2. Taming of the Shrew (Gender Issues)
BASIS FOR MARRIAGE
Last week we discussed contentment as a single. Why? Because marriage won’t heal
your dysfunctions, or fix your problems. If you expect a spouse to fix you, you’re set up
for marriage trouble. Jesus said, you can be happy and whole as a single.
So that’s where we started last week. BUT – that certainly doesn’t mean that the
longing for marriage that most singles feel is somehow bad or wrong. In the Bible, God
says:
“It is not good for man to be alone.” He’s saying, I created you to be community
creatures. I created you with an inner desire to find a mate. And this mating will
reflect me. God reveals: I’m a communal unity, a mysterious three in One,
Father Son and Holy Spirit. So marriage was meant to be a reflection of that
mystery: a man, a woman and their God joined in a mystical union.”
Aside: this is the reason why Christians believe that homosexual marriage is a
contradiction in terms. See, for Christians marriage is built on the idea that men and
women are both made in the image of God. Genesis 1:27:
Let US make man in OUR image
So God created people in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
So when God makes a marriage, the two parts of God’s image are needed: both male
and female. Jesus confirmed this hetero sexual, monogamous design was necessary
for a true union to form when he said:
Matt 19:4-6 “…in the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' 'For
this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and
the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one.
Jesus was reaffirming the beautiful symmetry and truth in the story of Genesis: God the
Creator makes Man. But he pulls Eve OUT of Adam. So in Adam the two were one,
but then in the making of Eve where there was one there’s now two. But in marriage,
two become ONE again.
At the heart of the design is UNITY in DIVERSITY. Remove either one and you don’t
have God’s design for marriage. It’s like what’s written on our coins: E Pluribus Unum.
Out of the many, one.
This ONE FLESH design, is why romantic love and marriage is the most beautiful,
mysterious, intoxicating… frustrating, angering, infuriating, exasperating, maddening
thing on earth – at the SAME TIME. Because the diversity of the genders is at the heart
of both the attraction and the repulsion. Because after a while, we find Unum is easier
than PLURIBUS.
Haven’t you seen it in young couples, where they are on the desperate search for “THE
ONE”? It starts as a noble quest, a consuming, heart pounding adventure! But then,
you see over a period of sometimes month, THE ONE turns into THE ONE WHO
DRIVES ME NUTS. I’ve heard people say:
- Oh, he’s so social, he loves his buddies, he’s so real, sometimes he just burps
when he’s watching TV, it’s so cute!
o Then a few years later it’s “he’s such a pig, and he’s never at home!”
- Or, “she really helps me be a better man, I love that!, and she has the cutest little
thing she does with her nose when she’s angry, it’s so cute!”
o Then a few year later it’s, “this woman is a shrew! I can’t stand how bossy
she is!”
The glory of marriage is in the diversity, the difference, the “OTHER-NESS” of it. That’s
what “heteros” means: “other”. We’re attracted to the “OTHER”. But after a while we
say, I don’t like “THE OTHER”. I like me and my way. So the challenge or marriage is
the melding of two opposite sides of God’s image into a life long relationship.
And we shouldn’t be embarrassed to acknowledge then that there is such a thing as
- A masculine mystique
- A feminine mystique.
o those parts of gender that reflect God’s image in unique ways.
DIFFERENT SEXES, DIFFERENT INSTRUCTIONS
So with this mystery and differentness of GENDER and the diversity of God’s Image in
our minds, it shouldn’t surprise us that when God gets down to marriage instruction in
the Bible, He gives more than a passing nod to the gender issue. Because we reflect
different parts of God’s image, it stands to reason we’re going to have different
challenges to work on, different needs we bring to the melding process of ONE FLESH
marriage.
So let’s listen to a key piece of the Bible’s instruction to married couples:
Eph 5:21-33 And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for
Christ. You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. …And you
husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He
gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and
God's word. …So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself,
and the wife must respect her husband.
Well, this verse brings up weird and hard reactions from both men and women today
who have been born and raised in a liberated culture. So before we can just dive in
here, I thought we should hear from a woman from AC3 whose had to wrestle through
what this verse means in a very fresh way as a new Christian bride as of last summer.
SUBMISSION FOR ALL
I love how Erin just wrestled with this, and came to see that in context of this passage
and other Scripture, your marching orders as women never include uncritical
subjugation. Unquestioned obedience. *
But notice what she also found: an overarching rule for Christian households that men
AND women need to hear:
EVERYONE submits. Submit to one ANOTHER…
This is simply a reflection of how Christians are to mimic how Jesus laid down his life in
servanthood for others. In fact, in Philippians 2 when Paul is not talking about marriage
he says every Christian, male or female should “consider others as better than
yourself”. So at a fundamental level, the ROLES Paul lays out for men and women are
like different ways of saying the same thing. Listen to them again:
- The wife who is called to submit to her husband
- The husband who is called to give up themselves for their brides, and to love
their wives as their own bodies.
Which of these involves more giving up of yourself? Which of these involves more
servanthood? More deferring? If you were to observe these commands lived out in any
marriage, you would have a really hard time identifying a hierarchy wouldn’t you? You
would rather see a servanthood competition where the leader could only be identified as
the one who initiated the self giving, rather than the one who responds to it.
HEAD – means most often: source – point of origination.
So perhaps Erin’s talk can move us away from the controversy and focus us like a laser
beam on the theme that runs throughout the instruction. The theme is counter cultural:
servanthood. Self giving. Women, I have to ask you a bald question here:
- If you’re struggling with submitting to you husband, on what grounds?
o Because he doesn’t have to submit to you? Ah, but we’ve already seen
that he does. Laying down his life means a regular giving up of his needs
for your own, which must involve deferring.
o Because it confers some kind of inferior status on you? But the Bible says
the whole Church is a bride! And the Lord of Life came into the world
through a WOMAN! And a woman was the first to see him risen from the
dead. And both Jesus and Paul elevated women enormously, bringing
them into their extended entourage of followers and workers. Where’s the
inferior status?
And see here we are getting to the heart of it. Your problem might not be what you
think are misogynistic marriage rules. Your real problem might just be with Christianity
in general. Because in our faith, the road to up is down. Submit comes up a lot.
- Submit yourself to the state
- Submit yourself to your boss
- Submit yourself to your neighbor’s interests as well as your own
- Submit yourself to your church leader’s
- Submit yourself to God’s authority
So men AND women, the connective tissue in your role is SERVANTHOOD. If you say,
I’m not going to serve until she does first – until he does first – what you are rejecting is
not you’re your spouses claim to authority, but God’s! And if you resist this, you’re not
resisting some arcane form of marriage from the stone age, you are resisting the path of
Christ…
Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very form of a servant. And being
found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto
death, even death on a Cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every
knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God
the Father.
The word “submit” has nothing to do with your husband or wife. It has EVERYTHING to
do with your relationship with Jesus Christ. Which is why Paul says to wives AND
husbands, “submit to one another” why? Out of obedience to their whims? To make
yourself a doormat? Because they’re better than you? No.
“out of reverence for Christ.” Will you do this, out of reverence to Christ?
But you say
- what about my needs?
- What about my concerns?
- What I’m not getting what I need out of this relationship?
Well, there are times that hearts grow hard and we’ll talk about what to do next week
when we address conflict. But we have to get the basic rule before we can understand
the exceptions to the rule.
INDIVIDUAL GENDER NEEDS
So if submission is assumed, and mutual, and just part of being a Christian spouse…
what is the value of the difference instructions to men and women? Much if we move to
the end of the passage when Paul simplifies and summarizes the rule in Eph 5:33:
- each husband must love his wife as he loves himself,
- each wife must respect her husband.
RESPECT AND LOVE.
Why these two words specifically? Because God knows this is what they are wired to
need…
LITTLE BOYS AND THE MASCULINE SOUL
We have raised two boys and when they were young, my wife heard once that young
boys often gravitated toward stuffed animals but would never ask for them because of
gender stereotypes.
So we provided stuffed bears, and lions and other things, but what was it they really
wanted? More ammo. Their room became an arsenal. Pirate swords, Indian knives,
pistols, light sabers, bows and arrows, and “air-soft” shooters (a marketing ploy for
moms). They hit and slammed and wrestled… and that’s how they showed affection.
You may look at a young boy and tsk tsk this aggressive wildness, this competitive
push, this desire to conquer and vanquish and win, as a terrible thing. But someday
you may need that boy to storm a beach into the face of Nazi bullets to save the world
from tyranny, and then perhaps you won’t think it’s such a terrible thing.
But the bigger thing is what this is telling us about what men want. They want to be
known…
- as someone who could get it done.
- As someone who made the cut.
- As someone who was noble and not put to shame.
Then look at how men talk to each other:
- “what’s up at work? I used to do that myself!” Can you imagine a woman
saying, “man, I sure schooled you scrap-booking last night – 5 pages to 2!”
Imagine them chest bumping after that? No! Men establish their value by
discussing mutual accomplishments and they get the appropriate admiration
and esteem from their fellow males.
LITTLE GIRLS AND THE FEMININE SOUL
But now let’s turn to women. I’ll let a woman speak for them. Stasi Eldredge says, in
her book Captivating:
Look at the games that little girls play, and if you can, remember what you
dreamed of as a little girl. Look at the movies women love. Listen to your own
heart and the hearts of the women you know. Like Sleeping Beauty, like
Cinderella, like Cora in Last of the Mohicans, I wanted to be the heroine and
have my hero come for me. Why am I embarrassed to tell you this? I simply
loved feeling wanted and fought for. This desire is set deep in the heart of every
little girl – and every woman. Yet most of us are ashamed of it. We downplay it.
We pretend that it is less than it is. We are women of the 21st century after all –
strong, independent, and capable, thank you very much. Uh-huh… and who is
buying all those romance novels?
What Stasi is not saying is that women are nothing without a man. What she’s saying is
that in general girls have an innate desire to be precious to someone and this desire
matures as they get older… into a longing to be pursued, desired and wanted as
women. To be considered top priority.
So now look at how women talk to each other:
- “your hair looks cute; are you feeling OK? Have you lost weight?!” Imagine
a man coming up to his buddy saying, “what shampoos are you using?”.
Women speak a language of consideration and are relational experts.
And now we’re cutting close to what women really want and need in marriage.
- a fate worse than death for your woman, is to feel unloved and un-pursued,
un-prioritized and alone.
- Women, a fate worse than death for your man, is to feel inadequate and
disrespected, and like he can’t cut it.
So here’s God, honing right in on this inherent need with two simple words.
RESPECT and LOVE.
So to serve and submit to your husband:
1. RESPECT HIS JUDGMENT.
2. RESPECT HIS ABILITIES
So to serve and submit to your wife:
1. CHERISH THROUGH REGULAR REASSURANCE:
2. CHERISH THROUGH PERSISTENT PURSUIT
Men we’ll be talking about some of these issues in our men’s forum coming January
27th and we’ll delve into how to cope with the dark side of the masculine soul with all the
hyper-accomplishment, and fears that go with feeling we’re not DOING enough to
measure up.
