A.M. Leibowitz

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A new view of submission

Blogs, Gender Roles, Relationships

This is the third post on the subject of mutuality (see footnote).

I got some nice responses to my first post in this series, including a mention in this post (which I enjoyed reading; I appreciate the writer’s generous, loving tone).  On my Facebook page, one friend wrote,

[To] us that word [submission] doesn’t mean authority it mean[s] “source.”

I found myself thinking about that, because I liked it, but couldn’t place exactly why.  Then I realized that I liked it because it has profound implications for both complementarians and egalitarians.  In other words, we can both be right, because in our unique marriages, we can figure out with our spouses what to do with it.

I looked up the word “source” and found the following definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary:

  1. The point at which something springs into being or from which it derives or is obtained.
  2. The point of origin, such as a spring, of a stream or river.
  3. One that causes, creates, or initiates; a maker.
  4. One, such as a person or document, that supplies information: A reporter is only as reliable as his or her sources.
  5. Physics. The point or part of a system where energy or mass is added to the system.

Each one of those definitions can hold meaning within a marriage.  Each one can be a point of blessing for a couple, depending on how they view their roles and how they are seeking to honor one another and Jesus.  The beautiful part about the word is that when it’s applied to the passage about mutual submission, it can take on a whole new dimension.

Personally, being kind of a geek, I like definition number 5.  It suits us well, as my husband and I both score major Nerd Points, both in our marriage and in life generally.  If marriage is a system, then it certainly makes sense that “mass” would have been added when we entered into it!

I would encourage you, with your spouse, to engage with this concept of “source” in marriage.  What does it mean for you?  How does it work in practical terms?  In what ways does this make you feel either more free or more restricted?  I hope that in digging deeper, you will be able to find peace with how your relationship works.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans.  You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012.  Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic.  On Friday, I will highlight my favorites.  Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.
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What if a man can’t lead?

Blogs, Family, Gender Roles, Relationships

I’m continuing my posts this week on the subject of mutuality.  Today’s topic: Exceptions to the rule.

Whenever I hear the words “Biblical womanhood” I want to do several things:  Throw something large, heavy, and preferably breakable; scream; hide until whoever said it goes away.

I understand that a certain kind of relationship is to be expected when you take a particular female personality type and a particular male personality type and put them together in a marriage.  And you know what?  That’s awesome for them that they have figured out how to make their marriage work, honoring their natural styles.  But I’d rather they keep their opinions about my marriage to themselves, thanks.  My marriage isn’t built on obeying a certain set of rules, goals, traits, or what have you.

Anyway, one thing that always concerns me is the number of people who are left out of the equation.  I can handle it.  I’m used to being a non-traditional woman among traditional Christians.  Story of my life, for many, many years.  No, I’m more frustrated by the traditional people left out in the cold by people hawking Biblical womanhood.

There are a lot of women who can’t fulfill this role even if they want to.  As one friend put it, “I don’t like hearing all the time about how I’m supposed to submit to my husband.  I don’t have a husband.  Am I supposed to go find one so I can submit to him?”  Another friend asked, “What am I supposed to do?  I’m a single parent.  I have to be both mom and dad to my kids.  Who do I submit to?”

Last night, my husband and I generated a list of people who might have some difficulty with the typical conservative marriage expectations:

  • Women whose husbands have died or abandoned their family
  • Women who have never been married
  • Women whose husbands are ill or injured and unable to “lead” their families
  • Women whose husbands have left the Christian faith and cannot be the spiritual authority
  • Women who became Christians but their husbands did not (see above)
  • Women whose husbands are deep in addiction
  • Women whose husbands are abusive
  • Women whose husbands are doing things that are morally corrupt or illegal
  • Women whose husbands are incarcerated
  • Women whose husbands spend large amounts of time away from home (due to work or military service)

That’s an awful lot of exceptions to the rule.

I am sure that conservative people would have some snappy answer for all of it.  Or else they might say that of course there are exceptions, this applies to “regular” people.  That’s fascinating, but it doesn’t do much to help the people who are in the midst of those situations.  It doesn’t help the woman who has lived her entire marriage being the kind of Biblical wife she believed she should be, and now finds herself without a spiritual rudder because her husband has Alzheimer’s.  It doesn’t help the woman who suddenly finds herself a single mother of three because her husband has left her for another woman.  It doesn’t help the woman who has given her whole life in service to others, believing her highest calling wasn’t marriage but the mission field.  It doesn’t help the woman whose husband returns to her every night, blind drunk.  It doesn’t help the woman whose husband has spent the better part of their marriage beating her and calling her names.

Instead of labeling those women “irregular” and “exceptions to the rule,” why not make a point of helping those women gain strength in Christ?  I know there are support groups for people dealing with life issues.  However, shouldn’t the church be another place they can turn?  There are more women in these situations than you know.  Instead of reminding them of the ways they are different from all the “normal” families, where Dad is the strong head of the household, can’t we do more to empower those people who don’t fit that mold?

If we really want to build healthy marriages and healthy families, we need to start by removing language that says or implies that proper, Biblical marriage is the pinnacle of existence.  We need to talk more about how families can be strengthened in God-honoring and people-honoring ways that have less to do with gender roles and more to do with respecting each person’s needs within the home.  When we can do that, we will bring hope and healing for all women, regardless of relationship status.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans.  You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012.  Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic.  On Friday, I will highlight my favorites.  Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.
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What would happen if I didn’t submit to my husband?

Blogs, Family, Gender Roles, Relationships, Religion

I didn’t grow up in a family culture that promoted “Biblical womanhood.”  My mother had been an evangelical Christian, and then spent many years as a non-believer/agnostic/possibly something else before returning to the church.  My father is a non-religious Jew.  Throughout my childhood, I attended a Unitarian church.  In Sunday school, we drew pictures of what God might look like, watched secular kids’ movies, and ate popcorn.  We didn’t learn much about what men and women are supposed to be like or how husbands and wives are supposed to make marriage work.

When I became a Christian at age 14, I had no idea what was in the Bible.  My mother had a dusty, old King James Bible on her shelf, which I promptly took out and started to read.  I began with the Psalms.  At my church youth group, we were studying Revelation (our leaders did a fantastic job with it, by the way; a post for another time).  I didn’t learn much about Biblical womanhood there, either.

The denomination my church belonged to, PCUSA (Presbyterian), allows women to be elders and pastors.  I don’t recall much about Biblical womanhood or wives and husbands over my years there.  Maybe I tuned it out, or maybe it didn’t make sense to me, but it didn’t register.

Until I found Ephesians 5.

I read these words:

 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do 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.

I didn’t understand them.  So I asked some of the adults at church, “What does this mean, submit?”  They mostly seemed uncomfortable, awkward, like they weren’t sure how to answer that question.  I got everything from “respect your husband” to “do what he says” to “be the kind of wife and mother he wants to come home to” to the considerably more honest “I don’t really know.”  One person said, “We take it to mean that when there is a major life decision, we go with his preference.”

I think I gave up.  In fact, “submission” wasn’t even something my husband and I ever talked about.  He was an avowed feminist, and I’m admittedly a pretty intense and opinionated person, so it never seemed to matter.  We simply did what came very naturally for us:  Talked about everything, worked things out when we disagreed, and based our relationship on mutual respect.  The one time our pastor gave a (rather half-hearted) sermon on submission in marriage, my husband and I ended up talking about how no one ever seemed to be able to define that term clearly.

I have since been exposed to a heck of a lot of conservative teaching on this topic.  Life has a way of doing that, I suppose.  I’ve met a lot more people and read a lot more books since the early days of my Christian faith and my marriage.  In fact, it seems like the older I get, the more I hear about the whole “wifely submission” thing.  Guess what?  No one seems any more clear on it than the people I spoke to at my first church or my college professors or my friends or my former pastor.  It’s still murky.

These days, my big question isn’t “What is submission?”  Instead, it’s “What will happen if I don’t?”

The message has been pretty clear that “bad things” will indeed happen if I don’t become the properly submissive wife I am Biblically meant to be.  I’ve been told that my children will be unhappy due to lack of clear authority; my marriage will suffer and we will be miserable; my children will “turn gay” because they have a gentle, nurturing father and a strong-willed mother.  Our lives will be out of control, because things run more “smoothly” if I show my husband proper (read: their version of) respect.  Our home will be filled with tension and strife.

So far, none of those dire predictions have come true.

Do we have our share of tension?  Sure.  Want to know what my husband and I argue about most?  Just take a wild guess.  It’s none of the usual things couples fight about (money, kids, sex).  Nope.  Our biggest arguments are about differences of opinion on social/political topics.  Not even Biblical interpretation or Christian doctrine—just stupid things.  We’ve learned to work through it, though, and we’ve learned to mutually respect each other’s views.

If your natural personalities mesh with a more conservative view on marriage, and this works to create a loving, happy home, then that is wonderful.  But if you’re like my husband and me, and your natural personalities don’t fit with the conservative view, you have nothing to be ashamed of.  What’s more important is that you build in your home a culture of respect.  There are a thousand—a million—ways to do this.  Start by applying what Jesus called the Greatest Commandments: Love God, love others.  All the rest will fall in place.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans.  You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012.  Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic.  On Friday, I will highlight my favorites.  Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.
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Notable News: Week of April 21-27

Blogs, Cool Stuff, Links, Odds 'n' Ends

It’s been a newsworthy week!  Lots of good stuff.  Go read some awesome things happening around the web:

1. Grace for oppressors

In case anyone missed it, there’s been a ton of web buzz about Hugo Schwyzer, a “feminist” with a checkered past that he attempted to gloss over for his own gain.  The response was a whole lot of bloggin’ about what it means to be a male feminist ally and how we keep our space safe.  It’s brought up a ton of interesting discussion about all types of oppression and victimization, and how Christians ought to respond.  This post by Fred Clark (Slacktivist) sums it up nicely: Mercy for the downpresser man is not the first step. Or the second, or third.

2. New York State Department of Education, the 8th grade ELA test, and a rogue pineapple

In an epic fail, a bizarre question appeared on (and subsequently disappeared from) the test last week.  Everything you ever wanted to know about the sleeveless nature of pineapples can be found at these web sites:

3. John Shore’s open call for Christian LGBT allies

Love him or hate him (I happen to love him), John Shore doesn’t shy away from the Big Issues.  He’s created a petition for Christians to sign, calling for us to stand up as allies to our LGBT friends, neighbors, and loved ones.  You can read about it here, and sign it here.  The goal is hundreds of thousands of signatures.  Let’s make it happen!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Provoketive: Review of Kosher Jesus

Provoketive

Visit Provoketive to read my latest, a review of Kosher Jesus by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (Gefen Publishing, February 1, 2012), Kindle edition.

When I first read that Kosher Jesus would be available in February, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. The prospect of reading more about Jesus from a purely Jewish perspective was intriguing.  I am pleased to say that Kosher Jesus lived up to my expectations. [continue reading]

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Around the Web: Kathy Baldock

Blogs, LGBTQ+

It’s Tuesday, time for me to introduce you to another blog.

Many of you know that I’m disgusted by the way that a lot of churches (and a lot of individual Christians, sadly) treat LGBT people.  Thankfully, I’m not alone in this.  Kathy Baldock works tirelessly to bridge the gap between the Church and LGBT people.

I’m not entirely sure how I came across her web site.  It was probably a Google search.  At any rate, I’m glad I did.  Prior to finding Ms. Baldock, I had only ever seen men doing this work.  That was something surprising, actually.  Women tend to be (in my experience) more open to inclusion, or at least acceptance.  I suppose that I assumed I would mostly find women at the front of the movement.

Anyway, while I know that a number of people won’t agree with Ms. Baldock’s conclusions, I hope that what she has to say doesn’t fall on deaf ears.  There should be at least some take-away when reading her blog.  And it should be pretty clear that she’s done her homework.  Although she herself has no close family who are LGBT, she has certainly developed many relationships along the way.  She is a fine example of what I’ve also called for, listening with an open heart.

Ms. Baldock is particularly passionate about working toward restoration between the Church and LGBT Christians.  More often than not, Christians’ idea of “outreach” to the LGBT community is to look for the people perceived as farthest from God.  The thousands of gay Christians are ignored and marginalized, because many conservative Christians see “gay” and “Christian” as being mutually exclusive.  Even when churches gather to celebrate diversity, with multiple faith traditions represented, there are still people left out of the equation.  Even if we are uncomfortable, even if we aren’t sure that we agree, all Christians should be able to find common ground.  Ms. Baldock’s efforts in this area are to be commended.

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