That Headship Thingie

I'm not quite sure what to say, my head is spinning. Thanks. But it seems that no matter how 'unique, special, or different' we like to pretend we are, we still lean towards legalism. Silly, self help books that tell you exactly how to be a Christian, husband, wife, mother, father, ect...in exactly eight steps. Besides how can some stranger know how my marriage is going to look like when my walk with the Lord is obviously going to be different than his.

I completely agree with your assessment that the model for the marriage relationship that is set forth by many TR types is nauseating and manifestly damaging. But I've got two things I'd like to hear your take on. First, there are, as awkward as they may be to interpret in our current cultural mileu, that say that wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. I'm not going to even attempt to render an exegesis at this point, but I will say that whatever our interpretation of the passage, we must to be able to use the words that Scripture does to describe the relationship. If you can't say the words and mean something by them that doesn't undermine the actual vocabulary then you've got a problem.

Second, while I'm not attempting to argue any kind of normative model here, it's pretty uncontroversial that human culture - especially ancient Near-Eastern, Roman, and Greek culture - was pretty patriarchal. Not much question there. What stands out as curious to me is to what extent Scripture seems to assume that this is the case, and how little it does to change that. The culture was a certain way, and Scripture isn't particularly critical of it a lot of the time. And the thing is, that Scripture, especially when Christ is talking, has absolutely no qualms about sticking forks in cultural sacred cows. If anything, Scripture often goes out of its way to be culturally subversive. Except here. The idea that women are just as human as men is enshrined in the first chapters of Genesis, and the protections for women in the Torah are pretty impressive when compared to what they could expect from surrounding peoples, but nowhere is there any attack on the basic model.

I'm not trying to suggest that because Scripture doesn't roundly condemn patriarchal societies that patriarchy is the way to go. But if it's the hugely damaging and wrong thing that it's frequently made out to be, why does Scripture basically leave it alone most of the time? I mean, when God handed down the law on Sinai, he was totally remaking a culture with the explicit purpose of setting it apart from the nations around it, even down to the level of what they were and weren't allowed to eat, for pity's sake. But a basically patriarchal society is left essentially intact. The excesses of patriarchy are dealt with in other ways, as symptoms of underlying sin, but the structure itself doesn't seem to command much notice. Again, just because Scripture seems to be silent here doesn't disprove anything, but anyone who wants to say that patriarchal systems are inherently problematic would be well served to deal with the fact that God through Scripture doesn't seem particularly bothered by them.

Oh, and I'm perfectly willing to just say that post-millennialism is wrong and unhelpful, so no worries there. It's not wrong because its adherents can be jerks; its adherents can be jerks because it's wrong.

Maybe another key question is: What does power and authority look like in the Kingdom of God? Because Christ is Lord of the Church, not only the Lover.

But what does that Lordship look like? Well, primarily it involves Jesus laying aside His own rights and privileges and making sacrifices for the good of the Church. It is a scheme of power that undermine's the world's idea of power and authority: it is a power achieved by laying aside the things the world normally thinks of as power so that the loved one will prosper, thrive, and ultimately be saved.

Jesus does give us commands, and we do them, because He is our Lord. I don't want to *totally* divorce the idea of leadership from Jesus. That would be weird. But when we see how Jesus is the head of the Church, He is not primarily Jesus the Lawgiver (although He is that); He is primarily Jesus the Lay Aside My Own Rights, Welfare, and Well-Being for the good of the person I love.

He who would be highest in the Kingdom must become the servant of all. This is the structure of power in the Kingdom of God. It is because we have adopted the world's idea of power and authority that the Church's mission has become "exert as much cultural and political influence as possible" and husband's roles have become totalitarian regimes.

Nice thinking, Phil. Jesus as Lord, yes, and Jesus as Lay-Asider, yes. I guess since the Bible only puts a noun on that by 'servant', we miss remembering the full richness when we talk extra-biblically about Jesus. But it's there, and it's what the Bible describes, rather than names.

Josiah, you have a bright career ahead of you as Marriage Workshop Counselor. Heck, get April in on it ;P

Phil/Noel: I agree with you guys, and I know I'm being insecure here, but I hope I didn't sound like my beliefs about Jesus as Head and husband as head weren't different from what you just described (though we could banty about terminology).

Ryan: no problem with the word submission, but again, I'm talking about husbands, I'll let somebody else worry about wives and women, like, well, wives and women, since Paul is pretty clear about the older women working with the younger. Maybe I'm being pansy, but I'm alright with that.

Further: I think that Scripture, particularly the NT, was far more revolutionary in terms of women's roles than we'd like to think. Dig back into it. Read the passages. Being at least marginally aware of the over-the-top cultural patriarchalism (women as chattel) in Biblical times, Jesus does seem to spin alot of things on its head. And I guess I'd just have to disagree with you: when I read the NT I see Christ flipping the whole thing around.

I could get into it, but hey, my wife's got dinner on the table. Gotta get home.

OH, and one more thing: Noel, don't wanna be marriage workshop counselor. I'd settle for having my own marriage be sane. Not that its not...

Does anyone else find humor in Josiah's reluctance to "get into it" becuase his wife has dinner on the table?

Talk about normative.

JK

It is just because he does love his wife and wants to show her appreciation -- simple as that.

RYE

I guess I missed the Vision Forum connection....

You are a post-millenialist?

Just out of curiosity, I'd be interested to hear why you're not amil.

I'm so glad you brought up the Vision Forum. Those people scare me. They push the whole 'Frontier America is the biblical model for family' to a scary scary place. We live in a black neighborhood and it was embarassing when the Vision Forum catalog showed up on our doorstep. I had to throw out their catalog before our neighbors came over. The catalog is all white people with a token indian girl doll thrown in because she helped the white people conquer America. These people have fit Christ to their culture in a scary package at the exclusion of other cultures. I'm done..

Ryan is right about Christ and Paul not trying to change the Patriarchal culture. It was a given that men would rule over their wives. What is culture-breaking for Paul to say was his command to 'love' you wife as yourself. This 'loving' your wife was new to the culture.
I remember when we were going through premarital counseling with Render Caines he asked me what my role as a husband was. I started listing everything I had read like 'building her up', 'nurturing her', 'protecting, and encouraging.' Finally, Render stopped me and said the only thing I was commanded to do was to 'love' my wife. Ooops, I had totally missed that.

It might be somewhat controversial for Paul's time because he wrote that to the church at Ephesus - the city whose society and commerce is controlled by the cult of Diana (you may remember Paul's troubles with the silversmiths in that city) which was matriarchal in its beliefs. It's possible that a message of submission to a brand new batch of Christians coming out of the Ephesian culture could have been something of a rock to their world, but ironically not in the way we might expect.

And remember, the command isn't just to "love." I love strawberries. The command is to love as Christ loved the Church. That kind of love carries a lot of extra considerations.

yeah, i didn't read all the comments and to be honest, i didn't even finish reading your entry, josiah, so here comes ignorance talking. but i thought this might be a great time to quote from "my big fat greek wedding" where her mom so wisely states "the man may be the head, but the woman is the neck that decides which way it should turn" or something to that effect....brilliant.

i think some more discussion should surround the question as to why Christ does not address patriarchy in the bible. religion then, as now, was political in it's efforts to subdue groups of people, women, and certainly nonchristians. matriarchal religions were pretty prevalent in Christ time, and so there really was a political effort to annihilate this tradition. Anyone recognize this?