Brave Marriage Podcast
SHOW NOTES:
Brandon and Haley Weaver talk with us about growing up egalitarian, being introduced to complementarianism in college, and what equality in marriage and ministry look like from their perspective! If you enjoy this episode, please take a quick second to tap the stars below to leave a rating and review!
Podcast Editing by: Evan Duszynski, MA
Music by: John Tibbs
SHOW NOTES:
In the beginning, God was good. He created us for intimacy, co-dominion, and co-stewardship of His creation. Male-female relationships and marriage may have gotten distorted after the Fall, but in the beginning, it was not so. Listen in to hear what Genesis 1-3 has to say about God Himself; God’s original design for humanity; and God’s plan for salvation following the consequences of sin. You might be surprised to learn what’s actually in the creation narratives…and what’s not.
If you’ve learned something new here and are enjoying this series on “Marriage, Mutuality, and Gender Roles,” please leave a rating & review!
Podcasting by: Kensi Duszynski, MA, LMFT, CPC
Editing by: Evan Duszynski, MA
Music by: John Tibbs
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to the Brave Marriage Podcast! Thank you so much for your earnest desire to grow as individuals, do marriage with intention, and live a mutually empowered, purposeful life in Christ.
I’m really glad to be working my way through this series with you and really encouraged by some of the conversations I’ve been having lately. In upcoming weeks, we will get into a few interviews where we’ll dive more deeply into marriage and mutuality, but today, we’re covering marriage in the Creation account and after the Fall. I believe last episode, I said I’d cover Ephesians 5 as well, but that was a little ambitious, I found, and so that episode will drop on Monday, November 29th. And the reason I wanted to include these biblical teachings in a series on marriage, mutuality, and gender roles, is because I think for many of us, we’ve heard these passages so much that we often don’t even hear them for what they actually say, or we hear these verses so piece-milled to prove a point, that we don’t even understand their context. So what I’m hoping is that the questions posed in the last episode encouraged you toward your own reading of Scripture, because today, we’ll be diving into it together with fresh eyes and ears.
Let’s start by taking a look at the Creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2:
Genesis 1:26-31 says:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ [So notice, when God says, ‘let us make man in our image, and after our likeness,’ He’s referring to the relationality between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—whom we know as the Triune God. The word man used there is adam in Hebrew, and the them is ha’adam in Hebrew. It’s plural for humanity or mankind. And Scripture says that God made humans to have dominion over the earth and other created creatures—not dominion over each other.]
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [In other words, from the Hebrew, God created mankind, in the image of God he created mankind; male and female he created mankind.]
And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
So in the first creation narrative, here in chapter 1, we have the Creator God, who in the Hebrew in chapter one, is referred to as Elohim. Elohim, God, we’re told, created the earth and humanity in His image. And compared to other creation accounts at the time, this God was described quite differently. For one, He was one—3-in-1; secondly, He was a good God; and third, He was a relational God, completely unified within Himself.
In chapter 1, we’re zoomed out a bit, seeing how this all-powerful, relational-within-and-between-Himself God created the entire universe. If you can, imagine a movie that begins with a look at earth from outer space. From this aerial vantage point, we see that this God completed His work with the creation of humanity, instructing them to be fruitful, to multiply, to create, to rule, to subdue, and take care of the earth He created. And only after God created male and female—humans in His image—and instructed them to steward the earth for His glory, did this Creator God proclaim His creation “very good.”
Here’s how I read that: In contrast to other renderings of the text I’ve heard, woman isn’t the epitome or the icing on the cake of creation, nor is man the “cake” itself, or instructed to bear the weight of the world alone. It wasn’t the man or woman whom God called very good; rather, it was the fullness of His image and His instructions to man and woman to be like Him (relational beings who were to be procreative and co-creative and stewards of His creation) that God called very good.
But even more important than that, in my view, is the point of chapter one, the reason why males and females have meaning and purpose and see themselves in this story at all, and it’s this: in contrast to other beliefs about creation and different deities, the Hebrew people believed in a relational, monotheistic, Triune God who wasn’t afraid or threatened to create humanity in His own image, as other gods are portrayed, who valued human life so as not to engage in human sacrifice, as other religions did, and who created both man and woman with free will, whereas other creation narratives cite the creation of woman as a necessary evil, the gods’ punishment to men for their arrogance. Instead, the God of the Bible is loving toward His creation, values human life, gives humans free will, and instructs both men and women to rule, fill, and subdue the earth. This is a story about an all-powerful deity who created man and woman to be in relationship, to bear the fullness of His image, including, in how we act upon the created earth together.
Now, as we take a look at the second creation account in Genesis 2:15-25, I want you to imagine we’re zooming in, moving from a distant view of the earth or an aerial view of the earth, to a zoomed-in, up-close, and personal look at the creation of man and woman. So imagine, revisiting the creation of humanity on the sixth day, and this time, we’ll get to know God not just as Creator and relational-within-Himself, but as the personal God of Israel, who is also very much relational-with-us.
Starting with verse 15:
“The LORD God [that is, Yahweh Elohim] took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’
Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ [Why? Because as we saw in chapter 1, God is a relational God and we are created in His image. Verse 19…]
“Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them [right, here we get this picture of a personal God who meets the man, who brings things to Adam to see what he will name them. It’s like God is delighting to watch Adam create as God had instructed him to.] And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.”
Meaning, he was creating and ruling and stewarding the earth alone, outside of a relationship with someone like him. But remember, in Genesis 1:26-31, God did not call creation completed until male and female were both created and both co-creating.
Now in Hebrew, a ‘helper fit’ or a ‘helper suitable’ is translated as ezer kenegdo, meaning “a strength, an aid, or an ally who is like”, not a help who is subpar or who does a husband’s bidding. I was in a book club a few years ago where a woman, a pastor’s wife, shared that back when her husband was pastoring, they attended a marriage conference for pastors and pastors’ wives, where the speaker likened the husband-wife relationship to the relationship between a CEO and his executive assistant. But if the speaker had taken a look at the Hebrew, rather than just putting his own capitalistic cultural spin on the text, he would have discovered that the word helper, or ezer in Hebrew, is used 21 different times in the Old Testament to describe God’s strength and aid to Israel! So I can hardly imagine that what God had in mind when He said, ‘I will make an ezer who is suitable to, and like Adam,’ is a female secretary for Adam. Furthermore, if God Himself is an ezer, and if the Trinity is 3-in-1, equal in power and glory, this has significant implications for the way men and women are to partner to bear the fullness of His image.
Let’s keep going, verse 21…
“So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman [ishah in Hebrew], because she was taken out of Man [ish in Hebrew].’
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
As I read this, God delights to see the man respond to the woman He places in front of him. The animals got named; the woman got a poem in verse 23, which is what that indentation represents in your Bible as you read it. And the man essentially says, “at last, I have a help who is like, yet somehow, different from me, so that now, I am fully created in the image of God because now, I am in relationship, not just with God, but also with someone like me—a help who is like me.” And jumping back to Genesis 1:28, this is where God blesses mankind. This is where God gives His instructions to humanity to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, while ruling over the earth and its creatures. So in the garden, in God’s perfect plan for creation and for humanity, there is intimacy—between God and humanity, between man and woman, between husband and wife. There is love, there is relationship, and there is procreativity, co-creativity, and co-dominion over other created creatures, but not over each other.
This is Eden. This is the picture of male-female relationality, of co-leadership in respect to the earth, and of co-servanthood in respect to God. Right? God did not create us for hubris, dictatorship, or human oppression on the one hand, nor did He create us for self-degradation, powerlessness, or purposelessness on the other; he created us for intimacy, relationship, and mutual empowerment as we co-labor with Him and with each other.
But then, we get to chapter 3 and everything goes awry. The serpent enters the picture, man and woman sin, the woman is deceived, the man says nothing and blames Eve, and the consequences of the Fall enter in.
Let’s take a look at Genesis 3 from the New American Standard Version.
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any animal of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
Notice here, the contrast between the writer of Genesis, who cites the personal name of God, Yahweh, or LORD God, and the serpent, who refers to God as Elohim, God rather than LORD God. Right, the serpent, representative of Satan, is even deceptive in his language, distancing the woman from God in the way that he’s framing Him, even before casting doubt as to what God said. So she then picks up his language.
“The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”
The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Now, we have the gift of hindsight and more importantly, Jesus, to help us see where Eve went wrong here, and what led man and woman to sin. As John recounted in 1 John 2:16, it was “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life” that led Eve, and Adam, to sin—these things, we’re told as not coming from the Father but rather, from the world.
So the strategy I see in the serpent here is: 1) Create discomfort and discontentment. 2) Create distance between God and His people by twisting the Word of God. 3) Lure them in with worldly things (the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life) and lead them to doubt God’s good plan, nature, words, and intentions toward them. 4) Wait for them to choose disconnection and disobedience to the LORD God, their personal connection to the Father.
And what’s wild is that we see this same old strategy that satan used with the woman, used with Jesus, in Mark chapter 4. Before Jesus began his earthly ministry, he was led into the wilderness and tempted by the devil himself. And after 40 days and nights of fasting and growing weak in the flesh, the devil starts into Jesus. First, he tempted Jesus by questioning His relationship and sonship to the Father, saying in Mark 4:3:
“If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread”—the lust of the flesh. But amazingly, in His hunger (at least to me, because I am good for nothing when I’m hungry, just ask my husband) Jesus said to his tempter: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.’”
Second, the devil tempted Jesus by asking him to stand on the pinnacle of the temple in the holy city, saying:
“If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for after all, You know it is written that ‘God will give His angels orders concerning You…On their hands they will lift You up, so that You don’t even strike Your foot against a stone”—the boastful pride of life. But not pulling one past Jesus, Jesus replied: “On the other hand, it is written: ‘You shall not put the LORD your God to the test.”
And third, Mark 4:8 says that:
“Again, the devil took Him along to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Jesus, ‘All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me’—the lust of the eyes. But thankfully, Jesus said to him, ‘Go away, Satan! For it is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’”
So Jesus shows us what could’ve been said here, by the man or the woman in the garden, seeing as how they were both right there when the serpent made his case. They could have said: “Serpent, we have everything we need, every green plant and tree for food, not to mention a perfect, loving relationship with God.” They could have said, “on the other hand,” like Jesus did, “God told us to be fruitful and have dominion over the earth, not to be ruled by it.” They could have said, “Go away, Satan! For God has created us, blessed us, instructed us to be like Him!” But they didn’t.
And so, jumping back into Genesis 3:7…
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves waist coverings.
Now they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
So there they were, having been emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and volitionally disobedient to God, after first being distanced and distracted from Him…and here comes God in His personal, present nature (noting the shift in language back to the use of LORD God, Yahweh Elohim) desiring to talk with them and be in relationship with them both.
Verse 3:9:
“Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
Okay, God knew where the man was, but because He’s a personal God, He wanted the man to show himself.
He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
Now, someone recently told me that what they’ve primarily been taught about these few verses goes something like this, “Who does God come to after Adam and Eve sin? Does God come to the woman? No, He comes to the man to take ownership for his family. So men, God is going to come to you and expect you to take responsibility for your wife and kids. That is your job.”
But a few things to note about this widespread spin on Scripture: 1) This is a wild extrapolation out from the text and what it actually says. 2) Telling men to be men of God and to lead their families toward kingdom-living is one thing. But it’s really easy to move from a posture of, “Men, let’s be intentional about making disciples of the next generation” to “Men, you should be ashamed of yourselves and better for your wife and kids.” The message of the Gospel is that the Son of God died and was resurrected for us all, to free us up to co-lead, as God originally intended, and to free us up from the weight of our sin and guilt to shame so that we might live more fully and freely in Christ, with that translating into our families, not a message of guilt and shame. And listen, this is a spiritual formation issue for those spreading this message.
So whoever is spreading these messages without really thinking about what’s being communicated to men, can we please stop teaching men (and women) that this is the Gospel? Christ did not die for good Christian men to give themselves a hard time and try to man up as if, on the other side of redemption, they still need to earn God’s respect, love, or approval of their worth (because God has already given it)! Christ also died that men and women, husbands and wives, might have a chance at healthy, intimate relationship again, as before the Fall, through Him—not to be stoic and distant or overly-responsible or placating and pacifying of their wives! That is not biblical, that is cultural. It’s an unhealthy teaching that doesn’t reflect Christ so much as it reflects the Pharisees, and it’s messing otherwise healthy families up.
So back to Genesis 3: God calls out to the man, and the man replies not with stoicism or self-degradation, saying, “God, I know I’m worthless, I know I need to be a better man and just, man up and measure up.” The man first responds to God here with vulnerability, saying, “I heard you, God, I knew you were present, and honestly, I was afraid. I was embarrassed and ashamed of my nakedness, and so I hid from Your presence.”
And again, based on lots of teachings in the church, we would now expect God to deliver His wrath. But God doesn’t. God moves in, and treats the man like a Father would. He asks questions, He’s about to discipline, yet, but He engages the man and woman in a personal, relational way.
“And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’”
Now he’s being confronted for his actions. And this is where the guilt, shame, and blame come in. Because it can be hard to look at ourselves in light of a good, gracious, perfect, holy, powerful, loving Father. But it’s hard to look at ourselves not because our Father is pointing a finger or has unrealistic expectations of us (He merely asked a question). It’s because we feel the weight of our sin, and when we do, we turn inward on ourselves (shame) or we turn outward on others (blame).
“The man said, ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me some of the fruit of the tree, and I ate.’
Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’”
Again, this is the God of the universe who is treating the woman, now, like a Father, and engaging her directly to get the full story (even though He already knows, can any parents relate?)
“And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”
Imagine this. Imagine you have a son and daughter. Adam is your firstborn and Eve is your second-born. And you conceived (because you’re human) and created little Adam and Eve in love, and so they bear your resemblance, and you’ve given every good thing you have to them. You’ve raised them on acres and acres of property, apple orchards and vineyards and orange groves that you are delighted for them to roam in and play in and eat from to their little hearts’ content. Now these fruit groves are a result of your own work, the benefit of your labor, but just by being born into your family, they’re heirs of what you created. And they’re your kids, so you’re pleased to have them delight in all that you’ve provided for them. The only thing you’ve instructed them not to do—for the sake of their lives and relationship with you—is eat the fruit from one single tree among thousands on your property.
But in striking up a conversation with a snake on your property, what do they go and do? They eat from it. They disobey you. They question your judgment, your reasoning, they mistrust your heart for them, and they deny a thousand good gifts you’ve given them in exchange for something you know they can’t handle.
Okay, so if this were you, how would you be feeling? Maybe you’ve been here before with your own children. Does that scenario evoke feelings of frustration, disappointment, hurt? A desire to protect them from that stupid snake?
Let’s jump back into the story:
“Then the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all the livestock, and more than any animal of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life; and I will make enemies of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant (that is, Jesus); He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
So before turning His attention to punish or curse or incur His wrath upon the man and woman, God curses the serpent. He deals with him first, letting him know that spiritually, there will come a day when Jesus is born and deals directly with the serpent and his demons, as well as make a way for the children of God to be redeemed and righted in their relationship with the Father. God so loved the world that the first three things He did after Adam and Eve sinned was talk to Adam and Eve about it, deal with the one who hurt and deceived His children, and promise to make a way through Jesus for His children to be reconciled to Him.
Verse 16…
“To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall deliver children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
Then to Adam, in verse 17:
He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; with hard labor you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; yet you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
So, as a result of sin and the curses God gives, we immediately see the consequences for both women and men: for the woman, the hardship of her labor; for the man, the hardship of his labor; and for both, the challenge of oneness and intimacy. Remember, God told the couple back in Genesis 1:26, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the other creatures I created!” But the consequence of sin was that the woman would play her part in the creation mandates with difficulty—with pain in bearing children, with a heart that would tend to desire her husband’s approval and lordship over God’s. Likewise, the husband would play his part in the creation mandates with difficulty—with pain, sweat, and toil in his work, and with a heart that would tend to desire to rule over his wife instead of co-ruling over creation with her. Read the text. There’s no hint of headship before the Fall; it’s only introduced after the fall along with everything else we are still struggling with today as Christians in a fallen state and fallen world.
Now, this is a marriage podcast, so I want to focus on the interpersonal couple dynamic for a second. In my practice, this is what I address: the sever in relational intimacy, issues of power imbalance, and desires that tend to move couples in unhealthy, dysfunctional directions—rather than to God first, and toward each other, second.
This is another part that’s interesting to me, and I first heard this come from Bruce C.E. Fleming, author of Made in Eden. God doesn’t directly curse Adam, nor does He directly curse Eve. What He does is, He curses the serpent in response to Eve’s confession and blaming of the serpent. And He curses the ground, in response to Adam’s confession and blame of both God and Eve! So even though from the point of the Fall on, the man and woman lived under the curse, God still treated the actual man and woman with love, with protection, and with discipline, as a Father would his own children. This is consistent with the good, loving, just nature of God.
Back to verse 20:
“Now the man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.
And the LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—therefore the LORD God sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
So He drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”
So even after all this, God is still gracious, just as a loving parent would be. He clothes Adam and Eve. He provides for them. He delivers consequences, yes, but He makes a way for them to live.
So here, we have the beginning of civilization as we know it, with Adam being instructed to cultivate the ground from which he was taken, and Adam and Eve co-partnering and co-parenting within the consequences of the Fall and their sin. And the rest of Genesis is a collection of stories about how good and gracious and unlike other gods, Yahweh is, and how dysfunctional families are as a result of sin, until in the midst of our broken and fallen state, God’s grace and goodness intervenes.
Now, I want to take you from Genesis…all the way to the last chapter of Revelation to see if you observe any parallels between the two depictions of the garden city.
In chapter 22:1-3, John writes:
“Then the Angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him.”
So, remember that tree of life that God protected after creation? Well, here we see it again at the end of time, except this time, without any curse, with trees that consistently bear good fruit for healing, and with God’s servants serving not themselves or their own agendas—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or their boastful pride for life—but serving Him, as the throne of God and the Lamb dwell among God’s servants in the garden city of God.
So, if all 66 books of the Bible comprise this meta-narrative, the story of God and His desire to save us, to give us eternal life, and to be in relationship with us—not because He has needs like us, but just because He’s a good Father—then where are we currently in that story, and what does that mean for our lives and relationships?
Well, Jesus, the Son of God is the climax of this story.
As we talked about last episode, the Son of God willingly took on flesh, dwelt among us, taught us how to live and how to die, becoming the substitutionary atonement for our sins, replacing the required animal sacrifices from the OT with Himself, the once and for all, redeeming Lamb of God.
Jesus came not to nullify the Old Testament law, but to fulfill the Scriptures and show us the Spirit of the law. He taught us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Then, He died, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven, leaving us with the Holy Spirit to empower us to live faithfully as His bride, the church.
So as His Church, His body, His bride, we now live in this in-between state where Christ has come to redeem us, forgive us, and make a way for us to live in Him, as servants of Him, now, before He returns….but the end has not yet come. We still live in a world impacted by the curse and the consequences of sin, even as we live as believers with the Holy Spirit to empower us to live as Jesus showed us how to live, and as Jesus taught us to live.
Which begs the question…how then shall we live?
I had a really great conversation with Evan last night after giving a talk to college students on partnership in marriage, and Evan was saying, “you know, the picture God gave us for relationship before the Fall was loving Him and loving each other. Then the Fall happened. But what does God tell Moses, and what does Moses tell Israel? To love God and to love each other. And what does Jesus tell His disciples and followers to do? To love God and love each other. So the picture of Adam and Eve in the garden is what we, as Christ followers today, and as married couples in particular, should be aiming for in our relationships with one another.” And I wanted to share his thoughts with you because I couldn’t have said it better myself. The whole story of Scripture illustrates our journey as humans toward the kingdom of God, and in a sense, back to the original state.
In upcoming weeks, you’ll hear from authors, pastors, and podcasters regarding their thoughts on Scripture, gender equality, and mutuality in marriage. All coming from different places and stages of life and marriage, and I can’t wait for you to hear from them. So tune in next time, where I’ll talk to a couple in ministry together, who will share some of their thoughts on what Scripture has to show us and on what God has to offer us through his designing us for co-leadership and mutual submission in marriage.
Thanks, friends, for joining me today. You all know I’m passionate about teaching mutuality in marriage, and so if you’ve learned something new in this series, please, please hit the share link and text this to a friend. It would also mean a lot to me if you would take a quick second to rate and review the podcast. I spend hours on it each and every time and I’d be grateful for your feedback and letting others know if you enjoyed it.
This has been episode 136 of the Brave Marriage Podcast. I’m your host, Kensi Duszynski. Podcast editing is by Evan Duszynski. And music is by John Tibbs. Have a great week, everyone, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
SHOW NOTES:
What is egalitarianism? How is it different from complementarianism? On this episode, we explore what true equality in Christ means for us all, and how it should lead us to mutuality—in the home, in the church, and in the world. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast!
To work with Kensi Duszynski, MA, LMFT, CPC, visit bravemarriage.com.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there and welcome back to the Brave Marriage Podcast, where today, we’re talking about egalitarianism. My own personal journey from a complementarian perspective to a more egalitarian one has been a decade or more in the making. Part of the reason for that is, like I mentioned last time, through reading and study, I’d immersed myself in complementarian doctrine without even really realizing it. Even though I grew up in a church tradition where women could exercise their spiritual gifts as pastors, what I saw in practice were lots of traditional gender roles and more respect for male leadership than female leadership. So by the time I read I started reading complementarian authors, I just thought, this must be the Christian perspective, this is what we as Christians believe. Especially because in the books I was reading from the local Christian bookstore, which was supplied by a complementarian book distributor, none of the authors were saying, “This viewpoint is called complementarianism and it’s one interpretation of Scripture; we think it’s the best and most true view, but read Scripture for yourself, pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, and judge for yourselves which is right.”
A second reason for my own personal shift was coming to a place in my life where I began to see beyond myself and my own circumstances, to really consider the experiences of others in the world, and how complementarianism and egalitarianism played out in others’ lives. Right, because of certain privileges my life circumstances have afforded me, I didn’t have to question the complementarian view (or the inherent issues built in to the position, as we talked about last week) because they didn’t affect me, personally in a negative way—at least, on a felt level, day-to-day. That doesn’t mean the issues weren’t there all along; it just means that my station in life prevented me from feeling them as others have, and continue to.
And the third reason is that probably up until I was married, I didn’t know there was a distinctly defined, alternative viewpoint on men and women in marriage and ministry. I thought all of it—complementarian and egalitarian views—could co-exist and intermingle, all pointing to some aspect of God’s Truth, since as 1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “for now we see in a mirror dimly, knowing in part, but then we shall see face to face.” And of course I believe that’s true—that no one person or group holds all the answers—but I think the part about both positions that’s true is the part upon which both perspectives agree: that men and women are created equally, with complementarity, in the image of God. But other than that, I found myself as a Christian college and seminary grad, thinking there was no distinct alternative definition to complementarianism, much less a meaningful difference between whatever those two positions were. Not because I was taught anything remotely complementarian; I went to Wesleyan schools after all. But because between Old and New Testament, Christian Theology, and my Marriage and Family courses, the topic was never specifically taught (for a variety of reasons, I’m sure).
But I remember hearing a peer in grad school refer to herself as egalitarian, not really knowing what that meant or how that was justified biblically because when you grow up being taught to fear anything that contrasts with hierarchy, traditional marriage roles, complementarianism, you initially hear alternative views with skepticism and fear, especially if some measure of your faith or Christian identity are bound up in extra-biblical ideas. Which is especially confusing, right, when you're taught that it’s biblical manhood and womanhood. But then, I heard the president’s wife of Asbury University publicly call herself an egalitarian and refer to her marriage as such. And it was those two experiences that made an impression on me because I realized they held a distinctly different position, but to be honest—I didn’t know what that was. (Which is wild to me, as I think about it now, because I consider some of the differences, matters of biblical truth and morality, and the difference between relational dysfunction and relational health and flourishing.)
So that’s what this episode is about: defining what egalitarianism is and taking a look at a few more differences between egalitarianism and complementarianism. And just so you know, there will be multiple episodes on egalitarian theology and the concept of mutuality, because there’s too much to share in one episode.
Starting with a definition: Egalitarianism is the belief that both men and women are created equal in the image of God; not only in spiritual worth and dignity, but also in human worth and dignity and in spiritual calling. Egalitarians believe that spiritual giftedness and leadership are not assigned to individuals based on gender, but are gifted equally to the sons and daughters of God, regardless of race, class, culture, or gender. So rather than believing that there are no meaningful differences between men and women, egalitarians believe that God created male and female differently, both in His image, but that through Christ, and in Christ, there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female—for all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28)!
Egalitarians have come to the realization, like Peter did in Acts 10, that God is not a God of partiality, even if we’d prefer that He be, or even if our own pride or self-deception leads us to believe that He is.
Now, Christians have struggled with the equalizing effect of the message of the Gospel throughout history. Let me share the earliest example of this, as it pertains to Jews and Gentiles, recorded after Jesus’ ministry:
The apostle Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, a Jew, like the other 11 disciples, and a man of middle Eastern descent, really wrestled with whether or not the Gentiles were to be considered clean, or as called to the message and ministry of the Gospel as Peter was.
It literally took a vision from God and a visit from Cornelius, a God-fearing Gentile, to help Peter see his own bias and blind spots. But afterward, Peter declared what he’d learned to a large gathering of people around him, saying in verse 28 and 34:
“You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean…I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right.”
I love what’s written next in verses 44 and 47, both because God’s grace is so amazing and because the human condition is so hilariously predictable. Acts 10 says: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles.” Then, Peter said, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have!” And thank God Peter realized this, right, because as Jesus told him, he was the rock upon which God would build His church.
So the early apostles worked to build up the body of Christ, to build up the church on the basis that all were one in Christ Jesus. And they taught the various churches that because of Jesus, humans of every tribe, tongue, and nation could receive the free gift of salvation, receive baptism and the Holy Spirit, and minister the message of the good news of Jesus Christ. Now that looked different depending on cultural context and location, but this was that radical, scandalous nature of the Gospel—that all are welcome, and that in God’s kingdom, the first are last, and the last are first.
But like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, who he curses throughout the Gospels, religious leaders throughout every century have found a way to use God’s Word to promote their own power and glory, not God’s.
Take for example, moving to the slave or free clause, slave-owning Christians and those responsible for creating the slave Bible in 1807, where only about 10 percent of the Old Testament was included (leaving out any reference to the Israelites being delivered from bondage and slavery), and only about 50 percent of the New Testament was included (with Paul’s words to the Ephesians about slaves being obedient to their masters left in, but Paul’s words to the Galatians—that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus—being left out).
This is horrendous to us now, that a group of people whom God loves and desires to save and pour out His Spirit on equally, would be read and taught the Bible in ways that supported the slave owners’ cause, rather than supporting their freedom and liberation as humans with worth and dignity. Rather than teaching, as Paul taught in Galatians, that there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. Rather than calling all believers to use their freedom to serve one another in love, not to oppress others or minimize others’ gifts or condemn others as somehow the inferior race, class, or sex. Right? These things have nothing to do with the message of the Gospel and everything to do with the spirit of the age and leaving cultural assumptions unquestioned.
But as someone who came to see, like Peter, and as someone who helped others see, like Cornelius, abolitionist Frederick Douglass had this say about slave-holding American Christians:
“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked…. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”
Douglass here is noting a discrepancy between the message of Christianity according to Christ, and the message of Christianity according to western culture.
So Peter, Cornelius, Paul, Frederick Douglass…they’re all defining aspects of the egalitarian position. The realization that using Scripture, abusing its authority, perverting its power, and defiling its beauty for the sake of dominating or oppressing other people is some sort of religion, but as Douglass said, it’s not the Christianity of Christ.
The egalitarian position is the commitment to the Truth that all humans are created in the image of God; that God sent His Son to save everyone, equally; and that in Christ, there are no longer differences that divide us, as there once were before Christ came, but in Christ, we are free to be one and free to serve God and one another in love.
What this looks like specifically in marriage, which we’ll talk more about in upcoming weeks, is essentially, the mission statement of Brave Marriage: growing as individuals, doing marriage with intention, and living mutually empowered, purposeful lives. It looks like sharing with one another—sharing power, leadership, truth, decision-making, work and household roles. It looks like supporting one another’s growth, rather than demanding it, on the one hand, or suppressing it, on the other. Egalitarianism in Christian marriage looks like mutually loving, sacrificing, serving, trusting, and respecting each other—not because that’s what you’re supposed to do, as husband and wife, but because you actually do, as a functional outworking of believing you’re equals, created for mutuality and intimacy from the beginning.
In upcoming weeks, we’ll study Scripture together and we’ll talk to egalitarian couples, but for the rest of this episode, I want to help you better understand the differences between the egalitarian position and the complementarian one, both of which gained traction in the 1970s and formed official positions and organizations in the 1980s.
So, just as last week, you learned about the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (or CBMW) who represent the complementarian position, this week, I want to introduce you to Christians for Biblical Equality (or CBE), who represent the egalitarian position. Last episode, you learned that those on the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood created the term “complementarian” to define a position of complementarity set within tradition and hierarchy. But unlike CBMW, CBE didn’t create the term egalitarian; instead, it was borrowed from political philosophy simply because of its encapsulation of equality between all people. Now, for this reason, I would like to air my complaints with both terms, as I see neither term as particularly helpful—complementarian being deceiving and egalitarian being misrepresentative, as the Gospel is not a political philosophy but primarily, the story of God and His love and relationship to us.
Great, now that that’s off my chest, I’d like to take the rest of the episode to compare and contrast the beliefs, mission, vision, and values of Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) with the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) so that you can begin to more clearly see the differences between the two. I think it’s important to know what each group believes, because that will inform the outworkings of the organizations themselves.
According to their Statement of Faith, available at cbeinternational.org, Christians for Biblical Equality (or CBE) believe:
Firstly and secondly, “…in one God, creator and sustainer of the universe, eternally existing as three persons equal in power and glory…and in the full deity and the full humanity of Jesus Christ.”
Now, these two points are important because they distinguish orthodox Christianity from heresy. And while CBMW’s statement of faith almost says the same thing, they omit the phrase, “eternally existing as three persons equal in power and glory.” Here’s why that omission is important:
Orthodox Christianity teaches that the Trinity, God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are eternally equal in power and glory. In seminary, one of my favorite things I learned about was Trinitarian theology, because that’s how God created my mind to work—systemically and relationally. So before Adam and Eve were created, there was the Triune God. And according to the Bible, starting with Genesis 1:26, and foundational to our Christian theology, God existed in relationship, three spiritual persons in one, equal in glory and power, and mutually indwelling each other; therefore, perfectly modeling this ideal of interdependence and relationality for us. It was Jesus’ humanity that led Him willfully to submit His will to the Father’s for a time, but orthodox Christianity maintains that Jesus was both fully God and fully human; therefore, his place and role among the Trinity is fully equal among the three.
And to deny that teaching is to adhere to a 4th century heresy known as Arianism. Forgive me for nerding out on you for a moment, but Arius was a 4th century priest who began teaching the church that the Son was created by the Father, different in substance and role, and therefore, not co-eternal or co-equal. But if this were true, then that would effectively render Christ’s death and resurrection null and void in terms of saving us from our sins, because if Christ was created by God, lesser than God, and therefore, not fully divine and fully human as we believe he was, then his lack of humanity would’ve meant that Jesus couldn’t have been the substitutionary lamb who was slain for our sins. And if he wasn’t fully divine, then Jesus wouldn’t have had the power to save us from our sins.
In other words, if the Son is not co-eternal and co-equal to the Father and Holy Spirit in power and glory, this would deem Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension as meaningless to the Christian faith. And yet, a version of this heresy has become a regular teaching and tenant of faith in some complementarian circles. While complementarian theology maintains that God is 3-in-1, some complementarians also maintain that God is 3-in-1 hierarchically, meaning they believe in God the Father, whose rule is sovereign and supreme over all; in Christ the Son, as the second person of the Trinity who reigns and rules over us but is eternally subordinate to the Father; and in the Holy Spirit, who lives inside of us.
When I was a student at the Focus Leadership Institute, this 3-in-1 hierarchical theology was then laid overtop of the family, with husband as sovereign leader over the family, wife as subordinate helper, and children, said to be analogous to the third person of the Trinity, birthed out of the intimacy between husband and wife.
But here’s the deal: to suggest that the Holy Spirit was somehow birthed out of the intimacy or procreativity of the Father and Son is heresy, as is the suggestion that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father. In fact, in 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea, which is where the Nicene Creed originated, condemned Arius as a heretic of the Christian faith for this teaching and was exiled from the church!
In her book, The Making of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, historian Beth Allison Barr affirms the experience I had at Focus on the Family when she writes:
“By the end of the twentieth century, [this heresy] had a new twist: because Jesus is eternally subordinate to God the Father, wives are eternally subordinate to their husbands.”
This is why understanding our doctrine, our theology, and our Christian heritage is so important. Because unless we do, we’re likely to repeat the sins of our past in current practice. In family therapy, we call this multigenerational transmission process, whereby the very thing we wish not to do, is what we do and carry forth into the next generation; that is, without intentionality, without history to guide us, and without the Holy Spirit to empower us to do something different. In their fifth statement, CBE believes that:
“…the Bible is the inspired word of God, is reliable, and is the final authority for faith and practice.”
And this statement of faith comes from 2 Timothy 3:16-17, where Paul writes: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
With slightly different terminology, CMBW believes:
“…that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are inspired by God and inerrant in the original writings, and that they alone are of supreme and final authority in faith and life.”
By inerrant, they mean that the Bible is without error or fault in all its teaching, often equating inerrancy with a literal interpretation of Scripture. But biblical inerrancy seems to apply most dogmatically to Paul’s instructions to certain churches when it comes to marriage and ministry, but not so much when it comes to other passages, like permanently changing the words in Genesis 3:16 to mean something entirely different—from “your desire shall be for your husband” to “your desire shall be contrary to your husband.”
Historian Beth Allison Barr also takes issue with the concept of inerrancy and modern-day Arianism when she writes:
“It should also not surprise us that evangelicals resurrected Arianism for the same reason that evangelicals turned to inerrancy: If Jesus is eternally subordinate to God the Father, women’s subordination becomes much easier to justify…
Except it is still heresy. Arianism repackaged,” (p. 195).
In their remaining four statements, CBE believes:
“…that women and men are equally created in God’s image and given equal authority and stewardship of God’s creation; men and women are equally responsible for and distorted by sin, resulting in shattered relationships with God, self, and others; the Holy Spirit equips us for service and sanctifies us from sin; eternal salvation and restored relationships are only possible through faith in Jesus Christ who died for us, rose from the dead, and is coming again. This salvation is offered to all people. ”
Here, CBE’s statement of faith includes the most prominent difference between the two positions, in that egalitarians believe that in the beginning, God created male and female, different in gender, yet equal in worth, role, and function; whereas complementarian believe that in the beginning, God created male, then female, different in gender, gender identity, and specific gender roles and functions, yet equal in spiritual worth. Tim and Anne Evans affirm a view of marriage equality in their book, Together: Reclaiming Co-Leadership in Marriage, when they write:
“People with different marriage perspectives (male rulership, traditional-hierarchical-complementarian, and egalitarian) all agree that both men and women are made in the image of God—they are intrinsically equal. However, male rulership and traditional-hierarchical-complementarian proponents would say men and women are not functionally equal. Egalitarian marriage proponents would align with God’s creational marriage design. They believe men and women are intrinsically equal and functionally equal because in the beginning both the man and the woman were given the dominion and procreation mandates,” (p. 127-128).
(And next episode, we’ll do a deeper dive into the Creation and Fall accounts).
Next point: according to CBE, it’s the Holy Spirit who equips us for all service and sanctifies us from sin as we grow in faith in Christ; but according to CBMW, it’s redemption in Christ, period, which restores husbands to loving leadership and wives to intelligent, willing submission, period. But as we’ll see next week, Jesus says no such thing when asked about marriage, nor does this ideology accurately reflect the sum of Paul’s letters and teaching, either.
Here’s CBMW’s statement of faith in this regard:
“We believe that God, the transcendent Creator of all things in heaven and earth, created Adam and Eve in His own image; that they sinned, and thereby incurred not only physical death but also spiritual death, which is alienation from God; the universal sinfulness and guilt of all men and women since the Fall renders them subject to God’s wrath and condemnation. Both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood. Adam’s headship in marriage was established by God before the Fall and was not a result of sin. The Fall introduced distortions into the relationship between men and women but redemption in Christ restores this relationship. In the home husbands are lovingly to lead their wives and wives should intelligently and willingly submit to their husbands. In the church, some governing and teaching roles are restricted to men.”
We won’t have time to break that one down, but just notice that they believe in marital headship as set forth in creation, with the distortion of that relationship being righted through redemption in Christ. On our next episode, we’ll basically have a Bible Study where we look at what Genesis 1-3 and Ephesians 5 have to say, and at some of the original language (at least in Hebrew, I didn’t take Greek).
Okay, so I hope you can see the differences in the way Christians for Biblical Equality commit to Scripture compared to the way the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood commits to Scripture.
Take CBMW’s mission and vision for example, which I’ve shortened here but linked in the full transcript, which is to…
“…set forth the teachings of the Bible about the complementary differences between men and women…because these teachings are essential for obedience to Scripture and for the health of the family and the church…and to see the vast majority of evangelical homes, churches, academic institutions, and other ministries adopt the principles of the Danvers Statement as a part of their personal convictions and doctrinal confessions…”
And if you’re just joining us for this episode, we examined what the Danvers Statement actually says in episode 134. By contrast:
“CBE exists to promote the biblical message that God calls women and men of all cultures, races, and classes to share authority equally in service and leadership in the home, church, and world. CBE's mission is to eliminate…theological patriarchy. CBE envisions a future where all believers are freed to exercise their gifts for God’s glory and purposes, with the full support of their Christian communities.”
One aims to defend, one aims to advocate.
One aims to maintain power, one aims to share power.
One aims to serve cultural Christianity, one aims to serve Christ globally.
One aims to instill obedience and fear, one aims to set people free—men, women, singles, couples, and their Christian communities.
A few final questions to leave you with today as we prepare to take a look at Scripture together next time:
When was the last time you read Genesis 1-3 for yourself?
When was the last time you read the book of Ephesians for yourself?
When it comes to viewing yourself as a son or daughter of God, a co-heir with Christ, with gifts of the Holy Spirit, to be stewarded alongside your husband, wife, or male or female counterparts, what do you personally have to fear? What might you collectively have to gain? And what might you—personally or collectively—have to lose?
When it comes to your own marriage, what might mutuality look like? How might your marriage look different if you two believed that you were created male and female, equal in worth and dignity, free to share thoughts and feelings, roles, decision-making, spirituality, and intimacy?
What might your multigenerational legacy be if you both saw yourselves as God sees you?
Thank you for listening to the Brave Marriage Podcast. I’m your host, Kensi Duszynski. Podcast editing is by Evan Duszynski. Music is by John Tibbs. I’d love to hear from you between episodes, but I’ll be back with the next one in two weeks. Until then, take care, talk soon.
SHOW NOTES:
What is complementarianism? Where did it begin? What are the practical effects of its teachings on real life couples and Christian communities? And how do we, as Christian couples and communities, do the most good and the least harm when it comes to how and what we teach? Tune in and stay tuned to engage in this conversation.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to the Brave Marriage Podcast, a podcast for couples and communities who want to grow as individuals, do marriage with intention, and live mutually empowered, purposeful lives. If you’re just joining us, I’m Kensi, an LMFT who’s passionate about helping couples discover mutuality in Christian marriage, that we might grow healthier individually and together—not only as couples, but as the body of Christ.
In Season 2, our theme is marriage, mutuality, and gender roles, and over the next two episodes, we are talking about complementarianism and egalitarianism.
If you’re unfamiliar with these two terms, these are two distinct approaches to the way Christians have come to define their positions, theologically, on the relationship between males and females, in the 20th century, as it relates to equality, authority, leadership, and roles in marriage and ministry. Why I’m wanting to define these two positions at this point is because they carry very different implications for what actually gets played out between husbands and wives in marriage, and for what actually takes place between men and women in the church.
In the summer of 2018, right as I launched this podcast, I was still on social media at the time, and taking questions to address on the podcast. And immediately, from the beginning of Brave Marriage, I had someone ask, complementarianism or egalitarianism—which is better?
Now at the time, I thought I had a firm grasp on both, yet not a strong position on either. On complementarianism, having read books from that perspective since high school and having studied at the Focus Leadership Institute at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs and reading Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which was the text first written to specifically define the complementarian position. And then, I attended a megachurch and two denominational churches that supported a complementarian view, without explicitly using that term. And when you live somewhere, where complementarianism is baked into the culture and traditional gender roles are widely accepted, you don’t really see it as an issue to take up, because you don’t see it from any other perspective at all—at least from any other perspective that you deem worth considering (I didn’t at the time).
…Which is funny because I grew up in a church that would say it holds egalitarian doctrine, in that it supports women in ministry, and I ended up at a Wesleyan university and seminary for my education. But like the complementarian churches I attended, the church I grew up in and the egalitarian ones I’ve attended since didn’t explicitly use that term to describe their position either. So on the surface, it seemed like, either way is good, whatever couples prefer, I’m Switzerland on the question. My only desire is to share with couples the idea of mutuality in marriage and mutual flourishing, this idea that men and women are created equal and designed as marriage partners to reflect the image of God, and the relationship between Christ and His bride by way of intimacy and mutual love, respect, submission, and empowerment between spouses.
But what began to dawn on me was that what we talk about here on the Brave Marriage Podcast is new to so many couples. Some couples, and solid couples from solid families started sharing with me that no one ever painted a picture for them in the church of mutual flourishing in marriage, or of making room for each other in marriage and ministry. And it had begun to free both of them.
So clearly, the complementarian/egalitarian question is one that I have developed a lot of passion around the longer I’ve been doing this. And here’s what I want to say first: I believe that at the end of the day, Christ’s grace prevails and His transforming love for us is stronger than our limited understanding, and while I believe that the Holy Spirit can do whatever He wants, in whoever He wants, and turn marriages around and use couples—complementarians and egalitarians alike—for His glory. Having said that, I also think it’s appropriate to ask those in the Church—as a Christian and as a marriage counselor—to take a look at what we’re actually saying, what we’re actually teaching, and how that’s actually affecting couples in our congregations and in our communities. I think it certainly could do us good to take a look at both positions to see how we, the body of Christ, can do the most good and the least harm, to couples and families in our congregations, in our communities, in our care.
So as I talk about complementarianism today, I ask for your understanding. For your openness to hear its history, to try and understand what’s going on behind the scenes, which I’ll do my best to explain given my study, and to have compassion for the people of God as we take a look together. And I wouldn’t be asking us to really take a look at these positions and challenges ourselves on them unless I thought that together, we could bring our intelligence to this as couples, our advocacy to our own relationships and for those we do life with, and our hearts to know God more fully and the depths of love and freedom and flourishing He has for us.
Okay, starting with complementarianism:
Complementarianism is the belief that men and women are created equal in spiritual worth and dignity, but different in spiritual role and function. In the home, men are to lead and women are to help. In the church, men are to lead from the pulpit and both men and women are to be inspired by their leadership to fulfill their complementary ministries—typically men as pastors, elders, and unrestricted teachers, and women serving in every other function in the church. And men, but the first three offices mentioned are typically reserved for men based on Paul’s teachings to certain churches in the New Testament. But for the purpose of this podcast, which pertains to marriage, we’ll limit our conversation to the role of husbands and wives.
In a complementarian family, there’s a belief in the general premise of male headship and female submission. As Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood states: “Biblical headship for the husband is the divine calling to take primary responsibility for Christlike servant leadership, protection and provision in the home. Biblical submission for the wife is the divine calling to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts” (p. 63). Complementarians also have varying views on the degree to which women should submit to all men or just their husbands and pastors, but officially, the position is: “Ephesians 5:22, Titus 2:5 and 1 Peter 3:1, 5 exhort wives to be subject to ‘your own’ husbands. This term ‘your own’ shows that the relationship of leadership and submission between a woman and her husband should be different from the relationship of leadership and submission that she may have with men in general” (p. 52).
Complementarianism is the majority view in evangelical Christianity today because of its emphasis on harmony displayed through complementary roles, as outlined by Paul in Ephesians 5:22-33. It’s taught in many churches to help couples understand their male and female roles, purpose, and the meaning of Christian marriage, to illustrate the mysterious relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church.
Now here’s the thing…I think if we were to start there and end there, or work our way toward the centrality of Christ and his character as evidenced in the Gospels, I think most of us would agree that the relationship between men and women in marriage and ministry would be a beautiful thing to behold! I mean, consider how Jesus related to both men and women in the Gospels and in the beginning of Acts, both who represent the bride and body of Christ! Consider the types of people he engaged with, listened to, healed, criticized, challenged, and called to serve and follow Him. (And by the way, Paul does exactly that if you read his letters to the churches in their entirety. He always starts with the centrality and preeminence of Christ in the Church and in our lives as the basis for our Christian living, including our marriage relationships.)
But that’s not where the Complementarian camp focused in the beginning—the beginning being the 1980s. In fact, in their first official position paper, what’s known as the Danvers Statement, not once is Jesus or any of the four Gospels cited in the biblical references given to support the position. Instead, Complementarianism began with lots of inherent contradictions, pointing to what’s biblical in some ways, but exposing their cultural biases in others. Understandably, much of this plays out in my office. And we’ll spend the next bit of the episode taking a look at some of those mixed messages and trying to understand all the different competing components.
You might be surprised to learn that the term complementarian was created in 1988, just 33 years ago. It was a term invented to draw attention to the male and female complementary embedded in the position, and away from the hierarchy and patriarchy built into the perspective. That’s not how the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood would say it, but in my research, it seems that because of the Women’s Movement, the term “Christian patriarchy” had a bit of a PR problem, and a small group of evangelicals were looking to nail down a thesis of human sexuality—specifically, of biblical manhood and masculinity and biblical womanhood and femininity. Thus, the term complementarian was chosen to emphasize the harmony between men and women in marriage and ministry, when played out through male-female complementary in their respective roles as head and helper.
Now I want you to put yourself in their shoes for a second…
We’ve already talked a little about the Feminist Movement, the Sexual Revolution, Civil Rights and Women’s Rights in previous episodes. Well, this was the rising tide that Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and others were seeking to address in their formation of a formal position on biblical sexuality. And to some degree, I can understand and empathize with that desire. I grew up in a small church in the ‘90s with many older couples who were parenting children in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and I remember one specific couple’s disdain for sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, and anything remotely feminist. Because having had children negatively impacted by some of those things at the time, they railed against them, believing that women should be protected from the world, finding their place in the home and in the pews, and that men should step up, finding their place in servant leadership at home and at work.
But what society was offering and modeling at the time wasn’t all bad, right? We can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The Women’s Rights movement offered an articulation of what many women were already experiencing, and this gave Christian women a chance to envision themselves as living into all they were made to be, not just into who they were always told to be. So as you can imagine, many in conservative Christian circles were feeling anxious, concerned, fearful, even potentially displaced, should they fail to take back the Christian culture wars for God. To use some of the language from the handbook on complementarianism, this group was truly worried about “secular feminism infecting the church” and Christians being swayed to believe things they deemed antithetical to Scripture.
And given the past few years for us, I think we can all appreciate the uncertainty, the unknown as to what the future will look like or what changing tides will bring. So I want us to have compassion for where they were at the time, so close to culture change, and yet so far away from being able to observe the effects of what they proposed at the time as a better future for Christian marriages and families.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it? That any of us can be genuinely worried and concerned about something, desiring to make change for the better. And at the very same time, we can have blind spots that lead us to engage in efforts that are well-intentioned, but turn out to be more harmful than helpful. It seems to me that rather than giving an honest evaluation or even a 30,000 foot-view to the good brought about by women gaining equal rights, this original group in the ‘80s was unable to hold their faith and culture in tension, which led to doubling-down on their rather homogenous perspective, without really listening to the other side with an open mind and heart. And so, in an effort to define the correct Christian position, this group of 25 evangelicals wrote what’s known as the Danvers Statement. From there, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood began distributing the publication, and what I’ve heard referred to as “The Blue Bible” was written in 1991, entitled: Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism.
So in 1988, it was decided that the term complementarian would be used to describe their position.
Now, this might be getting into the weeds a bit, but I’m including it because I think it’s worth taking a look at the official Complementarian position to understand the differences between what views are held on paper versus what gets played out in practice when couples, churches, and communities firmly hold this view.
Starting with Danvers Statement, written in December of 1987, it included 2 sections: its Rationale for existence and Biblical Affirmations outlining what Complementarians believe.
The rationale section starts: “We have been moved in our purpose by the following contemporary developments which we observe with deep concern…” and then it lists 10 points outlining their concerns. In summary: the confusion in our culture regarding the differences between masculinity and femininity; the subsequent unraveling of marriages; the ambivalence of women toward motherhood, homemaking, and women’s ministries; the increase of pornography and the distortion of human sexuality; an increase in physical and emotional abuse in the family; the promotion of Egalitarianism, leading to distortions in the harmony between husbands as loving and humble leaders, and wives as intelligent yet willing followers; an increase of women in church leadership; and finally, the threat to Biblical authority, as they saw it, by egalitarian theologians and scholars who were working on more accurate translations of the Greek and Hebrew into English, and who were seeking to understand the Bible as it was written and intended, interpreting each book not with a fundamental Western lens, but with a contextual middle Eastern lens.
Okay, so this describes the concerns they were having in the late ‘80s, which we’ve talked about already, and there are a few earlier points of rationale upon which egalitarian Christians would also affirm as problematic, but of course, since the latter half of their concern was solely around egalitarian Christians, they would obviously differ on those points.
In the affirmation section, we’ll have to break this down a little bit more, but it begins “Based on our understanding of Biblical teachings, we affirm the following…” There are 10 bullet points, but I’ve lumped some together for the sake of time.
(A) That man and woman are created in God’s image, equal yet distinctly different in the created order, per their God-ordained masculine and feminine roles. And here are those roles according to Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood:
“At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships” (p. 41).
“At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships” (p. 41).
“A man, just by virtue of his manhood, is called to lead for God. A woman, just by virtue of her womanhood, is called to help for God” (Ch. 3, p. ).
(B) That the Old and New Testaments affirm God-ordained male headship in the home and in the church—so they see male headship as biblical prescriptive, whereas egalitarians would see male headship as purely descriptive.
(C) That Adam’s headship over Eve was inherent in creation, not a consequence of sin or the Fall. Rather, it was the Fall that led to both passivity and abuse of power in men; and it was the Fall that led women to both servility (which is excessive pleasing of men and others) and usurping male authority.
This point is really important. Everything that complementarians believe flow out of their presupposition that male headship is built into the created order—that it’s reflected in the Trinity with the subordination of the Son to the Father; that when Paul says “the husband is the head of the wife,” that he means the husband is to lead, protect, and provide for his wife”; and that when God delivers the curse to the man, woman, and serpent, that God is saying, “Eve, you will desire to ruin, destroy, and usurp your husband’s authority, but in my good and gracious plan for you, Eve, Adam will rule over you.”
I remember being taught this at Focus on the Family in my Gender Identity and Leadership Class, where we read Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and in 21 years of being a Christian, I had never heard this particular exegesis of God’s curse to Eve, that her heart would be evil toward her husband, but that because of Christ’s redemption, she would be able to be free from that posture, and that Adam would rule over her with love. That was also a time when the English Standard Version read, “…and your desire shall be for your husband…” in Genesis 3:16, instead of “and your desire shall be contrary to your husband” as it was permanently changed to in 2016–a decision which was later reversed after the outrage of scholars. Anyway
(D) That no earthly submission should follow human authority into sin—a point upon which Complementarians and egalitarians would both agree.
(E) That Christ came to reverse the curse of gender-role confusion, and confusion around the created order; that because of our redemption in Christ, husbands should aim to forsake harsh or selfish leadership, while wives should aim to forsake resistance to their husband’s authority. In Christ, husbands should grow in love and care for their wives, while wives should grow in willing, joyful submission.
Now this point comes directly from Ephesians 5 where Paul puts a twist on the ancient household codes. But whereas egalitarians tend to start with Ephesians 5:21, with the call to the church to mutually submit to one another in love, Complementarians tend to start with Ephesians 5:22, with the call for wives to submit to their husbands. What I also found interesting is the additional omission of any reference to the Gospels or to the teachings of Jesus.
(F) That women or men who feel called to lead or pastor should never use their “heartfelt sense of call to ministry” as reason to go against Paul’s prescription for godly men to lead, except in places outside the reach of indigenous evangelism, as outlined further in point #9. In other words, in places where missionaries have not yet gone and established a Christian presence, the Danvers Statement allows that “no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make His grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of God and the good of this fallen world.” In other words, if a people group is unreached, one’s sex doesn’t matter in the delivery of the Gospel, because the Gospel matters too much to limit the sharing of it, on the basis of sex. However, in establishing Christianity as a religious presence in that unreached people group, male and female missionaries are expected to teach Complementarianism, organizing families and church communities accordingly.
By now, I hope you can more clearly see some of Complementarianism’s internal contradictions.
Now, I want you to hear me on this, because even though I’ve shifted the neutrality of my position, I really do want to be fair to the Complementarian position in their commitment to Scripture, as they understand it. They read it plainly and in the tradition of Christian fundamentalism and with commentary or statements like these from scholars they trust. Nevermind the fact that the Danvers Statement doesn’t include one single reference to Jesus’ teachings or the Gospels, for a lot of people, especially in my context of small town Christian America, Complementarianism makes sense. Gender roles and gender bias often already exist and are un-examined. There’s nothing really new there except for those who are genuinely committed to Christ, to turn from their selfish ways and love each other like Jesus. And for a lot of Complementarians, I believe their desire to know Truth and to live by it is genuine and pure.
Here’s the problem.
In John 8:31-32, Jesus said to the Jews: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the Truth and the truth will set you free.”
That’s not the problem; this is: I don’t see a lot of freedom coming from Complementarian teaching or practice. I say it like that because many people who call themselves Complementarians aren’t—but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Let me start with complementarian teaching: In my opinion, Complementarianism has led to more confusion than clarity for couples. Because first of all, both complementarians and egalitarians affirm the complementarity between men and women, as two distinct genders uniquely, yet together, reflecting the image of God, which you can read about in the link in the full transcript to an article by Scot McKnight. But second of all, in my opinion, Complementarianism, as defined in 1988, has intentionally or unintentionally created a bait-and-switch, whereby what is offered on the attractive surface isn’t all that couples are getting when they buy into the product. In other words, the advertising of the product turns out to be very different from what couples expect and what they receive when they unbox the whole package.
Here are some examples of the confusing messages, mincing of words, and contradictions built into Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
“If one word must be used to describe our position, we prefer the term complementarian, since it suggests both equality and beneficial differences between men and women. We are uncomfortable with the term “traditionalist” because it implies an unwillingness to let Scripture challenge traditional patterns of behavior, and we certainly reject the term “hierarchicalist” because it overemphasizes structured authority while giving no suggestion of equality or the beauty of mutual interdependence” (p. 15).
In other words, the term Complementarian was chosen because it’s more comfortable and palatable. And at the time, it seemed, they hoped to be open to letting Scripture challenge tradition. They also preferred Complementarian to hierarchicalist, even though that name was thrown into the mix as an option, because they genuinely wanted to emphasize equality and the beauty of mutual interdependence, while minimizing the structured authority still built in.
“While I am not keen on hierarchy and patriarchy as terms describing the man-woman relationship in Scripture, Genesis 2:18–23 . . . and Ephesians 5:21–33 . . . continue to convince me that the man-woman relationship is intrinsically nonreversible. By this I mean that, other things being equal, a situation in which a female boss has a male secretary, or a marriage in which the woman (as we say) wears the trousers, will put more strain on the humanity of both parties than if it were the other way around. This is part of the reality of the creation, a given fact that nothing will change” (p. 54).
In other words, while the writer doesn’t like thinking of his position in terms of hierarchy or patriarchy, he cannot say, in good conscience, that they are not a part of his position. Based on his reading of Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5, paired with his fear of Matriarchy perhaps, or role reversal, he concludes that patriarchy is a fact of creation. That men and women are equal…except on the basis of personhood, sex, and authority.
Can you see why this would cause someone to have to do a bit of mental gymnastics? And there are 690 pages of this book, taking time to exegete every related passage and answering every possible question that might come up about Complementarianism. And part of me respects this endeavor. I remember reading the book in college and thinking, “My goodness, I’m so glad these guys took the time to form a position for me and to reason with all of these extraneous questions because this seems so complicated and complex!” Now, my Christian upbringing contributed to this thought, too, because prior to my reading, I was also taught to be humble, lowly, to not think too much of myself, which in some ways was constructive to character building, and in other ways, misguided, in that the way I was taught this led me to distrust my own intelligence. And so, I trusted theirs. I took them at their word and considered all the things they were saying as just part of playing my role in the kingdom of God.
This is why Complementarianism is confusing to so many people and why, unless you’ve grown up in it, or are immersed in it, it can be a little bit crazy-making.
Case in point: By 2012, Mary Kassian wrote an article entitled, “Complementarianism for Dummies” to try and clarify the position. A founder of the movement, she wrote:
“I was at the meeting, 25 years ago, where the word “complementarianism” was chosen. So I think I have a good grasp on the word’s definition.”
The graphics on that post read: 1. It’s about complimenting, not complimenting. 2. It’s not about perpetuating a 1950s stereotype—that’s called traditionalism. 3. It’s not about one sex being more privileged than the other—that’s called hierarchicalism. 4. It’s not about guys having the right to rule over and oppress—that’s called patriarchalism. 5. It’s about male and female reflecting complementary truths about Jesus. Kassian concludes her article: “We don’t get to dictate what manhood and womanhood are all about. Our Creator does.”
Okay, but again, given the text we’ve previously covered, just because the term Complementarianism was the one chosen to represent the group’s predominant value doesn’t mean they’re not present in the position itself.
Remember, patriarchy has played out predominantly in culture since the beginning of civilization, as has the practice of men as heads of households. The inferiority of the female sex has been an idea forwarded by men throughout history. Take St. Augustine, for example, who wrote in the 4th century: “It is the natural order among people that women serve their husbands…because the justice of this lies in the lesser serves the greater…. This is the natural justice that the weaker brain serves the stronger.” Take John Calvin, for example, who wrote in the 16th century: “Let the woman be satisfied with her state of subjection, and not take it amiss that she is made inferior to the more distinguished sex.” In the 18th-19th centuries, the idea of complementarity took root to maintain social stability with the emergence of the love-based marriage. And finally, in the 20th century, this same blend of Scripture and sexism has been promoted through Complementarian teaching.
“Manhood” and “womanhood” as such are now often seen as irrelevant factors in determining fitness for leadership.“ … When the Bible teaches that men and women fulfill different roles in relation to each other, charging man with a unique leadership role, it bases this differentiation not on temporary cultural norms but on permanent facts of creation” (p. 40).
And the thing is, Complementarian teaching is pervasive. It shows up all over the internet, on social media, without our necessarily knowing it. The Gospel Coalition, GotQuestions.org, Crossway, who publishes the English Standard Version of the Bible, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and in many Christian marriage and parenting books and podcasts.
But more and more, their own proponents are identifying the presence of hierarchy (J.I. Packer), patriarchy (Russell Moore), paternalism (Hannah Anderson), subordination (Beth Allison Barr), and benevolent sexism as built into the Complementarian position, whose books and articles I’ve linked to in the full transcript on my website.
And finally, I want to cover complementarianism in practice. Now, as I said before, some couples, by the grace of God, maneuver around this in their marriages. They stick to the Ephesians 5 passage, but base their love and respect for each other on Jesus instead of on hierarchical practice. They intuitively find healthier ways to relate. They leave the misogyny out of their marriages. And so, I’ve known plenty of couples who call themselves Complementarian, who say they hold complementarian beliefs, but in actuality, the way they live is quite egalitarian, thus, they’re happier, more intimate, and freer than those couples who try to apply biblical manhood and womanhood rigidly to their relationships. Why? Because hierarchy and predetermined marriage, gender, and ministry roles set couples up for resentment, distance, isolation, inauthenticity, and power struggle with one another.
I’ve worked with lots of young couples on both sides of the spectrum of complementarianism and egalitarianism, but in my work with couples middle-aged and older, I’ve predominantly work with couples who’ve practiced complementarianism and its outworkings for 20-30 years who are frustrated, who are seeing: This is not working. This has not worked. We are halfway through a lifetime together and no better at resolving conflict, sharing decisions, figuring out our sex life, figuring out how to be happy together, or knowing what to do with our shame, resentment, guilt, hostility, and lack of emotional intimacy with one another.
Research backs this up, too, in its look at traditional arrangements in a modern world versus an egalitarian approach to marriage.
In the 1980s, when David Olsen was doing his research that’s now encompassed in the Prepare-Enrich curriculum, he found that couples who perceived their relationship as egalitarian were qualitatively happier: 81% compared to 19% who reported being unhappy in their marriages. Strikingly, when both husband and wife abide by traditional roles, 18% reported being happy, compared to 82% of couples who reported being unhappy. In 2002, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife found that women who didn’t subscribe to traditional gender ideologies, or who said they did but actually didn’t in the way they organized their relationships—who were actually more egalitarian in practice—were healthier and freer in their sexual agency than those who practiced traditional gender roles. And in 2006, Heather Helms did a study that concluded that spouses who follow stereotyped gender roles tend to have marriages that are reportedly less satisfying and happy than couples with more egalitarian roles.
Now, here’s what I’ve seen in my practice and why I’m so passionate about this topic and why I want to educate couples on what’s healthy and leads to wholeness.
It seems like gender roles are being emphasized over Jesus. And the prescriptions feel unfair, based on their strengths and personalities; unbalanced, based on their workloads between work and home; and un-Christlike, in that one or both partners is more concerned with trying to play a certain part than with loving their partner and trying to connect on an intimate level, rather than a role-based one.
Christian men are experiencing suffocating amounts of pressure, not only in their expectations for themselves, but in the shame they feel when they can’t or don’t measure up to one of these complementarian standards. A husband loses a job, another struggles with mental illness, another doesn’t know what to do with the fact that his wife makes more than him, another is overworked and burnt out, but doesn’t have any sort of frame in which to put those things. Instead, he says to himself because of what he’s been taught, “I should be better than this. I’m ashamed and embarrassed. I’m weak. I’m not holding up my side as a man. I need to man up.” All of which make the pressure worse, not better, by the way. Oh, and sometimes, not always, the wife is laying that message on him, too, because guess what? They’re buying into what they’ve heard at church or through unhealthy Christian teaching. Men, in this framing are taught that they’re weak and unworthy, when really, they’re just human. As James would say, “brothers and sisters, this ought not to be.” There ought to be kindness and grace and support built into our teachings so that when life inevitably happens and roles inevitably shift, men’s self-esteem and self-respect don’t plummet, leaving him to be able to do less of that which he desires to do for his wife and his family.
Christian women are experiencing loads of guilt and resentment as they blame their partners for not living up to the unrealistic expectations placed on Christian men in complementarianism, and then the guilt comes for disrespecting their husbands and getting angry with them for reasons perpetuated by complementarian views themselves! Do you see how this could be a crazy-making cycle for wives? Because not only does she cycle through thoughts of, “He makes me so angry, but I just need to love and respect him better,” she herself has no sense of inner stability or strength. Why? Because she’s been taught that her stability and strength lies in her husband. That if she exhibits strength, she’s doing it wrong. So instead, she needs to manipulate herself, oh, and her partner to get him to become who she wants him to be, which is, who she’s been told he’s supposed to be in the Complementarian view. But she’s a human, too! So of course, she has agency and personhood—those are God’s gifts to her, just like her husband! But either she won’t recognize her agency in the marriage, winding up in a really underdeveloped state for an adult woman, or she’ll subconsciously use her agency in unhealthy ways to try and fit herself or her husband into a mold that likely doesn’t fit, or is just plain unhealthy. So here, we need teaching, Church, that encourages Christian women, wives, and mothers—all people, really, to grow up into Christ, who is the head, not to be stunted in their growth by leaning too heavily on their husbands, who were not made to be their lords.
Okay, I’m cutting myself off. We will have to stop here. But we’ve covered a lot, so feel free to connect and let me know your questions, considerations, all those types of things. And especially if you’re in church leadership, I would be more than happy to have a conversation about how to more effectively help the couples you serve. That we both serve in complementary ways. I’m not on social media, but you can find my website in the show notes and my email and contact form from there. Alright? Thanks for being here. Thanks for your engagement this season. I’m Kensi Duszynski. Podcast editing is by Evan Duszynski. Music is by John Tibbs. Have a great couple of weeks and I’ll talk to you again soon.
SHOW NOTES:
What have some of the most popular authors and speakers on Christian marriage had to say over the past 5 decades? We’ll talk what’s good, what’s bad, and what we’ve believed to be true—before questioning our assumptions about what we’ve been taught God wants for our marriage relationships.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to the Brave Marriage Podcast, a podcast for couples who want to grow as individuals, do marriage with intention, and live mutually empowered, purposeful lives. I hope wherever you are, that you’re doing well, and enjoying this series on marriage, mutuality, and gender roles. And thank you to those of you who’ve recently left ratings of the podcast, I really appreciate it.
On today’s episode, we’re picking up where my conversation with Steve and Twyla left off. They had talked about having few resources available to them in the ‘70s as they got married, and I’d like to share a little bit of my story and context as well because what I plan to do today is talk about Christian resources, and especially Christian books on marriage, to help us think wisely about what we’re inputting and how we’re internalizing what it means to be married and to do marriage well as Christ-followers.
So I started reading Christian relationship books in the early 2000s, and back then, the only way to access those resources was through my local Christian bookstore. I lived in a small town and our church had a library, but it wasn’t regularly updated, and I wasn’t sure if my local public library would have the resources I was looking for, so what I had to choose from was whatever my local bookstore sold as Christian. So I picked up a few Christian books on male-female relationships in high school, one by Joshua Harris, one by John Eldredge, and one by Emerson Eggerichs. I read their books, and apart from seeing what was modeled for me at church and at home, I really didn’t have any explicit teaching on marriage, so I thought what I was reading was gold! You know, I started dating early, I was interested in counseling, and so I wanted to know the right way, as a young Christian girl, to go about dating and I hoped, one day, marriage.
What I did then was I assimilated this information on marriage and male-female relating into my pre-existing schema, into my Christian worldview. I didn’t question what these books were saying; I trusted what these books were saying because I grew up in a small town and apart from youth group and theological conversations with my mom and grandmother, I didn’t know any better. I assumed that if someone was published, then they must be credible and trustworthy, and that what they’re saying in their books must be true. What’s more is that I could see myself in the godly woman role these men were describing. So I never doubted or had any qualms about what I was reading; I just wanted to do what was best and honoring to God!
So I lived by these teachings, I internalized these messages, not even realizing they ran counter to my church doctrine! Because these authors seemed so sure of themselves, and I thought that by following them, I would not only be pleasing God but also my future husband. That’s just a little part of my story, I’m sure I’ll share more in bits and pieces in the future, but it wasn’t until grad school, until seminary, that my professor of Couples Counseling, Toddy Holeman, had us read Jack and Judith Balswick’s, A Model for Marriage: Covenant, Grace, Empowerment, and Intimacy that I realized: 1) the model for marriage I was reading in grad school resonated with me so much more than anything I’d read before—it felt more true to God’s nature, it felt more intuitive 2) perhaps this Christian teaching on marriage is qualitatively and fundamentally more Christ-like than any of the rules or roles that I was taught through other books, were Christian.
If you’ve been listening for a long time, you’ll recognize the Balswicks’ names, as I mentioned them and their work on differentiated unity all the way back in episode #004, I believe. For the longest time, I hoped that teaching marriage differently—by teaching healthy relationship dynamics that align with Scripture as a Christian and as a licensed professional—would be sufficient to give listeners a better foundation for their marriages. But the longer I’ve been in the field and immersed in the world of marriage education in the church, the more earnest and eager I’ve become about shedding light on things that need to be exposed, in order that we might live healthier, lighter, freer, fuller, and more loving lives in Christ, within our homes, and within the Christian communities.
So here’s my plan for this episode. I want to walk you through a few books that I was able to get my hands on in paperback form that I’ve read or others have read over the past five decades in the church. Taking one example from each decade, we’ll talk about what’s good, what’s bad, and after taking a look at each one, I’ll draw out a few themes that I want us to think about as we continue our conversation on marriage, mutuality, and gender roles in upcoming episodes.
Starting in 1975 with psychologist James Dobson’s “What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women.” Most of the book talks about low self-esteem, depression, fatigue, loneliness, isolation, and financial, sexual, menstrual, and parenting problems, as wives and mothers experience them—from the perspective of Dr. Dobson. What’s good about this book is that I think Dobson is genuinely trying to help husbands at this time better understand their wives. He’s addressing the most common complaints he hears in his office or on his broadcast, and attempts to give men advice on how to love their wives better and remedy problems at home.
What’s bad is that he tells men in chapter 5 that as husband, he is her sole reflector of self-esteem due to her being isolated at home; thus, he needs to take his job as head of the household seriously to save his wife from mental illness and to fulfill her emotional needs. He also encourages husbands to understand that wives need romance and emotional connection in the same way that husbands, as it was thought at that time, need their biologically-driven sexual appetites fulfilled—sooner rather than later. So I wonder, what parts of this teaching have you heard in the church and believed to be true? What of this do you not believe is true, but are still influenced by nonetheless in the way you relate in marriage or in what’s taught to you in your circles?
It’s important to remember that Dobson’s teachings are coming out of a time where teachings on marriage were already “bad for women,” (as Steve Lee stated on episode 132), so rather than placing all the blame and responsibility for the husband’s attitude at home on the wife, Dobson seems to be trying to help wives by getting their husbands to take on some responsibility as well. As he wrote in his book, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives in 1980: “For the man who appreciates the willingness of his wife to stand against the tide of public opinion—staying at home in her empty neighborhood in the exclusive company of jelly-faced toddlers and strong-willed adolescents—it is about time you gave her some help.” So he’s seeing the plight of wives in his work, those who’ve chosen to stay home, going against the cultural tide of change, who are sacrificing their own personhood and self-esteem, as evidenced by their mental health issues, for the sake of the family. But his solution is to try to get men to take better care of their wives. Believing that husbands are biblically called to be the head of the household, he encourages husbands to steward their household rule with benevolence, and loving leadership, rather than ruling their households with cruelty and abuse on the one hand, or passivity and disengagement on the other.
So I can see where people thought at the time that this advice was helpful, healthy, and loving. Wives at this time probably appreciated Dobson’s advice, encouraging their husbands to do something different in order to relieve their pressure and depression at home. But time, distance, and research in social science shows us the deficiencies in this line of reasoning:
1) Biological, psychological, and environmental factors all play into mental illness, so in the first line of chapter 2, to state that depression and apathy are merely a fact of life for women that needs to be dealt with and normalized in marriage is not only based on availability bias, but proven to be untrue. Furthermore, if a person’s depression is linked to environmental factors, the solution is not to prescribe more of the same that’s not working (in this case, hulling up in the house, relying on one’s partner to take care of them) but to help a client change environmental factors with the differentiated support of a spouse.
2) To suggest that a husband is solely responsible for his wife’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem is an immense amount of pressure to place on a husband. If in the ‘50s, the advice of the day was for a woman to play a certain part so prop up her husband’s ego and to make sure he was happy at home, and if that contributed in part to a housewife’s mental health during those decades, then it’s illogical to reverse those roles, changing the advice in Christian spaces to get a husband to play a certain part to ensure his wife’s happiness. All we’re doing there is creating a system of relating in which both husbands and wives feel unhappy to some degree, overly responsible for their partners, and codependent on each other to now meet expectations that have been created through teachings such as this, that neither partner was ever meant to fulfill!
I was just having a conversation yesterday with a former professor of mine and now colleague and she was saying how worried she is about the low self-esteem she sees among women and the purposelessness and lack of direction she sees among men; I can’t help but think that as a church, we’ve done this to ourselves! The loudest evangelical Christian teachings since the development of the love-based marriage have not led to our mutual flourishing, but instead, for many couples who buy into these teachings, to mutual discouragement with themselves, and their subsequent blame, shame, guilt, lack of freedom, lack of love, and misgivings with each other. (Somebody research that please.)
3) While Dobson tries to convey the importance of emotional intimacy in marriage for women, in doing so, he diminishes the importance of emotional intimacy in marriage for men—when we know through attachment research that both men and women require a secure emotional attachment to relate in healthy ways with one another. Furthermore, on page 64, he says that men need respect for self-esteem purposes, while women need love for self-worth purposes. Again, both are true, but so is the other side of the coin, that men need love for self-worth purposes, and women need respect for self-esteem purposes. Sixteen years later, we’ll see this treatment of men and women needing love and respect differently in the handbook of complementarianism (which we’ll talk about next episode). And thirteen years after that, we’ll see a Christian psychologist and pastor write a NYT best-seller based on this treatment of a divergence of love and respect based on gender, encouraging couples to heal their marriages based on giving a woman the love she most desires and giving a man the respect he desperately needs. And what’s so wild to me is that when Dobson writes about love and respect, he acknowledges that he’s writing in gender stereotypes and overgeneralizations, and yet, the conventional wisdom for relating in conversative Christian circles holds these virtues as diametrically opposed—even though Paul’s instructions to couples in Ephesus were an outpouring of his instructions for those in the church to mutually submit to one another; not rigid rules for relating between men and women.
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Next, we’ll look at the book, For Women Only, a book of essays by different authors, written in 1988. What’s good about it is, there are many essays written by many different people with different perspectives. For example, there’s an essay by Mary Lou Lacy encouraging women to grow up into spiritual maturity in Christ, seeking Him first daily, above all else, above husband, about children, above all, until women grow up into the fullness of Him, who is the Head, Christ, and learn to love God and others as Christ has called them to.
However, there’s also an essay by televangelist Robert Schuller called What Does a Man Really Want in a Wife? Five things, he says: 1) a confidante, 2) a companion, 3) a creative climate-controller, and by that he means, his very own source of positivity and possibility-thinking at home—for “No man” he writes on page 116, “will ever leave, or stop loving, a positive-thinking wife who feeds his enthusiasm and self-confidence.” 4) for her to be his conscience, and 5) wait for it—that she be his “consecrated concubine.” He supports his desire for a consecrated concubine to fulfill his biological needs by saying, “we must never forget that God is responsible for this thing called sex” and “many counselors agree that sex is a primary cause of problems in marriage.”
Now, this is where we see the breakdown between the knowledge of a mental health practitioner, and a Christian person or pastor with a platform disseminating pop psychology and using the Bible to back it up. At least in Dobson’s work, he understands that sexual problems more often expose relational problems in a marriage, rather than causing them, as Schuller misinterprets. But the difference is, Dobson is a parachurch professional, whereas Schuller is a televised pastor to whom evangelicals looked for spiritual guidance and spiritual wisdom on how to relate in marriage. On top of that, there’s a world of difference in what these teachings lead to. When a Christian psychologist understands sexual problems as exposing underlying relational ones, they’re at least a step closer to helping a couple get to the root of their issues. But if Christians are taught by pastors to believe that there’s a causal effect between a lack of sex and relational issues, then what happens in practice is that wives feel pressure to provide sex and husbands feel anxious about not getting it. So they end up doing this dance of pressuring, avoiding, and trying to create desire out of thin air, to solve their relational woes. But what they don’t see is that it’s the teaching itself, rather than the insufficiency of the wife or the enduring need of the husband, that’s perpetuating the problem rather than solving it. Sex and couples therapists will tell you that that type of pressure and perceived insufficiency leads to more problems, relationally, sexually, and psychologically, not less. But it’s hard to know that or to be convinced of that, when Christian leaders and shepherds use God to command their points, which prove unhelpful and harmful when applied to the Christian marriage.
But again, I want you to ask yourself: Is this something you’ve heard in the church, or been taught in some way, or believed?
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Okay, now we’re getting into the ‘90s and what I want to point out is that by this time, research in the field of marriage and family therapy had advanced like never before. Both John Gottman and Sue Johnson had done years of research specifically on couples in marriage and intimate relationships. But when Dobson started writing his books to couples in the ‘70s, the study of marriage relationships was still in its infancy; the pioneers of my field were actually Dobson’s contemporaries because remember, the love-based marriage was extremely new in history, and how to do it well was still unknown. Dobson was a child psychologist who worked with Paul Popenoe, the father of marriage counseling, but Popenoe was a former eugenicist who wrote popular marriage advice—the same advice that Steve Lee said on last episode, was bad for women in the ‘40s-50s. So throughout the 20th century, we have the emergence of the field and study of intimacy in love-based marriage relationships, which paralleled teachings on marriage in the church, some of which was based on Scripture, but some of which was based on pop psychology and pseudoscience before there was actually empirically-validated scientific studies and evidence-based models for working effectively with couples. I just want you to keep that in mind.
So in 1996, Gary Smalley wrote a book for Christian couples called Making Love Last Forever. What’s good about his book is a lot, compared to what I’ve shared thus far, and that’s because he combines Scripture and evidence-based principles found in marriage and family therapy. In part I, Smalley gives instructions on how to fall in love with life, the idea being taking personal responsibility before trying to make change in your relationship. And in part II, Smalley gives instructions for how to stay in love with your spouse, getting at the fact that love is a personal choice and decision. Both of these overarching principles are good.
What’s bad though, is the perpetuation of gender-based stereotypes which don’t fit all couples. For example, in Ch. 11, entitled “How to Bring Out the Best in Your Maddening Mate,” he highlights how men love to share facts, while women love to share feelings. On p. 192, he says, “there’s one particular thing we men wish we could control about our wives—sex whenever we want it! But as we’ll see in chapter 14, that’s not how good sex works.” So I’ll give him credit for saying that’s not how good sex works. But I get so frustrated with the perpetuation of stereotypes, because in my practice, thanks to Olsen’s premarital research in the ‘80s, I have premarital reports that directly express the opposite—both in regard to sexual desire and the communication of fact versus feeling. So when couples are taught that these traits are gender-normative, how are they supposed to feel about themselves when they’re wired differently than what these books they’re reading are purporting? I hear these questions time and again from husbands and wives in my own practice who feel, in some way, deficient because their personality or desires don’t line up not only with what our society calls masculine or feminine, but what the church and Christian authors like this, have set out as normative and typical!
Smalley makes a few points about gender differences that I would call conditioning, such as men tend to be independent, while women tend to be interdependent, and men tend to compete and be controlling, while women tend to cooperate and be agreeable. Twenty years earlier, Dobson observed that women could also be competitive with one another, and in 1991, the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was sure to point out that it’s women who tend to be controlling of men and therefore, need to heed the advice of remaining agreeable and cooperative.
So how, as the church, are we to make sense of gender differences when all of these authors are saying different things about men and women in their books, based on what they’re seeing in their own work with couples? Well, there are a few things that are important to remember:
1) Men and women are biologically different in some ways, yes, but they are also culturally conditioned to behave differently over time. The traits that are labelled masculine or feminine in a given time and place don’t stay the same over time; rather, they change and reflect their culture.
2) Men and women are no more prone, disposition-wise, to certain personality traits than the opposite gender. Men and women can both exhibit independence, competitiveness, cooperation, a desire to control, or a desire to be agreeable. Again, I have many research-based premarital reports which say that each of these traits can and do exist in both genders. So what service are we doing to couples when we speak in broad strokes without looking at each individual person and relationship?
3) We are all prone to cognitive biases and attribution errors. The problem is, when we aren’t aware of our bias or blind spots, we teach solutions to problems as we see them—not as they actually are. In the case of these authors, they see the issues as gender-based rather than culturally-based, and so they apply a medical model to treating couples, linear logic that might alleviate symptoms in the short term, but do nothing to actually help couples long-term, especially when systemic issues are at play. What’s worse, is that they call this truth God’s truth, and at that point, couples not only have relational injuries to address, but emotional and psychological injuries as a result of Scriptural misuse.
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Let’s take a look at another example of this, moving into the 21st century: Emerson Eggerichs’ best-selling Christian book, Love and Respect, written in 2004. Starting with what’s good about the book, Eggerichs does use the family systems principle of feedback loops in his book. And I think this book had such huge success because for the first time in Christian literature, a psychologically trained Christian minister is saying, hey, these issues you’re facing are cyclical—and he names this dynamic “the crazy cycle.”
What’s bad about this book is that it virtually names every couple’s dynamic as the same in conflict, while research shows that couples tend to have 1 of 3 different dynamics in conflict. But according to Eggerichs, when couples get into conflict, the problem is that conflict makes most men feel disrespected, while women tend to feel unloved. In contrast, eight years earlier, Gary Smalley quoted Deborah Tannen in his chapter on what drives one’s mate mad, quote: “Many women could learn from men to accept some conflict and difference without seeing it as a threat to intimacy; and any men could learn from women to accept interdependence without seeing it as a threat to their freedom.”
So, who’s more right? Smalley, in his suggestion that men can better tolerate conflict than women, but that men don’t like feeling like their freedom is threatened? Or Eggerichs’, when he suggests that what men fear most is disrespect, and conflict makes most men feel disrespected? Well, I would say that no human likes feeling disrespected or like their freedom is threatened. So to me, their differing emphases seem more like matters of personal experience than matters of universal truth. For example, Eggerichs’ confesses his own intolerance of being disrespected when on p. 68, he writes, “There are many wives who tell me, ‘Respect and love are the same thing.’ I respond, ‘No, they aren’t, and you know they aren’t.’” “The bottom line is that husbands and wives have needs that are truly equal. She needs unconditional love, and he needs unconditional respect.”
So from there, the author spends the book outlining his solution, what he’s named “the energizing cycle,” assuring readers that the cycle will be broken if wives and husbands could just learn to spell love and respect, respectively. To spell love to women, Eggerichs tells men that a wife wants her husband to be close, open, understanding, peacemaking, loyal, and in agreement with Dobson, to provide her with self-esteem. On the other hand, he tells women that a husband wants his wife to appreciate his conquest, hierarchy, authority, insight, sex drive, and desire for friendship. On page 252, he uses a case study of a woman who calls her mom to tell her they won’t make it to visit her parents that day because her husband is upset. The mother asks why and the daughter responds, “I suppose because we have not been sexually intimate for seven days.” Eggerichs goes on to say that the mom “let her daughter have it,” replying, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why would you deprive him of something that takes such a short amount of time and makes him soooooo happy?”
Again I ask, have you believed this to be true. This shame-based motivation for marital change is a common pattern I’ve seen in Christian teachings on marriage throughout the past few decades. Certainly not all books lead with shame, but it occurs to me that some of the best-selling Christian marriage books do. I’d love to know what’s going on there, that we’d prefer to have shots fired at us, borrowing a phrase from Dobson, than to have someone teach on love in marriage in a way that leads to life and grace and the truth spoken in love.
The last book in my literature review through the past five decades is, A Model for Marriage by Jack and Judith Balswick. The premise of their book is that by looking at the way the Trinity relates, we can take a few different principles and apply them universally to our relationships in a way that will lead all couples, through all times, in all places, toward life, love, and health relationally, and those are the principles of covenant love, grace-filled love, mutual empowerment and servanthood, and the intimacy of knowing and being known.
In Romans 1:16-25, Paul talks about the power of Gospel and how as humans, we are without excuse when we exchange truth for lies and choose to worship created things rather than the Creator because he says, “for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” And I tend to think that when human-made principles are applied universally, the fruit of such teachings are exposed, as I believe we’re seeing more clearly today in the evangelical church. But when the power of the Gospel is taught correctly, it brings life and health in its transformation of individuals and couples, not death and dysfunction. So I think we have to look at what we’ve been taught, for better or worse, about Christian marriage, and evaluate it accordingly. Does a teaching lead couples closer to Christ and toward freedom and intimacy with each other, or does a teaching lead couples away from Christ or from true intimacy with each other?
To contrast the Balswicks’ teaching on sexuality with the previous books we’ve looked at, they make no mention of gender differences except to say that it's in our being created male and female that we move toward knowing and being known through emotional and sexual intimacy, and that by communing together in sexual union, we reflect the full image of God. On p. 165, they affirm that the erotic expression between the lovers in Song of Solomon goes beyond sexual desire to a longing for the lover, him or herself, making sex a person-centered experience rather than a husband-centered experience that wives are shamed to participate in. Imagine how much difference teachings like these could make if they were the ones primarily taught to couples in the church!
My main hope for this episode is that you feel caught up to speed on where we are today in the church as it relates to teachings on marriage. This series so far has been in no way exhaustive and there’s so much more I could share, but I think this will give you a good foundation for thinking about what you’ve been taught and why, and how these messages have impacted couples in the church. The most interesting thing to me the more I’ve learned and studied this topic is being able to see how conventional wisdom morphs and changes over time, but how influenced we still are by many of these messages, not really realizing or understanding where they come from.
Stay tuned for the next two episodes where we’ll dive into Egalitarianism and Complementarianism, to find out what those mean and why it matters to your marriage. Thank you so much for listening to the Brave Marriage Podcast. I’m your host, Kensi Duszynski. Podcast editing is by Evan Duszynski. Music is by John Tibbs. Have a great week and I’ll talk to you again soon.
