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Traditional marriage vows in some circles. The woman promises to love, honor, and obey. In my former church, the “obey” was emphasized to the point of embarrassment in the ceremony. Supposedly the pastor was “just teasing” but it was not the time or the place, and it wasn’t something to be taken lightly or joke about. Men demanded that “their women” obey them in everything, even if it meant they must go hungry, stay home rather than going to social events, have few friends, give up their hopes and dreams, or even endure abuse.

The man promised, in the ceremony, to love, honor, and protect (or keep). If he did not do these things–if he abused her, made her go hungry, didn’t provide basic necessities, didn’t allow her any friends–he was not considered wrong, but if she didn’t obey, she was. The vows that were made by the man were very broadly defined. The vow of obedience was absolute and entire for the woman. For a month before the ceremony, obedience of the wife was emphasized. She was to obey in all things. There was no caveat, no boundary for that obedience.

About a month ago I brushed up on the memory of these ceremonies in a service where Ephesians 5 was used. “Wives, submit…” The pastor mentioned that he discusses submission and the meaning of Ephesians 5 in premarital or marriage counseling. The word ‘submission’ carries some damaging memories, but so do weddings. “Love, honor, and OBEY.”

It was only tonight that I read that in the New Testament there is nothing that says women to are obey their husbands. Children are to obey, slaves or servants are to obey, but nowhere in the Bible does it say wives are to obey.  I checked. The writer of the article I read was right. It’s not there. And not one version of the Bible translates ‘submit’ as ‘obey’, either, at least not regarding wives.

I had come to a point in my former church of thinking that any woman who got married there was selling herself into slavery because of the way she was treated and regarded in a marriage relationship. The unbiblical emphasis on complete obedience may have just provided more evidence of that.

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I cringe every year in May. Mother’s Day is coming.

After years of hearing sermons about motherhood being the highest purpose or calling of a woman, of guilt trips because I’d never had a child, of thinking I was weird for not wanting children, for being humiliated by the “inclusion” of “the rest of us” by saying “Ok, all the mothers stand… now, all of you ladies stand, we want to honor all of you. If you’re an aunt, a daughter, a sister… you’ve probably helped raise a child in some way. Stand up!!” Ugh. If I could have just remained seated, but I couldn’t. And so the guilt tripping sermon about the highest calling of a woman being something I had not the least real interest in and a month or more of wondering if I should adopt or try artificial insemination just so I could be “normal” culminated in the embarrassment of standing in front of a group of my acquaintances to acknowledge I was, indeed, female, someone’s daughter, and an aunt. But not a mother.

Thank you for that day. You talked about Mothers Day from a historical perspective. I tuned you out. But you fairly quickly moved away from the mom stuff and on to a very good sermon about loving one another. You didn’t give all the mothers corsages or some gift in front of the congregation. You never pointed out which of us were and weren’t mothers. You didn’t ask the ladies to stand if they had this or that many kids or if they had this or that many grandkids. You didn’t even preach on motherhood.

For the first time in many years I didn’t regret going to church on Mothers’ Day, and I breathed a tentative sigh of relief. There was one more trial in sight, because there were candy bars given to each mother at the door on the way out. I hesitated to leave for the same reason I hesitated to come-surely this would be the moment when I would have to admit I wasn’t a mom or take the candy bar and act normal while cringing inside. I walked by the table and the person giving them out smiled, but not with any expectation or gesture to indicate I should take one. And nothing was shoved at me. No questions were asked. No one poked me and told me “Someday you will… just have faith!” Not once.

It was the best Mothers Day service I’ve probably ever been to. One where I didn’t feel embarrassed to be me.

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I wrote this about 6-7 years ago.

I can go, I can help while I’m there, and then eventually I can leave. Or I can put down a few tentative roots and see how things go. The things I like about the church aren’t even really doctrinal. I like the stability–they agree on a few fundamentals and I share those beliefs. I like the friendliness, the proximity to my home, the fact that I’m accepted even if I haven’t joined and even when I blow their minds with some off-the-wall statement, the fact that I already know quite a few people from my previous job… (which is humorous. Apparently for all the rumors that I only hired people from FT, I actually hired more from this church, and had many MANY fewer problems from them!) I really like the fact that people say “thank you”, don’t push (physically or for me to do anything), and have some shared interests with me. I really REALLY like the fact that the pastor doesn’t think of himself above anyone else. No reserved parking place, even!!!

This really struck me tonight. The church I’ve been going to is a lot like what I described 6-7 years ago from a church I eventually joined. Then I left, then the pastor left, then the new pastor came and was just… proud, unyielding, inflexible… he majored on a lot of minors. In my mind he and his wife were trying to make names for themselves. It got worse over time and I think a lot of people probably left. But it was a good place to be while I was there, and the church I’ve been going to is actually better in a few ways–the preaching is better, there is more interest in study, and there’s a little more leniency in doctrine in several fairly big ways.

So this was interesting to revisit. And maybe, just maybe, a bit of comfort to me in my current decision on where to attend.

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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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I forgot to list a couple of verses in my last post that were used in Michael Pearl’s “Moral Earnestness Test:”

• And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. – 1 Timothy 2:14 (This is where I got the idea of not trusting my mind.)
• Like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear. – 1 Peter 3:6 (Not to fear consequences for submitting even while the husband is making foolish decisions.)

Writing these posts have been quite a bit triggering for me personally. Michael and Debi Pearl’s marriage teaching created a sort of abuse and Stockholm Syndrome situation disguised as Christianity. I will even go as far as saying it became tantamount to idolatry. It duped my husband to become entitled, narcissistic, and a tyrant. Needless to say, It didn’t make him a better, more mature spiritual leader. It hurt him. It hurt us. It hurt me. I was living a life of bondage which turned into another gospel, another message, a different spirit. It didn’t make sense with the rest of the Word of God.

A few years ago my husband scolded me for wanting to follow my gut to end a friendship with a woman I met on the internet. I don’t need to go into the story too detailed here but I believe she was a psychopath or at least a malignant narcissist. The way she idealized me, devalued and discarded me, after me giving her moral support for a year… It gave me PTSD.

Then I discovered this verse:

Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. – Proverbs 13:20 (I can’t be keeping company with anyone who exhibits behavior of a fool as described in the Bible whether a friend or spouse, God warns His children. So boundaries are key!)

Around that time in the same year another blogging friend I knew for two years prior told me her husband was evil and had been abusing her and their many children and that he was leaving them. That gave me empathically induced PTSD too!

I think, at least in part, the PTSD caused me to start distrusting my own husband. I was no longer feeling safe with him as my umbrella of protection. I was sensing that something wasn’t right even more than ever. I was realizing I was in somewhat of an abusive marriage situation, both financially and emotionally. God didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to us either. One thing lead to another and our church paid for us to get counseling using a John Gottman Institute trained counselor. It helped us a lot!

Around that time, I got a big bruise that lasted a month and became a hematoma. This was caused by jumping out of bed and hitting my knee on the bed frame. I got a phone call thinking it was my husband and I wasn’t doing the housework. I had been relaxing instead so when I got the phone call I jumped out of bed and that’s how I hurt myself. I was contemplating about that hematoma on my leg realizing I was afraid because I feared telling my husband I was relaxing. You see, I had a ‘fake-it-’till-you-make-it’ system. A facade of being Super-wife that I was striving to keep up, while also thinking again God is not protecting me like I’m used to. Why? Then, a thought came to my mind:

God is a jealous God and He is jealous for me. Around that time I found this Bible verse:

• Fear of man will prove to be a snare but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. – Proverbs 29:25

Oh my gosh! You don’t know how relieved I was! God was revealing stuff I needed to realize! It then occurred to me something I knew and practiced before the Pearl teaching, was that scripture trumps my husband. Awesome! So since then it’s been a few years and I’ve been studying a bit of apologetics and egalitarian hermeneutics. It’s stuff I was interested in, but Debi Pearl made it seem like I wasn’t supposed to be interested in anything other than being an over-accommodating wife and mother. So that was the beginning of the end of my unnecessary marriage troubles. Now my husband says he likes me better with a backbone! 😜

That’s a glimpse of my personal story, but I want to refer everybody to a blog called: createdtobehelpmeet.blogspot.com. It’s an excellently done review of the book. I don’t have the book anymore, so I couldn’t really take it apart and give you a nice detailed review about it. All I did was share how it harmed, more than helped, our marriage and our spiritual well being.

Marriage Trouble Part 1
Marriage Trouble Part 2
Marriage Trouble Part 3
Marriage Trouble Part 4

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