful man could never be.
That’s probably why people like you don’t understand the situation…maybe your husband really is perfect and you as the woman are always at fault. But, I have a feeling it’s not always that way for you either.”
I want to unpack this comment carefully, gently, because it does represent what a lot of hurting women feel. One thing HAS to be clarified right out of the gate…it’s actually the big hang up that I see with the frustration taking places in a lot of marriages…
“My greatest frustration with all this patriarchal stuff…is that basically they tell you that if the marriage has any kind of problem, it’s the woman’s fault…”
Unless the “they” here refers to the Trinity, we’ve got problems (and the Trinity wouldn’t say “it’s always the woman’s fault”). It is so tempting to blame “them”–those who teach “this stuff”, when it’s simply the Word of God being repeated. I have been the brunt of “damaging women” many times, simply by quoting from the Bible.
Do away with the terms if it helps. I know the term “patriarchy” causes some to shudder, and maybe many have indeed ill-defined it. Forget the words and the terms. If you have to, put away all the books except the Bible. It alone is the right blueprint for our lives. It alone has the truth and the answers. We must stop blaming “they”, unless “they” are teaching something not biblical. Go to the Word. And we must cling to the truth that God’s Word is inerrant. Because if it’s not, then we are merely operating under a Christian label with nothing to follow but our own feelings about life. (“The heart is deceitfully wicked…who can know it?”)
Which brings me to the next point: so many women are absolutely convinced that because their husbands abuse the principles taught in Scripture that we have been misinterpreting those Scriptures. There are groups and websites devoted to the reinterpretation of “biblical marriage” since so many men seem to abuse what is written. Logically, it would be easy to make such a conclusion. God obviously didn’t intend for women to be hurt by His design of marriage. So if she feels she is following the biblical pattern, but is still getting hurt, we must have misread the pattern.
I’ve read all the explanations of how the Bible doesn’t really mean what it says when it talks about submission and the wife reverencing her husband. About the time period and the difference that makes. I’ve read about the fact that “mutual submission” trumps any other kind. That “headship” doesn’t really mean what we think it means. I have done a careful study myself on these Scriptures.
Bottom line: the Bible is clear. God didn’t mess up, or give us some enigma that isn’t what it appears to be. The design is right and good. It is not intended to hurt us but to give us joy and freedom. WE are sinful. Man’s sin is always to blame, never God’s Word. When a marriage IS lived out according to Scripture, (I’ve said it a hundred times) a husband literally dies for his wife, “just as Christ did for the church”. If that isn’t happening, the command isn’t to blame–our sinfulness is.
Analogous Question:
The Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill.” Clear. We all agree that the principle is not alterable. Lately we saw yet another example of a man who “logically” believed that an abortion doctor should be killed in order to spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. In a numbers game, it seems logical. Usually, someone claiming to be a Christian is the one who commits the crime. We could look at this problem and conclude that the command is to blame for the killings. We could reason that because we’ve taught that murder is wrong so strongly, so adamantly, people are using it to justify their crimes to stop the murders. Do we change the command, or do we deal with the mishandling of it? Do we point to a misinterpretation? Or do we acknowledge the one holding the gun has the problem?
There are Christian marriages suffering because of various reasons. It may be that we are reaping the generational consequences of not being taught the proper attitudes toward marriage. Or we married a man with serious spiritual problems. Or we have serious spiritual problems. It may be that a woman is truly striving to live out her role and her husband is using it to benefit his sinful ego. I feel deeply for these women if that’s the case.
But under no circumstances can God be wrong. (“Even is we are unfaithful, God cannot be unfaithful.”) We must deal with the problems in an appropriate way, but we CAN’T reinterpret Scripture to justify sinful behavior. Once we do that, we set a whole generation on yet a more destructive course. We must deal with the core of the problem. The heart.
The answer? It’s not easy, of course. It must begin with an absolute peeling away of everything except the desire to obey God–no one and nothing else. (I can’t instruct men here.) Even our desire for happiness must vanish–and that is not easy. We must begin with the purest of motives, to obey regardless of the outcome, with a blind faith. She must walk forward believing God for His promises…which don’t always come without some suffering. Scripture gives clear instructions to wives even when they are married to unbelieving/disobedient husbands:
“Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.”
This is not wisdom in a time capsule; this is a universal, time-defying principle.
The church is to stand in the gap for a woman who is obeying the Word but whose husband is not loving her biblically. There is a biblical recourse for everything, including a man being held accountable to treat his wife as the Bible instructs him–loving his wife as his own flesh. If a church is not fulfilling its duties, find one that is. If a husband is being abusive, I believe she is to get out. Separate. Go somewhere safe, by all means. Pray, seek counsel, rally godly men and women around to help you.
I do not take lightly the fact that many women are in very difficult marriages. I hurt with you. Admittedly, it is much easier to embrace the biblical design for marriage when your husband obeys the Word and lays down his life for you daily. But even if he doesn’t, despite what the flesh tells you, obey the Lord. With all your heart, pour out your desires to him, continue loving and respecting your husband. It is not respect DUE to him that we give; we respect him because in doing so we submit to the Lord.
More times than not, I’ve seen even an unbelieving husband respond favorably to a woman who simply loves him, respects him and enjoys him. Men were created that way–their requirements are usually pretty simple. (Maybe that’s why there is so much teaching out there towards women and not so much to men…their needs are much simpler 😉
Scripture cannot be wrong; because if it is, the whole picture of Christ and the church is wrong.
Even as I write, I know how insane some of these words sound to our culture. And yet, our culture did not create man and woman nor did it create marriage. Therefore, it doesn’t have the answers. It doesn’t really matter if we *like* the way it sounds if we are Christians. We are given clear instructions, and our love for the Lord is revealed by our obedience to His Word (“If you love Me, keep my commands.”). We can make Scripture what we want it to be, or we can fall back into its truth and let God fulfill His ultimate purpose for us…which is VERY GOOD, even if it requires our temporary suffering.
