Chapter 42: Masters of Ourselves
MASTERS OF OURSELVES
“MAKE us masters of ourselves,” wrote the prison reformer Sir Alexander Paterson, “that we may be the servants of others.”
We have to talk about self-discipline again. We keep coming back to that, and we’ll keep coming back to it as long as we live, whatever struggles we have to endure. “Does the road wind uphill all the way?” asks Christina Rosetti’s poem, and the answer is, “Yes, to the very end.”
No woman who has not learned to master herself can be trusted to submit willingly to her husband. And that word willingly means that she does not merely resign herself to something she cannot avoid. It means that by an act of her own will she gives herself. With gladness she submits because she understands that voluntary submission is her very strength. Because it is the thing asked of her by her Creator, it is the thing which assures her of fulfillment. It is the task assigned her which, willingly performed, actually strengthens the husband in his weakness.
The husband strengthens the wife in her weakness by obeying the command to command. But he, too, must first have mastered himself. George MacDonald points out that the strong-willed one is not the willful one. A willful child wants only his own way. His will has never been exercised against himself. The strong-willed person wills against himself, chooses that which he does not naturally choose, refuses that which he would naturally choose. Many men protest that it is not their nature to dominate. Many see their wives as superior to them in intelligence, strength of character, physical endurance, or spiritual perception, and use this as an excuse to let them lead. But the roles are not assigned on the basis of capability. They were determined at the beginning of Creation to be a man’s role and a woman’s role and again, we are not free to experiment, tamper with, or exchange them.
It takes self-discipline and it takes humility to do your job. We can count on the God who issued the order to provide the strength to carry it out. No man has sufficient strength in himself properly to be the head of his wife. No woman can rightly submit to his headship. It takes grace, and grace is a gift, but we are to use the means of grace. Self-discipline helps. Prayer helps. Christ, who is the Head of all of us, stands ready to help any man or woman who asks Him.