A response to last night’s Q&A with Peter Jensen

from here

I was a little nervous about watching Peter Jensen on Q&A last night. As you may know, I don’t agree with Jensen on a couple of the points I knew he’d be grilled on, but I also don’t like watching people get picked on; I wasn’t looking forward to the tension of wishing he was saying something different or nothing at all, while simultaneously wishing people would be kind and let him speak - I decided it could only be a lose-lose situation. Jensen remained admirably calm in the face of (sometimes aggressive) opposition, and I like that he was humble in saying that he was open to learning more about issues (such as the health of homosexuals – I can’t recall whether the “I could be wrong” phrases were all linked with this topic rather than the women stuff). I do wish I could sit down with him and have one of these respectful debates, but because I can’t, I’m offering here my rebuttal to what came up about submission on last night’s program.

Submission is counter-cultural

To argue that our culture doesn’t value submission is to demonstrate an unwillingness to listen to what our culture’s actually saying. As we saw last night on the show, Anna Krien agreed that submission in relationships was a good thing, and Catherine Deveny nodded (considering she didn’t agree with much that was said, this is huge!)! Our culture is okay with the idea of submission; it’s not okay with sexism and inequality. As long as complementarians continue to blame our culture’s opposition to women-only submission on the “submission’s a dirty word“ line rather than listening and addressing the real – and valid – issues, the conversation cannot move forward.

Submission for women only is not counter-cultural, it is the norm for the majority of people in this messed-up world. To think that clinging to patriarchy is somehow going against the grain is to blindly ignore history, the plight of women outside of the more egalitarian West, the messages implicit in pornography, the inequality in pay for women (even in countries like Australia), to name just a few of the signs that patriarchy is alive and well. As Deveny pointed out to Jensen last night, it’s easy to talk of equality when you are a white, middle-class man. Equality for many is still a dream that so many in our culture strive to move towards rather than away from.

It’s difficult to work out what’s “the world” and what’s God in order to avoid the former and follow the latter. I understand that at the heart of complementarian arguments about women is a deep desire to make the right choice here. I keep thinking, though, that there were many Christians using the Bible to justify slavery for a while after most others had realised how very wrong it was; I’m sure they thought they were being counter-cultural too.

The men initiate 
Peter Jensen stressed last night that wives submit to their husbands only after the husband has promised to lay down his lives for the wife. Where in the Bible does it say this?! I’ve noticed a shift in complementarian language recently: men no longer lead, they initiate. It sounds nicer. And yet it’s not backed up anywhere by Scripture! The passages that speak explicitly of marriage (Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 are the first to spring to mind) talk first to the women, and their submission stems from what Christ has done, not from what their husbands have done. Husbands are never encouraged to try to beat their wives in what seems to have become a competition (that the men are expected to win) to be the first to lay down their lives.

While we’re on this topic, last night Tony Jones offered a definition of submission as “to yield, to surrender” but Jensen was never asked to explain how a man laying down his life (surrendering, yielding) for his wife is not exactly the same thing as “submitting” to her. The debate repeatedly returns to “men and women are different,” but the Bible seems to say that what’s called for from both men and women in these passages is exactly the same thing. 

Tony is not the boss (uhuh)

This reference will only make sense to those who have had the great joy of listening to Christian songs for kids, but I’m going to stick with it! In trying to explain submission last night, Peter Jensen said that he was submitting to Tony Jones because Tony was the boss. This ‘boss’ language seems so foreign to the submission taught and demonstrated by Jesus that it really surprised me to hear it come up last night. To say that a husband is like a boss that his wife must submit to is a distortion of New Testament teaching, and not at all helpful in explaining the concept of submission. The Colin Buchanan song says, “You are not the boss (uhuh), and I am not the boss (uhuh), and they are not the boss (uhuh) - Jesus is the boss.” As Jesus explains to his disciples, ‘boss’ equals ‘servant’ (Mark 10:41-45):

You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Wives do not submit to their husbands because their husbands are the boss. Jesus is the boss. Both wives and husbands are called to “submit to one another out of reverence for [their boss] Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).  

There is equality in Jesus Christ

I’m so thankful that Peter Jensen was given the last word on the show; it was a respectful move after a long and difficult conversation. I wholeheartedly agree with how Jensen ended: God has spoken through Jesus Christ, and it all comes back to him. An examination of Jesus’ life and teaching clearly shows that God is for women, and for equality, not against them. I hope and pray, pray, pray that the Anglican church in Sydney will reflect this equality for women one day; I’m not sure Jensen –and fellow complementarians – have fully grasped the extent of its awesomeness yet.