Submission: Love in practice

from here

In a very early post on the whole egalitarian/complementarian issue, I said that I didn’t like reading pro-egalitarian arguments written by women because I tended to accuse them of “finding loopholes in what the Bible says because they don’t like submitting.” It’s interesting reading back over where I was a year ago, and comparing that to where I am now. One of the reasons I started this blog was to document the journey, and I appreciate the record I have of the ways different assumptions and confusions have been reshaped over time. An important part of my conversion to egalitarianism has involved a new respect for and love of the concept of submission; I now believe that it should be a way of life – the way of life – for all Christians. A couple of posts ago I spoke about magic, and I’m about to attempt some for myself: Be amazefied, ladies and gentlemen, as I condense two giant ideas – submission and love – into one not-too-lengthy* blog post!

Complementarian teaching on submission is aimed only at women**, encouraging them to let men initiate, lead, protect and provide for them. Submission seems to have become synonymous with Peter’s “gentle and quiet spirit” which has morphed into just being “gentle and quiet,” causing most passionate and loud-laughing women to question their submissiveness and therefore their chances of impressing godly men. So submission is reduced to women aiming to be less animated and men not thinking about it at all. (I have never once heard a man wishing he was more submissive; hopefully by the end of this post, this fact will worry you as much as it worries me.)

Egalitarian teaching on submission encourages both men and women to follow Jesus’ example by humbly “taking the very nature of a servant” and giving themselves up for others. I found it striking to read that the word ‘Islam’ means ‘submission’; it made me wonder if we Christians had missed the hugeness of submission by applying it to only one sex. Surely submission is something that should define Christianity too, because it’s the way we live out Jesus’ great command to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. As Darren Hanlon sings, “love is just a lazy generalisation that we use for a hundred different feelings and as many situations” – it’s a word we throw around a lot without ever thinking through how to actually do it (although we also know, thanks to DC Talk, that “Luv is a Verb“). I think 1 John 3:16 tells us how to do love: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Love is being like Jesus: laying down our lives, humbling ourselves, looking to the interests of others as well as ourselves, sacrificing for the sake of others; in short, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

I used to panic about what submission was supposed to look like practically in marriage (of course, I thought it was my job alone, as the wife; my husband was busy trying to work out what practical love looked like), but I’m seeing it more often as I understand it better. As a treat, my husband and I sometimes buy a box of ice creams. There are three flavours in the box, and strawberry is our least favourite. Last time we bought them, I knew there were two left and I headed to the freezer hoping that only one would be strawberry so that I could eat it and leave my husband the one he preferred. My husband takes our son for a couple of hours every morning so that I can sleep for longer. We both aim for submission, which looks a little like a friendly dance (“You go first!” “No, you go first!” etc., etc.). He lets me initiate, and I let him initiate. We support and encourage each others’ gifts and passions. He leads where he’s strong and defers where he’s weak, and I do likewise; we recognise and embrace the fact that God has made us complementary in many ways.

In our best moments, our marriage is like a tiny and mysterious version of the Church, a body in which there is no division and each of its parts have equal concern for the other; “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it” (1 Corinthians 12:25-26). And it’s not just husbands and wives who make up the Church and are therefore called to adopt the attitude of Christ Jesus and be servant-hearted, or “slaves of all,” as Jesus puts it in Mark 10:44; in all relationships Christians must “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

Outside of marriage, submission may mean washing up your flatmate’s dishes without keeping tab of how many nights now you’ve done it because she hasn’t. It may mean offering to make your colleague a cup of tea every time you fix one for yourself. It may mean tidying up the mess in the lounge room even though it was your brothers who created it. It may mean sticking to your position at the back of the field even though your team still hasn’t scored. It may mean biting your tongue, it may mean looking for new chances to show kindness, it may mean losing self-righteousness, time or money, and it may mean talking to someone on their own at church even though you’ve noticed your buddy Jordan is back from Europe and you haven’t had a chance to catch up with him yet. There are so many chances each day for all of us to serve, to submit, to be humble and loving, that it’s almost ridiculous to suggest that such a massive theme should apply merely to a Christian wife as she is to relate to her husband, as is too often the case. 

In last Saturday’s paper, Sandy Gordon, a sport psychologist, is quoted as saying this: “It’s important to realise that the best teams in the world aren’t full of well-rounded people who do everything well. They’re full of people with particular, complementary skills, whose goals for the team trump their individual goals.” The thought of every person in the world working alongside each other towards a goal of peace and harmony is one that fills my heart with fuzziness and makes me long for heaven. This is submission, this surrender of our own goals and selfishness and desires and pride and resources and ability for the sake of others! And this is love. Christ was servant-hearted, humble and loving, someone who repeatedly and willingly gave himself up for others (including those who hated him). His submission is what makes him so compelling, so worthy of worship and adoration, so worthy of following. It’s a beautiful guide and goal for all of his disciples, as we strive to love a little more like him and taste a piece of heaven here on earth.

///

* Okay, it was a little lengthy.

** For an example, click on this link, search for the words “And I think” and then read the paragraph that follows. I originally saw this sermon on the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood website months ago, but they’re currently updating their site so I found it elsewhere.