Submit?!

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. – Ephesians 5:22
Okay I’m going to say it since there are no other men out there saying it.,. WHAT?
Today I was reading an article talking about how women want to be like men (in terms of their autonomy, access to power and control etc.) It also mentions that for some strange reason, men don’t want to be like women… hmmm…. I wonder why that is?

I work with the Sexual assault and Domestic Violence Center. I have heard about abuse, sexism, misogyny, etc. for almost 4 years now. It makes me sick to the stomach to know that a man can treat a woman in the ways that I have heard while working here. So called male privilege and entitlement has led us in a direction and down a path that we should have never traveled… but we are and now we deal with the consequences.

At the beginning of time God mad man and woman, placed them in a paradise that he spoke into existence and blessed them with his raw presence. How beautiful does that sound? Man worked many years… perhaps hundreds before he finally was BLESSED with woman! It says in the bible that God Brought the woman to the man. Like a gift, more so like a treasure. When he sees her, what happens? He sees a person, similar to him but twice as beautiful. In fact she was so beautiful that her beauty and splendor draws something from his soul that he had never felt, trying to explain it with mere words and so the first poem is written, “"This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman, ' for she was taken out of man.” But then a few chapters down men begin to take advantage of women. And then it doesn’t stop…

My point is this. Women have been disrespected, harassed, beaten, raped, sold, objectified, and discriminated against ALL BY MEN! And then we wonder why women don’t want to be women and why men don’t want to be women? Alright! Who wins the grand prize for that observation!

So back to the above verse… is it wrong to tell women to submit to men?? Biblically it is not… Let me explain… at one point Jesus Christ “submitted” to God and His will. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. This is the relationship between Jesus Christ and God, one of love, order and one submitting to the other. It’s something beautiful and sacred. So what is the problem then… The fact that men abuse this relationship dynamic and use it to benefit their own selfishness and self entitlement to things that God did not place under him.

So the problem is not so much the fact that women are asked to submit to men and no longer wish to do so… the problem is that women don’t want to submit to men due to years of men abusing the authority that was given to them by God. The problem is that men have lost all respect for women and have therefore lost all respect FROM women. The Problem is that men read verses like “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…” but ignore the rest of it. A few verses down you have this: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...” And that is where the rubber meets the road. If we don’t love and respect all women then how in the world do we expect respect from ANY women? So here is how it actually goes: She shall submit HERSELF to you and you SHALL LOVE HER AS CHRIST LOVES THE CHURCH. Nowhere there do you see, “You shall make her submit” and nowhere there do you see, “you have to treat her like dirt until she submits,” it’s her choice. In fact the picture you see there is a perfect picture; one of love, care, compassion, grace and flat out beauty.

Men, we have to start earning back the respect from women, shown through the respect OF women, and then maybe one day women will look at this passage and instead of feeling defiant to the point of disobeying, they will gladly submit as Jesus submits to the father, bringing the perfect picture back to existence.

“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.” Ephesians 5:22-28 – Amen!