I get triggered any time submission comes up because the word was a cover for so much abuse in my former church. Submission was subjection. The woman was to do whatever her husband said. If she didn’t like it she could “entreat” him (ie beg or flirt him to a different answer) but she could not logically state reasons for an alternative suggestion or method. She could not discuss a matter with him. Her “right” was to put on a negligee and bat her eyes or grovel.
Women were to submit because this is what God knew they’d find hardest to do. And so God in his wisdom [and perhaps his malevolent desire for juicy drama] made women with abilities they would never be able to use and dropped them into a hierarchy that placed them just above the babies and children they were to bear and raise. At the same time, there was a teaching that men were commanded to love their wives because THIS would be hardest for them, since women are rebellious Jezebels, daughters of Eve who brought all trouble on the world (and particularly every husband).
In my former church the twisted teaching on submission began to sound like “You, woman, disgust me because you’re so sinful and rebellious but I love you so much I want to spend my life with you… [but I hate everything you are. I just want to have sex and a free housekeeper and cook and this church won’t allow that unless I promise this].” Imagine the damage that can do not only to marriages but also to women’s relationships with God, since marriage is compared to Christ’s love for the church. If a husband is supposed to reflect Christ’s love for the church and Christian husbands – the most favored ones in the church – are like that, then Jesus either doesn’t really love us or struggles to love us, but either way just wants to greedily use us for his own selfish purposes.
This is not what the Bible teaches. Not at all. But this is how quickly false teaching can spiral, especially when it’s coupled, not with mistaken beliefs, but a complete lack of love.
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