Sheila here!
My husband Keith is here for his final installment this month for his series on the Danvers Statement, that statement that codifies what those who believe in hierarchy in gender relationships believe.
It’s been an awesome series, and I’m happy to welcome him to the blog to wrap it up today!
Do hierarchists mind female servility?
Have you ever heard anyone who believes in gender hierarchy preach about the problem of women being too submissive?
Me neither.
Welcome to the ugly duckling of the four errors in marriage that the Danvers statement identifies: Female servility.
We are at the end of my four-part series that discusses the ways the Danvers statement says marriage can go wrong. The Danvers Statement, released by the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in 1988, represents the beliefs of those who think God designed marriage to be a hierarchy.
Instead of seeing marriage as a union of two equals, they teach that the husband is to sacrificially lead and the wife is to willingly submit. They indicate this can go wrong in four ways:
- A husband can err toward domination or passivity, and
- A wife can err toward usurpation or servility
Basically, it suggests God’s perfect plan is a spectrum between opposing errors as shown in the graphic below:
I have been making the case in this series that while the aim of the Danvers Statement is ostensibly to teach people “God’s way” to have a healthy marriage, its true goal is keeping women in a subordinate position to men.
For instance, in my first blog post, I contrasted the Danvers statement’s assertions that “domination is bad” with its adherents’ unwillingness to confront it when it happens and their insistence that even if men are dominating, women are still expected to submit.
In my second blogpost, I showed how “male passivity” tends to be used as a code word for “men not being in charge” and the only solution offered is once again (you guessed it) that women need to submit more.
And last week, I pointed out the inherent problems with labelling a woman’s reticence to unilaterally submit to a fallible human husband as “usurpation” and discussed how this demonstrates that at heart, they fundamentally do not have the best interest of women in mind, but only their subjugation.
And today we come to the last error: a woman erring into servility.
Now servility is defined as “an excessive willingness to serve or please others”, so by labeling it an error, the writers of the Danvers Statement paint their theology as a moderate position. After all, we don’t want women to be “servile”, we only want them to willingly submit.
But let’s consider what proponents of male hierarchy think wifely submission actually look like before we make our judgment.
Spoiler alert: it looks suspiciously like servility.
Exhibit A: Emerson Eggerichs’s advice to women when confronting a husband’s workaholism
Eggerichs is the author of the Love & Respect series, which Sheila has roundly criticized as toxic, but which is considered mainstream in evangelical circles. His DVD series is the most popular marriage Bible study in churches in the USA, so his teachings are a perfect example of what people are being told submission in marriage should look like.
In one of his appendices in Love & Respect, he tells women how to approach their husband when he is sinning against the family with workaholism.
Since Eggerichs has in the past officially come after Sheila as violating copyright when she discussed some of his sermons, I want to emphasize that I am here reproducing part of Love & Respect in line with fair use for the purpose of critique and commentary and I quote Eggerichs’s instructions in full specifically to address any accusations that I am taking him out of context.
This is how he says the wife should address her husband:
“Your son (daughter, children) needs you at home more. You have a unique influence on him. In certain areas, nobody matters to him as much as you do. It may not appear that way to you, but your positive presence has the power to mold him. I know you are swamped and have little time, but I also know that you want to give him that part of you that no one else can give him. Thanks”
After delivering your “we need you at home more” message, don’t repeat it for anywhere from ten to twenty days. Then mention it again, quietly and positively with the general tone of “just a positive reminder because of your importance.” Always choose your words carefully. Never even remotely imply that you are really saying, “If you don’t make a positive change, you idiot, you will destroy me and the children.”
I don’t know about you, but if I were asked to sum up this way of interacting with a spouse, one word that immediately comes to mind is servile. I mean, this husband is an “idiot” who is “destroying [her] and the children” yet:
- She does not even mention her needs, only the child’s
- She does not call his actions what they are
- She massages his ego
- She vaunts how important he is
- She provides ready-made excuses for his behavior
- She assumes he means well even when he has not shown that
- She chooses her words exceedingly carefully
- She speaks only briefly and quietly
- She lets weeks pass before she follows up
- Even then, she does not get firmer if he remains unmoved
She is even instructed to end by saying “Thanks”, but what is she thanking him for?!?
To me, it has a distinct vibe of: “Oh, my lord, thank you for listening to your servant’s humble plea….”
Notice the emphasis on making the husband feel positive, appreciated and unchallenged rather than (1) identifying the issue, (2) setting healthy boundaries and (3) communicating directly and effectively. How could anyone not consider it servile for a wife to prostrate herself like this and prioritize the ego of her husband over the good of the family?
Never in a million years would I want my wife to come to me in this way. I want an ezer kenegdo, a “power corresponding to me”, not an ego-boosting lackey.
Love and Respect
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But I dare say that what Eggerichs is proposing here would never be considered the error of servility by those who follows the Danvers Statement, which makes me wonder –
What would servility actually look like to them?
I mean if the above illustration is the “golden mean” what does the extreme of servility look like? It must be terrible indeed and yet I have never seen one sermon on how to avoid this hideous monstrosity.
In the end, the only concrete examples of the error of “too much submission” I have ever heard talked about are prohibitions of a wife following her husband into sin. Eggerichs himself told the story of Ananias and Sapphira in his sermons at Houston’s First Baptist back in 2019.
Enraged that people suggested he ever taught that a woman should follow her husband into sin and riled up with preaching fervor, he tells about how Sapphira was not given a pass for being submissive but was killed along with her husband because “there are boundaries!”
Coming from the man who wrote an entire chapter in Love & Respect teaching women to value their husband’s “Insight” over their own “Intuition”, I find this a bit hard to swallow.
I have no time for men who preach women must give up their autonomy to their husbands completely, but not so completely as to sin, without seeing the obvious non sequitur.
Yet somehow they seem to be able with a complete absence of irony to insist that since women are more easily deceived they should listen to their husbands – unless of course their husbands are leading them into sin in which case they should know better.
So…
“If you don’t submit to your husband….you’re going to hell!”,
but
“If you submit to your husband and follow him into sin…you’re going to hell!”
and
“If you don’t submit to your husband because you thought he was leading you into sin, but he wasn’t….you’re going to hell!”
but
“If you submit to your husband because you weren’t sure it was a sin, so you trusted his judgment and it WAS a sin…you’re going to hell!”
I’m glad we got that sorted out.
Which brings me to Exhibit B: John Piper actually instructing women how not to follow their husbands into sin.
What does John Piper teach about servility?
John Piper founded the Desiring God website and was involved with establishing the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CMBW). Since CMBW produced the Danvers Statement, his bone fides are not in dispute as a follower of its philosophy.
Yet in a now infamous video response to the question “What does submission look like when a woman is married to an abuser?”, he has these words of guidance for women:
If this man, for example, is calling her to engage in abusive acts willingly – group sex, or something really weird, bizarre, harmful, that clearly would be sin. Then the way she submits … [is] to say, however, something like, “Honey, I want so much to follow you as my leader. I think God calls me to do that, and I would love to do that. It would be sweet to me if I could enjoy your leadership…But if you would ask me to do this, require this of me, then I can’t – I can’t go there.”
It gets worse from there. If you would like to learn more you can read this blogpost about it.
But for a moment let’s just ponder the absolute servility that Piper is putting forward as appropriate from the wife. Think about how this plays out in real life. Piper even suggests a specific situation: group sex.
I am glad I have a wife who – were I ever to suggest something like – this would come back with “Are you NUTS?!?!?” I think any good man would want a wife just like that – – and an evil man needs one twice as much.
But Piper would have the wife basically apologizing to her husband for not following him into such sin! Is she honestly supposed to say “Oh, honey. I want so much to follow your leadership into group sex. It would be so sweet for me to enjoy your leadership into a threesome with your secretary….but I…I just can’t.”
It makes me sick.
And if you think I am overstating the case and don’t agree with me that Piper and Eggerichs are in fact promoting servility, then I suggest you reverse the roles and think about what word you would use if a husband were told to approach his wife in these ways.
This asymmetry is a fatal flaw in this whole way of thinking.
It’s not just the fact that what is good for the goose is definitely not good for the gander, it’s that the goose and the gander have entirely different rule books. I would venture to say that those who follow the principles of the Danvers statement would resist the label of “moral relativism” and would insist they follow a clear reading of Scripture, but in my mind, they fail on both counts. They fail on the first count because all their morality is ultimately relative to gender.
What is considered servility for a man is considered appropriate submission for a woman.
What is considered sacrificial leadership for a man is considered usurpation for a woman.
But the second count is more egregious – Rather than husband and wife both obeying Jesus when He says, “Follow me”, they must instead each follow their roles as a “biblical man” or a “biblical woman”.
And rather than following Our Lord’s teaching to “love your neighbor as yourself”, a husband and wife must love each other in the specific and opposite ways laid out by the Danvers statement.
To me, that sounds a lot “leaving the commandment of God to follow the tradition of men” (Mark 7:8) and I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it even if all of its bad fruit weren’t so manifestly obvious.
What do you think? Do evangelical authors really believe that women can be “too servile”? Don’t you think the way they want women to act is, actually, the definition of servility? Let’s talk in the comments!
Keith's Danvers Statement Series
Looking at the 4 ways those who believe in hierarchy in marriage think marriage can go wrong
- Domination: Do hierarchalists take it seriously?
- Passivity: Is it the problem hierarchalists say it is?
- Usurpation: Behold the circular logic!
- Servility: When every problem is a nail
- And our PODCAST summarizing the whole series!
Plus see the book Keith co-authored with Sheila, The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex!
The whole circular reasoning thing makes me sick – I’m supposed to give unquestioning obedience to my husband UNLESS he is asking me to do something wrong, when suddenly it’s ok to question it. But how do I know it’s sinful without questioning it, which means I’m sinning in the first place by questioning it… Nice one.
No, I don’t believe men like Piper & Co really do believe a woman can be too servile – you can see Piper almost licking his lips over his fantasy of a woman crawling to her husband in an attempt to avoid group sex and you can’t get much more servile than that – but if a man should ever sin in a way they can’t ignore, they do like to have the wife’s ‘inappropriate servility’ to blame as a backup. “If she had only spoken to him in the correctly gentle and submissive way, he wouldn’t have…”
It absolutely does make me sick, too. The way John Piper seems to relish telling a woman how to say no with such servility to a demand for group sex? Like holy cow, John. What is wrong with you?
Wow, woman can’t even be expected to get their submission right, without a man to straighten them out. 🙄 🤮
I will point out what we all know, which is that a woman in a relationship where she is expected to approach her husband in this manner is a woman in an abusive & neglectful relationship. And with such a man, she will never get ANYTHING accomplished or resolved. The fact that a guy with a phd can spout this stuff makes me really wonder who the h—- is handing out these degrees!
I completely agree. What they are actually training women in is the fawn trauma response. It’s how to keep a bad man appeased so he doesn’t hurt you.
Exactly!
!!!!! This is so true!
What is SO frustrating about the idea that women are supposed to submit and follow most of the time is even a very practical time later when men expect that if the husband were to suddenly be unable to work or “lead” because he was injured or whatever– they expect that, of course she would take over. But, think about this.. we have been taught since being a child to obey, to submit, to follow.. to actively turn off trusting our own judgement. Then suddenly, being expected to turn all that back on? It isn’t possible to switch that on in an instant. Yes we can grow and learn and become strong and confident, but man it takes WORK! It takes a lot of self reflection and learning to make our own choices and we have to take baby steps of figuring out how to be an adult after years and years of making ourselves small. It is like being a stunted plant (in this specific area) and then suddenly put in the light.. which feels too bright and too much at first! And like the wind is just too harsh in the open and could break us.
It is cruel.
Not being gently, over time, from childhood eased into being a thinking adult who makes their own choices– but being held back.. being in the hot house of “protection” and yet all along.. these leaders know and expect that if the husband were to be injured or were to suggest some obvious sin that she should say no to, that she would know (intuitively) that it was a sin. How can this “protected” plant who only knows the environment in the hot house know what to do in the weather outside? How can she recognize the pests from out there when she has been held back by every man in her life?
Or if some have thought she should know better, they sort of chuck the plant out and then it gets all root shocked.
Anyway, my metaphor is getting away from me, but you get the point.
When Piper says that a woman would know not to follow a husband into sin, he is wrong to assume it would be a sin that is obvious to her. Most people do not go from zero to group sex. If a husband WERE to get to that point, do you know how many ways he would likely have asked her to sin with him over possibly years? In that scenario I would guess that the husband would push her boundaries in smaller ways over time.. maybe getting her to engage in porn or his fantasies somehow and she would tell herself that it isn’t that bad.. she would get drawn in and be ignoring her own conscience and intuition (as they of course teach her to do- to “submit”) until she has ignored her conscience and herself for so long that one more thing may not matter to her or that she doesn’t realize she even has a choice (because she never felt she had a choice before)..
If you slowly ignore your conscience and person hood and ability to choose and let others cross your boundaries or you cross your own more and more and over and over again over many years— you just aren’t going to know what is healthy or right or up or down. You don’t even know what yogurt you like for yourself because you have been trying to be what other people want you to be..
Those guys always worry about the “slippery slope” of women getting too much power over men (which is actually a logical fallacy) but THEY are the ones creating the slipperiness! And the slope does not slip UP into more power, but rather down as we are being taught to debase ourselves more and more.
All that to say, even in the best case scenario of a complimentarian relationship.. not asking the wife to sin but just suddenly being unable to lead and she needs to take over as a mutual partner would be expected to do. Can she? Not with the teachings they give out! She is not prepared at all! She has not been taught to follow Jesus first! But rather the husband.. so if the husband is wrong, what has she learned to do?
As I said.. this teaching is cruel. It does not protect women. It keeps them in a green house and then at some point she is thrust into the storm without any preparation at all.
Excellent thoughts, Lynne! The slippery slope is very real and they do ignore it.
This is so very true.
Wow! That is super insightful and spot on! It is exactly how I feel right now. I’ve been living “under” my husband’s authority for about 20 years now and decided enough is enough and decided to separate from him… But I’ve never lived on my own before and only started working part time after separating. I don’t even have a place to go, so we are just living in different parts of the house.
This series has been fantastic!
I have enjoyed this series from Keith so much! The insight is intriguing to me and my husband and I have looked forward to discussing every week. Thanks!
This has been a great series! Thank you for writing it!
A great series, indeed! By the way, the Golden Midway between two opposing errors does not come from the Bible but from Antique Greek philosophy, and from Aristotle in particular, if I remember correct. Aristotle was by no means stupid, and he has written many things that are worthwhile reading, nut they are not God’s word or Gospel truth either.
Thank you!! None of the comp books actually teach women how to not be servile. (And I’ve read most of them!) When I had my first meeting with a counselor, she listened so attentively and then said “Your homework is to read Boundaries.” I didn’t know I had a boundary problem because I had no problem saying no to other people. But I had little ability to say no to my husband. I had never been taught that was a thing! I mean, he’s never suggested an orgy so why would I need to?😂
That was the second phase in my healing journey after finding Sheila. The Boundaries concept was incredibly difficult to accept because it was so opposite everything I had been taught about my role as a wife. The comps basically train you to be codependent- and then only address it when you wind up in the counseling office with crippling anxiety. (Yes, I was set free in the counseling office of my very comp church. The irony!)
And that Piper clip…I’ve seen it before and it still makes me sick. First, why was “group sex” the first thing that came to mind?? And then, like, THAT’S the line? Not any of the likely sins a husband could lead a family into, like harshness or lack of generosity or workaholism…women, don’t complain about submitting to all that, because you don’t have to submit to an orgy! We’re not monsters! Ugh.
The unhelpful anecdote reminds me of a time our old pastor tried to preach that men shouldn’t be dominating with their wives. His example was, “If you’re deciding where to get lunch after church, and she doesn’t want Taco Bell, you don’t make her go to Taco Bell!” I actually wrote him a letter about that one. Why use such an inconsequential example for the very real problem of spousal abuse? Because you don’t really want the women to see the problem. You don’t want men held accountable for the kinds of problems that are REALLY happening right under our noses.
Ok rant over. Thank you for speaking up Keith!
I reckon he picked the group sex thing because it was the only thing that was bad enough in HIS eyes to justify a wife ‘submissively declining to obey’. I mean, if she’s meant to accept being screamed and yelled at, and is only allowed to object to being physically beaten up if it lasts beyond one night, then where else is there to go to find an example of a husband’s ‘leading’ that she’s allowed not to follow?
Right? Much more common examples of men expecting their wives to sin are things like signing fraudulent tax returns! Allowing him to spend money wastefully while the bills are unpaid.
Coming soon to a Christian bookstore near you:
“Power of a Servile Wife”
“The Act of Servility”
“Intended for Servility”
“His Demands, Her Servility”
“(Conditional) Love and (Absolute) Servility”
“Servility Music”
“For Servility Only”
They will be best-sellers I’m sure!
Unfortunately, they already are but are disguised under “Christianese” titles.
By the way, do I detect some passive-aggressiveness in that infamous excerpt from Love and Respect, rather than “willing submission”? Especially the “thanks” at the end soundes really passive-aggressive to me. I’m surprised. Does he want his own wife to speak to him like that, and does he not notice how angry and insinuating his suggested response to a husband’s sin can sound? Does he like it when a woman speaks in a like passive-aggressive way, or does he not recognize it?
Of course, if his wife would speak to him like this, and with passive-aggressive intentions, I would not blame her, not at all. In fact, if I were married to a man like this Eggerich guy, I guess I’d develop passive-aggressiveness into an art, in order to have at least some fun at his expense.
No, I have no respect for such men what so ever.
When I read this book, isn’t there that passage where he talks about how his wife cooks his eggs? He hates pepper on his eggs. Every time she makes him eggs, she positively blackens them with black pepper. Every time. He’s asked her over and over again not to put pepper on his eggs, and eveyr time, she forgets. In the text, as I recall it, he laughs about how she just has this one little quirk, the sweet darling, where she never remembers this the one way he hates eggs, but he’s so generous because he loves her anyhow.
So, if you want passive-aggressive…I’d say, she found it. And he does not recognize it.
Eggs with pepper for E. Eggerich, serves him right!
Much other things this fellow does not recognize. Sheila once heard a good one and spilled her tea.
I start to find him quite amusing. Perhaps we have taken him too seriously for too long.
That’s actually an excellent point. I think we’ve taken many of these people too seriously for too long.
I don’t have the book with me, so my quote may not be word for word, but in Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin tells Harry: “The thing that really finishes off a Bogard is laughter. You have to force the Bogart to take a shape that you find amusing.”
Great wisdom in that! For those who have not read the book, a Bogart is a scary creature who always looks like thing you fear the most.
This is, in fact, what many satirical authors have been doing for ages. Also some movie makers have done some great work. They have made bad and dangerous things look ridiculous, and sometimes this has even had an effect in real life.
Perhaps we should start to do the same.
Exactly! Once we start to laugh at these people they lose power. And we should be laughing at them.
This has been a helpful series. And I am glad to be trying to unpack how ingrained CBMW teachings have been unknowingly believed to be pure gospel. Thank you all for introducing me to the fact that other denominations and Christian teachings have Biblical support! I was so brainwashed into thinking that any other way of reading the Bible was incorrect. My gut instinct was good, and my feelings were trying to warn me to try to really examine, not just the echo chamber of the denomination and school I was in. Thank you all!!!! ❤️
Yes, your gut instinct was good! It’s like how Romans 1 talks about how creation tells the story of God. Or Ecclesiastes telling us that He has put eternity into people’s hearts. We can sense things about God and about reality too. It’s called having a conscience!
Paul’s sermon in Athens (end of Acts 17) has the same idea too.
Also just wanted to echo everyone who’s been saying this is a great series.
So women are supposed to follow their husbands without question, then hope for the best that he’s not leading them both into sin, because she can’t question him herself, but if HE screws up, SHE goes to Hell.
Understood. (eyeroll)
Keith is completely right here. I can’t stand Piper in general, and I note that his servile prescription for women is completely resonant with his hyper-Calvinistic picture of humanity toward God’s sovereignty (he predestines us to Hell, forces us to sin, and we should glorify him for it). Just look at his takes on the Canaanite genocides in Joshua. I suppose it makes a certain appalling sense.
I’m gonna get raked over the coals for this, but I do think there is a healthy way of looking at a “sacrificial love/devoted trust” ideal for husband and wife put forth in scripture. There are sexual metaphors throughout scripture: Heaven/Earth, YHWH/Israel, Christ/Church – all of these are spoken in terms of husband and wife as primary metaphors. It seems the consensus here is that any ideals other than sexual interchangeability in the way we relate just leads to abuse and misery. I don’t really want to argue about that: people should find healing and live out their lives and marriages such that they flourish. But I do want to explore how evangelical complementarianism ought to be able to accept your critique from their own commitments.
If I am to try to boil the sexual relationship between the archetypes to a single dynamic, it would be:
MASCULINE: proves himself to her to be trustworthy
FEMININE: opens herself to him in trust
Not saying that husbands shouldn’t trust their wives (any bets on how many responses to this will act as though I did?). It’s the archetypical dynamic, and insofar as we relate in that way, we are tapping into something big and timeless. None of us perfectly embody an archetype in our individual lives, nor should we or it would pave over all of our distinctives.
Here’s what is interesting to me about the way the evangelical church has tried to work out complementarianism. They assume that the feminine virtue needs to go the full distance, whether the masculine virtue is present at all. This is assumed by Piper above, by the Danvers statement, and by books like “Love and Respect.” I remember my Mom in tears recently after a fight with my Dad: “I’m supposed to unconditionally respect THAT?” (Which makes me assume they read that book). She’s right. This is absurd. It’s like saying “the earth needs to be growing fruit with all her might, before a single drop from the heavens has arrived.” Or “Israel needs to be totally faithful to the law, before YHWH frees a single slave from bondage. That’s her part, and his part is his business.” Or “The church need to be willing to follow Christ even to death, before he’s performed a single sign or gone to the cross and risen from the dead. Her job can’t depend on him doing his job.” Crazy.
The right way to think of this type of feminine virtue is RESPONSIVE. She only has the option of trusting him as the church to Christ insofar as he has proved himself to her as Christ did. Before he does that, trust is NOT virtue. It is foolishness. Trusting anyone (say, for example, the Devil) is not praiseworthy. So it is only virtuous for a wife to put down her guard, release control, and relax into her husband TO THE EXTENT that he has loved her like Christ does the church. Any further, and it’s not virtue. It’s idolatry. And yes, this is subject to her judgement.
So the feminine virtue is responsiveness and the corresponding masculine virtue is … active? Initiating?
She’s the only spouse that has to open up? He never needs to get real about what’s going on with him? He never needs to see what she’s initiating and respond to her?
In other words, same 💩, different day. “Just keep on as you’re going, dearie, it’ll work eventually. And if not, well, at least you were obedient to God until he (or you) died.” 😖 NOT buying it, because many of us have been living it for decades and NOTHING CHANGES.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
(And still waiting for those lists of four or five male vs. female virtues, spiritual gifts, and fruit of the Spirit from Friday. Again, not exhaustive, just the top ones in each category.)
But where in scripture does it say that femininity is responsive? I would gladly respond to loving advance, but I would expect my husband to do the same for me. And we are both called to lovingly, trustingly respond to the Holy Spirit. Where is the biblical injunction that makes this gendered?
And BTW, your “any bets on how many responses” remark is a little passive aggressive and makes me think that maybe you need to examine your motives. I’ve heard that kind of response all my married life, and it comes out most strongly when the man needs to examine his conscience. Not pretty.
I have so many questions here!!
“If I am to try to boil the sexual relationship between the archetypes to a single dynamic, it would be:
MASCULINE: proves himself to her to be trustworthy
FEMININE: opens herself to him in trust”
Why a single dynamic?
Why is proving trustworthiness a particularly masculine quality and opening oneself/responding a particularly feminine one?
Are you referring to what type of libido (spontaneous versus responsive) either partner is more likely to have?? Okay, there’s a trend there. But if that’s what you mean, why does that one general trend get to be the essence of either gender? (I hope you aren’t suggesting a beautiful-union-esque, let’s-make everything-about-PIV kind of thing here).
In addition to “responsiveness,” your recent comments here suggest that femininity also involves needs for things like emotional support, approval, relational safety, practical assistance, and self-care. Do men also have these needs? If so, how are they to meet them? What impact does it have on men and boys if these basic needs are coded as feminine?
“If I am to try to boil the sexual relationship between the archetypes to a single dynamic, it would be:
MASCULINE: proves himself to her to be trustworthy
FEMININE: opens herself to him in trust
Not saying that husbands shouldn’t trust their wives (any bets on how many responses to this will act as though I did?). ”
These two statements seem to be contradictory. On the one hand, you are saying that it is the husband’s job to be trustworthy and the wife’s job to trust. On the other hand, you are saying that husbands can still trust their wives (and presumably, you would agree that it is good for the wives to be trustworthy also?) Yet if both husbands and wives should be both trustworthy and willing to trust, then neither of these things is specifically masculine or feminine.
Am I missing something?
In a comment on the June 19 post, “where Are the Women Usurping Authority?,” you made the comment, “The trouble with gender roles would arise if you try to out-compete us (hah – I can lift more chairs than any of you men!).”
Here’s a good answer to that particular challenge:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/526859788924013/permalink/782161290060527/
CMT,
Those are great questions; thanks for engaging! This is going to be a big answer, sorry. Clarifying my thoughts here is really helpful to me. I’m going to speak to the middle question at length and see if that helps explain the other ones.
“Why is proving trustworthiness a particularly masculine quality and opening oneself/responding a particularly feminine one? Are you referring to what type of libido (spontaneous versus responsive) either partner is more likely to have?? Okay, there’s a trend there. But if that’s what you mean, why does that one general trend get to be the essence of either gender? (I hope you aren’t suggesting a beautiful-union-esque, let’s-make everything-about-PIV kind of thing here).”
Yes, libido shows this quite directly, and that PIV moment is really significant (“consummating” the marriage). But the key is to ask WHY spontaneous vs responsive? Rather than making everything about sexual intercourse, I’ll do the reverse and say that sexual intercourse is about everything.
Shockingly, so few of us men understand what drives the female sex instinct. Before I dug into this in trying to help heal my marriage, I was so clueless. I thought “how on earth is my wife ‘not in the mood’ – this is an amazingly pleasurable thing to do. Does she just hate fun?” I didn’t think how sex for women is deeply consequential. Though we have birth control now, the female unconscious body agenda is still thinking about being vulnerable for nine months of pregnancy, enduring the danger of childbirth, and being incredibly needy for two years having to feed and care for an infant. In a wilderness situation, to be alone and pregnant would mean almost certain death.
So how can a woman’s body agenda ever say, “sure, sex would feel great”? It has to encounter something to set against that vulnerability, danger, and need: a man who is strong, capable, reliable, and committed to her. If her primal mind detects this guy can protect her when she’s weak, provide for her when she needs to eat for two, hold his own against other men, has the social skills and standing to navigate the tribe’s hierarchy and free up resources, understand and control his emotions so that his strength is never turned against her, then she starts feeling SAFE. And feelings of safety free up the opportunity to feel sexually aroused.
What’s a bit crazy is that the masculine/feminine distinction I mention isn’t just a human thing. We have a power differential between males and females. Our males are way stronger and more aggressive. But the “prove/trust” dynamic still exists even in species where the power dynamic is reversed. Take spiders: the female is way bigger and stronger, and will eat the male if he does anything wrong! But observe:
(DO NOT CLICK ON THIS IF YOU ARE TERRIFIED OF TARANTULAS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1vL2_8yvFI
MASCULINE: prove that I’m not a threat or a prey
FEMININE: open myself up to mating without eating you
The ancients connected sexuality with the cosmos and with agriculture. The heavens rain and the earth responds with fruit (sing ye heavens and earth reply). The sun shines and the moon reflects the light. Scripture references these archetypes, and also ties sexuality with the relationship of YHWH to Israel, Christ to the Church.
Mature human sexuality doesn’t pornify intercourse, it “everythingifies” it. So that moment looks forward to the whole story of pregnancy, childbirth, and suckling an infant, while it also looks back to everything the man had to do to develop himself into something that gave the woman the security and confidence to take this plunge. Even if we’re not trying to conceive right now, these forces within us are present and affecting the way we feel about each other. Christian sexuality elevates this to the being of God himself and our union with him.
Of course a man should trust his wife, and a wife should be trustworthy (“her husband trusts in her”). A marriage needs adult partners in all the things we need to do. But, though important, this is secondary. Though every human partnership requires mutual trust, when we are specifically acting as “man and wife” (as we do when bringing children into being), this dynamic of “man prove / woman trust” is central. Just like “Christ shows his faithfulness, and the Church responds in faith” is a central doctrine, whereas “The Church proves herself faithful, and Christ delights to trust her” is more an outgrowth of applying that central doctrine. Does this distinction make sense?
Do men have needs of emotional support, approval, relational security, practical assistance, and self care? Absolutely. But when he provides these things to her, it can key in to the central “man/wife” dynamic. For most men, it’s really important that they develop structures outside the marriage (male friends, mentors, coaches, extended family, etc.) to fill these needs primarily. He should certainly share his heart and his life with her, but if she’s his primary support, it can really make her feel anxious and unsafe (“I’m going to be vulnerable, how can I be expected to care for this infant AND this overgrown infant?”). The wife can start to revert to the “mother/child” dynamic with him, which often kills attraction. A personal example: I’m happy for her to lay her head on my chest every night – it doesn’t decrease attraction at all. If I rested my head on her breast every night, she would get annoyed.
The takeaway here for me is NOT that any number of these things can’t or shouldn’t be mutual. It is rather that there is a central current to the man/wife relationship, and we can often get real payoff if we work with it rather than fight against it. But the devil’s in the details, and every relationship is different.
“A personal example: I’m happy for her to lay her head on my chest every night – it doesn’t decrease attraction at all. If I rested my head on her breast every night, she would get annoyed.”
The chief difference between your opinions and those on this blog are that when the Bare Marriage team make a statement about what women like or don’t like, it’s based on surveys involving 1,000s of people. When you make a statement, it’s based on personal examples of what your wife likes or doesn’t like.
If you are going to start laying down the law about ‘what women want’, then first, you really do need to do some properly designed research.
It’s not surprising if the majority of those you and your wife mix with agree with you – most of us tend to form our closest relationships with people who are a lot like us. Equally, it’s no surprise that most of my friends would disagree with you – because they are a lot like me! But the likes and dislikes of ourselves and our friends should not be used to build an entire theology of marriage and relationship.
Thank you, Angharad! I don’t think Lasta realizes he keeps trying to tell us what we think as women- and trying to explain our basic biology to us as well.
Lasta, I imagine your intentions are good, but it feels like another man telling us we just don’t understand what we want- so as a wiser man you will explain it to us. I am sure you mean well, but honestly? It sounds like that beleaguered wife from Eggerich’s example, passive-agressively trying to manipulate her husband to do what she thinks he should with flattering words. Only it’s you trying to make us to fit into your worldview.
I am glad your wife is happy now;good on you, the dynamics in your relationship are totally your business. But your wife is not representative of women in general. Don’t you see, that is a huge part of the problem? Trying to make it about “Women” and “Men” instead of individuals.
(And as a last note- the Bible talks about the Marriage Supper of the Lamb NOT the Marriage Bed or Wedding Night. Let’s not be weird.)
NL, seems like you think I’m trying to manipulate you into doing something. What is that?
I agree. Sex is always riskier for the woman and safety and trust are the biggest contributors to sexual pleasure.
BTW – I’m becoming convinced that the central complementarian error in all of this is trying to mandate “woman trust” as a rule, instead of letting it be a response to “man prove.” That’s just subjugation and abuse.
Piper’s whole demeaner during this video is creepy. He chuckles and smiles at inappropriate times for the subject matter as if abuse is comical to him. I can’t tell you how many times Christian men have given group sex as an example of a sin that women should not follow their husbands into. Why? Because these are basically sins that no normal man would even think about committing. So, they are safe. At another point in Piper’s statement, he says that if the woman is merely “being harmed,” she should submit to “maybe being smacked around one night,” and only then should she contact the men in leadership at her church for help. This is absolutely inexcusable advice, and it has brought great harm to many women.
Well, the police are *obviously* not qualified to deal with a *church* man, only the *church* should do this, right? 🙄
I read the “Are Women Human” blog that Keith linked to. The comment section brought up an interesting point, namely that Piper himself does not really believe the stuff he espouses, as evidenced by his nod to the woman that at a *certain point* she should call for help: why allow calling for help at all if you truly believe that submission and prayer will make the difference? She shouldn’t call for help, she should just pray! — right? So he really DOESN’T believe it!
So the next question is, why does he continue to recommend submission and prayer in response to abuse? I think the most likely answer is truly frightening, and that is that he believes that it is his calling in life to keep women in subjuga—- ahem, cough, Scuse me, SUBMISSION. All joking aside, from someone who has as much influence as he does, this is horrifying. And terrifying.
Lisa Johns, agreed 100%. And if my longer comment is approved below, you’ll see my take on how ungodly the message of John Piper and similar church “complementarians” really has become. Jesus is who we follow, not Piper, not Peter, not Paul, in the Way to God.
I didn’t realize how wonderful God was to me, in my teenage years. And it’s only gotten stronger with time. Here’s what I automatically did, without putting much thought into it: every single time I read a verse in the Bible, I inserted myself and my gender. Because EVERYONE concedes that Jesus was talking about everyone most of the time. In almost every statement, not about the magical one of marriage, male pronouns meant everyone.
What if we did that with ALL of them, in the new testament? And probably the old too, in the right contexts. (It’s more historical and the law was gendered. But we’re not under the law anymore!)
If we just did that, would there be any need to argue about the “rules and regulations of marriage? I think it’d allow the freedom to treat each other with human dignity, and respect.
Thanks for this series. It’s crystalizing thoughts my husband and I have been discussing (in “sacred” and “secular” spaces) for too many years. The implications of this are SO. FAR. REACHING!!! Frequently, the same arguments used to give husbands imbalanced power in a marriage are also used to defend the choice to elevate and keep bad men in control over churches or other similar organizations. Grace and Peace.
Two things: “If a man, for example, is calling her to engage in abusive acts willingly …” then he is in sin, she needs to be protected, and the church needs to consider financially backing her for a divorce!
Also, “If a man … is calling her to engage in abusive acts willingly …” (insert loud screeching breaks.) Abuse breaks down the will. It’s DESIGNED to break the will and exercise control over another person. If the abusive spouse has gotten to the point where he feels like he can get away with expecting “something like group sex,” then her ability to say “no” has probably been mostly erased. And she may be in a position of fearing that if she doesn’t comply, that she’ll be punished. In such a case, she would NOT be “following him into sin” It would qualify as marital rape.
That was one of the most creepy and vile things I’ve ever heard one of these guys say.
It is so super creepy and vile! And, yes, you’re right. He’s already broken her down.
100% yes.
My grandparents were in a complementarian and highly abusive marriage. It wouldn’t have mattered what he told her to do, the very most she would have felt able to do was to plead with him ‘submissively’ to allow her not to do it – and if he’d refused, then she’d have felt she had no choice but to obey.
What none of these ‘great teachers’ seem to realise is that if a person is in an abusive relationship, it doesn’t take long for them to lose sight of what is normal and what is not. They don’t realise their marriage IS abusive because they think all marriages are the same (or if you tell them that yours isn’t, they just think you are ‘extra lucky’) I’ve heard what should be basic standards of decent behaviour lauded to the skies by women who are convinced this proves their husbands are really wonderful guys. The number of women who say ‘but he’s never hit me’ as if this is the pinnacle of husbandly excellence is horrifying.
Well and also, what kind of response are we expecting from a man asking his wife for a threesome? Like is he just going to say okay sweetie. I won’t ask again. Uh no most likely not. What is her recourse when he inevitably punishes her for saying no? Whether that’s the silent treatment, or guilt tripping or anger and verbal/physical abuse. Then what? According to Piper she’s supposed to let it happen and only get help if he actually does hit her. And even if he does just say okay sweetie, don’t we all think there needs to be some sort of next step if our partner is asking for group sex??? Are we just never talking about it again?? Conversation closed?? Not even gonna send him to the church elders? The only answer to a husband asking a wife to sin is to simper, stroke his ego, and then pretend it never happened. Got it. Definitely a recipe for long term health of a marriage.
JoB, I identified with Mayfield’s perspective so much but found implementing his ideas difficult as well. One thing that helped me was to think that God was with me in my protests against abuse, in my tears and pain because of abuse, that I was not alone and separated from God – but he was with me testifying against my mistreatment, that he was the one inspiring me to push back and wish to be treated better. Maybe he loved me all along after all…
However, another book: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero was more helpful to me. And Marg Mowczko’s and Pete Enns’s blogs showed me new perspectives I could both resonate with and be challenged by.
Yes! The thought that God is with us in it all is so precious. I love the Psalms in these situations – some of them make quite uncomfortable reading when life is going ok (“Um, should you really be talking to God like that?!) but I love the reality. And I think they’re there to show us that it’s ok to have the tough questions and get angry at bad stuff that happens, and that God is still there with us in it all.
LTBB—Thanks for the recommendation, I will look for that book. It’s hopeful to hear you have found hope.
I haven’t been in the position of a husband wanting me to do group sex. (He did engage in it himself, he just didn’t ask me to participate because he knew I wouldn’t. And that it was wrong.) But he did ask me to dress in ways that I thought were wrong. He wanted me to engage other men’s sexuality with my appearance, so that they would be jealous that HE was going home with me and THEY weren’t. He wanted me to wear clothes in public that I thought only appropriate for the bedroom. And when he did that, he was not just sinning and asking me to sin, he was actively hurting ME. He was objectifying me, reducing me to my sexuality, asking me to act in ways that were not consistent with my morals and values.
In that moment, yes, I wished I had a husband who cared for ME, not just what I could do for him, whom I could trust with my heart and my safety. So I guess in that sense I was wishing I could follow his leadership, but only to the extent that I wanted a safe man, not an objectifying, abusive man. It would have been downright stupid in that moment for me to say, “Gee golly, honey, I sure wish you were being a good leader right now so I could follow you.” He was an officer in the army. He knows good leadership. He would have seen right through that as an attempt to manipulate him with feelings, and nothing would have changed. (nothing changed the way I did it either. Because only he could change his mindset, no matter what I did.)
A woman in this situation needs a whole lot more than a “leader”. She needs someone to tell her that her husband’s behavior is a sin against HER first of all, and that she does NOT have to tolerate it or tiptoe around it. She doesn’t need to try to manipulate him into good behavior by asking him to be a good leader of her. He has abdicated his right to lead. He needs to ask her forgiveness and submit to whatever boundaries she sets, not be in charge of her. And their marriage is not going to be happy happy the moment he does this. It is going to take months, years of repentance and establishing trust and seeking licensed counseling on his part before things become good again (and he shouldn’t expect anything of her sexually during this time; she also can decide to wait until she feels safe to have sex again). Because, and I can’t stress this enough, he has sinned against her and violated her trust. His mind is not healthy. His sexuality is not healthy. A woman in this situation needs to be told that, because this is an egregious sin against her, she not only can, but should, set hard boundaries to protect herself.
John Piper is, at best, extremely naïve and ignorant, or at worst, creepy, abusive, blinded by his own desire for power. He gives me the willies. He just …… *shudder* This man needs to listen to women. Shut up. Listen. Learn. and listen to God, not just keep reading the Bible with the same mindset and confirmation bias. The advice he gives women is downright stupid, ignorant and dangerous. I wish he would disappear. He tries to boil this interaction down to him sinning and asking her to sin. And there’s SO much more there. He doesn’t try to address it, and I think it’s because he doesn’t even know it’s there. And he has the hubris to say women should bring these matters to the elders (him) for help and a decision. The gall.
Ugh. This gets me riled up. The ignorance, The hubris. Shame. Rant over.
Rant away! It was perfectly done and very deserved.
John Piper clearly understands nothing about abuse dynamics. Here’s my personal example. My ex is an alcoholic and abusive. He would demand that I go to the liquor store to get him beer. I have a distinct memory of sitting in the driveway with this internal monologue. He treats me slightly better if he’s sober, so me going to the store to get him beer is enabling his mistreatment of me. However, what’s he going to do to me if I don’t go get the beer? And then, he would probably go get the beer anyway so then what happens?
I went and got the beer.
So, Piper actually thinks that this placating sort of I-just-can’t-participate-in-your-sinful-behaviors nonsense will actually work in any scenario involving an abuser?! John Piper needs to stay in his lane, which is some sort of ivory tower academic fantasy world and not comment on actual real world scenarios. People will get hurt.
Right on, Keith, and also I tried it– this is how I spoke to my hisband and he never changed, and finally I woke up years later and we ended up divorced, and even his friends and relations took my side. He did once tell a counselor that my behavior succeeded in making him feel guilty, but he still just got worse. Sheila is right that there must be consequences before there will be change.
It comes to mind that the real stories of changed men usually come after he does something that exposes him to legal, social, economic, or religious consequences, if the wife doesn’t set boundaries herself. For instance, he has an affair or addiction that gets publicly exposed and has serious natural consequences, gets arrested, fired, or other legal or economic consequences and embarrassment, or loses standing at church, and has to answer to outside enforcers. It almost never is a case of the man just waking up one day and really repenting and changing with no outside pressure. Why is it saintly for the wife to apply no pressure, and let him run amok until he publicly humiliates himself and destroys everyone financially, socially, or otherwise? That is not “helping” him at all. This type of disaster and redemption is a better story than earlier private change through spousal insistence on basic decent behavior???!! Which story would we rather live through or have kids involved in? We have so completely left any shred of common sense….
Yes, when the pain of staying the same finally outweighs the pain of changing, that’s usually the only way things change.
what kind of a christian man would even suggest group sex? something is seriously wrong in stepford land
ironically a good christian man will act in a loving way towards wife and family no matter if he is under patriarchy complementarianism or mutuality
whereas pat/comp teachings give an evil narcissist man exactly what he needs to practive his evil ways. but put that same man under mutuality and he will immediately be seen for what he truly is—the wolf in the fold
Susan, this is extremely insightful… thank you! I often apply if/then logic to help me think through complicated questions and decisions, but I never thought to apply it to this debate!
“Then the way she submits … [is] to say, however, something like, “Honey, I want to follow you as my leader. I think God calls me to do that, and I would love to do that. It would be sweet to me if I could enjoy your leadership…But if you would ask me to do this, require this of me, then I can’t – I can’t go there.” — Ew!
I wanted to throw up when I read this. I don’t want my [future] husband to be my leader. I follow Jesus, not man. Piper’s “example” of what he thinks a good submissive, er servile, wife would say is just plain ludicrous.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he had fantasies about threesomes. So creepy and after reading some of the comments on here, thank you all for watching that video. Now, I don’t feel that I need to subject myself to that torture.
I think, just like they mis-define male passivity, they also mis-define female servility.
As long as it is joyful submission while she’s emptying herself it’s not servility.
However, if she fails to smile or appear joyful, and instead wears her drudgery on her face, then it’s servility. As long as she can smile while he’s squashing her under his boot, then it’s joyful submission. The minute she can’t, she’s in sin and needs to get the smile back on her face. It’s not enough to just submit. It has to be joyful even if you are dying inside.
As long as women are gushing about longing for his leadership or thanking him for stooping low enough to hear her humble concerns about his un-named sin of workaholism, it’s joyful submission.
Just like the FLDS, Keep sweet, pray and obey.
Mara, would you mind? I just ate, and need my lunch to stay down.
This analysis is spot on.
Mara nailed the terrible thing Keith is alluding to: “I mean if the above illustration is the “golden mean” what does the extreme of servility look like? It must be terrible indeed and yet I have never seen one sermon on how to avoid this hideous monstrosity.”
This hit me so hard and I felt the truth of Mara’s statement viscerally. This is it. A joyful demeanor is THE difference between godly submission and servility. It’s such a simple and might I say minor distinction that if there were actually sermons preached on it, people might realize that the emperor has no clothes. Instead, they need to beat around the bush about it and preach the joyful demeanor.
My dilemma is that servility has been ingrained in me not as a female, but as a Christian. It was emphasized over and over again, but not in a gendered way. My takeaway from many decades of trying to be the best Christian I could be was that God wanted me to die to myself (which I believed applies equally to males and females). I was supposed to do stuff that didn’t really make sense from a “worldly” point of view and sacrifice by obeying even if I was going directly against my own self interest. Like Mara said above, the goal was to erase my own desires and replace them with God’s desires. I never thought of “fruit” as whether I was healthy or happy or doing well according to human standards, but whether I was growing in being more like Christ and wanting what he wanted more than what I wanted. And my current crisis is that I couldn’t stop wanting the things I wanted. I prayed and begged God to change me, but eventually I got tired of begging when nothing ever changed- I didn’t get the things I wanted (didn’t really expect to, although I hoped), but I never stopped wanting them, either. My heart never changed, no matter how much I asked to have my desires changed. And now I don’t really know what is true or what I believe anymore. I get angry when I hear people talking about God making them with “giftings” that he wants them to use, because all it’s ever has seemed like is that God wants to break me to the point that I surrender everything- which I have tried to do but at this point I am starting to think I will never be able to, no matter how broken and frustrated I am.
It sounds as if you’ve had some really twisted teaching on this topic. Close enough to the truth to hide the truth from you, but far enough away to be really damaging.
There is so much in the Bible about how God created us for a joyous, fulfilling relationship with Him. Yes, we may sometimes have to make decisions that are costly (for example, speaking the truth when lying would make us so much more popular), but if our whole life is one miserable slog, there is something wrong.
Look at Jesus’ teaching on the vine and the branches – he doesn’t say ‘if you work really hard to erase yourself, you will bear much fruit’. He just says ‘remain in me’.
Maybe you need to take a break from the Bible like some of the other people here have had to do, until you can see it clear of all the teaching that’s been superimposed on it by others. But if you can read it, then try looking at all the verses that speak of how loved you are by God, and what your identify is in Christ. Give it all to Him and ask Him to show you the truth – this is not how you were intended to live xxx
JoB, I am so, so sorry. We’re alike in more than our names, because I found myself in the exact same sinking boat.
I erased myself so much I didn’t know who I was anymore. If I liked something, it was probably just because I was sinful and selfish. If I didn’t like something, it was because I was sinful and selfish. There was no joy, just slog. Because I was sinful and selfish.
And I wondered how other people could do things they genuinely enjoyed, yet clearly they weren’t sinful and selfish. As for people (i.e., men) who taught these things, they sure seemed to get to do a lot of things they enjoyed, but THEY weren’t being selfish, because those things were a “reward” for how much they served the Lord. 🤔
I haven’t read the Bible, or prayed, or been to church in a very long time (hint: years, plural), as even thinking of doing those things has made me ill. I’m now, finally, to the point of wondering about trying a different church every week, to see if there’s one in our semirural area that doesn’t preach “penises first, penises forever.” But then again, Hubs and I make two, so maybe we’ll just go for a drive, park where we can look over the mountains, and just talk about God.
And maybe then I’ll finally find myself.
Hugs if you want ’em.
Thank you. When I was about 12, a gentleman in our church gave a testimony about how, when he was young, God asked him to give up a hobby that he really loved (I think it was model airplanes ), because he loved it too much. He was a kind, reasonable person who I liked and respected. He gave this testimony and his voice broke with suppressed emotion as he described how he cried as he burned his hobby books and supplies to show his obedience to God.
My mom, who is one of the most dedicated and sincere Christians I know, once talked to me about how she felt Jesus was testing her in all these difficult relationships and circumstances, and the question behind it was always, “Do you love me more than —- [your church, your kids, your marriage]?”
I distinctly remember a Bible Study Fellowship lecture where the theme was idolatry, and the speaker’s recurring point was “the human heart is an idol factory.” That we humans just keep making idols out of good things, no matter how hard we try not to.
These are all representative moments of my journey, and at the time they all impressed me as super spiritual insights and examples. But at some point I had to ask— why am I doing this? Why am I constantly sacrificing in one way or another? And I couldn’t answer. I didn’t have the things that were intimated would develop over decades of pursuing God- those fruits of the Spirit like joy and peace. Or A sense of “not being alone” or God being with me in my difficulties.
I stopped going to church a couple of years ago, and pretty much stopped reading the Bible, too. I do still pray, mostly for other people. I think I was hoping I would see God come after me, like the shepherd leaving the 99 to rescue 1. But I honestly haven’t seen that. I’ve never felt pursued by God- I was the one chasing after him. And I got tired.
I do ask myself a lot what it would take for me to believe that God loves me. I don’t have a complete answer yet, although I have some ideas. I think my suspicion is that God loves/likes/favors some people more than others, and I think I have some Biblical justification for that observation. Or maybe some people just have more of an innate capacity for sensing and understanding God’s love. I still have questions. Thanks for listening to me ramble, everyone.
I’ve heard some of these talks about idolatry, and I wonder if ‘giving up everything for God’ hasn’t in itself become a form of idolatry!
Especially for a younger or very sensitive person (and we do tend towards extremes in our early teens) there is a danger that we can end up giving up many very good things that God was actually quite happy for us to keep, out of a misguided sense that we are pleasing Him. And sacrifices we make that God hasn’t asked for are going to be much, much harder!
If someone genuinely believes that something in their life is holding them back from following God, then they’re right to think about giving up that thing – but people I know who have done that aren’t usually still grieving over the ‘letting go’ so many years after, because what they’ve received instead (that closer relationship with Jesus) far outweighs any loss.
So much of Christian teaching in this area seems very legalistic to me – almost like we have to keep ‘earning’ our salvation by making sure we are ticking all the right boxes. “Oh look, I’ve given up x even though I really enjoy it and it’s making me miserable to give it up – that must mean I’m being a really good Christian.” But it’s never about us and our efforts – Jesus has already done it all.
Thank you, Angharad, for your thoughtful response. I don’t want to take up more of your time, but if do have time, I would appreciate hearing your thoughts: what do you mean when you talk about a relationship with Jesus? What, specifically, have you experienced that makes you sure that you have such a relationship? In what way do you think your life is different from someone who doesn’t have this relationship? I realize you can’t answer for everyone, but I’d appreciate hearing your perspective.
Oh my, those are big questions to answer in a blog comment, but I’ll try!
I believe that Jesus is not just a historical figure, but the Jesus of the New Testament – he is the one who has paid the price for all the bad stuff I’ve ever done so that I could be reconciled to God. Nothing I can do will ever make him love me more or less than he does now, because his love is unconditional and never-ending. And he’s gradually transforming me into the person I was meant to be – a process I don’t believe will be completed in this life, but I know it will be completed. He encourages, comforts, teaches and guides me and yes, sometimes convicts me of things I need to change in my life, but never, ever condemns me – that is a huge difference! I never have to face anything alone because he’s always with me.
As for how I know – I guess it’s a combination of what I read in the Bible and personal experience. I find the Bible such a realistic book compared to the Holy Books of other faiths. If I were trying to ‘create’ a religion, I certainly wouldn’t be writing a book like the Bible to back it up, it’s too warts-and-all! And there is so much evidence that supports the Bible – prophecies that have been fulfilled, things the Bible said that people at one point thought were false but later found to be true, that it makes sense to me to believe what it says.
And the personal experience – so many times when I have felt God telling me to do something, even something that feels ridiculous, yet it has been spot on. And so many answers to prayer – not the kind of ‘please bless auntie’ or ‘please can my cold get better’, but real specific answers that have no other explanation than a miracle. Plus there are times when there is such a tangible sense of God’s presence – it’s hard to put into words, but honestly, I think you’d have as much chance of convincing me that my husband didn’t exist as convincing me that Jesus didn’t! I know other people who have an even closer relationship, who just walk in a tangible sense of his presence all the time, and I long for that. I know a lot of people argue that these things are just a combo of coincidence and imagination, but THAT many coincidences?!! Not buying it. And I’m not sure my imagination’s that good!
As for what difference it makes – without Jesus, I would see no point in the present and no hope in the future.
Sorry, I probably haven’t explained it very well – I find the bigger and more important something is, the harder I find to put it into words. Does that make any sense?
A couple more things – when I was struggling with fully accepting God’s love for me some years ago, I came across a quote which I found really helpful because it flips the whole serve-God-to-be-loved thing on it’s head.
“We don’t serve God to gain His acceptance; we are accepted so we serve God.
We don’t follow Him to be loved; we are loved so we follow Him.
It is not what we do that determines who we are; it is who we are that determines what we do.”
It makes perfect sense to me – I do things for my husband because I love him, not because I have to do them to keep being his wife. In the same way, I do things for God because I love him, not because I have to do them to keep being his child.
I also found the lyrics to the song ‘So You Would Come’ really helpful at that time – you might want to check them out to see if they encourage you too xxx
Thank you, Angharad, I appreciate your taking the time to respond!
I’m so sorry, JoB. That sounds really, really hard. It may help to listen to podcasts that show a different way of relating to God. What about checking out the podcast I did with Krispin Mayfield? It may help you.
Thank you- I actually did listen to that episode with quite a bit of interest. I picked up his book and read it twice carefully. I think he diagnoses the issues that can come with an evangelical upbringing with astonishing clarity. However, I found his suggestions for finding a new perspective completely unconvincing for me personally. I looked up some of his materials online, and in the process started reading some of his spouse’s work, since they had collaborated on some stuff in the past. She recently declared herself no longer a Christian at all, she’s an atheist now.
While many people throughout history have been called to give up their very lives for the sake of the gospel, not everyone is called to do that.
Psalm 37:4 says that God will give us the desires of our hearts if we trust him. That doesn’t mean he’ll give us whatever we ask for necessarily, but he does delight to bless us.
I have seen in my own life the blessings of God, the unexpected fulfilment of what our hearts long for. There’s growing in the waiting, but God knows the longings of our hearts, and he loves us. He’s not a cruel taskmaster.
Some examples in my life – a wonderfully happy marriage, a much longed-for baby after a struggle with secondary infertility (after a period of time where He gentry drew me to Himself, showed me how to have joy in Knowing Him no matter what life brings, followed by my heart’s desire even though I’d stopped asking). A forever home for our family after a long time of feeling like we could never afford it, which ticks the boxes of what we want for our family – and the way it happened was 100% worked out by God. All we had to do was say yes.
God loves you.
I think this is part of my problem… yes, life circumstances can and do shape our perception of God’s love for us, as much as I try to tell myself I should love him “no matter what.” I have many good things in my life for which I am grateful, but I have always felt unfulfilled, like I never found the place where I fit. Funny you should mention the baby… I am trying to accept that I will never have one, and it’s breaking my heart. Thank you for sharing your story,
JoB- I just want to express my condolences. That is an extremely difficult heartache to go through, and the lack of a child probably increases the lack of purpose feeling. I’m so sorry.
This is the garbage I’m currently in therapy to untangle. I kept a journal for two decades, trying to keep my mind straight but as I’m in the process of healing, it’s becoming so clear just how brainwashed I was. The fact that it took me 2 years of reading this blog to even believe that I didn’t have to submit to abuse as to the Lord shows how bad it was.
It took even longer for me to realize I have value, though that one is going to be a longtime battle. I’m struggling to believe that Malachi 2:16 actually teaches that God cares how husbands treat their wives. Even after at least 5 years of reading this blog, I’m realizing how much I just feel like a worthless slave because of the “God hates divorce” mistranslation that I had shoved down my throat and being told for so long that I have to submit to abuse and trust God because He’s so good and if I would just submit like I should, then my husband wouldn’t mistreat me.
The first time reading, I read your word “mistranslation” as “manslation” — which gives us a good picture, actually! 😆
I will say to you, you are God’s own daughter, and He is NOT pleased when you are treated with contempt and abused. He loves you and strengthens you. ❤️
We definitely need to add “manslating” to the list of words that already includes “mansplaining”! 😆 🤣
That will be SUPER helpful!
Agreed!
Oh, EOF, I’m so sorry! God was never allowing your husband to abuse you because you weren’t submitting enough. What a horrible burden to have to carry!
I hope this helps with Malachi 2:16 https://youtu.be/swy65LUIdg0 .
God actually hates abuse.
There are six things that the Lord hates,Seven that are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,And hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans,Feet that run rapidly to evil, A false witness who declares lies,And one who spreads strife among brothers.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov.6.16,Prov.6.17,Prov.6.18,Prov.6.19&version=NASB
I have a friend who seems to think that staying with a husband who has “strange sexual tastes”, had an affair and has fallen away from God is what she needs to do. She views any hardship, abuse or anything in between as “God teaching her a lesson/moulding her more into His likeness”. She tried to suggest that some stuff I was walking through was this “breaking me down to mould me” nonsense. Then only this week, I found her favourite author is Piper and she swears by Power of a Praying Wife.
At that point, it all made total sense. It breaks my heart that we are allowing this sort of pernicious, ungodly nonsense to be held up as gold standard teaching.
Absolutely! I’m so sorry for your friend.
‘I would venture to say that those who follow the principles of the Danvers statement would resist the label of “moral relativism” and would insist they follow a clear reading of Scripture, but in my mind, they fail on both counts. They fail on the first count because all their morality is ultimately relative to gender.
What is considered servility for a man is considered appropriate submission for a woman.
What is considered sacrificial leadership for a man is considered usurpation for a woman. ‘
Amen!!! This!
Lasta:
“MASCULINE: proves himself to her to be trustworthy
FEMININE: opens herself to him in trust”
Two things
First:
Proverbs 31:10 An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
11 The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
Here she is held up as the trustworthy one. And the rest of the chapter talks about how excellent she is in ways that appear to be masculine according to many definitions of Masculine and feminine.
And even more interestingly, the word translated as excellent (virtuous in other translations) is the exact same word that is translated as valor when used for men. You see, our translators lean your way. They have difficulty translating the Bible accurately when it comes to women. They prefer to lean into cultural archetypes than to be accurate in translating God’s word.
Second:
Perhaps you should consider where these archetypes come from. They may very well be pagan.
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2014/02/patriarchy-is-rooted-in-paganism.html
This may be fine with you. For whatever reason human have always felt the need to categorize things and put them in boxes. But that is human thing. God is not limited by what limits us.
Did you see my response to CMT? I think it speaks pretty directly to these concerns.
Given some of the observations made about passive/aggressive actions, I thought we might all need a good snigger this morning.
Follow the link, scroll through to pages 32-35, the story titled “After the Funeral of Haney Sparks.” Passive aggression at its finest!
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Oysterback_Tales/-25J7ZtaAycC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA4&printsec=frontcover
Enjoy!
So…
If female servility is so horrible (and yet no one ever preaches against it, but I digress), perhaps women should do a big “church ministry participation reset” to make sure they haven’t edged over the line from what is totally proper joyful submission to completely improper servility.
Women could, for the entire month of July, simply stop doing all their usual church activities (making Sunday morning coffee and cleaning up the kitchen after church; womanning the nurseries; cooking, serving, and cleaning up after the church’s family night dinner; teaching kids’ Sunday school classes; preparing and cleaning up communion trays (while obviously not ACTUALLY moving the trays from the end of one row to the beginning of the next row during the service); replacing flower arrangements; participating in the worship team, whether playing the piano or singing; and any other tasks that the women of the church have been doing.
It sort of would resemble the strike at Putney (http://www.online-literature.com/lucy_montgomery/1902-1903/20/) without being an actual strike.
Oh, and that reminds me, since in so many churches, women are not allowed to serve communion (because only deacons and elders can pass the trays between the ends of the rows and walk them back up to the front of the sanctuary, and women can’t hold either of those offices), then doesn’t that mean that if a woman is sitting in the middle of the row, she absolutely MUST NOT pass the tray to the next person beside her? Because passing the tray to the person sitting next to her looks an AWFUL lot like “serving communion.” Or is that just me? 🤔
Or how about this?
1. Women show up early and prepare everything
2. Women hide somewhere while the men attend the service
3. Women come back and clean everything afterwards
4. Men tell the women what the service was about.
That should avoid any line crossing from submission to servility.
I hope most poster here know that I’m being brutally sarcastic…
Or how about this: let’s just all go to the beach?
Lisa, I love your idea! 😀
Yes, Mr. R. and I were discussing this over lunch.
A woman can prepare the communion trays in the kitchen, carry them to the sanctuary before the service, pass a tray to the person sitting beside her, carry the trays to the kitchen after the service, clean the trays, and put them away.
A woman can’t carry a tray from the table to the beginning of the first row, she can’t move it from the end of one row to the beginning of the next row, and she can’t carry it from the last row back to the table.
So during the service, she can touch a tray if she’s on her butt but not if she’s on her feet.
Yep, that all makes sense. 😶
Yes it makes so much sense. Especially in light of those Scripture passages that specify who is supposed to serve communion … passages like … um … hmmm …
Maybe it’s rooted in fear of a visibly standing/walking female body. It’s probably bad form to take communion if you are actively being “tempted!” 🤦♀️
🔔 🔔 🔔
I think we have a winner here!
Seriously, this makes a TON of sense. 👍
In the Church of Christ there was a “joke” that “women can pass he communion trays from east to west, but not north to south”.
I recall Jesus making a very long and detailed sermon regarding under exactly what conditions women may or may not carry trays.
This made me laugh 😆
I once visited a church where there were several steps leading up to the platform on which the pulpit stood. Women were allowed on to the second step but no further (unless they were cleaning the church, when of course it was ok to go anywhere!!!) I wished I’d thought to ask for a chapter and verse for that teaching, because I couldn’t remember where it comes in the Bible…perhaps it follows on from the teaching about communion trays?!
Sheila or Keith, could you please do a “fixed it for you” for the wife’s response in this quote from Love and Respect?
Reading Eggerich’s words, I realized that aside from using a child’s needs as a mask for one’s own—no kids in my life as yet—this is almost exactly how I handled similar issues in a past relationship… and that everything Keith wrote about this unhealthy type of dynamic was true of me. And I can say from lived experience that this approach did not yield good results! Can you show me what this conversation would sound like in a strong, loving, relationship where there’s no element of trauma fawning response? I, for one, would definitely benefit.
Great idea! I don’t know if it would work in a Fixed It For You (might be too long), but maybe we could do a follow-up post about the fawning trauma response as synonymous with biblical submission in their minds?
Yes, please!!
It sounds interesting, and I’d particularly appreciate seeing an in-depth look at what healthy, loving, behavior and boundaries look and sound like, as contrasted with the fawning “pseudo-loving” behavior.
Really appreciate your blog.
In comments throughout this series, there has been talk about gendered advice.
That usually means to confuse sexist prejudices and stereotypes for the will of God. But I’d like to propose a different take on gendered advice.
I think gendered advice can be good depending on what it’a based on.
“Men, society will try to trick you with these lies. Don’t fall for it. Women, these are the lies you need to look out for.”
What’s some advice you wish you had been given as a young woman?
To not take “men of God” at their word, including pastors, authors, and ***especially*** Bible translators.
To not be ashamed that I don’t fit the feminine stereotypes.
To be free to be who God made me to be, instead of trying to conform to other people’s ideas of what I should be.
That I answer to no one except God and my husband for how I conduct myself as a wife.
As C. S. Lewis more or less said, “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants have been, how gloriously different the saints.”
*like*
To not assume that a man is a good man just because he is “Christian.”
To not compromise my thoughts just because I’m female.
To not be ashamed of emotions and think I need to not feel things.
To recognize that God loves my humanity and not some future-faked “perfect” version of myself that I will become eventually.
That I’m not responsible to protect Jesus’ reputation by hiding other people’s sin.
That I’m not responsible to heal other people.
That good character and good personality are not the same thing.
That I’m not a walking temptation, who has to live in fear of sex-crazed male mosters.
That I’m beautiful, that God made me with dignity.
That if my dignity was disrespected, I didn’t somehow earn it by being female. That it was sexual harassment, and was illegal.
And the big one: that I have a voice. And my voice actually matters.
What advice do I wish I’d been given?
That there is no clothing on earth that will stop predatory men from being predatory – and that the more I covered up, the more likely I was to be assaulted, because it signalled that I’d absorbed the church’s ‘modesty teaching’ and was more likely to blame myself for not being modest enough than to blame the predator.
That church would be the place where I was most at risk from predatory behaviour from men – non Christian men would be much safer to be around.
That Christian men could assault and abuse young girls and explain it away as being the child’s fault for ‘tempting’ them by being attractive – and that the church would agree with them.
That none of these things were my fault.
The Danvers statement saying that they don’t mean women should be “servile”- I read this as an excuse to completely ignore any women who speak up about the ways that patriarchal ideology harmed them. Complementarians can just say “oh, but you’re not supposed to be *servile*- you weren’t following the teaching right, so it’s your own fault.” But I don’t see complementarians saying to each other “whoa wait wait wait, you shouldn’t teach those things because you’re teaching women to be servile, and obviously we wouldn’t want that.”
Yep, men set up the rules of the game, play in the game, and have sole responsibility to ref the game. And ain’t it funny how any potential violations of the rules of the game are always decided in their side’s favor? 🤔
One insight I really appreciated from Sheila was that this kind of setup incentivizes bad behavior on the part of the men. I’ll add that it keeps men weak, relying on playing with a stacked deck rather than their own virtue and accomplishments.
I mean, I am, but my influence doesn’t extend that far. 😉
Hey Sheila, do you have that exchange between you and Tim Little saved anywhere? That’s what first put you on my radar and intrigued me (though I’ve since discovered that my co-leader’s wife has read several of your books and benefitted from them greatly). I know Tim left Twitter after that, and I was trying to reconstruct it to describe what I found so compelling.
A pastor’s wife once said, “Submission does not mean being a doormat.” Then she would go on to say that she did whatever her husband asked of her such as not wearing jeans, never cutting her hair, nor wearing red lipstick, and always being at his beck-and-call even when she was in the middle of delivering AVON to a customer. He needed her help in the kitchen, so she stopped what she was doing and drove home because he did not know what temperature to put the oven on for a roast.
As much I was fond of her and she is the aunt to one of my childhood friends, I just could not take this woman’s advice seriously. It’s like Keith was saying [I’m paraphrasing here and not sure if this is completely accurate] that the way CBMW defines sacrificial leadership and willing submission. Their definition of sacrificial leadership really means domination which they don’t see it as that while willing submission is really servility. Like the pastor’s wife saying that being submissive does not mean being a doormat, when in actuality that’s what it really means.
I’ve called women out on it and said that the way they define submission really does sound like being a doormat because they are just going along with whatever their husbands want without question regardless of their feelings. Well, here was an interesting response, “That’s just what the world wants people to believe. Being submissive is actually liberating because you don’t have to deal with the burdens of making hard decisions.” I tried to protest and say that being equal partners should be the way to go, but they thought that was sinful and “worldly.” Needless to say, I quit going to that women’s Bible study and that church 15 years ago.
“Being submissive is actually liberating because you don’t have to deal with the burdens of making hard decisions”
There’s a kind of irony in that sentence when you realise that it comes from women who are married to the type of man who can’t decide what temperature to set on the oven…
Well, he’s so busy making all those big, important, manly decisions that he can’t possibly be expected to make any of those little decisions that make day-to-day life work smoothly. 🙄
And I guess women who have never married, are widowed, or have spouses who are gone for substantial periods of time (e.g., military wives) somehow never have to make hard decisions. Maybe the decision fairy prevents those situations from arising?
Sounds almost like some folks whom I know that have been in prison. They had hard time after becoming free because they had to make choices for themselves. They confessed they really missed the prison routines. Every minute of the day, you knew where you were supposed to be and what you were supposed to do. It was not nice, but it gave some structure to their life and it “freed” them from making decisions. After be, all this fell off, and they had to fill their days meaningfully themselves.
We should stop listening to people who advertise the “benefits” of a marriage that is like jail.
Yes, I wrote a post sort of about that too–how even if women like this arrangement, it isn’t necessarily good for them.
One thing I learned fairly early on (from a book that was supposedly on improving your sex life but was actually a book on becoming a better man) was that, if your wife asks “should I make chicken or fish tonight?”, there are two sexy answers and one dead bedroom answer. All my marriage I had been giving the dead bedroom one: “it doesn’t matter to me honey, whatever you want.” I thought of myself as kind and accommodating, when actually I was telling her that, even in the most arbitrary and inconsequential case, when nothing was on the line, she couldn’t rely on me to make a decision. She says looking back, that the mental load of running the house used to be all on her.
What the right answer, or the right type of answer, is depends entirely on whether the wife has absorbed the idea that a wife should never use direct language while speaking to her husband. That she needs to be indirect and beat around the bush, lest she somehow “disrespect him” or “usurp his (unchristlike) authority.”
If she does believe this bull pucky, then yeah, she may well want her husband to make one, just ONE damn decision. But if she’s used to, oh, what would you call it, being truthful (which I believe would be a virtue for any Christian, male OR female), then when she asks a question like that, she may honestly not care. Maybe she bought fresh chicken and fish at the grocery store, so she could cook one and freeze the other. Or cook one tonight and the other tomorrow night.
If the husband likewise has a habit of truthfulness, then he can answer as he likes without making his wife wonder about his real preferences or any ulterior motives.
Can we all just be adults, for crying out loud? Why does “Christian” marriage so frequently get turned into nothing but constant mind games? 🤬
Yes – if I ask my husband if he prefers chicken or fish, then I genuinely don’t care which one I cook, and I’m asking if he has a preference. If I actually need him to choose for some reason, then I TELL him I need him to choose. Likewise, if he has a specific preference, then I expect him to tell me (before I’ve started prepping the meal)
An awful lot of problems are solved if you just communicate directly.
Laura, your comment just pulled something together for me. It’s like complimentarianism is designed to keep women bouncing up and down between the lowest two or three layers of the hierarchy of needs pyramid–and that she’s responsible for all of these areas for her husband. While the husband gets to enjoy all the benefits of having his lower two or three layers met, so he can then have the opportunity to bounce around in the upper two or three layers.
And that the woman who’s kept in the bottom layers is basically expected to be fulfilled with keeping her husband in the upper layers–this should be enough for her. She can supposedly live vicariously in the upper realm because she keeps him in the upper realms.
Having been in recovery from complementarianism for a few years, I see now how many women I know who live this way only seem to be partially themselves. They aren’t allowed to be who they really are, in freedom.
This is bad fruit.
This is not from Jesus.
Exactly!
Here is one situation where the church does blame women for being to servile:
The husband is caught in a sinful pattern (porn, adultery, etc) and, in the name of fairness and it takes two to tango etc martial counseling, the wife is blamed for not holding him accountable for the signs of sinful behavior.
Frequently she tried at one point in the relation and then stopped out of a desire to submit faithfully and because of how those moments of attempted accountability played out.
This is now her fault that she did not let him see that what he was doing was wrong and hold him accountable therefore she is equally accountable for their current marriage problem.
Or she was told not to “be the Holy Spirit for him”.
John Piper and similar misogynists pretending to follow Jesus — when they just follow their own male ego money trail and the confused or mistranslated biblical Paul out of context — are so normative in U.S. Christianity nowadays as to be anti-Christ. Not worthy of being “ekklesia.” Jesus chose: 1st evangelist, Samaritan woman (Photine); 1st resurrection preacher & witness, Mary (“the Tower” Magdala); 1st human contact, mother Mary. Paul: never met Jesus in flesh; at most he’s scripturally for reproof on how sex-biased men get Christianity wrong.
Sick and tired of being sick and tired that so many Christians paper over this hatefulness toward the female half of humanity as though it’s a simple doctrinal issue. No! The misogyny of patriarchal “complementarianism” that follows Paul instead of Jesus should never be or have become an acceptable form of Christianity when it’s no better than the ugliness of Taliban-lite.
Many of us are the “dones” and will never again cross the threshold or give another dime to any institutional church. We follow Jesus outside the walls as the called-out “ekklesia,” peer-led, joyous, equality to all. Jesus did not start an institutional church, and indeed “church” is not an accurate translation of anything Jesus mentioned about “ekklesia” — church became mainly about cultural control, not worship “in spirit and in truth” (as Jesus taught), after the Roman Empire’s influence and going forward into the Reformation.
Daily I pray that more people in droves will leave the discriminatory abominable churches — come out, good people, and love one another without bigotry as Jesus taught!
Why any self-respecting women can tolerate the passive-aggressive hateful “complementarian” discrimination from church (unless they fear male violence or economic devastation) is beyond my logical comprehension. But culturally there is a substantial amount of male violence and economic penalty against women in all aspects of society including Christianity. (I say this as ex-SBC. First hand I’ve seen and experienced the traumatizing wages of servility and abuse.) So this is on the men who are utterly sick and depraved to pretend they’re enacting any of this hatred against women because of God. Jesus pronounced “woe” to their sort of hypocrisy, and with that as my model, I no longer mince words either. Misogyny of bigotry against women deserves woe because it is sinfully wrong and Jesus taught a higher awareness. Divine love wins but first the victimized have to detach and walk away, with love to move us into a better place.
“Why any self-respecting women can tolerate the passive-aggressive hateful “complementarian” discrimination from church (unless they fear male violence or economic devastation) is beyond my logical comprehension.”
I won’t pretend to speak for all women, but an awful lot of us were told that if we disagreed with these ideas, then we were disobedient, sinful people who might not actually even be Christians and so were in danger of an eternity in hell. And if we somehow were actually Christians, then God was going to severely punish us in some way if we didn’t toe the complementarian line. Those are pretty big baseball bats to beat women over the head with.
I’m with you on your suggestion: small groups of people meeting in homes. Imagine what could be done without all the overhead of building construction and maintenance, staff salaries, and all the other costs of a centralized meeting place.
That money could be spent on, oh, I dunno, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick…
There would be actual fellowship among all the people in the group. After all, if you go to a church with a thousand people in the weekly service, don’t you still only really socialize with and know reasonably well a dozen or so families? Which means your experience would be the same as if you just met in one another’s homes.
Now, big churches can have more “stuff” going on, but is that necessarily a good thing?
At the church we attended in another state, I once counted up all the weekend activities that all the different ministries put on during the course of the year. There were only eight or nine weekend days that didn’t have some kind of church activity scheduled. Several ministries did weekend campouts, there were the men’s and women’s weekend-long retreats, there were Christmas and Easter productions by the choir with Saturday and Sunday performances, and on and on and on. So just over a hundred weekend days in a year, and 90 percent had some kind of pre-planned activity (above and beyond Sunday school and the worship service).
When were families supposed to rest and recharge when the church kept us all running as ragged as the world did? When were we supposed to be Jesus to our neighbors, when we were so busy at church with people who theoretically were already believers?
One other thing…. How is a forty-minute monologue appropriate when Paul expects several people to speak at the gatherings of believers, with, presumably, some discussion among everybody about what was shared? When Paul preached, even to strangers, he seemed to expect questions and dialogue, not silent acquiescence.
thank you, just thank you. This clears some things up for me….
The way that complementarians tell women to confront men is EXACTLY the way I had to talk to my very abusive parents growing up if I wanted to avoid a violent explosion. It doesn’t really work consistently in practice. It doesn’t bring peace to the relationship. If someone forces you to communicate with them like that, the only thing you can do is get out.
Exactly. It’s a fawning trauma response.