Chapter 7
Misguided Teachings
These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. In vain they do worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.
—Matthew 15:8–9
We have reviewed the four foundational teachings in Scripture regarding the biblical husband-wife dynamic and the underlying modern influences that challenge those foundations. Sadly, the Christian community relegates too much discussion of marriage to secular, subjective views while pushing aside the objective teaching of Scripture. And when problems manifest in Christian marriages, couples are often referred to Christian counselors trained in the mind sciences.
Even if the mind sciences were a legitimate, effective option, by this time it may be too late. The damage has already been done; from the start the couple should have been consistently presented the biblical marital model. Marital issues could be preempted if pastors adequately presented what the Word of God says about the position, disposition, and predisposition of husbands and wives. They so compromise the Word of God that it is rendered worse than ineffective—many teach in opposition to biblical principles. When you listen closely to their sermons on the marriage relationship, their teachings more closely reflect a secular worldview.
I see too many pastors forsaking Scripture and submitting to secularism by neglecting to teach and admonish their flocks on the biblical foundations of marriage. They substitute biblical principles with views tainted by pop culture, feminism, and the mind sciences.
In so doing, pastors fail men, women, and their families in order to please those other than God. In their fear of criticism from the world and even other pastors, they jettisoned scriptural admonitions of married women over the last three generations. In the same three generations, women were steeped in an anti-biblical, anti-male culture. The Christian leaders who could have saved them remained silent.
Proverbs tells us that the virtuous woman is not the norm. Proverbs 31:10 asks, "Who can find a virtuous woman? For her worth is far above rubies." King Lemuel’s observation is consistent with the disposition that God said the woman would struggle. If the virtuous woman is a rarity, then it would follow that most women do not hold the qualities of the virtuous woman. Where are the sermons? Where are the books that confront women on this shortcoming? Is the woman of today so superior in virtue than the woman of 930 BC that there is no need to remind her of this wisdom? How do preachers and authors today reconcile their unbalanced sermons with what King Lemuel had to say about the rarity of virtuous women? The disproportionate emphasis of Ephesians 5:25–29 by pastors and authors is peculiar when the rest of Scripture is taken into consideration.
Inadequate instruction and admonition of women sets up the blameless wife: If there are problems in the marriage, they must be the husband’s fault. Such a view fits neatly with the secular narrative of the relationally deficient husband. The marriage counseling industry thrives on the prevalent fallacies of the blameless wife and the insensitive, self-centered man.
Pastors and counselors who are imperceptive to the reality of this erred view are more secularly than biblically aligned and will answer to our Lord for the damage. And every woman who holds a pastor in the kind of high esteem that she should reserve for her husband will also answer to God. Let’s look at some specific points of failure and hope those responsible can make a course correction.
Biases of Pastors, Authors, and Counselors
Throughout this book, I have referred to biased teachings that contradict biblical principles. There are underlying presumptions imposed on Christendom’s terminology that taint or outright contradict scriptural teachings. Some make presumptive statements that go beyond the basic requirement for a husband to love his wife and the woman to submit to her husband.
As a case in point, consider the article, "Does a wife have to submit to her husband?" by evangelical seminary graduate S. Michael Houdmann on his Got Questions website.29 Although Houdmann gets some things correct in his lengthy answer to the question posed in the article’s title, he makes two statements that subtly embed presumptions contradicting Scripture. One is when he says, "When a wife is loved by her husband as the Church is loved by Christ, submission is not difficult."
What Houdmann is saying is if the woman is having difficulty submitting, then it follows that the husband is not loving her like Christ loves the Church. In other words, it is the man’s fault if a wife finds it difficult to submit, and thus he needs correction. With this type of fallacious thinking, it would make sense to call men to account for not loving their wives. But this is an erred remedy based on a flawed presumption by means of a thinly veiled if-then statement.
First Peter 3:1–7 says the opposite: The wife is held to the biblical standard, independent of her husband’s spiritual state. However, Houdmann shifts the onus from the wife to the husband. By his approach, she alone determines whether her husband is loving enough and makes the call based on her standard, "what is right in her own eyes," to paraphrase Judges 17:6. She becomes his judge. But how can that work if he is to be the leader and she the help meet? And what if the husband does love his wife, but she still finds it difficult to submit or simply refuses?
Houdmann fails to call out the woman’s sinful rebelliousness that sources from her predisposition to desire her husband’s headship. He does not acknowledge the contentious wife cited multiple times in Proverbs. Nor does he provide a balance regarding the woman’s sinful nature as a variable in the dynamic of the headship-submission relationship between husband and wife.
The second error I find is when Houdmann includes the false teaching that women will "naturally" submit: "Submission should be a natural response to loving leadership." This statement contradicts Genesis 3, where God explicitly told the woman that because of her sinful nature, she will not want to submit: "Your desire will be for your husband." Here too Houdmann makes her submission contingent on her perception of his loving leadership. He ignores that her submission, or lack of, is of her own will. Houdmann’s erred teaching allows her to withhold her submission if she deems her husband’s loving leadership is lacking.
Do you see the sleight of hand? This is not to pick on Houdmann. I use his teaching as an illustration of how the subtleties of language used by many Christian pastors, authors, and counselors convey meanings that contradict Scripture. It is false teaching; I’m not sure they even realize what they are doing. Have they been so steeped in the culture and in misguided training that they cannot see it any other way? Intentional or not, they are serving Satan’s agenda when the effect of their words is to contradict scriptural principles.
Houdmann is effectively setting up a conditional relationship and providing an out for the woman’s accountability to submit to her husband. The Bible doesn’t offer any conditions allowing a woman to withhold her submission (or anything else) from her husband—difficult or not. Teachings like Houdmann’s allow philosophical room for a wife to fabricate reasons for her husband to conform to her judgment: "Do I think he’s loving enough for me to (fill in the blank: reverence him, submit to him, have sex with him, love him)?" Do you see where this kind of thinking leads?
Contrary to this type of teaching, the scriptural requirements for the man to love his wife and for the woman to submit to her husband are mutually exclusive. Marriage is not meant to be a transactional relationship. Transactional behavior in the sexual relationship magnifies the spoil. When a woman requires tokens or performance from her husband, she is placing herself in the company of less-than-desirable women who trade in the world’s oldest profession. By her own hand, she cheapens the act and the relationship.
But how many times are men admonished to provide material tokens to appease their wives’ emotional state? We’re all familiar with them: flowers, date nights, helping with the dishes, and on and on. (Not that a loving husband shouldn’t attend to his loving wife’s needs or deliver any of these.) In effect, women are encouraged to have a disposition of entitlement—formulaic expectations of her husband planted by pastors, authors, and counselors or encouraged by her own lusts. Instead of keeping her heart for her husband for whatever expression he gives as an outflow of his love, she becomes dissatisfied because he hasn’t met an imposed standard.
These views are fabrications of our plenteous culture. So, what does a man in a third world state deliver when he and his wife live in a dirt floor hut in the wilderness and he doesn’t have the means to shower her with material tokens? How has it become allowable for a wife to hold hostage her loving disposition toward her husband because he hasn’t paid an acceptable price? Is that really agapé love? Or is it the consequence of her lusting for material things, what she sees in other men, or in the pornography of romantic novels, television shows, and movies?
Is she feeling disenfranchised when she sees the things in our society and culture that she feels she doesn’t have? First Timothy speaks to the ruin and destruction that follows our lack of contentedness: "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with these things. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in ruin and destruction" (1 Tim. 6:6–9).
There seems to be a great many discontented women in marriages, as far more women file for divorce than men. Are we sure that their lustful desire for things they perceive not having isn’t what is really at play? Shouldn’t pastors, authors, and counselors address this world-centered exhibition to prevent their audiences from slipping into worldly lusts?
Misuse of the Genesis Account
If you can disrupt the book of Genesis, you can bring down the whole Bible. Proponents of the big bang and other evolutionary theories are aware of this as they attempt to rationalize away God. In the same way, some Christians alter Genesis 2–3 in such a way as to undermine its meaning. As I cited earlier, Genesis 3:16 is twisted by some to reduce its effect on the woman’s obligation to God and to her husband.
This trend is consistent with the rise of feminism and its complementary trend, anti-patriarchy. Another example of mischaracterizing Genesis is a twist some pastors overlay on the interplay between Adam and Eve after Satan tempts Eve. The Genesis account says that she gave the fruit to Adam. The Genesis account does not reveal the particulars, only that "she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Gen. 3:6, KJV). We don’t know if Adam was in the vicinity to hear Eve’s conversation with Satan, but we can conclude that he knew she gave him forbidden fruit. God holds him accountable for listening to the woman and eating it. It is safe to conclude that the woman said something that caused him to abandon his obedience to God. She was to Adam what the serpent was to her.
Many today add to the account by interjecting things from their imagination. Some suggest Adam was privy to Eve’s conversation, but we don’t know that. That would have to be imposed on the account; if it were important, it would have been included. However, that doesn’t stop some pastors who impose on Adam a level of responsibility beyond what the text provides. They will carry on with comparisons to their straw man models that characterize men in the way that our culture does: self-centered and aloof. They say things like, "If Adam was doing what he should have as her husband and protector, Eve would not have been tempted by Satan," while wagging their finger at the men.
This is in error on at least two fronts. First, that thinking must be imposed onto the account. The patterns and evidence in Scripture of the contentious (rebellious) woman, the repeated admonishment in Scripture for wives to submit to their husbands, and the warnings that the woman will evoke bitterness from her husband all align to characterize her foremost predisposition: to step away from the man and do what is right in her own eyes. This conclusion makes more sense because it is consistent with the woman as characterized throughout Scripture.
The second reason this teaching is in error is it removes responsibility and accountability from the woman. Genesis 3:3 says that the woman knew the fruit of the tree was forbidden. Either God or Adam had instructed her about the tree. In Genesis 3:6 she took it on herself to make a judgment in opposition to either God’s directive or her husband’s instruction. She even rationalized her disobedience by citing her reasons: "the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" (KJV). What makes us think that women today are not susceptible to the same pattern of thinking and behavior, and thus rationalize away their lack of submission or why he doesn’t deserve her reverential treatment?
Another common, misguided teaching is misinterpreting Genesis 3:12 to say that the man is blaming the woman. This is based more on projection than evidence or principle. It fits the modern narrative that undermines the man and shifts accountability away from the woman. To the contrary, this verse simply highlights Adam’s error in hearkening to the voice of his wife (which God addresses in verse 17). However, the misinterpretation of verse 12 is used to construct a broad-brush mischaracterization of all men’s integrity, consistent with a feminist, anti-patriarchal culture. Some pastors appear to go out of their way to undermine the man and his headship.
In Genesis 3:13 God addresses the woman directly: "What have you done?" He is undeniably holding her to some level of accountability and citing her disobedience. God holds the woman accountable; she is not a victim of anything but her own sinfulness. Adam is not accountable for her as some try to lead you to believe by saying Adam should have been there to protect her. This portion of the account emphasizes the woman’s sinful predisposition rather than any shortcoming on Adam’s part. The reasoning overlaid by modern pastors shifts the focus onto Adam and away from the woman while ignoring the interaction between her and God. This is one of the rare moments in all human existence where a dialogue with God, the God of the universe, is detailed. Certainly, what He says and to whom He speaks should overrule any man-made imposition and rationalization.
The Woman Naturally Knows How to Love
One of the most unchallenged errors that has seeped into Christian teaching is that women naturally know how to love their husbands. Church leaders fill in with their own bias what is not specified in Ephesians 5 or any other Scripture. Because of their adopted secular views, they mistakenly conclude that since Paul did not explicitly direct wives to love their husbands, they "naturally" know how. How is that idea supported scripturally? Titus would contradict their presumption with Paul’s directive for the older women to teach the young women to love their husbands: "The aged women likewise, that…they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children" (Titus 2:3–4, KJV).
This is another scriptural study in the wife’s requirement to submit—that is, to learn what love means to her husband—and be taught what she needs to do to connect with him on his terms. How can you read this any other way when you place the text in a larger biblical context of what the woman’s relation to her husband should be: a "help meet" and to submit in "everything"?
The popular, errant view is rooted in the mindset where women are more emotionally developed and men do not have as much capacity to convey their feelings. Yes, women do tend to be more emotional than men; however, it is a mistake to equate emotion with love. Love is a broad term, expressed in many ways between husband and wife. The Old and New Testaments detail those expressions if we would only search and study them and clear our minds of secular teachings that lack biblical substance. That is my goal in this book—to help Christians understand biblically based marriage beyond the blinders and secular influences too common today.
Be a Man
Many point to the deterioration of marriage as a root cause of modern society’s ills. What has gone undetected over the last fifty years by Christian leadership is the slow and steady process of undermining the man’s role in marriage and the family. The man’s biblical role is held not only by his character and behavior, but by how his wife treats him and speaks to him. The man is the pillar of the family as Christ is the pillar of the Church. Pastors, authors, and counselors need to uphold the man’s role in the marriage and family as much as they uphold Christ’s.
When they fail to do so, alternatives like the "be a man" movement spring up. The mantra of this misguided trend—"stand up and be a man"—does quite the opposite of what it claims. Painted with a broad brush, the husband is told to "man up," which presumes he isn’t already doing that. Husbands are admonished to be the leader of the family on one end, but the narrative in our culture and pulpits constantly undermine him.
Pastors who have fallen for this gimmick are effectually scolding men in front of their wives and families. They succumb to the guilt-ridden narrative from those beating the feminist movement’s victim drum. They buy into the narrative that men are inferior to women on relational and moral levels, that these brutes need saving from themselves, and that if they would only listen to women and follow their cues of knowing how to naturally love, they would finally measure up.
Pastors who buy into this misguided trend place men in a compromised position, knocking them down a notch instead of building up who God designed them to be in the marriage and family. We’re all sinners and imperfect, husbands included. Is it helpful to relentlessly call them on the carpet in a corporate setting without doing the same for the wife (and children)? Harping on the husband and going light on the wife creates unrealistic expectations and an unhealthy dynamic. It undermines the very person who is to be built up—the protector, the head, as appointed by God. Pastors keep pointing at men to "man up" and be the leader, but they do little to support them. They undermine men by criticizing them in front of the congregation. Listen to pastors speak on this topic. The observable bias in their language and attitude toward men is astonishing.
"Be a man," like a political tag line, appeals to the cursory. It is a misleading play on words that appeals to shallow biblical understanding. What Christian male doesn’t want to "be a man"? After all, anyone who opposes it can’t be a real Christian man, right?
Male-shaming is the driving force behind "be a man." Its play is to coerce men. "Be a man" also changes the expectations on the woman’s part. She can use the "be a man" card to knock him back into place. She can grab hold of any attempt on his part to hold to his true biblical role in marriage, something not beyond the woman’s susceptibility.
Respect: A Red Herring?
If there is any woman who could rationalize not holding her husband in reverence, it was Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Twice, in Genesis 12 and 20, Abraham was willing to give Sarah to other men for their pleasure. Despite those betrayals, Sarah called Abraham "lord." She maintained a deep level of reverence and awe for him. It is safe to observe that in light of 1 Peter 3, Sarah maintained the qualities of a virtuous woman: "hidden nature of the heart…the ornament of a gentle and quiet spirit…obeyed Abraham, calling him lord" (v. 4–5).
However, that doesn’t keep best-selling author Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, in his popular book Love and Respect, from taking Ephesians 5:33 to a different level of meaning.30 Eggerichs essentially dumbs down the meaning of the original term—reverence—for what he and some translations call "respect."
Eggerichs narrows further to verse 33, saying "the need for love and the need for respect play off of one another." He continues with, "I still believe that women want love far more than respect and men want respect far more than love." This is a false premise and a false dichotomy.
This "respect" that he speaks of goes both for the wife and the husband. It is what we do with those we love. Eggerichs places love and respect on two rails that never meet. Granted, they are not the same thing. However, in a marriage, love or respect cannot be divorced from the other. Respecting the other person is to love them. Love is the broader term that should have, within its many expressions, respect. Demonstrations of respect for the other include many things: seeking forgiveness, granting forgiveness, listening to the other, considering the other’s opinion, preserving the other’s dignity (even when challenging their behaviors or views), not misrepresenting them or what they say, and more.
Eggerichs is not alone in thinking that men "need" respect. I’ve heard it from others too, although men don’t "need" respect in the desperate way that Eggerichs characterizes. Scripture prescribes women to be reverent toward their husband. The respect that wives are to give them is one component of reverence and is done out of obedience as prescribed in Scripture. The respect husbands are due should not be characterized as his fickle need that the wife puts on her checklist to deliver with a pat on the head. That view is as destructive as no respect at all.
In contrast, a wife’s reverence is due him because of his position in the relationship as assigned by God Himself in the book of Genesis. Here again, the point is about the state of her heart. She is answerable to God to position herself (i.e., to dress her heart toward her husband) with the heart that Sarah had for Abraham.
I believe the real meaning of the love-reverence verse must be placed in the larger biblical context of headship, submission, becoming one, and repentance-forgiveness.
A wife owes her husband unconditional reverence. Her reverence for him is a demonstration of her submission and love, just as a lack of reverence is a manifestation of her hardened heart. It is that which God in Genesis told her she would struggle—rebellion, against God and her husband. A prideful woman will not admit that she is rebellious, predisposed to sin, and that she acts on that predisposition. Without a heartfelt admission of her sin, she is no better than the Pharisees in Luke 7.
When Paul says that wives should reverence their husbands, he is not speaking to the "desperation" (Eggerichs’ word) of the husband; he is speaking to the sinful predisposition of the wife—of stepping away in rebellion from her role as help meet and defying her husband as head in the relationship. Paul does not prescribe some magic phrase that the wife pronounces to trigger a response in her husband. Paul is speaking to the disposition of her heart and how it manifests in a pattern of what she says to her husband and how she treats him.
Eggerichs doesn’t confront women for their lack of reverence. Instead, he describes their irreverence as a cry for their husband’s love. In the book, he provides an example of a woman that would regularly "verbally emasculate" her husband. Instead of citing her verbal assaults as the sin that it is (not the least of which is lacking a meek and quiet spirit), Eggerichs characterizes her outbursts as a cry for love. Eggerichs tells that he coached the husband in this example how to respond to her. However, he doesn’t bring it full circle to correct the woman so that she can begin changing her sinful approach with her husband. The woman in the example has obviously never been taught by older Christian women how to love her husband (with reverence as a part of her love for him).
Overall Dr. Eggerichs does a far better job than most pastors and authors by balancing his book in terms of providing instruction to both husband and wife. His work has apparently had a positive effect on many by getting them to be more responsive to their spouse as he defines love and respect. He uses the love-respect construct set forth in the first part of the book as a springboard to extend other useful teachings to both the man and woman in the latter part.
Eggerichs couches the book in terms that make the pill easier to swallow. He alters his lexicon and delivery enough to make his message acceptable to an audience that finds it difficult to embrace terms like headship, repentance, submission, and reverence. But in doing so, he apparently had to pull back on some important concepts.
By the millions of copies sold, it appears that Love and Respect has done well for many marriages, and I am truly happy for anyone who has benefited from the utilitarian value of Eggerichs’ work. In the baseball vernacular, I do believe that his book has a lot of hits, but it also has some misses, with reverence being one of them.
I’ve cited Eggerichs’ work as a specimen amongst many Christian marriage books. The prominence of Love and Respect makes it an easy mark. Regardless, my limited critique is about the misuse of the term respect as a replacement for reverence.
The entire "respect" discussion is a diversion from the word used in Ephesians 5:33, reverence. As I noted in chapter 2, the Greek word for reverence is phobeo. It can mean "to frighten," "to be alarmed," or "to be in awe of, i.e., revere." The term respect does not have the same meaning as "revere" or "to be in awe of." In contrast, respect is defined as "a feeling of appreciative, often deferential regard; esteem."31 The meaning of respect falls short of reverence. Matthew Henry captures well the essence of the reverence a woman is to show her husband:
Reverence consists of love and esteem, which produce a care to please; and of fear, which awakens a caution lest just offence be given. That the wife thus reverence her husband, is the will of God and the law of the relation.32
Yes, the woman is to revere her husband—to be in awe of him.
The "Weaker Vessel"
Another error is to throw the "weaker vessel" image back on the husband when his wife is acting in a less-than-honorable way. This phrase is often used to avert a woman’s accountability for her behaviors and words that contradict biblical admonitions, such as a lack of reverence or common expressions of kindness and love. It is hardhearted to hit a man over the head with Scripture that places the onus on him when his wife is the one who needs admonishment for her less-than-honorable attitude, words, or behavior. What is a man to do when his wife disregards her own predispositions as the weaker vessel? Specifically, her rebelliousness, contempt, and refusal to repent of her offenses.
It is another manifestation of cultural influences that have seeped into the Church—an aversion to holding the woman accountable and an errant tendency to place responsibility on the man when her unrepentant sins and offenses contribute materially to the spoiled relationship. His love may need to take on a form of "tough love" if she refuses to acknowledge this truth.
An Unholy Alliance
An unbalanced and distorted presentation of the husband-wife relationship in many of today’s pulpits creates a disturbing dynamic. Among those who are calling attention to this problem is author April Cassidy, a Christian marriage blogger who writes at peacefulwife.com. In an article on her site, "Who Is Calling Us Out for Our Sin as Women?" she makes a prescient observation about this: "I don’t know if you realize this, but almost no one in the church is confronting us as Christian women about our sin today—to our great detriment. That is a HUGE problem."33 Cassidy does a fine job making this observation and calling women out on their sins that our culture rationalizes as OK.
However, there is another side to this "HUGE problem." The bias of many pastors when they preach regarding the marriage relationship creates an alliance with women. Pastors create an empathetic connection that makes a woman comfortable, even if her heart is not in a right state with her husband. This alliance can create animosity between the woman and her husband for what she judges he is not delivering in the relationship. She is soothed into a state of resentment or even bitterness toward her husband rather than challenged to be in a biblical state with him. She senses a rapport with the pastor that should be reserved for her husband. In effect, the pastor supersedes the husband’s position, thereby acting as the wife’s authority in ways that she should reserve for her spouse.
Furthermore, this dynamic desensitizes her conscience. With no check on her heart, this failure fuels her aversion to accountability. The Church is the only place outside her marriage where she can get biblical chastisement on her own heart and it is not there.
A woman must be careful that she doesn’t hand over a part of the intimacy (not just sexual intimacy, but emotional and spiritual) of her marriage to another. But how many wives seek out their pastor’s empathetic sermons for comfort and affirmation, let alone solicit their one-on-one counsel. The trend of pastors counseling wives is a recent development. Counseling between a male pastor and a married woman creates a risk-laden situation, tempting the relationship to exceed any one of the intimacy boundaries mentioned above. Pastors and counselors should be minimizing one-on-one interactions with women who are simply disheartened about their marriage. Outside of a few exceptions, where her husband is abusive or has committed adultery, a woman who seeks anyone (including pastors) other than her husband for counsel risks undermining the biblical directive.
A woman should be cautious of seeking counsel from another so that she doesn’t circumvent her husband’s headship. In her article "6 Reasons Marriage Counseling is BS," New York Times best-selling author Laura Doyle provides some useful insights as to why bringing in a third party is not a good idea.34 She says a woman who wants marriage counseling is "calling your spouse a loser." Doyle’s point makes sense in the context of a man’s headship. She points out in her article how her "marriage was in tatters" and that it wasn’t until after years of marriage counseling that they "finally realized that the counseling was the problem." Her marriage improved only when she began to practice the principles in what she later captured in her book, The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace with a Man.
Doyle’s situation is illustrative to what happens when a woman defers to someone other than her husband.
Pastors should not be a sounding board for wives seeking a sympathetic ear. Save a few exceptions, they should be directing women back to their husbands and to Scripture in how they are to respond to their husbands—the proper state of her spirit and attitude toward him and looking to him as the head in the relationship, whether she thinks he deserves her reverence or not.
An Obsessive Romance
An illustration of the obsessive romance pastors have with Ephesians 5:25 is Rev. Allen M. Baker’s article "Rekindling the Dying Fire,"35 published on the Banner of Truth website. Banner of Truth is part of the Banner of Truth Trust, a long-standing evangelical and Reformed Christian non-profit publishing house. Their reach in readership is vast. Baker wrote the piece in 2009 when pastoring Christ Community Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Baker’s article is another case-in-point for the misguided direction it takes. His stance on Ephesians 5:25, like many others, is revisionist. I would encourage you to read it. It is a good specimen of the erred teaching that dominates popular Christian views.
He creates an entirely different type of Christian marriage than do Paul, Peter, and Genesis. Baker makes all the common errors. He imposes meaning on Ephesians 5:25 beyond what the text provides and twists the meaning of other Scripture to preemptively rebut any attempt by a husband to call his wife out for her sinfulness in the marriage relationship.
Baker, and others, disregard the woman’s sinful predispositions, her position as "help meet," and her responsibility to "submit in everything." He sets up a conditional relationship based on the subjective judgement of the wife—what is right in her eyes. His teaching is so skewed, it is unbiblical.
The article does not allow for a marriage where the woman is in the character of what is frequently cited in Scripture—rebellious, contentious, desiring her husband’s headship. Those who subscribe to Baker’s form of interpretation presume the woman is without sin in the relationship. They presume that she is holding to her biblical role without offense, which is not consistent with the preponderance of Scripture.
The books and blogs by women who acknowledged their past sinful dispositions toward their husbands are witnesses to the damage they caused to their own marriages. These women authors speak of the miserable marriages they had prior to changing their hearts and minds. The "anger, bitterness, wrath, strife, inability to trust her husband" that Baker lays at the husband’s feet are the same things that these women self-corrected by checking their own hearts and repenting.
In effect, Baker removes accountability from her to manage her own spiritual countenance. He doesn’t consider that it could be her own sin and guilt that trigger her to languish. How can Baker write such an article without allowing for the other sinner in the relationship—the wife?
Neither does Baker state any objective standard as to what "love your wife as Christ loves the church" looks like. This false teaching creates an opening for the wife to determine in her own mind if her husband loves her as Christ loves the Church.
This article plays on an ill-informed woman’s emotional strings and sinful pride. Baker provides no check on her heart. Any woman who reads his article and takes it in without balanced biblical discernment is either seeking to justify the sinful disposition of her own heart or she is misguided and on a weak base of biblical misunderstanding.
The online article provides no references or links to other articles by Baker that might offer a balance to this one. It is an example of what April Cassidy points out in her blog article: no one in the Church is calling women out for their sins.
Postwar Family Idealism
Many Christians today still mistakenly reflect on the post-World War II family model as ideal. Many still hold to the 1950s and 1960s mythical Leave It to Beaver family as the standard. What they don’t realize is that this postwar paradigm was an anomaly in history.
Prior to the industrial era, only the rich could afford for a married woman to stay at home without producing income or goods to help the family. On the other hand, whether it was the woman on the farm or the couple who owned a business, the average pre-industrial era wife was productive in terms of bringing money or goods into the family.
In America, there was a seismic shift in the character of the marriage relationship. This shift originated with the industrial era and was solidified in the postwar years, where the family unit was idealized as a stay-at-home wife and a working husband.
Undetected by church leaders and others in the postwar era was the absence of Proverbs 31 character in many stay-at-home wives. Generally, women became accustomed to viewing their role as maintaining the home instead of managing the household. There is an important distinction between maintaining the home and running a household as described by Proverbs 31.
The Proverbs 31 woman is an industrious individual who is not apathetic toward her responsibility in the marriage. She owns her own person and acts accordingly. She accepts her biblical role and the accountability that accompanies it to bring value to the household. In this sense, she is an example to her children and a true biblical "help meet" to her husband. Her self-perceived value is based in part on her contributions to supporting the family; she doesn’t need to depend on her husband or children as her only sources of purpose and self-worth.
In general, the lines of demarcation in the postwar marriage fell short of the biblical standard. The husband was the sole provider, producing goods and bringing home income, while the wife tended the home—cleaning, cooking, and, for a minimal part of the day (because for most of a twenty-four-hour period, they were at school or sleeping) tending to their children. As consumer goods became more available because of increased production and lower prices, consumerism increased. On one hand, these consumer goods helped her efficiency (washing machines and dryers, vacuums, kitchen appliances, soaps and cleaners, etc.), freeing up her time. On the other hand, some goods required more of her attention (increase in home size and furnishings and things that did not increase her efficiency). She became settled and comfortable with the arrangement. But simple maintenance of the home doesn’t measure up to Proverbs 31 in a couple major ways.
First, it didn’t produce. Women no longer upheld an industrious role. It is not that cleanliness and order are not of value. However, these activities don’t produce. Second, unless she made the effort on her own to be industrious, it underutilized her abilities and gifts, which caused a certain level of frustration for many, and for others it instilled an entitlement mindset.
Some Christians today believe that the postwar model is what God intended. Sadly, this errant belief is what helped usher in militant feminism. This is not to criticize a couple who decides one will stay at home to nurture and care for their children. That choice should be defended as valid much as any other. What I am talking about is the belief and propagation in some Christian circles that the stay-at-home wife is more "biblical" than those who work outside the home. Proverbs 31 indicates otherwise: “Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates (Prov. 31:31). As a society, we should heed its lessons.
Inverting the Foundations
Marriage is not unlike a house. The four foundations are what the Christian marriage is built upon. Only when the foundation of a house is in place can the house and all its rooms and unique features be built. Marriages, like houses, are customizable. Regardless of the design, if the foundation is not set first, it is impossible to build the house.
The four foundations in marriage are matters of the will. Each in the marriage is responsible for willfully managing their own attitude toward the other and the marriage consistent with scriptural exhortations. This is not always easy to do with two sinners. However, when the four foundations are firmly set in the character of both husband and wife, the rest of the marriage can be built –the trust, security, intimacy, and oneness, will follow.
Unfortunately, many pastors, authors and counselors neglect the foundations. Their instruction and counsel focuses on secondary, non-biblical issues. They talk about blue and pink, Venus and Mars, five love languages and other non-biblical concepts that effectively emphasize differences between husband and wife and, in a way, encourage enmity between them. With the labyrinth of these secularly-derived concepts, it is no wonder couples are compelled to seek counseling.
Frequently, marriage counselors not only neglect the foundations, they focus on performance. They teach a “works” system within the marriage, contradicting the agapé required of us in Scripture.
The predominant thinking has inverted the biblical model, first putting in place the house absent the foundations. The writings of S. Michael Houdmann and Rev. Allen M. Baker cited earlier in this chapter are examples of this inversion. Dr. Eggerichs is guilty of the same in his example of the wife who emasculated her husband. Instead of citing her contention as a violation of at least two of the foundations, Eggerichs advised the husband to placate her contentious ways. Often, as in these examples, the burden is placed on the husband to satisfy non-biblical and arbitrary requirements before his wife assumes her biblical role and lives up to her vows. He must dial in just the right combination of emotional tokens for intimacy with her; or he must earn her respect if he is to be regarded as head of the relationship and secure her submission. These are performance requirements that are inconsistent with Scripture.
Frequently, it is the woman’s emotions that are given priority and assigned a credibility that is absent in Scripture and oppose scriptural requirements for agapé –a willed love, not an emotionally derived love. Pastors and counselors fail to acknowledge the instability that her emotions introduce, which compromises the call for agapé –love comprised of a deliberate assent of the will.
As the foundations described in Scripture are presented as matters of the will, they are not to be held hostage for performance. What I am getting at is not merely a theoretical dynamic. The women bloggers and authors cited in Chapter 2 came to that realization and improved their relationships by their own willful efforts, not because their husbands’ did or said something (performance) that magically unlocked the Sarah, the Proverbs 31 woman, or the Song of Solomon woman within them. It is interesting that each of them came to their realization without the counsel of pastors or marriage counselors. In fact, at least one came to her biblical role in spite of marriage counseling. Their changed hearts toward their husbands and their marriages came from the only place it could –the Holy Spirit. And that happened because each of them drank from the cup of humility, allowing the Holy Spirit to work within them.
Please don’t think that I am picking on women. Yes, some need to take the content in this book personally, however, my foremost criticism is of pastors, authors, and counselors who are stuck in a cultural rut that has done more damage than they comprehend. They need to repent and adjust.
Misguided teachings of the last five decades have had profound consequences on Christian marriages. Let’s look at a few in the next chapter.