(Some things in Christianity tend to apply equally to all – love, grace, mercy – but there are some teachings that are non-applicable if you don’t happen to be a married believer whose spouse is also a believer. One would think the complement of male headship is female headship, but the former isn’t speaking to males in general (thank God!) and the latter doesn’t exist, seeing as how the compliment of male headship is female submission (though it doesn’t apply to females in general – thank God! again.) I guess male submission doesn’t exist either. Let’s imagine the shoe on the other foot anyway … )
God, in her sovereign power and infinite wisdom, together with her omniscience, arbitrarily designated woman to be the head of the man; “for from woman man is born, from man neither woman nor man is born.” Female headship, is the exercise of godly authority in a pattern of solid, Biblical order. Wives are to exert gentle, loving leadership over their husbands who are to joyfully and intelligently submit to the authority of their wives over them. We can see this pattern in how Christ leads the church and the church submits to Christ. Female headship is not about the human thirst for power and control over others, when sin corrupts this beautiful picture of Jesus’ relationship with the church, we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water – it means we should try all the more to make sure we teach it right so that people don’t get it wrong and the symbol is not maligned nor is our faith discredited. Remember, we want outsiders to look upon us and say “Sign me up for that!”
Male submission isn’t just being a doormat; but it’s being responsive to the initiation of female headship. Remember, it was Adam who chose to knowingly rebel when he ate the apple and was therefore blamed for the original sin and all sin that follows. Besides, it’s the reason why men have to cut their glory and women, can grow out their glorious tresses. That’s why men must dress modestly, for the sake of their sisters who cannot help themselves even though they try their best.
Only women may be pastors, elders, deacons, bishops, priests, and hold all teaching positions. Since Adam willfully rebelled, we can’t trust any of Adam’s sons with teaching as they might chose to spread heresy against doctrine. While yes, there are some men that might seem as if the Holy Spirit gave them the gift of teaching or leadership – it only seems that way because God, in her grace and kindness, created male spirits with the inability to lead. It’s not sexist, it’s just the way that God wants it. Women in general are just in charge and men are supposed to submit, but not to every woman. Specific men must submit to specific women in specific circumstances, husbands are to submit to wives, sons are to submit to their mothers, and widowers to the female leadership of the church.
According to the criterion of Boultbee: “If the reverse of a statement is absurd, then the original statement is an insult to the intelligence and ought never to have been made.”
It makes little sense how God, being omniscient – knowing fully well how seriously the Bible would be taken and that eventually egalitarian societies would emerge would create a rule arbitrarily giving husbands authority and requiring wives to submit the world over until the end of time knowing that every argument for the superiority of the male and the inferiority of the female would come to nothing. What if God had arbitrarily said that all blue-eyed people had to submit to all brown-eyed people? All lefties had authority over all righties?
Look, in the era in which the Bible was written, human fingerprints smudged a great many details, words are out of order, misspelled, missing entirely, added from seemingly nowhere – ideas from that culture are then used as an interpretive framework from which lessons are read out of Scripture and applied to daily life. In a world where men had first class status, they might have let some of their attitudes color the pages of the Bible. We need to learn not to read those colors as if they’re God’s word and the meaning of Scripture because we’d be getting it wrong. Very wrong.
Be Persuaded 