On about the third day after we first met, Seth and I were on our way to a little Italian restaurant in Memphis when he asked me, out of the blue: “So, Julie, if we got married, and God called me to live in a mud hut, would that be okay with you?”

For a few frenzied seconds, my poor teenage-girl brain was very confused.  Seth had been very clear that he didn’t feel called to a foreign mission field, and so part of me was trying to figure out why God would call him to live in a mud hut in North America, and another part was thinking mud hut?  Does he feel called to live in a mud hut?  Why a mud hut?  What would we do for a bathroom?  I think I missed something here.  But then I realized what he was really asking: are you the type of person who wants to live a good moral life, live in a house, have a family, try to live a righteous life, and be actively involved in a local church–or are you the kind of person who is happy to drop everything and lose everything for no reason beyond the fact that it’s the way God is leading us?  And also: are you the type of person who would willfully give up the usefulness of a kitchen, a bathroom, and a floor, simply because your husband asks you?

So I answered.  And I realized that his question was no less insightful into his character than my answer was to mine.

In the past six months or so, I’ve realized that a very large number of the people I knew in high school and college are starting to get married.  Still lots of singles in the group, but a growing number of people who are “together,” engaged, or married.  And–having been married for going on four years–I’m really terrified for the souls of many of these old friends of mine.  Some of their prospective spouses’ salvation is in serious question, others are marrying into heretical denominations, and countless more seem to be spending their lives in pursuit of the American dream, Christian-style, which says let’s get married, have two kids, volunteer in VBS, go to the local MOPS, and tithe; we won’t cheat on our taxes and we’ll give to charity.

I hear phrases like “I’m so excited–I know God just made us for each other, we have so many interests in common and we just understand each other so much!”  Because, you know, God’s main concern is that you can find a board game you both like to play.  Or “he’s such a great guy; he has a really great job and our careers work together so perfectly, and he’s so sweet and sensitive–he makes great cappuccinos!”  Personality equals greatness.  And, my favorite of all: “we even want the same number of kids!”  Since the whole kid thing is governed by wishes and not by, I don’t know, the multitude of Bible verses on the subject.  Just once, I want one of my friends to pull me aside and tell me that they’re deliriously in love with their boyfriend/fiancé/husband because he makes it clear everyday that his top adoration is Christ, and constantly points her toward the truth of the Gospel, enough that it makes her uncomfortable, embarrassed, and aware of her own insufficiency.

One thing I’ve learned in the past four years is that it’s very easy for a husband and a wife to become alike spiritually.  We can drag each other down, we can build each other up, and the effect is effortless.  We have a huge impact on each other, even when we don’t want to.  It’s hard for one of us to be in close fellowship with God when the other is spiritually depressed, and conversely easy for us to be lifted out of spiritual dimness when the other is passionate and fiery.  Solomon is a prime example of this; 1 Kings 11:4 says that ” when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God” (ESV).  Even with all his wisdom–and verbal communication with the Most High–Solomon still succumbed to his wives’ spiritual state.

Even more than our relationship with each other impacting our relationship with God, though, our relationship with God impacts our relationship with each other.  Nothing brings us together like the feeling of catching Seth’s hand in mine in silent support during an intense theological discussion that’s going on, and nothing is quite as satisfying as curling up to each other to sleep after a spiritually harrowing night.  Sometimes there’s no words, just togetherness: nothing can give one-ness on the same scale as pursing the Gospel together.  There’s no comparison.  Scripture doesn’t give us very many examples of couples where both are clearly strong believers, but it’s worth noticing that the couples who seem to have the most secure marriages–Abraham and Sarah, Boaz and Ruth, Joseph and Mary, Zechariah and Elizabeth–are the same couples where we can read both parties praising and praying to God.  And I’d wager that Priscilla and Aquila were among the happiest people in the whole New Testament; they certainly seem to have been inseparable!

Nothing can make a marriage a success the way that a shared commitment to Christ will.  Our love for each other–our capacity to love each other–increases as we draw nearer to God.  Nonbelievers can never experience the most ultimate pleasure of marriage, and weaker believers cannot experience it as fully.  There’s no earthly delight more agreeable than a godly spouse–and, I suspect, no earthly torment more horrible than a wayward or apathetic one.  And on the other side of the coin, apart from the Gospel itself, I don’t think there’s anything that can change us, for better or for worse, than the person we live with day in and day out.

2 Corinthians 6:14-15 are the famous verses used to point out how wrong it is to marry a nonbeliever, but I think it’s useful to note the reasons Paul gives: “what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?” [ESV]  No matter how many common interests two people may have, if one is righteous and one is lawless, they have nothing in common.  No partnership, no fellowship, no accord; no shared portion.

And so, common interests, pleasant personalities, good jobs, even going to the same church or writing identical doctrinal statements: these things are not what we should be looking for.  You can marry a seminary graduate with all the right words and excellent references, and still find out that he falls apart when his world falls down around him.  Or you can marry somebody who obsesses over the proper method of courtship and reads every book Douglas Wilson, James Dobson, and Gary Smalley ever published, and learn what happens when he’s more concerned with his relationship with you than your relationship to God.  It takes a lot more character to confront someone with their sin than to be a sensitive shoulder to cry on.  It takes far greater maturity to look you in the eye and say, “if God takes you away from me then I will praise Him; He is all I need,” than to say, “darling, you’re my world and I couldn’t survive without you.”

That’s where the mud hut questions come in: Would you really abandon everything?  Can you really smile when humanly everything is sorrow?  Do you put your relationship with God above all, and regard your relationship with your wife/husband as only a tangent to that all-encompassing passion for Christ?  Is your house going to stand strong when the rain starts to fall and all the sand washes away?

I pray that the marrying people of my generation would have greater vision, and that we all would be bold in confronting the horror of unequally yoked.

Tags: marriage married happiness singleness spouse criteria women

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
[Ephesians 5:24, ESV]

I can just imagine the hordes of feminists getting out their pens and crossing this verse out of their Bibles. Not only does Paul say that wives are to submit to their husbands, but he explains exactly what he means: in everything. Can’t really build any loopholes out of that! The Greek is equally plain and incontrovertible; everything means everything!

So, we have a command from God to submit to our husbands in everything. Let me the first to say that I fail miserably at this! Everyday, probably: very time I’m lazy and spend time on my own pursuits and the housekeeping goes a bit awry, every time I get unjustly miffed at Seth for some little thing or another, every time he asks me to do something–or I know it would please him if I did something–and I don’t do it, I am failing to submit in everything. In short, this is a hard command to follow! It infiltrates every moment of our homeworking, every breath of our marriages, our finances, our families… that’s what everything means.

While the command is clear, I find myself asking two questions tonight:

1. Are there exceptions to “everything”?
2. What motivates me to such a massive calling?

These aren’t exegetical questions so much as heart questions, so my answers are not theological so much as personal, although I hope they’re scripturally sound!

Are there exceptions to “everything”?
I think this is sort of a trick question, really, although I suspect it’s the most often asked. The only exception that’s is biblical is, of course, when one’s husband is asking one to sin. Clearly, Christ is our Lord far and above the position of our husbands, and submitting to Him is both first and limitless. And since Christ is Lord of our husbands as well (whether Christian or not), I think it’s fair to say that biblical wifely submission in such a case is to obey God rather than man.

But once we get out of the area of direct sin, things are far less clear. What if our husbands want to teach something we think is theologically wrong to our children? Again, there are times when this would be clear–if our husbands forbid us to tell them about Christ, for instance–but what if it was a more minor point of theology, or even something that barely even touches on theology, like politics? Especially for those of us who tend to be more opinionated, it can be a deep struggle to have a disagreement even in such a small subject.

The most helpful thing to me in these situations is to remember that unsubmission should always be a very sorrowful concept. If we are choosing to act contrary to our husbands, and if we believe that we are doing so out of righteousness, then our hearts should ache unbearably! Our husbands are choosing sin, we’re being ideologically completely separated from them, we aren’t happy with them, they aren’t happy with us, and we’re losing the opportunity to move forward in Christ together. In other words, there is no room for gloating, unholy glee, rashness, or self-centered anger. If our hearts aren’t breaking with every act of disobedience, then we’re not being unsubmissive for the right reasons.

To bring this home a bit–I remember one time when I told Seth something along the lines of I think what you’re doing is wrong, in the sense of sin-wrong, and I’m not going to have any part of it. Which sounds really good doctrinally, except that I was saying it because I was frustrated and you’d have been searching my heart for a long time before you found a holy motive. So was I right? Absolutely not!

Secondly, I think that it’s important to remember that nothing should be important to us apart from God. All of our wants and desires–whether mundane, like a fondness for chocolate sundaes, or serious, like a burning desire for motherhood–all these things we are called to subordinate to God’s will. All these things we are called to abandon to God. Not to stop liking them, necessarily, but to order them in our minds so that if, in God’s sovereignty, they are denied us, we find it joy to forsake them for His sake.

In other words, while submitting to our husbands involves varying degrees of self-denial, it’s nothing more than we should already be prepared to do (joyously!) as Christians. The wants we’re talking about abandoning are nothing in comparison to the sweetness of obeying God. And submitting to our husbands is obeying God. This strikes very near to my own heart, honestly, because I often don’t consider things that far. If Seth asks me to do something, I tend to consider it as him asking me to do something, me giving up something I like for him , when really I need to view it as obedience to God.

What motivates me to such a massive calling?
Submission isn’t natural–check out Genesis 3:16–and submission in everything can sound downright unpalatable. So why do we do it? This is one of those areas of theology that must sound absolutely batty to nonbelievers; we give up “everything,” and what do we get in return? What motivates us? Moreover, when we feel unmotivated, how can we learn to enjoy submitting to our husbands?

There’s the obvious answer: heavenly reward. God will reward us for obeying Him. But I think it goes beyond that, and so it’s the here-and-now I want to focus on tonight. As I was studying to write this entry, I came across the following passage in John Gill’s commentary on the verse:

Her head, being wholly dependent upon him, and entirely resigned to him, and receiving all from him; from whom alone is all her expectation of provision, protection, comfort, and happiness; wherefore she has respect to all his commands, and esteems all his precepts concerning all things to be right; and yields a cheerful, voluntary, sincere, and hearty obedience to them; arising from a principle of love to him, and joined with honour, fear, and reverence of him.

To be less archaic, Gill is saying that since a wife is dependent upon her husband for “provision, protection, comfort, and happiness,” she must therefore do what he says, agree with his opinions and obey them, because she loves/honors/fears/reveres him.

As I read, I thought, hmm, Mr. Gill, that sounds rather akin to the philosophy that we should do good works in an attempt to “pay God back” saving us. Like a cosmic thank-you note from us to God. And since John Piper rather throroughly debunked that idea (excellent book, by the way), I’m not sure that I agree with Gill here. Or maybe I’m reading him more chauvinistically than he intended. But while there is a sense in which wives do subordinate themselves to their husbands out of thankfulness for their provision, I think that motivation alone falls far short.

The parallel Paul makes in this passage between Christ/Church and husband/wife is unspeakably valuable. As believers, why do we do good works? Because they please God. And why does that please us? Because our delight is the Lord; pleasing Him is the sweetest thing we know. And yet that very truth is one that we have to learn a bit as we grow in Christ. Sometimes our thick skulls forget that there is no higher pleasure. Sometimes we do the wrong thing in pursuit of something infinitely less grand. And sometimes we do the right thing trusting that it will bring us the most delight, even though we don’t yet know it experientially.

Very similarly, in the sphere of marriage, pleasing our husbands is the sweetest thing we know. Just as we were created human to worship and glorify God, we were created woman to be a helper to man (Genesis 2:18)! As wives, the height of our gender, our identity as female, is to submit to our husbands. The church is the Bride of Christ to submit to and glorify Him; wives are examples of that relationship. Therefore, if submission doesn’t bring us happiness, our worldview needs changed! As Christians, we sin because we forget that our joy is in pleasing the Lord; as wives, we balk at submission because we forget that our joy is in pleasing our husbands.

But how do we get that truth into our minds? What can we do if we don’t feel joy in submission? I’m sure there are many answers to this question, but I would like to propose two.

The first is this: earnest prayer that God would change our hearts. It sounds cliché, but truly, every step on the road to eternity teaches me more and more that God is sovereign, and that He delights in answering our prayers. When things seem hopeless–when we need a massive personality overhaul, for instance!–God is faithful .

The second is, very simply, to seek out and savor the joy when we do submit. Here’s an example: when everything’s going crazy and I really don’t feel like I have time to get dinner on the table, but I do it anyway, I’ve got to treasure Seth’s smile and appreciation; treasure his happiness more than I disliked the “inconveniences” of achieving it. Then the next day when the same thing happens again, I can anticipate that joy as I work towards it. The joy sweetens the work, until it becomes such a state of mind that the work begins to sweeten the joy.

How awesome the gift of submission becomes once we treasure and learn from it as God intended!

Tags: biblical wifehood special tag no 1 submission theology women

Sidenote: It has been suggested in a comment that I might define “submission” before I continue. So I’m going to do that in the next two posts. First, in this post, I want to define the depth of submission (how much do we submit?) and in the next post, I’ll be more grammatical about it and look at the meaning of the word in Greek, other uses of it, etc. The next post is already half-written and will, Lord willing, be posted sometime tomorrow. Now for today’s post…

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
[Ephesians 5:22]

As to the Lord. Wow. Intense.

If there is one thing in the whole topic of submission that I find both most insightful and most terrifying, it’s those four little words. I know to what extent I’m to submit to the Lord: totally and completely and unquestioningly.

This is the same sort of command qualification as “love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s just so far out there–so extreme–that it’s really hard to wrap my head around it. It’s one of those instances where it becomes plain that it’s impossible to live Christianity as a simple rulebook… it’s too far-reaching… it’s who we are. They way we submit to God invades every aspect of our life, from sleeping and breathing all the way to decision-making. In the same way, Paul is telling us, we are to submit to our husbands.

When I think about submitting to God, I think about total, unquestioning, unwavering obedience. While I’m not perfect at achieving that level of submission, I do know very clearly what I should do. I don’t imagine myself talking back to God, or arguing with Him. I mean, if God were standing in my living room telling me that we are not going to buy a new coffee table, I think I’d probably give a frightened squeak and nod obliquely; end of discussion.

Of course, part of the reason for that is because God is scary, and also because He’s always right. Husbands, on the other hand, are neither! And the real question is, how does one submit to an imperfect husband in the same spirit as one submits to a perfect God?

I mentioned yesterday that I tend to endeavor to do whatever I think is right. I don’t mean morally (although that too!) but pragmatically. I do a lot of careful research before I make decisions, and I’m the sort of person who applies for scholarships and compares insurance companies. And sometimes, I know that I’m “right,” objectively speaking, but Seth doesn’t agree. And sometimes doing what he wants to do has negative consequences that I want to avoid for the good of both of us. (The windshield issue in my long-ago post is a perfect example, at least from my point of view!)

God doesn’t make bad decisions. Husbands do. And, unless it’s a moral issue, we’ve got to go along with those bad decisions. That’s our calling. That’s where the rubber meets the road! It isn’t just blind trust. It isn’t being brainless and not thinking for ourselves. Sometimes it’s doing something that goes against every fiber of your being! Sometimes it’s doing things that we know are stupid! And doing them cheerfully!

I remember when I was in junior high or high school youth group, and we’d go on retreats. And there’d be all sorts of really silly rules. No hairdryers. No going from point A to point B without an adult. The buddy system. As an adult, I understand the reason we put such things on teenagers, but as a teenager I thought, hmm, I wandered all around the camp by myself before the rest of the kids got here, but now that they’re here, I have to follow this stupid rule, like I’ve suddenly lost my sense of direction. It didn’t make sense. But I followed the rules anyway, because they were the rules, and being obedient to them was the right thing to do.

I think submission to our husbands is kind of like that. Sometimes the “rules” are stupid. Truly, objectively stupid. Our husbands are wrong sometimes. And sometimes the we don’t understand the reason for “rules,” because sometimes our husbands see things that we don’t see. (Hopefully that happens more often!) But either way, sometimes we don’t get what our husbands are trying to do, and we don’t agree with them. And what we have to do at that point is recognize that just like our camp counselors, our parents, our government–whomever–we are under their authority, and we follow that authority because to do otherwise is to sin and to displease God.

When God commands us to do something, we have to follow it and trust Him even if we don’t see the reason in it. Similarly, we must submit to our husbands’ leadership and decision-making even if when we don’t see the reason in it! And by submitting to our husbands “as to the Lord,” we also submit to God. To return to the child metaphor, we obeyed our babysitters because our parents left them in charge, and in a sense, to obey the babysitter was to obey our parents. In the same way, the authority our husbands hold over us, the source of our submission, is ultimately from God.

This post is part of a series. You can read the introduction first or view all the posts together.

Tags: biblical wifehood submission women

Noël Piper has recently started posting on the Desiring God Blog, for which I am thankful. Most “A-List” Christian women bloggers seem to go out of their way to make sure that their readers know that their posts are intended for women, explicitly drawing on the “Titus 2″ tradition, and largely confining their posts to discussions of how to be a good home-keeper, wife, and mother. I’ve seen instances on such blogs where, if a heavily theological issue comes up, the woman blogger will ask her husband to do a guest post to address it, instead of addressing it herself. Mrs. Piper’s two posts thus far are not in that exclusive tradition and contain no disclaimer warning men away. On the contrary, she writes in a blog authored almost exclusively by men, and quite probably read most often by men. And in her latest post, she sets out to expand upon her husband’s latest sermon!

I appreciate that. I struggle much with the issue, all the more because Christian women who blog subjects that can only be defined as “theology” seem to be a rare breed. For that matter, Christian women who write theology books seem equally rare–Elisabeth Elliot is the only one that really comes to mind, and even she does it in a very roundabout way. And yet, nowhere in the Bible does it say “women shalt not speak of the wonders of God except in the presence of younger women and small children,” does it? But that seems to be the consensus nevertheless.

How far removed we have become from the likes of Susannah Spurgeon, who throughout her entire life was very much in public ministry, whether in her little books of “Personal Notes On a Text”, her notes in The Sword and the Trowel publication, or in her immense work of gathering funds and selecting texts and recipients from the countless poor British pastors who applied to her for aid. Of her published devotional works, she wrote, “[the Lord] lead me into this unthought-of service, and most graciously has He hitherto sustained me in it; first giving me in my own heart the joy of His Word, and then enabling me to minister of that rejoicing to others.” In other words, what God taught her from His Word, He enabled and led her into sharing in book form. Moreover, she said, “its one aim and object is to summon the Lord’s people to bless and praise His Holy Name.” What a broad and far-reaching goal, and how immediately applicable to Christians of all ages and genders!

I wonder if she–and Noël Piper–don’t have a better grasp of the role of women than many of us seem to have today. When Priscilla and Aquila (how interesting that Scripture puts her name first!) took Apollos aside to “[explain] to him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26 He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (ESV)), do we presume that Aquila did all the talking while Priscilla stood meekly by? When we learn that Philip the evangelist “had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied” (Acts 21:9 He had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied. (ESV)), or when Paul gives instruction that women are to cover their heads while prophesying (1 Corinthians 11:5 but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. (ESV)), do we try to redefine the Greek word to mean something less than it does? When Paul writes of “women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel” (Philippians 4:3 Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. (ESV)), what does he mean? If he wrote of “men, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel,” would we assume something different?

These questions bother me immensely. On the one hand, we have the clear directive that “women should keep silent in the churches” (1 Corinthians 14:34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. (ESV)) and Paul adds that “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. (ESV)). John Gill’s succinct exposition of the latter passage is a common interpretation:

Timothy, no doubt, received much advantage, from the private teachings and instructions of his mother Eunice, and grandmother Lois; but then women are not to teach in the church; for that is an act of power and authority, and supposes the persons that teach to be of a superior degree, and in a superior office, and to have superior abilities to those who are taught by them.

And so, all things considered, it seems that the argument could be made that Scripture’s commands for women to remain silent applies only within the church; that only men should be invited to preach or exhort in worship services. Yet even that is not so clear-cut: does the command apply to Sunday School? (Yes, presumably, since it’s still in church.) Does the command apply to night-time Bible studies held at the church? (Again, presumably.) Does the command apply to Bible studies held informally in people’s homes? (Not by the same logic, since it is not in or affiliated with church. And yet, would a woman teaching a Bible study to a mixed group in her own home still be “exercising authority over a man” even though it’s outside of the church context?) I don’t know all the answers. It doesn’t help that the traditions we’ve built up to supplement Scripture cloud the issue. And yet the question is of vital importance.

When it comes to Christian women blogging, some concrete answers must be found! For instance, I’m assuming that none of you reading here think that what I’ve been doing in writing thus far has been wrong, even though many of my posts are much more theologically-oriented than the average female Christian blogger. But there are things I’ve been learning from Scripture that I have not shared; things where perhaps many of you would disagree with me. If I shared those things with the same conviction that I’ve shared my belief in God’s unwaveringly astounding grace, would I suddenly be out of line merely because I would be controversial? There have been subjects debated in the blogosphere of Christian male bloggers lately–if I weighed in on some of the debates, would I be overstepping my bounds? Am I regulated to discussing only the “obvious” parts of Scripture and those which immediately concern homemaking? (And even to the latter–since most women are “older” women compared to me, am I overstepping my bounds to discuss even the home?)

It is not my intention to be flippant or irreverent here; the issue is utterly serious. I am a housewife; I have deep respect for the many women out there who do a better job at homemaking than I do. I learn from them and I appreciate their testimonies of love for their families. I also have deep respect for the roles God has created for men and women, and in theology I’m as complementarian as they come! But legalism is no better than liberalism, and the examples of Susannah Spurgeon, Elisabeth Elliot, Noël Piper, and women in Scripture itself stand in stark contrast to the lack of boldness displayed by many women bloggers today. We’re putting our lights under bushels! Does it glorify God to have so many blogs where women pour out their ideas about how to please their husbands and raise their children, but never ponder publicly on pleasing their Lord and Saviour? Does it glorify God to pontificate endlessly on how wonderful “dear husband” is, while reserving few words to describe the magnificence and majesty of God Himself?

We should be as gutsy as Susannah Spurgeon:

In these days of daring infidelity, and awful treason against the Most High, I count it an unspeakable honour to be permitted to testify to the power of the old truths, and the pleasantness of the old paths, and the unfailing faithfulness of God in the fulfilment of each and all of His precious promises; and though my voice is less than a Whisper amid the roar and turmoil of conflicting opinions and blasphemous theories, I know that God can hear it, and that He will accept the loving tribute which my heart thus offers to Him.

We too live in days of daring infidelity and awful treason against the Most High. Shall we also testify to the power of the old truths, or are we content to share recipes and laundry-folding techniques? May unbelieving readers never read our blogs and conclude that our whole life is swallowed up in serving our husbands and maintaining a good home! Instead let us confront them with the reality of the Gospel and the beautiful arrangement God has set forth wherein we serve our husbands and maintain a good home because, and only because, we are serving the Lord Most High and our true Delight is exclusively Him.

Tags: bloggers more coherent special tag no 1 susannah spurgeon theology women