1. Moving Beyond Headship Debates: Finding Common Ground In Storytelling
moving beyond headship debates
Finding Common Ground in Storytelling
In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not
victory, or an unjust interest.
WILLIAM PENN
I was wound up. An energizer bunny. Tingling with excitement—maybe even a tad nervous. It was seven o’clock on the night of October 25, 1995. The setting, Pierce Chapel at Wheaton College. As I looked out over the crowd, it appeared as though all nine hundred seats were filled—students standing up and down the outer aisles and in the rear, stretching as far as I could see into the vestibule. The event had been well publicized. Though not necessarily the mother of all debates or the debate of the decade, word had obviously gotten out. I was there to face off against Dr. John Piper. The plan was not for a formal debate. Rather, we were each given an allotted amount of time to speak to the question, Should marriage be based on a model of mutual submission and equality or on a model of male headship?
I look over the text of my address today, two decades later, and nod my head in agreement, while scolding myself here and there for using the passive voice or a weak verb. But the position I took then has changed very little. Yet I wonder about the value of such debates. Would it have been better if John and I had each sat down in an easy chair on that stage and told our stories, while at the same time speaking to biblical and theological issues? But that was not the format. If I were to debate today, I would say some of the same things but take a very different approach.
And today I would certainly hope that any thought of victory would be excised from my mind. It felt good when students cheered, but as I recall, most of the students seemed to have come with their minds already made up. The majority of those who supported mutuality in marriage no doubt thought I won the debate, and vice versa. When we contemplate Christian marriage today, the stakes are high. Little is accomplished by winning or losing in a public forum.
It was perhaps mere coincidence that John Piper and I each presented our positions in ten points, mine in the form of questions. My first eight questions briefly answered common misunderstandings related to mutual submission and headship in marriage. My ninth question asked if mutual submission is supported by Scripture. A quick word count of that twenty-year-old document shows that more than half of my entire presentation was a response to this single question. I began with Adam and Eve, skipped right ahead to Jesus, and then zeroed in on the apostle Paul.
Despite our ten-point similarity, John Piper and I approached the topic from very different angles. He did not go through various biblical passages to make his case, though had he been inclined, he was certainly capable of doing so. Rather, he approached the subject from the top down. I zeroed in on Scripture that dealt with women and men in marriage. His emphasis was on God’s supremacy, as is indicated by selected sentences from his text:
My own personal mission statement is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things . . . God does not like being taken for granted. The very reason for creation is God’s going public for the glory of God . . . God has designed human beings to magnify His glory . . . Since my mission here is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all people, I commend to you this complementary view of marriage and family rather than an egalitarian one.1
It may not be too simplistic to suggest that the differences he and I demonstrated in the Wheaton debate go to the very heart of the wider evangelical debate on women’s equality in the church and in marriage. Of course, God is sovereign. That is a given for anyone who upholds historic orthodoxy. But is God’s supremacy the starting point in dealing with gender roles, particularly the relationship between husband and wife?
That God’s supremacy should be the foundation for a husband’s role in marriage is not necessarily an obvious conclusion. There are certainly other biblical truths that seem far more appropriate, including the comforting passage in Hebrews 13 (quoting from Deuteronomy and Psalms) in which God says, “ ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.’ ” Here is a passage that reflects on God and at the same time profoundly speaks to the mutuality between a husband and wife. The Lord is my “helper,” as husbands and wives are helpers to each other.
It is true that the apostle Paul asserts that the husband is the “head” of the wife (Ephesians 5:23). This statement, however, is surely not a slam dunk for the claim of male privilege. The verdict is still out on the meaning of “head.” Indeed, kephalē, the Greek word translated “head,” has been endlessly debated by biblical scholars. Our contemporary usage suggests the meaning is “ruler,” but from the biblical context, the concept of “source” (an equally valid rendering of kephalē) is actually more fitting. But however kephalē is defined, when it is used for the husband, it is always in the context of Christ as head of the church. Indeed, this metaphor is an absolutely jaw-dropping concept.
We sometimes read right past these words from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Really? The standard is impossible. Christ gave himself up for the church by submitting to crucifixion. The husband’s role is obviously to be read metaphorically. No husband is expected to die on a cross for his wife. Still, the benchmark is very high. The great eighteenth-century Methodist theologian John Fletcher clearly understood that. Late in life, he married Mary Bosanquet, a noted preacher in her own right. His words are instructive. Gathered with friends after the ceremony, he read from Ephesians 5: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.” His spontaneous comments are most revealing: “My God, what a task! Help me, my friends, by your prayers to fulfil it. As Christ loved the church! He laid aside his glory for her!”2
When I think of a husband laying aside his glory for his wife, Robertson McQuilkin immediately comes to mind. Although the back cover of his book A Promise Kept identifies him first as a homemaker, most people know him as having served for more than two decades as the president of Columbia International University in Columbia, South Carolina. Much to the chagrin of the university’s board of trustees, he quit at the height of his career to become a full-time homemaker. His wife, Muriel, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1981. By 1990, her condition had deteriorated to the point that she was becoming agitated and fearful unless he was with her. He had not promised “till death do us part” to the university. To Muriel, however, he had. So he laid aside his glory as a university president to become a caregiver for Muriel.
Five years into his “retirement,” he reflected on the course their lives had taken: “Seventeen summers ago, Muriel and I began our journey into the twilight. It’s midnight now . . . Yet, in her silent world, Muriel is so content, so lovable. If Jesus took her home, how I would miss her gentle, sweet presence.”3
That gentle presence, however, was at times interrupted by utter frustration. On one occasion before Muriel began wearing diapers, she had an accident in the bathroom and Robertson was trying to clean her up. She was pushing him away, clumsily trying to take care of herself. He told her to stop. She ignored him. In exasperation, he slapped the calf of her leg. “She was startled,” he writes. “I was, too. Never in our 44 years of marriage had I ever so much as touched her in anger . . . But now, when she needed me most . . .”4
Now, when she needed me most . . . The reader can almost hear the choke in his voice.
What an incredible illustration of Christ’s love for the church—a husband’s unconditional love for a wife. Of course, Paul goes on to speak directly to the wife (as we will later discuss).
How sad it is when a Christian man cannot say, “Never in our years of marriage had I ever so much as touched her in anger.” What if, rather, the husband beats his wife in anger?
During the debate with John Piper, I addressed the matter of a wife submitting to her husband even if he physically abuses her. I told how Elisabeth Elliot had spoken to a large audience of women (primarily seminary wives) at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. After her talk, one of the wives asked, “Should a woman remain in a home where she is being physically abused by her husband?” In her remarks, Elliot pointed the audience to 1 Peter 2, which speaks of slaves being beaten. She then made reference to the next chapter: “In the same way, you women must accept the authority of your husbands.” With that, she added a troubling comment: “I don’t think that requires a woman necessarily to stay in a home where she is literally being physically beaten to death. But on the other hand, it might.” Were there any young women in that packed room that evening who only heard the words “on the other hand, it might”?
After this illustration, my allotted time was up. In my closing remarks, I said, “Scripture and good judgment tell us that a pattern of mutual submission and equal partnership is the best way we can effectively serve the Lord in a marriage relationship.”
I did not tell my listeners about the years of abuse I had endured and my own terrifying dread of being literally beaten to death. I was married to a Bible church minister. There were dozens of incidents I could have referred to. One in particular, however, might have caught their attention more than others as it related to my work as a professor. Since 1982, I had been flying from our home in Grand Rapids to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to teach at Trinity for two or three days each week for fall and spring quarters. The routine worked well. Our son was in middle school, active in sports, and managing to keep on top of his paper route.
There had been many violent instances throughout the nineteen years of our marriage. On numerous occasions, my ex-husband beat me or threw me against a desk or onto the floor—always behind closed doors and most often when our son was out of the house. I was convinced I was becoming better at managing these outbursts by strictly avoiding certain subjects and being alert to his ominous moods, brewing and portentous as they were.
It was a cold West Michigan evening in March. Spring quarter at Trinity had begun a week earlier. I recognized my husband’s mood before we had even sat down for the evening meal. When we finished eating, I tidied up the kitchen, took my books and notes, and went upstairs while he watched his usual TV programs and Carlton did homework nearby, listening in as he typically did.
After an hour or so, I heard my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. I stiffened, dreading the worst. He entered our bedroom where I was hunkered down and then, seemingly out of the blue, with not so much as a segue into the topic, demanded to know my interpretation of a particular biblical passage that related to women. I explained that I was very busy in course preparation and did not wish to discuss the matter, particularly because I knew it would create problems. He proceeded to give me his interpretation of the passage. When I remained silent and refused to agree with him, he became irate and began very loudly to threaten me and exclaim that he would not let me fly to O’Hare in the morning. He yanked me from where I was sitting, my papers flying in every direction.
Hearing his father shouting, Carlton was up the stairs two steps at a time. It was not the first time he sought to defend me. Normally, his crying out at his father put an end to violence. But not this time. My husband demanded he leave the room while at the same time squeezing my arms with all his might and viciously shaking me. Carlton did leave. He raced back to his own room and grabbed two knives, one no more than a hard plastic toy, the other a Swiss Army knife he had managed to open before returning to confront his father. At twelve, Carlton was tall and lanky, but no match for his six-foot-two father, who could do a hundred push-ups without breaking a sweat.
When I saw the knives, I screamed for Carlton to get out, but within seconds my husband had thrown him to the floor, taken the knives, and was coming at me again. In a second, Carlton got back up and tackled his father, crying out at the top of his lungs. And then somehow amid the mayhem, it ended. My husband left the room still raging, ordering Carlton to come downstairs with him.
The next afternoon I was in Deerfield, greeting students in my classroom and wearing a turtleneck and blazer that conveniently covered the bruises—black-and-blue finger marks on my upper arms. I had taught the course before, and once I was into my rhythm and a lively discussion was under way, I was in another world. After the class ended in the late afternoon and all the students had checked in with me on term projects, I gathered my books and notes and began making my way over to the little apartment on campus where I stayed. My real life flooded over me, covering me like a shroud—like a shroud of pitch-black, oily fright. A quick call home to Carlton relieved the tension. But the situation seemed hopeless. Our little family was a complete mess. Where would it all end?
There are many underlying factors to consider in attempting to understand why a husband would beat and terrorize his wife. I’m certain a psychiatrist could write an entire volume on my ex-husband. But from my vantage point, his perspective on male supremacy and female submission was front and center. He repeatedly quoted Scripture to defend his headship and to enforce my unconditional obligation to submit—from “the kitchen to the bedroom.” He might have added to that list my home office where I prepared lectures. His rule was absolute and final—most notably during his violent moods. Black-and-white Bible, black-and-blue wife.
Why didn’t I just pack up and leave with Carlton? That’s a complicated question that will be dealt with throughout this volume. Perhaps a more appropriate question that relates specifically to this chapter is, Why didn’t I tell this very story to that full house at Wheaton? It’s a story the audience—students, staff, faculty, and visitors—needed to hear. I was a professor, like my fellow professors at Wheaton. The crowd could relate to that. And here I was, a woman, a wife, a mother, standing before them. I was exhibit A.
In fact, what if the forum for that evening at Wheaton College would have been not a debate but a storytelling forum—a session during which John Piper and I simply sat down and interacted with each other about real people and about ourselves. We could have done that. We knew each other. I spoke one Sunday night about missions history at his church in Minneapolis. I was welcomed into his home. I commend him for his bestselling book, Desiring God and for his active involvement in missions outreach around the world. And he has commended me. In fact, in January of 1984, he wrote (now posted online), “Noël and I are reading together in the evening Ruth Tucker’s book From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions (Zondervan, 1983). Then we pray together.” In 1993, he made reference again to his and Noël’s having read that book together nine years earlier.
Instead of debating, he could have related experiences of counseling married couples in his ministry, and he might have talked about how he and Noël work through issues. I might have told stories about my parents’ marriage and revealed details of my own marriage breakdown. Imagine the impact we could have had on those students.
Some, of course, prefer debates and proof texting. But I would remind them that storytelling is the stuff of the Bible. True, there is nothing wrong with debates. We learn a lot from them. The debate over headship, however, has become rancorous in recent years, often sounding very un-Christian.
But is it possible, I wonder, to deal with some very touchy matters with graciousness? Can we come together as a Christian community and recognize that the doctrine of male headship has sometimes been used as a cover to perpetrate violence against women? At the same time, can we come together in an understanding that marriage based on mutual submission is a biblical model—a valid interpretation of Scripture? I acknowledge that the headship model is a valid way to interpret the Bible. I certainly do not believe it is the most faithful interpretation, particularly in light of the central themes of Scripture, but I would never claim it has no biblical basis at all and is simply pulled out of a magician’s hat.
I truly believe we are at a turning point. We can keep on going as we have previously done, debating the issues, each side marshaling texts and claiming to win the argument. Or we can find a new way to interact with civility and respect. Can we find common ground in all of the Bible’s stories, and not just the Adam and Eve account? Let’s talk about Sarah and Abraham, and Rebekah and Isaac, and Jacob and his wives. Let’s talk about Naomi and Ruth and their plan to approach Boaz in the dark of night. Let’s talk about Bathsheba and David, Mary and Joseph, Ananias and Sapphira. Can we as men and women who are seeking to serve God today benefit from their stories? We can, even as we recognize that their stories aren’t so different from ours. Let’s talk about them and their struggles. Let’s talk about Ruth Tucker and domestic violence. Let’s talk about Robertson McQuilkin and his painful confession and abiding love for Muriel.
I was moved to tears when I reread Robertson McQuilkin’s story—for both Muriel and for him. Here is an intelligent, engaging, and capable woman lost in the depths of an awful disease. She has not yet begun to wear diapers, and he is in the bathroom trying to clean her up. As much as we want to turn away and close the bathroom door, we must leave it open for our own understanding of what marriage entails. We must picture that scene. It is an altogether pitiful and private moment. She in her sickness is pushing him away. Picture the mess. Picture it. She’s trying to take care of herself. Of course she is. Doesn’t everyone try to take care of themselves in such circumstances? But in her condition she can’t. He tells her to stop; she doesn’t. He raises his voice. She ignores him, pushing him away from her. He slaps her on the leg. Then the question that knifes right through him: “What have I done?”
He admits to that hasty slap in print. And then those haunting words of remorse: “Never in our 44 years of marriage had I ever so much as touched her in anger . . . But now, when she needed me most . . .”
Robertson McQuilkin’s account of his marriage to Muriel is a profound illustration of a husband demonstrating Christ’s love. But the reverse—a wife ministering to her husband in such circumstances, as often happens—is equally telling. Such love is not determined by gender or by one’s particular view of male headship and mutual submission. “In sickness and in health” has meaning. In fact, this very vow had momentous implications for my second husband, John Worst. His first wife, also Ruth, was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in 1995. She enjoyed four years of moderately good health between surgeries. But the surgeries could only do so much, and by 1998, surgery and chemo only prolonged what doctors had confirmed was a terminal illness. Soon after that, John requested early retirement from his vocation as a professor of music at Calvin College.
By the summer of 1999, though still alert and quick-witted, Ruth, as John describes her, was hardly more than “a bag of bones.” This particularly hit home one evening when he heard her whimpering in the bathroom—“almost the sound of a kitten.” He got up from his chair and raced across the room and opened the door. She had fallen. He picked her up in his arms, no heft at all.
Shortly after that, John arranged for Ruth to go to a home environment at a nearby hospice facility, where he would be able to spend his days with her. She had reached the point where he no longer had peace about her even attempting to walk on her own. She needed to be where she could have round-the-clock care. They arrived and settled in to the nicely furnished bedroom. After eating and spending some time together, he was preparing to leave for the night. Only then did he realize how deeply sad she was. Sadness, of course, was ever-present for both of them, especially toward the end. But this was different. He paused. He stood looking at her in silence.
“Would you like to come back home?” John whispered. Ruth nodded. So her clothes and books and magazines and personal items were packed up, and they returned to their condo. The days that followed were not easy, often causing him to wonder if he had made the right choice to bring her home. Hospice nurses stopped by, but he was in charge. Looking back, he knows that, despite those distressing and unpredictable days, he had made the right choice. John now speaks of this most personal and private care he was able to give Ruth as a sacrament of duty. During that time and throughout her illness, he fulfilled vows that are too often taken lightly. He is quick to point out, however, that each couple must make these decisions together—that there is no one-size-fits-all in living through a painful ordeal such as he and Ruth endured.
In October 2000, John married again. Myra had been a colleague at Calvin, and he had fallen hopelessly in love, knowing she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was a friend of mine, and whenever I’d see her at church, she was always her cheery self and acted as though she was perfectly healthy. But her remission lasted only so long. The marriage was short—just a little more than three years. She commented to me on several occasions that her marriage to John—her only marriage—was the best time of her life. Once again, John performed a sacrament of duty as he cared for her to the very end.
The relationship between a husband and wife is surely not defined by debates. A marriage—a God-honoring marriage—is lived out till death do us part. Its deepest significance comes when modeled on Christ, who gave himself up for us. Stories show us the way. Indeed, stories, far more than biblical proof texting, show us how to work through the tough times of life. They also show us where both sides of the debate can meet on common ground.
Robertson McQuilkin’s story, John’s stories, and even my own serve to remind us that the most profound way we exegete Scripture is through our lives. For McQuilkin, there would be times when he, even more than I, surely felt himself being flooded over and covered by a shroud—a shroud of pitch-black, oily despair. In fact, he writes that there was a stretch of time when he truly feared he might be heading into his own midnight.
He could mouth the words that he trusted God—that God was in control of his life and of Muriel’s, but he could not process the depth of his pain emotionally and spiritually. “The blows of life,” he wrote, “had left me numb—my dearest slipping from me, my eldest son snatched away in a tragic accident, my life’s work abandoned at its peak.” Depression engulfed him. His love for God “frozen over.”5
There was one incident amid this darkness that, small as it was, revived his depleted spirit. He found his way back to God and emotional stability, not through the hymn lyrics, “showers of blessings,” but rather through what could only be described as tiny teardrops of God’s tender mercies. “Sometimes the happy doesn’t bubble up with joy,” he reflected, “but rains down gently with tears.”6
The day was gloomy, not necessarily the weather, but the day as a state of mind. It was the morning after Valentine’s Day 1995. The day before had been the anniversary of their marriage engagement. Robertson was exercising, as he normally did, on his stationary bicycle at the foot of Muriel’s bed. She awakened and spoke for the first time in months. The word was “love,” three times repeated. They were words he had so many times spoken to her during her seemingly endless silence. But he was astounded and rushed to embrace her, begging her, pleading with her to assure him: “You really do love me, don’t you?” She responded in the affirmative with the only words that her lips and her enfeebled mind could form: “I’m nice”—the last words she ever spoke.7
From her, Robertson had received a Valentine—teardrops of tender mercies.
Muriel died in 2003 at the age of eighty-one. Robertson had first met her in college decades earlier, where he remembered her as “delightful, smart, and gifted” and “more fun than you can imagine.”8 Prior to her final illness, Muriel had taught at Columbia International University, was a conference speaker, and had her own radio talk show—smart and gifted. Soon after her death, Robertson wrote: “For 55 years Muriel was flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. So it’s like a ripping of my flesh and deeper—my very bones, but there is also profound gratitude . . . I’ve delighted in recalling happy memories.”9 Indeed, a marriage of mutuality.
In 2005, Robertson married again. Dr. Deborah Jones Sink was then a professor of nursing at the University of South Carolina. She was a leader in her field and had previously been the owner of First Place Leadership Development and also vice president of Goebel Marketing Associates. She and Robertson brought together a blended family of nine children.
Robertson’s marriage to Muriel (and now to Deborah) is a narrative that should be part of the canon of every Christian storybook, told again and again to the young and old who find themselves falling in love in that perilous Garden of Paradise. There is a serpent close by that wants us to believe that true love comes naturally and is all about sex and sweetness. “Marriage is easy,” the serpent assures—simple, straightforward, blissful, and bright. We too easily take a bite out of the apple that leads to banishment. The love takes flight, and marriage is irretrievably broken. The sacred vows carved into the Tree of Life have been covered over with lichen and are no longer visible.
To have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part.