Be the Kind of Man Your Wife Would Submit to
an examination of this admonishment
If you are a recent subscriber and haven’t noticed yet, I’ve been contemplating men and women in leadership. Does God want men and women to lead together in the Christian home and church? Do Paul’s letters to the early Christian Church establish a men-only leadership model?
This past January, I accidentally acquired and read a book that explained Paul’s writings on gender in a way that seems far more historically and contextually consistent with scripture than what I’d previous heard. Since reading that book, I have been re-examining what I’ve believed about who is supposed to lead in the home and church.
This blog post is examining the admonishment: “Be the kind of man your wife would willingly submit to.” I have heard this taught to men as their take-away from passages where Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands. “Husbands, don’t demand your wife submit to you. Instead, be the kind of guy your wife would willingly submit to.”
Bear with me as I take this apart.
Certainly there seems to be times when it is in a wife’s best interest to submit to her husband. If he has a job in the financial world, it would be in the family’s best interest for her to submit to him in regards to the family finances. If he has a black belt in karate and a robber comes into the house, it would be in the wife’s best interest to submit to the husband’s leadership in getting out of harms way.
Likewise if a wife is a nurse, it would be best if the husband submitted to the wife in an emergency involving an injury. If a wife has a degree in child’s psychology, it would be best for the husband to submit to the wife in regards to the children’s psyche.
This kind of mutual submission is done based on the man’s and woman’s giftings. However, this statement, “Be the kind of husband your wife would willingly submit to,” isn’t used for these kind of situations. I think it’s used to teach godly men how they might acquire a godly order in their homes. It assumes that marriage is a place where only one may lead. Feel free to comment below if you think otherwise. I may be taking this wrong.
“Husbands, be the kind of man your wife would submit to,” seems like it’s saying, “Husbands, be such a good driver that your wife feels safe submitting to your driving.”
Such a statement wouldn’t work if we were to say, “Husbands, be such a good driver that your wife feels safe submitting to being next to you while Jesus is driving.” Why does a wife need to submit to the husband’s driving if Jesus is doing the driving? We could say, “Be a companionable passenger with your wife as Jesus drives.” That makes sense.
Neither would it make sense to say, “Husbands, be the kind of doubles parter that your wife would willing submit to if she were playing tennis with you.”
I suppose one person could be the dominant player on the tennis court, but I think in tennis, a team does best if they both learn how to communicate with each other, both become attuned to one another’s strengths and weaknesses, and both learn to return the balls with excellent precision and power.
This statement—“Husbands, be the kind of guy your wife would willingly submit to”—seems to assume that there can be only one leader in a marriage, and that if a man is being godly enough, his wife will submit to him.
Eek! I very much pity the guy who believes that. He might think himself a failed Christian if his wife doesn’t submit to him. There are lot of reasons why a wife wouldn’t submit to her husband.
The wife has a dominant personality.
The husband doesn’t have a dominant personality.
The husband and wife mutually submit to each other.
They haven’t been taught or pressured into a model of male-only leadership.
They don’t live in a male-ruled society.
The law requires equality between men and women.
Uhh… they’re preying mantises, and the female is twice the size of the male, and if he doesn’t perform properly, she might eat his head.
Moral of the story, if you’re a guy, don’t be a praying mantis. No, seriously. The conclusion here is that this statement “Husbands be the kind of guy that your wife would willingly submit too” might encourage men to be godly, but it might also give them a confused understanding of what a godly home ought to look like.
I would like to be the first to confess that I have had a confused understanding of what a godly home ought to look like. The reading of Cynthia Westfall’s book Paul and Gender is helping me release some of those false ideas and discover what God has in store for my marriage. If you’re interested in reading my summaries of the book’s chapters, click on the link below.
Maybe a better admonishment for the time being would be: “Husbands, be the kind of guy that compels your wife to submit to Jesus. And be open handed to what that might look like in your God-led marriage.”