Wives Submit …
Submitting is one of the most difficult things we are called to do as Christians. It runs counter to our pride. We don’t think we should be put lower than anyone. It, also, runs counter to our culture. Certainly the idea of submitting based on gender is seen as just crazy. Even in christian culture we see very little talk of submission. If you count how many books have been written on christian leadership and then count how many are written on how to be a follower you get a quick impression on what believers are most interested in. We all want the power over others.
A big part of being Catholic is accepting the leaders God has put in place. You need to accept that the pope is in charge of the church. You need to accept that the bishop is in charge of the diocese. You need to accept that the priest is in charge of the parish. Then there is the family. Do we accept that the father is in charge of the family? As in the other cases one key is to understand the nature of the authority. It is not there to make one person greater and others less. Rather it makes a community possible where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. All members are blessed by accepting the gift of leadership rather than fighting to be the leader.
In marriage we often associate submission with abuse. We see a danger of a man disrespecting and taking advantage of his wife and somehow the only solution to that problem is to totally ditch the idea of submission. We decide we want a 50-50 relationship. When we do that we end up with other problems. There are times in a marriage when there can be a real power struggle. Often very unhealthy things happen when a couple gets locked in a dispute with no way out. They either break up. Sometimes they get a divorce or maybe they just emotionally break up and start to live as married singles. The other option is they fight and one of them wins. Then you get back to the abuse problem. One spouse will use money or sex or physical violence to gain a dominant position and it starts to get very ugly.
So why does submission help? Well let’s read Eph 5:21-33 first:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
So we start with the idea of submitting to eachother out of reverence for Christ. This calls for total submission. It is not a 50-50 reltionship but a 100-100. That is we give 100% of ourselves to our spouse. More precisely it is a 100-?. That is because out giving is unconditional. We don’t give ourselves 100% only when our spouse does so as well. We are to give ourselves fully even when our spouse does less than that. This allow us to be married to imperfect people.
OK, that is well and good but we still have exactly mirror relationships here. What about those times where there is a unresolvable conflict? Can mutual submission really avoid that? Most of the time it can but not always. Since marraiges are to be preserved ‘come what may’ we need a way out when this symetrical submission fails. That is why the rest of the text gives different commands to the wife than it does to the husband. The husband is called to be the leader and the wife is called on to accept his leadership. The style of leadership parallels what is asked of church leaders. That is a servant leadership that was modeled by Christ. That command to be a servant leader does not nullify the fact that he is to lead any more than Jesus telling the diciples, and by extension the bishops, to be servant leaders nullifies the bishop’s role as leader.
These leads to a bunch of questions. Why the husband and not the wife? Could not some marriages work better if the wife was in charge? Well, no. One reason is that women can’t be priests. God has created a unity between the role of father and the role of priest. Our culture really hates the idea that men and women might have deeper differences than the obvious biological ones. By binding the consciences of believers on the all male priesthood the church forces us to believe in such a difference. That is a topic for another day.
So what if the husband is a jerk? Well what should we do if our bishop is a jerk? Mostly we just obey him anyway, pray for him and hopefully resist the temptation to talk negatively about him. In extreme cases we might ask the pope to do something but that would be pretty rare. Something similar would be the case here. If it got really bad you might ask you parish priest if you could leave. Still in most cases we are to be humble, patient, and loving even when we feel we are being treated unfairly. By repaying evil with good you can transform many hearts. It is so hard but it is the path most likely to lead to a healing of the relationship. It is something to think about before entering marriage. Can I submit to this man?
So what if your wife just won’t listen? Again love, patience, and self ssacrifice are in order. If people don’t listen to a bishop he can excommunicate them but he usually does not. Most fo the time he continues to encourage, to teach, to listen, to pray, and to try and reconcile. Husbands are called to the same thing. Work hard at communication and accomodation. If those become impossible then just pray and love. Again this is hard and again we need to have faith that God can change bad situations if we are faithful to what he has asked of us.
So when does this ‘mutual submission’ thing end and the ‘head of the family’ thing begin? Well, when does consensus building in a parish end and obedience to the bishop begin. Obedience begins when the bishop says it need to begin. Deciding when to use authority is always part of the authority. Having somebody to submit only when they feel they should submit just does not work. You can still end up in disagreement over whether this is a matter for submisssion or not. That is why wives are called to submit ‘in everything’. Not because all matter should be dictated by the husband. If the marriage is working right it should rarely happen. Still there is no matter to big, to small, to personal, to anything such that it is excluded from potentially be a matter of submission.
