7. Closing Words
Closing Words
Not every reader of this book will agree with all the arguments or conclusions presented here. The number of “mays” and “possibles” in my own arguments indicates that I myself am not settled on every detail of cultural background I have argued, although I am convinced that the case as a whole is sound.
But regardless of less crucial details, I trust that several basic themes have been argued persuasively. Because women are men’s equals spiritually and intellectually, they are also capable of the same spiritual and intellectual roles. This means that they are capable of fulfilling the same calls as men and can serve alongside their husbands as equal partners in marriage and ministry. An increasing number of us men would, in fact, have it no other way. This method of arguing from clear principles in Scripture rather than from several proof-texts that are as easily interpreted another way is also the way evangelical abolitionists argued their case.[1]
This is not to play down the need for a wife’s submission, but to emphasize that husbands are called to submit and serve no less. I think that most Christians would agree that a man who wants to imitate Jesus cannot be some epitome of macho masculinity with a beer in one hand and a television control in the other, snapping out orders while his wife is at his beck and call. The Jesus-like man will defend a Mary when a Martha challenges her for abandoning a traditional feminine role in favor of becoming a disciple (Luke 10:41–42)[2] and will lay down his life for his bride (Eph. 5:25–27). Such a man is secure enough in his own personhood and masculinity that he can serve without selfish self-assertion, respecting and nurturing his wife’s relationship with God. Paul does not tell the husband to enforce his wife’s submission; he tells him only to love sacrificially and thus submit to her. It is the wife, not the husband, who is reminded of wifely submission.
Nor is this book meant to argue that men and women are the same biologically[3] (as if both genders could become pregnant!)—a caricature of the egalitarian position that has sometimes been presented. There are also differences between men and women that are culturally based (i.e., they vary from one society to another). While some of these are harmful (e.g., withholding education from or abusing women), others (such as separate clothing styles) are no more hurtful than any other culturally defined distinctions and may simply acknowledge the biological differences on which gender is based to begin with.
Instead, this book is meant to proclaim that we should treat one another in marriage the way we should treat all believers: with dignity, respect, and support as fellow heirs of God’s grace. Many, though not all, advocates of the more traditional “hierarchical” marriage actually come close to this position in practice because of their emphasis on mutual honor and Christian love.
Christian “submission” is not a dirty word. I have learned to delight in voluntarily submitting to my senior pastor with whom I work and to others in authority over me. I have also learned to delight in voluntarily submitting to my colleagues and students, seeking to minister to their needs. Submission need not imply hierarchy, and I consider myself blessed when those to whom I submit also submit to me, exemplifying the mutual love and unity that are meant to characterize the body of Christ. Submission in this sense is not blind obedience; it is desiring the honor and seeking the blessing of the other person above our own.
IMPLICATIONS FOR MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIPS AND WORK OUTSIDE THE HOME
We noted earlier that an ideal marriage involved loving cooperation. Does cooperation require specific roles predetermined by gender, or can it be more flexible than that? Although the Bible provides some direct statements of principle, most of its examples are instead descriptions of ideal roles in given cultures, and we cannot glibly impose them on our own culture without thinking carefully how they should really be applied.
The nature of loving cooperation may vary from one culture to another: the matron may rule the domestic affairs as in a Greek context (1 Tim. 5:14, using standard ancient language for the wife’s relative seclusion),[4] or she may be a smart businesswoman and real estate agent (Prov. 31:14–18, 24), highly respected by her husband and others (31:11, 28–31), well educated by the standards of the culture (31:26), who makes clothes for her family (31:19–22) and makes other clothes which she sells in the marketplace (31:34). This woman does not spend most of her time at home “rearing the children”; Israelite tradition demanded that both father and mother raise the children (e.g., Deut. 6:7; Prov. 1:8; cf. Eph. 6:4), and at a young age boys seem to have joined their fathers in their work (e.g., 2 Kgs. 4:18).
“Male” and “female” chores vary from one culture to another. One parent’s staying home with the child all day has not marked most homes even in the history of Western culture—as important as a healthy amount of parental attention is. (The model of the wife staying home to engage mainly in childrearing while the husband is in the work force is an ideal of the relatively leisured, nineteenth-century U.S. middle class, and was not common through most of Western history, including recent Western history.)[5] Given the technological aids our society has provided to the homemaker, many homemakers do not find that homemaking consumes a whole day’s schedule. Would not productive employment or ministry outside the home be healthier than time in front of a television set (cf. Prov. 31:27), in the cases where those are the main alternatives?
I would never suggest that being a homemaker or staying home to raise one’s children is not an honorable profession; I am more than grateful to my mother, who sacrificed so much to spend time with me and my brothers and sister before we went to school. But I am challenging the position that I have heard some (certainly not all)[6] proponents of the traditional family model advocate, that a woman’s proper place is necessarily in the home. I would not want to see that position imposed on my mother, sister, wife, or daughters as long as I live! Had my mother not been educated, and had she not also provided funds to help me with my schooling, I would probably be in no position to write this book today.
Since I have learned from women professors and ministers, studied alongside women colleagues in doctoral-level classes, worked alongside women colleagues in ministry, taught women students, and so on, the intolerance of those who pronounce judgment on women’s calls strikes me as insensitive and demeaning. Spiritually, intellectually, and in leadership ability these women are complete equals of their male colleagues; biblical evidence for their subordination would have to appear much more compelling than it does for me to grasp how subordination could even reasonably be applied in their case.
I know all too many women who are forced to work to support their children because their husbands or boyfriends left them and are nowhere to be found. This situation was not created by feminism, as some allege;[7] it was created by male selfishness. Unless those who oppose women, especially mothers, working outside the home are willing to support the women who have no other way to feed their children, they ought to be quiet. If they admit that there are exceptions to their principle, then they must ask if there might be other exceptions besides those which they have already granted.
If we do not believe that a mother must make her own clothes for a family (Prov. 31:19–22)—indeed, if we believe that the emphasis on a woman’s public role in the market (Prov. 31) and the emphasis on relative domestic seclusion (1 Tim. 5:14) do not conflict—we must allow that biblical principles are expressed in different ways in different cultures. If we do not allow differences for culture, we become the sort of rigid missionaries for our own culture (instead of the gospel) that Paul’s opponents were in Galatia. They quoted Scripture and sought to impose its mandates on Paul’s converts, without sensitivity to the situation or culture behind Scripture or to the people they were addressing.
Our world has seen enough “imposed liberation”—where a war for “rights” is forced on those who would rather have peace and food to eat—to make us rightly suspicious of anyone who demands that we “liberate” ourselves if we are happy with the way things are. This chapter is not meant to imply that only marriages based on absolute role equality are strong marriages. Each of us brings strengths and weaknesses to a marriage, and one partner may have leadership skills (including encouragement) that can help the other partner. But it is important for us to recognize our mutual dependence (1 Cor. 11:11–12) and mutual responsibilities (1 Cor. 7:3). None of us may take his or her spouse for granted; we need to care what the other person thinks and feels, and work together as God’s servants.
In many traditional American marriages the husband and wife respected one another and looked out for one another’s interests. Although specific roles of husband and wife may change from culture to culture and generation to generation, this version of traditional marriage is not in practice far from the sort of marriage based on equality that many of us advocate today.[8]
But the issue here is not just semantics, because others have abused the same “traditional” system to allow husbands to make all the decisions without their wives’ counsel, to treat their wives and children as appendages of their own will, and often even to abuse them physically or sexually. Understanding what Paul teaches about mutual submission removes a supposedly biblical excuse some have used to justify their selfish and sinful behavior.
Of course, the egalitarian model of marriage, which affirms the full equality of both partners in a marriage, has been abused, too. When one or both partners perpetually clamor for his or her way, when division rather than unity of purpose marks the marriage, it means that selfish and sinful behavior has again entered in. The emphasis in Ephesians 5:18—6:9 is not so much on “equal rights” of the sort U.S. citizens are wont to demand; the emphasis is on mutual submission. Mutual submission means that we are each free to seek the other’s good, to love and serve unselfishly, and to maintain these as a goal even when we feel our partner is not upholding his or her end of the contract. Both husbands and wives must love, and both husbands and wives must submit to one another’s needs. Such a lifestyle is realized only through joint submission to the Holy Spirit.
Christian equality is different from worldly equality: we are equal servants, striving together to nurture one another in the service of our Lord. We thus find our true fulfillment in giving love, not in self-seeking indulgence; in commitment to a fellow person in God’s image, not in satisfying fleeting passions. For the Christian, submission is not a burden, but a joy. Many a chauvinist and secular feminist alike cannot identify with the absolute security we have in Christ, a security that means that our self-esteem is not based on what others think: I can submit to others joyfully because I do it ultimately as an expression of love for my Lord Jesus Christ.
Before my conversion, I desired power over other people’s wills; now I delight in serving, obeying, and submitting to the leadership of those God has placed over me. One of my greatest joys was working as associate minister under Pastor Carl Kenney at Orange Grove Baptist church. But Carl made it easy for me because he envisioned his own ministry as being a servant to the body of Christ, and we became intimate friends. In the Kingdom, leaders are servants, and we can lead without asserting our authority in a worldly way, because the only authority to which we need appeal in the body of Christ is the authority of Scripture and the law of love. If we present the Scriptures and present the current situation that guides our application, I believe that mature Christians can work through the details in love. Immature Christians may not respond to such an approach, but I am not sure they would respond to much else but the discipline of the corporate church anyway, and maybe not even that: “A rebuke goes deeper into the one who has understanding than a hundred blows into a fool” (Prov. 17:10, NASB).
I must add one caveat at this point: when we speak of “mutual submission,” we are speaking in terms of submission under reasonably normal circumstances, not in cases of flagrant abuse or criminal behavior. Abigail was right to break with her husband Nabal and side with David; she saved the lives of many people by doing so (1 Sam. 25). Jonathan was likewise right to take David’s side against his father, without breaking off his relationship with his father (1 Sam. 20). It has become increasingly common in our cities for wives to find their husbands selling drugs or engaged in other activities that could bring violence into the home. Both unfaithfulness and abandonment are given in the New Testament as grounds for dissolving the marriage if the erring partner refuses attempts at reconciliation. These are issues of pastoral concern for which the Bible offers us important guidelines (though not explicit rules for every conceivable situation), and they must be addressed with compassion and God’s heart, directed by the principles of Scripture.[9] But the general rule is that, except under the most extreme circumstances, we must work to preserve and nurture our marriages.
Submission is a directive for husbands no less than for wives. History testifies that power corrupts, and that those in power have often used the Scriptures to maintain their power, whether over other peoples, slaves, or spouses. It is important for husbands not to be so quick to cite Paul’s admonitions to wives; instead, we should pay attention to Paul’s admonitions to ourselves. In most church circles with which I am familiar, wives have already heard their call to submit more than enough.
THE ISSUE OF THE CHURCH’S WITNESS
Several of Paul’s points treated in this book were meant to help the church to be a more viable witness in its own culture. In a culture where the submission of wives to their husbands was regarded by most as important and by others as acceptable, Paul could stress that wives should submit to their husbands, while still maintaining that Christian husbands should submit to their wives as well.
But in our day, what it takes to be a relevant witness has changed. Very few people would criticize a marriage in which a husband and wife lovingly submit to one another, but quite a lot of people have problems with a husband being his wife’s master. An increasing number of people, in fact, have come to view Christianity as anachronistic and oppressive, since in their minds it is associated with the latter kind of marriage, even though Paul never taught this even in his own culture. Many feminists in the universities are becoming increasingly alienated from Christianity and drawn toward other religions, to the frustration of the Christian feminists who believe that Christianity is being misrepresented to them.
Although the focus of this book has been limited to what Paul meant and how that calls for a more biblical treatment of women in the church, our response to the issues addressed herein and to other issues mentioned in the introduction does affect our witness to society. At least in the segments of U.S. society I know best, a more egalitarian perspective in the church would substantially improve our witness.
This is especially true in how we respond to the concerns raised by the women’s movement, which extend far beyond feminist circles themselves. That this statement needs to be made is tragic in view of the past century and a half of history. Most Christians will agree that the Bible elevated the status of women above what was available in surrounding cultures; many of us would argue that God might have elevated their status more but for a concession to human weakness.[10] But fewer U.S. evangelicals are aware of the evangelical roots of much of the women’s movement in the nineteenth century, or its links with evangelical abolitionism we mentioned in our introduction.
Many in our society have chosen either to adopt or to reject uncritically all agendas touted as feminist, without recognizing the diversity among those who would consider themselves advocates for women’s rights. Between a woman’s right to vote and worshiping a mother-goddess are a wide variety of other causes that have come to be associated with feminism, and one does not have to support all those causes (most feminists do not worship the mother-goddess, and many are Christians) to work together with feminists on issues on which we can agree.
Most of us naturally think in reactionary rather than critical ways. But this is not helpful, and even when our reactionary attitudes get covered over with a rationalized Christian veneer, they are still not Christian. For example, evangelicals had been at the forefront of social justice issues until they reacted against liberal critics who played down the necessity of personal conversion. Although evangelicals have always done some of both, our witness has suffered because too many of us have withdrawn from genuine social justice agendas where Bible-believing Christians naturally belong.[11] The Bible commands us both to make disciples of all the nations and to defend the orphaned and needy. Those who claim obedience to the Bible dare not pick and choose which of these parts to obey.
In reacting against elements of the contemporary feminist movement that are objectionable from a Christian standpoint, we have often gone too far and repudiated our own heritage of being ahead of the world in seeking justice for all people. We have also alienated ourselves from some people for whom Christ died, and whom he calls us to love and call to himself.
We could be more effective witnesses to those who share some of our social justice agendas if we acknowledged and worked together with them on points with which we clearly agree, such as opposition to pornography and other forms of sexual exploitation. This is not to suggest that we compromise on matters of genuine disagreement, but dialogue is usually more productive than avoidance, when dialogue is possible. This is not to argue that we compromise truth; it is to argue that we expend more effort communicating it. Given the metamorphoses the women’s movement has experienced in the past century, differences between many white feminist and black womanist thinkers (I am technically closer to the latter position), and so on, we may question whether the radical feminists who draw the most criticism necessarily have the right to set the agenda for the whole women’s movement anyway.
Paul often used the dialogue approach in the book of Acts; he even had friends who were Asiarchs (Acts 19:31), officials who were, among other things, in charge of the cult of emperor-worship in Asia. Some Christians may be worried that they are not strong enough in their faith to begin to engage non-Christians in discussion. The ideal solution to their problem would be for them to spend more time reading their Bibles and to become strong enough. Like Paul, we must be willing to do whatever it takes to share Christ in relevant ways with all people (1 Cor. 9:19–23).
Indeed, most people in modern society who do not classify themselves as feminists would nevertheless be offended by an agenda that could suggest women’s social, spiritual, or intellectual inferiority—and rightly so. My guess is that it would have offended Paul, too, especially to find out that his words were being used to advance such an agenda. This is not the best way to evangelize our culture or to be “above reproach” (1 Tim. 3:2, 7; 5:7, 14–15; 6:1; Tit. 2:5). It is necessary to challenge our culture where it departs from the values of the Kingdom; it is likewise necessary to relate to our culture where it has preserved some of the values of the Kingdom.
Yet, as important as communicating Christ to our culture is, we cannot simply guess which issues should be areas of common ground with our culture and which issues should be points of contention. We need an objective guideline in order to know where we should stand. Our best model for how we relate God’s message to our culture is how God has always related his message to various cultures, and that model is available to us in the Bible. This was the model many of the first proponents of the women’s movement in this nation followed, and it would certainly help our witness in society if we followed it better today.
Our witness is at stake, and this means that people’s eternal destiny is at stake. This is no small issue, and those who loudly proclaim that the traditional view is the only proper biblical view would do well to reexamine their claims in the light of what is now at stake. A relevant witness to most of our society today should emphasize mutual submission, rather than just the submission of wives, as Alan Padgett points out: “Today, of course, we live in a different situation. If anything, the church is slandered because it continues to insist on the submission of women: quite the reverse of Paul’s day.”[12]
We would do well to consider such a critique. Christians must never compromise the truth of God’s word. It seems to me that despite all our protestations that we honor God’s word, we have dishonored it by failing to understand it, and therefore failing to obey it correctly. The church’s disobedience has unfortunately always had disastrous consequences for the church’s witness. May God in mercy send a fresh blowing of the Spirit among us, so that we may hear our Lord’s voice in truth and be agents of revival in our generation.