“I do not think it means what you think it means…”

My wife loves The Princess Bride. It is an incredible tale, with some of the most quotable lines in movie history. One of my favorites is delivered by the great Mandy Patinkin, playing the character Inigo Montoya.

As a marriage therapist with a passion for helping couples, I keep bumping into teaching offered by pastors who are lazily interpreting scripture. They keep teaching about marriage and using words that I do not think mean what they they think they mean. And the results are disastrous for marriages.

The concern

Most everyone is aware of one of the apostle Paul’s more famous statements, “Wives submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.” (Eph. 5:22-23, NIV) Many who don’t go to church (and this verse may be a reason they don’t attend) know about his verse. Often, many who teach, or write on this verse ignore the verse before, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Eph 5:21, NIV) If you have read my book or heard me speak on this topic, I have stated clearly that 5:21 is an overarching paradigm for understanding the rest that Paul says about marriage in the next 11 verses.

In many churches today, a version of complementarianism is promoted. I must tell you this idea is a very recent historical idea. It was developed in the 1980s by American evangelical leaders (You can read the Danvers Statement that introduced this idea here). Complementarianism is presented as the husband’s being given the role in marriage as the spiritual head or leader. A wife’s role is secondary to that and as a result, the husband is often considered the final decider or tie-breaker in important decisions for the family. This is not the teaching of the historical or global church. And research (look into Gottmans’ research on husband’s “accepting influence”) shows how this poor and lazy interpretation of the scripture, leads to harm and broken marriages.

Sheila Gregoire author of, “The Great Sex Rescue” and the more recent “The Marriage You Want” has addressed this issue in many blog posts and her research for her most recent book. First, she found that a vast majority of couples make decisions together 78.9%. This is an encouraging number. But many couples struggle with the message they receive in church and from pastors that there should be a “leader” and a tie-breaking decision-maker. And because of Paul’s instructions in Ephesians, this role is assigned to husbands. However, Sheila found in her research that couples who lived with a husband having a tie-breaking vote experienced negative impacts on the overall health of their marriage.

• Husbands are 66% more likely to say “My spouse doesn’t know how to help me when I am stressed.”
• Wives are 71% more likely to say “My spouse doesn’t know how to make me laugh.”

The Lazy Exegesis

I wanted to write about this topic again because the teaching in many churches in America is not changing and this is concerning. I recently came across a video clip of a pastor, Mattie Montgomery, from The Altar Church in Johnson City, TN. He was teaching an Ephesians series and of course, focused on marriage for one of the lessons. I, unfortunately, cannot provide you with an analysis of the entire message in context because this church hides the pastor’s messages behind a $ 100-per-year paywall (strange money grab for a church). Here is the transcript of what he said in the clip that I heard.

“And God’s order for your marriage is that you will come behind your husband and say, ‘If you don’t lead us we won’t go. If you lead us into poverty that’s where we’ll end up. If you lead us into disorder that’s where we’ll end up. If you lead us into disobedience that’s where we’ll end up. No pressure. Can I tell you that my wife’s trust in me is at the very top of the list of things that keep me accountable. She trusts me and when I think about all of the reasons that I don’t want to fail, all the reasons that I want to make sure that I give my life to things worthy of my time and resources. When I think of all the reasons that I want to continue to walk in righteousness and holiness it’s because to disappoint that woman is not something I could live with. And so wives I know this sounds very scary to plant yourselves behind your husband. And to say its not like if you don’t do it I am going to do it, instead it’s like if you don’t do it, it’s not going to get done. There will be no head in our family if you don’t take spiritual leadership. We will have no direction if you don’t seek God and give us direction. It’s like this is how you hold your husband accountable. You hold his feet to the fire and say our family will rise and fall to your level. So get into prayer, get into God’s word, get into fellowship with Godly men that inspire you. Learn from them, how they lead their families, because if you don’t lead ours, our family is not going anywhere. That’s headship. That is what it looks like. For the husband to be savior of the family.”

I would like to analyze this quote and help you the reader a bit more clearly how lazy exegesis gets us to damaging teaching for marriages.

“If you don’t lead us we won’t go… it’s like if you don’t do it, it’s not going to get done”

Mr. Montgomery’s portrayal of women is demeaning and infantilizing. This picture he presents of a wife acting like a petulant toddler, refusing to move, until her husband acts is revealing how he views women. He sees them as less than, needing to be managed or led. He discusses his own marriage and how he is motivated to not disappoint “that woman.” This also diminishes men as if their only goal is to behave in ways to keep their wives from being upset. Trying to prevent tantrums is a very poor foundation or representation of the sacramental love of a marriage.

“…my wife’s trust in me is at the very top of the list of things that keep me accountable.”

It appears that Mr. Montgomery (and too many other pastors) think that a significant role for women in marriage is to be responsible for their husband’s behavior. This is ludicrous. A mature married man is responsible for himself and for a man to expect his wife to moderate his decisions is irresponsible. The very top of the list for what holds any Christian marriage partner (husband and wife) accountable should be their desire to be an image-bearer to Jesus Christ.

“That is what it looks like. For the husband to be savior of the family.”

This statement is heresy. The elders of this church should censure their pastor, and offer a public correction of Mr. Montgomery. As I said in my book, this sets up a dynamic for husbands to feel like failures, and women to be woefully disappointed. There is one Savior. Church history has settled this question over and over, specifically with the conflicts of papal supremacy and infallibility in the Reformation. This statement by Mr. Montgomery implies a power differential that should never be a part of any healthy marriage. Power over another is not part of Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus taught this directly, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35, NRSV). The king of any Christian home is Jesus, and not the husband in his Lazy-Boy.

“Submit” & “Head”. They do not mean what you think they mean.

But wait, Dr. Mark, doesn’t Paul say in Ephesians 5 that wives are to submit and husbands are head of the wife? Yes, but I do not think those words mean what you might think they mean. Why would the apostle Paul suggest in any way that a husband should have any power over his wife when he knew full well that Jesus taught consistently that his followers were to become servants of all? So it is possible many Christian teachers need to put the lens of “servant” up to Ephesians 5. When you do this, you get a completely different picture.

“Mutually submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Eph 5:21, NIV). This statement plainly aligns with Jesus’ teaching to be a servant. I think we can all agree on this. This is why I teach that we have to view the next 11 verses as functioning under this umbrella. Here is what is interesting. The Greek word for “submit” is only in the text in verse 21. It is not really there in verse 22. In fact, what verse 22 literally says is “Wives to your own husbands as to the Lord.” In the first century, the culture had women in a position of submission. They were already naturally without power. So Paul confirms for them to remain serving in these ways because it aligns with God’s vision for his kingdom. But now, Paul takes a turn and directs many more words to instruct husbands whose culture had endued with too much power.

“For the husband is the head of the wife…” Look, I get it that on a first read, this looks like Paul is saying the husband is the boss and in charge just like Jesus is the king. But remember, we have to align what Paul might be saying here with Jesus’ teaching about serving and being a ‘servant of all.’ An exegetical analysis of the Greek word, kephale (head), would lead many to understand that it refers to the head on top of your shoulders. Paul loves to use the body as a metaphor. And in this case, Paul is saying something about “head” that does not mean what we think it means.”

Paul uses kephale in Ephesians a few times and prior to Ch. 5 he refers to Jesus as head of his church, but the sense is not one of subjugation, but one of unity—one of drawing together. The head is a unifier. Just as Jesus draws together and supports his embodied church to live out its kingdom purposes, a husband draws his wife to himself and supports (as a partner) her efforts to be an image-bearer. A wife of course does the same (as we noted in 5:21), but Paul has to instruct husbands, who had all the power at the time, with a vision of how they join themselves to a true equal, not a servant. All of the words to husbands reinforce their need to serve, not be a savior or even a spiritual leader. (For more on this read a previous blog)

Paul uses Genesis 2:24 (Ephesians 5:31) to connect all this together. A husband leaves and joins with his wife. He then calls it a mystery because it is a lot for us to fully comprehend. Marriage as a sacrament is complex and cannot be boiled down into lazy platitudes that are far too often preached and taught in pulpits. But, it cannot be that a wife is somehow less than and requires leadership. Nor can it be that men have some ordained power over this partner or that wives are somehow responsible for their husbands’ choices.

Marriage as Sacrament

I recently read Alexander Schmemann’s work, “For the Life of the World.” Alexander Schmemann was an orthodox priest and professor. This book is considered classic and his chapter on marriage would challenge all of us and confront directly much of the teaching that I have identified in this blog. He provides a sacramental picture of marriage that emphasizes its role in the Kingdom of God. I want to close this blog with two quotes from Schmemann.

“The family has here ceased to be for the glory of God; it has ceased to be a sacramental entrance into his presence. It is not the lack of respect for the family, it is the idolization of the family that breaks the modern family so easily, making divorce its almost natural shadow. It is the identification of marriage with happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it.”

“Each family is indeed a kingdom, a little church, and therefore a sacrament of and a way to the Kingdom…Behind each window there is a little world going on…behind each one of them the fullness of life is a ‘given possibility,’ a promise, a vision…that here is the beginning of a small kingdom which can be something like the true Kingdom. The chance will be lost, perhaps even in one night; but at this moment it is still an open possibility. Yet even when it has been lost, and lost again a thousand times, still if two people stay together, they are in a real sense king and queen to each other. And after forty odd years, Adam can still turn and see Eve standing beside him, in a unity with himself which in some small way at least proclaims the love of God’s kingdom. In movies and magazines the ‘icon’ of marriage is always a youthful couple. But once, in the light and warmth of an autumn afternoon, this writer saw on the bench of a public square, in a poor Parisian suburb, an old and poor couple. They were sitting hand in hand, in silence, enjoying the pale light, the last warmth of the season. In silence: all words had been said, all passion exhausted, all storms at peace. The whole life was behind—yet all of it was now present, in this silence, in this light, in this warmth, in this silent unity of hands. Present—and ready for eternity, ripe for joy. This to me remains the vision of marriage, of its heavenly beauty.”