In Half the Church, Carolyn Custis Jones tells us that the church should be the one leading the fight for women. But as we know, the church is part of the problem. Last week someone sent me a book about equality that she had written. Skimming over it quickly I could see that there was some very good material in the book. But when I got to her conclusion, she negated everything that she had written about equality when she told women that God tells them to voluntarily submit to their husbands because they are actually submitting to Jesus.
There we have it! God stuck the husband in between a wife and Him. Now why would God do that? As Carolyn James points out in her book, both are the image of God.
There is a picture being sent around on facebook of a woman being beaten by a man and the sender hopes that this picture will be shared 1,000 times as a testimony against men who beat women. I agree and hope that more than that will send it around. But I doubt they will. There is still within us the belief that women who are beaten by their husbands ‘ask for it’ or have some other fault which justifies the beating.
One of the reasons women are beaten and mistreated in a marriage or relationship is because the men and the women are taught that the man is her leader and her ruler. That means that he gets to set the rules she is to go by.
This fallacy is perpetuated in our churches and bleeds out into society, causing women who do not even go to church to suffer because somebody convinced her boyfriend or husband that she is to voluntarily submit to him.
Many of us have hidden within us a remnant of women’s inferior position, and it comes out in the guise of “the Bible says so.” But that isn’t so. The Bible tells us that in the beginning “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
One image cannot rule over the other image. Will you join me in speaking out against all who promote male headship as being God’s plan. Equal means Equal. There are no equal-buts.
bWe Baptist Women for Equality's Blog 
“But when I got to her conclusion, she negated everything that she had written about equality when she told women that God tells them to voluntarily submit to their husbands because they are actually submitting to Jesus.”
Sad misinterpretation of Ephe. 5. Verse 21 says that we are to submit to everyone in the fear of the Lord. This should immediately give pause to the English translation using ‘submit’. We don’t think in English of submitting to everyone else, we think of yielding, giving way, supporting or attaching in support. These are better understandings of upotassomai than just plain submit. Since this is Paul introduction into the attitude, to which the rest follows, once we get the first part correct, then it isn’t too difficult to understand that ALSO wives are to support, yielding, give way and attach themselves to their husbands in a similar way that we all do toward Christ. This is because we are or should be thinking of becoming one with Christ and spouses should be thinking of becoming one with one another.
LikeLike
Cheryl has a good post on how the mindset of the world has infected Ephesians 5:
http://strivetoenter.com/wim/2012/01/08/eph-5-infected/
LikeLike
Thanks for sending that. In the book, Half the Church, the author says that marriage leaves out the majority of females (too young, too old, widowed, ill, etc) so how are they supposed to show their submission to Christ? Good thoughts.
LikeLike
Hi Shirley
A happy new year to you!
This link is a bit off topic for this particular post but I thought of you as soon as I saw it on facebook this morning (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZd0kLWP01c) – a group of women in Israel standing (dancing) against the exclusion of women from the public domain.
LikeLike