You might remember that I talked a little about God's beautiful plan for the family back in September. It was actually thoughts I shared with our church body on a Sunday morning. I wanted to delve further into Ephesians 5:22-24.
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the Church and He is the Savior of the Body. Therefore, just as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”
Perhaps you realize that TV and other forms of media are extremely prevalent, so much so, that families today are using media's examples of marriage and family structure as the example to follow.
That is sobering, to say the least.
(This is how long it's been since I've watched TV regularly.) Think of Everybody Loves Raymond, one of the more "wholesome" sitcoms out there. Raymond's and his wife's (I can't remember her name) marriage is not a Godly one. TV always seems to portray the husband as a lazy wimp and the wife as a bossy, nagging, cutting and sarcastic woman. As a Christian, why would you want to take your view of marriage and family structure from tv?
The more you watch, the more it just soaks in.
Another thing that we pull from our culture and its media, is this concept that marriage is a team. The thought is that we make decisions together; we split the work 50/50. One has the same amount of authority as the other. I'm sure you're probably starting to squirm, but please don't freak out yet. I want you to know why that has never sat quite right with me. In verse 23, the Word says,
"For the husband is HEAD of the wife…”
HEAD.
Now, you ask yourself. Which way are we going in a marriage? We’re going the way the HEAD wants to go.
Are we going where the feet want to go? No. The head is what decides where we’re gonna go. We’re going where the head leads, where the head decides. When I take the team idea and I hold it up against what that verse says, it doesn’t match to me. As a believer, that says to me, this cultural idea is not quite right. It is not quite what God had in mind.
My working definition of our roles in this marriage is that my husband is the CEO of this (family) enterprise and I am the Executive Assistant/Domestic Engineer. It just helps me see the chain of the command better. It helps me be practical about my husband being the head and me submitting to him. Every successful CEO knows he is lost without his Executive Assistant. She may be a little more in the background, but she is vital. Just because we as wives aren't the head, doesn't mean we aren't vital.
So many wives have shied away from submitting to their husbands because they thought it meant that he was everything and they were nothing. That isn't God's intention at all. In a culture that didn't particularly value women (in Bible days), there were women mentioned in Jesus' geneology. Unheard of! God values women. We simply have different roles or jobs or functions. It's a beautiful balance, when both the husband and the wife operate in the functions God has set up.
Pictures from our recent trip to Ithaca, NY and Taughannock Falls State Park. More on that in days to come.
