ON SERVANT LEADERSHIP AND GRACIOUS SUBMISSIVENESS
By James W. Wray, Attorney
Corpus Christi, TX
Introduction: An Old Deacon (OD) and Old Lawyer (OL) are old friends who meet occasionally to discuss current events over coffee. They have learned to disagree without being disagreeable, which is fortunate because sometimes it seems they would rather argue on credit than agree for cash. Today the subject is a newspaper clipping the Old Deacon puts on the table:
TEXAS BAPTISTS: WIVES DON`T HAVE TO SUBMIT
El Paso-Texas Southern Baptists on Tuesday repudiated the denomination`s call for women to "submit graciously" to their husbands. . . "The Bible doesn`t teach that the husband is the general and the wife is a private, but yet that`s how it gets interpreted," said the Rev. Charles Wade, the executive director of the Texas Group.
OD: Why are Texas Baptists being so contrary? All that the Southern Baptists did in 1998 when they added Section Eighteen on "The Family" to the Baptist Faith and Message is to quote from Paul`s Epistle to the Ephesians.
OL: I see you came prepared. Is that Section Eighteen sticking out of your Bible and does it happen to be marking the fifth chapter of Ephesians?
OD: Right. And here is the meat of it: "Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God`s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church . . .
The husband and the wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God`s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation."
And here is Ephesians 5:20-25: "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. . ."
If anything, Paul puts it in stronger language! Nothing about "servant leadership" or "gracious submission." He said that wives should "submit yourself unto your own husbands . . . For the husband is the head of the wife." Nothing could be plainer.
OL: I think you have put your finger on something important-Paul very clearly recognizes the wife`s subservient role in the marriage. But, Paul does not describe a harsh or unloving relationship. Every time he describes the husband`s dominance or the wife`s subservience he qualifies it with a reference to Christ and His church: "Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church."
Does it seem to you that Paul is trying to take away the harshness of the dominant/submissive character otherwise given to marriage by this passage?
OD: I agree that a marriage with a "boss" husband and a "servant" wife, with those qualifications, is likely, nevertheless, to be a pretty compatible relationship.
OL: I`d like to come back to that, but, first, let me show you two sentences in Section
Eighteen that seem to be in conflict: "The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God`s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to his people."
OD: That comes right out of the Bible.
OL: The first sentence stating "husband and wife are of equal worth before God" does: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male
and female created he them" (Gen. 1:27).
But the second sentence, "The marriage relationship models the way God relates toHis people" is not a direct quote from any scripture cited by Section Eighteen. It must be inferred from Paul`s reference to "God and his people" and "Christ and His church."
OD: Where do you see a conflict?
OL: On the one hand, husband and wife are equal before God, but on the other, the husband is likened unto Christ and the wife unto the church, which is not an equal relationship.
The drafters of Section Eighteen struggled with the fact that man and woman are equal before God, yet are, in marriage, unequal, as they interpret Paul`s teaching. Do you think that a husband can be dominant-have the last word, so to speak, and the wife required to submit, however gracefully-and there still be true equality between them?
OD: But what else can Paul mean: "the husband is the head of the wife?"
OL: Oh, I agree, Paul states that as a fact-and it was a fact. Roman law was not even equivocal: in Rome, the husband was absolute ruler of the household. There, is the key to this dilemma.
OD: Now, you are going to tell me that "Truth is relative." Times have changed, therefore old "truths" do not hold. I won`t buy that.
OL: And I won`t try to sell it to you. Times change, but truth does not change.
Let`s start with things that do not change. Both having been made in the image of God, man and woman are equal before God. That, you just read from Section Eighteen.
But men and women were not treated equally. Until recent times, women have never been treated as equal to men in biblical narrative, custom, or law. Women have been accorded certain rights, but they were not treated as equals. Consider, for example, the Old Testament rules relating to kinship and marriage. Polygamy and the superior rights of the male are seen throughout the Old Testament.
But, on the best authority, such rules were not the will of God. You remember, some Pharisees thought they had asked Jesus a question to which there was no "right" answer: "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?"
Jesus answered: "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female. . . So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate"
Then, the Pharisees asked, "Why did Moses authorize divorce?" Jesus replied, "It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." (Mt. 19:4-8).
In Jesus` time on this earth, Roman law regulated the relationship between family members. Roman marriage was monogamous but divorce was easy and Roman law was very hard on wives. The male head of the family had, literally, the power of life and death over the members of his household-his wife, his children, servants, and slaves.
A striking example: a husband might decide that, in the interest of preserving the inheritance of his children (it being very important to pass on to the children sufficient means to maintain their social standing) he could not afford more heirs. If, nevertheless, his wife became pregnant, he had the power to order that the child, when born, be "exposed." This meant being put out at the gate of his dwelling to die or to be claimed by anyone who passed by.
OD: So, your point is that when Paul said, "Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands . . . For the husband is the head of the wife . . ." he was merely stating the status of the parties as established by law?
OL: Exactly! But, then, he qualified the harshness of the law, thereby putting the relationship on an entirely different plane: "Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church . . ." (Eph. 5:22-23).
Paul`s Ephesian Christians would have understood that; for them, the wife really had no alternative. To submit was an act of love. The husband`s leadership was to be loving, not authoritarian.
OD: So, Paul was writing to couples who were equal in the sight of God, but unequal in Roman law. He told them they could have a Christian marriage even though the law decreed otherwise.
OL: Now, follow that thought to its logical conclusion: would Paul, who qualified the harshness of Roman marriage so beautifully, who said that Christians should be mutually submissive and that man and woman were equal before God, seek to impose male dominance on Christians who live, today, in a society where the laws declare the equality of the sexes? Section Eighteen is an anachronism.
OD: But what does that do to the principle of marriage as a model "of the way God relates to His people?" God has not changed since Roman times. If wives should submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ, surely that means that the husband is leader in the marriage.
OL: Paul`s "Christ and church" analogy related to the dominant/subservient relationship of husband and wife that was mandated by Roman law. But how far did Paul, the theologian, intend that analogy to apply? Paul was logical in his teachings. He knew that equating the relationship of God to His people with that of husband to wife, was not infinitely valid.
How does God relate to His people? He relates as the Divine to the human, the Perfect to the imperfect, the Creator to the created, the Saviour to the redeemed. Can this analogy be extended to the marriage relationship in first century Rome or at any other time? Did Paul intend to carry the analogy to that extreme? Surely not!
But there are other qualities of God`s relationship to his people and of Christ`s to his church. Christ relates to his church with love, faithfulness, and understanding. That is the comparison between Christ and the church and husband and wife that applied in Rome and, of course, still applies today.
OD: (After some thought.) I agree that no sensible understanding of Paul`s teaching about marriage would conclude that he intended that the husband`s role in marriage would be Godlike. But is that a fair reading of Section Eighteen? The Southern Baptists who wrote Section Eighteen about "The Family" were concerned because marriage and the family are in a terrible shape today. You know that it was better when we were boys, when everyone knew that father was the boss. People stayed married in those days.
OL: I agree that Section Eighteen puts the best face possible on the contradiction it tries to justify: "husband and wife, equal before God, but unequal in marriage."
And, yes, families are in trouble. Our generation, the ones who went through the depression and World War II are about the last generation to feel a general sense of security in marriage. What went wrong? People have been looking for the answer to that question as long as I can remember. Isn`t it simplistic to think that the decline of the husband`s authority is the cause of decline in the strength of marriages? Isn`t it equally, or even more logical, to look for the answer in the decline of love and commitment by marriage partners, which, as we have noted, were qualities of a Christian marriage very important to the Apostle.
The drive toward equality of the sexes, in custom and the law, is not merely a perverse result of the agitation of "uppity women;" it owes much to elementary principles of justice. When I began the practice of law the wife needed her husband`s consent to sell her own separate property, property she brought into the marriage or that she inherited. The legal domination of the wife by the husband has been done away with primarily because it was not fair and men and women knew it.
You and I were taught that the husband is the "head of the house," but in my observation, the marriages that are strong and successful, are those of shared responsibility and decisions. In your marriage, how often does it come down to "Who`s boss?" when important decisions have to be made?
OD: You`re right about that. I seldom make important decisions, even in business matters, which is my role in the marriage, unless I at least discuss it with my wife. Thank God we`ve had a partnership, not a "Roman" marriage.
OL: Today, most husbands are not the sole breadwinners and most wives are not relegated solely to the domesticrole. That did not come about because husbands ceased to be "servant leaders" and wives were no longer "graciously submissive." Rather it resulted from a great change in the way people live. Machines, from the typewriter to the dishwasher, have served to make it possible for the mother of small children to be gainfully employed outside the home. It is possible to have a Christian family where both husband and wife work. Do these marriages benefit from an unequal relationship between husband and wife?
A more disturbing trend is the large number of single mothers. Getting men to take responsibility for their children is the problem. Tell me we need more responsible and more loving husbands, and I agree. But we don`t need better "top sergeants."
OD: "Top sergeants!" You are not being fair to Section Eighteen. Anachronistic it may be, but it does not describe a harsh domestic dictatorship. The husband is to "provide for, to protect and to lead" his family. Is that a "put down" of the wife?
OL: Well, consider this: a mother leaves her job to take a child to the doctor, reads a Bible story to that child at bedtime while dirty dishes are in the sink, or she may even be the one who keeps the family check book. Do you think that she has something to do with providing for, protecting and leading that family? It is not that a husband provider, protector and leader is bad, but that wives perform those same functions.
Section Eighteen falls into the Orwellian fallacy. The pigs, you recall, ruled the barnyard with the slogan, "All animals are equal, but pigs are more equal than others."
OD: Let`s be practical. When there are differences of opinion, somebody must have the last word. Of course, people need to be considerate of the opinions of others, particularly to a marriage partner. But, when there is a difference concerning things that really matter, and a decision must be made, somebody must have the last word. Paul says it is the husband!
OL: Nowhere in America would you be more likely to find agreement with that sentiment than in the city where this amendment to the BF&M was adopted, Salt Lake City. Have you heard the radio spot the Mormons have been playing for a number of years about the wife smoking?
OD: You mean the one where the stern-sounding husband says, "My wife smokes. I don`t permit it in the house. It`s not good for my five beautiful children?"
OL: I see you remember it as vividly as I do. That is the first requirement of a good commercial, that people remember it. Well, the wife acknowledges that smoking "is a habit" and one of the children chimes in, "My mom smokes. I wish she didn`t."
OD: I used to smoke cigars, and my wife made me smoke outside. Said it ruined the curtains.
OL: I`ll say this much for the Mormons, they do not sugarcoat it. The husband`s tone and words could have been spoken by Brigham Young himself. And the issue, whether a parent should smoke in a confined space with children present, genuinely concerns the health of the children. But the entire spirit of that brief little domestic drama is very disturbing to me. This is a marriage that is likely to cause much more serious damage to those five beautiful children than even the risk of lung cancer.
Why does the wife insist on smoking when she realizes it is just a habit and damaging to her and annoying to those who are closest to her? She has consented to smoke outside. What resentment does she exhale with every puff? Does she insist on smoking because it is one "habit" in which she can assert herself-defy her husband? What is the message that the children get, that their father loves their mother and them, or that he is determined to dominate? Perhaps the former, certainly the latter.
I will guarantee you one thing: if marriage becomes a question of who will have the last word, the answer is likely to be the judge in the divorce proceedings. In every phase of a marriage relationship, the marriage partners need to work things out as to who will yield, and the yielding should be willing, not grudging, to find an answer both can live with. In a good marriage, it is not always the husband who has the final word, even on matters where he feels strongly. Submitting, one to the other, as the Bible says, is much the better solution. I say it is the only solution.
OD: Actually, I can`t recall an argument with my wife, I mean disagreement, that I thought could be settled by insisting I had the right to the last word.
OL: Recently I had dinner with a young married couple where the husband just happens to be the sole breadwinner and the wife stays home with young children. As the rest of us were visiting around the table I noticed that the husband was at the kitchen sink doing the dishes.
To the wife and the mother of the dishwasher I said, "One of you trained that boy right." The wife said, "But I cut the grass this afternoon." Now there is a good marriage, where each is a "servant leader" and a "gracious submitter."
The assignment of roles as "leader" and "follower" to husband and wife offends most people. As Charles Wade says in that newspaper article "The Bible doesn`t teach that the husband is the general and the wife is the private, yet that is the way it gets interpreted."
OD: You make a good case for the proposition that Paul`s teaching must be understood in the context of his time. That is what still bothers me: "the context of his time." We believe the Bible is true and that its truth is for all time. What Paul wrote, he was inspired to write. It would make it so much simpler if he had just said, "The law of marriage is wrong-husband and wife are equal before God and should be equal in their relationship."
OL: I agree that would have made it simpler. Paul was not a rebel against the Romans, not against their rule or against their law, and this period was in a time when many Jews were rebelling and preaching rebellion. Why was he not a rebel? I can only conclude it was because it was not his mission to rebel. Unjust as it was in some respects, Roman rule was beneficial to Paul`s purpose.
Rome ruled every country whose shores were washed by the Mediterranean, and beyond that, into Europe and the British Isles. This was advantageous for Paul in his mission. First, he could go where he wanted and be protected by Roman law. Second, the Romans were very tolerant of religious beliefs and practices in conquered countries. They had many gods, mostly adopted from the Greeks, and the Romans permitted conquered peoples to worship their own deities. There was, of course, a limit to Roman tolerance; there were episodes of persecution of Jews, and later Christians, because their worship of One God was a challenge to the primacy of the Roman Emperor. But for most of his ministry, Paul was protected by Roman law. He did not preach resistance to Roman law.
Neither did Jesus. He gave us the most memorable lesson in respect for civil authority when the Pharisees, who never seemed to know when they were overmatched, asked Him if it were permitted to pay taxes to Rome. As you recall, He asked to see a Roman coin. "Whose image is on the coin?" Jesus asked. When told it was Caesar`s image, Jesus said "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar`s and unto God that which is God`s."
Jesus` message was the most revolutionary ever brought to this world, but he was not a reformer in the sense of proposing one law or opposing another. In this respect, Paul, was like Jesus.
OD: You know, you have shed light on something that has always bothered me: why did Paul never speak out against slavery? I can remember when I was a boy some preachers would cite the Bible to justify discrimination against African-Americans. Paul admonished servants to obey their masters, and most of those servants were actually slaves.
OL: The most dramatic illustration of that is the beautiful Epistle to Philemon. Philemon was a Greek who had become a Christian through Paul`s preaching. While he was a prisoner in Rome, Paul was served in his prison by one Onesimus, another of Paul`s converts. It happened that Onesimus was a slave who had escaped from his master, Philemon. Paul now sent Onesimus back to Philemon with this letter in hand. Not a sermon, but a note written to one man, not to a church; an appeal, man to man, heart to heart. Think of this: Onesimus is an escaped slave who probably stole from his master and he is returning to a master who has the power to have him put to death without ceremony. The letter he brings asks that Onesimus be permitted to return to serve Paul in his confinement. How does Paul argue Onesimus` case? Does he say, "Slavery is wrong and you have no right to hold him, therefore free him?" Not at all.
Here is Paul`s plea: "Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for awhile, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother-especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord" (Phil. 15-16).
What happened to Onesimus when he handed that letter to Philemon? Can you imagine anything other than that he was sent back to Paul? The spiritual quality of Paul`s appeal to Philemon is immense, but no condemnation of involuntary servitude, only an appeal to love between brothers in Christ.
When we read Paul on marriage, as on the subject of slavery, we should keep always in mind that Paul was a teacher of spiritual truths, not a legal reformer.
OD: I admit you make a strong case. I might even say you make a convincing case. But you admit that marriage as described in "The Family" is not a harsh tyranny, and has worked for a lot of us in our generation. Why should Texas Baptists cause a split, which is painful to all of us, and puts the Cooperative Program at risk?
OL: Of course that bothers me. Most Baptists are reluctant to take up issues that are divisive. But the same is not true of those who have dominated the Southern Baptist Convention for many years. They promote their beliefs and, no doubt, think they are right, without much obvious concern for the affect on Baptist unity.
In 2000 the Southern Baptist Convention revised the Baptist Faith and Message again, this time declaring that, in the Church, "the office of pastor is limited to men." The Associated Press on June 15, 2000, reported on this action: "`Approval of the men-only pastor clause will probably drive out more congregations,` said the Rev. Daniel Vestal, of Atlanta, coordinator for a group of 2000 theologically moderate congregations. The newly elected president of the Southern Baptists, James G. Merritt, a 47-year-old conservative from Snellville, Ga., responded to the idea of churches leaving by saying: `I don`t fear a split. I don`t even fear a splinter.`"
Two thousand congregations who might not agree, and not to be dignified as even a splinter? As one who heard J. Frank Norris preach, I assure you that one scripture fundamentalists follow sparingly is: "A soft answer turneth away wrath."
OD: Still, I fear that this issue might cause divisions in our own church.
OL: I wish I could allay that fear, which I share. I do not fall out with those who agree with Section Eighteen. But, they should not impose it on other Baptists. Baptists who declare that the Holy Bible, alone, is God`s message, must be very cautious when they attempt to put that message into their own words, and then insist that their interpretation is authoritative. Section Eighteen is a violation of the Baptist Faith and Message, which recognizes Soul Competency. Inevitably, one day it will be seen as such.
In fact, even before they got away from Salt Lake City I saw a report in a newspaper of an interview with Mrs. Paige Patterson, wife of the president who had presided over that convention. She was interviewed by a reporter who asked her if she was willing to be "graciously submissive" to her husband`s leadership. Of course, she said she was willing. The reporter asked what she would do if her husband as leader made a decision she thought was not according to Bible teachings. "Then, I would do what I thought was right," she replied.
Soul Competency triumphed over Section Eighteen!
Mrs. Patterson`s reply was not much different in its meaning from the epistle Martin Luther nailed to the church wall. You remember what that started.
