When I embarked upon the study of the roles of men and women in Scripture in 1984, I had a couple of concerns in view. First, I felt acutely my own resistance to biblical submission as I had been taught. I was having personal difficulty with submission to my husband. I am smart, decisive, talkative, strong-willed, team-oriented and idealistic. This contributed to some friction early in our marriage. And completely unsolicited, the elders at my church asked my husband how he liked being married to such an “aggressive” wife! Their question reflected something about how many Christians understood submission. It was equated with quiet and passive behavior.
I knew I was married to a good man, but he is not perfect and he is less decisive than I am. In my immature thinking, the marriage of a decisive woman and an indecisive man was a tough combination. (This was before we knew anything about Myers Briggs personality assessments, so I did not yet appreciate Bill’s slower decision making style!) While I believed he needed to grow in wise leadership, I decided to focus on my need to grow in submission.
My second concern was training my daughter, born in January of 1984. I believed one reason I was having such a hard time with submission was that I had not been raised to be a submissive wife. So I thought maybe I could do a better job with raising my girl.
I imagine some of you may be thinking “I don’t want to read any more of this!” As I share where I started, I am realizing how much I have changed! I am realizing how simplistic I was. For starters, I failed to appreciate the beauty of how my parents raised me, however imperfectly. What a great thing to be raised in a home that did not squash my spirit! I also repeatedly failed to see the multifaceted teaching about women and men in Scripture. Women and men in God’s kingdom do not have to be carbon copies of one another in personality. Wives do not have to be “Stepford” wives and husbands do not have to be “take charge” husbands. Thank God that He has shepherded me through 37 years of our personal marriage, and that today we both see ourselves with greater grace and appreciation than we did then!
Now I have two revised and clarified concerns that guide my writing. I am calling these my “plumb-lines.” In the Old Testament, God referred often to his teaching as a plumb-line for his people. It was the guide for them to build their lives well, and the measure He used to correct them. My two plumb-lines continually guide and measure my thinking. They hopefully do not close my mind as I read and listen to others.
My first concern is to obey the Scripture’s teaching about roles, to never dismiss it or relativize it because it is still hard to obey, out of step with our culture and imposes constraints on my natural personality and tendencies. For example, I do not want to dismiss the Scriptures because they teach submission. The New Testament passages about submission often refer back to Genesis. That is significant because it connects the structure of marriage – the man’s role and the woman’s role – to how God created them, not merely to what the New Testament author thought was right in his cultural moment.
But Genesis 1 and 2 not only teach God’s created differentiation of gender, but also their shared humanity bearing his image, as I wrote last fall. (See my Fall, 2017 posts on The Beginning of Us All.)
Therefore, my second concern is for the lopsided ways we potentially read the Scriptures through a biased lens. In particular, I am concerned about what has been referred to as “hyper headship” by some. There are many husbands and wives who believe as I used to that husbands must make the decisions and wives simply comply. There are even secular books that promote a kind of “hyper submission” for wives to keep the marriage happy and peaceful. I am also concerned for church communities where different roles for men and women are taken seriously, taught and applied. I do not want to foster by my writing “hyper headship” in the church, or the tendency I have seen in some Christian men to overlook or dismiss the skills, help and wisdom of women around them because they are “applying” Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2 and Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, etc. that women are to submit to men. Women were made to be indispensable helpers from the start in every area of human life. They were made to be contributing members of Team Humanity, in all of the team’s purposes.
These two concerns will be evident in my writing, but I wanted to alert you to them in advance. Sometimes one concern will be the theme of a post, sometimes the other, sometimes both. They are both always the plumb-lines for my thinking. One feels more constraining – submission – and one more affirming – equality. Both are in God’s Word. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man (and woman) of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, ESV, with my italicized addition)
(See an article by Sam Alberry on the goodness of God’s Word, even when it does not feel good: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/do-you-have-to-like-gods-commands/.)