Chapter 39: Subordination
SUBORDINATION
“I JUST can’t stand the idea of being a doormat,” Jo said when I tried to talk to her about the biblical principle of rule and submission. She’s about to get a divorce because she’s determined to find freedom, and her marriage, she says, was not fifty-fifty as she thinks it ought to be. She has been sold a bill of goods by those who have declared that submission of any kind is bondage. Yes, there have been great wrongs in society. Yes, I agree that men are not meant to oppress one another. Yes, it’s true that some men have treated women as doormats. No, a husband is not commanded to domineer nor a wife to be servile. There have been all sorts of human bondage which the Christian ought to be the first to deplore and correct. Jesus came to loose captives.
But submission to God-given authority is not captivity. If only I could have helped Jo to see this, but when I asked her what she thought should distinguish a Christian marriage from all others she said, “Equality.” Equality is, for one thing, a human impossibility in marriage. Who is in a position to apportion everything according to preference or competence? “If I like it, I do it,” Jo said, “and I should be the one to do it. If I don’t like it, Bill does it. If he doesn’t like it either, then we divide it in half.” Sounds all right at first. It’s certainly the way a lot of things get done in any household, I suppose, and I wouldn’t say it’s wrong. But is there a truly happy household where the members are doing only what they like and are never doing gladly what they don’t like? It is a naive view of human nature to assume that two equals can take turns leading and following, and can, because they are “mature,” do without rank. Common sense has told women in all societies in all ages that the care of the home was up to them. Men have been providers. There are surely circumstances in our complex modern society which call for modifications. I know many seminary students’ wives who have to work in order to pay their husbands’ tuition and the grocery bills. Obviously the husbands must do some of the housework and child care. This is a temporary expedient and most of them, husbands and wives, look forward to the day when things will be normal again.
If we have become so mature and open-minded and adaptable and liberated that the commands of Scripture directed to wives —“adapt,” “submit,” “subject” —lose their meaning, if the word head no longer carries any connotation of authority, and hierarchy has come to mean tyranny, we have been drowned in the flood of liberation ideology.
I said to Jo, and I say to you what Paul said to the Roman Christians, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within.” God wants us to be whole and secure and strong, and one of the ways to find that wholeness and security and strength is to submit ourselves to the authorities He has put over us. (The question of political authority, which the Bible also says we are to submit to, becomes an enormously complicated and painful one for some. In modern times Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie ten Boom and her family, and Richard Wurmbrand have had to struggle with this. It is not within the scope of these notes to discuss that question, but I mention it in case any would think that I tend to oversimplify and would use the same arguments to defend, for example, slavery.)
Submission for the Lord’s sake does not amount to servility. It does not lead to self-destruction, the stifling of gifts, personhood, intelligence and spirit. If obedience itself requires a suicide of the personality (as one writer claims) we would have to conclude that obedience to Christ demands this. But the promises He’s given us hardly point to self-destruction: “I will give you rest.” “My peace I give unto you.” “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” “Whosoever believeth in me shall have everlasting life.” “Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.” “Whoever loses his life for my sake will preserve it.” “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
God is not asking anybody to become a zero. What was the design of the Creator in everything that He made? He wanted it to be good, that is, perfect, precisely what He meant, free in its being the thing He intended it to be. When He commanded Adam to “subdue” and “have dominion over” the earth He was not commanding him to destroy its meaning or existence. He was, we may say, “orchestrating,” giving the lead to one, subduing another, to produce a full harmony for His glory.
It must be very difficult for people who have not been reared in disciplined homes to learn the relationship between authority and love, for authority to them will have been associated with elements outside the home, such as civil law. But we have a loving God who arranged things not only for our “best interests” (we’re not always eager to have what is “for our own good”) but for freedom and for joy. When He made Eve, it was because the Garden of Eden would have been a prison of loneliness for Adam without her. It was not good for him to be alone, and to release him from this prison and bring him freedom and joy He gave him a woman. Eve’s freedom and joy was to be in being Adam’s complement.
When Paul speaks of the subordination of women he bases his argument on the creative order. The woman was created from and for the man. It follows naturally that she had to be created after the man. Woman’s secondary chronological position does not necessarily (Richard Hooker and others notwithstanding) prove an inferior intelligence. But those who rule out the possibility of sexual differences in intellectual gifts are not taking all the data into account. There are some intriguing statistics that point to biological reasons for such differences. Men seem better equipped to deal with high-level abstractions. One demonstration of this is the fact that while there are at present eighty-two Grand Masters in chess, not one is a woman. Of the five hundred greatest chess players in history, not one has been a woman. But thousands of women, particularly in the Soviet Union, play chess.
I read about this in a book called The Inevitability of Patriarchy by Steven Goldberg. Goldberg goes to infinite pains to show that he is in no way suggesting that men are generally superior to women. They are different, and their differences are hormonally determined.
It is necessary to point out once again that there is no reason to believe that there are sexual differences in intelligence in all of its myriad aspects. To consider an ability to theorize as a greater demonstration of intelligence than perception or insight is loading the dice no less than is considering physical strength more important than longevity as a measure of good health.[14]
For the Christian, Goldberg’s statistics are interesting. For the Christian who believes in a hierarchy of order, they are even more interesting, for while we believe that the traditional patriarchal order is not merely cultural and sociological but has its foundation in theology, it is interesting to discover that it has also a valid biological foundation.
There is a spiritual principle involved here. It is the will of God. From Genesis to Revelation we are shown in countless stories of God’s dealings with people that it is His will to make them free, to give them joy. Sometimes the process of freeing them is a painful one. It meant death for the Son of Man —His life for ours. He came not to condemn, not to imprison, not to enslave. He came to give life.
And it is the will of God that woman be subordinate to man in marriage. Marriage is used in the Old Testament to express the relation between God and His covenant people and in the New Testament between Christ and the Church. No effort to keep up with the times, to conform to modern social movements or personality cults authorizes us to invert this order. Tremendous heavenly truths are set forth in a wife’s subjection to her husband, and the use of this metaphor in the Bible cannot be accidental.