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What is submission?

There are a lot of misconceptions about submission and submissive people. Before we can intelligently consider what the Bible has to say on the subject of submissive wives we need to clear these misconceptions out of our way. Let me begin with a few simple statements about the nature of submission:

Only a strong person can be submissive.
Submissiveness is not timidity, it is not servility, it is not subservience, it is not docility, it is not degrading, it is not a sign of weakness.
Submission is a sign of strength, not of weakness and a greater degree of submission requires a greater degree of strength of personal character.

Submission is an act of the will — it is the result of a choice, a decision. The act of submission can only come from a choice that a person makes. Submission cannot be enforced upon a person. Either a person submits of their own free will or they do not submit at all. Submission is a gift that one person chooses to give to another person. By contrast oppression is the act of extracting something from a person against their will. Submission and oppression are, therefore, opposite qualities of a relationship and not even remotely similar.

The submission of a good wife is a glorious thing that is intended to help her and her husband to have a contented life together. Problems in life and in marriage are more or less inevitable but when a woman is submissive to her man it is much more likely that those problems can be resolved harmoniously, without unpleasant quarrelling and without bitterness and resentment. Those people who look down on submission as if it were something demeaning, degrading or humiliating are merely showing that they have no understanding of what submission is and that they are quite ignorant of its power.

If you are a Christian wife who has been feeling uncomfortable with the Biblical demand that you submit to your husband then, I hope, these statements have perked up your interest and given you a glimpse of the bright cheerfulness ahead. Being submissive to your husband does not mean, as so many ignorant detractors of submission seem to think, that you should be an empty-headed bimbo, or that you should have no opinions of your own, or that you should be like a doormat.

If you are a Christian husband I hope that you will take care to understand the nature of submission and be careful to understand your responsibilities in response to your wife's submission to you. A submissive wife is not a justification for an abusive husband. God commands men to love their wives with the same kind of love that he [God] gave to his people ... that's a pretty tough assignment to give a mortal man and it doesn't include the possibility of abuse.

Usually when I am asked to comment regarding the submission of wives, I find myself in a debate where somebody is trying to prove from scripture that women do not really have to submit to their husbands or obey them. In this article I will attempt to demonstrate the error in such thinking. The argument is not especially difficult but it does tend to focus on the negative side of life rather a lot and consequently doesn't make submission sound very desirable. So, before I get into the detailed passage-by-passage arguments I would like to try and explain why a wife who is submissive towards her husband is such a glorious and powerful component of an earthly family and of the Christian family at large. The Christian message is, after all, “good news” and hence a reason for delighted cheerfulness and joy, but in these focused theological debates it sometimes seems that the Christian life is all long faces and dour clothes and instructions towards restrictive behaviour.

A submissive wife is one whose heart is inclined towards satisfying her husband and who has made a choice to be led by her husband, to accept his authority and to be his helper in the broad biblical sense of that word. She does not seek to please her husband because she is afraid of his rebuke or rejection or punishment, but because she delights to please him and finds satisfaction in doing so.

For a man, a submissive wife is a pleasure to be around because she helps him to feel peaceful and contented, she is a reliable helper who can be depended upon. He can trust her with his deepest desires and fears because he is not afraid of her scorn or her rejection or her anger. He can relax with her because he knows that even when he makes mistakes, she will be working with him to put them right and minimize the consequences rather than using them to prove a point or as an excuse for rejecting him in some way. A man who has a submissive wife acquires a greater sense of self respect because he knows that she respects his authority in her life and she is not in any way trying to belittle him.

A submissive wife is one who makes a choice not to resist her husband's will. That is not to say that she cannot disagree with him or that she cannot express an opinion. Indeed the submissive wife is, by definition, a strong woman and will usually therefore have her own opinions and these may often be different to the opinions of her husband. Can she express them? Of course she can, and indeed it might often be wrong for her not to express them since she is, after all, supposed to be her husband's helper, not his slave or doormat. Expressing her opinions and giving advice and suggestions will often be a valuable part of the help that she gives her husband.

Let us see how this works in life by using an analogy of a road for life and junctions in the road for each of life's decision points of choices. The married man and woman set off walking along the road of life and at each junction they choose which road to take next. Sooner or later they will arrive at a junction where they each desire to take a different road and hence there is a disagreement:

In the disharmonious family there is a quarrel, there is cajoling or bullying, there is intimidation and bitter words. The quarrel might last for the rest of their lives with neither giving ground and thus they never move on or, finally, either the husband and wife continue along one road together with one of them feeling resentful and both of them feeling bruised and wary of the other, or if they could not even obtain an unpleasant agreement then the marriage might simply fall apart and they separate, each taking a different road. None of these outcomes is pleasant or desirable.

When a submissive woman finds that her wishes conflict with those of her husband she has little or nothing to fear. If her husband is respectful then they will discuss the matter together agreeable, frankly and cheerfully and through the discussion they might reach either a compromise or one of them might change their mind completely and accept the other person's wishes. If this happens then they can then continue along the road they have now agreed upon with no sense of bitterness and without having expressed any angry words. However agreement might not be reached so then what? If they cannot reach agreement then the submissive wife needs only to obey her husband and accept his wishes graciously. Having done this there are now only a few possible outcomes, all of which have positive aspects and none of which is particularly terrible. In the first possible outcome they will take the road the husband selects and, in due course they will discover that they have chosen a good route through life and both will be happy. In the second possible outcome they will take the road the husband selects but, in due course, they discover that it was not such a good choice after all. All they do is turn around, go back to the junction and take a different road; there has been no need for argument, nobody has felt disrespected or belittled and they have not bruised one another. Although the husband's choice turned out to be a bad one, they have discovered the mistake together, discovered it quickly, and swiftly got back onto a better road and, in the process, they have strengthened their bond by having been able to disagree with dignity and mutual respect. They are not stuck in a perpetual argument at the junction, they have not separated and the process of finding a mutually acceptable road has not weakened their marriage.

If the submissive woman has a husband who is not respectful and who is inclined to abuse her gift of submissive then still she has little to fear. The worst possible outcome is that they will travel a bad road together until the next junction. Although the road might be bad it is good to remember the positive aspects of the situation: They have still remained together, they have kept alive the possibility of improving their relationship as they make their way through the troubles of life, they have not wasted time and damaged one another in a bitter quarrel and they are not still standing at the junction locked in argument. They have moved on, and therefore given themselves the hope of another choice later. This, remember, is the worst possible outcome. Even with a selfish husband it is still possible that he will acknowledge that the road is bad and that they will turn back to take another route.

I have mentioned this example of a road journey to try and illustrate that submission can bring real and worthwhile benefits to a marriage. The scripture also indicates that the act of submission by a woman is able to influence a bad man to change his ways but even if he doesn't change, her choice of submission will still allow her to avoid the worst of the possible problems that a bad marriage and husband might bring.


The key text concerning the submission of wives to their husbands

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery -- but I am talking about Christ and the church.

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Taken from Paul's letter to the congregation at Ephesus, chapter 5, verses 22 to 33.


Submission in the Christian world

Submission of one person to another is described in various forms in the Christian faith. There is the submission of wives to husbands, of slaves to masters, of Christians to one another, of Christians to the ruling authorities, and Christians to God. If my own experience is anything to rely on, then it seems that we Christians do not much like the idea of submission and, if we think about it at all, then we do so on order to reduce its application to our day to day lives. In this document I hope to redress the balance slightly.


We don't really like the idea though ...

In the “Western World” of the twenty-first century, the form of submission that is perhaps most frequently contested is that of wives to husbands. It has been pointed out on several occasions and by various people that the scriptures do not say that wives are to obey their husbands — only that they are to submit to them. Now, each of the clauses in the preceding sentence is true; the problem comes with the word “only” that is used to connect the two clauses. The women (and many men) who want to limit the authority of a husband over his wife are seriously mistaken if they think that a husband can expect less compliance from a submissive wife than from an obedient one; the truth is quite the reverse. Obedience is easy. Submission is hard. Obedience demands little. Submission demands much. It is not possible for a wife to submit to her husband without also being prepared to obey him; a submissive wife is also an obedient wife.


The meanings of the words "submit" and "obey"

If I obey then I do what those who have authority over me tell me to do. There must be an explicit command given before I can obey it and consequently if no command is given then it is not possible for me to be either obedient or disobedient. Obedience does not of itself require me to be cheerful, willing, co-operative or contented. I can be surly, rude, bitter and unhelpful and still be obedient. I do not have to be willing to be merely obedient because mere obedience can be forced upon me. For these reasons, obedience is easy when compared to full submission.

In order to submit to a person who has authority over me, I do not need to wait for an explicit command but instead I can attempt to anticipate the commands and thus avoid the need for them to be given. Anticipating the commands does not mean that I can substitute my own agenda or my own will but rather that I am trying to imagine what the person in authority will want me to do next; I am trying to make my will conform to theirs. Attempting to anticipate the commands does not allow me to disobey any command that has been explicitly given — those I am still required to obey. If I am to be truly submissive I must also learn to be contented, cheerful, willing and co-operative even if I do not like doing what is required of me. Finally submission is a choice that I must continuously make. It can be seen therefore that submission is far more demanding than merely obedience and requires much more of me than does mere obedience.

It is also worth repeating that submission is NEVER enforced upon a person. Submission is the opposite of oppression. In fact submission is a gift that one person gives to another. In a marriage, submission is the wife's gift to her husband. If the husband is wise he will treasure that gift and handle it very carefully because his own happiness depends on it. Submission is a gift that must be renewed each day or even each moment.


Trying to wriggle out of the obligation to obey

It has been claimed that a wife need only obey her husband when her husband's will conforms to the will of God and that is right for a wife to disobey her husband when what he commands is wrong. At first sight this argument seems to be very reasonable but unfortunately it leads into chaos and emptiness and also leaves the wives in a very cruel “no-win” situation. It is true that all husbands are fallen and sinful and it follows that they will make mistakes and that they might desire and command what they ought not desire and command. It is also true, but more frequently overlooked, that all wives are fallen and sinful and it follows that they will make mistakes and that they might desire what they ought not desire. God knew both of these facts when he arranged for scripture to be written and yet he still gave wives the instruction to submit to their husbands. He knew that husbands would wield the authority that he gave them imperfectly and he knew that wives would respond to that authority imperfectly. It is a terrible wrong for husbands to abuse their authority but it is no less terribly wrong for wives to reject or usurp their husband's authority.

Some of the people who claim that wives have the right to selectively submit to their husbands have put much emphasis on three New Testament passages - Acts 5:1-10, Acts 4:19 (and a similar passage in Acts 5:29) and Ephesians 5:21. It is worth looking at these to see what they add to the debate.

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