That Offensive "S" - word

Tell any intelligent, modern, non-Christian woman that if she accepts Christ she will have to start submitting to her husband, and she will very indignantly tell you where to stick your "submission." Crumpled up so it's all corners first, just exactly how far in, and sideways.

And very rightfully so.

Being an intelligent, modern, Christian woman, the daughter of teachers, I must confess that I had a similar reaction. Then after getting involved with a certain extremely conservative message board, I came under "conviction" that I'd been all wrongheaded about it, and began "submitting" to Grey the way they told me I should have all along. Don't get me wrong; I wasn't a slave, and I was still free with my opinions and all, but I began leaving the final decision-making up to him the way the church told me I should. (Note: this is a classic example of "false conviction," which is that state in which you're hearing nothing about the issue from the Holy Spirit, but plenty about it from people who speak with enough authority that you start to wonder if they're right. They almost never are!)

Well, he hated it. The pressure started building up more and more in him, until finally he blew up like Mt. Vesuvias (and if you know Grey, you know he is NOT usually an angry or violent fellow) and demanded that I STOP submitting to him. He wanted his wife back, the equal partner he had married.

Feeling like he was asking me to go against the Bible, I tentatively started speaking up more, making more decisions, that sort of thing... and I also began researching the submission issue on my own. The more I delved into it, the more I realized that I'd been sold a bill of goods by the church. Submission means nothing like what I'd been taught: it isn't subjection, obedience, or anything that even implies bowing to authority. Here's what I came up with:

The Greek word for "submission" in the Ephesians 5 passage is "hupotasso," and it has two meanings. One of them is military, and it means "to arrange [troop divisions] in a military fashion under the command of a leader". Yes, I know this does sound like obeying authority, but hear me out. The other meaning of "hupotasso" is a non-military one, and it means: "a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden".

You show me the couple whose marriage is based in the military, and I'll show you an unhealthy marriage. I think it's safe to assume that we can go with the non-military meaning here, given above: which, if you think about it, sounds like a recipe for a very healthy marriage instead of one based in the concepts of commands and obedience.

It gets better. You'll notice it mentions "assuming responsibility," doesn't it? This tells me that submission has much more of a connotation of helping by shouldering part of the load than it does of accepting someone else's commands. Assuming responsibility is something a leader does, is it not? And yet, that's one of the definitions of "hupotasso." So, Biblically speaking, wives are to "submit," among other ways, by leading and assuming responsibility.

Hmmm. Doesn't sound much like obedience or subjection to me. But hey, don't take my word for it: one of the Greek lexicons I used to look this up is located here. Feel free to check it out for yourself.

And just for fun, after I worked out the whole "submission" gig, I wondered hey, what about the passage that says the husband is head of the wife? What's up with that, if we're not talking about an authoritarian relationship? Here's what I found out about that:

The Greek word used there for "head" is "kephale." I checked it with a secular Greek-English lexicon and discovered something surprising. In all the different contexts of the word's use, nowhere does it come across as "leader" or "authority." Some definitions were: crown, completion, consummation, sum, total, head of man or beast, generally, top, brim of a vessel, source of a river, mouth; generally, source, origin, starting-point. (These ones were especially interesting in light of the fact that Adam was the "source" of Eve in a very literal sense: God made her out of his body.)

Most of these definitions apply to Christ's relationship with the church, but not a single one of them implies authority. I especially like the ones that mention crown, completion, and sum total; if this is what the husband is to be toward the wife, then that goes along very nicely with 1 Cr. 11:6, which says that the woman is the "glory" of the man. One of the definitions of "glory" here is "a most glorious condition, most exalted state," and another is "magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace."

That sounds like another fine example of Greek parallelism, saying the same thing in different words. The husband is the consummation of the wife, and the wife is the exalted state of her husband.

Here is an excellent site that explains this concept much more fully, and also goes more deeply into the Greek literary technique of parallel writing. Very interesting reading, it is! Now that I'm learning more about the scriptures in their original languages, I'm discovering all sorts of nasty little secrets that the translators have kept to themselves over the years, that the church has taught as doctrine for centuries.

Feminists and the Church

In recent years, there is a huge schism between feminists and the church. Christians who believe in equal rights and respect for women are afraid to call themselves "feminists" because of hate-spewing bigots like Andrea Dworkin who literally gave feminism a bad name... and feminists who believe and worship Jesus are afraid to call themselves Christians because of misogynistic (and racist) bigots like Bob Jones and his ilk.

But in the roots of feminism, there were very close ties with the Christian community; in fact, the Salvation Army was especially active in promoting women's rights (and many of the first-wave feminists were active in the church as well). It seems that the first-wave feminists and the church of a hundred years ago were both a lot more enlightened than we are today.

Modern feminists, however, hate Christianity because it's so "patriarchal." The reason it is patriarchal is that there have been centuries' worth of wrong teachings concerning certain passages mostly penned by St. Paul. Women being silent in the church and not usurping authority over a man -- that was a directive for one particular church that was having a problem with the women shouting questions to their husbands (men and women didn't sit together), having them answered (loudly) by other women who didn't know any better than they, and just generally being disruptive. Women submitting to their husbands was essentially the same thing that husbands were being asked to do for their wives. Yet people have misinterpreted these passages for hundreds of years and used them to essentially enslave women through spiritual abuse.

What's happening, though, is that even in this modern age, churches are still preaching these mistaken views of women -- and it's proving a real hindrance to the educated, modern, thinking woman who doesn't know Christ.

Don't get me wrong -- many churches and pastors will spout the party line of Galatians 3:28. They'll say that men and women are equal in Christ, but that God has given them different "roles" -- to men, a leadership role, and to women, a subordinate, helping role. Umm... correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't sound too equal to me... or if it does, it's only equality in the Orwellian sense.

So when Christians start to witness to feminists, they have to be aware that feminists are even less likely to like Christianity because once the church starts telling them how equal they are in Christ -- "You're equal, but you've gotta submit to your husband. No, he doesn't have to submit to you; it's a one-way street -- but don't worry! You're really equal!" -- they're not gonna go for it.

They're not going to listen to anything that has to do with how "sacrificial" the husband's love is; they're going to hear "he gets to make the decisions," and "you have to do what he says." Not only that, but many churches would also say, "Oh, you're equal to men in Christ -- but you can't teach them anything; your ministry is limited to women and children. Maybe boy children if we're feeling magnanimous. But don't worry-- you're really equal!"

Might as well be sitting around chanting "Two legs, bad! Four legs good!" and "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

Orwellian church? I'll pass, thanks.