When Not to Follow Biblical Texts: Men in Authority Over Women
Last week, someone tagged me under a “Desiring God” Facebook post.
Desiring God is a ministry founded by John Piper, who, among other things, advocates for a strict form of complementarianism.
The post where I was tagged read in part “God calls men to love and lead their wives according to his good design. But what can a husband do if his wife resists his leadership?”
The writer offered “five ways her husband’s example helped lead her from feminism to joyful complementarity.” There was a linked post. I did not read the linked post, but I thought the excerpt called for a “Fix.”
So I left a comment under the post: “Or. God calls men to love their wives according to his good design. But what can a wife do if her husband resists her autonomy and agency?” Because that’s the real question here.”
Some commenters didn’t like my response (which was really about women existing as image-bearers) and they made their feelings known. I made a meme in response.
But today I want to talk about benevolent “male leadership” in marriage.
I want to highlight a problem I often see, which I believe is the driver of some of the things I saw with the Desiring God posts and an engagement I had with a male commenter on my page that same week.
Whenever women try to make a case for why something “Biblical” is not necessarily healthy/something we should follow – for example, gender roles – the response by some men tends to follow a pattern:
- Engage in some type of circular conversation
- Start to heat up when its called out
- Grandstand and paint themselves as misunderstood
- Call into question one’s intelligence, faith
- Insult and shame.
All the while…
People on that same side, who believe the same things these men do, distance themselves from the worst actors with: “Yeah, that’s bad BEHAVIOR by these guys. But the BELIEF itself isn’t wrong. It’s Biblical.”
Maybe some of us don’t know this yet, but Belief leads to Behavior. Our internal world, which includes the thoughts we think and the values driving our thoughts, shapes this external world we exist in. There are other reasons for behavior, like coping mechanisms, but majorly, what we believe shapes how we show up in our lives.
Just because a concept is found in the Bible does not mean that it is meant to be followed
I talk about this in my book The Newlyweds: Pursuing Mutuality Health and Happiness in Marriage (for dating, new and maturing couples) how when something is off behaviourally, we can reverse engineer and figure out what’s causing people to act the way they do and fix things from there.
We need to understand that just because a concept is found in the Bible does not mean that it is meant to be followed. Christians shouldn’t just do things because “the Bible says so.”
Because the same Bible that “puts men in authority over women” also discourses incest and forced marriages and other questionable, harmful behaviors and nobody’s beating their chest about following the latter.
For the record, Christians are supposed to do things because they look, feel and sound like Christ. And many Christians do infact read the Bible with the understanding that not everything is prescriptive and meant to be acted upon.
Some Christians do understand that some of these ancient cultures, histories, and storytelling are about us learning what not what to do—not telling us what to do now.
And so, in the same way, we can look at what Christ taught and seemed to model vs. what the cultures of the day taught and modeled and draw our lessons from there. Further, we can use our sacred brains and experience in our bodies to determine what harms and nurtures people. And make corrections from that level.
Men in authority over women: how healthy beliefs lead to positive outcomes
Healthy beliefs lead to positive outcomes, while harmful beliefs do not. To address negative outcomes, we examine our beliefs and replace them with healthier ones.
So, to the Christians defending “husband leadership,” and “men in authority over women”, insisting it works when people genuinely love God, you are very much part of the problem.
And until you decide to get curious about your beliefs, start listening to the experiences of others, read some research, books, and scholarly works, you’ll remain a part of the problem, walking right past God as you try to maintain the systems that make a good God weep.
My book The Newlyweds is all about helping couples explore what nurtures connection and what injures it. We can have amazing marriages – without gender-roles, 24/7 sacrifice and the erasure of personhood. We can recognize when our relationship is operating outside the framework of love and honor. If you are ready to create a marriage without hierarchies and learn to grow as equals, ORDER THE NEWLYWEDS HERE. (It’s an awesome gift for weddings and engagements!)
What readers are saying about The Newlyweds:
I think women in the church have been brainwashed by the sermons directed at men to “step up and lead your family like God has called you to do!” It made us think we couldn’t function without a man to lead us. Somehow it sounded right at the time. The “godly husband leading his family” was positioned as the solution to the lazy husband who had abdicated his role (think Mark Driscoll vibes 🤢). But what was never talked about was mutuality – until now! So thankful for your voice, Ngina, and others speaking truth.
I get really tired of this sort of power trip in the Church. Men…we don’t need you to be our leaders. That’s what our fathers did. We need you guys to be our partners. We are opposite but equals.
“We need you guys to be our partners.” Exactly