I thought I would share here what a large part of the impetus was for me to start researching all that Greek that I've referred to in earlier posts, about how husbands and wives should relate to each other. The impetus was my own marriage.
First of all, my husband suffers from clinical depression. He's usually okay when he's medicated properly, but sometimes he builds up a tolerance to the medication and it simply stops working. His depression isn't expressed as sadness or feeling "down" -- it's expressed as anger. All anger. He is usually the most laid-back man around, but when he goes into a depression all bets are off. He has never been violent to me or our son, but he starts fantasizing about random violence to strangers... ALL the time.
Anyway, it was during his last MDE (Major Depressive Episode) that we actually started to work all this stuff out. When we first got married, he was a new Christian and had never been exposed to "Christian" sexism before, and I had been attending a secular university for 6 years. We married as equals and functioned very well that way. If anything, I made more of the decisions simply because of the two of us I'm the more "Type A" -- he just doesn't care about the same stuff I care about, or as much. It worked out very well for us.
Then I got involved with a patriarchal church and a couple of spiritually abusive message boards. Hearing the message from all these sources that we were in sin and shirking our God-given responsibilities made us start questioning our relationship. Even though it goes against the grain of both our personalities, we gave in to the "peer pressure" of the church and decided that we should try to be more like we were being taught husbands and wives should be like; that we should fight our "sinful" personalities and sublimate them so that he could "lead" us and I could "follow".
So I backed off. When we had to make a decision, I would do all the research and legwork required, all the information-gathering, and then present it to him and he would make the decision.
When he got angry and yelled at me, or at our son, for no reason, I "submitted" and tried to be self-effacing. I did what he asked me to do. I ventured opinions, sure, but always left the final decision up to him. According to the teachings of our church, the people on those forums, and the likes of Debi Pearl, our marriage was finally "in line with God's will."
Living like that caused so much grief and discord in our lives and household that we very nearly split up. It even affected our sex life. He would get angry, actually angry, when I tried to initiate, an HE never initiated anything at all. The results of some of his bad decisions came back to haunt us, and knowing that he was the one who had made them made him even more depressed. Mind you, those few times when we had both done the info-gathering and decided things together, those decisions had great results! But living like that, with him being the boss and my unilateral submission, nearly killed our marriage... and definitely did kill our joy, love, and pleasure in each other.
It wasn't until I lovingly told him, "The next time you snap at me or our son for no reason, I'm taking him out of the house and you won't get to see us for the next [span of time]," that he discovered lo and behold! He didn't HAVE to yell and berate us all the time! (Thank you, Cloud & Townsend!)
He hadn't wanted me to even bring up the topic of medication for his depression, so I hadn't. Until things got so bad I just decided "This is insane. I'm doing everything according to God's will and not being rewarded for it. If not submitting is a sin, then I'll by golly sin and take the consequences for it, but I'm not going to continue like this anymore."
About the same time as I made that decision, my husband (during an angry outburst) told me he didn't WANT a submissive wife anymore! He loved the wife he used to have, doggone it, and why couldn't I be her anymore? If we were going to go against God's will in going back to the way we were when we married, then if he was the leader, he'd take the consequences for it, but he wasn't going to continue like this anymore.
Hmmmmmm.
So after that, I started mentioning his medication more often. As I said, he NEEDS antidepressants in order to function at a human level. He'd been off his meds, or on the wrong ones, for a long time. He didn't like hearing that he should go back to the doctor and get new ones, but I kept mentioning it and kept mentioning it persistently (and lovingly) until he did. A month later it was almost like I'd gotten my true husband back.
Worried that now that we were being true to our own personalities and each other's desires, we were outside the will of God, we started to research and study the scriptures about it...
Only to discover that what we'd been taught was the "will of God for marriage" was only the teachings of our church for marriage... and that God's will is something VERY different. Not only that, but it was something of a "duh" moment when we realized God gave us our personalities, too! And we had been rejecting that gift thinking we were more in line with his will by calling them sinful. God made us this way for a reason, and it was very wrong of us to try to preempt God and tell him how he should have made us.
That's our story. We walked together through the valley of the shadow of patriarchy, and God be praised, came out egalitarian on the other side. Hallelujah!
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Thoughts on Authority
Been thinking a lot about authority issues lately. I know that I have them -- "issues" (read: problems) with accepting someone's authority over me who in my opinion isn't supposed to have it. Especially among believers this seems to be a problem.
On one of the message boards I sometimes haunt, a poster called "Nice" has this to say: "I wanted to add my thoughts on...the difference between to have authority to do something and to have authority over somebody. I think there's big difference between these two...I think that when authority is being exercised, it’s always in some kind of context; usually an organization that contains some kind of hierarchy. Organizations and hierarchies can be either flat, vertical or both (in it's structure). Such “organization” could be the family, the workplace, the government, an association etc. It is often said that the biblical "organization" is the vertical; most often referring to the order of creation (genesis 1:28 and 1 cor 11:13 and also Rom 13:1 (that last scripture isn’t about the order of creation)).
But I think Jesus, He who himself is the Word of God, adds another perspective when he says
"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (Mark 9:35)
“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. (John 13:14)
“Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Jesus talks about himself as if he was” the least” in heaven??) (Matt 11:11)
“The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Jesus identify himself with the least) (Matt 25:40).
Some say those scriptures are about the attitude we should have as christians, and I think that's right. However I do think Jesus turns the human perspective up side down. I wonder if this could mean that there is a difference between “to have authority over …” and “to have authority to ….” if you understand what I mean with that. The first one can only (I think?) occur in a vertical organization. The second may very well be exercised in a flat (and more equal) organization.
For example if you have a spiritual gift, let’s say, to prophecy, than you have a God given mandate to do so. The person who prophecy has an authority to do so, but does he has authority over them who are receiving the prophecy? Hardly. At least I don't think so anyway.
Another example is if you’re a doctor, then you have the authority to diagnose and treat people but you don’t have authority over them do you?
In a marriage, we have different roles. The husband have the authority to be the head but does that mean that he has authority over his wife? Well, not if they are equal. That would seem contradictory to me. The children however, we can say we have authority over because they aren’t adults. When one says women can’t teach men because then they will exercise authority over men, then one must consistently say that women cannot exercise any form of prophesying, teaching or caring or anything else where the man must submit to the woman’s ministry. However, it seems to me that the Bible contradicts that (Luke 2:36, Rom 12:6 fwd, 1 Cor 11:5 )...
We are all to serve each other with the amount of talents ("authority") we've been given. Matt 25:14
And for that to be possible... We must submit to one another!
"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" Eph 5:21
Nice has hit the nail on the head here. She is talking about authority in a marriage, while I was talking about authority in the church, but the basic principle is the same. The pastor does not have authority OVER his congregants. He has authority TO... do what? Serve them. And yet how often does he serve them without lording it over them as well?
That's one of my biggest beefs with the institutional church lately: one person (a man) has charge over the whole group. He's the one who decides who is to speak when, what songs they'll sing, how everything will fit together, and he's the one who does the preaching.
This attitude of one man being in charge of everything is TOTALLY against scripture. As is the concept of one person doing all the preaching and teaching. The Bible tells us that "each of you" is to prepare a teaching, a song, offer a prayer, etc. and then take turns so that everything remains orderly. When's the last time you attended an institutional church where that happened? Even so-called "Bible believing" churches tend not to follow the format for gatherings that is laid out very clearly in 1 Corinthians.
Every believer is anointed, yes. Every believer is also an authority over every other believer, and is also to submit to every other believer.
Re Ephesians 5: I know I've mentioned this elsewhere on this blog, but I'll say it again: I discovered that in Ephesians 5, when it says wives should submit to their husbands, it's a continuation of thought in the previous verse: we believers are to submit to each other! It's not a separate thought at all, as I had been taught: it's the same word. It's not even a repetition of the same word -- that word is used only once, in the Greek, to cover BOTH the submitting to each other AND the wives submitting to their husbands.
That seems to say to me that all believers are to submit to one another -- wives in one way, and husbands in another. Husbands get to be the servant, "point man" and protector, and wives get to be the servant, strong rescuer (gen 2:18), and rule over the household (Prov. 31).
Key point there is that both partners are servants to the other. That is where TRUE authority lies: in serving. Not in taking charge.
On one of the message boards I sometimes haunt, a poster called "Nice" has this to say: "I wanted to add my thoughts on...the difference between to have authority to do something and to have authority over somebody. I think there's big difference between these two...I think that when authority is being exercised, it’s always in some kind of context; usually an organization that contains some kind of hierarchy. Organizations and hierarchies can be either flat, vertical or both (in it's structure). Such “organization” could be the family, the workplace, the government, an association etc. It is often said that the biblical "organization" is the vertical; most often referring to the order of creation (genesis 1:28 and 1 cor 11:13 and also Rom 13:1 (that last scripture isn’t about the order of creation)).
But I think Jesus, He who himself is the Word of God, adds another perspective when he says
"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (Mark 9:35)
“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. (John 13:14)
“Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Jesus talks about himself as if he was” the least” in heaven??) (Matt 11:11)
“The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Jesus identify himself with the least) (Matt 25:40).
Some say those scriptures are about the attitude we should have as christians, and I think that's right. However I do think Jesus turns the human perspective up side down. I wonder if this could mean that there is a difference between “to have authority over …” and “to have authority to ….” if you understand what I mean with that. The first one can only (I think?) occur in a vertical organization. The second may very well be exercised in a flat (and more equal) organization.
For example if you have a spiritual gift, let’s say, to prophecy, than you have a God given mandate to do so. The person who prophecy has an authority to do so, but does he has authority over them who are receiving the prophecy? Hardly. At least I don't think so anyway.
Another example is if you’re a doctor, then you have the authority to diagnose and treat people but you don’t have authority over them do you?
In a marriage, we have different roles. The husband have the authority to be the head but does that mean that he has authority over his wife? Well, not if they are equal. That would seem contradictory to me. The children however, we can say we have authority over because they aren’t adults. When one says women can’t teach men because then they will exercise authority over men, then one must consistently say that women cannot exercise any form of prophesying, teaching or caring or anything else where the man must submit to the woman’s ministry. However, it seems to me that the Bible contradicts that (Luke 2:36, Rom 12:6 fwd, 1 Cor 11:5 )...
We are all to serve each other with the amount of talents ("authority") we've been given. Matt 25:14
And for that to be possible... We must submit to one another!
"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" Eph 5:21
Nice has hit the nail on the head here. She is talking about authority in a marriage, while I was talking about authority in the church, but the basic principle is the same. The pastor does not have authority OVER his congregants. He has authority TO... do what? Serve them. And yet how often does he serve them without lording it over them as well?
That's one of my biggest beefs with the institutional church lately: one person (a man) has charge over the whole group. He's the one who decides who is to speak when, what songs they'll sing, how everything will fit together, and he's the one who does the preaching.
This attitude of one man being in charge of everything is TOTALLY against scripture. As is the concept of one person doing all the preaching and teaching. The Bible tells us that "each of you" is to prepare a teaching, a song, offer a prayer, etc. and then take turns so that everything remains orderly. When's the last time you attended an institutional church where that happened? Even so-called "Bible believing" churches tend not to follow the format for gatherings that is laid out very clearly in 1 Corinthians.
Every believer is anointed, yes. Every believer is also an authority over every other believer, and is also to submit to every other believer.
Re Ephesians 5: I know I've mentioned this elsewhere on this blog, but I'll say it again: I discovered that in Ephesians 5, when it says wives should submit to their husbands, it's a continuation of thought in the previous verse: we believers are to submit to each other! It's not a separate thought at all, as I had been taught: it's the same word. It's not even a repetition of the same word -- that word is used only once, in the Greek, to cover BOTH the submitting to each other AND the wives submitting to their husbands.
That seems to say to me that all believers are to submit to one another -- wives in one way, and husbands in another. Husbands get to be the servant, "point man" and protector, and wives get to be the servant, strong rescuer (gen 2:18), and rule over the household (Prov. 31).
Key point there is that both partners are servants to the other. That is where TRUE authority lies: in serving. Not in taking charge.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The Old "Help-Meet" Rubbish
This entry is a combination book review and Bible study.
I recently had the misfortune to read Debi Pearl's book Created to be His Help Meet. I had read bits of it before, excerpts, and also skimmed the whole thing; but recently I had the opportunity to read the entire book in-depth.
What a waste of four hours of my life. Honestly, I'll never get those four hours back, which would have been more successfully utilized in clipping my budgies' wings, or perhaps watching paint dry.
Extreme, I know... but so was this book. The general gist of it was that God created women to be a lowly servant to the man, and that we women can only find our true fulfillment in Christ by relinquish our own desires, skills, gifts, etc. and just living for our husbands. The author puts blame the woman for most of the problems in a marriage, and even goes so far as to say things like, "Have you done this? Well, shame on you!"
As if most women need even MORE things to feel shame over!
Most of all, her advice to women in abusive relationships is at best questionable, and at worst downright dangerous. Let me say it right here, plainly so that no one misses it:
If a woman is abused by her husband, it is always, always, ALWAYS, HIS fault and not hers.
There is NOTHING she can do that would "make" him abuse her.
If a husband abuses his wife, it is ALWAYS his conscious choice to... and it has NOTHING to do with whether or not she is "submissive" enough!
If you are in this situation, please get help and get out!
There, now that I've got that out of the way, I wanted to address the mis-translation that this whole book is based on. It is taken from the King James Version of the Bible, which I understand the Pearls use exclusively. The trouble with the good ol' KJV is that King James was Anglican, and he wanted to make SURE that this new translation of the Bible would make his subjects into good, obedient little Anglicans. So he made sure they put a distinctly Anglican spin onto it, including using cultural understandings of certain things, rather than going by what the scripture truly says.
The word that so many versions translate as "Help meet," "help mate," "helper," etc. is the Hebrew word "ezer." As it turns out, far from meaning "lowly helper" with a connotation of "servant," ezer has two root words which mean, respectively, "to rescue" and "to be strong."
So when God created Eve for Adam, he wasn't actually creating a servant. He was creating a "strong rescuer."
Not only that, but the other word that is part of that phrase -- the "mate" part of "help mate" is the Hebrew word "kenegdo" which is a word used only once in the Bible. Its meaning? Corresponding to, or opposite of. Used in other ancient Hebrew texts, it simply means "equal."
So we can learn from this that God created woman to be a strong rescuer of the man, and to be his opposite and complete equal. To correspond to him, to be parallel to him, and to complete him.
This was God's original purpose and intent for women. This was the way he created humans, for the male and female together to reflect His image... and then he said it was "very good." NLT even translates it as "excellent in every way."
And then they both had to sin and mess it all up -- and as part of their punishment (or possibly just a prediction; it is unclear in scripture), God tells the woman that her husband will dominate her.
Interesting, isn't it? that male supremacy entered the world when sin did!
Patriarchy was never God's original plan -- it's all the idea of sinful men who want to control and dominate. And sinful women, who want to be controlled and dominated, because they think this will please their husbands. Neither is scriptural, and neither is the way God intended a husband-wife partnership to be.
No matter what Debi Pearl says, her whole book is based upon a faulty interpretation of its most basic premise. With that in mind, I found very little in the rest of the book that was correct or useful either.
(The information about the Hebrew translations was taken from this article, and from the Net Bible. Check 'em out for yourself!)
I recently had the misfortune to read Debi Pearl's book Created to be His Help Meet. I had read bits of it before, excerpts, and also skimmed the whole thing; but recently I had the opportunity to read the entire book in-depth.
What a waste of four hours of my life. Honestly, I'll never get those four hours back, which would have been more successfully utilized in clipping my budgies' wings, or perhaps watching paint dry.
Extreme, I know... but so was this book. The general gist of it was that God created women to be a lowly servant to the man, and that we women can only find our true fulfillment in Christ by relinquish our own desires, skills, gifts, etc. and just living for our husbands. The author puts blame the woman for most of the problems in a marriage, and even goes so far as to say things like, "Have you done this? Well, shame on you!"
As if most women need even MORE things to feel shame over!
Most of all, her advice to women in abusive relationships is at best questionable, and at worst downright dangerous. Let me say it right here, plainly so that no one misses it:
If a woman is abused by her husband, it is always, always, ALWAYS, HIS fault and not hers.
There is NOTHING she can do that would "make" him abuse her.
If a husband abuses his wife, it is ALWAYS his conscious choice to... and it has NOTHING to do with whether or not she is "submissive" enough!
If you are in this situation, please get help and get out!
There, now that I've got that out of the way, I wanted to address the mis-translation that this whole book is based on. It is taken from the King James Version of the Bible, which I understand the Pearls use exclusively. The trouble with the good ol' KJV is that King James was Anglican, and he wanted to make SURE that this new translation of the Bible would make his subjects into good, obedient little Anglicans. So he made sure they put a distinctly Anglican spin onto it, including using cultural understandings of certain things, rather than going by what the scripture truly says.
The word that so many versions translate as "Help meet," "help mate," "helper," etc. is the Hebrew word "ezer." As it turns out, far from meaning "lowly helper" with a connotation of "servant," ezer has two root words which mean, respectively, "to rescue" and "to be strong."
So when God created Eve for Adam, he wasn't actually creating a servant. He was creating a "strong rescuer."
Not only that, but the other word that is part of that phrase -- the "mate" part of "help mate" is the Hebrew word "kenegdo" which is a word used only once in the Bible. Its meaning? Corresponding to, or opposite of. Used in other ancient Hebrew texts, it simply means "equal."
So we can learn from this that God created woman to be a strong rescuer of the man, and to be his opposite and complete equal. To correspond to him, to be parallel to him, and to complete him.
This was God's original purpose and intent for women. This was the way he created humans, for the male and female together to reflect His image... and then he said it was "very good." NLT even translates it as "excellent in every way."
And then they both had to sin and mess it all up -- and as part of their punishment (or possibly just a prediction; it is unclear in scripture), God tells the woman that her husband will dominate her.
Interesting, isn't it? that male supremacy entered the world when sin did!
Patriarchy was never God's original plan -- it's all the idea of sinful men who want to control and dominate. And sinful women, who want to be controlled and dominated, because they think this will please their husbands. Neither is scriptural, and neither is the way God intended a husband-wife partnership to be.
No matter what Debi Pearl says, her whole book is based upon a faulty interpretation of its most basic premise. With that in mind, I found very little in the rest of the book that was correct or useful either.
(The information about the Hebrew translations was taken from this article, and from the Net Bible. Check 'em out for yourself!)
Saturday, June 9, 2007
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.
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.
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