The Obedient Wife
Sally staggered slightly and grabbed the sink for a moment. The dizziness would pass in a moment. The singles in the household all had meetings that night, so she had to clean up dishes alone. Her feet were sore. They tended to swell anyway when she was about seven months pregnant, and this time was no different. And she hadn't had a nap that day. Because it was her night to fast (It was Lent and her husband had decided that everyone in the household should take turns fasting twice a week.), she had thought of sleeping through dinner, but that would be to give in to the flesh. The dizziness passed, and she scrubbed the rice that Ella had burned onto the bottom of the pot. Then Dave called her from the living room: "Sally, Tommy smells again. I think you need to change him." Biting her tongue - he was a man of God and had his own responsibilities - she dropped the Brillo, picked up the diaper bag and headed into the living room. As she knelt to change the diaper, the pain struck again. The next day, in mid-afternoon, the pain came again and didn't stop until Sally had delivered her stillborn child.
Why did Sally overwork herself? Why did she undertake a strict fast so late in her pregnancy? Why did an intelli-gent woman accept her unhelpful husband's orders so unques-tioningly? Sally was a victim of the "Obedient wife" (O.W.) trap.
A Powerful - but Neglected - "Biblical Teaching"
Its advocates call it the key to all our problems ... the cure for the breakdown of the family ... the solution to adolescent crime and teen pregnancy ... the key to a peace-ful society. All these blessings are promised by the "Scriptural teaching" that we call the "Obedient Wife" (O.W.) trap. And there is more. By embracing this teaching you prove that your faith is real, that you trust God's word, and that you stand against feminist modernism. The essence of the teaching is simply this:
Wives are commanded by God to be completely submitted to their hus-bands, obedient in everything but sin. Everything they do is subject to their husbands' rule.
I have heard influential leaders in the charismatic renewal say, "Headship and submission [in marriage] is the key to everything." One of the country's largest and most influential Medjugorje centers writes:
"[This teaching] is among the most important directions Caritas of Birmingham has ever printed because if it is followed, it will work, being that it is based on solid Scripture, backed with Our Lady's mes-sages and the lives of the saints."
This group goes on to say that those who reject this teaching are not only wrong, but they play into Satan's hands. The relationship between hus-band and wife is supposed to be the fault-line along which the devil wants to destroy society. If the right order of marriage can be ruined, then human society itself will fall. Modernism and feminism are so strong in the Church - it is said - that priests and bishops are afraid to recognize the truth or stand up for it. But God's word still obliges married cou-ples to obey this teaching.
The basis for the O.W. teaching is found in St. Paul's letters, especially in his Letter to the Ephesians. Since this text is used so often, let me quote it in full:
Defer to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be sub-missive to their husbands as if to the Lord, because the husband is the head of his wife just as Christ is the head of his body the church, as well as its savior. As the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church. He gave himself up for her to make her holy, purifying her in the bath of water by the power of the word, to present himself a glorious church, holy and im-maculate, without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort. Husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ...
This is a great foreshadowing; I mean that it refers to Christ and the church. In any case each one should love his wife as he loves himself, the wife for her part showing respect for her hus-band.
Ephesians 5: 21-28,32-33
Right here - apparently - is where St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sticks it to the feminists. He com-mands: "Wives should be submissive to their husbands as if to the Lord." They are to be subject "in everything". This means (so it is taught) that no part of her life is to be outside of her hus-band's authority. Protestant preacher and pastor Bob Mum-ford explains it this way: If a wife has prayed and decides that God wants her to sing in the church choir, her decision does not yet stand until her husband approves. Even if she has already promised the pastor and choirmaster to join, she must back out if her husband disapproves. Caritas teaches the same thing in their newsletter. A wife may make no decisions on her own. She may do only what her husband ap-proves. Otherwise she is disobeying God.
The wife is to submit to her husband "as to the Lord". This is taken to mean that her husband stands in Christ's place for her. If she would not say "no" to the Jesus, then the Christian wife may not say 'no' to her hus-band. Christ -- so goes the O.W. doctrine - has established the husband over the wife with the Lord's own authority. In his family life conventions. Bill Gothard spoke almost in terms of a chain-of-command: God-Christ-husband-wife-children. Disobedience anywhere along this line is a sin. Each is to obey the next one up (except the children, who obey both father and mother). The wife cannot "go over her husband's head" directly to Christ. He is Christ for her. Even if he is a bad husband, maybe an alcoholic or not a churchgoer - Caritas gives the example of a man who beat his wife with a hammer - even then she must love and obey him as if he were Christ. If this seems hard, she should still trust the Lord to take care of her through her husband.
Further support for this doctrine is often drawn from 1 Corinthians 11, where St. Paul discusses women's head cov-erings at church. There he says that "the head of every man is Christ; the head of a woman is her husband; and the head of Christ is the Father" (1 Cor. 11:3). Taken by itself, this text seems to support the chain-of-command image. Everybody has a head, and the heads give the orders. Stephen Clark , one of the smartest and most articulate pur-veyors of the O.W. doctrine (and one of the few Catholics), ties it in with the idea that husband and wife are "one flesh". If they are one flesh and the man is the head, then the woman is really part of her husband's body. They are one person. If someone's nerves are damaged so that his brain cannot move his arm, then he is crippled. By the same token, if a wife does not obey her husband (her head), then they are crippled. She is to be completely one with him. She is to think what he thinks and want what he wants.
The good wife (in the O.W. teaching) reminds me of my friend Jim's partner. Jim is a police officer, and for a time he had the advantage of working with an especially brave, intensely loyal partner. Jim was the superior. He called all the shots. His partner was unquestioningly obe-dient. At Jim's word he would pursue the most dangerous criminal, check out the darkest house, and ultimately offer his own life for Jim. He was almost an extension of Jim's own mind. Jim's partner was a loyal, faithful, brave, patient, obedient -- German Shepherd! Unfortunately, the kind of wife that Clark and Caritas idealize looks a lot like Jim's dog.
Who Would Want This?
Spiritual traps are always voluntary. We fall into them willingly, because we think they will make us holy. Why, then, do people with good sense embrace the "Obedient wife" doctrine? It isn't natural. It leads quickly to dis-cord. When couples even start to talk about doing it, a genuine sorrow enters their relationship. Nevertheless, thousands of devout, intelligent, well-read modern Catholics have embraced some form of this doctrine. Why?
Certainly the disintegration of family life has been one factor. According to one study, the typical American couple spends, on the average, less than three minutes a day talking seriously with each other. With conflicting work, school, and recreational schedules, many families no longer share a family meal. More important, we no longer enjoy a common understanding of what marriage and family mean. The divorce rate is very high. Many young people now live together without marriage. And there is a growing movement for the social and legal recognition of homosexual mar-riages. We no longer enjoy clear models or social under-standing of what family life is.
The popular culture adds to the problem. TV’s "buffoon fathers", Homer Simp-son, Married with Children's Al Bundy, have become a cultural icons - selfish boys in men's bodies. We admire the simpler, more traditional lives of the Waltons, but see ourselves in the Bundy's and Bunker's (from the sitcom All in the Family). Our teenagers are sold a model of family life where parents are irrelevant.
In short, the American family is in trouble. Intelli-gent, concerned Christians want to know how to solve it. If "Christ is the answer", then he should have an answer for this very important problem. And - in an age when TV shows us Tim Allen ogling girls and playing with toys, and when "successful" men work 60 hours a week or more to get ahead - if a preacher or author says that the solution is for fathers and husbands to take responsibility and keep their promises, this rings true. It is no great mystery that two men so different as Bill McCartney (white, Christian leader of the "Promise Keepers") and Louis Farrakhan (black, Muslim leader of the "Million Man March" in October 1995) have gotten such a strong response. When a man stands up and calls on other men to be responsi-ble and to take charge of things in their homes - by being there, instilling disci-pline, checking homework, assigning chores, and backing up mother's authority - most of us say "yes!". If God's word in Holy Scripture addresses this, then it only makes sense to take it seriously.
Love is the other factor that leads both men and women to embrace the O.W. teaching. The heart of the Christian is eager to obey and sacrifice for love of Christ and devotion to his Holy Mother. When charismatics began to hear Spirit-inspired prophe-cies, they knew they must obey God's word. When the Medjugorje visionaries reported messages from Mary, those who called themselves her children wanted to live those messages. Whenever anyone begins to start taking the faith seriously, he or she begins to understand that praying and thinking are not enough. If we love God, we will do what he says. So: If God's word (or Mary's message) is for wives to obey their husbands in everything, then this is what we must do. Out of love for Christ and his Mother, we can give up everything - even the relationship we have grown comfortable and happy with in our marriage. We can do the hard thing for the sake of Christ.
Obeying this teaching has also become a matter of faith. Do you really believe God's word? Do you trust him that if you obey, he will take care of you? Very often a husband or wife embrace the O.W. teaching as a genuine, practical step in faith. Here - they are told - is a concrete way to embrace the cross and show Christ that you are serious about follow-ing him and trusting him.
In other words, the victims of the O.W. trap are not just the mousy, timid wives of macho, bullying husbands. They are often conscientious, intelligent Christians who want to obey the Lord and to make the world a better place.
What Scripture REALLY Commands
The O.W. teaching misrepresents what God wants. It is based on a simplistic, one-sided misreading of a few texts in the Bible. But you don't have to take my word for this. The authority of the Church's teaching Magisterium rejects this teaching. The Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Con-stitution on the Church in the Modern World devotes an entire chapter to marriage and the family, and it makes no mention of such a teaching. If this is THE vital teaching on marriage for God's people, why did the Council completely ignore it?
Pope John Paul II has taught often about marriage and the family. This pope has not been afraid to stress teach-ings that most Catholics (and the world at large) find hard to accept - the ban on artificial contraception, the prohi-bition of remarriage after divorce, priestly celibacy, to name some. But he has never said that wives have to obey their husbands. In his Apostolic Exhortation, The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World ("Familiaris Consor-tio"), his 1994 Letter to Families, and his many addresses, he has called for love, family prayer, sacrifice, and virtue - but he has never said that the wife's obedience is what will save the family.
Most important, in his Apostolic Letter, The Dignity of Women, he completely rejects the subservience of the wife. Read what the pope says:
"The husband is called the 'head' of the wife as Christ is head of the Church; he is so in order to give himself up for her. ... But the challenge presented by the ethos of the Redemption is clear and definitive. All the reasons in favor of the 'subjection' of woman to man in marriage must be understood in terms of the 'mutual subjection' of both 'out of rever-ence for Christ." - Mulieris Dignitatem, 24
Picking up on St. Paul's opening sentence, "Defer to one another out of reverence for Christ", the pope summons both husband and wife to mutual submission. Furthermore, if the husband takes Christ's place, it is not as lord and master. It is to lay down his own life for his wife. Pope John Paul II rejects the O.W. teaching.
When God decided to create woman, he said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helpmate." (Gn. 2:18) Some take this to mean that God created the woman to be a servant. This is not what the Bible means. The Hebrew word ezer (help, helpmate) is applied more often to God than to any human person; "Happy he whose help (ezer) is the God of Jacob." (Ps. 146:5) The woman is a partner for the man's good. When Adam first sees her, he rejoices, "This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." (Gn. 2:23) Here is someone like him. The woman's submission does not appear until after the Fall. It is an effect of the original sin (Gn. 3:17).
But what about St. Paul? Doesn't he command wives to obey their husbands? No, he does not. Socially and politi-cally the women Paul was writing to were second-class mem-bers of society. They were not getting jobs, putting the kids in daycare, agitating for their rights, voting in elections, or challenging the patriarchal order. St. Paul was not writing to feminists. These women were already obeying their husbands - they had no choice! Paul was telling them how to obey. This is why he begins and ends this section with the call to mutuality.
Wives are to be subject to their husbands "as to the Lord". But how is the Christian subject to the Lord? Jesus told us how he sees it: "I no longer call you slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is about. Instead, I call you friends, since I have made known to you all that I heard from the Father." (Jn. 15:15) We don't obey Christ as trembling servants, anxiously waiting for his orders. He calls us friends and asks for our response in love. "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (Jn. 14:21) The way we obey Christ is not out of ignorant fear, but out of friendship and love. Likewise, wives owe their hus-bands love, not servile obedience. In this way, at least within her home, the ancient Greek Christian wife met her husband as an equal and not as the highest ranking slave.
But doesn't Scripture always imply that the husband is in charge? Pope Pius XI does call him the "head of the home", while the wife is its "heart".* This is true. That the man is head of the family is a cultural universal. In virtually every historical age and in every part of the world, the man is normally head of the family. This seems to be a result of natural dispositions of human beings. Men tend to be physically stronger and more aggressive, more oriented to the world outside the home. A woman is disposed to motherhood, which entails a certain withdrawing from the outside world to protect and nurture her baby. Men are ori-ented toward achievement, women to relationships. Tradi-tionally men have had to protect and provide for women. So, when the Bible (or a pope) talks about the man's role as head, it is referring to a fact about human nature and culture.
We no longer live in a traditional society. Roles and relationships change. In the United States and western Europe now, headwork is replacing muscle work. Not only in offices and laboratories, but in factories as well, intelli-gence is replacing brawn. Armed with her mace and .38 revolver, a 120-pound policewoman is as effective as her 230-pound male partner. In modern democracies women have taken their places in the polling booths, legislative assem-blies, and highest executive offices. Margaret Thatcher of England, Golda Meir of Israel, and Indira Gandhi of India have been among the strongest of their countries' recent leaders. Education and intelligence are decisive now for leadership, cultural influence, and social advancement.
The Church does not command us to return to tradi-tional roles. Furthermore, the Church has never said that when the man is head of the family, his wife is to be absolutely subject to him. The relationships in the family and its 'governmental' structure depend on the culture it is in. The point is to permeate the culture with Christ. In the First Century the Church said to married couples, "You wives - who have no rights and are little better than slaves - claim your dignity and love your husbands the way you love Jesus, your Lord. And you husbands - who have every legal right to treat your wives like property - love your wives and give your lives up for them." Today the Church contin-ues to call husbands and wives to love. Only the culture has changed.
Effects of the Obedient Wife Trap
Of all the traps in this book, the O.W. trap is among the most destructive and certainly the most painful. Any couple who embrace it will find that it quickly cripples love - and in the long run kills it. The Obedient Wife teaching destroys marriage by destroying friendship and love. Strong words. Perhaps I'm exaggerating? Let us analyze it with an illustration.
Two years out of nursing school, Julie married Paul. She was a surgical nurse at a large urban hospital. The doctors there praised her skill and intelligence. Julie and Paul struggled through those early years, balancing her job, his graduate studies, in-law problems, and the arrival of the first baby. Paul learned to change diapers and feed the baby. Then Julie took over all the household burdens, as Paul wrote the final draft of his dissertation. They prayed, worked, fought, made love, worried, laughed, and talked. They liked and respected each other. Then they started going to prayer meetings. At the prayer meeting they heard a new teaching. They heard that Paul is Christ to Julie. She is to submit to him in everything - body and soul, mind and heart.
Now Paul has this problem, and Julie has never liked it. She does not want to accept it. Paul leaves his socks on the floor. Early in their marriage, Julie realized that nagging and scolding didn't help. Leaving her nylons on his computer desk did. This little retaliation quickly alerted Paul how annoying his own sloppiness could be, and he became more considerate.
But with the new teaching Paul became God's man, standing in God's place. He is now head and lord. He enters his den and there are the nylons. "Julie, remove your nylons. And please don't put them on my desk again." Julie tries to argue, but he cuts her short: "Your duty is to obey, not to criticize my habits." What should she do? Give him a piece of her mind? Julie can't do this, because she too believes the O.W. teaching. It is not Paul she is arguing with but God himself in Paul. Even if he might be wrong, it's not her place to correct him. She must keep her mouth shut and lift her concerns up to God. Picking up her husband's socks is no longer an irritating chore or even an act of selfless generosity - it is now her obligation before the Lord.
Some months later the baby gets sick. Paul, who is stressed and preoccupied by a problem at work, doesn't need this. "It's just a flu," he says. "Give her an aspirin." Julie knows better. The symptoms might point to flu. But they could indicate a more serious illness. As a nurse, she knows that a doctor's diagnosis is necessary. But as a wife, she must defer to her husband. And Paul gets angry when she brings up the sub-ject. The normal response would be to take the baby to the doctor anyway and let Paul cope with it. But Paul is the head in everything. She must trust God to use Paul to guide her. She may do nothing on her own.
I would love to be able to say that this sort of thing does not really happen. Un-fortunately, it does. I personally know of cases where the counsel, "Obey and trust God to care for the children," has endangered children and left adolescents ignored. Both Paul and Julie want to love each other, but there is an interloper in the marriage - a false idea of God. Paul has become divinized; everything he does is supposed to be from God. So, any real conversation or partnership is impossible. If Julie thinks the baby is sick and God's man says she is not, who is right? If Julie is frustrated with Paul's habits but Paul is her lord, whose problem is it? The trap is that both husband and wife believe that Paul speaks with the voice of God. They can no longer talk things over as equals. Because her husband holds the place of Christ, she is always wrong.
This affects every part of the marriage. Sexual union, which was once the happy enjoyment of mutual self-giving, is undercut by the dutiful wife's resentment. What she owes to his command is no gift. Her self-esteem is lost. She is no longer an adult but the oldest child in the family. Her opinions don't count. She sees herself not as the sexy girl who once won his heart, not as the competent professional who carried the family through those early years and still enjoys the esteem of the medical community, not as the devoted mother of a healthy child - more and more she sees herself as the drudge. Even her spirituality, her relationship with Christ, is under her husband's author-ity.
This trap also damages the husband. His superiors tell him that he is head, standing in Christ's place. He serves his wife best by ruling her. What he sees, though, is that he is hurting her. This means either that she is an especially rebellious woman - resisting all the grace that God is pouring on her through him - or that he is an incompe-tent, unworthy man of God. In either case, the answer is the same: He must tighten the screws and exercise firmer authority. This drives the wedge further between him and his wife. He is lonely and frustrated - a failure in God's sight. The two of them, who had begun so well to build a strong marriage, are now held apart by a growing wall of bitter-ness - and a false idea of God's plan.
There is a further consequence - infidelity. One of the greatest enemies of sex-ual happiness in marriage anyway is the loss of "magic", the way that married people can come to take each other for granted. The joy of human sex is never sheer physical pleasure. It is the delight that this person has given herself freely to him, when she might have chosen not to. She wants him. And she experiences the delicious thrill that he finds her desirable. Having "won" each other for life, married couples need to beware of losing sight of the gift they are to each other. In the O.W. marriage, the gift is lost. Marriage becomes a corporate contract with a command structure. There is no question here of gift. This woman who gives herself is not the fascinating creature whose heart the husband won, but the drudge who has to do what he says. And the wife simply finds her heart full of resentment. He is God's holy man; she is the submissive little woman with no mind. She has to obey his every word. He can ignore her, and it's because he is ‘busy with God's work’. This is a breeding ground for infidelity and it does happen. Adultery has become a serious problem in many renewal communities that adopt the O.W. teaching. And invariably the affairs are with non-members - interesting people who bring some life into their relationships.
Spousal Abuse
This discussion would not be complete without some mention of the problem of abuse. We hear it repeated too often: The abused wife has one responsibility - to be a martyr. Even - and this is an actual example* - if he cracks and bloodies her head with a hammer, she must never speak against him or stop honoring him. Fortunately, not all purveyors of the O.W. teaching go this far. However, social scientists tell us that the second best predictor of wife abuse is a fundamentalist interpretation of the Biblical doctrine on marriage. In other words, the second most likely sign that a man is a poten-tial abuser is that he holds to this teaching.†
In fact, we know that the most important thing an abused woman can do - both for herself and for her children - is to insist on her own dignity. Over and over the children of abusive fathers tell us that their deepest anger is not toward the father himself - "He was a sick man" - but toward the mother who accepted it all and failed to stand up for herself and her children.
What to Do
The solution to the O.W. trap is very simple. Don't believe it. Instead, love each other. Care and be there for each other. Communicate. Love your children. Make love your aim, and then use common sense. Get advice from people you know and trust when you need it. Learn from the Scriptures and from the Church's authentic teachers. Pope John Paul II’s writings are especially helpful.
Don't let inspiring or forceful teachers bully you. These teachers especially love "straw man" arguments. "Do you believe God's word? Or do you believe the feminists?" They set up a "straw man" - in this case that the only alternative to what they think is radical feminism - and then make you choose between it and their own view. "Are you afraid of the cross?" "Satan is good at planting doubts?" "Do you really have ques-tions, or are you afraid of losing your wife's favors in bed?" Statements and questions like these are nothing more than bully-tactics. Loving each other in marriage for life is hard enough as it is.
Life gives us enough pain, and often the only way husband and wife can hold on is with each other's help. Marriage is a matter of love that is faithful unto death. It is for this that Christ gives the sacramental graces of matrimony, not for a rigid, dehumanizing chain of command.
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