Samantha and Pete Buy Groceries (Part 3)

An analysis on authority in marriage

This is the third part of a thought experiment involving siblings, marriage, and authority. If you haven't read the first two parts, click on the links above. These posts build off one another.

We're in the middle of thinking through why people don't view marriage like they would two siblings renting an apartment together and raising adopted children. Why don't people see marriage as a partnership with equal authority?

In the last post, I briefly talked about how we expect marriages to be different because of romance. I also mentioned how the sharing of everything as a gift—including one's own body—is part of what I think makes marriage unique. I posed the question: if in marriage husbands and wives give each other authority of even their own bodies, why would they not also give authority in everything else including headship?

In this post, I intend to explore the last reason why marriage is different than just two siblings living together. And that is, perhaps God did not give equal authority to men and women to rule on earth or in marriage. Perhaps that is why in the olden days, the woman would promise in her wedding vow to obey her husband.
 
Doesn't the Bible make it quite clear that men are the head of the home and that wives ought to submit to their husbands? How can two truly be one if the two are not equal? Let's get into it! I'm excited to see where this goes. I truly have no idea.

I feel the need to define some terms before I get into this. These are going to be Abby terms, not dictionary terms. Let's differentiate between three kinds of authority: real, stolen, and fake. Real authority is given. Some examples of these are parents over their children because God gives parents their children. Another example is an elected official over the people. In this case, the people give an elected official authority by voting him into office. A vendor gives us the authority over a car when he sells it to us. Etc.

Stolen authority would be if a person stole a car or cheated his way into office. Lastly, fake authority would be if someone came into my house and began telling me how I ought to redo my kitchen or live my life. Fake authority is also when my children boss each other around. They don't actually have the authority to rule each other, but they act like it. Thus, it is fake authority.

I suppose there’s an overlap between fake and stolen authority. If someone were to tell me how I ought to run my life, and I was to submit to them, they have stolen my authority. I have given it up. This also applies to the spiritual world. If Satan tells me I am guilty and unloved, and I believe him and act like I'm still under the weight of my guilt, I have allowed Satan’s fake authority to steal my real authority.

If authority is stolen, then there must be a confrontation or altercation to get the authority back.

We acquire real authority over people when they submit to or are born into our system or company. Children are born or adopted into a family. People apply for employment in a business, thus submitting to certain systems and rules of behavior in that company. People are born into a country, thus they are under a country’s authority. We might, at this point, say that we both acquire and give up all authority in a marriage when we make our vows at the altar.

Question: Do both the husband and the wife give up all their authority to one another when they get married or just the wife? Does the wife say, "I submit everything to you," but the husband says, "I submit everything except headship to you?" I think in the olden days, this was the case with marriage vows. Although, they wouldn't say it like that. They said that the father's authority over his daughter was then transferred to the husband in the wedding ceremony.

Nowadays, women frequently marry much older and after they've become independent of their father's authority. Perhaps that is why we tend to cut that part out of marriage vows. If submission of authority isn't transferred from father to husband and if it isn't promised in a wedding vow, is it still implied by God himself since he made the rules of marriage?

Photo by Camden & Hailey George on Unsplash

Let’s do a thought experiment.

Let's pretend there is a law that doesn't allow men to grocery shop or go out to eat without their wives' permission. A husband could do the family grocery shopping and go out to eat so long as he has a signed permission slip from his wife approving all the things he wants to buy. If he wants a box of cookies, he can't have them unless she has pre-approved them. But if a man is a bachelor, he can go shopping and out to eat whenever he wants. Woohoo! Go, bachelors!

In this scenario, the husbands are under the grocery shopping authority of their wives. It’s not a fake authority, albeit, it’s unfair and kind of silly. But it’s a real authority. The law in our pretend scenario says so. The law was made to protect the family cook's position, which historically is the usually wife.

If a wife is understanding and considerate, she will ask her husband's opinion about food and take his tastes into perspective. If she isn't power hungry, she might also give him several signed permission slips to go out to eat whenever he wants, just so long as he notifies her ahead of time so she doesn’t make a meal for him.

Next, let’s pretend that over time, the laws changed. The world saw that this was silly, and so they threw out those laws. Women's grocery shopping authority was gone. However, let’s say in one marriage, a woman insisted that she still had the authority. She said that the laws were there for a reason and just because the husband can legally go grocery shopping now, doesn't mean he ought to without the wife’s permission and approval. 

We would then say that that wife is operating on a fake authority. She is also a megalomaniac! The law no longer gives this authority to women. She might claim that she still has this authority, but she doesn't. Now, if the man continues to submit, then the authority becomes a stolen authority. This isn't necessarily evil. Nor would it necessarily destroy a marriage. In fact, the couple might continue to thrive under these conditions, especially if the husband has no desire to buy groceries or cook.

On the other hand, if the couple decides to change with the times, the wife may decide to relinquish her claim to this authority. In the transition, and if the husband is a wise fellow, he might continue to seek his wife’s advice about grocery shopping and dining out. In fact, if he did, this would ease the transition from the wife having total grocery-shopping authority to shared grocery-shopping authority. Perhaps, with the husband's newly found freedom, he might take on some of the cooking responsibilities.

Photo by Lily Banse on Unsplash

Thank you for participating in this thought experiment with me. Do you see the correlation?

The question at hand now is: when the Bible tells wives to submit to their husbands, is it because there were actual laws giving certain privileges only to men? And if so, are those laws still in place? If there are no laws like this anymore, earthly or heavenly, then husbands do not have that authority anymore. If they continue to claim they do, it is fake authority, remnants of the old ways. 

Does this make sense? Authority must be given by someone: either the government or God. If we find that neither the government nor God has not given headship to men in the world or marriage, then male headship is a fake authority.

Mind you, people may continue to thrive by living according to the old laws. It might continue to help marriages where men and women play typical male-female roles. It is not uncommon for marriages to be like this. After all, many of us saw this type of marriage modeled for us by our parents. And, as I mentioned before, we often expect our marriage to work like our parents' did. It might not even be a bad idea to use those old ways as a framework to begin a marriage. But if the laws giving authority to men are no longer actually there, I think, over time, we were meant to grow out of these hierarchical views.

Let's move forward.

Without having done an in-depth study, I’m going to assume that during the time of the Roman Empire, there were actual laws giving men certain privileges that women did not have. I'm going to assume that men were the only ones equipped to be the head of a family in the areas where men-only by law had authority. Those areas being: the ability to provide shelter, food, and physical protection for their families.

Perhaps men could own property and get an education whereas women couldn't. Men could be representatives in Rome and be business owners whereas women could not. Men could buy and sell where women could not. Men could travel freely and acquire information in male-dominated arenas where women couldn't. 

As I said, I haven't done an in-depth study of the culture and times of ancient Israel and the surrounding regions during the Roman occupation. Someone with more authority on this subject could give you more definite details on what men could do and women couldn't. 

Photo by Jorgen Hendriksen on Unsplash

Now, it seems apparent that in the twenty-first century United States, men and women have equal authority in almost all these spheres: business owning, education, government offices, voting, property ownership, and the right to bear arms. The laws that once said men could and women couldn't don't exist anymore.

Thus, when Paul says for wives to submit to their husbands in 1 Corinthians 11:3, 14:34, Ephesians 5:22, and Colossians 3:18, and Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 3:1, are they only be referring to the laws of the land?

When I did a brief study of Ephesians 5, I learned that Paul’s words—“wives submit to your husbands”—were nothing new to the people in those times. In most cultures, this was expected because of actual laws that gave men the “grocery-shopping authority” so to speak. 

Side note: In most marriages, it is more likely that the husband would punch an intruder in the nose and own a gun than the wife. This does not, however, mean that the husbands must own the guns or that they must be the ones to secure their homes every night. There are no actual government law supporting that sort of authority in the home. The fact that most men do own the guns of the family isn't the same as saying that all men must. Do you see the difference? One is a trend; the other is a law. We are trying to discover if there are actual laws that say men must or men ought to have certain authorities.

Photo by Jay Rembert on Unsplash

How about other kinds of authority given specifically to men by law?  

How about laws allowing men greater access to knowledge about scripture? Perhaps in those days, women couldn't attend Torah school. Perhaps that was against some extra-Biblical Jewish laws. Thus, the men had the authority to learn what God said in his word and teach their households. Women would need to submit to their husbands' teaching to learn spiritual truths. An actual law may have supported men's authority in this area. Again, I haven't researched this, I'm just making some general guesses about ancient times.

Such extra-biblical Jewish laws are not the case anymore. Nowadays, both men and women have access to scripture. They may study at any seminary and read scripture in its original language. Neither man nor woman has more authority to interpret or teach the scripture. If this sounds contradictory to several parts of scripture, here's a link to a thorough rethinking of those parts of scripture.

If in the US, there are no more laws giving men the authority to own property, make money, vote, or study scripture, have all the laws that supported men's authority vanished?

What about men's physical strength? What about age? What about spiritual authority? Let's tackle that in the next post!