True to my pledge never to avoid the hard stuff, I turn now to a recent posting on Doug Wilson's "Blog and Mablog," wherein he discusses the Biblical concept of submission.
"Headship in marriage does not mean that women submit to men; it means one woman submits to one man. Her submission to her husband protects her from having to submit to other men. Prior to marriage, her submission to her father protects her from having to submit to other men. There is no overall biblical requirement that women be submissive to men in general. The biblical pattern is that a wife should respond to the initiative and leadership of her husband, and only to him. She is prepared and trained for this in her submission to her father" (Her Hand in Marriage, pp. 12-13).
No, not really.
Wilson appears to want to liberate women from the nasty idea that women, as a class, should submit to men -- a higher, stronger, better, or more worthy class. Her submission, first to her father and then to her husband, frees her to not have to submit to other men, Wilson says, and this looks, at first read, to be a remarkably liberating idea.
But it comes from a man dedicated not to freeing women, but to freeing words and Biblical texts from their correct meaning. The Biblical idea of submission is mutual and all-encompassing. It's mutual because it's not gender-based; Ephesians 5, where the Apostle Paul argues that women are to submit to their husbands and men are to love their wives, is a call for mutuality and reciprocity. The verse that precedes Paul's instructions to wives and husbands is "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (v. 21)." There is no mention of gender; there is an emphasis on reciprocity. The following admonishments to wives and husbands make clear the intention -- no one would argue that "only men" are to express love in their marriages, and just as surely it isn't "only women" who have to submit to their husbands. I can't imagine a wedding ceremony that presumes that the Loving Partner can only be the husband and the Submitting Partner can only be the wife, and any rhetorical confusion is pretty clearly eliminated by "submit to one another . . . "
Further, submission is an act that comes from freedom, and it means to freely decide to set aside one's preferences and rights for the betterment of another. It is always a volitional, non-coercive, unforced response from a position of strength. It is not, as Wilson argues here and elsewhere, an act of obedience or an expectation of subordinates. Wilson talks about dutiful, obedient daughters as examples of Biblical submission, when what he describes is appropriate parent-child guidance and obedience. To extend that dutiful obedience to wives is not only un-Biblical, but demeaning to women. Married women are not children and are nowhere in Scripture called to obey their husbands. To "free" them by saying that their childhood obedience to Dad simply becomes childlike obedience to Husband upon marriage is a shameful exposition of Scripture, although quite handy in establishing and strengthening patriarchy to one's benefit.
Here's a shocking fact: I believe very much in Biblical submission. The problem with submission is the wrapping Wilson and others package it in. I submit to drivers in traffic, to my friends, to store clerks, and to my husband -- just as I'm blessed to have friends and a husband who submit to me. It's simply kindness -- unforced, unblemished by role hierarchy, and unlike what pro-patriarchy preachers tell you. Submission is, for example, a cheerful decision on my part to eat Mexican food with you because you want to, even though I might prefer Chinese, and I submit to the people in my life with the expectation that those with whom I'm in relationship are eager to submit to me as well. Submission is my choosing, pleasantly, to watch the movie my son wants rather than watching "The Color Purple." It's what makes reciprocal, mutual relationships work, and it -- not the gender-based hierarchical "protection" of Wilson's teaching -- is what best represents Jesus' character.
Wilson has written elsewhere that he'd laugh at the thought of some unknown man asking one of his daughters to go get him a cup of coffee -- his girls, says Wilson, know they don't have to. And that's my point: they don't have to, and that's all the more reason why getting a stranger a cup of coffee in the spirit of Biblical submission wouldn't be such a bad idea at all.
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2 comments:
i remember first coming across this idea as a teenager - it was being preached from the pulpit - and i asked the pastor what a woman was then supposed to do if her husband wasn't a christian and asked her to do/act against christian principles - the answer was that she should therefore submit to the pastor - i didn't like that answer then and i still don't
demanding submission in this way comes across as discrimination or dehumanising of one gender in preference to another - and i don't believe that a loving God would ever intend that
your comment "... submission is an act that comes from freedom, and it means to freely decide to set aside one's preferences and rights for the betterment of another. It is always a volitional, non-coercive, unforced response from a position of strength." is spot on
Nice comments. I'm tempted to dive deep into the theological / exegetical side of this, but I'll limit myself to referring to the relevant chapter (I think it's called "Revolutionary Subordination") in John Howard Yoder's classic book _The Politics of Jesus_. (Anyone read that?)
Yoder sets the so-called Haustafeln (household codes) genre in the Pauline letters within the context of similar codes as found in contemporary Hellenistic (mainly Stoic) writings. He shows how the Pauline versions are actually revolutionary in treating traditionally subordinate classes of people (women, children, slaves...) as primary addressees. Conventionally, such people were not addressed at all as moral agents in their own right; their traditionally subordinate status made them unfit as addressees for any kind of ethical teaching. The fact that they are being addressed at all -- in fact, in first position, BEFORE husbands, fathers, masters -- shows that they are not being treated according to traditional patriarchal norms, but are rather understood as full members of the community, entering voluntarily into relationships of MUTUAL submission, for the greater good of the whole body and for the greater glory of God. As Keely points out, this has nothing to do with any kind of conventional patriarchal "orders of creation" ideology.
Coincidentally, I was just listening last night to a recent podcast episode of the radio show "This American Life" - one that contains a powerful illustration of the damage that can be done to individual persons (as well as to the body of Christ) by conventional misconstruals of these texts as if they involved demands for maintaining the conventional patriarchal subordination of women.
The story (a true one, as always on this show) involves a pair of girls who were accidentally switched at birth, so that each birth mother took the other's child home from the hospital. One of the mothers realized the mistake almost immediately, but her pastor husband refused to allow her to go back to the hospital and get the error fixed. (He wasn't 100% convinced, and he didn't want to embarrass the doctor.)
His wife submitted. She unwillingly raised a daughter she knew was not hers, letting the girl know in various ways that she was less wanted and was invested with fewer hopes and expectations than the other children. As soon as she could (I think after the death of her husband, by which time the girls were both middle-aged adults), she set the record straight, essentially letting her "adoptive" daughter know that she belonged with her "real" family, and welcoming her birth daughter back into her family in a way that cruelly sidelined the other.
The story has an unexpectedly grace-filled ending. But the cruelty and hurt that resulted from this woman's lifelong passive-aggressive response to her own unquestioning, unilateral wifely submission to her husband's will left deep and lasting scars on her own spirit and on those of others.
The show "Switched at Birth" (an hour long) is available in audio form on the webpage of This American Life. (I'd insert the URL here, but it might mess up the post; anyone interested can google it. If you use an iPod or other mp3 player, consider just subscribing -- it's one of the best radio shows in the world!)
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