I’ve often been told that men have God-given, biblically mandated authority because of their greater strength. Women, we were told, are the weaker vessels. In nearly the same breath, I and other women were told to submit to this authority, this leadership, this masculine strength and power, to dress modestly, to obey whatever men told us. If we were abused, if we were not loved by our husbands, we only needed to submit more and everything would be OK. God would take care of the rest. He would deal with our husbands, our fathers, our pastors if they were wrong. We were to silently accept whatever happened in the meantime, or we were in sin.
The responsibility rested entirely on the woman or the child or the church member, even while the man or pastor boasted that he was granted authority by his masculinity, his strength. He was strong (but the woman was at fault if he lusted). He was strong (but if he didn’t love his wife it was because she wasn’t submissive enough). He was the strong one (but we were the ones expected, as women and children, to endure anything that happened). That doesn’t sound like strength to me.
How can a man be considered the strong one in the relationship if he blames everything on the other person, if the full weight of responsibility for the relationship and the man’s behavior rests on the woman, not the man? How can he even consider himself a leader if all responsibility is laid on someone else’s shoulders? Who is stronger, the one bearing the burden or the one telling her to bear it, and to bear it alone? And is there a leader in these situations? Leadership requires direction, not demand, and the best way to lead is by example.
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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